Player POV Problems & Incentivizing Roleplay

[SCANDALOUZ]

I've been rambling abot a boatload of things in Discord for a while, so I figured I'll finally make a more organized post with the hope that the community as a whole can share their two cents and even more importantly so the staff could see things like the ones that I'm going to mention (and hopefully others that others will add) as a bigger priority.

I'm just going to touch down on certain aspects of the server, why they aren't ideal and potentially how they could be improved. I'm a text-wall guy, but I'll try to be as straight to the point as I can. With nothing further to do, let's dive into a couple of points:

1. Gatekeeping the Money
PS: DDaniels has already mentioned in Discord that what I'm addressing is something on the staff's mind and that is going to happen. I'm just going to share it so the community can add their opinion on it and perhaps suggest cool stuff in regards to it.

Most of the money-making mechanisms that aren't related to grinding the five scriptwise jobs that we have (that do little, if anything, to contribute to generating roleplay and in character behavior) are red taped and railroading you towards factions and groups. Don't get me wrong. Factions are great, necessary and the backbone of any roleplaying community, but:

- For hourly paychecks, you need to be in a government, official/legal faction.
- For a business, you need a "starting roster" to begin with and they are hardly profiteable anyway besides all the OOC headache and effort. (I'll touch on that more in 2.)
- For schemes, contraband and the likes, you need to be in a faction, and the unwritten rule is that as if the faction red tape isn't enough, you have to realize that most faction leaderships decide themselves on which member they allow to apply/run whatever scheme for the faction, so there is even more red tape on that than the information topics suggest.

This is all cool and cool things to have, but you have to understand that not everyone, for whatever reason (whether IC or OOC, or both), wants to commit to a faction (regardless of the kind of faction) but rather be more "laid back and do their own thing" if this makes sense. If you want to stop the senseless trucking and fishing at the pier, you need to do something to incentivize these people to stop grinding and role-play.

Not to critique without suggesting - but making schemes available for NON-FACTION characters (solo/individuals) would be a great start. Unfortunately, schemes are still rather exclusive as a whole and I think simply doing that would not be enough. There has to be something else. Tapered paychecks are cool, because they essentially force you to go out and roleplay, rather than just grind, but clearly not enough. At some point we have to consider free hourly money for everyone (like $100 a hour) or whatever. Just so people can spend hours roleplaying and know that they will be able to pay their rent without having to spend more time on the fishing pier. This isn't ideal, it's just a whatever suggestion to make a point.

2. Business Income (especially smaller businesses)
The economy, especially when it relates to businesses, needs serious work.

Businesses are critical to generating role play, and the whole "public/social" aspect of role play and generally making the server feel more a-live. They are also crucial to connecting people. A.k.a. they meet up in some business and carry on role playing outside it from that point on.

Right now, a lot of businesses are essentially doomed, what do I mean by that?

Imagine you want to open a small bar, or a restaurant. You know, something with the idea to promote social role play and character interaction, not just /dance at a night club with entry fees.

So what do you do is:
- You spend hours/days working on a business thread, more than likely gfx for it, a business application, then a business interior/furniture, then hiring, filtering out, interviewing staff for your business, then training your staff. Then figuring out and micro & macro managing your opening times.

But what happens after is:
- You realize (for example for a bar) that your only source of income is selling beer (and beverages), and beer goes for aproximately $5 a bottle.
- That your aproximate hourly source of income, regardless of how well visited your bar ends up being, is comperable to that of a fisherman. Except that fisherman did fuck-all but /fish and /ame checks the time every 3 minutes for a hour, while you put in all the effort and time described above.
^ And this is only thanks to the fact that you are being reimbursed for your staff pay and advertisement costs by the staff. Otherwise, you would be operating at hell of a loss every single time and probably either be bankrupt in two tries, or have to fish/truck your life away just so that you can afford keeping your business a-float.

Not ideal at all. People should be incentivized to open and maintain businesses, and what I described isn't that nice of an incentive, IMO.

