The Government and You

[Guest]

9 hours ago, vrb said:

It's better to focus on having a single layer of government and maintaining the three institutions it relies on to achieve the checks and balances than try to support single institutions of different levels of government. 

 

The city and state governments are the same things but abstracted differently. Choosing which layer to use should primarily revolve around the setting of the roleplay environment. Since the map revolves around a single city and a single county, it's best to go with a city/county government. 

 

I understand in many cases; some laws would realistically be state laws and not city laws. However, if we're going through the trouble of maintaining elections and a player-based legislature, they should have a say over all laws imposed on the players. 

 

An easy way to deal with this is to say that the NPC senate would automatically accept the city council's resolution expressing change to state law. The governor's signature would be management's approval since the penal code often has OOC implications which affects the illegal community; therefore, it's best for management to look at anything changing it. I think this is what @Maximis saying above. 

 

I can't stress enough what a waste of time and unnecessary OOC drama we had to go through in the "other community" due to having two layers of government. It's much more efficient to just work on one layer of government and leave it at that. 

+1. Government was always an inactive faction and dividing it into two layers will cause even more frustration and less activity.  We can always NPC some  things. 

[Flemwad]

The reason the state government was adopted was to remove the layers and realistically give control to the players.  When you focus on a City government as the sole government, you fail to account for the areas outside of the city, which would not be realistically impacted by the passage of legislation at the city level.  By going to a sole city government player controlled, you remove the realistic sense of player control by saying everything passed by the city is law throughout the state and outside of the city (unrealistic) or you remove the ability for the players to pass law by creating an OOC automatic passage of city laws.

 

The reason we moved to a state government was to realistically address these issues.  I'm not against the City aspect however, but I think it creates an OOC avenue of issues that need to be addressed in that sphere.  It becomes even less realistic when it gets vetoed on a state level as there is no way to really challenge it as a city legislator. 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Flemwad

[Sal]

I personally enjoyed some of the earlier iterations of government systems because it was more simple. I know there were quite a few folks who were really into it a few years later with the senate and what-not too, though I'll admit it just got a bit much for me to keep up with so I just sort of stopped reading. 

 

So tl;dr I think this is on the right track and I support, and am looking forward to what you come up with. Also know that you've been there, done that and worn the t-shirt so you'll know the kinda things to think about. Further thoughts below, since it sounds like things are still in early stages: 

 

• Make the decision early on regarding how much "say" the Government has in the operation of other factions, obvs thinking law enforcement and fire department as the main ones. If it's to be a lot, then due care needs to go into who in the Government that particular responsibility stops with. I know this is why there was always some level of admin involvement in the form of a Governor for certain things, since IC decisions could heavily impact OOC enjoyment of the game. I'll use the example of the time when a Mayor tried to fire a Chief of Police, which would have caused untold chaos if nobody intervened. 
• If there's to be elections, I think make the terms long. We saw time and time again that regular new leadership basically meant an entirely new faction, which was unstable and chaotic. I know that the city manager position and the separation of departments / the mayor's office tried to combat this, and I'm not sure how successful that was (perhaps others who were around after me could elaborate 'cause that would be interesting to know). A constantly changing leader figure is also very fatiguing for everyone. 
• Remember it's still a game. I think that in the past, and in certain "other communities", it just went too far down the lines of being a bureaucratic, boring mess. Some people love doing paperwork and are fine with seeing their online lives as a second job, but I don't personally think that's sustainable. There are some paperworky things that you'll never get away from needing, but I think the focus should be on the roleplay and the experience far more than the function. I know not everyone will agree with that, but I'd rather have an active and stable government faction which stays that way because the players enjoy playing their characters, rather than one which just seems to manage a myriad of processes on the forums. I'm not saying make the government useless, but just make it interesting! Then we may actually have people who stick around.
• If there's to be competition, or party systems, be careful of players getting too hyper about winning. Easier said than done I know, but I just think it's important to encourage people to enjoy the game and the stories rather than getting so involved and bothered about whether they'll "win". And yesss I know this also feeds into the wider problem of some folks having a problem with losing in general, I just know from experience that too much competition and things can get really nasty and stressful on an OOC level. 
• Stay fluid. You're in the fortunate position at the moment where nothing is set in stone and you can just sorta sit back and watch everyone's thoughts. People do have their own prerogatives for getting involved in Gov factions though; some people enjoy the creation and passing of legislation, some people enjoy having powerful characters, some people enjoy the in-game roleplay, some people see it as a popularity contest then disappear, some people enjoy the forum paperwork... basically just take opinions in context where you can. Creating a government which has function and purpose but is still fun to be part of in the game should be the direction, I reckon. 

