[Discussion] What can improve RP interactions between players and general RP standards?

[Mistery14]

13 minutes ago, NickyW said:

 

I don't understand this criticism because it seems to lack a fundamental understanding of why people turn to illegal activities both in-real-life and ingame. Crime is the /easy/ way out. That's the entire point of it.

 

Things that criminal roleplayers need to focus on in order to have strong characters: Emotional development, facing the consequences of their actions, moral regression/or progression, vices/addictions, normal relationships, life outside of their hustle.

 

Things that criminal roleplayers absolutely do not need to focus on: Finding victims who aren't "harmless" or only victimizing people their own size who can defend themselves. 

 

I hope people understand that the "Real life" argument is a valid way to make a point using existing factors that are portrayed in the game, but ultimately what's going to matter most is GTA W - Let's look at it closely. I do understand why it's seen as a bigger problem than should be, in real life, criminals have thousands, hell, hundreds of thousands of other victims to pick, yet in GTA W they only have a couple hundreds at best, so it's going to feel like your legal character is being more of a target. You have to take into account that a good chunk of that few hundreds, are most likely criminals themselves so criminals ultimately have only a handful of opportunities to take. Whether they do so correctly is another issue.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with criminal character development needing to be more of a thing, but again, those who actually do it are outnumbered, and ironically outgunned by those who opt out of taking the effort of roleplaying their character and portrayal correctly. Good criminal characters are being both figuratively and literally killed by bad ones because the bad ones take the most efficient, and easiest path, which harms not only criminal RP but affects everyone else's experience as a result.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Mistery14

[Stormy Monday]

I would say that increasing punishments for people breaking rules, particularly DM, poor escalation / portrayal would improve the level of RP. I think most people at least I personally interact with are great to roleplay with, but sometimes it's pretty common we come across people that just don't care as much. 

[Humour]

This is probably a very unpopular opinion type response, but here goes, my two cents:

 

Server administration needs to be harsher when it comes to the most common rule breaks, such as DM and non-RP driving and so forth. They need to issue bans instead of admin jails. Putting people in admin jail for 15 minutes for VDMing a bunch of people is just enough time for you to go number two and make a sandwich, and then come back to do it again, whereas putting them physically out of the game would serve more as a punishment. It'd amount to less players but honestly, I'd rather have a smaller playerbase with better quality than large numbers and a very low bar for what's acceptable.

 

The thing is; most players aren't afraid of the server administration, they're not afraid of breaking rules, knowing that if they do X, Y or Z they'll just get jailed for 20 minutes and pretty much get off, scot-free. The only way admin jails serve as an actual punishment is if you shape up, eventually, and try to join a legal faction such as the LSSD or the LSPD and find yourself barred from it, based on your admin history. Criminal factions don't look at admin record or do very little quality check when they're taking people in past the rank of "hangaround." (I'm not very big in the illegal circuit so bear with me.) 

 

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Humour

[bncal]

1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

I don't particularly mind self inserts if they are RPing their character (And, I guess, themselves?)

They roleplay themselves, period. Respectfully talking they bothers me. I do understand if you are a new player, I have been one once and you too, the admins and the founder of this server as well, but if people with 1 year of experience still don't understand then there is a critical problem within the community. Also @NickyW wrote very well what I tried to say in my first post here. But will the playerbase understand what is going on? Or will they stick with their self inserts? I like what you said on the end btw

[El Bandito]

58 minutes ago, NickyW said:

 

This is unironically, the literal definition of being a criminal.

 

You can't be a criminal and not do this, unless you exclusively rob/kill other criminals, which is incredibly ballsy/dangerous.

 

Most criminals are criminals because it's an easy way to make money/gain respect. 

 

 

Because it's easy. Because, just as in real life, "marks" are the best target for crimes. 

 

Why on earth wouldn't you victimize random civilians? 

 

I don't understand this criticism because it seems to lack a fundamental understanding of why people turn to illegal activities both in-real-life and ingame. Crime is the /easy/ way out. That's the entire point of it.

 

Things that criminal roleplayers need to focus on in order to have strong characters: Emotional development, facing the consequences of their actions, moral regression/or progression, vices/addictions, normal relationships, life outside of their hustle.

 

Things that criminal roleplayers absolutely do not need to focus on: Finding victims who aren't "harmless" or only victimizing people their own size who can defend themselves. 

 

You can still be a criminal and not harm or victimize "harmless" people. For instance drug dealers don't necessarily have to harm or kill anyone theoretically(at least not directly if we include selling hard drugs to vulnerable customers). Neither do money launderers, drug manufacturers, illegal gambling ring heads and weapon traffickers either.

 

Not that there's anything wrong with robbing, mugging or intimidating "harmless" people if it's all IC within reason. But to say that all criminals by definition have to rob/kill "harmless" people or other criminals is a bit short-sighted. In real life there is a wide spectrum of different types of criminals involved in various non-violent criminal activities.

Edited June 29, 2022 by El Bandito

[Wuhtah]

I don't think beating a dead horse will help - server administration for harsher punishments has been brought up to management. They are talking about it amongst themselves. A change won't happen overnight. So, while that's happening - how can you as players improve RP interactions between yourselves and general RP standards. 

 

Some players slip through the cracks in the application. Some are malicious, some are benign. Those benign ones, if they are willing to listen - try to teach them the correct way. If they give you attitude, just walk away / stop PMing. 

