Whats with scenes being voided?

[Mahitto]

2 hours ago, Slappy said:

Problem is not enough admins to effectively deal with the problem OOC whether it's handled in game or on the forums and if rules were broken leading up to a scene it wouldn't have happened in the first place if they weren't. Plus I got to feel more sorry for the admins giving up there time then the LEOs as the admins have no RP from it what so ever but they have to clean up the mess. People sign up to law enforcement for the shootouts, car chases and/or character development. They still get action more then most any other faction or roleplayer whether it gets avoided or not, there is a reason you never see alot of LEO's at bars like regular people as they aren't in it for the passive RP, they get their roleplay from the active RP which is always the best RP.

 

I feel the problem is not IC but it's the fact that OOC punishments for rule breaking is very lax or could be handled differently, maybe if you break the rules DMing you should have a character/account ban on being able to equip a fire arm for a certain time frame. It would put you at a disadvantage in character yes, but it will stop the ability to be able to do it again. It could lead to vehicle DMing or them using a melee weapon I hear you say? Well if they start to vehicle dm they aren't here to roleplay and have a play to win mentality and aren't wanted on the server. If they use a melee weapon then it's alot harder to get the same result as then the victim could either run away or fight back alot more effectively.

 

These are just my opinion not a matter of fact.

 

TLDR: Admins have it worse having to deal with the issues, LEOs still get the action RP from the shootouts or car chases even if the scene gets voided. Maybe new forms of punishment OOC need to be implemented.

 

There are enough admins. The entire situation, regarding everything, would change if punishments were actually harsh. It's disheartening to see 30 people lose hundreds of collective hours over someone's OOC selfishness and them only being verbally warned for it. If punishments were actually punishments, we'd have a completely different situation. And it makes sense - imagine how much more crime there would be in our real life communities if the punishment for murdering someone or robbing people would be a verbal, or even worse, a written warning, and rarely a few days in jail. It'd be chaos.

 

I see lots of people saying that LEOs still get that action of shootouts or pursuits but for lots of us, it's not about that at all. It's about the role-play, the circumstances, the development that comes out of all of that. It's not about the 3 seconds of shooting. And I know for a fact that a ton of people, in SD anyway, share this feeling.

[Wremlish]

I'm not going to comment on the LEO side of this discussion because I have never and currently don't play one! But, the voiding of scenes is done way too frequently in-general. I personally am of the mindset to never void situations, unless there's blatant rule breaking and the roleplay gets ruled on by an Admin through a report or other means. So, it's very frustrating to me when people void roleplay. I've experienced it countless times myself, where someone doesn't like the outcome of the roleplay that's happened to their character, so they void it. Which is obviously just breaching common courtesy and power gaming at that point. Just because you don't like the outcome of the roleplay situation, doesn't necessarily mean you need to roleplay the outcome as being this negative life altering event (within reason, of course, please don't brush off near death experiences like a robot). Also, it's fun to roleplay losing. You don't always have to win.

 

Personally, I believe there needs to be an adaption made to the current In Game Rules list. There's no written stance on when it is deemed acceptable to void roleplay and when it is not, currently the rules list only mentions it once, under Rule 1, Common Courtesy: "failing to roleplay a car crash, unless it was clearly caused due to desync (contact an admin through /report if you wish for a crash to be voided)". Because, there's no clear cut written rule or stance on the voiding of roleplay in the rules. I believe some players take it into their hands too frequently to just void roleplay they don't like. Be that with or without second party agreement.

 

I don't think voiding needs to be a strict rule, but an adaption to the Common Courtesy rule and expanded on in a little more detail. 

 

[sCrax]

13 hours ago, Cypher99 said:

This is the bigger issue with the entire situation. People breaking these rules aren't doing it as first-time rule breakers. They know the rules. They know if they break the rule they will get punished, scene will get voided, and their character suffers no IC consequences. It seems some would rather take the OOC punishment over the IC punishment, which is ridiculous. In some situations, they should be punished IC'ly and punished accordingly for logging off/maliciously disconnecting/breaking a rule just to avoid the IC consequences. Might certainly crack down on some of these shitty scenarios.

Well it's because admins will give them 4 warnings for the same offense and then ajail them for 20 minutes. Players know that they can get away easily with rule breaking in general instead of spending 20 OOC days in TTCF. Even if they ban them, it's mostly 3-7 days ban which solves nothing in the end. Admins needs to enforce harsher punishment for players that break the same rules over and over. 

