Rethinking the approach towards civilian role play

[Apophis]

LS:RP, originally being an edit of the Godfather, was from it's core a complicated form of cops and robbers role play. While many players found different avenues to create and play as characters with varying success outside of this meta, there is no denying that the root of the game, the majority of the player base, and the systems created to facilitate role play were all centered around law enforcement and criminal factions respectively. If you're looking for success, I believe it's important to reconcile that the GTA RP landscape seems to've changed. 

 

While I won't explicitly criticize or promote the community in saying this: I find it funny when people rail against certain systems GTA:W uses, a frequent highlight being the lack of focus the overall community has on illegal factions. With what I've observed through admittedly a low amount of play (about ~100-150 hours), I think a hard pill that many of the old guard players refuse to swallow is that you are not the majority demographic anymore. 

 

While a good amount of LS:RP players had made the trip to GTA:W, I've noticed through Discord hopping and communicating with players that a majority of them stem from more social role playing games, many of which I'd say are hardly compatible with the LS:RP C&R format. GTA:W seems to deliberately cater to these players, and rightfully so. The expectation that illegal / old guard role players should be center stage is a remnant of the attitude of old LS:RP. Frankly put: I fully believe that in order to be competitive in the market, the former approach of leaving these players to their own devices simply is no longer possible.

 

The largest takeaway I have from my theory is that players beget players. I don't think it's reasonable to expect LS:RP to be competitive in the market if the primary goal is to simply bring the old community into the new platform. The remaining veterans aren't going to make the switch if the player counts are glaringly in favor of the communities they're already in, and the opposite demo won't make the switch unless they're compelled with very good reasoning. In both cases, you'd be asking many players to abandon relationships with the server, factions, characters, other players, assets and potentially thousands of hours of progress and whatever else that progress may entail.

 

I think it's become far too trendy to blindly criticize GTA:W. Don't get me wrong, I have the same problems with it that you do. That being said, I've been preaching for quite some time that, while yes I think true that the  community objectively has some problems, simply dismissing every idea out of Nervous' head as bad is an overly elitist, unrealistic line of thinking. Truthfully, some of the scripts regarding businesses, dynamic item creation, map markers, and static info points are downright genius, and very literally go above and beyond facilitating role play, particularly for civilian role players.

 

In short: how does LS:RP compete with other communities in this area, which has specifically been sidelined for years and which the community may be woefully underequipped to handle?

[IdleStacks]

Let's be real here; LSRP isn't going to be able to compete in the same market segment of legal roleplay as GTA:W if everything I hear about it is true (I don't play it), at least from the very start. They have more experience in GTA V and RAGEMP as a platform, a bigger playerbase (presumably), and a ton more scripts (and maybe better, if you're right) put into place already, not to mention that LSRP is severely late to the party and has already been delayed once. So what can we do? Is it all over before it begins?

 

Maybe not. We can simply gun hard for a different segment of the community. If we can bleed GTA:W of illegal and LEO roleplayers - then the people who just want to be social with eachother in GTA V will soon find themselves playing a more complicated version of Second Life, which I presume isn't the point,  and if it is, then nothing we ever do is going to bring them back in my opinion because to me the point of LS:RP isn't to sit in a chatroom with socially awkward people who can't talk to eachother in real life so they do it on a GTA server - it's to do things that you'd be ill-advised to do in real life to a bigger extent than what 99.99% of games on the market allow you to do.

 

I understand your point about catering to the illegal RP community exclusively not being viable and I agree somewhat, but I don't think trying to compete hard with a server that specializes in legal roleplay would be very wise. LSRP is NOT the big dog anymore - we have to take what we can get, and if illegal roleplayers really are in the minority these days, then, well, we'll just have to start with the minority.

 

 

 

[yekim]

Just now, IdleStacks said:

Let's be real here; LSRP isn't going to be able to compete in the same market segment of legal roleplay as GTA:W if everything I hear about it is true (I don't play it), at least from the very start. They have more experience in GTA V and RAGEMP as a platform, a bigger playerbase (presumably), and a ton more scripts (and maybe better, if you're right) put into place already, not to mention that LSRP is severely late to the party and has already been delayed once. So what can we do? Is it all over before it begins?

 

Maybe not. We can simply gun hard for a different segment of the community. If we can bleed GTA:W of illegal and LEO roleplayers - then the people who just want to be social with eachother in GTA V will soon find themselves playing a more complicated version of Second Life, which I presume isn't the point,  and if it is, then nothing we ever do is going to bring them back in my opinion because to me the point of LS:RP isn't to sit in a chatroom with socially awkward people who can't talk to eachother in real life so they do it on a GTA server - it's to do things that you'd be ill-advised to do in real life to a bigger extent than what 99.99% of games on the market allow you to do.

