What are some examples of unrealistic escalations that you've seen on the server?

[Mór-Ríoghain]

51 minutes ago, Yoak said:

Lol sit down neek

Fuck up ya virgin

[ode]

Somebody rammed me off my bike and called me slurs because I refused to take off my helmet... quite odd if I may say so myself

[Narco]

Went to Singletons and got into a verbal argument with some italian dude, rp's punching me and then gets butthurt I flip him off while I'm down the street so he tries to impress his friends by pulling his gun out and shooting at me in the middle of vinewood (hit my head once). I take off running down the street and call 911 while hiding in an apartment complex, he zooms by in his car and metagames my name and then tries to gun me down in the middle of the road metagaming that im on the phone with the cops. 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Narco

[Plutonium]

The idea that situations should escalate in the exact same way, every single time, is in itself unrealistic.

A huge problem I see on this server is that people assume they know everything, they assumed they know what is realistic and what is unrealistic.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the player-base has not interacted with many real-life criminals to the point any genuine information and psychology is revealed. Neither has the majority of the player-base had much interaction with the street bar what they've seen on the internet.

 

I'd give a rough estimate and say 1 in 3 people (in the UK) who carry a knife, will stab and murder somebody for punching them. 1 in 10 would aggressively confront somebody for simply looking at them, should their response be respectful and/or compliant they could very well get murdered.

I'm sure the US is worse.

 

The problem (if any) is not with escalation, it's with the volume of criminal/gang-affiliated characters in contrast to the volume of legal and civilian characters. However, I've noticed that a lot of civilian characters seem to be snarky and witty to every single stranger they meet and especially people they assume to be criminals. That is where the unrealistic nature comes in, and 9/10 the responsibility with "bad escalation" falls on the person to instigated the situation.

If you've instigated a situation and then escalated it yourself, that is against the DM rule and so it's bannable/reportable.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Plutonium

[Trupiano]

4 hours ago, Plutonium said:

I've noticed that a lot of civilian characters seem to be snarky and witty to every single stranger they meet and especially people they assume to be criminals. That is where the unrealistic nature comes in, and 9/10 the responsibility with "bad escalation" falls on the person to instigated the situation.

If you've instigated a situation and then escalated it yourself, that is against the DM rule and so it's bannable/reportable.

 

See this has been going on forever, plays a big role in the amount of "unrealistic" escalations we see and people seems to refuse to see it as a problem. 

 

"What am I supposed to be, weak helpless prey that submits to criminals every time???"

 

This is one of the most common responses whenever this comes up and honestly it's a childish overreaction. Nobodies saying that, nobody has ever said that and not being "weak helpless prey for criminal" does not = being a mouthy shithead IC. It's not everyone, but it's a decent number of civilian characters who do this and it frankly creates situations where I have to assault/kill/do something to you. It's frustrating because, I don't even want to RP with those people because frankly it's obvious it's their OOC frustrations with the server bleeding through to IC. But sadly, if I'm playing a gang member, mobster, really anything criminal? Being blatantly disrespectful or insulting to my character especially in front of others creates a situation where my character can't let it slide.

 

I'm not talking about small petty shit or slights, though I understand that there are ultra aggressive criminals who do exploit them as a chance to be well... ultra aggressive. I'm talking about civilian characters being downright insulting and rude just because they think they can and then somehow crying rule break and unrealistic when they face consequences for it. 

[AlphaBatal]

6 hours ago, Plutonium said:

The idea that situations should escalate in the exact same way, every single time, is in itself unrealistic.

A huge problem I see on this server is that people assume they know everything, they assumed they know what is realistic and what is unrealistic.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the player-base has not interacted with many real-life criminals to the point any genuine information and psychology is revealed. Neither has the majority of the player-base had much interaction with the street bar what they've seen on the internet.

 

I'd give a rough estimate and say 1 in 3 people (in the UK) who carry a knife, will stab and murder somebody for punching them. 1 in 10 would aggressively confront somebody for simply looking at them, should their response be respectful and/or compliant they could very well get murdered.

I'm sure the US is worse.

 

The problem (if any) is not with escalation, it's with the volume of criminal/gang-affiliated characters in contrast to the volume of legal and civilian characters. However, I've noticed that a lot of civilian characters seem to be snarky and witty to every single stranger they meet and especially people they assume to be criminals. That is where the unrealistic nature comes in, and 9/10 the responsibility with "bad escalation" falls on the person to instigated the situation.

