Short staffed factions?

[Shaderz]

I'm going to speak for PHMC because it's the faction I'm mostly familiar with and have been a member of since day one.

 

Yes, activity issues exist and the faction is short-staffed. There's no denying that. Can we as a faction put in more efforts to help fighting these issues? Absolutely. But it needs to go both ways. It kills our motivation every time someone skips roleplay with us, it makes us feel unappreciated and undervalued. Perhaps you don't realize it, nor do you care, but it's true. It's also extremely frustrating that 95% of the ER visits are gunshot wound victims or patients with either a minor concussion or a broken leg after a car accident. They may be fun the first few times, but they become way too boring to deal with that it's no surprise we avoid a lot of them like the plague.

 

Give us more unique roleplay opportunities. It's winter season, and there are plenty of illnesses that are too common around this time of the year. Colds, croups, strep throat, pneumonia, stomach flu, influenza, acute ear infections, to name a few. Look up their symptoms and roleplay them accordingly, it's honestly not hard at all and takes little to no time. Also, play this game with us where you don't tell us what your character is suffering from straight away unless it's painfully obvious, but make it so we have to keep asking questions, run tests and gather medical history information in order to make a diagnosis. I can assure you we'll have a great time if you do that, and so will you.

 

Something as simple as the above would most certainly help boosting activity levels and, ultimately, help sorting out staffing issues. And I'm sure the same applies to other factions listed on this thread. There's most definitely work that could be done on their end, but maybe if the community starts approaching them differently and providing them with unique roleplay opportunities, most of these issues will be eradicated. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pogis]

12 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

 

I always checked the gov forums instead, so I guess that's why. They don't seem to be matched.

I’ll get that updated today, maybe I missed something.

[Thekillergreece]

20 hours ago, Paenymion said:

 

Sooo, pretty much every legal faction that isn't LEO? 😄

Perhaps SAPR. It could need more numbers.

[Topinambour]

Hm main difficulty for LSGOV is that most of the positions require very specific skills, that most often you're required to also have OOC'ly. It's the first thing I looked at, for a legal char, but clearly it wasn't going to be possible :x 

(see: this thread)

 

Regarding official factions, is the Hope medical center a part of PHMC? Because I rarely see it opened but it's really cool and my char would go there on a more regular basis, if it was possible ^^ 

[Pogis]

Just now, Topinambour said:

Hm main difficulty for LSGOV is that most of the positions require very specific skills, that most often you're required to also have OOC'ly. It's the first thing I looked at, for a legal char, but clearly it wasn't going to be possible :x 

(see: this thread)

 

Regarding official factions, is the Hope medical center a part of PHMC? Because I rarely see it opened but it's really cool and my char would go there on a more regular basis, if it was possible ^^ 

 

Some of our positions do require some specific skills indeed, just like any Government job in real life would. You can be a PW Technician or a Licensing Official with no degree behind it whatsoever, but if you wish to pursue a career in Health and Human Services, you're obviously expected to have a degree. To rise in the ranks you're also expected to have a bachelors degree in the respective field, which, yet again, is normal for any Government job also in real life.

 

As for the OOC part - that is completely untrue. We do not require anyone to have any knowledge / skills on an OOC level, we're always ready to help you out and teach you shall there be anything to teach.

 

 

The only positions that require specific OOC knowledge could be the City Attorney, that's pretty much the only one I can think of.

[Welsh]

21 hours ago, Koko said:

FD and PHMC often complain about staff shortages. As far as I know, PHMC is the worst one off of the two, particularly when it comes to EU timezones since a lot of doctors are US players.

 

I'm not a Faction Leader, but my idea as someone who has extensively done medical/Fire RP for years is that a lot of the medical models in the server are based around waiting for calls staring at the wall. There's peaks of activity that are very stressful, and then complete voids of activity that are absolutely boring. Medical RP quantity is also a self-fulfilling prophecy through which staff performance and procedures at a given time have a lot of impact on how the community feels about interacting with these factions. I've definitely seen the number of calls increase or decrease depending on what kinds of characters and RP styles were predominant.

 

Fewer calls lead to less active RP, leading to boredom. A good fix would be to add more aspects of passive RP. For PHMC it could be doing the rounds at the hospital with NPCed patients and hypothetical scenarios, for FD things like training, maintenance, or time spent out in the community passive RPing.

I have created an alt for exactly this reason, I am UK based and the number of times I have been involved with NPCing PHMC, I thought it would be handy to create a character specifically for that role.

[Welsh]

Further to my last. There could also be vaccinations rolled out at either the Hospital or at one of the outreach centres/up state.

 

I don't mean Covid (it doesn't exist IG) but Flu jabs (are these a thing in USA?) And general vaccination drives.

 

There can be outpatients appointments, STD Clinics, Trauma clinics - not every interaction needs to be a another GSW (Gun Shot Wound)

 

Personally as someone who has done Medical RP in other games, I'm looking forward to getting heavily involved. 

[Alyssa McCarthy]

22 hours ago, bncal said:

Do you know if there is a short staffed faction? I was thinking about creating a legal character and i was wondering if there is a specific faction that needs members. 

 

Also you (as FL) can use this thread to discuss about this issue and how to fix it 

 

Pretty much all factions suffer from player shortages from time to time, the obvious exceptions being PD / SD / ULSA & perhaps, FD.

 

Why?

 

I think if you look at what the above three factions have in common, is that they hit a lot of tick boxes in terms of 'appeal' - the first two, are law enforcement, they're bound to appeal in what has traditionally been a cops vs robbers game - let's face it, it's also where the excitement exists for many players - who'd think that people enjoy car chases and shootouts in a GTA game! 🙂

 

I can probably speak a lot more about ULSA having led the faction since conception (Though just stepped away due to a new RL job), but what made it successful is that it isn't focused around sitting in a classroom, but a much wider campus life - so it's wide ranging from lectures, field trips & educational RP, but we've hosted political debates, sports events, charity fundraisers, lots of clubs, fraternities, sororities, camping trips, outdoor activities and of course, parties.

 

FD is another fairly large faction - though it has a heavy emphasis on medical roleplay, and of course they get to be involved in 'on scene' activities and roleplay along the PD / SD who are securing scenes and making them safe. I think this is probably what makes them more popular than say, a more static medical faction like PHMC.

 

After those factions, things become considerably more niche - either their scope is far more narrow and/or they are heavily forum involved and far less IC based (JSA for instance).

 

Overall, I think you have to look at what kind of roleplay you're looking for - their is an obvious draw in joining a bigger faction that I don't think anyone has mentioned btw, in so much that when you login to play, it's nice seeing alot of members online - it's pretty demoralizing to login and see you're the only person online, so do consider that too!

 

[KinnyWynny]

10 hours ago, Mahitto said:

 

Most factions, legal or illegal, have shortages in the sense that they either don't have enough members or could use more (either in the faction itself or in certain divisions). Take SD, for example - sure, the faction is overall doing good membership-wise but there are certain divisions that don't get the same attention, like pre-employment (recruitment) or field training. I don't know about PD, but it's probably similar.

Well then they're doing much better than the vast majority of other factions.

[Wuhtah]

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