 

I understand your point about catering to the illegal RP community exclusively not being viable and I agree somewhat, but I don't think trying to compete hard with a server that specializes in legal roleplay would be very wise. LSRP is NOT the big dog anymore - we have to take what we can get, and if illegal roleplayers really are in the minority these days, then, well, we'll just have to start with the minority.

 

 

 

lsrp can definitely compete with gta:w when it comes to civilian roleplay. there's a pretty toxic civi vs criminal discussion going on rn due to a lapse of quality in factions spiking chain robberies & crimes against the innocent. intrusive actions aren't fun when u have to encounter them whenever u hop on. a good representation and focus on illegal rp helps mitigate these issues because it becomes a lot more self governing. not to mention a lot of the civi focused features on gta:w are fluff n dont really serve a purpose other than to pad the server - people will happily go without them if it means a more immersive and fun experience

 

there's also lot of disdain for groups like RPQ and IFM, with the general consensus being "why are noobs enforcing how i rp when they cant rp themselves" 

[IdleStacks]

10 minutes ago, yekim said:

lsrp can definitely compete with gta:w when it comes to civilian roleplay. there's a pretty toxic civi vs criminal discussion going on rn due to a lapse of quality in factions spiking chain robberies & crimes against the innocent. intrusive actions aren't fun when u have to encounter them whenever u hop on. a good representation and focus on illegal rp helps mitigate these issues because it becomes a lot more self governing. not to mention a lot of the civi focused features on gta:w are fluff n dont really serve a purpose other than to pad the server - people will happily go without them if it means a more immersive and fun experience

 

there's also lot of disdain for groups like RPQ and IFM, with the general consensus being "why are noobs enforcing how i rp when they cant rp themselves" 

That's good to know. Internal rifts and strife is always fairly easy to exploit even without trying. A good launch (hopefully with no more delays) and competent handling of illegal roleplay could give us a real leg up.

Edited January 3, 2022 by IdleStacks

[Dos Santos]

You generally have to remember a lot of los santos roleplay have had years and years of experience of where they have gone wrong and are able to come over these things and reflect and perhaps create a better legal system, the civilian roleplay is going to be extremely good on LS-RP but we do need to be patient. 
 

I feel like a lot of people will return for the name itself, a lot of people don’t agree with a lot of things on World, but you have to remember they’ve done a very good job themselves. Yes, it’s a bit of competition but the work Mmartin and co have put into the script is insane and we need to try and provide the roleplay to the community itself. 
 

a lot of people don’t agree with the way IFM handle things, on LS-RP I’m hoping Faction Team can be good, where we can be dynamic and unique and hopefully have a 50/50 between illegal roleplay and legal roleplay. 

[Sparkles]

2 hours ago, Dos Santos said:

You generally have to remember a lot of los santos roleplay have had years and years of experience of where they have gone wrong and are able to come over these things and reflect and perhaps create a better legal system, the civilian roleplay is going to be extremely good on LS-RP but we do need to be patient. 
 

I feel like a lot of people will return for the name itself, a lot of people don’t agree with a lot of things on World, but you have to remember they’ve done a very good job themselves. Yes, it’s a bit of competition but the work Mmartin and co have put into the script is insane and we need to try and provide the roleplay to the community itself. 
 

a lot of people don’t agree with the way IFM handle things, on LS-RP I’m hoping Faction Team can be good, where we can be dynamic and unique and hopefully have a 50/50 between illegal roleplay and legal roleplay. 

Faction team deals with illegal factions only tho, no? Not civilian RP. Heck, when I had a company that we wanted to expand into a legal faction eventually (more cars, easier job assignment without having to post requests) - I got the runaround because FM only dealt with organized criminal rp and legal FM only dealt with gov factions. 

 

The biz markets and such put on SAMP were a good idea, hope something similar is instilled early on. We shouldn't "be patient" - planning things for just Legal factions & criminals is ignoring the civilian side of things. 

 

 

[Dos Santos]

15 minutes ago, Fiendfyre said:

Faction team deals with illegal factions only tho, no? Not civilian RP. Heck, when I had a company that we wanted to expand into a legal faction eventually (more cars, easier job assignment without having to post requests) - I got the runaround because FM only dealt with organized criminal rp and legal FM only dealt with gov factions. 

 

The biz markets and such put on SAMP were a good idea, hope something similar is instilled early on. We shouldn't "be patient" - planning things for just Legal factions & criminals is ignoring the civilian side of things. 