If you've instigated a situation and then escalated it yourself, that is against the DM rule and so it's bannable/reportable.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the playerbase has the life experience of potted plants. Criminals have jobs, they have bills to pay. Slinging drugs on a corner pays below minimum wage. The underaged subset of those go to school, even if they fluke most of it. Drug addicts feel withdrawals, people have hobbies, favorite dishes, know their neighborhoods. Do you feel that the grand majority of crimegrinder goon characters out having shootouts in the middle of the road have that sort of depth? Not really.

On here? Every dealer is moving kilograms to other gangs and street dealing is, in effect, dead. A vast majority of self-proclaimed "illegal" characters don't look for anything resembling normalcy to strengthen their portrayal. Admittedly, OCGs do this better by opening fronts and making their members work in them, but street gangs? No, not really. The (M)s don't go to school even as flavor to their roleplay, nobody eats in, nobody eats out. Characters aren't really characters as much as they're extensions of the organization they belong to; they're just bodies, drones.

And no, derailing a thread about escalation just to vent about civilian characters doing shit you don't like doesn't in any way address the fact that garbage roleplay exists in legal, illegal, civilian characters. Some people are assholes, some people are snarky and some people are just plain rude, regardless of the ethnic nameplate hanging above your character's model. Would do well to remember that it isn't just illegal characters that can be nuanced, violent or crass.

Besides, the whole legal-civilian-illegal labeling system is just a garbage practice by poor roleplayers that seeks to categorize characters, put them in a box and facilitate the tribal us-versus-them mentality that shuts down most of the public discourse on here. The legal character infront of you might be a player with two illegal alts that finds it all pitiful. And the illegal character might be somebody who's done nothing but civilian roleplay up to now; and this is the sort of mindset that's the calling card of the scene they're dipping their toes into, turning them away immediately.

[Plutonium]

4 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

Criminals have jobs, they have bills to pay. Slinging drugs on a corner pays below minimum wage. The underaged subset of those go to school, even if they fluke most of it. Drug addicts feel withdrawals, people have hobbies, favorite dishes, know their neighborhoods. Do you feel that the grand majority of crimegrinder goon characters out having shootouts in the middle of the road have that sort of depth? Not really.

 

For sure, however there's a limit to what you can expect from a roleplay server regardless of how serious it is. It's almost impossible to ask every single illegal-RPer to create a realistic environment and lifestyle for their character when the most they've seen regarding that lifestyle is through YouTube and documentaries. 

For the most part, illegal-RPers and drug dealers roleplay to an almost realistic standard.

The minority of gang-affiliated criminals have jobs in real life and "slinging drugs on a corner" doesn't actually happen in real life, drug-dealing pertains mostly to the phone or "line" that contains the dealer's customers and this is something totally do-able on the server. Neither does drug dealing pay below the minimum wage, maybe for extremely small-time and young drug dealers? However for the most part drug dealers will be making considerably more than the minimum wage both on a daily and a monthly basis.

 

When you put it into perspective, the only reason as to why the drug-dealing environment doesn't replicate the real world is due to that fact this is a game and therefore will never have

the same weight as the real world.

Real drug-dealers didn't just wake up in the morning, buy a kilo of weed, grab their gun and claim they're drug dealers. They spent months building a strong line full of customers and spent years involved with illegal activity learning not only the process but the culture of crime. Asking people to do this on a game just wouldn't happen, it'd be impossible.

 

27 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

On here? Every dealer is moving kilograms to other gangs and street dealing is, in effect, dead. A vast majority of self-proclaimed "illegal" characters don't look for anything resembling normalcy to strengthen their portrayal. Admittedly, OCGs do this better by opening fronts and making their members work in them, but street gangs? No, not really. The (M)s don't go to school even as flavor to their roleplay, nobody eats in, nobody eats out. Characters aren't really characters as much as they're extensions of the organization they belong to; they're just bodies, drones.

 

In real life, there are levels to the drug game. There are un-affiliated drug dealers selling kilos of drugs on a regular basis, who you won't find selling smaller amounts to (unless it's a special situation; an old customer, friend, family, etc.). There are also people who never buy drugs, they solely rely on robbing other drug dealers for their inventory. The current situation on GTA:W isn't a world away, the real problem doesn't come from criminal portrayal. All it takes is to look at the faction thread and you'll see ample example of realistic gang-affiliated portrayal.