 

It's been a very long time since I roleplayed in Government on any server now, so I know that things have no doubt come a long way since the 2012 era. I'd be eager to hear more about what happened and whether certain things worked or not, purely 'cause I'm nosy and nostalgic. Also I ain't gonna pretend my opinions are the  magic bullet here, far from it, just my two penneth from what I've seen before! 

[Guest]

On 1/25/2022 at 9:23 PM, Allegra said:

I personally enjoyed some of the earlier iterations of government systems because it was more simple. I know there were quite a few folks who were really into it a few years later with the senate and what-not too, though I'll admit it just got a bit much for me to keep up with so I just sort of stopped reading. 

 

So tl;dr I think this is on the right track and I support, and am looking forward to what you come up with. Also know that you've been there, done that and worn the t-shirt so you'll know the kinda things to think about. Further thoughts below, since it sounds like things are still in early stages: 

 

• Make the decision early on regarding how much "say" the Government has in the operation of other factions, obvs thinking law enforcement and fire department as the main ones. If it's to be a lot, then due care needs to go into who in the Government that particular responsibility stops with. I know this is why there was always some level of admin involvement in the form of a Governor for certain things, since IC decisions could heavily impact OOC enjoyment of the game. I'll use the example of the time when a Mayor tried to fire a Chief of Police, which would have caused untold chaos if nobody intervened. 
• If there's to be elections, I think make the terms long. We saw time and time again that regular new leadership basically meant an entirely new faction, which was unstable and chaotic. I know that the city manager position and the separation of departments / the mayor's office tried to combat this, and I'm not sure how successful that was (perhaps others who were around after me could elaborate 'cause that would be interesting to know). A constantly changing leader figure is also very fatiguing for everyone. 
• Remember it's still a game. I think that in the past, and in certain "other communities", it just went too far down the lines of being a bureaucratic, boring mess. Some people love doing paperwork and are fine with seeing their online lives as a second job, but I don't personally think that's sustainable. There are some paperworky things that you'll never get away from needing, but I think the focus should be on the roleplay and the experience far more than the function. I know not everyone will agree with that, but I'd rather have an active and stable government faction which stays that way because the players enjoy playing their characters, rather than one which just seems to manage a myriad of processes on the forums. I'm not saying make the government useless, but just make it interesting! Then we may actually have people who stick around.
• If there's to be competition, or party systems, be careful of players getting too hyper about winning. Easier said than done I know, but I just think it's important to encourage people to enjoy the game and the stories rather than getting so involved and bothered about whether they'll "win". And yesss I know this also feeds into the wider problem of some folks having a problem with losing in general, I just know from experience that too much competition and things can get really nasty and stressful on an OOC level. 
• Stay fluid. You're in the fortunate position at the moment where nothing is set in stone and you can just sorta sit back and watch everyone's thoughts. People do have their own prerogatives for getting involved in Gov factions though; some people enjoy the creation and passing of legislation, some people enjoy having powerful characters, some people enjoy the in-game roleplay, some people see it as a popularity contest then disappear, some people enjoy the forum paperwork... basically just take opinions in context where you can. Creating a government which has function and purpose but is still fun to be part of in the game should be the direction, I reckon. 

 

It's been a very long time since I roleplayed in Government on any server now, so I know that things have no doubt come a long way since the 2012 era. I'd be eager to hear more about what happened and whether certain things worked or not, purely 'cause I'm nosy and nostalgic. Also I ain't gonna pretend my opinions are the  magic bullet here, far from it, just my two penneth from what I've seen before! 

 

I was a Senior Licensing Official under different Mayors, so I can put a word or two to answer your questions.  

 

When Mayor was changing, they were not discharging directors of Bureaus and Departments, if they did their job well. Basically, these departments/bureaus were like sub-factions in a faction. However, Mayor's office still used to take a huge part in developing them. 

 

