Current server status.

[EGN]

1 hour ago, Mmartin said:

 

This is a separate problem, with wallhacks we're currently limited in how to detect them. We've been able to detect them to some extent and have banned people for them already, but we've a solution in the works that will get rid of a large % of them.

 

There's also wallhacks for weapon objects, so you're quick to be ambushed if you spawn a stash car that has finalized weapons in it. We've been able to mitigate this to some extent, but you can't really make a fully reliable solution for it; so I'm considering just disabling visible weapons in vehicles altogether. Yes it's a shame to turn off the feature, but it'll put a massive dent in ambushing stash cars.

 

 

 

Any solution which primarily relies on more time spent by admins watching players for a long period of time, vetting them etc, isn't sustainable in the long term. If we can impose the limits via script or automation, and leave admin intervention as a last resort, it'll be much more consistent and reliable for players and staff both.

 

 

This also crossed my mind. Only allowing robberies in certain parts of the city. That's of course in combination with other measures, like my /rob proposal. We could still grant exceptions to this by staff if they've time to vet a crew that roleplays well and allow them to do robberies outside of the pre-approved areas. That way we can directly rate limit the robbery rates in areas where they realistically wouldn't be common.

 

 

We're reinstating 11 administrators tomorrow and have recently promoted a batch from Tester to Admin. Some of these folks are from US/AU timezones too to cover the graveyard shift. This should improve the response time a bit.

 

When an admin handles a situation, we're trying to go for education over punishment. If someone commits their first offense, we don't go straight to a ban or a lengthy admin jail (unless it's a very severe breach of rules). Since the server's "fresh" right now, people don't have punishments stacked and usually kick is the first line of punishment before they're dealt with harshly.

 

That all being said, it's still only been two weeks since SA-MP has returned for everyone (shit has it been two weeks already) and I do believe things will cool off naturally to some extent, but this is a pressing issue right now so let's look for as many solutions to consider as possible.

 

We can cover some aspects of this in tomorrow's community meeting and open the question up to the community as well.

 

I agree with all you've stated, mainly with the safe zone expansion to realistic places, specially in a modern setting.

[Michael_Dippolito]

I commend you @Mmartin for engaging in this discussion and looking for the best possible solution. 
 

Things are especially hectic if you’re an official faction showcasing roleplay around drug and gun distribution. Often times people will intentionally target you and metagame things because they’re aware from an OOC perspective that their chances of coming across a weapon or weapon packages are greater. 
 

With the amount of robberies that take place it is a big inconvenience for factions and the general public to interact with each other in public areas that would realistically be considered a high risk. Some players even take advantage of the empty vehicles that are shown on the map. 
 

Happy to see that something is finally being done about it. 
 

@Brigone also suggested a great potential system in order to combat this behavior. 

[Xak1]

its obvious some people only came back here to dm and not rp

[Ronnie2Polez]

What I realized is PD does not go to any calls unless there is a gun involved. You can call for anything, someone stole a car? They'll drive right by it. 

[TheCed]

@Mmartin I appreciate that you and the other members of the staff listen to community, and that things are seemingly going in the right direction. I trust that the decision you’ll take, will be in the interest of the players and the server environment, hoping it will only lead to a healthier and funnier experience.

[DeadlyMuffin]

8 hours ago, Mmartin said:

I agree there's a lot of chaos right now. The best thing you can do is to submit a /report ingame if you feel someone's RP or driving is subpar or unrealistic, and we'll deal with it. Maintaining a high RP standard is very important to us, and that's sometimes tough to balance with being welcoming to new players.

 

I want to shift the attention to the robbery issue though. It's correct that robberies (and esp. chain robberies) were always a problem to some degree. While it's easy to write this off as an IC issue, I know for a fact that being robbed constantly greatly degrades your experience on the server from an OOC level. Which is no good.

 

Let me float this idea I've had a while back here on how to curb the robbery sprees, without changing the money and level limits.

 

- Add a command (e.g. /rob ID) that has to be executed during a robbery and confirmed by all parties.

- The command logs the robbery.

- You wouldn't be allowed to perform a robbery without executing the command - it'd be against the rules.

- You can only use the command X times over Y hours (2 times over 24?)

- If you're two people robbing a player, both have to do the command.

- If you're being robbed and the robbers refuse to use /rob, you can report to have it reviewed.

- The 24-hour limit would apply per-account, so you can't go on a different character to continue your spree.

 

Although mildly cumbersome and RPG-ish, this is really the only reasonable way I see how to curb robbery sprees without relying on player reports and admins having to spectate for hours to detect it.