 

 

Regarding the 50/50 I’ve also included that inside the legal roleplay with the civilian role—play as I’m not sure what the plans are regarding the teams yet aka a company team etc. With the civilian roleplay I know their focusing on it a lot more than what they done on LS-RP previously. The way the script works is a lot more better on V as there’s a lot more possibilities on RAGE MP.

[La Tweaker]

5 hours ago, yekim said:

lsrp can definitely compete with gta:w when it comes to civilian roleplay. there's a pretty toxic civi vs criminal discussion going on rn due to a lapse of quality in factions spiking chain robberies & crimes against the innocent. intrusive actions aren't fun when u have to encounter them whenever u hop on. a good representation and focus on illegal rp helps mitigate these issues because it becomes a lot more self governing. not to mention a lot of the civi focused features on gta:w are fluff n dont really serve a purpose other than to pad the server - people will happily go without them if it means a more immersive and fun experience

 

there's also lot of disdain for groups like RPQ and IFM, with the general consensus being "why are noobs enforcing how i rp when they cant rp themselves" 

Yeah I agree, and if I'm being honest Civilian RP on world isn't all its cracked up to be. The great civilian RPers are going to move here, I can see it happening now because even alot of them are fed up with some of the shit going on on that server. Civilians provoking gangbangers in their turfs, mallrats leading factions and being favoured by mallrat IFM members, civilian RPers constantly crying about being robbed when they pull up to the hood in their sports cars and walking around South Central and other slummy parts of LS dressing in suits / flashy clothes. If you go to some places, it doesn't matter whether you're innocent or a civilian, if you look like a target, you will be a target

 

I'm confident that LSRPV is going to compete with that server in all ways, shapes and forms because I've never seen the amount of nonsense that I experienced there on any other community, especially not LSRP.

Edited January 4, 2022 by La Tweaker

[mattmocz]

I agree with a lot in this thread and there’s a lot of things that GTAW has pioneered in the legal roleplay space that LS-RP should definitely take note of and strive to implement or try to support in this community. After playing LS-RP for 6 years and GTAW since it’s launch I definitely can say I look forward to what LS-RP has to offer in terms of both illegal and legal roleplay and can’t wait for launch.

 

After playing GTAW on both the legal and illegal side, leading the court system and being in many illegal factions, the experience I’ve had playing LS-RP was much more enjoyable than what I’ve had on GTAW and I’m sure many others feel the same way and look forward to the competition.

Edited January 4, 2022 by mattmocz

[RafaSilva15]

Despite being out of the roleplay scenario for some time, I guess when it comes to roleplay, it's all based on the old and good common sense. If we consider the real life, of course we shouldn't drop and abandon illegal factions, but we've way more normal and common civilians than people involved with illegal stuff, and it should be like that. While providing a good environment for factions(even scriptwise), I think there should be way more opportunities for civilian RP, such as job opportunity, ways to make cash, investments, etc, because not everyone wants to join mafias or gangs, neither be involved with police department, they simply want to roleplay camping or going for a hike with friends, as I've seen in other servers.

 

I saw people talking about a new government, LS port and some other kind of opportunities for civilian RP. As some of the guys said, LS-RP has been in the market for a long time, having a good experience with mistakes and right choices, and now we have a MP that gives us a ton of cool stuff to do as we all saw in the snippets so I think we should give it a chance and wait for what they are preparing for us. If I know them well, it's gonna be dope as it has always been in the old SA-MP.

 

 

[Cronic]

I think there has to be a shift of mentality regarding both sides when it comes to this matter. Rethinking the approach towards civilian role-play requires initiative and I don't think a lot of players have that. Both sides have to give more and talk less because I've seen plenty of actions that only ended up failing. 

 

Also, comparing LSRP with some of the other big servers just isn't really fair. There's a considerable amount of players there and the majority of that will always be legal roleplayers. They already have the foundation. 80% of LSRP businesses are from illegal roleplayers, while the 20% are actually influenced by illegal factions also. We also need help coming from the administration. A big part of the legal stuff involves scripts that make people interested, otherwise it's nothing.

 

 

 

 

[eminence grise]

First and foremost, you should not divide community to illegal and legal sides. Integration between these two aspects is essential if we are to build realistic environment. We should avoid situation where people who focus mostly on illegal roleplay, get isolated from the legal scene entirely or worse, develop some kind of rivality between the two. Also, mentions of LSRP not being able to compete with GTA W in legal aspects is highly overestimated.

