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

[Mitch]

I'm not sure if it was addressed but can the admin team or management just find a way to cut the red tape for wanting to create roleplay events, unless it's something catastrophic or city changing it shouldn't need admin approval. There's absolutely nothing wrong with people wanting to create passive roleplay events that don't hurt or harm the local communities.

[goonbagAPPEAL]

Are we able to ask IFM what the progress is on this:
 

 

As well as what the end result of the IFM Debate was?

There were numerous workgroups which all submitted documents to the IFM outlining suggestions and fixes for different rules, scripts and processes on different topics of illegal roleplay. A FEW were implemented and the rest seem to have fallen by the wayside. Are they just being worked on in secret, or was most of it shelved? What aspects were picked up as suggestions to be worked on, what weren't? And what progress has been made on the things that are being worked on (if any)?

[FourmsThreadWatcher]

1 minute ago, Wuhtah said:

 

They are working on a drug overhaul and have also helped modded in a ton of new clothing options that were for illegals and also legals.

 

Those are the top two I know off my head before looking around.

 

it's been nearly a year since they have mentioned that drug overhaul update and the mods is a server wide thing, not focused on illegal RP only.
 

i appreciate your replies really but i see that they need the bashing to get a grip.

[Wuhtah]

9 minutes ago, Mitch said:

I'm not sure if it was addressed but can the admin team or management just find a way to cut the red tape for wanting to create roleplay events, unless it's something catastrophic or city changing it shouldn't need admin approval. There's absolutely nothing wrong with people wanting to create passive roleplay events that don't hurt or harm the local communities.

 

I believe it's more so to help create fires or even admin objects we can spawn in to help the scene. I will ask for Continuity to respond. @Nightmare Night

 

1. When can players do their own RP scenarios without requesting admin approval?

2. When do the players need to get Continuity approval to do said events versus a normal admin handling them without approval?

 

7 minutes ago, goonbagAPPEAL said:

Are we able to ask IFM what the progress is on this:
 

 

As well as what the end result of the IFM Debate was?

There were numerous workgroups which all submitted documents to the IFM outlining suggestions and fixes for different rules, scripts and processes on different topics of illegal roleplay. A FEW were implemented and the rest seem to have fallen by the wayside. Are they just being worked on in secret, or was most of it shelved? What aspects were picked up as suggestions to be worked on, what weren't? And what progress has been made on the things that are being worked on (if any)?

 

I forwarded this to the IFM channel. 

[goonbagAPPEAL]

I'll give IFM a drug overhaul in a few dot points and fix the entire drug economy and HP issue:

Drug effects don't stack and each drug has a HP cap.
For example, you take cocaine and get +20 HP - AND NO MORE!
The drug effect wears off in 15 minutes - to keep the HP boost you need to take more.
As your addiction level rises, so does your HP cap - i.e. you have a high addiction level so now you gain +25 HP and not +20 HP.
With an upper limit of maybe +30 - obviously we don't want to see junkies with +500 HP.
This promotes more drug use thereby stimulating the drug economy, giving incentive for people to roleplay addicts and removes the drug stacking issue.

I've never played an RPG game that lets you take an item that gives you 200% HP. If World of Warcraft doesn't let you do that, why the hell does a Heavy RP server?

 Having used drugs should give you a slight advantage - the ability to take maybe one or two extra bullets (which can be the difference between life and death), not an extra ten.

 

ALSO:
 

The idea of "uncutting" cocaine back to pure quality that IFM is toying with is probably the silliest thing I've ever heard. Are we trying to roleplay realistically or just be an arcade game at this point?

Not only does it make zero sense from a sense of realism, is it even financially viable from an OOC standpoint?

 

Assuming that it's like 2:1 - 1kg of 50% is going to give me 500g of pure.
I'm selling 50% for $175 and pure for $300
1kg of 50% = $175,000 | 500g pure = $150,000

 

Maybe I have the entire idea behind it wrong or don't have the full picture? But it doesn't make sense to me.