"The (M)s don't go to school even as flavor to their roleplay" I was roleplaying with a kid last week who was going to school, I've seen quite a few good minor RPers. It seems like your putting all illegal RPers in a basic labelled by the worst. (Also there's no way of you knowing whether or not people eat-in or eat-out, unless you've been creeping on dudes peeping through their windows.)

 

From this part onwards, your reply got a bit less reasoned and a lot more questionable.

 

30 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

And no, derailing a thread about escalation just to vent about civilian characters doing shit you don't like doesn't in any way address the fact that garbage roleplay exists in legal, illegal, civilian characters. Some people are assholes, some people are snarky and some people are just plain rude, regardless of the ethnic nameplate hanging above your character's model. Would do well to remember that it isn't just illegal characters that can be nuanced, violent or crass.

 

I'm not sure if you're talking about me derailing a topic about escalation or if you're talking from a third-person perspective. But my reply completely pertained to the topic of escalation... "Some people are assholes, some people are snarky and some people are just plain rude, regardless of the ethnic nameplate hanging above your character's model. Would do well to remember that it isn't just illegal characters that can be nuanced, violent or crass." A civilian being "violent" or "crass" towards a criminal makes no sense at all, it would result in problems for the civilian that they most likely do not want. This doesn't mean that's unrealistic, however after the first beating the civilian would surely learn and their psychology would surely change from the trauma they experienced, first-hand caused by their irrational attitude. This is just speaking about the umbrella term "criminal" and not gang-affiliated criminals. A civilian holding such an attitude with a gang-member is just outright stupid and extremely unrealistic, they'd most likely find themselves dead or hospitalized within their first 45 seconds of impertinence. 

The fundamental difference between most criminals and all gang-members and civilians is that criminals live within a world of violence and danger, whereas civilians live in a world of the complete opposite. Criminals aren't just civilians who decided to be bad, the majority of them had an extremely fucked up family-life and from that even more fucked up experiences on the street and within their communities. Civilians might experience hardship, and some hard-to-deal-with situations? But for the most part they are safe, warm, and fed and have been since childhood, a lot of criminals had to fight for that right.

 

40 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

Besides, the whole legal-civilian-illegal labeling system is just a garbage practice by poor roleplayers that seeks to categorize characters, put them in a box and facilitate the tribal us-versus-them mentality that shuts down most of the public discourse on here. The legal character infront of you might be a player with two illegal alts that finds it all pitiful. And the illegal character might be somebody who's done nothing but civilian roleplay up to now; and this is the sort of mindset that's the calling card of the scene they're dipping their toes into, turning them away immediately.

 

Civil Servant-Civilian-Criminal is a genuine and real way of broadly defining social groups internationally, whether or not somebody decides to have an OOC us-versus-them mentality is completely up to their own accord however it is indeed very stupid and somewhat sad.

I've seen a lot of amazing and realistic faction RP and a lot of good legal RP. The one thing I've found however, is that legal RP seems to have less regard for realism and more regard for their characters success/"development" than actual realism in respect to illegal faction RPers. That is completely personal opinion however. 

 

 

[fortieznshortiez]

pretty much 99% of all white supremecist rp when interacting with non-illegal characters because most of them are just trolls and toxic asf aside from a very very small amount. Out of like 12 yrs of rping on and off I've had 3 interactions with white supremecist rpers where they actually cared about the RP n were cool af ooc. not just triggering everyone around them to get a laugh and spamming racist memes in discord and DMing left and right. most of the people attracted to that are usually the worst and most toxic rpers around and ironically claim to be the best. its always the typical shit almost every time and they'll always defend it with some silly ass attack on your person/excuse to defend.

 

example being the shit that happened to one of my friends on gtaw a year or two ago where one of the vespucci dudes was speeding around in a totaled asf Sultan, rolls up, hops out with a gun and hardly says anything, basically trying to bait a shootout. he got his shootout and got killed, then proceeded to spew obscenities OOC in their pms and insult the fuck out of them for no reason. extremely weird, poor escalation and bad RP on the ic side, and then just a shit human being on the ooc side.

 

if you dont act like ^ you're not apart of that 99% so don't feel attacked.

