Realistic Roleplay, IC Consequences & Improving RP Quality

[SCANDALOUZ]

There hasn't been a SCANDALOUZ text wall in a while, well here it is.
Inspired by this thread:

TLDR on the thread above (although you should really read it as it goes in depth on why what it is suggesting is a good thing):
For All The Dogs was suggesting perma-death/CK (instead of PKs as we know them) in order to add a whole new dynamic and improve the role playing quality of the server indirecty, by first improving the aspect of In-Character Actions = In-Character Consequences, thus making people be more careful and realistic with their characters and subsequently tackling the problem of the fearless and immortal acting Rambos that flood the streets.

Now...

While his suggestion probably isn't ideal or plausible at this stage of the server (as we have to cater to more players than just the most "hardcore" roleplayers and etc reasons), I'd like to take it, modify it and run with it. I'm curious about what the community feels. But first, a little premise:

The Problem:
There's very little consequences to being an absolute moron and subsequently providing sub-par role play / just engaging in "poor portrayal". People do all kinds of stupid shit and often get away with nothing more than a PK. They don't lose money on a PK, they don't lose all of their items, and they obviously don't lose their characters. They just get PKed, respawn and are right back to doing dumb shit and being unrealistic characters all over again. Yeah, I know, they lose guns and drugs. You lose a pistol costing less than $1,000 which you can make by less than a day of AFK-ing in-game. Big deal. There are no consequences.

The Counter-Argument:
People will say that there doesn't need to be a system, suggestion or policy against the problem above set in place, because unrealistic and fearless characters can simply be monitored and punished by our administrative team. Just report them, bla-bla. Well, no. It's not that simple. Forum Reports are a taxing process for everyone involved. You have to record footage, you have to make a thread, you have to go back and forth in the thread for a couple of days and then the player gets an admin-jail. Wohooo. Then they go right back to being a moron as soon as the timer expires. Then the whole taxing process repeats itself, and the troublemaker likely gets banned in the end if they don't learn. By that time we went through an exhausting process, a lot of "fun time" in-game was ruined by said troublemakers and in the very end - nobody really fucking won or benefited, let alone the server as a whole, since we just lost a player that we had to ban. Obviously admins and reports are necessary, but something else needs to be done in order for dumb behavior to not be essentially incentivised by the lack of consequences surounding it. 

The Suggestion:
A lives system. Please don't "grasp" on to the specific numbers provided in the suggested system. Obviously numbers have to be crunched and some fine-tuning has to be done for the whole thing to be pleasant, yet still do the intended job. This is just a proof of concept.

It's actually very simple. Each player-character has scriptwise lives. Let's say three. Everytime you die scriptwise/are PKed - you lose one of these lives. Upon losing all three of your lives and hitting 0 - it's an automated CK.

But, hear me out. Since you're all pussies and won't agree to it still, because "reeeee, my character. What do you mean I can't treat Davis like Iraq and just shoot up the place every 15 minutes" or "reeeee, fuckin hyperrealism this is a game let me have fun by ruining everyone else's fun, mate", there's more:

Lives can be recuperated. For example, if you stay alive for 1 WEEK without being PKed - you recuperate a life. The cap is 3, so you can't have more than three, but the point is that even if you get killed, you're not stuck on 2 lives forever. You can simply stop being a moron for a week and get back to your three lives. So, essentially - get fucking shot up (probably for a reason) 3 times in a single week - congratulations, you have been CKed. You should have been more mindful of your actions in-character. Better luck next time.

What About The Police:
Same system, except cops get more lives, let's say 6. For obvious reasons. The very nature of their factions put them at the risk of death at any given second. Ideally, we want everything to be fair and for everyone to have said three lives, but we need the LSPD to have a member base and to exist, and this is a sacrifice that we should be willing to make.

What About DeathMatching:
Once again, very simple. Forum reports and refund requests exist. If you lost a "life" as a result of a deathmatch, the administartion should have a simple command at their disposal that allows them to add/refund lives.

But why, Scandalouz:
Once again. In-Character Actions should have In-Character Consequences. This directly affects OOC culture and approach to role play and in-character and "encourages" people to be more mindful of how they role play their characters. As a result, we get better and more realistic portrayal - such as characters (supposed to be living, breathing people) that actually care about not losing their life. Less fearless rambos on the street = better roleplaying quality of the server overall.