Paper work became headache in the government. Imagine, I had to  forum PM all registered businesses (RP'd as an e-mail) and ask them, if their business was still operating. Also, there were pointless duties  like collecting monthly license fees that used to make us spend unnecessary time on forums, filling pointless information. It was not role-played well and it did not bring anything to the table for the  server.  Another duty of a licensing official was to ask businesses register on forums and obtain necessary licenses. To be honest, application form was not hard or time consuming.  Business owners had to fill basic information , then they had an inspection and the business was fine to open. However, it caused lots of drama. Many criminals tried to insult or attack licensing officials, then these licensing officials used to pay back by locking their places up or having constant investigations over their premises. It used to turn into OOC  hassle and many criminals with P2W attitude were mad at the BoL, because they couldn't bully the government.  Of course, there were lots of bad Licensing Officials as well whose role-play was unrealistic and the Bureau did not have motivation to fire them, because there wasn't anyone else to do all those forum works.  Anyway, we were trying to develop and actually we had lots of improvements under Susan Litcher's  and Bloodseeker's leadership.    Then admins decided to make a new government that would be more professional and would not make people hate the Bureau of Licensing. So, there was a revamp, they fired all of us and messed up the faction which we we had built step by step during 2013 - 2016.   They did not ask for suggestions, they did not listen to us and made a new government that should work, but guess.... It did not. They made new business registration forms to look more professional, increased bureaucracy, increased fines, increased licensing fees and of course it did not work and it caused even more drama (more corruption, more lethal decisions, more OOC hassle e.t.c) . So they had one more revamp and they created a State Government.  They were role-playing like politicians and had a different style. Yes, they had a good role-play, but it was not followed by the server.  They did not interact with others, they had a circle and they were operating in this bubble. They did not bring anything to the table for the rest of the server.  I know that many people won't agree with me, especially those who were in this State Government. 

 

Furthermore, there was a second problem. Basically, the government suffered from inactivity.  I was always advocating for less bureaucracy, more transparency and in game activity, but high ranks were always trying to make everything complicated. I think that in new government we must try to have everything balanced. I agree with you that people don't join  this server to spend hours of their game-play on forums.  I hope that modern government will be less strict to players, will actually work on events and useful projects. Also, I hope that new Bureau of Licensing will be taken seriously, this faction needs modifications and they can turn it into a LEA like faction that will be professional, will have strict rules for its members and  more transparency for the community. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Guest

[i dont wanna od in LA]

26 minutes ago, dzgapaan said:

 

I was a Senior Licensing Official under different Mayors, so I can put a word or two to answer your questions.  

 

When Mayor was changing, they were not discharging directors of Bureaus and Departments, if they did their job well. Basically, these departments/bureaus were like sub-factions in a faction. However, Mayor's office still used to take a huge part in developing them. 

 

Paper work became headache in the government. Imagine, I had to  forum PM all registered businesses (RP'd as an e-mail) and ask them, if their business was still operating. Also, there were pointless duties  like collecting monthly license fees that used to make us spend unnecessary time on forums, filling pointless information. It was not role-played well and it did not bring anything to the table for the  server.  Another duty of a licensing official was to ask businesses register on forums and obtain necessary licenses. To be honest, application form was not hard or time consuming.  Business owners had to fill basic information , then they had an inspection and the business was fine to open. However, it caused lots of drama. Many criminals tried to insult or attack licensing officials, then these licensing officials used to pay back by locking their places up or having constant investigations over their premises. It used to turn into OOC  hassle and many criminals with P2W attitude were mad at the BoL, because they couldn't bully the government.  Of course, there were lots of bad Licensing Officials as well whose role-play was unrealistic and the Bureau did not have motivation to fire them, because there wasn't anyone else to do all those forum works.  Anyway, we were trying to develop and actually we had lots of improvements under Susan Litcher's  and Bloodseeker's leadership.    Then admins decided to make a new government that would be more professional and would not make people hate the Bureau of Licensing. So, there was a revamp, they fired all of us and messed up the faction which we we had built step by step during 2013 - 2016.   They did not ask for suggestions, they did not listen to us and made a new government that should work, but guess.... It did not. They made new business registration forms to look more professional, increased bureaucracy, increased fines, increased licensing fees and of course it did not work and it caused even more drama (more corruption, more lethal decisions, more OOC hassle e.t.c) . So they had one more revamp and they created a State Government.  They were role-playing like politicians and had a different style. Yes, they had a good role-play, but it was not followed by the server.  They did not interact with others, they had a circle and they were operating in this bubble. They did not bring anything to the table for the rest of the server.  I know that many people won't agree with me, especially those who were in this State Government. 

 

Furthermore, there was a second problem. Basically, the government suffered from inactivity.  I was always advocating for less bureaucracy, more transparency and in game activity, but high ranks were always trying to make everything complicated. I think that in new government we must try to have everything balanced. I agree with you that people don't join  this server to spend hours of their game-play on forums.  I hope that modern government will be less strict to players, will actually work on events and useful projects. Also, I hope that new Bureau of Licensing will be taken seriously, this faction needs modifications and they can turn it into a LEA like faction that will be professional, will have strict rules for its members and  more transparency for the community. 

I certainly believe that even licensing has a pretty huge potential in terms of creating roleplay. It should be more focused on actually going IG and roleplaying rather than sitting on the forums and filling out forms. You're generally not wrong, I just disagree about the part of reducing the downtime in govt roleplay. I feel like the downtime and the slower pace of it is quite the essential part of it. Turning bureau of licensing into law enforcement doesn't make sense imo. 

