Stricter Enforcement on corporate business

[zUgg zUgg]

27 minutes ago, Woona said:

I love capitalism in real life and I wholeheartedly support it, but having a monopoly over other industries in-game can ruin roleplay opportunities. Comparing real life to in-game companies on the surface levels seems reasonable, but it just isn't. Expanding into new business ventures isn't just one of those things anyone does overnight; it takes legitimate planning other than just saying "hey, we can tow cars, because other security companies do it irl". No significant cost is lost if any company expands into other lines of work, which is why it's just silly as heck to allow companies to monopolize other industries in-game.  

Well said and I agree. Figure in the liability, insurance and training it would be quite a cost. If these businesses in game are already operating slow enough to support running a tow business it makes you wonder if planning was even a consideration or if the money was just the primary thought. 
 

 

i open this to anyone, please find me a towing company that also does security… installs camera and offers even half the services Gruppe 6 does. 
 

Find me a logistics company that does package delivery and impounds cars for their local law enforcement department, hell let’s make it easier; a logistics company that does any public towing….

 

What’s next, we allow a car dealership to offer scuba diving certifications? Why not, they sell boats, or maybe they just expanded into another business..

[eTaylor]

6 minutes ago, zUgg zUgg said:

Well said and I agree. Figure in the liability, insurance and training it would be quite a cost. If these businesses in game are already operating slow enough to support running a tow business it makes you wonder if planning was even a consideration or if the money was just the primary thought. 
 

 

i open this to anyone, please find me a towing company that also does security… installs camera and offers even half the services Gruppe 6 does. 
 

Find me a logistics company that does package delivery and impounds cars for their local law enforcement department, hell let’s make it easier; a logistics company that does any public towing….

 

What’s next, we allow a car dealership to offer scuba diving certifications? Why not, they sell boats, or maybe they just expanded into another business..

http://www.opgla.com

 

Says it right there, G4S, Jones Logistics and Hassan’s Cab Co. 

[Diana_Molina]

Fully agreed. Although I don't think the issue lays within the faction hiring these people because it's fully understandable that they don't want their sworn staff driving towtrucks, the issue is with the people who apply for those contracts and don't see anything unrealistic in doing it with a business that doesn't fit in at all. While it might make sense for some businesses (i.e. a mechanic workshop/garage that has their own fleet of towtrucks cause they already provided recovery services to their customers), it certainly makes little to no sense for taxi companies to pick up those kinds of gigs. 

[Late]

Hello, Rafi Habeeb from Habeeb Transport Union here. 

 

Since April-sh 2020 we've had recovery vehicles to tow the missing taxi's back to the depot. From an IC point of view Rafi would have learnt how to correctly load and strap vehicles. Over the two years i've done a few private recoveries for people on the side, I never advertised it as an official thing we do, but to IC friends etc because "Rafi has a tow truck."

Fast forward to Janurary 2022 I was told ICly that SD had a towing contract on offer and since for the most part the towtrucks just sit around and do nothing. I thought it would be a great way to make use of our flatbed that spends 99 percent of it's life parked up and also to offer some extra ROLEPLAY. 

Anyone who's RP'd as a taxi driver knows that sometimes calls are very few and far between, I thought it would be a good way to encourage some extra RP and to offer it as a sort of career progression with in the company. Not /anyone/ in Habeeb Transport can take a towing call. Everyone who is put onto the towing contract undergoes a full background check ICly and is subject to a week of training. 

So to answer one of your questions we do fully hand pick and train the people we put on the SD contract. It's NOT open to anyone in the company. We even made a little training plan, this is for select drivers to do, for people looking to "move up the ladder" etc etc. It was done primarily to give us something more to RP in the dead hours of taxing. 

We even made a cute little guide:

 

 

I didn't mean any harm by it or to piss anyone off by doing this or to overstep our reach as a company as I thought it was with in the sphere of transportation. 

If anyone from staff has any issues, just let me know and i'll stop towing at once. I am sorry if i've caused distress to anyone. 

[Jax]

From a simple suggestion that only needed people to either agree or disagree, and put in some input.

To people feeling personally attacked and leaving petty comments while playing a victim.

[Shokkoth]

Sounds like you’re just salty because you have to share SD’s towing request with other entities lol

[RedRover]

1 hour ago, Jax said:

From a simple suggestion that only needed people to either agree or disagree, and put in some input.

To people feeling personally attacked and leaving petty comments while playing a victim.

Lol it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a criticism of companies that are moving in on his territory and a questioning of their motives. If he felt it a serious portrayal issue, why not just file a report rather than publicly and specifically call out companies knowing people would respond in kind? That’d be like calling out any specific group of RP'ers for doing something potentially unrealistic and questioning their motives. What do you expect is going to happen? 
 