[Sparkles]

2 hours ago, eminence grise said:

First and foremost, you should not divide community to illegal and legal sides. Integration between these two aspects is essential if we are to build realistic environment. We should avoid situation where people who focus mostly on illegal roleplay, get isolated from the legal scene entirely or worse, develop some kind of rivality between the two. Also, mentions of LSRP not being able to compete with GTA W in legal aspects is highly overestimated.

This topic isn't about the illegal factions or the legal/GOV ones - it's about civilian RP, the everyday Joe Schmoe 

[Apophis]

On 1/3/2022 at 7:08 PM, IdleStacks said:

Let's be real here; ...

 

Is this a viable strategy? The conditions that you're competing with that I listed in my original post are going to be an ever present force on a supposed minority player base. Considering the skew in the server's population towards legal role players, it seems like a dangerous gamble to assume that the allure of better scripting and different leadership is going to be enough to not only convince your target minority demo to cross the road, but to keep them engaged in the face of what'll be a total reset for them? I think this issue compounds further with players in established factions that are going to levy the burden of losing positions and relationships with players who don't want to switch, or are otherwise not a candidate for their position on LS:RP that they otherwise already have (i.e. LEO factions). You are not going to siphon everybody, and from what I've gathered speaking to individuals, I don't think it's possible to simply refuse to engage with the civilian "second life" population because you or I disagree with their approach to role play. There just isn't enough of us.

 

 

On 1/3/2022 at 7:27 PM, IdleStacks said:

That's good to know. Internal rifts and strife is always fairly easy to exploit even without trying. A good launch (hopefully with no more delays) and competent handling of illegal roleplay could give us a real leg up.

 

Responding to both you and Yekim, I can confirm that from what I've witnessed, the perception of gang role play is staggeringly different on GTA:W, and a minority of players look at African American / Latin gang role play with anything other than complete disdain. Think of the robberies argument on LS:RP except exponentially worse. That being said, from my point of view, these issues would need to be resolved in order for LS:RP to be successful, and identifying individual problems like Yekim had, along with realistic, implementable solutions needs to be done sooner rather than later. 

 

On 1/3/2022 at 7:56 PM, Dos Santos said:

You generally have to remember ...

 

I don't mean to sound rude, but feel-good posts about how civilian role play will be "extremely good" without offering either evidence to support your claim such as planned implementations or individual ideas on how to accommodate these players lack any substance whatsoever. "Experience" is irrelevant if you don't apply it, and the purpose of the thread is to discuss said application.

 

 

23 hours ago, Dos Santos said:

Regarding the 50/50 I’ve also included that inside the legal roleplay with the civilian role—play as I’m not sure what the plans are regarding the teams yet aka a company team etc. With the civilian roleplay I know their focusing on it a lot more than what they done on LS-RP previously. The way the script works is a lot more better on V as there’s a lot more possibilities on RAGE MP.

 

This was a major fuckup on LS:RP and it shouldn't be repeated. This was the result of an outdated faction selection system that in no way supported legal role play outside of LEOs. I think the most obvious example of this failure is that people in this thread, right now are mixing up the terminology and lumping in civilian role play with legal role play while others are communicating with the terms separate. You can implement individual features to promote businesses and civilian role play without immediately reverting to a copy of the faction system.

 

Natasha_Valentine, knppel and ROZE deserved some form of official support for the civilian role play they engaged in and I voiced this several times to the chagrin of literally every other administrator, but because the rigid structure of the faction system did not accommodate anything outside of the C&R meta, people were simply unwilling to admit that after  ten years of effort, they've earned something. The mentality we held of "if it doesn't reach my idea of official faction quality, it deserves nothing" is outdated and elitist. The company system remedied this, but was far too little, far too late. I would go as far to say that a good amount of the complaints I've heard about either of the players mentioned would have been remedied if we didn't just tell them to fuck off and figure it out on their own 90% of the time.

 

The script is only better if the script is better. RAGE:MP affords more liberty to development but I'm asking how should the script along with the community be steered to help accommodate these players.

 

For reference: Legal role play is the antithesis of illegal. It refers to factions that operate as law related agencies (LEO factions, gov, courts, arguably lawyers). Civilian is anything outside of this relationship. 

 

21 hours ago, La Tweaker said:

Yeah I agree, and if I'm being honest ...

 

You may or may not be right, that's really up for time to tell. I'm moreso talking about what incentives LS:RP can offer to retain these players. You're definitely on point about the nonsense, though. I've seen players on both sides of the argument pound keyboards until their fingers were raw about either side. 

 

19 hours ago, mattmocz said:

I agree with a lot in this thread and there’s a lot of things ...

