Current State of Company Roleplay

[Anasbenatt9]

It seems that the role-playing in the company has weakened a lot lately. Most people seem to prefer playing as thieves or cops, and the civilian side of the server (especially company RP) has almost disappeared. After the closure of Roze Company, it has been rare to see any new or active companies.

 

Right now, it seems like only IBL and Exora Company are still standing, and even they seem to be carrying the entire scene on their backs. The balance that once existed between law enforcement, crime & civilian life has tilted heavily in one direction. And the company roleplay, which used to give the city so much depth, is struggling to remain relevant.

Edited Friday at 07:52 PM by Anasbenatt9

[Cursed_King]

On 10/24/2025 at 8:51 PM, Anasbenatt9 said:

It seems that the role-playing in the company has weakened a lot lately. Most people seem to prefer playing as thieves or cops, and the civilian side of the server (especially company RP) has almost disappeared. After the closure of Roze Company, it has been rare to see any new or active companies.

 

Right now, it seems like only IBL and Exora Company are still standing, and even they seem to be carrying the entire scene on their backs. The balance that once existed between law enforcement, crime & civilian life has tilted heavily in one direction. And the company roleplay, which used to give the city so much depth, is struggling to remain relevant.

You can't force what people want to play.

It's never been easier to apply for a lease and get your company/businesses scripted IG, yet players stir away from Corporate/Civilian RP due to the current state of the server.

[fruit]

The interest in civilian/business roleplay just isn't there in the community anymore, unfortunately. There have been many unique companies and businesses that have come about recently (e.g. DARPA, Nocturnal, Influencer, etc.) but they've seen little love compared to what they deserve within the community. What made Roze Company work was the endless marketing they were doing in-game, which by law of averages would amount to at least a good chunk of the playerbase joining their company. Companies nowadays don't have the drive (or money) to put out /cads, design posters, or schedule events anymore, and it's not entirely their fault. For example, there have been fewer and fewer people buying cars and properties from one another. It no longer seems viable to run a used car dealership or a real estate company. I can only speculate that this is because most players tend to buy properties through /auctions, and players no longer buy trucks from dealerships or other players because they can use company trucks for free.

 

My view is that the unrealistic salaries companies were paying had a big role to play in this decline. Big companies with money pouring in through profitable businesses like casinos could easily pay high salaries, but they created this norm that ended up ruining the experience for everyone else. It seems absurd to pay $100,000 - $250,000 per dancer or bartender every opening when even the best-run businesses don’t make that much per opening, yet situations like these have forced people’s hands into doing so. Clubs/bars make less than what they pay a single staff member. Other businesses are the same. Unless your 24/7 is in a prime spot like Idlewood, you’d typically only make $10,000 - $15,000 per week. I used to own Vinewood Gas Station back when the playerbase was relatively high, and it made around $5,000 per week. Trucking companies are undoubtedly the most popular template for a company since the feature was launched, but we’re seeing fewer and fewer of them popping up, presumably because the roleplay around it has become boring and stale, and because they don’t make (or even lose) money for the owner, there’s little incentive to keep it going.

 

I think fresh businesses and new script additions can definitely reignite some spark into business roleplay. I can confidently say a paintball script would be loved by the community. Casinos and betting shops also need to make a return. There’s a significant number of players who are hooked on betting and the poker script, but there’s a severe lack of these businesses around. The best-looking casino on the server, V-Rock, is just sitting there in LV collecting dust. Golden Dice Lounge and Caligula’s don’t open anymore. Only Celestria Casino seems to be active, but even then, since the owner runs multiple other businesses, you can’t fault them for not opening it regularly.

 

A bit off-topic, but since newer players tend to lean more towards civilian/business roleplay first, it’s crucial to make the experience for new players as smooth as possible There are still a lot of players joining the server every day, and it’s essential to hook them to the server with fresh additions and to give them the sense that this is an active community where stuff happens every day.

 

On separate threads some time ago, I wrote something that is relevant here so I'll quote them here.

 

Quote

I can't imagine how a new player would find much enjoyment playing on the server in its current state. It's important to work on improving the experience for new players in parallel to the other issues laid out on this thread.

 

For example, its quite often that the server assets won't download when a player first logs onto the server. You'd have to manually download the assets by going on the server's discord, typing !cache and then downloading the assets from there. I can't imagine the probability of a player going through all these hoops is high, let alone knowing what to even do when this issue arises. This needs to be fixed ASAP.

 

Let's say a player manages to finally download the server assets and spawn in game for the first time. Immediately after a few minutes, they're kicked for having a clown skin. Again, this is easily preventable by having a skin selection menu on a player's first spawn. The skin change section on the UCP also has some issues. You have tons of skins who's models are not visible, and for some who's models are visible, actually turn out to be the CJ skin when you spawn ingame. This is not to mention the barrage of error messages that you see as you navigate through the skins. All of this doesn't give a premium image of the server.

 

Variety in terms of businesses also needs improvement. Currently we see clubs, restaurants and bars open and that's it. I see @Slice doing something unique on the server with LFA, but its not healthy to have only one person carry the weight of the whole business sphere. There's only so much you can do at clubs/restaurants/bars before it becomes stale and repetitive. The way management can remedy this issue is by auctioning or leasing off ready-made businesses, rather than having the same club/bar interiors being auctioned/leased. I have expressed my desire to furnish these interiors for the server before and I still volunteer to do so.

 

The server needs to get out of this rut and start freshening up things. Bringing back the billboard system, auctions, leasing etc. would be a good start to bring a sense of refreshment on the server. Additionally, the forums have generally also been very inactive. Apart from the faction threads and this topic, everything else feels like a ghost town. It feels like the community doesn't want to interact with each other anymore, which is odd because even the months leading up to the server's closure in 2021, there was still some activity on the forums. Nobody posts any guides, off topic threads, general discussions topics or much of anything else at the moment. I think part of the issue is that its difficult to keep track of conversations on the forums unless you explicitly look for topics that you want to keep an eye on, which isn't very user friendly or conductive to activity. I strongly suggest that the "View your posts" feature from the old forums be added to these forums, as that option was the sole reason most of us could even keep track of any conversations or remind us to check up on certain threads that we had commented on previously.

 

Quote

Problem:

The originality is lost when it comes to businesses. It seems that every faction or business owner exclusively runs a club or a bar, rather than thinking of something creative. This has made business roleplay so repetitive that it's not fun for either the business owner, or the go-ers. If you look past the facade of the fleet of company vehicles outside a business opening, you'd realize that 80% of the people inside each business opening are actually the business staff, rather than actual go-ers.

Solutions:

• There are so many unique businesses still on the server. Why not auction them if they're not being actively used? For example, Waterpark, Aquapark, Los Santos Forum, Visage.
• Introduce ready-made unique businesses on auction, rather than putting clubs / bars on auctions. This means putting already furnished businesses on auctions. For example, there should be clothing stores, go-karting arenas, motocross arenas, theatres, comedy clubs, gyms, mechanic garages, museums, art galleries, betting shops, office spaces, ice-cream shop, paintball arena, gun ranges, country clubs, music studios, escape rooms, news agencies etc.

 

Problem:

It's almost impossible to purchase a business at the moment from another player.

Solution:

The solution is quite simple to this one. Just auction off more inactive businesses. Though I have no evidence for this, but I believe almost half of the businesses on the server are owned by inactive players. Why not auction them? What harm does it do? There are so many inactive businesses with insanely beautiful interiors and concepts that I wish would be auctioned. For example, Narc's 24/7 with a safehouse is a business I'm sure any faction would love to roleplay at, but it's collecting dust near the mall.