Panda Box Loot thread

[kartoffel]

On 4/8/2022 at 7:23 PM, Pandaa said:

It's an alternative system so people can get donator features without donating, it's ridiculous to see that you think it affects roleplay.

not having certain donator features affects your roleplay tho. the way i see it panda points were made so people who don't bother to buy donator can get a taste of the benefits being a donator can give u. i think the goal is to attract more people to buy donator and that of make more money, which is a smart move actually. its just shit that u have to pay for the simplest things. basically if u a business owner icly but not a donator u can't even place business blips on the map which is just totally ridiculous

[Jain]

[illski]

its clear panda points were a massive flop and the rates are horrific but can someone please buy a shit load of PP from the marketplace cos i need to nc thanks

[Mistery14]

On 4/10/2022 at 12:58 PM, kartoffel said:

not having certain donator features affects your roleplay tho. the way i see it panda points were made so people who don't bother to buy donator can get a taste of the benefits being a donator can give u. i think the goal is to attract more people to buy donator and that of make more money, which is a smart move actually. its just shit that u have to pay for the simplest things. basically if u a business owner icly but not a donator u can't even place business blips on the map which is just totally ridiculous

 

That's a very good point and I agree. I still believe that business blips would be so much more beneficial if they were free. Instead of the 4 - 7 bar/club blips you'd get on the map at peak time, you'd get 10 - 15 different blips of all kinds of businesses if not more, giving people an incentive to go to a wide variety of different kinds of businesses and having a good time doing so, and not limiting their roleplay based on how many donators with blip permissions are online.

 

Without blips and /bad perms, you cannot possibly run a successful business, let alone run a business alone in the long term, because, no one knows about it unless you heavily advertise the location, and then again, people assume that if there's no blip, it must be that the business is closed, so you'll get a lot of people avoiding your business if no blip is there to show that it's actually open.

 

You could argue that donators have an extremely important role on the server. Without them, there would be practically no socialization aside from hangout hotspots and work-related businesses that have a permanent, known location like G6, etc. It just so happens that those donators are choosing to run bars, clubs, because they're the most profitable to them in-game, which, in turn, makes the entire server's RP scene a little tame because of a few people holding the cards in the business scene.

 

I get that the server won't pay for itself without donator features, yet I still think that there are other ways to get money for your server other than putting practical functions such as business blips behind a paywall. Cats, dogs, plates, phone numbers are a good example of a great donator implementation, no one really NEEDS that to RP. Blips on the other hand is a whole other thing, it's there specifically to bring RP to one location.

 

Panda points are good in my opinion. It allows people that can't really afford/want to pay for WP to get an alternative. Yes, it encourages people to donate by giving them a taste of what it's like to get donator functions, but then again, it doesn't fundamentally change anything, if someone doesn't want to buy WP in the first place, they won't.

 

(This one addresses another comment) If minors are getting their hands on their parent's credit/debit cards to buy WP, yes. It is a problem. But, I don't see why a good parent would not step in in that case. If I had a kid and they suddenly decided to steal from me to buy virtual things, I think it'd be time for me and my kid to have a talk, you know? Parents shouldn't enable that kind of thing, and GTA W's role here isn't to do the parenting for these minors. You ultimately cannot prevent minors to play on your server. An entry questionnaire that asks your age would be useless, they'd just claim to be over 18, which, would bring even greater issues on the server that I'd rather not even think about. Discouraging these minors from participating in the gambling would be better than giving them a deaf ear, but then again discouragement isn't prevention, which, is up to the parents to enforce.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Mistery14

[BINGBONGBALONEY]

15 hours ago, Mistery14 said:

If I had a kid and they suddenly decided to steal from me to buy virtual things, I think it'd be time for me and my kid to have a talk, you know?

they'd be talking with the back of my hand that's for sure 

[DLimit]

16 hours ago, Mistery14 said:

 

That's a very good point and I agree. I still believe that business blips would be so much more beneficial if they were free. Instead of the 4 - 7 bar/club blips you'd get on the map at peak time, you'd get 10 - 15 different blips of all kinds of businesses if not more, giving people an incentive to go to a wide variety of different kinds of businesses and having a good time doing so, and not limiting their roleplay based on how many donators with blip permissions are online.