 

I agree completely. I would happily sit in a Discord call for hours on end, complaining about GTA:Ws information conveyance and staggeringly non intuitive commands, but in the same breath I'd be doing them a disservice if I didn't say the ad system, map markers, static points, and business payment script / business item creation script weren't all fantastic. In the spirit of this thread: LS:RP really should be observing the cause and effect relationships with some of these features and considering similar implementations if they aren't already.

 

12 hours ago, RafaSilva15 said:

Despite being out of the roleplay scenario for some time, I guess when it comes to roleplay, it's all based ...

 

An idea that I toyed with in the past was creating administrative ran factions that would offer payment in return for role play, sort of like public utilities. GTA:W has automated this function with biz rp payments and it is very literally my favorite piece of GTA RP scripting. LS:RP offered pretty much nothing in the way of a legal income outside of trucking (which I would rather be dead than do). Something like this should definitely be mirrored in my personal opinion. 

 

11 hours ago, Cronic said:

I think there has to be a shift of mentality regarding both sides when it comes to this matter. Rethinking the approach towards civilian role-play requires initiative and I don't think a lot of players have that. Both sides have to give more and talk less because I've seen plenty of actions that only ended up failing. 

 

Also, comparing LSRP with some of the other big servers just isn't really fair. There's a considerable amount of players there and the majority of that will always be legal roleplayers. They already have the foundation. 80% of LSRP businesses are from illegal roleplayers, while the 20% are actually influenced by illegal factions also. We also need help coming from the administration. A big part of the legal stuff involves scripts that make people interested, otherwise it's nothing.

 

You make a fair argument. I'm drawing a lot of parallels to the other community as they're my only real experience in the GTA 5 environment, and are the most similar to LS:RP. I know that both communities objectively will not take the same route / approach to a significant number of issues, but I think the situation LS:RP is in now very literally parallels 2008 GTA:SA. They've laid down a significant foundation and which simply translates to free market research. I agree about script incentives. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Apophis
Formatting

[IdleStacks]

1 hour ago, Apophis said:

You are not going to siphon everybody, and from what I've gathered speaking to individuals, I don't think it's possible to simply refuse to engage with the civilian "second life" population because you or I disagree with their approach to role play. There just isn't enough of us.

That may well be true, but I do think that the server will inevitably have to cater to one or the other demographic more unless we pull off some fairly impressive balancing act. For example, do you, as an admin, take the side of the criminal who beats up a civilian wearing the wrong colored clothes and being the wrong race in the wrong neighbourhood, which isn't unrealistic or really deathmatch-y or do you take the side of the civilian who thinks he got the shit beaten out of him for no real reason because he doesn't know these things are important, since he has no interest in illegal roleplay? Siding with the criminal may leave the civilian thinking the server is biased for them, and vice versa.

 

And in general, if people just want to roleplay with their friends and have fun and they'd really rather not have to deal with much criminality how are we going to attract them to a server where there's, probably, going to be a lot more of it, and get them to stay?

 

1 hour ago, Apophis said:

Everything else

 

All good points.

 

It's worth saying that people had been asking for more scripted civilian jobs since, at the very least, when I joined around 2013-2014. They never came and as we well know civilian RP was mostly left to wallow in its own misery as a brave few did their best to make it enjoyable, spending what they made off savings to create whatever roleplay they could with a very limited script, having to call admins for tons of stuff and a community that frankly looked at most businesses as a place to either start retarded fights every 4 minutes or show up and rob every day with 4 AKs. I say this because it's not all about the script: the community needs a bit of a mentality shift in how illegal factions interact with eachother and the rest of the server, because in V they'll probably suddenly be doing so a lot more in player-owned businesses.

 

Expecting people to switch servers because of a cool-looking taxi script (which I have some problems with by the way, but that's for another thread) or whatever is just not realistic, for sure. I'd very much like to see a lot more from the development team on what's being done scriptwise for legal roleplay and what if any OOC systems are going to be put into place to govern it/make sure it's going smoothly. In general it's easy to say (and I've been seeing this type of shit a lot) "it's going to be way better dude, it's in GTA V and RageMP has more possibilities etc etc" but I'd like to see some concrete systems being displayed like we got for the taxi & music.

 

Anyways my posts aren't meant to convey that I think illegal roleplay should be favored over civilian, obviously in a perfect world the three sides are well balanced, just that it may not be very viable for LS:RP as a server that always kinda prided itself on the quality of its illegal/legal roleplay (at least in the heyday) to follow down the path of World. Like you said, why would people leave their friends and factions to join a server that's doing all the same stuff?

Edited January 5, 2022 by IdleStacks