If someone legitimately thinks it’s a problem, the RPQM report section exists for a reason. Let the admin RPQM team sort it out. No hard feelings at all, but we’re all here just trying to RP and provide RP. If they determine it’s an issue, then we stop. It’s that simple. 

Edited May 4, 2022 by Brofessor

[Kushiel]

On principle, I see the sense in both diversifying the services and potential businesses avenues a company in the transportation industry can explore; as well as the need for more uniform guidelines as to how far out you can push your company's general activities. Having more of any sort of business is something I'd like to persistently advocate towards but there does seem to be a tendency of people, regardless of intent or purpose, stepping on each other's toes and moving IC discussions to OOC jabs. 🤡

Ideally, the cleanest way to go about this would be delegation and division as companies in real life do and if GTAW is supposed to be a sort of semi-realistic emulation of it, then to go with that idea and make it work like an organization would. If any individual or company is willing to put the work in and actually show that they are doing it right, there's no point in caging them with further strictness. It's an RP server that's already deeply seated in rules, more rules in every facet isn't always the right method.

[zaXer.]

8 hours ago, Camacho said:

I'd like to see the research you did to claim something like this. I actually live in America and have had family in the tow industry and have never heard of this.

 

 

 

Quick 10 second Google search landed me this, if I dig more I'll find even more, I've done the research before starting this, but I'm not gonna sit here and englighten everyone. If you wanna find something out, google it rather than asking others to do it for you.

[Ink]

The roleplay purist in me wants to say "hell yeah, every company should just stick to its area of business and roleplay exclusively around that!" I'd rather see a server where we have 50 companies each doing 50 different things, and that if you needed X Y or Z thing you'd go to the appropriate A B or C company. That'd be in a perfect world, but we're not in a perfect world. We're on an RP server with a limited number of active players, only so many free hours in people's IRL lives to RP, and only so much energy and interest in RPing in niche companies.

 

If you can make a dedicated towing company work, more power to you. But the problem is? Most people can't. Most people can't run the company effectively, they can't recruit enough players to portray characters dedicated to the towing company, and they can't maintain a workload enough to keep things interesting enough that they don't burn out. If you can, that's awesome, but my realistic bet is your towing company will have a difficult time retaining employees and you'll find yourself feeling restless before long for a lack of things to do. Not that I'm prescribing you this or wishing your project ill, it's just realistic, and if you can be the exception that's fantastic.

 

It's hard as hell to keep niche legal company projects alive on this server. We only have so many players who are even willing to actively play "legal" characters. There are only so many people on this server who are willing to be employees to a firm for longer than it takes to make enough e-maniez to try to open up their own bar, club, or whatever. There's only so many times you, as a business leader, can tolerate spending hours and hours onboarding a new prospective employee, only for them to work 1 or 2 shifts and either vanish or tell you they got another job at a cafe/security company/faction/etc which is taking up their time. 

 

You might be inclined to look at the problem from the wrong end. "Well, if every company was specialized and focused on one thing, it'd funnel more roleplay towards them and there'd be more to do, thus less boredom and burnout." But that's not really how it works day-to-day. There's a finite number of RP offered in a certain field at any time, and a finite amount of time people have to form relationships with new business partners, fill out contracts, do deals, and facilitate service RP. It's the same reason why it's hard for breweries to find long-term clients to purchase liquor from them, or why it's hard for trucking companies to find businesses interested in more in-depth trucking and delivery RP, and so on. On average it takes me about 2 real life hours to meet with a new prospective client. Whether or not we ICly do any business, that is at least 2+ hours that I have spent on them, and though there's room to make the RP different, it kinda follows the same pattern every time so it's not really the most interesting RP to do over and over. The majority of prospective clients either fall out of contact due to IRL playtime differences, because they realize it's going to be more RP/effort than they wanted, because they decided on an alternative, or they just decided they're too greedy to pay a small premium to support someone else's RP. Over and over again, this starts getting old.

 

While you have the moral high ground and it sounds like a good idea from an RP purist perspective for companies to remain tightly focused, the bottom line is that it's just not tenable on our server. There is the ideal of what business on GTA:W would look like, but there's the reality of it. With the situation we have now, it's much more sustainable to have more diverse concepts out there because it allows for variety, flexibility, and it reduces RP overhead (time spent going out, meeting new companies, sitting down, going through the same exact negotiation and contract RP every single time, so on). We just don't have the playerbase on this server to expect that every single player-run company focuses on one really tight, focused niche. We just don't have the employees to go around, we don't have the RP to go around, and we don't have the real life time.

 

But again, dude, don't let any of that dissuade you. If you enjoy towing RP and you are down to do your niche tow truck business, then do it. And do it the best out of anyone on the server. Sure, most people won't notice, but you'll attract your following of people who OOCly respect your efforts, and those are the people you'll want to RP with most.