 

In general, I think robberies are a part of RP, but IMO they shouldn't be the primary source of income for any player due to the experience affecting nature they carry. What do you think about the solution I proposed? Do you see any other solutions? 

Perhaps we shouldn't cater to crybabies or go the same route that GTA : W went in regards to street robberies. If you're robbed, toss them the $500 and whatever else you're carrying and go on your merry way.

Adding the same command that GTA : W has, besides the fact that attempting to enforce the same rule on a completely different roleplay environment, doesn't make sense on LS-RP. This server has been open since 2007, why wait 17 years before adding something? And if players could go 17 years without complaining about it, it wasn't that big of a deal.

 

[Michael_Dippolito]

6 minutes ago, DeadlyMuffin said:

Perhaps we shouldn't cater to crybabies or go the same route that GTA : W went in regards to street robberies. If you're robbed, toss them the $500 and whatever else you're carrying and go on your merry way.

 

Over the years I've noticed you've taken pride in the fact that you have no problem performing these robo-robberies so your comment in regard to this matter doesn't really come as a surprise. However, this behavior you're catering to just creates a toxic roleplay environment and has no real positive influence. It's no big deal giving vigilantes $500, but when it happens five or six times a day it doesn't add up to what LS-RP is considered to be as a heavy roleplay server.  

 

I'm not saying that if you're in a gang infested neighborhood that you should be protected by a rule stating you can't be robbed or whatever. But if your entire development of a character is only centered around roaming the entire SA map and shouting at people to raise their hands so you can spam /frisk and do the same thing over and over it serves no benefit whatsoever. 

[EGN]

14 minutes ago, DeadlyMuffin said:

Perhaps we shouldn't cater to crybabies or go the same route that GTA : W went in regards to street robberies. If you're robbed, toss them the $500 and whatever else you're carrying and go on your merry way.

Adding the same command that GTA : W has, besides the fact that attempting to enforce the same rule on a completely different roleplay environment, doesn't make sense on LS-RP. This server has been open since 2007, why wait 17 years before adding something? And if players could go 17 years without complaining about it, it wasn't that big of a deal.

 

 

Nah, there's a lot of unrealistic chain robberies and kidnappings going on for this day and age. A lot of these dudes don't just accept the items either, they lean a little more into Bestiality roleplay with their stuff, trying to humiliate people and such for no reason and a lot of them right now are using hacks as well. The server, as everyone has agreed needs a change and revision of this current situation and I'm glad is going to happen. 

[ihealyou]

1 hour ago, Ronnie2Polez said:

What I realized is PD does not go to any calls unless there is a gun involved. You can call for anything, someone stole a car? They'll drive right by it. 

You probably have ZERO idea about the amount of calls the police receives. 

[DeadlyMuffin]

33 minutes ago, Michael_Dippolito said:

 

Over the years I've noticed you've taken pride in the fact that you have no problem performing these robo-robberies so your comment in regard to this matter doesn't really come as a surprise. However, this behavior you're catering to just creates a toxic roleplay environment and has no real positive influence. It's no big deal giving vigilantes $500, but when it happens five or six times a day it doesn't add up to what LS-RP is considered to be as a heavy roleplay server.  

 

I'm not saying that if you're in a gang infested neighborhood that you should be protected by a rule stating you can't be robbed or whatever. But if your entire development of a character is only centered around roaming the entire SA map and shouting at people to raise their hands so you can spam /frisk and do the same thing over and over it serves no benefit whatsoever. 

I don't do street robberies and I haven't played in a very long time. Nobody complained about this in 2010, why are they complaining about it now? If it was always an issue, people would've always complained, but that clearly isn't the case.

[Mmartin]

3 hours ago, DeadlyMuffin said:

I don't do street robberies and I haven't played in a very long time. Nobody complained about this in 2010, why are they complaining about it now? If it was always an issue, people would've always complained, but that clearly isn't the case.

 

Chain robberies aren't a new concept and it's always been a problem. And just because something's been done a certain way for a long time doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way, or that it can't change - the meta and standards evolve over time. To say people haven't complained about chain robberies before is inaccurate at best.

 

> I haven't played in a very long time

Maybe it's time to change that, so you can provide valuable input to the current state of the matter rather than theorize about times past.

[leo]

The main issue here stands with players resorting to full-time trolling because they believe there is no valid alternative despite the playerbase trend reaching its peak since shutdown and several factions providing a quality roleplay environment across the entire server map. I have personally found myself dealing with combined level 20/30+ players, who are undoubtedly more than capable of providing roleplay to a high standard, acting with absolutely no regard for their accounts or the server in general.