Bonus:
MIght as well introduce some medical bills, too, just to add on to the consequences, besides Roze was thinking for a money sink anyway. You should lose SOME money when you get PKed. Pretty straightforward, I won't go in debt about that one.

I'm a girl IRL, please make this happen Mmartin.

Edited July 28, 2023 by SCANDALOUZ

[ScubaStef]

I could probably confidently say this is going to push more people away than it’s going to attract. I totally get the thought behind it, but the amount of killings that happen ingame every day is a little ridiculous. On top of that, this idea might complicate things when it comes to people “running out of lives”. Once someone gets CKed, do they pay for a name change, or is their entire character deleted (along with the character slot) and they have to make a new one?

[SCANDALOUZ]

1 minute ago, ScubaStef said:

I could probably confidently say this is going to push more people away than it’s going to attract. I totally get the thought behind it, but the amount of killings that happen ingame every day is a little ridiculous. On top of that, this idea might complicate things when it comes to people “running out of lives”. Once someone gets CKed, do they pay for a name change, or is their entire character deleted (along with the character slot) and they have to make a new one?

We should be wanting to attract role players, not people out here looking to RPG-TDM.
That's the point.
Seems like just another decision to be made/integrated into the system, not a huge complication as you already came up with 2 potential options on the matter.

[ROZE]

I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it since people that play 10hrs a day would inevitably be more likely to be CK'd over someone who only plays 2

 

Losing money on death is a good idea though and I'll bring it up in the next lead meeting as a way of removing cash from the server, good idea here

 

I think an optional hardcore mode could be cool that uses a system like or similar to this where dying could be a CK, I remember seeing Martin have some interest in it

[SCANDALOUZ]

Just now, ROZE said:

I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it since people that play 10hrs a day would inevitably be more likely to be CK'd over someone who only plays 2

I don't know why asking people to not die more than three times in the same weeek in if they want to keep their characters alive is considered such an impossible concept and grand feat. So this is a Cops & Robbers server?

[Dai]

I support what you're saying in terms of there seems to be very little concern in to shooting places up, some of the RP is amazing but there is a heavy share currently of sub-par rp experiences happening.   Personally I put it down to the server population, in fact I put a few things at that door and prepared to be patient whilst it improves, in terms of your idea to fix the problem I don't really have an opinion on it, certainly not against it but I know what you mean it will likely never happen because of what ScubaStef said and numbers are key at the moment and I get why.  

 

I made the comment to somebody just yesterday that there is a feel of cops and robbers at the moment because it does, luckily my RP generally keeps me away from it but there is a serious lack of fear currently IG.   There's a small number of people that are re-offending and not really being punished for it, not if your portraying heavy / mid RP.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Dai
additions

[ROZE]

2 minutes ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

I don't know why asking people to not die more than three times in the same weeek in if they want to keep their characters alive is considered such an impossible concept and grand feat. So this is a Cops & Robbers server?

 

Not what I'm saying at all, I actually like the idea but I think a lot of people would be against it, I'm trying to brainstorm by giving other thoughts

 

Maybe this could be optional for the player to enable, but we could also have admins enable it forcefully for a player if they're constantly dying for supbar reasons, to make them fix their act

 

Player deaths are really easy for us to track and notice when it's excessive 

 

[SCANDALOUZ]

Just now, ROZE said:

 

 

 

Maybe this could be optional for the player to enable, but we could also have admins enable it forcefully for a player if they're constantly dying for supbar reasons, to make them fix their act

 

 

Anything is better than nothing I suppose.

[Consistency]

 

This is going to do more harm than good. Forcing people to CK after X amount of respawns will lead to more arguments because namechanges cost money. 

This has been tried elsewhere and didn't go so well. When you start imposing penalties on people a cycle begins. Yes they value their character life more but they'll also fight  harder to defend it. Instead of having someone pull a gun, get PK'd and move on they're going to complain and try and avoid jailtime which leads to A LOT more OOC arguments when it could've just been  kept IC. 

 

I get the point of making people roleplay more fear and value their life more but that will just end up causing more scenes to go OOC as has been demonstrated  on other platforms.

