Discord&Closed Communities Leading To Mediocrity(?)

[Alys]

9 hours ago, Anders said:

Happens in legal factions too.

¨far back in the day most of the factions were doing OOC applications whether they're law enforcement or gang/mafia.¨

Nobody said it only happens in illegal factions.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Alys

[Paenymion]

This kind of stuff ultimately comes back to bite them because if you cling to a limited closed friend circle they will eventually leave and then we get all the stuff about "Community was best in 2020"  "All the good roleplayers left, we don't have as much fun thesedays".  You have to think it might be because you clung onto a fixed set of people and never welcomed in new people during the good times.

[Eastside.Shady]

13 hours ago, pateuvasiliu said:

One of my main issues with the server is that it prides itself on expunging metagaming but at the same time the factions have the right to remove a player based on OOC reasons. This to me is no different from mixing IC and OOC/metagaming.

 

There is a difference between an admin saying " This guy broke X rule, we ajail him " and a faction doing it.

Being in a faction is not a right that's protected by some legislature or law. Every faction and its' leader is allowed to pick and choose who they allow in. While it might not be fair for someone who's new, not a lot of things are. Some factions are geared towards helping new players and some are meant for people experience in that line of rp. It's not that complicated.

 

Discords sometimes can harm RP quality but in the end it depends on you, the faction's leadership, and the overall atmosphere of that Discord. It's not universal. These "friend group inner circles" show either poor leadership or even poorer vetting abilities. If you're faction's gonna be elitist and exclusive then you better be 100% sure of who you accept. The people who ignore others purely because they don't know each other on Discord or whatever are people who you shouldn't even pay attention to.

[pateuvasiliu]

12 hours ago, Late said:

It's not so much as a right but seemingly it's a requirement. As a faction/business leader you're somewhat expected to remove people OOCly if they're "not up to standard." 

 

The issue is when server standard and faction standard are not the same. Also bias exists.

[MeowTheEpic]

27 minutes ago, pateuvasiliu said:

 

The issue is when server standard and faction standard are not the same. Also bias exists.

My guy if I run a faction and I want to uphold a certain level of quality that may be deemed as higher than the server quality I'm free to do so, It's my faction and that person chose to try and join, there's no "Metagaming" done there, it's making sure a faction doesn't turn into a pile of garbage. If anything you should be praising those who try to uphold a higher standard of RP than your average Joe instead of complaining about how unfair it is, they chose to interact with a group that prides itself in their high roleplay standards then they automatically agree to their guidelines whether IC or OOC. Now I'm sorry if I misunderstood your statement but I felt that you're talking about OOC reasons as in lower quality of roleplay than the average member of said faction which is usually the reason. And honestly if a member is being problematic OOCly I don't see why it's a bad thing to get rid of them, whether IC or OOC as a member you represent that group and I understand why some would crackdown on bad apples.

[Trupiano]

I think discord is a great tool for knowledge sharing, critiquing and generally just distributing information. But it also provides certain tools and abilities that can be tempting to abuse and ultimately hurt RP. VOIP is the most tempting and arguably the most damaging. People will tell you "Oh, we don't MG we're just chitchatting about IRL" but regardless of intention, if your in VOIP you will MG. It's just entirely unavoidable, for example someone in the call might be tabbed out and upon hearing someone who is IG vocally react to something immediately tab in. What might not seem like a big deal just gave you a serious upper hand IC. Intentional or not it's MG and it hurts natural RP on the server.

 

 

Edited October 28, 2021 by Trupiano

[Vassilios]

19 hours ago, Koko said:

I've made it a point to, other than my main faction (K-Town, where our Discord communication is mostly as a social hub to mostly chat, shitpost and meme anyway) and a few other long-standing friends from the community, to limit my OOC communication with people I RP with as much as possible. In fact, I don't really RP at all with most of the GTAW people I talk to on Discord. We're just OOC buddies and we don't let that interfere in the paths of our characters. I definitely don't like discussing IC decisions or motives with the people involved IC, and if I meet someone spontaneously through RP, I have never asked for a Discord handle unless it was for something specific like needing to share a relevant file, image or document for something. If communication happens OOC, it usually relates to the RP at hand and it's kept to a minimum.

 

It helps my enjoyment and if there's a falling out it's easier to remain certain in the fact that it was 99% ICly motivated, due to events happening in the game. I'm here to RP first and foremost. It's nice that you can get along OOC, but it's not even really necessary as long as you're having fun in your shared hobby together.

This. Aside from faction members I try not to roleplay with friends, it always creates drama. Are you mean to their character? They'll take it OOCly. Do you backstab them or do anything else? They take it OOCly.

[pateuvasiliu]

4 hours ago, MeowTheEpic said:

My guy if I run a faction and I want to uphold a certain level of quality that may be deemed as higher than the server quality I'm free to do so

 

You're describing metagaming with extra steps.

[L I C E]

Got booted from my longstanding friendship group because suddenly they decided OOC they were unironically sexist now. Won't RP with me IC anymore either. I stopped wanting to be friends with people OOC after that, now I don't really touch discord too much. My RP experience is better for it.

[Ink]

So my personal take on all this? I think this is something that's impossible to fix. People are going to be on VOIP, people are going to metagame over Discord, so on and so on. Yes, we should still keep punishing people who get caught because it's definitely cheating, but it sucks that we won't catch most people doing it. 

 

But here's the thing: GTA RP communities have a long-running hard-on for people pretending like "zero MG" is a thing. The servers tend to run really strict stances against OOC influence on things and there's a lot of moral righteousness among different RPers and factions who like to value signal about how they do "everything IC." This posturing, of course, tends to be lies. Most other RP communities recognize that there is an OOC meta involved in the roleplay, and that there is room to use OOC appropriately. Faction forums, screenshot threads, all of these things are "metagaming" in a way. On most RP communities, there are LFRP boards and places for people to talk about what sorts of characters they'd like to make.

 

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be a good step for GTA:W to encourage less pretending about some impossibly high standard of "RP purity" and instead allow and encourage more avenues of OOC coordination. Why? The goal would be to help newer players or players who are not already established in the community. All the people who already have friends on the server (whether from other communities) or who have groups they RP with are already benefiting from these sorts of communities and channels, the only people who are missing out are our newbs.