Once again, not to critique without suggesting: The reimbursement system is nice, but it's also an OOC hassle of paperwork for everyone involved. Take screenshots, fill forum forms and all that. And you still don't profit shit, all that - just not to be at a loss. Now, GTA:W tackled this issue somehow well by "paying" X money for every unique /enter in the business to a cap of max money per 24 hours. For example your business there got $1000 per unique /enter up to 25 people. That way, you could still sell $5 beer but also actually profit and make it worth your while. I'm not saying that this system is ideal and that we should copy it, and everything leaves room for exploitating when we discuss such things, I'm once again - making a point that something needs to be done. Saying that a beer shouldn't cost $5 and just make it $200 as an easy solution does not work, because nobody would pay $200 for a beer in this current economy given their bank accounts. Or at least not nearly enough people anyhow for the business to be suceseful.

3. Free Business Furniture
This is going to be relatively shorter and more-so a question, because I'm unsure of how that will work, BUT - to the best of my knoweledge, currently the furniture that you do in your business interior is essentially free. Is this going to be the case forever? Will people be able to furnish their business venues for free, or will we eventually re-enable furniture item prices? And if we do - how is that going to be fair to the future LS:RP player and business owner? When someone got their gigantic complex luxoriously furnitured entirely free of charge and you have to break the bank for your little coffee shop? What's the plan here?

4. Improving scriptwise jobs regardless.
Scriptwise jobs are going to be used/worked on regardless of whatever we say and do, so let's make them better with the hope they can generate at least some role play. Take fishing for example:
"Please support this giga suggestion so business owners and hood rats don't all have to meet at the pier daily to fish. I cannot stress this enough."

To add on to this, understand how important of a first impression this is. Think about how many people will join the server, go to the fishing pier and see business CEO's in suits and hood rats fishing together with little to no role play, let alone sense. Think about what they will think of the server and what we want to do with it.

 

5. Character Customization

I don't know where this is on the dev priority list, but IMO it should be up there. More clothes, make-up tattoos, accessories, all that cool stuff. Simple as - the more of that and sooner - the better. I'd even add more cars being buy-able to that as well.

I think that's the general gist of my rambling, but I would be hella curious to see what the communtiy thinks, has to add on, and what other issues they want to tackle on. There's some other more-obvious and straightforward issues like a JETSKI COSTING 70K but I don't think this is some in-depth subject needing a general discussion debate.

 

EDIT: Just to clarify, I love LS:RP and I think it did many things well already. I'm not here to bitch, whine and call the place shit. I'm here to provide feedback and suggest stuff that I believe will improve the place for everyone's sake.

Edited June 27, 2023 by SCANDALOUZ

[Dos Santos]

I just want to add company related stuff to this just to make sure that you're aware of what's going on. In regards to the roster for opening a company/busienss as it mentions we expect big companies to have sort of six members but I know, I need to revisit this and look at other options as sometimes there's no need to have such a large amount of people such as bars etc. This is why we've been looking at it on case by case basis for now, but I know we've had a lot of people un-happy with that - so willing to see what I can do.

 

Businesses - At the moment we're currently allowing all business leases to be reimbursed money for their advertisements and staff costs - so they can try profit as much money as possible for now, as we understand that businesses won't be able to profit until things get sorted - when it comes to the business itself they can charge a entrance fee, and this can be used via the /pos command - where the money will go straight into the company bank account.

 

Passive Companies - We are trying to adapt by allowing players to own their own sort of passive roleplay companies, so if you own a construction business or a news agency for example, we will give you a grant so you can pay your employees for roleplaying. Rather than having to do scripted jobs. And this will also benefit the characters IC'ly, by building their relations and generally seeing good business roleplay.

 

Business Furniture - that is currently free at the moment but come the 30th June 2023. We will be making the furniture payable so businesses will need to furnish their own businesses (But I'm going to see what I can discuss with management) - because obviously at the moment with the economy I feel like a lot of people will struggle to furnish their businesses. 

 

If you can throw any suggestions on how I can improve the company system, please come to me my PM's are a open book via the forums as I do want to improve what we have going at the moment.

