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Where are the truckers?


ZaE

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16 minutes ago, Paenymion said:

 

I believe developers just work on what they feel like working on, so if nobody feels like working on the trucking system, nobody does.  But if somebody feels like making a new fishing script or adding a new speed radar, it's done.  Not ideal because it leads to things like this, but it is what it is.  They don't get paid so who is going to force them to work on something they won't enjoy?  Last I heard, they were looking to hire some Russian coders and "direct" them a bit more (new inventory system) but I would imagine the recent sanctions on Russia might have made that a bit more tricky (not a lawyer, just guessing).

 

It's not even about developers. It's all of it. The issues that we have in the community relate to, well, all aspects of it. Sure, lots of them are about bugs and/or suggestions, but we have many more issues that can be solved by the staff team as a whole, management, property management and others. Some of these issues include the enormous waiting times for most of the stuff, the lax, barely-existing punishments given out to rule-breakers, admin rulings and precendents, (the lack of) general role-play quality, as well as smaller issues with specific systems - look at the poor robberies that have only recently been fixed through a pretty quick ruling, if I may say so, after literal years and probably thousands or tens of thousands of cumulated poor robberies that damaged the game-play of thousands of players altogheter. A huge issue that was well-known to, well, everyone, for years, with a fix that required a few days of work. Same goes with pretty much all of the other issues. 

 

And even developer-wise, they obviously should be given some leeway if they're doing it for free, but volunteering entails taking on some responsibilities. If you volunteer with, say, the Red Cross, you still do what you're being told, even if you have some freedom to attend or not, or in terms of what you can do. You can't say you're a volunteer and have pretty much 0 responsibility, do whatever you want. That should be somewhat enforced too. After all, we don't need an amazing script to have a great experience, but we do need an extremely well-working staff team and very high standards. Or, hell, low standards. Make it a low-quality role-play community, but at least let us know. Right now we have huge expectations when it comes to, say, how in-depth a turbocharger is installed or how many /me's have to be put for a canine to track a bag of coke, but at the same time it's perfectly fine to grind the trucking script to then drive your sports Coquette to your penthouse.

 

So as a side note to the discussion, I'm just starting to realize that all of these discussions and debates might be in vain. People are putting it a lot of time and effort, coming up with the issues and with solutions, only for them to not only not be considered, but rather be completely ignored. Just take a loot through this entire forum, what's the point? We have almost 25000 (thousand!!) posts in the suggestion forums, 16 pages of bugs and 51 thousand posts of general discussions.

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20 hours ago, Mahitto said:


You know, this makes me wonder if it's even worth speaking out or making suggestions anymore. All of the stuff you mentioned is true, but more than that, it's well-known and it's common sense. It's been happening from the first moment the system was implemented and despite it being obvious, it's been living proof ever since. And nothing is being done about it.

 

Most, if not all of the issues that plague GTA World are constantly being brought up. For years on end (literally). Some are bigger than others, more urgent. Some take a stupidly short amount of time and effort to fix or look into. All of them are well-known by everyone - players, staff, management alike -, yet everyone seems to skeddadle around them and act as if they don't even exist. Quite literally nothing is being done about them.

 

Not to minimize the effort that was put into the community to bring it to this point, that didn't and won't go unnoticed, but isn't it a shame to see it all get put in jeopardy. It's like building a perfect, amazing, flashy Lamborghini Huracan from scratch and then driving it with your eyes closed.

Personally I think any sort of attempt would be better than nothing at this point with the trucking system. I'd love to see how this goes:

 

1) Crates don't cost anything to truckers. They just pick them up and deliver them. Truckers get paid a flat $4,000 per hour like other /startshift jobs on the server. I'd suggest a small minimum delivery requirement that walks the line between "Oh I only have to deliver X amount of jobs and still get paid" and "Oh shit I have to get this many deliveries within an hour to get paid". A balance that doesn't make people slack, but doesn't make people zoom around the map like speed racer.

2) The full crate payment ($250/$350 average per crate as of now, but probably should be adjusted as needed) from the end-point business goes directly to the trucking company instead of the truckers earning a commission, since they now earn by the hour. This sounds like it would be a lot of money but there are trucking companies out there who really care about creating RP over money. With the amount of funds coming in with this change, I bet companies could afford to hire HR teams, fleet techs, in-house security, etc. at decent wages comparable to other jobs on the server rather than relying on A) People who don't care about money or B) Petitioning LFM for extra funding in order to even attempt these extra jobs.

 

A major point with this influx of new income would be trucking companies who could now afford to offer bonuses to truckers who take on long-haul jobs versus short-haul jobs, thus encouraging truckers to deliver to those businesses that aren't so close to the supply points. This would allow companies to kind of compete with each other in terms of benefits, bonuses, etc. since the base trucker pay is all the same at $4,000 per hour. There are only a handful of trucking companies, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to keep an eye on them to make sure the influx of the extra income is going to create more RP rather than lining the owner's pockets. This would not require a whole lot of script adjustment. I'm sure a lot of this is already in place, just needs to be moved around and adjusted slightly to fit the idea.

 

Edited by Cypher99
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On 2/11/2022 at 10:35 PM, Paddy said:

 I was on one of my characters looking to buy a Wiwang alarm, and visited every single store on the map only to find them either locked or out of components. In the end I was fortunate that an administrator came to my aid

So I just had a look and there is a tool store that has been requesting components for 11 days but only offering the basic pay of $250 per crate.  Meanwhile, there are PLENTY of businesses offering $300, and some $350 and $400.  So to me it looks like an inattentive business owner who just doesn't care.  Not really a trucking issue: the owner isn't paying the market rate to get deliveries.

