Neutral Characters and the crime rate: What's the point?

[DasFroggy]

6 minutes ago, Valkyr_ said:

Honestly, these run and gun shitrobberies are nothing but a nuisance, theres no enjoyment or developing done, after the quick bang and run you usually just go meh and move on because its so bland and god damn boring and creates nothing of value

 

If only I were so lucky. It's rarely ever anything besides having three dollars stolen before my character has their legs broken before they're dumped on a back road coastline on the opposite side of the island from LS proper.

[DLimit]

26 minutes ago, nwah_ said:

Admin punishments are also CRAZY lax to what they used to be. People brazenly and knowingly breaking rules get off with minor ajails instead of bans, I could have sworn when I joined the server admins were dishing out bans left and right to people just not being up to server standard. 

I remember getting a-jailed as a first-time offender for 60 minutes over something smaller than what people are getting warnings for, today.

Warnings for deathmatching is a thing, today...

[DasFroggy]

1 minute ago, DLimit said:

I remember getting a-jailed as a first-time offender for 60 minutes over something smaller than what people are getting warnings for, today.

Warnings for deathmatching is a thing, today...

 

This is going to get worse as the population shrinks further, as the problem players become a bigger percentage of the overall population. Banning them and responding to their behavior risks putting a larger dent in the overall server population.

 

Which isn't surprising, because this is actually a pretty common issue in roleplay communities with a player operated antagonist element. The good roleplayers in all walks of the roleplay community are either run off or killed, as good roleplay is rarely if not outright never able to keep up with groups that focus on OOC meta strategy to 'win'.

[Wuhtah]

Let's keep on topic and not stray. 

[Jeroen]

It isn't a surprise that a lot of players share the same mentality about the omnipresence of illegal roleplay. And the problem with bad criminal roleplay is that it affects others. Bad illegal roleplay often involves cops, civilians, FD, and DMEC or PHMC depending on the situation. This is often 10+ players who had their roleplay disrupted for over 30 minutes because someone shot their illegal gun at someone for often reasons that don't make any sense to legal or neutral roleplayers.

 

People often don't like losing, many also don't like to lose their liberty even if it is briefly, and people don't like having to deal with getting their stuff taken from them. This results in people resenting those who rob them, and will try to avoid getting robbed at the cost of roleplay. The quality of roleplay on the streets absolutely has gone downwards hard because of the massive risk of getting robbed. Some complain that neutral characters go from one interior to another, to dance or do whatever. And I believe me that this is absolutely caused by robberies. You want more neutral/middle characters on the streets doing roleplay? Don't scare them into interiors excessive robberies.

 

You aren't even safe in numbers, I like to hang around on the street and chat with people. And in my case I was chatting it up with 3 other IC friends in front of my character's apartment on the sidewalk. In the meanwhile a 4-door car with shady figures slowly drive past us. Of course vigilance and street smarts (due to knowing it is a "high crime area") paid off. I informed the person standing next to me that we need to boogey inside, which we did because the car was coming for round two. The car beelined across the center line into the incorrect lane to try and park right in front of us. I've luckily escaped from them, however this proves that any attempt at making positive roleplay outdoors (which a lot of players want to do) will get disrupted in a negative way.

 

I've had at least half a dozen of my friends who are all good roleplayers either gone inactive from GTA:World or quit it entirely. Whenever I ask for their reasoning it is always that the amount of crime committed in the server is astronomically high and that it kills their desire to roleplay. It prevents them from doing what they'd like to roleplay outdoors, and it affects everyone. I've felt my friends quitting GTA:World a lot, all of us started as IC acquaintances and became OOC friends. This change is felt ICly too, as the friendships that my characters once had are now disillusioned because of GTA:World & IFM's backwards policies. I genuinely sometimes feel like a complete idiot for still playing on the server, seeing as many of my friends have left for the same reason(s).

 

All of these pains in the community is caused by certain staff members/teams pandering to a group that negatively affects another major group of players. All of these complaints have gone ignored for far too long. Get your shit together, it's not too hard for specific admins to make a meaningful and positive impact.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Jeroen

[L I C E]

2 hours ago, i dont wanna od in LA said:

i have a pretty simple solution guys. don't create characters that are your avatars and go clubbing because you can't do it irl. create meaningful roleplay instead of focusing on being the top dog aka mr everything aka i work juggle 3 fulltime jobs and still have time to go clubbing or robbing people. don't be afraid to roleplay a character that isn't a 1:1 replica of your favorite celebrity. high crime rate isn't the problem here. it's the quality of roleplay presented by certain groups and individuals & IFM seemingly doing little to nothing to counter it because this server doesn't have any set it stone rp standards and i've been saying this for nearly 6 months now. rule 0 is the biggest issue here.

