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Revise server-related applications & bureaucratic steps


orca112

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It is no secret the server found itself in a lot of bureaucracy and micro management over the years. Regardless what type of roleplay you find yourself into, you will eventually have to deal with one of the admin teams or various factions for a variety of reasons - house/business requests, LFM fundings, IFM schemes, RPQM, PF/CCW, Fire Inspections, Fishing/Huting license, business licensing and so on. No matter what idea you might have, you will eventually have to spill the beans in an elaborative essay or fill out formats to be able to do what you intent to do with your character.

 

To put it into perspective - to start a small unique item store, lets say a music store, a person needs to 

  1. Request a property with PM, detailing their project and why they need said property. This is reliant on a schedule which can, worst case, take between two to four months in total,
  2. Furnish or have the property furnished,
  3. Request a unique item script, once more detailing their project and need for the script support,
  4. Request LFM funding if their business is not self-sustaining due to the new absence of government checks by default
  5. Register the business with LSGOV and (if applicable) request a business license with LSGOV,
  6. Request and pass fire inspection with SFM,
  7. Have active donator status or employ an idividual with donator status,

all while also working out their concept, seeking/creating graphic design, an IC website, employing personnel, setting up discord, stock/price list and much more. The total process between initial idea and first opening can easily take up between three months and half a year which creates a huge burden on the player that may be inspired and has an idea they wish to realize, but fails to maintain motivation through this lengthy process or simply does not start to begin with due to the many bureaucratic steps to be taken for their simple, small shop.

 

My suggestion is to sit down and revise all these different applications, bureaucratic steps and essay writing. See what is actually necessary and benefits the server and roleplay quality, cut down on unnecessary writings and remove what creates a simple burden for the sake of simply being there whilst bringing no benefit to the playerbase and the roleplay quality on the server. The server and its community needs less bureaucracy and more natural character-to-character interactions. One with an idea should not have to jump 10 different hoops between in and out-of-character to make their idea reality. A player should not wait for weeks and months end for some requests to open or get a response to such. An admin should not be working nine to five exclusively having to push papers for the server and the sub-team they are in.

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Good thread. In addition to what you mentioned, there is the burden of hiring employees from a very limited pool of people who even are okay with roleplaying "regular" people--and many of these individuals either abandon the character or go on to own their own business shortly after they make enough money.

 

When my character first had the idea for the brewery, she had somewhere between 10 and 20 people interested in working there. It took about an extra month of IC development before the OOC application was entered. It took about a month and a half of discussing with LFM to get it approved and then another month and a half to get it mapped (which was relatively luckily fast for the scale of the project). By this point, that pool of a dozen people who wanted to work at the spot had shrunk remarkably. Many of them already went entirely different directions with their characters or were not even playing them/the server.

 

The point I'm contributing here is that all these hoops to jump take up time, and time is the biggest enemy we have in an RP community. Obviously we can't just magically appear fully mapped new businesses for people day 1 of their ask and there has to be some bureaucracy to facilitate all of that. 

 

My #1 hope for this server's OOC bureaucracy is that we are able to eventually take more and more of it in-character. It'd be really cool if Property Management, for instance, did more and more of their job on IC admin-account PCs. Instead of OOC applications which are not the best demonstration of a player's fit for running an IC property, have IC property managers/investors/sellers/whatever meet with the player's character and have an interview. It'll be more fun for both the player and the admin, it actually fits in with what we're all trying to do here (RP, hopefully), and it gives the admins a chance to actually see how the player roleplays and portrays their character.

 

Just an idea.

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1 hour ago, orca112 said:

To put it into perspective - to start a small unique item store, lets say a music store, a person needs to 

  1. Request a property with PM, detailing their project and why they need said property. This is reliant on a schedule which can, worst case, take between two to four months in total,
  2. Furnish or have the property furnished,
  3. Request a unique item script, once more detailing their project and need for the script support,
  4. Request LFM funding if their business is not self-sustaining due to the new absence of government checks by default
  5. Register the business with LSGOV and (if applicable) request a business license with LSGOV,
  6. Request and pass fire inspection with SFM,
  7. Have active donator status or employ an idividual with donator status.