 

 

 

[DDaniels]

24 minutes ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

1. Gatekeeping the Money
PS: DDaniels has already mentioned in Discord that what I'm addressing is something on the staff's mind and that is going to happen. I'm just going to share it so the community can add their opinion on it and perhaps suggest cool stuff in regards to it.

Most of the money-making mechanisms that aren't related to grinding the five scriptwise jobs that we have (that do little, if anything, to contribute to generating roleplay and in character behavior) are red taped and railroading you towards factions and groups. Don't get me wrong. Factions are great, necessary and the backbone of any roleplaying community, but:

- For hourly paychecks, you need to be in a government, official/legal faction.
- For a business, you need a "starting roster" to begin with and they are hardly profiteable anyway besides all the OOC headache and effort. (I'll touch on that more in 2.)
- For schemes, contraband and the likes, you need to be in a faction, and the unwritten rule is that as if the faction red tape isn't enough, you have to realize that most faction leaderships decide themselves on which member they allow to apply/run whatever scheme for the faction, so there is even more red tape on that than the information topics suggest.

This is all cool and cool things to have, but you have to understand that not everyone, for whatever reason (whether IC or OOC, or both), wants to commit to a faction (regardless of the kind of faction) but rather be more "laid back and do their own thing" if this makes sense. If you want to stop the senseless trucking and fishing at the pier, you need to do something to incentivize these people to stop grinding and role-play.

Not to critique without suggesting - but making schemes available for NON-FACTION characters (solo/individuals) would be a great start. Unfortunately, schemes are still rather exclusive as a whole and I think simply doing that would not be enough. There has to be something else. Tapered paychecks are cool, because they essentially force you to go out and roleplay, rather than just grind, but clearly not enough. At some point we have to consider free hourly money for everyone (like $100 a hour) or whatever. Just so people can spend hours roleplaying and know that they will be able to pay their rent without having to spend more time on the fishing pier. This isn't ideal, it's just a whatever suggestion to make a point.

 

The individual schemes will be a thing in the future. Just like I explained to you and a few others, we just cannot depend on a few individuals to keep the market flowing at the start of the server. If you want to be involved with guns, drugs, contraband and etc, you're always able to get them through interacting with factions. And yes, I understand that that's some form of a dependence, but don't forget that other factions that aren't in the schemes are in the exact same position as you are.

 

[SCANDALOUZ]

15 minutes ago, Dos Santos said:

I just want to add company related stuff to this just to make sure that you're aware of what's going on. In regards to the roster for opening a company/busienss as it mentions we expect big companies to have sort of six members but I know, I need to revisit this and look at other options as sometimes there's no need to have such a large amount of people such as bars etc. This is why we've been looking at it on case by case basis for now, but I know we've had a lot of people un-happy with that - so willing to see what I can do.

 

Businesses - At the moment we're currently allowing all business leases to be reimbursed money for their advertisements and staff costs - so they can try profit as much money as possible for now, as we understand that businesses won't be able to profit until things get sorted - when it comes to the business itself they can charge a entrance fee, and this can be used via the /pos command - where the money will go straight into the company bank account.

 

Passive Companies - We are trying to adapt by allowing players to own their own sort of passive roleplay companies, so if you own a construction business or a news agency for example, we will give you a grant so you can pay your employees for roleplaying. Rather than having to do scripted jobs. And this will also benefit the characters IC'ly, by building their relations and generally seeing good business roleplay.

 

Business Furniture - that is currently free at the moment but come the 30th June 2023. We will be making the furniture payable so businesses will need to furnish their own businesses (But I'm going to see what I can discuss with management) - because obviously at the moment with the economy I feel like a lot of people will struggle to furnish their businesses. 

 

If you can throw any suggestions on how I can improve the company system, please come to me my PM's are a open book via the forums as I do want to improve what we have going at the moment.

 

 

 

 

I appreciate you. To quickly add on to this with a couple of fast notes thar you can use:

 

1. Just let people apply about their business, then worry about their staff roster if/when they get accepted as opposed to "hello 3 people wanna come apply for a biz with me and see what happens". Exceptions being massive undertakings.

