Jonny D

I don't understand how this thread is 5 pages long. The problem is simple. The average player on the server is a "light roleplayer". This isn't a problem with any group within the community (Crims, PD, etc). In fact, it isn't a "problem" at all. The community, in its current state and in my opinion (and others) is "light RP". Some people prefer this over heavier roleplay. The "problems" in this thread are just symptoms of a light rp environment. In my opinion, the only way to "fix" this would be for the community to communicate up the chain that a heavier roleplay environment is wanted. If this is agreed on a shift can easily be achieved by implementing a significantly stricter whitelist system. Adding or changing rules will do nothing, all this does is increase the difficulty of the mod staff. Require people to demonstrate they are creative and are interested in roleplay, rather than gta online. If a player demonstrates they are not interested in roleplay, or hindered a roleplay scenario blatantly, remove them from the community regardless of rule break or social status. Behaviour is contagious and filtering/removing gta online mentality will quickly increase the average player to heavier roleplay. I also want to add on that I recently re-took the revamped quiz out of curiosity and in my opinion is still too easy.

I feel the people complaining about the rule don't fully understand RP, "People are now taunting me in a public area saying I can't rob them" What is fun about shallow 1min robberies in which a person taunts you and you tell them to put their hands up? If somebody has disrespected you or your gang in a meaningful way take it as an opportunity to create a deeper RP scenario. Report back to fellow gang members about the situation and create a plan with your IC motives. Tail the person from afar until they are in a less populated area. Lure the person out by having another party call their phone and setup a meeting. Find other IC connections of this person and use it to exploit them. When you're robbing someone, it is my opinion that your main OOC motive should not be to get more in game resources. Your main motive for a robbery (and all scenarios really) should be to have a fun RP interaction with all parties involved (even the person being robbed). I feel too often we approach interactions from the OOC mindset of "I need to win this scenario and get phat lewt at all cost" rather than "What can I do to make interesting/fun RP". The purpose of this rule is to crack down on the overdone shallow "hands up" scenario that destroys the RP environment. If you want to rob somebody, this rule still allows it. It just forces you to do it in a deeper more IC meaningful and realistic way. This rule facilitates deeper RP and thus I fully support it.

For the family!

More evidence that we aren't filtering out people who don't actually want to RP. People are treating it like a game/GTA online so much so that they are hacking it now? Sidenote: Did you report these people?

Very good feedback from the community and expressing their opinions! I just want to be clear in pointing out not to blame the PD of the server. This is not a PD problem. PD does have problems, however it is a symptom of the root cause which is low RP SERVER WIDE. I've explained in my post how the current environment is a cycle, a negative feedback loop of bad RP. The solution is not to change how the PD is run, the solution is to change how the server is run. We need to change the RP standard of the community and we need to do this by only letting people interested in actual RP in and not to tolerate those who do not wish to RP. But first I think we need to voice to the community managers that there is a large portion of us who want a deeper RP experience than what is offered now. I'd also love to hear input from a senior admin+ and their opinion on the topics brought up in this thread.

Almost entirely agree (I think ECRP has shifted away from medium towards light RP). If ECRP wants to retain their playerbase I agree this addition is very necessary and soon too as you described. ECRP has the advantage over these communities if they are able to provide this service before the others make the switch to rage.

Thanks for the input and good reply! "There is definitely space to improve RP and still allow players to be criminals" -Absolutely. People RPing criminals is not a problem in anyway. I would love to be involved in any form of criminal RP at just about any point as long as the RP is of the quality that it is fun, interesting, and engaging for all parties. We all know that this isn't the case at all, however. Give a gun to an experienced RPer such as yourself and they will use it as a tool to create fun RP situations; Give a gun to a gta online person who joined the server to make money and pwn noobs and they will actively terminate all RP scenarios in their vicinity with it. Solution: Make guns harder to get. No I don't mean raise the price of them. That doesn't fix the problem that just makes it more necessary to grind for money, worsening the problem. Remove all guns from the public. Give respected community member(s) known to exhibit and encourage great RP a gun whitelist and allow them to sell it. If this member is playing for RP (and not to make money) they will only sell to good RPer's and not just to make $$. This will results in guns in the hands of those who are able to seek out the whitelist holder, form some sort of relationship through RP, etc, instead of in the hands of COD players who just joined, farmed up some money from the labs or quickly joined Zetas. Yes there will be many people crying about not having guns and how the street price has skyrocketed. This will be the case as we try and shift the community mentality. When average RP standards are higher you won't rely on having a gun to have fun. You will be constantly interacting with different interesting and unique characters that you meet. The process in which to obtain the gun will actually be fun, having to meet different characters and RPing with them until finding somebody who seems like they might sell. This is in opposition in the way it is now, which is farm labs/robbing until you have enough money to head on down to the nearest store. This is the general mentality we need when choosing server rules, systems, and even when picking admins.