 

1) This is a necessary step. As you said, it "benefits the server and roleplay quality" by filtering out more quality applicants/owners for that business.

2) Can't cut down on this, this isn't any sort of bureaucracy. This just comes with the territory of starting a new business.

3) This is also a necessary step, but it could be consolidated into step one rather than a separate request. Same form.

4) What would you suggest here besides applying for funding? Unfortunately, this is necessary for any business not attached to the government bonus.

5) This is an IC action. Do you think businesses shouldn't have to register themselves? Why or why not? I'm sure the LS Gov keeps track of registered businesses, which in turn allows them to investigate/inspect said businesses if someone reports them IC'ly (which is possible on the LS Gov site). Is this not creating the potential for more RP opportunities that would otherwise not exist? That does benefit the server and its players in some way.

6) This is also an IC action. It gives purpose to players who RP with SFM. This is not added bureaucracy, it's creating RP for someone, is it not?

7) Yeah this is crap. Don't like donator status being a necessity in order to run a business.

 

Can't please everyone. A lot of this has to exist in some form or another, otherwise how would it all get handled? No applications? No LFM funding? What would you suggest to make it better?

 

1 hour ago, Ink said:

My #1 hope for this server's OOC bureaucracy is that we are able to eventually take more and more of it in-character. It'd be really cool if Property Management, for instance, did more and more of their job on IC admin-account PCs. Instead of OOC applications which are not the best demonstration of a player's fit for running an IC property, have IC property managers/investors/sellers/whatever meet with the player's character and have an interview. It'll be more fun for both the player and the admin, it actually fits in with what we're all trying to do here (RP, hopefully), and it gives the admins a chance to actually see how the player roleplays and portrays their character.

 

Honestly love this idea, but not sure this is possible. It's one thing to be able to handle something via UCP such as reading through an application or request and another entirely to have to logistically work out scheduling for these IC interactions. I feel it would ultimately become more of a burden and slow things down even more. Imagine having to work out IC interactions for 50+ applications in a timely manner? It's the same reason our court system relies on out-of-game communications. It's just not feasible with all the different players in different timezones, in my opinion.

 

 

Edited by 99
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19 minutes ago, 99 said:

1) This is a necessary step. As you said, it "benefits the server and roleplay quality".

2) Can't cut down on this, this isn't any sort of bureaucracy.

3) This is also a necessary step, but it could be consolidated into step one rather than a separate request. Same form.

4) What would you suggest here besides applying for funding? Unfortunately, this is necessary for any business not attached to the government bonus.

5) This is an IC action. Do you think businesses shouldn't have to register themselves? Why or why not? I'm sure the LS Gov keeps track of registered businesses, which in turn allows them to investigate/inspect said businesses if someone reports them IC'ly (which is possible on the LS Gov site). Is this not creating the potential for more RP?

6) This is also an IC action. It gives purpose to players who RP with SFM. This is not added bureaucracy, it's creating RP for someone, is it not?

7) Yeah this is crap. Don't like donator status being a necessity in order to run a business.

 

This has been an example of what hoops one has to go through for one idea, being the 'most extreme' variant due to the many requests and applications one has to undergo. A lot of concepts end up having some bureaucratic step needed to be taken and it got to a point that, if you have been on the server for longer, you end up writing many, many essays. Hence it is vital to look into the wide variety of applications, requests and essays needed writing to see what is needed, what can be ammended and what can be ultimately removed.

 

You have already noted that yourself, property & script request could be combined. Another suggestion in this thread brought up was setting PM up as more of an in-character entity with meetings. There can also be a cut down on details within the different application or request formats...a lot of things that can be done when sitting down and going over the various things to see where the micro management and bureaucracy can be cut down rather than the current trend of adding even more bureaucratic steps - both in as well as out-of-character.

Edited by orca112
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10 hours ago, 99 said:

 

1) This is a necessary step. As you said, it "benefits the server and roleplay quality" by filtering out more quality applicants/owners for that business.