[Mistery14]

On 12/2/2021 at 12:33 AM, Boland said:

Stop voiding scenes, instead... Let it continue, jail them ICly then jail them OOCly, stack that shit. 

This comment is honestly short simple but would work wonders.

 

Some players give absolutely 0 flying fucks about anything as long as their in-game assets are not touched. Throwaway characters are a thing yes, but if you get that thowaway out of the picture for a long enough time, it means the player using said throwaway will either have to wait it out or make another throwaway by deleting their previous, which in turn wastes their time in having to make another throwaway and gain assets/money with them over time, which is good. 

 

OOC Punishment is good but it's not the only solution. IC Consequences are just as important.

 

 

[Viscaria]

So what happens when one of you LEO's get blasted at a traffic stop and PK'd, you then report for an admin to handle but a pursuit is now ongoing, chasing the suspect, do we let that play out while having the person reporting wait for it to conclude? What about when LEO's report during a situation where they feel someone isn't roleplaying fear adequately? where do we draw the line to let roleplay continue when rule breaking is occurring?

Here's another common situation that occurs; There's some random guy massively trying to bait a well known street gang, hes clearly looking to provoke a shooting without any fear for his characters life whatsoever, he ends up ramming into them with his vehicle and then a shooting occurs, LEO's respond and end up arresting all the shooters - Is it fair to allow this to stay IC? should they have to suffer the IC consequences? there's often situations like these, and LEO roleplayers still get annoyed when we void this scene, understandable, no one wants their time wasted, but sometimes we just don't have a choice.

I feel there's too much finger pointing here when there's not enough taken into consideration, it was myself who responded to the voip metagaming the other night during that pursuit, should I just let it continue? having them coordinate over voip even more as they continue to keep switching vehicles and running PD through a chicken coup? what happens when they start involving more people into the situation potentially? when do we draw that line? when PD/SD says they've had enough?

I can understand the frustrations, truly, but sometimes there's just no other choice. If there's a good chance that things can stay IC then I'll certainly push for that, I don't ever want to void situations, and I always consider the other people involved when thinking about doing as such, its not like we just show up and go "lol okay voided", we do take into consideration that your time would be wasted, and while we hate voiding, sometimes its simply inevitable.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Viscaria

[Zach..]

14 minutes ago, Viscaria said:

So what happens when one of you LEO's get blasted at a traffic stop and PK'd, you then report for an admin to handle but a pursuit is now ongoing, chasing the suspect, do we let that play out while having the person reporting wait for it to conclude? What about when LEO's report during a situation where they feel someone isn't roleplaying fear adequately? where do we draw the line to let roleplay continue when rule breaking is occurring?

 

I cant speak for the situation you described that you handled, but, in this situation why not just tell the officer to put up a forum report after they've been killed?  In a situation when someone isn't RPing very well, maybe come in to pause it, explain to the person what needs to change, and go from there? I dunno, I understand your point, but it's incredibly tiring and demotivating on our side, there's gotta be an amicable solution right?

[Engelbert]

4 minutes ago, Zach.. said:

I cant speak for the situation you described that you handled, but, in this situation why not just tell the officer to put up a forum report after they've been killed?  In a situation when someone isn't RPing very well, maybe come in to pause it, explain to the person what needs to change, and go from there? I dunno, I understand your point, but it's incredibly tiring and demotivating on our side, there's gotta be an amicable solution right?

Technically they can do that on the spot, given once they are PK'd there's no rp expected from them.

[Narco]

On 12/1/2021 at 3:31 PM, Zach.. said:

I play in PD and half of the scenes we go to get voided. It's honestly tiring.

I dont see why the server couldn't change to pausing the scene, talking to the players, and then letting it progress. When there's tons of people logging in/investing their time into a situation, it's so demotivating to have to just skip it all.

 

Any thoughts as to how this could be fixed/changed?

From experience of being in SD, people cry about every little thing that doesn't go their way. Roleplay isn't always going to go your way and people have a difficult time accepting that and taking a loss. 

[Allerion]

On 1/10/2022 at 3:02 PM, Viscaria said:

So what happens when one of you LEO's get blasted at a traffic stop and PK'd, you then report for an admin to handle but a pursuit is now ongoing, chasing the suspect, do we let that play out while having the person reporting wait for it to conclude? What about when LEO's report during a situation where they feel someone isn't roleplaying fear adequately? where do we draw the line to let roleplay continue when rule breaking is occurring?