[Venta]

We've been trying to minimize paperwork as much as possible lately, but we were quite limited in SAMP, however, since it's a new start for LSRP - it should work out as we intended now. Minimizing the amount of "paperwork" done on the forums and focusing on the factions presence in-game in way that others could see it.

[Sparkles]

4 hours ago, Venta said:

We've been trying to minimize paperwork as much as possible lately, but we were quite limited in SAMP, however, since it's a new start for LSRP - it should work out as we intended now. Minimizing the amount of "paperwork" done on the forums and focusing on the factions presence in-game in way that others could see it.

As long as it's not going back to when licensing was rolling around masked up with guns playing vigilante, using gov vehicles. 

[skyrocket]

59 minutes ago, Fiendfyre said:

As long as it's not going back to when licensing was rolling around masked up with guns playing vigilante, using gov vehicles. 

Highly doubt this'll happen here.

[Venta]

10 hours ago, Fiendfyre said:

As long as it's not going back to when licensing was rolling around masked up with guns playing vigilante, using gov vehicles. 

 

I can assure you that won't happen again, back then PD didn't have as much influence when it comes to business matters as it has now with DSVD, therefore wrong decisions were made in Licensing to compensate for that. 

[Sal]

I wonder how it’ll work in terms of taxes. Back in the day, funds for projects had to be requested by admins (requests like this were often rejected though). 
 

I guess I’d be interested in knowing more about the economy and where the money sinks will be, what proactive things are in place to limit inflation etc, but that’s not entirely related to the topic at hand here. 
 

So yeah, the degree to which gov will have access to city funds, and how much say it has in how such funds are distributed (potentially even going so far as to impact on public service salaries and all that) would be interesting to know too. 

[Venta]

On 1/28/2022 at 3:38 PM, Allegra said:

I wonder how it’ll work in terms of taxes. Back in the day, funds for projects had to be requested by admins (requests like this were often rejected though). 
 

I guess I’d be interested in knowing more about the economy and where the money sinks will be, what proactive things are in place to limit inflation etc, but that’s not entirely related to the topic at hand here. 
 

So yeah, the degree to which gov will have access to city funds, and how much say it has in how such funds are distributed (potentially even going so far as to impact on public service salaries and all that) would be interesting to know too. 

 

Current aim is to minimize money spawning in the server to a minimum, making at least some money actually circulate in the economy. 

[orklainer]

I think it's a good idea that firearm licensing will switch from PD to GOV.

 

And the parking enforcement is amazing! 

When I used to be a deputy, I kinda found it funny cops giving tickets.

Having an actual parking enforcement will make everything more realistic, add another faction and will have the main objective of keeping the streets clean!

 

Kudos for the idea, its brilliant!

 

[Venta]

On 1/30/2022 at 6:30 PM, orklainer said:

I think it's a good idea that firearm licensing will switch from PD to GOV.

 

And the parking enforcement is amazing! 

When I used to be a deputy, I kinda found it funny cops giving tickets.

Having an actual parking enforcement will make everything more realistic, add another faction and will have the main objective of keeping the streets clean!

 

Kudos for the idea, its brilliant!

 

 

There's big plans for parking enforcement, hopefully they'll work out. They will also fill in whenever PD/SD needs a car impounded.

[Maxim]

We're looking for players who may be interested in joining the city council, aka our legislative aspect of the government. Writing legislation, voting on it, debates and politics are all part of it - we're also going to push for more in-game interaction and roleplay instead of the old forum bureaucracy.

 

If you're interested feel free to submit the next application to my forum PMs.

 

Forum name:
Character name:
How long have you been playing LSRP for?:
Provide a short backstory of your councilman/councilwoman character (max. 300 words):
Which district/area would you be interested in representing? (There's no set list of districts as of right now, name of the area will be enough):
Do you understand the role of the LS City Council and therefore acknowledge that it's meant to realistically depict the LA City Council? Provide a short explanation of duties of the City Council as a legislative body of the city (max. 200 words):
 

 

If you're interested in pursuing a path in one of the political parties we have (DEM, GOP) shoot me a message as well.

[Sparkles]

On 1/30/2022 at 10:30 AM, orklainer said:

I think it's a good idea that firearm licensing will switch from PD to GOV.

 

And the parking enforcement is amazing! 

When I used to be a deputy, I kinda found it funny cops giving tickets.

Having an actual parking enforcement will make everything more realistic, add another faction and will have the main objective of keeping the streets clean!

 

Kudos for the idea, its brilliant!

 

Traffic cops do give parking tickets though, realistically.

 

https://www.ladotparking.org/parking-enforcement/