2) Can't cut down on this, this isn't any sort of bureaucracy. This just comes with the territory of starting a new business.

3) This is also a necessary step, but it could be consolidated into step one rather than a separate request. Same form.

4) What would you suggest here besides applying for funding? Unfortunately, this is necessary for any business not attached to the government bonus.

5) This is an IC action. Do you think businesses shouldn't have to register themselves? Why or why not? I'm sure the LS Gov keeps track of registered businesses, which in turn allows them to investigate/inspect said businesses if someone reports them IC'ly (which is possible on the LS Gov site). Is this not creating the potential for more RP opportunities that would otherwise not exist? That does benefit the server and its players in some way.

6) This is also an IC action. It gives purpose to players who RP with SFM. This is not added bureaucracy, it's creating RP for someone, is it not?

7) Yeah this is crap. Don't like donator status being a necessity in order to run a business.

 

Can't please everyone. A lot of this has to exist in some form or another, otherwise how would it all get handled? No applications? No LFM funding? What would you suggest to make it better?

 

 

Honestly love this idea, but not sure this is possible. It's one thing to be able to handle something via UCP such as reading through an application or request and another entirely to have to logistically work out scheduling for these IC interactions. I feel it would ultimately become more of a burden and slow things down even more. Imagine having to work out IC interactions for 50+ applications in a timely manner? It's the same reason our court system relies on out-of-game communications. It's just not feasible with all the different players in different timezones, in my opinion.

 

 

 

All of them are necessary, if we look at them that way, but the process is heavily flawed at the moment. If anything, we could add ten more steps and double the waiting time for the sake of realism, but that wouldn't really help anyone.

 

I think that a compromise has to be reached in order to make opening a business (and requests in general) more bearing and easy on both players and the staff team or factions who handle them. It's the same thing with server applications - in order to ensure absolute quality, we could, in theory, have a 3 hour role-play test, a probationary period and 2 interviews with each applicant, but we're not doing that. A reasonable compromise has been found in order to have the highest quality possible while being efficient as well.

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Won't say for all things mentioned here, as it would be unfair (never started a business), but to give you at least some light of hope - step 5 is a necessary IC action, but we do understand players want to start their business immediately and don't have any sanctions for not registering the business straight away/prior to making it work. You can do it when you're more or less settled.

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14 hours ago, orca112 said:
  1. Request a property with PM, detailing their project and why they need said property. This is reliant on a schedule which can, worst case, take between two to four months in total,
  2. Furnish or have the property furnished,
  3. Request a unique item script, once more detailing their project and need for the script support,
  4. Request LFM funding if their business is not self-sustaining due to the new absence of government checks by default
  5. Register the business with LSGOV and (if applicable) request a business license with LSGOV,
  6. Request and pass fire inspection with SFM,
  7. Have active donator status or employ an idividual with donator status,

 

  1. This unfortunately takes a lot of time. No argument there.
  2. I don't see an easy way to avoid this, unless you're going to offer prefurnished interiors for businesses. This doesn't really work since each building is unqiue, and someone will have to map them either way. No solution for this.
  3. This doesn't actually take that long. If your business is approved, the script usually isn't an issue.
  4. LFM funding is only applicable in extraordinary situations. If you're setting up a business that will depends on LFM funding, you're doing something wrong, or you haven't properly discussed this with administrators/PM/LFM beforehand. This doesn't really belong in this list, as it is an exception.
  5. This doesn't cost a lot of time, and you can do this beforehand, or somewhere afterwards. It is an IC issue that you should not lump together with OOC barriers like the ones above.
  6. This doesn't cost a lot of time and it is an IC issue that you should not lump together with OOC barriers like the ones above.
  7. The server doesn't pay for itself. 

 

 

The only revision applicable is the PM request process/schedule. I also posted a suggestion to help a bit with the last issue;

 

 

Edited by mj2002
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I have to admit, I'm a bit stuck with my business right now. It's not necessarily because of how many hoops there are, but also because of how they got added on top of one another, over time.