 

We try to sit down and talk to these individuals. We can be lenient on some aspects and give second chances when people understand (or pretend to understand) their wrongdoings. We can educate over punishing. There have been instances where several experienced players caught returning to play with the sole intent of senselessly deathmatching/chain-robbing were given one last chance on thin ice to play the server in an adequate manner, without being disruptive.

 

Some choose to step back in line, some don't even try and feel the need to go out seeing a red text as the last message in their chat.

 

Most players causing this are able to roleplay, they just choose not to.

[coed]

How about you make punishments more strict for trolls? Sometimes the best I see for them are mere kicks that are just pointless, since they can log back and do the same shit again.

From the moment they are able to roleplay but decide to not do it (compare this to people who are new but willing to improve, which are a lot better) you should be more unforgiving in their regard. I don't really care about the chain robberies (even though the proposal from martin is good), I'm more pissed about who doesn't take this server seriously. I've lost count of the times I've been "backstabbed" by people who weren't even that bad at roleplaying. So, maybe a solution can be giving priority and being more strict to the ones who troll in game.

[Grover The Good]

23 hours ago, Ronnie2Polez said:

What I realized is PD does not go to any calls unless there is a gun involved. You can call for anything, someone stole a car? They'll drive right by it. 

  

This isn't talked about nearly enough.

 

It's high time to stop pretending that spouting such nonsense as "you're expected to realistically portray the LASD/LAPD" is conducive to good roleplay, or that simply integrating real-life codes and procedures is a gateway to unlocking the secrets of police portrayal, or that pasting actual slogans over in-game mappings is all you need to achieve your best performance as a pixel cop, because nothing could be further from the truth. If the only defining trait of your character is acing 100% of the LASD/LAPD lingo while jumping from shootout to pursuit to tactical deployment, then you're not much better than any other virtual gangbanger who uses gang roleplay and AAVE as a paper-thin disguise to engage in server-sanctioned DM without any consequence.

 

Law enforcement roleplay somehow managed to pull a complete 360 and move from robocops whose only aim was to rack up as many arrests as possible while only engaging in action-packed scenarios, to a somewhat engaging and balanced level of police portrayal, right back to robocops whose only aim is to fill their sentences with as many LASD/LAPD terms as possible while only engaging in action-packed scenarios.

 

It's just a long string of disjointed episodes without anything holding the whole thing together, and how could it be otherwise? Hardly anyone takes their time to do some station roleplay or get to know other characters beyond a cursory introduction, debriefs after situations are done just because it's "real life procedures" and not out of a genuine interest of interacting with fellow faction members, good luck finding anyone above a first-line supervisory rank to discuss important matters because it's not "realistic" for commanders to be in-game and expect to be called out over faction chat if you don't use the right code or just say it in plain English instead of getting your message across in numbers.

 

While it's true that law enforcement factions receive a large amount of calls and can't possibly handle them all, it's also true that almost zero attention is given to anything else beyond the run and gun. Investigative roleplay is in shambles, held up by maybe five or six people in total. Patrol work is more shallow than it was in 2014 because even though the characters use more accurate terminology, they're nowhere near as interesting or have as much of a personality as they used to 10 years ago. Passive police roleplay is basically unheard of. And there's still people who somehow feel it's appropriate to use the "it's not about policing the server" motto. And it's absolutely not a problem limited to this server only, regardless of how popular others might be on other platforms.

 

The law enforcement roleplay scene these days can be summed up as people playing LSPDFR in multiplayer.

[imu_pertrauka]

Not going over the problems mentioned above although wanted to add my two cents about the current situation. SA-MP is great not because of the player base. Even though others can't see your customized skin but you just can't replicate the SA-MP vibe. Playing SA-MP in 2024 feels different in a good way. I think SA-MP is way better time investment than GTA V, though it can get boring and unmotivating to play. I think quality roleplay needs to be enforced by the management. What I mean is players that investing the time should be rewarded and you just can't leave the roleplay untouched OOCly because we get what we get. People that are serious are keeping this alive. I understand - it should not become an elite-only server though factions that are fostering a quality narrative should get support. Trolling gets boring after a week or so? Sure there always will be someone who does not give a fuck. Roleplay quality of a server is more of a management's job. I know it's important to have taxis at the airport spawn and it should feel like Los Angeles, California - though does it?? ✌️