yeah but the issue is even characters who are well roleplayed and aren't just club-rats get fucked over or forced out. i play a mailman, an architect and a druggie - all 3 have been robbed, kidnapped or otherwise extorted multiple times. creating a character who isn't inside an illegal faction is like painting a giant red target on your back for the so called "lolplayers". i've had some great interactions with the mongols, some of DWB and the conti crime family who are very good criminal roleplayers imo. unfortunately this is shadowed by the constant DeShawn Tycondarius played by a 16 year old Albanian teen IRL who thinks all gangs do all day is go out and kidnap people. Hell, there was even people getting robbed on Christmas by (M) characters in gingerbread masks with fully automatics. 

i personally have reached the point where i'm not going to bother ever forum reporting these players anymore. i genuinely can't be arsed. my RP on my civilian characters consists of interior RP inside a locked house where I sit n watch Netflix series with my friend for 2 hrs. if I so much as spawn my car on my driveway i'm gonna get robbed or kidnapped or have my interior broken into. i cannot be fucked to fight against it when i know nothing will ever change and that i constantly have to be on the edge of my seat OOC when i'm outside because there's a large chance the next car that rolls past is gonna be 4 (M) players with AK47s n glocks looking to take everything and anything on me with 2 lines of RP. as far as i'm concerned, let these shit rpers have the server. i don't care anymore. i truly don't care.

[H1 Soljuh]

I haven't personally dealt with much shit criminal roleplay in a long time. It peaked for me earlier in 2021. However, the server does absolutely tilt in a cops/robbers direction from what I've seen. There's constant LEO updates, yet we can't so much as get a working group chat. We can't get a working wheelchair (for the 2nd time). Hell, people bought $15/mo dogs when the update was announced, and the update was pulled. Cops don't seem to give a shit about boring scenes. I've seen cops drive past dumbass drivers and people drifting several times. As much as I hate the traffic laws, the high expectations of driving in an empty city, robocops that play cat and mouse with racers (two sides of the same coin imo), etc., traffic enforcement seems to be nonexistent in 2021. Might just be me but I'm actually struggling to get a ticket this year, and I don't give a fuck about how I drive, other than checking intersections so I don't get t-boned. Recently, I heard of 3 cop cars driving past a car flipped over from a crash in Alta, something that's HARD to miss, while no FD is online. I've seen LEOs tend to scenes only to leave dead bodies, weapons/casings, or blood spots. That might be because no coroners or even FD are around, but that's the problem. That shit is boring compared to getting into gunfights with carbines.

 

BF400 robberies got banned so now I guess the new meta is burglaries, because someone actually put forth the idea of 500k house alarms to make them easier for criminals. Why? For the sole purpose of getting guns. Swiping them from legal holders is the easiest way because there's a steady supply, and everyone has them, ironically because criminals are such a problem. I'm sure you've seen the recent report where a mapper nicked a stockpile of PF guns like he was ever going to get away with it. People get punished for looting and metagaming gun drops constantly. Why are guns that much of a commodity that many people seem to be willing to risk any punishment for them? You can't tell me there's a lack of them, the sheer quantity of gun crime says the complete opposite. All I can deduce is that there's a lot of shit criminal roleplayers that constantly get into shootouts, and that's likely all that they do.

 

This could all be the result of people getting bored and the server losing steam as COVID ends. Creative efforts get dropped and it devolves into basic gameplay. It is what it is, but it doesn't make for a fun game mode when doing anything cool on this server already required jumping through hoops, writing applications, meeting seemingly arbitrary portrayal standards, and possibly even clearing IC regulations. To top it off, these applications are fucking closed half the time. That leaves us with a stale interior-based dating sim.

[knppel]

The amount of crime is unrealistic as people only use "realism" as a short-cut excuse, ignoring what does not support their argument (subconsciously or consciously, regardless).

 

Best example is the recent debate about property alarms.

 

Some folks seriously lobby for easier gaming for burglars and argue that "irl 3,300 burglaries happen daily in the US"- thus implying some of these burglaries should "realistically" take place in LS (more than do currently, to be precice).

That however irl there's 330,000,000 us citizens falling victim to all these burglaries, not roughly 1,000 like in LS, has not been taken in account (because the whole idea was to lobby for support for criminal rp, spreading the myth it's supressed so bad).

 

5 minutes ago, L I C E said:

i have a pretty simple solution guys. don't create characters that are your avatars and go clubbing because you can't do it irl.

You do realize that roleplaying clubbing was a thing before covid when it was perfectly possible irl, right?

Just saying.

 

And the argument is just ironic and could just as much be turned around .

"Don't create avatars to commit cool criminal deeds as you can't do it irl", lmao.

 

Sounds ridiculous? No shit. Then why put it on others for not committing criminal acts ic for the sake of it? Just my 2 cents on that matter.