Edited July 11, 2022 by goonbagAPPEAL

[Wuhtah]

@Mitch - Continuity has told me to reference the admin handbook to help you answer your question. So, I'll be helping you in behalf of that:

 

Basically, as a normal admin we cannot make in-game events that make a drastic change to regular daily RP - only the continuity team can approve this. So, if you think it will not make a drastic change (airplane crash, bridge collapse, wild animal chases, bank robberies, natural weather disasters, etc) - feel free to get a normal administrator to handle your event. If you think it's drastic, please reach out to the head of continuity - if you are not answered within a week (I know this is already a long time, but I believe they only have 1-2 admins on the team), you are more than welcome to go above and reach out to the head of FM or management - as per admin handbook. 

 

All admins are allowed to act on RP that comes naturally and it's not forced. In your case, it may be forced as you are trying to make a scene with it. A scene that would not be forced is that if there was already a bomb threat (already pre-approved) and the LSSD/LSPD would enable an 'electric field' to disable all electronics within the area. This does not need to be approved by the continuity team as this is a response to a pre-approved event and would halt the RP for days if needed continuity approval.

 

I hope this answers some of your questions. I do understand it's frustrating that you need to wait for a response. Again, if no response happens within a week, feel free to reach out to the head of FM (Shanks in this case). 

 

[Jedai]

4 hours ago, Wuhtah said:

However, I'm having many business owners come to me saying /cad DOES work for them, but they just don't have the staff to keep them opened/run. Not saying the staff is running it, but they need staff (chefs, baristas, waitresses) in order to keep it running. But who wants to play a chef in a video game? You guys want the opportunities of restaurants, cafes, etc for your characters to RP, but it isn't just a take - you need to give too. 

 

I WISH there were more restaurants to go to and while I HATE that it has to be about money, I would rather people working these places get more money than someone who opens bars/clubs everyday. This kind of roleplay is always niche because there's no real incentive to keep it running when someone who COULD be a Chef will make much more money being a bartender or a mechanic or even being semi afk at a 24/7 for multiple hours. Also naturally things like security work also is just more interesting as you've said. The other parcel of the problem is that a lot of businesses are usually used as recruitment tools for Organized Crime. This isn't necessarily an issue on the OCG's part because it's a tried and true method but it does sort of eat into the work force because eventually your 9-5'er is going to possibly make more money illegally. 

 

4 hours ago, Wuhtah said:

Your post is a long one, but REALLY good as well. I don't have much time, so I will slightly touch up on the highlights and get to the rest later. With this - I believe IFM has a discord "Illegal FM - Public" - where you can join and give your opinion and IFM runs their new updates/features through there first. I was told that the illegals bring their complaints/opinions/suggestions up with IFM themselves and they bring it up to the staff team or whoever they need to in order to implement/change things. I may be wrong!

 

Yeah but what I'm referring to is a much different iteration than what they do now. It is probably a lot more constructive now but it's hard to tell based on what a lot of long time illegal roleplayers have said in this thread. On one hand it seems IFM does a lot to give people what they want but on the other hand it also seems like they're very restrictive once you get to a certain point in your roleplay. While I personally think Honey and Co have been on people, especially recently for poor quality and attempting to loophole IFM decisions, I think it would do them well to give admins a better baseline on how to deal with the illegal populace of the server because it feels like there's a major disconnect between both LFM and IFM and the rest of the admin team but I also strongly believe that's on Management more than the actual sub teams themselves. 

 

Overall I'm really glad how responsive you are @Wuhtah. Truly the people's admin. 

[Jeroen]

5 hours ago, Wuhtah said:

new clothing options that were for illegals and also legals

Did they mod in the newest Hawaiian Snow clothes?

[Wuhtah]

3 hours ago, Jedai said:

I WISH there were more restaurants to go to and while I HATE that it has to be about money, I would rather people working these places get more money than someone who opens bars/clubs everyday. This kind of roleplay is always niche because there's no real incentive to keep it running when someone who COULD be a Chef will make much more money being a bartender or a mechanic or even being semi afk at a 24/7 for multiple hours. Also naturally things like security work also is just more interesting as you've said. The other parcel of the problem is that a lot of businesses are usually used as recruitment tools for Organized Crime. This isn't necessarily an issue on the OCG's part because it's a tried and true method but it does sort of eat into the work force because eventually your 9-5'er is going to possibly make more money illegally. 

 

I'm unsure if it's about money or not. There was a player paying them the 4k/hour (from the script) and a 5k hourly on top of that for their staff. I truly think that's it just the RP that people really don't want to do. IRL - I absolutely hate cooking, but I do it to feed the mouths, right? In game, I rather stay away from things I dislike IRL because I don't want in game to become a "job" (like how PD was for me). 

