Without divulging into the past of LS-RP, I'm pretty sure that most people can agree of the various phases, stages and modes that the illegal roleplaying community, players and admins both went through. There are times were things seemed a lot better and times were I'm sure some of us felt the need to pull out hair. I focus upon illegal roleplay here because it is a big part of the server that goes to the opinion of many, unrequited on the largest competitor in the game at present. This is not a thread aimed at highlighting the issues that may exist within that community but looking at how such issues can be dealt with here to make the future of illegal RP even better. People are welcome to highlight why they agree or disagree with any of the points I will raise and share any ideas of their own.
A collective focus to try and make everything feel more real, immersive. I'd say one problem that immediately springs to mind about the illegal community is how often at times, many gangs often felt as if they were foreign countries far-far until the point came where one gang had to shoot at another and then individuals who are now shooting at each other know pretty much nothing about the other gang. Realistically, you know the gangs you are beefing with, there is always blood ties, someones cousin, someone went to school with another member, hell, even somebody used to play xbox live with another member. I know these attributes are entirely human and we can not simulate them all with the little time we get to play, but I think it'd be cool to build a bridge. Remember how old factions forum would have an IC rumours, the streets, or whatever section?
I think a say, totally opt-in, discord which focuses on the streets, welcome to everyone could be a good factor to try and make things feel more organic. This wouldn't really be a chat for people to fellate themselves and tell you about how many characters their body has, but to let people in a meaningful way, develop lore to their hoods. Not everyone will join it and that's fine, but I do believe this to be a good idea for more gang orientated characters.
Even since LSRP was around the middle of it's life span in the 2015 social media has changed vastly with the whole Chicago era even having a ripple effect on gangs in Cali, NY and London. Net banging has a big effect on gang-banging through snapchat, tik-tok, twitter. Not just faceinvader/facebook. This'd be a good hub to encourage content that could survive on places like that. I'm not suggesting that people post on a discord chat like they're using tiktok, but for edited screenshots, etc etc - I think it could be a good place to post that there too.
I know a lot of this can be stuff people put down to learning IC, but I think this plugs a whole new avenue of roleplay into the server. Even in character videos that might go viral within a community of an area, like the recent shooting of Oroy, a fight or whatever. They can often get posted on an in-character format on faceinvader and often just fall behind everything else. I think sharing it there is like how videos get downloaded, screen recorded saved and sent everywhere.
Character kill applications. Some characters were cockroaches that could never die despite how many times they got lit up, /q to avoid. I do believe like on the competitor, if someone has a CK forced on them (following an application, etc, etc) they should receive the option to change the name of their character. Unless people are that desperate to get their friend go through the application progress to kill them, most people will spend the $1 on the namechange. Characters that are imprisoned are still alive and can try and get out of prison legally. At certain times, characters should be suspectible to being character killed. Like, once you joined a faction many of the character kill agreements felt rather one sided. There's sometimes infighting within hoods, over women, money, whatever and this can lead to people from the same set being killed. This could come both at permissions granted by the leaders of a faction or, faction management, a step above them. The hoods a struggle, people die. We should not let people get CK'd from usual dumb gang shit, but loosing ones character should be something enforced at times.
Another thing that springs to mind is weed. San Andreas is San Andreas but let's be honest. It is modelled after California and, I think it should be representative of it. People might argue that it is an in character change to be made, but it is something else to be considered I think and something else that will help us stand out from opposition servers. We can still allow illegally, lots of weed to factions who are interested but I believe branded goods, goods from stores, weed shops IC add both a new avenue of roleplay legally and illegally. Weed legalisation will probably never happen on world. With a community of mostly young men, whatever anyone will vote party wise or RP in terms of politics would not fully represent the state as a whole and it is not that we need to dictate what happens in the servers IC politics scene, but San Andreas is sorta represenative of California in 2013 in a lot of GTA V and the roleplay servers that are based around it. The original LS was stuck in the past for a while too.
I think modernising will really help.