No offense Viscaria but we answered all these questions in this discussion on the topic already, I'll go one by one for ya.

 

So what happens when one of you LEO's get blasted at a traffic stop and PK'd, you then report for an admin to handle but a pursuit is now ongoing, chasing the suspect, do we let that play out while having the person reporting wait for it to conclude?: Yes, let the situation play out since we have other Officers already included in the roleplay, spectate the player and only pause/void if their roleplay is breaking the rules by having an advantage over us/making it not enjoyable for police. Once the roleplay is finished and it plays out you can issue you the punishment for the initial rule break ie. DM where they PK'd an Officer on a traffic stop.

 

What about when LEO's report during a situation where they feel someone isn't roleplaying fear adequately? where do we draw the line to let roleplay continue when rule breaking is occurring?: This one is pretty simple as well and I kind of explained it above. When someone isn't RPing fear adequately and it's not enjoyable for police to be RPing with them when they are breaking too many rules or not RPing fear for an example, those are the type of situations you can simply straight out void and issue the punishment. I actually met up with @Biscuit for a beer today and we spoke about this. What he does is he contacts the highest ranking PD on scene when someone breaks a rule and he asks him if PD would like to continue roleplaying the situation or straight out void this and I think it's a prime example of courtesy.

 

On 1/10/2022 at 3:02 PM, Viscaria said:

Here's another common situation that occurs; There's some random guy massively trying to bait a well known street gang, hes clearly looking to provoke a shooting without any fear for his characters life whatsoever, he ends up ramming into them with his vehicle and then a shooting occurs, LEO's respond and end up arresting all the shooters - Is it fair to allow this to stay IC? should they have to suffer the IC consequences? there's often situations like these, and LEO roleplayers still get annoyed when we void this scene, understandable, no one wants their time wasted, but sometimes we just don't have a choice.

 

I'll be honest with you from the PD's side of perspective, our guys love shootouts one way or another, sometimes it doesn't make them RP properly where we had 4 Officers get killed by chasing a guy with an assault rifle even though they were told to back off, just an example. So to answer your question, yes BUT only if the RP is enjoyable/makes sense, where the criminals are cooperating with us and letting us put them into custody, you always have a choice to let the RP continue and then issue out the admin punishment once they're arrested.

On 1/10/2022 at 3:02 PM, Viscaria said:

I feel there's too much finger pointing here when there's not enough taken into consideration, it was myself who responded to the voip metagaming the other night during that pursuit, should I just let it continue? having them coordinate over voip even more as they continue to keep switching vehicles and running PD through a chicken coup? what happens when they start involving more people into the situation potentially? when do we draw that line? when PD/SD says they've had enough?

I can understand the frustrations, truly, but sometimes there's just no other choice. If there's a good chance that things can stay IC then I'll certainly push for that, I don't ever want to void situations, and I always consider the other people involved when thinking about doing as such, its not like we just show up and go "lol okay voided", we do take into consideration that your time would be wasted, and while we hate voiding, sometimes its simply inevitable.

If it's policy that voiding for you is simply inevitable then change the policy although as far as I'm aware, it is NOT. It's not finger pointing but let's take a look at the VOIP situation and see the facts. They were metagaming indeed but we were already on their tail in a hot pursuit after armed suspects. A few guys from SWAT actually got to their PC and logged on the game to respond to the pager to come roleplay. We set up and went after the armed pursuit, chasing it for a while.

 

Now question is, should you void or not? Before you ask yourself that question is, is their rulebreak effecting the situation they are in AT THAT MOMENT that is putting police at disavantage? No, we were still hot on their tail chasing them, if they start involving more people potentially and continue switching vehicles then sooner or later the highest ranking in PD would have called off the pursuit and said to issue out a forum report. That's because we don't chase trolls or rulebreakers like that and we do actually let them go, and resort to forums. Once that happened you should be able to take your administrative action.

 

Pretty sure that sums it up.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Allerion

[Viscaria]

15 minutes ago, Allerion said:

No offense Viscaria but we answered all these questions in this discussion on the topic already, I'll go one by one for ya.