 

We do have something in the works (yes another thing) from the Property Management side to help niche businesses get more money to them to help pay the staff at least. I did forget about this project, so I definitely just bumped it today and hopefully we'll get it out within the next week or so!

 

If you have any suggestions that would help promote people to work at niche businesses - restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, etc. Please let me know!

 

Quote

Yeah but what I'm referring to is a much different iteration than what they do now. It is probably a lot more constructive now but it's hard to tell based on what a lot of long time illegal roleplayers have said in this thread. On one hand it seems IFM does a lot to give people what they want but on the other hand it also seems like they're very restrictive once you get to a certain point in your roleplay. While I personally think Honey and Co have been on people, especially recently for poor quality and attempting to loophole IFM decisions, I think it would do them well to give admins a better baseline on how to deal with the illegal populace of the server because it feels like there's a major disconnect between both LFM and IFM and the rest of the admin team but I also strongly believe that's on Management more than the actual sub teams themselves. 

 

I'm unsure of how the discord operates, but looking in once and awhile I do see IFM members & players talk amongst each other very often. I do see the same player name's pop up though, so I will ask IFM if it's okay to share the discord via public announcement in the discord channel again just to see if more will join in. I'm unsure if it's specifically for factions, or if it's for everyone - but I'll definitely get some clarification on that.

 

IFM has a really hard job IMO. They dabble in a little of everything and is one of the strong backbones of the community. They can't please everyone - as you know by this thread, but they can make appropriate changes, whether small or big, and see how it effects the server/community. I do know that in the discord - they ask for feedback a LOT before making the necessary changes. 

 

As for regular admins not knowing much about IFM - this is on us, not staff management. In the GTAW discord, there is a #ifm-chat or whatever it's called specifically for admins outside of IFM to ask questions to them and get some clarification. Obviously, the illegal scene is CONSTANTLY changing, so it definitely needs to be fluid. 

 

1 hour ago, Jeroen said:

Did they mod in the newest Hawaiian Snow clothes?

 

I'm unsure - I do not believe so as the team of Hawaiian Snow have been on LOA for the last couple of months. 

[lux]

1 hour ago, Wuhtah said:

I'm unsure - I do not believe so as the team of Hawaiian Snow have been on LOA for the last couple of months. 

 

Attempted to reach out but didn't receive much of a response. Was happy to give over everything but just some miscommunication stuff happened, so no biggie. Other owner of HS is still active, I'm just LOA for OOC reasons for a bit! (explained to PM etc. etc. etc.) Always said if our stuff is wanted, happy to provide. Just need to pop me a message.

 

As for input towards the thread, I've always just recommended more unique events to help a more positive interaction between legals/illegals - and to have staff actively try and help out to make the process easier. You have people like Fantasia (who I think are government now) that would push all these wonderful events and they really help build that bridge that's desperately needed. Issue is, these things take a lot of time and effort just to do all the forum work (apply for permission with Gov, LSPD, LSSD, LSFD, PM for event interior) that it often times is demotivating. A player that comes up with a spur of the moment event they think would be fun.. is instantly demotivated when they see the amount of things they have to do to even get it into the IC planning stages.

And then once you finally have everything done - the forum work, the IC planning, the OOC planning, the event interior, the mapping - all it takes is one person to come along and ruin it. I spent a solid month working on our mountain bike event and it was disrupted in the first 20 minutes by someone trying to drive a sports motorbike down Chiliad, then running around causing a scene with SAPR. Made a ticket, didn't receive a response despite all the OOC drama the person started in /b. It was the last time I bothered to tried to run an event so I commend those that still put on these large scale events for everyone to enjoy.. and then pity them when ONE person gets main character syndrome and wants to shit all over people's hard work.

 

 

 

There are simply too many steps for people to let their creativity flex on GTAW. Certain things should be purely handled in-game and instead you spend most of the time applying for permission, properties or applications on the thousands of forums you have to sign up to. And even if you manage to do all that? It takes just one person to ruin it all in a matter of minutes. 

I'm not often one to say staff should step in and void scenes.. but when the amount of work to actually get these things going is an insane amount - that should often be the solution so everyone can keep having fun.