 

It's... a bit like an old program that's been constantly updated by different generations of devs. Over time, code accumulates, never being fully cleaned. You have uncommented sections of code, nobody's got any clue what it does but you can't remove it because it might break the rest of the program. Features keep accumulating over and over, making the process absolutely impossible to digest for a new dev. Here it's a bit the same. A lot of different processes for businesses were added over time, sometimes not fully-documented. So for a new player, it can be a little crushing.

 

Like I registered my business - not a bar or a club - with LSGov, cool! Then I requested a business script to recruit people - but denied, I was told I needed to lease a physical office first. So I wait a few weeks for leases to open since they're not opened all the time. I request a lease on the office I wanted. Denied, because the office is in a specific kind of location instead of the usual towers, and it's not in the list: I need to" request it and set it as a lease" (no clue what that means, and there's no mention of that in the leasing guide). Essentially, I've lost a whole month, and now I have to wait for mid-January until leases are opened again, this time to "set it as a lease" (whatever that means). 

 

There's even processes that aren't up to date at all: for example, when opening a lease request, you're told you'll need to get a tobacco or alcohol license from the government. Except, on the gov forum, you have:

image.png.e2a531e650f558a756ef9f1f0a4e43de.png

 

Now don't get me wrong, it's not the PM staff's fault - in fact they were lovely and patient with my shenanigans 😛 But the accumulation of features over time, and the approximate documentation, can turn a simple concept ("I'll open a business") into a very long, drawn-out process (missing a lease windows because your business isn't a simple bar/club, etc.). It becomes more messy for staff and players alike :x

 

A bit of a rework to streamline the process may be a good idea. For example, making it so you can request a lease AND a business script at the same time (tick a box "I'll need a business script" or whatever?). Or applying for the licenses at the same time as you apply for the business license, instead of having a separate forum, those kinds of things? 

Edited by Topinambour
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5 hours ago, mj2002 said:

 

  1. This unfortunately takes a lot of time. No argument there.
  2. I don't see an easy way to avoid this, unless you're going to offer prefurnished interiors for businesses. This doesn't really work since each building is unqiue, and someone will have to map them either way. No solution for this.
  3. This doesn't actually take that long. If your business is approved, the script usually isn't an issue.
  4. LFM funding is only applicable in extraordinary situations. If you're setting up a business that will depends on LFM funding, you're doing something wrong, or you haven't properly discussed this with administrators/PM/LFM beforehand. This doesn't really belong in this list, as it is an exception.
  5. This doesn't cost a lot of time, and you can do this beforehand, or somewhere afterwards. It is an IC issue that you should not lump together with OOC barriers like the ones above.
  6. This doesn't cost a lot of time and it is an IC issue that you should not lump together with OOC barriers like the ones above.
  7. The server doesn't pay for itself. 

 

 

The only revision applicable is the PM request process/schedule. I also posted a suggestion to help a bit with the last issue;

 

 

 

I can, off the top of my head, think of a few ways to make the process a lot simpler and quicker, easier on both the staff team/factions and players.

 

  1. Keep all applications open at all times. Instead of an essay-based request, make a standardized application - some one-two sentence answers, quicker to both write and review. Let PM members to vote on the app in their own time and pass or deny it when a minimum number of votes has been reached. This way, the team can focus less on apps and more on how these properties are being used, interact with them, supervise them and make sure they're used in a realistic way, and as declared.
  2. - (no way to influence this)
  3. Add the script request to the original standardized application as one or a few extra fields.
  4.  - (not applicable to most businesses)
  5. You should be able to register your business within a month of the first time it operated.
  6. The inspection is actually something I've heard a lot of people complain about. Even if it's an IC problem, it's an OOC annoyance and it only adds up to the other huge waiting times. You should be able to request the inspection as soon as the interior is done, SFM should be able to do it without you being present and you should be able to operate the business under 'pending fire inspection' while waiting for it.
  7.  - (not related to waiting times, different issue)

 

 

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It's not THAT long. One can submit the fire inspection, business registration, and shop script right before furnishing the property. By the time you're finished with furnishing the property? Every thing would generally be cleared. Takes a couple of days, if any thing, after you've had your business concept OOCly accepted.

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