 

So what happens when one of you LEO's get blasted at a traffic stop and PK'd, you then report for an admin to handle but a pursuit is now ongoing, chasing the suspect, do we let that play out while having the person reporting wait for it to conclude?: Yes, let the situation play out since we have other Officers already included in the roleplay, spectate the player and only pause/void if their roleplay is breaking the rules by having an advantage over us/making it not enjoyable for police. Once the roleplay is finished and it plays out you can issue you the punishment for the initial rule break ie. DM where they PK'd an Officer on a traffic stop.

 

How long are we to spectate these occurrences when there's lots of other reports needing to be handled? is it fair to have witnessed rulebreaking and not intervene until the entire scene is over while there's other players that have potentially been waiting a long time for admin intervention? these scenes can take upwards of an hour or more.

 

18 minutes ago, Allerion said:

What about when LEO's report during a situation where they feel someone isn't roleplaying fear adequately? where do we draw the line to let roleplay continue when rule breaking is occurring?: This one is pretty simple as well and I kind of explained it above. When someone isn't RPing fear adequately and it's not enjoyable for police to be RPing with them when they are breaking too many rules or not RPing fear for an example, those are the type of situations you can simply straight out void and issue the punishment. I actually met up with @Biscuit for a beer today and we spoke about this. What he does is he contacts the highest ranking PD on scene when someone breaks a rule and he asks him if PD would like to continue roleplaying the situation or straight out void this and I think it's a prime example of courtesy.

This sort of ties in with what I wrote above with having to spectate a good amount of time while other reports continue stacking, its likely not fair for different reasons, I can understand the point of courtesy by asking the highest ranking online if they wish to continue, that's not always possible as any admin below level 1 and isn't LFM doesn't have direct access to the command to set themselves in the faction to check /fonline. Other admins can set it for us, but sometimes they're too busy, may not be watching the admin chat at the time, doing things while tabbed out, etc. The only other way would be for us to find someone in the faction who isn't in the pursuit and ask them, possible, but awkward, still I'll consider this going forward.

 

 

25 minutes ago, Allerion said:

I'll be honest with you from the PD's side of perspective, our guys love shootouts one way or another, sometimes it doesn't make them RP properly where we had 4 Officers get killed by chasing a guy with an assault rifle even though they were told to back off, just an example. So to answer your question, yes BUT only if the RP is enjoyable/makes sense, where the criminals are cooperating with us and letting us put them into custody, you always have a choice to let the RP continue and then issue out the admin punishment once they're arrested.

If it's policy that voiding for you is simply inevitable then change the policy although as far as I'm aware, it is NOT. It's not finger pointing but let's take a look at the VOIP situation and see the facts. They were metagaming indeed but we were already on their tail in a hot pursuit after armed suspects. A few guys from SWAT actually got to their PC and logged on the game to respond to the pager to come roleplay. We set up and went after the armed pursuit, chasing it for a while.

Now question is, should you void or not? Before you ask yourself that question is, is their rulebreak effecting the situation they are in AT THAT MOMENT that is putting police at disavantage? No, we were still hot on their tail chasing them, if they start involving more people potentially and continue switching vehicles then sooner or later the highest ranking in PD would have called off the pursuit and said to issue out a forum report. That's because we don't chase trolls or rulebreakers like that and we do actually let them go, and resort to forums. Once that happened you should be able to take your administrative action.

 

I know that not everyone in the faction enjoys shootouts, some despise them in fact, but I gather that a good amount also do enjoy them. The issue I've found with letting entire scenes play out like this, is that one of you ends up doing all the MDC paperwork only to get it voided, this has happened a few times before and I'm left with someone frustrated because they just wrote up a bunch of stuff only for it to get deleted and void. I get that what you mean here is that if its something like a pursuit, we could let it continue until its conclusion and everyone goes separate ways, but what if then the players who already left continue roleplaying around the scene that was voided? they perhaps log off after the fact and end up roleplaying development due to it without knowing about the void, or do we jump in directly when it reaches its conclusion when everyone is still present? which still leaves people stood around waiting doing nothing. 

If they call off the pursuit and put up a forum report, that contributes to forum reports taking even longer to get handled when admin intervention could have been taken in-game in the moment. The problem with all the above is that no matter what action you usually take as an admin, it will leave some people unhappy about something or another or cause other issues that could perhaps have been prevented. What I can say from this however, is that I'll be taking into consideration that LEO's may be enjoying the roleplay at hand, and I absolutely understand that they all get tired of things getting paused and voided, and if its possible, I'll let it continue for as long as I'm able should it be a viable option given the circumstances.