 

And I know I tag the wrong person with the quote, blame the forum not allowing me to take quotes from other pages.

 

8 minutes ago, L I C E said:

i play a mailman, an architect and a druggie - all 3 have been robbed, kidnapped or otherwise extorted multiple times.

Refering to what I said above:

while victim-blaming is wide-spread in our community and we'll find a lot of people to claim it's you, numbers simply prove it isn't.

The actual cause for such John Doe's constantly falling victim to random crime is that dedicated criminals want to portrait 3,300 burglaries a day (because realistic), of course with less than 10% of these being actually investigated by the cops.

This is just as much covering robberies (and if "chain robbing" is banned a hundred times, we've meanwhile found out this rule created a sport in cheating the system itself, by people in a crew doing it in turns etc.), or really any sort of crime - while typically less troubling drug dealing is a prime example too, the chance some kid offers you coke in a club irl is not 100%.

 

It is in LS as same as robbers, burglars etc., people want to rp dealers (and the myth holds it illegal rp needs support when in fact there is not enough demand for it, like, market wise. I can't snort as much ic as that you're all kingpins, and still also do a realistic portrait, can I?).

 

There's 1000s of fake "e-urban" myths going around such as civilians refusing to rp when they deny coke.

Even if they buy coke, why should they obliged to do so from randoms when you wouldn't?

And again quantitatively: How many kilos a week are the 1,000 residents of LS supposed to consume again?

 

And so on and so on.

On top of this come other problems such as that everyone is allowed to roleplay a criminal, while for everything else (literally, except trashman or supermarket employee) you need to apply, ic but very often ooc if you don't find that perfectly tailored job for your char (or tailored your char for a job).

[sCrax]

The main issue is that back in 2019, when I started playing here, people were getting punished for ANY rule breaking. If you were clearly trolling, you got banned straight away in most cases. Right now? You can walk in an open business and mass murder everyone and 9 times out of 10 you'll get away with a warning. Illegal roleplay felt so much better even a year back, there was more realistic beef, not just senseless shootouts. Admins need to be more strict when it comes to breaking rules. You can browse the report section and there are reports where people LITERALLY say that they don't care that they broke rules. What did they get in return? A few minutes in admin jail. Stop giving people 50 chances when their intentions are crystal clear. Anybody can sit 10 minutes in admin jail and go back to breaking rules. Ban people right away if they have instances of rule breaking in a span of few days. Yeah and stop unbanning noobs after three days.

Edited December 30, 2021 by sCrax

[i dont wanna od in LA]

24 minutes ago, L I C E said:

yeah but the issue is even characters who are well roleplayed and aren't just club-rats get fucked over or forced out. i play a mailman, an architect and a druggie - all 3 have been robbed, kidnapped or otherwise extorted multiple times. creating a character who isn't inside an illegal faction is like painting a giant red target on your back for the so called "lolplayers". i've had some great interactions with the mongols, some of DWB and the conti crime family who are very good criminal roleplayers imo. unfortunately this is shadowed by the constant DeShawn Tycondarius played by a 16 year old Albanian teen IRL who thinks all gangs do all day is go out and kidnap people. Hell, there was even people getting robbed on Christmas by (M) characters in gingerbread masks with fully automatics. 

i personally have reached the point where i'm not going to bother ever forum reporting these players anymore. i genuinely can't be arsed. my RP on my civilian characters consists of interior RP inside a locked house where I sit n watch Netflix series with my friend for 2 hrs. if I so much as spawn my car on my driveway i'm gonna get robbed or kidnapped or have my interior broken into. i cannot be fucked to fight against it when i know nothing will ever change and that i constantly have to be on the edge of my seat OOC when i'm outside because there's a large chance the next car that rolls past is gonna be 4 (M) players with AK47s n glocks looking to take everything and anything on me with 2 lines of RP. as far as i'm concerned, let these shit rpers have the server. i don't care anymore. i truly don't care.

i'd like to quote something i said earlier on this thread:

  

3 hours ago, i dont wanna od in LA said:

It's easier to just get into car 4 deep (with 1 or 2 people carrying guns) and go rob some PF holders to obtain fresh weapons and ammo. As it currently stands you can't even get any ammo legally (which is also bs). Guns shouldn't be a scarcity and locking PFs to non-gang members only seems silly asf and leads to this. Weapon supplier program is literally one of the worst things on the server as it currently stands because they only supply people from their circles and their ooc buddies. IFM does nothing to solve this. They hand out weapon supplier position to people in good administrative standing not actual good roleplayers. 

this issue doesn't lay directly in the legal/illegal split, it's rather the fact that most of people who decide to rob people target specifically PF holders and 'mallrats' as it's quite easy to tell who's who and what's what due to the reasons mentioned above.