 

I feel like the trucking system is the beginning of an actual dynamic economy, but it breaks down further down the chain.  If somebody wants a house alarm and the tool shop has to pay $400 per delivery, the alarm should increase in price to reflect that.  But the prices are scriptly fixed, so I don't know.  Doesn't make sense.  How can the price of components fluctuate, but the price of the final item be fixed?  If people REALLY wanted alarms, the business owner could charge $50k for them and pay truckers $800 to deliver them.  I can assure you there would be NO shortage of alarm components in such a scenario 😄  Of course, if $50k per alarm is too much, the price would come down and the delivery payment would adjust...and we'd reach a level where everyone is happy and the price has found it's perfect level.

Edited by Paenymion
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1 hour ago, Paenymion said:

So I just had a look and there is a tool store that has been requesting components for 11 days but only offering the basic pay of $250 per crate.  Meanwhile, there are PLENTY of businesses offering $300, and some $350 and $400.  So to me it looks like an inattentive business owner who just doesn't care.  Not really a trucking issue: the owner isn't paying the market rate to get deliveries.

 

I feel like the trucking system is the beginning of an actual dynamic economy, but it breaks down further down the chain.  If somebody wants a house alarm and the tool shop has to pay $400 per delivery, the alarm should increase in price to reflect that.  But the prices are scriptly fixed, so I don't know.  Doesn't make sense.  How can the price of components fluctuate, but the price of the final item be fixed?  If people REALLY wanted alarms, the business owner could charge $50k for them and pay truckers $800 to deliver them.  I can assure you there would be NO shortage of alarm components in such a scenario 😄  Of course, if $50k per alarm is too much, the price would come down and the delivery payment would adjust...and we'd reach a level where everyone is happy and the price has found it's perfect level.

 

Except that it's still a system that's based not heavily, but rather mainly on non-rp RPG grinding instead of character development, realistic interactions, and meaningful role-play. 

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1 hour ago, Paenymion said:

So I just had a look and there is a tool store that has been requesting components for 11 days but only offering the basic pay of $250 per crate.  Meanwhile, there are PLENTY of businesses offering $300, and some $350 and $400.  So to me it looks like an inattentive business owner who just doesn't care.  Not really a trucking issue: the owner isn't paying the market rate to get deliveries.

 

I feel like the trucking system is the beginning of an actual dynamic economy, but it breaks down further down the chain.  If somebody wants a house alarm and the tool shop has to pay $400 per delivery, the alarm should increase in price to reflect that.  But the prices are scriptly fixed, so I don't know.  Doesn't make sense.  How can the price of components fluctuate, but the price of the final item be fixed?  If people REALLY wanted alarms, the business owner could charge $50k for them and pay truckers $800 to deliver them.  I can assure you there would be NO shortage of alarm components in such a scenario 😄  Of course, if $50k per alarm is too much, the price would come down and the delivery payment would adjust...and we'd reach a level where everyone is happy and the price has found it's perfect level.

It comes down to running the numbers for crate prices, depending on item cost. Mechanic garages hardly make any profit at $300/crate and the 20% mechanic payout. Some shops simply may not be able to afford the additional crate cost depending on their item pricing. 

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It ain't even that deep, aside from actual truckers feeling burnt out due to the lack of roleplay from the businesses end, their only motivation which is a paycheck is gutted because business owners would rather pay the minimum per crate then complain on forums about why no one is delivering anything lmao

 

The only tweak this system needs is a business owner/employee needs to be on shift/online for the deliveries to take place, then we get a guaranteed bare minimum roleplay between businesses and truckers, those speedy bois that grind the job will have to slow down to RP a bit, actual truckers that do want some roleplay will get some roleplay.

 

As for the lack of deliveries, As long as there's a better paying business that'll offer me more on the mile, no one will go for your minimum wage cash grab, could potentially be fixed by that tweak suggested as players will find some solace in the fact they'll find some RP.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, MeowTheEpic said:

It ain't even that deep, aside from actual truckers feeling burnt out due to the lack of roleplay from the businesses end, their only motivation which is a paycheck is gutted because business owners would rather pay the minimum per crate then complain on forums about why no one is delivering anything lmao

 

The only tweak this system needs is a business owner/employee needs to be on shift/online for the deliveries to take place, then we get a guaranteed bare minimum roleplay between businesses and truckers, those speedy bois that grind the job will have to slow down to RP a bit, actual truckers that do want some roleplay will get some roleplay.

 

As for the lack of deliveries, As long as there's a better paying business that'll offer me more on the mile, no one will go for your minimum wage cash grab, could potentially be fixed by that tweak suggested as players will find some solace in the fact they'll find some RP.

 

But again, that's not the solution. It still promotes grinding over role-play and interactions, because people get paid based on how much they do, which will obviously push them towards doing more in less time. Even if there's someone on duty, they'll just rush that interaction, as they're not getting paid any money if they decide to spend an hour unloading, signing papers, sparking up a conversation and making friends. The only solution is to stop giving truckers money for their deliveries and give them the $4,000/hour bonus that other businesses get.

 

And requiring on-duty employees will just mean lots of businesses will stop getting deliveries. You can't make sure there's always a trucker on duty whenever a business opens, especially during the many dead hours. And if someone doesn't have that much time and can open their business for, say, 1 hour, they'd probably want to role-play there than to spend 30% of that time loading up on components.

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