[badhbh]

I'm sorry not sorry, this is silly.

You seem to be taking issue with the actions of a minority and putting restrictions on people who it may not apply to. Say I join a street-gang faction, I intend on opening a business - doing some illegal roleplay and chilling with members of said faction on their turf. They've got beef with whoever, and I get killed on Monday as a result of a drive-by. Now, I've not retaliated personally, but the faction I'm with do. I'm stood outside with someone involved the next day, I get killed again or maybe they start on us and I can't fight for shit so now I'm BW'd and accept death to take the PK from the faction war thats in place. My next death is a CK and I've had my character 2-3 days. That's bogus. I'm not sure on your background, but if you've been involved in faction wars you would, or should understand that this concept isn't going to work for every aspect of roleplay that's out there. The concept of a PK is heavily involved in faction war rules, and rightly so - because they happen so often.

 

The quality of some individuals roleplay does need to be reviewed, but it's happening all the time that admins are taking action whether it be a-jailing or banning people for poor roleplay, or DM mentality etc. It's the teething stages of the server, these people with shit RP will be weeded out eventually as their admin record grows. Imposing some mental system on the entirety of the server isn't it. Factions do take CK perms, and do use them. Most if not all decent RPers I know will hold a C.K following a random death if the situation calls for it. If the roleplay around the situation is good enough, and has built to the point that it would make little sense for their character to continue after that point. 

[trashstar]

nah, crime is disproportionately represented on lsrp and an active player involved in illegal rp (or situated near it) is inevitably gonna be the victim of some unfortunate situations. sure, career criminals are victims of circumstance IRL too, but at this rate? nah lol. + it takes way more effort to lead a faction so to have all that taken away from u over a temporary ig dispute? yeah idk. longevity is important to a lot of people 

 

i think im gonna say this too:

 

shootouts are fun

evading is fun

hostage situations are fun

 

the only times these events are not fun is when there's a massive power imbalance leading to constant victimization of the same people. i think this stuff can be fixed through other means

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by trashstar

[Mikey]

12 minutes ago, badhbh.x said:

I'm sorry not sorry, this is silly.

You seem to be taking issue with the actions of a minority and putting restrictions on people who it may not apply to. Say I join a street-gang faction, I intend on opening a business - doing some illegal roleplay and chilling with members of said faction on their turf. They've got beef with whoever, and I get killed on Monday as a result of a drive-by. Now, I've not retaliated personally, but the faction I'm with do. I'm stood outside with someone involved the next day, I get killed again or maybe they start on us and I can't fight for shit so now I'm BW'd and accept death to take the PK from the faction war thats in place. My next death is a CK and I've had my character 2-3 days. That's bogus. I'm not sure on your background, but if you've been involved in faction wars you would, or should understand that this concept isn't going to work for every aspect of roleplay that's out there. The concept of a PK is heavily involved in faction war rules, and rightly so - because they happen so often.

 

The quality of some individuals roleplay does need to be reviewed, but it's happening all the time that admins are taking action whether it be a-jailing or banning people for poor roleplay, or DM mentality etc. It's the teething stages of the server, these people with shit RP will be weeded out eventually as their admin record grows. Imposing some mental system on the entirety of the server isn't it. Factions do take CK perms, and do use them. Most if not all decent RPers I know will hold a C.K following a random death if the situation calls for it. If the roleplay around the situation is good enough, and has built to the point that it would make little sense for their character to continue after that point. 

bless u

[Wesson]

What if there was a risk to lose a limb or carry some kind of scar / permanent impairment / debuff instead of outright forcing people to CK and pay for another namechange?

[Tungsten]

I was talking about this on Discord earlier today, and have a slightly different way of handling it. Instead of using a "lives" system, why not deal with it on a case by case basis by creating a set of conditions where a Forced CK is warranted? For example...

 

For criminals:

• If you are in a police chase and clearly outnumbered 4 to 1, but you decide to shoot at the cops and "go down in a blaze of glory" - this should be an automatic CK if you die during the raid.
• If you are in a house and a tactical team knocks on the door, but you decide you want to have a shootout in the interior - this should be an automatic CK if you die during the raid.
• If you are a gang leader and actively engaged in an official war with another faction, the other faction should be allowed to assassinate you anywhere except on your own home turf.