 

 

slightly more off topic though but in response to some of these i've seen;

 

a lot of the shit people here say is unrealistic actually isnt. you'd be surprised how quick a few harmless words turns violent in a lot of areas in america, especially around LA and so-cal. the shooting is often a little crazy on the server but the brawling and what not that i've seen has been pretty normal. most people don't understand how to interact with gang chars or just chars from that environment. it's a lot of fragility and toxic masculinity masked as other shit in reality (im not talking on an ooc level, but the reality of that mindset of the characters). if you press back they HAVE to fight you or they look like a bitch. it's a constant game of back and forth where x person presses y and y person has to respond. (take the concept from battle rap/diss songs, if you dont respond to someone dissing you then you look like a pussy unless it's nick cannon vs eminem tier desperation for attention)

 

a lot of the shit when its 'civilian vs gangbanger' that gets claimed as unrealistic isn't really unrealistic at all, foreigners just dont know how to take things on the chin and keep moving. this is why there's such a problem with everyone being so hard on the server whether its some 5'2 lesbian or some 6'3 crip. if someone says something, everyone almost always barks back, and if you bark back - it's a problem. at some point it reaches unrealistic for the gang members/ghetto characters NOT to do anything to you.

 

despite all that, there's a lot of trigger happy mfs around that just pop off for seemingly little to no reason as well. back in like 2010-2011 these types were shunned and we used to joke about how they were just roleplaying O-Dogg from Menace II Society and not good roleplayers at all. Fighting > shooting. (I'm not talking about when you're kinda forced to shoot because some goofball comes and shoots up your block over minor shit. At that point it's fine - the issue's the guy that starts that without valid reason/weight.)

 

tl;dr

 

like half these 'poor escalations' are just foreigners rping legal characters that literally have 0 inclination of how to act around certain types of characters and get themselves into problems as a result. they blame the people instead of accepting their own responsibility too.

Edited June 2, 2022 by smo

[L I C E]

1 hour ago, smo said:

pretty much 99% of all white supremecist rp when interacting with non-illegal characters because most of them are just trolls and toxic asf aside from a very very small amount.

 

99%..? if ur letting no faction no name trolls dictate that white sup rp is therefore 99% shit idk what to say to you. I haven't met a bad white sup in a year

[AlphaBatal]

8 hours ago, Plutonium said:

For sure, however there's a limit to what you can expect from a roleplay server regardless of how serious it is. It's almost impossible to ask every single illegal-RPer to create a realistic environment and lifestyle for their character when the most they've seen regarding that lifestyle is through YouTube and documentaries. 

For the most part, illegal-RPers and drug dealers roleplay to an almost realistic standard.

The minority of gang-affiliated criminals have jobs in real life and "slinging drugs on a corner" doesn't actually happen in real life, drug-dealing pertains mostly to the phone or "line" that contains the dealer's customers and this is something totally do-able on the server. Neither does drug dealing pay below the minimum wage, maybe for extremely small-time and young drug dealers? However for the most part drug dealers will be making considerably more than the minimum wage both on a daily and a monthly basis.

 

When you put it into perspective, the only reason as to why the drug-dealing environment doesn't replicate the real world is due to that fact this is a game and therefore will never have

the same weight as the real world.

Real drug-dealers didn't just wake up in the morning, buy a kilo of weed, grab their gun and claim they're drug dealers. They spent months building a strong line full of customers and spent years involved with illegal activity learning not only the process but the culture of crime. Asking people to do this on a game just wouldn't happen, it'd be impossible.

This is the study conducted. Sure, it's been conducted during 2003, but it's still more valid than basing yourself on assumption.
Fact of the matter is, however, that drug dealers aren't willing to roleplay on the bottom. It just isn't interesting flipping a handful of grams. The phone line bit, though? That's true. It exists on social media, it exists through word of mouth. As for the networking bit, however? My last character was made specifically for the purpose of dealing narcotics at the endpoint. I have my own, personal observations from that.

The vast majority of potential clients from the legal and civilian sphere, which you should admittedly be attempting to cater to, aren't willing to risk interaction with your character. Dealers on this server are more keen on robbing their clients for an asset grab, rather than taking the proverbial stat L and doing their best to develop their network, even at a loss, for the roleplay benefit of both themselves and the people partaking in their roleplay.