 

Without blips and /bad perms, you cannot possibly run a successful business, let alone run a business alone in the long term, because, no one knows about it unless you heavily advertise the location, and then again, people assume that if there's no blip, it must be that the business is closed, so you'll get a lot of people avoiding your business if no blip is there to show that it's actually open.

 

You could argue that donators have an extremely important role on the server. Without them, there would be practically no socialization aside from hangout hotspots and work-related businesses that have a permanent, known location like G6, etc. It just so happens that those donators are choosing to run bars, clubs, because they're the most profitable to them in-game, which, in turn, makes the entire server's RP scene a little tame because of a few people holding the cards in the business scene.

 

I get that the server won't pay for itself without donator features, yet I still think that there are other ways to get money for your server other than putting practical functions such as business blips behind a paywall. Cats, dogs, plates, phone numbers are a good example of a great donator implementation, no one really NEEDS that to RP. Blips on the other hand is a whole other thing, it's there specifically to bring RP to one location.

 

Panda points are good in my opinion. It allows people that can't really afford/want to pay for WP to get an alternative. Yes, it encourages people to donate by giving them a taste of what it's like to get donator functions, but then again, it doesn't fundamentally change anything, if someone doesn't want to buy WP in the first place, they won't.

 

(This one addresses another comment) If minors are getting their hands on their parent's credit/debit cards to buy WP, yes. It is a problem. But, I don't see why a good parent would not step in in that case. If I had a kid and they suddenly decided to steal from me to buy virtual things, I think it'd be time for me and my kid to have a talk, you know? Parents shouldn't enable that kind of thing, and GTA W's role here isn't to do the parenting for these minors. You ultimately cannot prevent minors to play on your server. An entry questionnaire that asks your age would be useless, they'd just claim to be over 18, which, would bring even greater issues on the server that I'd rather not even think about. Discouraging these minors from participating in the gambling would be better than giving them a deaf ear, but then again discouragement isn't prevention, which, is up to the parents to enforce.

People can always hire a donator, ICly, to function as the advertiser of the business. That's one way to get around it, but profits are reduced in exchange for good R.P.

[ScottieP]

7 hours ago, DLimit said:

People can always hire a donator, ICly, to function as the advertiser of the business. That's one way to get around it, but profits are reduced in exchange for good R.P.

That right there is pay to win and also makes certain characters be managers of 10s of businesses just because they are a donator, it makes no sense and you will also have to wait for the person to come online to do the blip for you while they might not be able to. No thanks.

[DLimit]

4 minutes ago, ScottieP said:

That right there is pay to win and also makes certain characters be managers of 10s of businesses just because they are a donator, it makes no sense and you will also have to wait for the person to come online to do the blip for you while they might not be able to. No thanks.

Makes sense for owners to hire people to handle advertising and promotions than for the owner to do every square-inch of the job, as-well.

What does one "win" on an R.P. server as an advertiser? Money? That's not winning anything in the context of R.P... maybe in an RPG, though.

You also have to wait for security guards, cashiers, chefs, waiters/waitresses, masseuses, strippers etc.. to come online, as-well. Just saying, makes more sense than for an owner to do 100% of the labour.

What's next? People shouldn't hire mappers because it's P2W?

I mean, as much as I support the concept of free blips and free furniture slots? It's not feasible when you have to generate income to fund the server.

Edited April 18, 2022 by DLimit

[ScottieP]

13 minutes ago, DLimit said:

Makes sense for owners to hire people to handle advertising and promotions than for the owner to do every square-inch of the job, as-well.

What does one "win" on an R.P. server as an advertiser? Money? That's not winning anything in the context of R.P... maybe in an RPG, though.

You also have to wait for security guards, cashiers, chefs, waiters/waitresses, masseuses, strippers etc.. to come online, as-well. Just saying, makes more sense than for an owner to do 100% of the labour.

What's next? People shouldn't hire mappers because it's P2W?

I mean, as much as I support the concept of free blips and free furniture slots? It's not feasible when you have to generate income to fund the server.

Advertising and promotions can be done through Facebrowser or other social media or even posters that you can put around the forums to be visible to people that's completely different than a blip, a blip shows when exactly the business is open and most people are more interested to see the blip on the map than search for the next poster and when you have a café nobody will know when is open without a blip and also you can't put a poster every time saying yeah Ill be there at that exact time it's not how it works.