 

For law enforcement:

• If you do something very unrealistic or unsafe, such as running directly at a person who has an automatic rifle - this should be an automatic CK if you die while doing so.
• If you are a detective and are exposed by the gang/mafia/organization you are investigating, they should be allowed to Force CK you with approval from FM.

 

This wouldn't require the implementation of a hard number of lives to be tracked on a character level. Instead, it would encourage both sides - cops and criminals - to roleplay realistically under the threat of losing their character permanently if they choose to depart from the realm of reality.

 

"But why should I lose my character I've been working so hard on?"

 

This is the logic of RPG enthusiasts who want to tell exactly the story they want to tell. However, LS:RP isn't always just about telling the story you want to tell - it's about the stories we tell together through our characters. None of us have full control over what happens to our characters - for example, leadership overthrows in illegal factions can result in a gang leader being thrown out of their own faction and even killed! I would advocate for expanding this rule.

 

"But what if i'm in a shootout and the police call backup and then they outnumber me mid-fight?"

 

This is where I would say the rule should be clearly outnumbered. If it's a tactical team, this should scare the pants off any criminal - your options then are jump out the back window, surrender, or fight them... if you choose to fight them you deserve to be CK'ed if you lose that fight. If it's an open shootout in public, then I wouldn't say this should be the rule unless it is very clear you are outnumbered, but this is for the admins to decide...

 

"But I can't afford a name change every time this happens?!"

 

Free name changes should be given to those who are Force CK'ed, because they are losing their character. This is not the same as choosing to switch around what character is played on each slot, because in this case you would actually be losing a character permanently.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Tungsten
why is this hidden

[SCANDALOUZ]

1 hour ago, Tungsten said:

I was talking about this on Discord earlier today, and have a slightly different way of handling it. Instead of using a "lives" system, why not deal with it on a case by case basis by creating a set of conditions where a Forced CK is warranted? For example...

 

For criminals:

• If you are in a police chase and clearly outnumbered 4 to 1, but you decide to shoot at the cops and "go down in a blaze of glory" - this should be an automatic CK if you die during the raid.
• If you are in a house and a tactical team knocks on the door, but you decide you want to have a shootout in the interior - this should be an automatic CK if you die during the raid.
• If you are a gang leader and actively engaged in an official war with another faction, the other faction should be allowed to assassinate you anywhere except on your own home turf.

 

For law enforcement:

• If you do something very unrealistic or unsafe, such as running directly at a person who has an automatic rifle - this should be an automatic CK if you die while doing so.
• If you are a detective and are exposed by the gang/mafia/organization you are investigating, they should be allowed to Force CK you with approval from FM.

 

This wouldn't require the implementation of a hard number of lives to be tracked on a character level. Instead, it would encourage both sides - cops and criminals - to roleplay realistically under the threat of losing their character permanently if they choose to depart from the realm of reality.

 

"But why should I lose my character I've been working so hard on?"

 

This is the logic of RPG enthusiasts who want to tell exactly the story they want to tell. However, LS:RP isn't always just about telling the story you want to tell - it's about the stories we tell together through our characters. None of us have full control over what happens to our characters - for example, leadership overthrows in illegal factions can result in a gang leader being thrown out of their own faction and even killed! I would advocate for expanding this rule.

 

"But what if i'm in a shootout and the police call backup and then they outnumber me mid-fight?"

 

This is where I would say the rule should be clearly outnumbered. If it's a tactical team, this should scare the pants off any criminal - your options then are jump out the back window, surrender, or fight them... if you choose to fight them you deserve to be CK'ed if you lose that fight. If it's an open shootout in public, then I wouldn't say this should be the rule unless it is very clear you are outnumbered, but this is for the admins to decide...

 

"But I can't afford a name change every time this happens?!"

 

Free name changes should be given to those who are Force CK'ed, because they are losing their character. This is not the same as choosing to switch around what character is played on each slot, because in this case you would actually be losing a character permanently.

 

 

This guy gets it.

 

As for the proposed guidelines/policies, certainly they have to be mulled over and what-not, but I'm supportive of the general idea.