 

2. Entrance fees and /pos is cool, the problem is it does not make sense for a lot of possible venues. A restaurant or a bar charging an entry fee will be a realistic turn off for a lot of the playerbase, and they simply wont visit. Even if it is necessary to keep the business a-float and with good intent.

 

3. Business furniture becoming paid after 30.06 is a massive no-no. Business applications are closed at the moment, and the few businesses we got existing already got all their cool shit for free. So, when you re-open the apps, future business owners will have to truck their life away to furnish their cafe, when other people got massive night clubs and resorts done entirely for free just two weeks back? That's not cool, it's not fair, I'd personally riot and be extremely demotivated, and I'm sure many others would share my feelings.

 

4. Passive companies are great, you should emphasize on those. What I mean by that - less restrictions on the grant and more generous grant in general. You want to make sure that people can make more money by working for a passive roleplaying company than they can a scriptwise job. Or at least to be on par as opposed to worrying about 2761 limitations.

Edited June 27, 2023 by SCANDALOUZ

[CChef]

Some good points were raised on this thread. However, I want to add that the current rules that are set for individuals to lease a business is ridiciouls. Having 6 people hired is a bit too much, specially that it's driving away a lot of people who might have creative ideas for a business, including me as well. For example, Mouse and I are making a photography studio. The problem here is that only her and I are working on this and we don't need more people.

 

To add to this, right now, there are only a few nightclubs and a bar that usually open, I believe that they are all faction owned and NOT player owned. During server day time there is NOTHING that is open too!

 

Again, a lot of good points were mentioned into this thread, and my additions might add an insight to this.

[SCANDALOUZ]

22 minutes ago, DDaniels said:

 

The individual schemes will be a thing in the future. Just like I explained to you and a few others, we just cannot depend on a few individuals to keep the market flowing at the start of the server. If you want to be involved with guns, drugs, contraband and etc, you're always able to get them through interacting with factions. And yes, I understand that that's some form of a dependence, but don't forget that other factions that aren't in the schemes are in the exact same position as you are.

 

 

Yeah, as I've mentioned in the OP - I recognize you guys have plans for solo schemes and that is great to hear. I understand that factions come first and they probably should.

 

Ideally - we could just have both though, I don't see why not and why it has to be in this mysterious future. Is it script limitations?

 

Like I also touched on - it's still an exclusive thing and we need more than that IMO. - What, kill me I don't know hence a full blown public thread so that people can chime in.

Edited June 27, 2023 by SCANDALOUZ

[Dos Santos]

15 minutes ago, CChef said:

Some good points were raised on this thread. However, I want to add that the current rules that are set for individuals to lease a business is ridiciouls. Having 6 people hired is a bit too much, specially that it's driving away a lot of people who might have creative ideas for a business, including me as well. For example, Mouse and I are making a photography studio. The problem here is that only her and I are working on this and we don't need more people.

 

To add to this, right now, there are only a few nightclubs and a bar that usually open, I believe that they are all faction owned and NOT player owned. During server day time there is NOTHING that is open too!

 

Again, a lot of good points were mentioned into this thread, and my additions might add an insight to this.

 

I've had a lot of people complain regarding the six people having to be apart of the company before being considered - and this was mainly taken into consideration for smaller businesses such as bars, where we wouldn't expect these amount of players. Now I'm willing to relax that rule because it seems like this seems to be a massive issue.

 

When we had the applications open last for these business leases, we had a lot of people apply that was in factions, now I can't help the flow of applicants that we have had from factions and applications for businesses and passive roleplay companies will be opening up in the next few days, as I'm going to be looking over the companies we have at the moment to see the activity that we have had so far as I want to try and get as many companies active as possible..

 

Keep the suggestions coming along as all I want to do is take your feedback into consideration!

 

 

 

  

27 minutes ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

Business furniture becoming paid after 30.06 is a massive no-no. Business applications are closed at the moment, and the few businesses we got existing already got all their cool shit for free. So, when you re-open the apps, future business owners will have to truck their life away to furnish their cafe, when other people got massive night clubs and resorts done entirely for free just two weeks back? That's not cool, it's not fair, I'd personally riot and be extremely demotivated, and I'm sure many others would share my feelings.