 

[Mistery14]

3 minutes ago, Humour said:

This is probably a very unpopular opinion type response, but here goes, my two cents:

 

Server administration needs to be harsher when it comes to the most common rule breaks, such as DM and non-RP driving and so forth. They need to issue bans instead of admin jails. Putting people in admin jail for 15 minutes for VDMing a bunch of people is just enough time for you to go number two and make a sandwich, and then come back to do it again, whereas putting them physically out of the game would serve more as a punishment. It'd amount to less players but honestly, I'd rather have a smaller playerbase with better quality than large numbers and a very low bar for what's acceptable.

 

The thing is; most players aren't afraid of the server administration, they're not afraid of breaking rules, knowing that if they do X, Y or Z they'll just get jailed for 20 minutes and pretty much get off, scot-free. The only way admin jails serve as an actual punishment is if you shape up, eventually, and try to join a legal faction such as the LSSD or the LSPD and find yourself barred from it, based on your admin history. Criminal factions don't look at admin record or do very little quality check when they're taking people in past the rank of "hangaround." (I'm not very big in the illegal circuit so bear with me.) 

 

 

 

While I agree with most of it, one thing I'll definitely disagree with specifically is the whole "Barring X player from Y faction" based on their record.

 

While I understand the logic behind it, this would imply that any other faction that the player with the poor record will be able to join requires less quality for RP standards, which is absolutely not the case. Regardless if it's LSSD, LSPD, or any first-responder role, or hell, even something like bartending, players should be expected to provide good roleplay and no faction or role should be exempt from that. In addition to that, if the player ends up improving their behavior/RP, their record remains permanent, so they will be stuck with less options. This could in turn make other players exclude them if they find out that the player has a poor record and automatically assume they are still the same.

 

Nevertheless, actions should have consequences and I definitely do agree with harsher punishment - We need to stop being a "learning server" and finally own up to the fact that this is a Heavy-RP server, there are many other servers to learn on, many websites, videos, that teach the fundamentals of RP. We can be friendly to new players and still function like any other server would without borderline enabling the whole "fuck around and find out" that naturally comes with being too lenient with punishment.

 

[LuckyBastard]

Less toxic behavior OOC can be a start. The less toxic players are OOC the more likely they'll have patience for other players and RP in general. A lot of players I've seen jump the gun in a situation tend to have the qualities of a hot head or condescending about their roleplay.

[Mistery14]

42 minutes ago, Wuhtah said:

I don't think beating a dead horse will help - server administration for harsher punishments has been brought up to management. They are talking about it amongst themselves. A change won't happen overnight. So, while that's happening - how can you as players improve RP interactions between yourselves and general RP standards. 

 

Some players slip through the cracks in the application. Some are malicious, some are benign. Those benign ones, if they are willing to listen - try to teach them the correct way. If they give you attitude, just walk away / stop PMing. 

 

 

I personally think that allowing each other OOC time to actually /me is a great start but I doubt we can do much about it, as players. I know it's in the rules and falls under common courtesy/powergaming, that you shouldn't /me and immediately perform an action without letting the other party react, but I feel like it's not outlined enough despite the importance it truly deserves and is not necessarily common sense, as I've mentioned in my first comment.

 

And reporting each and every person who doesn't let other people /me before they do something (run away, punch, ect) would be both tedious for the players as they'd have to do that /very/ often, but also be unnecessarily tedious the admins that would ultimately take those reports. I know it's not swept under the rug, but at the same time, it's become so normalized behavior that new players have a hard time determining the correct way to approach RP interactions.

 

What we, as players can do to help in turn is simply to add a little more detail to our RP and add just a bit more text to our /mes to describe intentions clearly. It's a small gesture that goes a long way into making RP interactions feel better for everyone involved and lessens the chances of poor escalation in tense situations.

 

Let's take a pretty tense situation that could escalate if not enough detail is given: Someone is pointing a gun at you because they're pissed off.

 

/me grabs [name's] arm - Is a great way to get shot. Your intentions are not shown.

 

/me lowers his hand slowly on [name's] arm in an attempt to diffuse the situation, speaking in a calm tone. - Is a great way to have a chance to not get shot. Sure, you might still get shot, but the intent to diffuse the situation is shown and the player doesn't have to interpret your intent. Simply grabbing the arm might make them think you're trying to go for their gun even if it's not the case.

 

It's never black-and-white, but it'd still be an improvement if more people took their time to put a little more detail in their /mes. This in addition to allowing time for other people to respond to your /mes would be optimal. As a side-note, I think short /mes to begin with are a direct result of people not being allowed that OOC response time.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Mistery14

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

23 minutes ago, Wuhtah said:

I don't think beating a dead horse will help - server administration for harsher punishments has been brought up to management. They are talking about it amongst themselves. A change won't happen overnight. So, while that's happening - how can you as players improve RP interactions between yourselves and general RP standards. 

 

Some players slip through the cracks in the application. Some are malicious, some are benign. Those benign ones, if they are willing to listen - try to teach them the correct way. If they give you attitude, just walk away / stop PMing. 

 

 

The thing is, people have been asking for harsher punishments for years. It's not an overnight question, but it is one that should've been addressed in the nearly 3 years I've been playing here. Has not. In fact it's gotten more lax.

 

Wayyyy too much coasting on being the only text based server around here.

 

Nobody is saying that's it's unacceptable that there are some slip throughs. But start cutting the ones that aren't. The habitual offenders. The ones that ruin experience because they don't understand the gravity of what they're doing and how it's impacting players.