 

You can consider that as paying IRL money to gain IC money since that's what is happening there, right? And as far as I know that shouldn't happen or otherwise we could just pay $10 IRL money for $10,000 IC money but that's not allowed.

 

I can agree on the third point, yes you have to wait for other people too and if other people are unable to come when the donator is able or vice versa then we have a much bigger problem, it halts Roleplay, while a chef, a masseuse or a stripper can be changed by another easily. Also, sometimes businesses like dealerships only have a handful of people if not one or two mostly and that really sucks for them to have to wait and coordinate with a donator just because of OOC limitation.

 

Mapping is P2W too if you look at it but it does not halt the base Roleplay, you can live without it while businesses not opening cares for less Roleplay on the server and more people getting bored or burned out quick and quit.

 

There must be a better solution to it.

[Mistery14]

1 hour ago, DLimit said:

Makes sense for owners to hire people to handle advertising and promotions than for the owner to do every square-inch of the job, as-well.

What does one "win" on an R.P. server as an advertiser? Money? That's not winning anything in the context of R.P... maybe in an RPG, though.

You also have to wait for security guards, cashiers, chefs, waiters/waitresses, masseuses, strippers etc.. to come online, as-well. Just saying, makes more sense than for an owner to do 100% of the labour.

What's next? People shouldn't hire mappers because it's P2W?

I mean, as much as I support the concept of free blips and free furniture slots? It's not feasible when you have to generate income to fund the server.

 

You do make valid points, the problem with asking for donators to do this for you is that you have to have ties with them somehow OOC'ly or, in turn, ask through the advertisement system to put up an advertisement.. For.. An advertisement? If you don't know them IC already, that is. The reply for this comment, above, also makes great points about blips being essentials for running businesses, advertisements does more or less half of the job, the blip does maybe 70 percent of it, really. Nowhere near enough people are going to look through other means than the in-game map to see which business is actively open on the map.

 

Pay to win on an RP server is different - You don't "win" an RP game per se, but you do get advantages above others when you do pay for a given perk such as blips and /bad, which can be considered "a win" for your character,because it allows you to run a successful business for example, something that you couldn't have achieved/would have a very, very hard time achieving IC without paying through OOC means. Because getting a business that would generate IC profit which would only realistically work after paying money is far different from getting a custom interior overhaul - That interior is not going to get you much money at all, it's there to look good, it's an aesthetic, or cosmetic asset as opposed to a business which generates revenue. This applies to cats, dogs, license plates, custom numbers, etc. They're more cosmetic than actually useful, practical perks that could see you generate IC income. Unless you make your pet some circus animal or something.

 

All in all I really do believe that while yes, generating income to fund the server should be one of the primary focuses because GTA:W is most definitely not cheap to run, doing so by putting actually functional and sort of, essential perks behind a paywall is a bit of pay-to-win, yes. But then again, some people unfortunately do find ways around that factor, by playing with the technicalities of rules, like car ownership limits, essentially flipping cars without owning an actual business is one of these examples. - But that's another issue.

 

I just really think perks from donations should stop at more cosmetic changes (pets, plates, phone numbers, clothing slots, etc) than practical perks that are actually useful in terms of in-game monetary gains and the likes.

 

Edit: To add to this, I think that having the whole business scene relying on a handful of players that are able to do so at any given time is not very good. It makes the business scene fluctuating. On some nights, you might get 3 - 8 businesses opened, which happens to be mostly bars, because that's the most profitable, while on other nights you might get 0 bars and 4 clubs, vice-versa. I think making business blips and business advertisements free or at the very least more accessible but limited for regular players could see the server become more lively, allowing more varied businesses on the table that don't focus primarily on generating the most income possible, because while yes, some donators do provide us with RP-focused businesses, the majority of businesses are going to be something that'll fall into the GTA:W trend, like bars, clubs, casinos. We need these, but we also need other things to make it all believable. It's unfortunate to see so very few businesses opened at peak hours, because a majority of those 500-600 players are going to be mostly dependent on those few active business owners for interacting with other people.

 

More active businesses means more people on the move, means more interaction, more RP, more choice, more playability, makes people spread out on the map because there would be more businesses everywhere, and might in turn revive some dead RP like Paleto, Sandy, Grapeseed. Because people would have less incentive to want to put their businesses in LS solely because that's the most profitable option to them in relation to what they've paid for OOC'ly.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2022 by Mistery14