 

I'll bring this up to Management's attention and see what can be done!

Edited June 27, 2023 by Dos Santos

[jmp]

The red tape you talk about, that's basically necessary to make it as annoying as humanly possible for people. It's a requirement that you justify to the admin on why you deserve to have fun on the server. Why you?

 

 

[SCANDALOUZ]

1 minute ago, jmp said:

The red tape you talk about, that's basically necessary to make it as annoying as humanly possible for people. It's a requirement that you justify to the admin on why you deserve to have fun on the server. Why you?

 

 

 

Because standards and roleplay quality for the most part. I get the red tape. It just needs work on and to loosen up a bit.

[trashstar]

1 hour ago, DDaniels said:

 

The individual schemes will be a thing in the future. Just like I explained to you and a few others, we just cannot depend on a few individuals to keep the market flowing at the start of the server. If you want to be involved with guns, drugs, contraband and etc, you're always able to get them through interacting with factions. And yes, I understand that that's some form of a dependence, but don't forget that other factions that aren't in the schemes are in the exact same position as you are.

 

 

with all due respect you can't rely on factions to circulate the market either, as seen on the previous server, where deagles were being sold for 150k each because faction leaders kept valuable illegal assets within their circle. i don't see how adopting nearly the same system is beneficial (instead of faction tokens you're giving limited darknet access)

 

it doesn't matter how many weapons you flood these factions with. they'll all be hoarded across a bunch of alts and friends because having access to 100 weapons is infinitely better than selling them off and holding 5. you can say you have measures in place to prevent hoarding, but let's be honest, you really don't. you can trickle weapons down through 20 different people and they still won't leave the network of the faction that created them

 

its essentially the same thing as before, where you have to lick the shoes of mafiosos and crip members just to get a taste of illegal weapon rp. there is absolutely no reason to red tape darknet access unless you want to funnel artificial power to certain criminal groups

 

open it up and let anyone apply apply based on the merit of their character

Edited June 27, 2023 by trashstar

[jmp]

Just now, SCANDALOUZ said:

 

Because standards and roleplay quality for the most part. I get the red tape. It just needs work on and to loosen up a bit

 

Yeah you're right. Roleplay quality. I think it's also important to give the admins a sense of importance too, ya know? They should be allowed to dictate who gets to do what. Administrating on a RP server is a job they do for free after all.

 

As if it's not glaringly obvious that every person who submits an app is basically just typing paragraphs of nothing anyway. 

 

Then after bullshitting the application, those same suppliers are basically abusing it by only supplying people they know on an OOC level, their faction members and themselves. And once they're bored of the server they can RWT the guns.  

 

Once enough faction leaders have their foot in the schemes, you get to wait until it opens back up. Have fun in the meantime tho.

 

This all encourages roleplay quality.

[Kingstone]

After having played for around 30 hours on the new server, and several thousand on SA ls-rp, I am left with some impressions regarding the economy, and other things previously mentioned. While I realize the server was released in a MVP state (with barebones features, more or less), I also hope the following topics are things the staff/design team are interested in addressing:

• All the criminal/illegal roleplay revolves around illegal factions (schemes, etc). There's very little opportunity for one or two people to gain money from basic illegal things. I am thinking along the lines of being able to do small scale drug production (growing weed in my apartment, or producing moonshine - heck, even making a tiny brewery would be a good legal hustle). Chop shops from the old server should return soon, I hope. So far it seems like most criminals without faction affiliations just bait cops into pursuits and/or do trucking.
• IMO; a lot of ingame legal RP through City, FD, hospital RP and so on are gatekept through extensive forum application processes. This is not to say that we need to lower the standard for FD or anything, but that there are likely many other roles that you should be able to gain access to simply through a short application on an IC website or messaging ICly through the fantastic phone system (that is very much WIP, I do recognize). We should take into account that people have already gone through an extensive application process just to play, so if we respect people's time and give them access to things a little more loosely - I definitively think people would respect the server in return. Something about that saying.. "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"
• On both the legal side and the illegal side, it is very difficult to start something from scratch without OOC friendships involved, because you need >5 people to get access to any of the benefits of even having a faction/company.