Other affiliated illegal characters invariably have no need for drugs unless you catch them at a point where they've ran out and have none in their inventory at the point of meeting them. The demand for drugs is low, everybody has either friends that sell or a considerable amount stashed away. 

As for how much it pays. Make a new character, grab an ounce of any drug and try to work your way up from there, see how difficult it is without trying to turn your drug dealer into a drug trafficker by scaling up.

 

9 hours ago, Plutonium said:

I'm not sure if you're talking about me derailing a topic about escalation or if you're talking from a third-person perspective. But my reply completely pertained to the topic of escalation... "Some people are assholes, some people are snarky and some people are just plain rude, regardless of the ethnic nameplate hanging above your character's model. Would do well to remember that it isn't just illegal characters that can be nuanced, violent or crass." A civilian being "violent" or "crass" towards a criminal makes no sense at all, it would result in problems for the civilian that they most likely do not want. This doesn't mean that's unrealistic, however after the first beating the civilian would surely learn and their psychology would surely change from the trauma they experienced, first-hand caused by their irrational attitude. This is just speaking about the umbrella term "criminal" and not gang-affiliated criminals. A civilian holding such an attitude with a gang-member is just outright stupid and extremely unrealistic, they'd most likely find themselves dead or hospitalized within their first 45 seconds of impertinence. 

The fundamental difference between most criminals and all gang-members and civilians is that criminals live within a world of violence and danger, whereas civilians live in a world of the complete opposite. Criminals aren't just civilians who decided to be bad, the majority of them had an extremely fucked up family-life and from that even more fucked up experiences on the street and within their communities. Civilians might experience hardship, and some hard-to-deal-with situations? But for the most part they are safe, warm, and fed and have been since childhood, a lot of criminals had to fight for that right.

 

This is just a garbage take. It works on assumptions and generalizations. "This character is an illegal one, they've had hardships, nobody loves them, they're not going to prison and hate the world." "This character is a civilian, they have had a comfortable life up to now and can't seem to understand what my character is going through." This is the sort of ego that makes people fuck with criminal characters for shits and giggles. Getting riled up that somebody has the utter /gall/ to not prostrate themselves infront of a criminal character they've never met, who is, half the time, not showing any affiliations. What's irrational is assuming that just because you roleplay a criminal, your roleplay is superior in any way to any other sort of roleplay. That's the vibe I'm getting. And that's also one of the reasons garbage escalation exists; an OOC ego and poor portrayal on either side. Not every criminal is a badass. Not every criminal fought for anything, and hardship is only a secondary motivator when greed exists. Roleplaying a cowardly scumfuck is fun. This isn't the savannah, characters aren't prey and predators, cops, robbers and NPCs. Add some nuance and ridicule people on an OOC basis when they try to knock on you for doing so.

 

9 hours ago, Plutonium said:

Civil Servant-Civilian-Criminal is a genuine and real way of broadly defining social groups internationally, whether or not somebody decides to have an OOC us-versus-them mentality is completely up to their own accord however it is indeed very stupid and somewhat sad.

I've seen a lot of amazing and realistic faction RP and a lot of good legal RP. The one thing I've found however, is that legal RP seems to have less regard for realism and more regard for their characters success/"development" than actual realism in respect to illegal faction RPers. That is completely personal opinion however. 

This, however, is a good take. Acknowledging how categorizing characters and roleplayers is a bad practice is something everybody should do. That's why I advocate making characters in each subset of roleplay instead of recycling the same concept once your gang dies, your character dies or you get put in prison. You can do better than that. Just as there's nonsensical and wacky first generation cat-ear wearing female characters that you hate, there's 16 year old hoodrats rolling around in 200 thousand dollar Buffalos, first generation Balkan criminals that have so much money they do crime out of principle rather than actual need. It exists everywhere; it doesn't exist in your bubble, it doesn't exist in mine, but it draws attention when it's somebody on the other side. Broaden your horizons, it'll serve you well.

( if ur char's motivation for crime is hardship and they reach a point of success, i think that people should have the balls to develop their character past the criminality and towards normalcy. dont think that "gritty roleplay" has any value when u arrive to the trap in a rebla and log off in a playa del vista penthouse condo. that's grandstanding and blowing air up your own ass; the motivation is greed and the person roleplaying it should acknowledge it rather than blow the trumpet on how good their character is )