[deadplaya]

3 hours ago, trashstar said:

 

with all due respect you can't rely on factions to circulate the market either, as seen on the previous server, where deagles were being sold for 150k each because faction leaders kept valuable illegal assets within their circle. i don't see how adopting nearly the same system is beneficial (instead of faction tokens you're giving limited darknet access)

 

it doesn't matter how many weapons you flood these factions with. they'll all be hoarded across a bunch of alts and friends because having access to 100 weapons is infinitely better than selling them off and holding 5. you can say you have measures in place to prevent hoarding, but let's be honest, you really don't. you can trickle weapons down through 20 different people and they still won't leave the network of the faction that created them

 

its essentially the same thing as before, where you have to lick the shoes of mafiosos and crip members just to get a taste of illegal weapon rp. there is absolutely no reason to red tape darknet access unless you want to funnel artificial power to certain criminal groups

 

open it up and let anyone apply apply based on the merit of their character

I'm sure individuals will be allowed to apply and be granted supplier status further down the line. It hasn't even been two weeks. RP with factions and you can get a gun. They're far more readily available than the SAMP server.

[SolidShock24]

6 hours ago, Dos Santos said:

Passive Companies - We are trying to adapt by allowing players to own their own sort of passive roleplay companies, so if you own a construction business or a news agency for example, we will give you a grant so you can pay your employees for roleplaying. Rather than having to do scripted jobs. And this will also benefit the characters IC'ly, by building their relations and generally seeing good business roleplay.

I think this definitely the way to go. Currently looks like me and my bud who made a business together as well as @CChef and @Mouse have more or less the same situation.

In this passive roleplay system, I provide all my roleplay content for the players (and in short their characters) via ooc means, so that would be the forum, discord or something of that sort. For example, we over at Critics Corner make the magazines then post them on the forums, yet at the same time Mouse posts her images and videos in her business post as well. Most of the *work* that goes into making these things is actually done outside of the game. Usually we either are semi-afk in-game or do fishing whilst writing and editing all the stuff.
If we were to have, let's say a construction company, a good part would be taking the screenshots with RP, similar as to how we do it for our content and then on top lots of time would be spent in some kind of map editor or whatever you use to create buildings or interiors for RageMP.

The thing is, if we are in these programs or afk-ing, that $250 paycheck isn't applied to us. Ofcourse if you have some kind of employees, for their efforts it's fine, but since in my company I, myself, have to do all the editing, formatting, writing and posting, it means that to get the money I earned out, I still have to somehow spend a boat load of time on the server.
And if I have 2 hours to play, than I can make the same if not more trucking than if I would be just sitting getting my paycheck to get paid for that day.

The alternative would be to pay the CEO or what not a lump sum of money earned during a week via placing it in the organizations, this sum has to be more than scripted jobs, but not enough to be broken. Somehow need to balance it out so it's worth the work that gets placed in, but it can't be judged directly based off count of posts either.

----------

In regards to the active company profits. I honestly couldn't think of anything better than an improved entry fee system like some other servers apparently have. Never been there nor' have I tested it, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense for those active bars etc.

So make it so the owner gets X money per unique player entering the business in that specific day, thus far it's easy and already said that this exists elsewhere.
But then the question arises, how many visits till it caps out and how can you as a business grow if it is limited?

I think there's a pretty cool concept that we could draw up.
So when a company is brand spanking new it has a cap of let's say 30 unique players per day that provide income.
Then we, meaning the staff, could increase that cap based off how long this business/company/whateverthefuck has provided quality roleplay on their forum post. The longer the business/company has posted good shit, the more we increase this cap up to some limit, let's say 70 players.
After 70, the company, if they want to increase their profits and grow more have to just open a new venue, like another club, another bar or another whatever and then repeat the cycle there as well.

[fifu92336]

Hard pills to swallow! Excellent thread.