I left the community around a month ago (I'm this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bRQaVYHKc0) and recently decided I'd give my reason for leaving as well as my two cents on how to fix it. I left simply because the RP standards within this community are too low (for me). (This thread is about acknowledging the community as a whole is very light RP and that based on quantity of server suggestions related to the "issue" there is a large demand for heavier RP) Now I feel like an explanation and examples at this point almost aren't necessary because this is so widely known. Deep meaningful RP is incredibly rare and not widespread within this community because the current environment does not allow for it. The current whitelist system lets anybody into the server that has a basic understanding of the rules. It does not do a good job of filtering out people who aren't capable of RP, that don’t want to RP, or in otherwords it does not filter out the "gta online" mentality. As long as you can read a brief rulebook, and answer a simple questionnaire, you are able to play the server. I sincerely believe all of the common complaints including, the "hands up this is a rob", "gta online mentality", "PD sucks", etc, all stem from this one root cause. As a result, a large percentage of the community has no interest or intentions of actual RP. Instead they focus on the game aspect, the GTA online aspect if you will. The vast majority of players are here to obtain virtual $$, to rob as many people on sight, and in general, to "win". The symptoms of this are commonly complained about: "hands up this is a rob", "gta online mentality", "LSPD suks at RP", "robbing simulator", "there isn't enough to do as a citizen", etc etc etc. Robbery scenarios are so common and bland because everybody is playing for the game aspect, to get in shootouts, to flex their epeen and show off how much money they’ve gotten, to win, not to actually RP. There isn't anything to do as a citizen because there is nobody to RP with. Instead of spending time thinking of how they can win whatever RP scenario they are in, or how they can maximize their income, they should instead be focused on developing their character. How would my character act in this scenario? What type of relation/interaction would my character seek with this person that I've just met. How can I create an interesting interaction between all of these dynamics? Do these questions go through the majority of our community members heads while in an altercation with the PD? The answer is no. The effects of the low RP standards can be seen in all factions on the server, including PD. I've spent some time in PD, reaching POII before quitting. I must say Osborn does a very good job with this faction given the conditions. With that being said, this faction still suffers the effects of low RP standards caused by a bad whitelist system. Like everyone else, members of the PD are playing to WIN, not to experience quality RP. When interacting with a police officer you will notice that very rarely are they actually there to RP. Very rarely do they get tangled up in RP stories with other citizens or their character development. Most of the time they react in a way that quickly wins them the scenario, throws you in the back of the cruiser, silent ride back to prison. This is in opposition of responding in a way that results in the best RP scenario, don’t rush the situation, let it flow organically and try to enjoy the interaction. Example: Hostage situation, 2 hostages are being covered by 5 heavily armed individuals on a crane. There are explosives near each hostage ready to be detonated should the police try anything funny. A plan has been carefully thought out and executed, there are vehicles parked blocks away and the criminals have parachutes ready for a quick escape. Contact is being made with police through a note left at the PD that contains a number to somebody able to communicate to the hostage takers. Result: SWAT shows up and slowly snipes all the criminals, both hostages die. Sound familiar? That's because this happens all the time. I have this exact scenario recorded. Being in PD on my alt, I messaged the SWAT leader inquiring about this. He responded by telling me to message him in the future next time I want to commit a crime like this so that they know it is me and they will engage in actual RP. Now this isn't the PD's fault and I don't blame them at all for having this mentality because the crim RP is also VERY low. I've spent most of my time on my crim, leading multiple factions including the now dead "L'Ultima Famiglia". PD is forced to react this way because there are too many shit shallow RP attempts at "money grabs" that would run rampant if they didn't. PD doesn’t attempt to actually RP with the citizens because they know there is a very low likelihood of actually getting decent quality back. The majority of the time they will just get some troll crim pissed off because he got arrested accusing of rulebreaks, etc. This is the same thing with all factions, LSPD, EMS, etc etc. I've tried leading a faction, starting it from nothing and growing it to a decent size with 40+ active members. I was not able to achieve the RP standards I wanted within this faction because quality RPers on the server are far too rare. The majority of the server, and thus the pool of people I had to recruit from were people only interested in running drug labs, robbing people, or in other words the "gta online" aspects. They were not content doing a well thought out RP scenario if it did not result in them getting a large payout. It was also hard to develop them because we had very high turnover with many people leaving to join the zerg crim groups (Zetas, etc). Think to yourself why do people join zerg crim groups, is it for the quality RP that they provide? The whitelist system and rule enforcement is not sufficient resulting in low RP standards throughout the community. This isn't any particular person or factions fault, this is a community problem. What I’ve described above is a cycle of non-rp, an environment where RP cannot exist. EMS doesn’t RP with its patients because they know their patients won’t RP back, etc. Now moving on to how to fix the problem. The issue will not be resolved by revising the rules to fear RP. Drastic changes need to be made to the way the community is managed and RP is enforced. The server has a flow in (people joining) and a flow out (people leaving or getting banned). We need to restrict the “flow in” first and enforce a little bit stricter on the back end too. There should be no such thing as a 5th time non-rp offense. If people demonstrate they are not here for RP, they should be removed from the community. If your whitelist system isn’t strong enough there will be far too much work for the admins to do in terms of enforcement. You might find that they spend endless hours reviewing the same type of reports over and over. Sound familiar? The solution is a stronger whitelist system, over time the baddies will filter out through, and the ratio of RPers to gta onliners will improve. I will address what is likely on the community leaders mind: I know being a light RP server draws a broader audience and possibly even generates more revenue for the server by having more people online and thus more donations for VIP, etc. It keeps the server at the top of the list so that we have a good flow in of people, though a high inflow isn’t as important when you are retaining more. Regardless, I bring a second solution. Keep the current light RP server as is. Add a second server reserved for serious RP. Once you play on the light RP server and demonstrate good RP, character backstory, and development, you get whitelisted for the second server. Following this suggestion and you get to keep the large player count as well as keep your core "serious RP" community around by catering to both. Now is a perfect time to do it after the twitch influx of people. Breaking 60-70 people off the main server for a second server won’t move it down the list. The second server will serve as the golden standard for RP. It will push people on server 1 to demonstrate better RP, if for nothing more than to try and get whitelisted for server 2. This post is constructive criticism with a suggestion solution. I am not blindly whining or blaming people. I hope that if you reply to this thread you will also keep it constructive. I give my opinion in hopes that others will agree and perhaps we can make some positive changes and improve as an RP community. I've spent a decent amount of time on the server and have had some good times. There certainly are some great RPers within this community, despite being the vast minority. I'd love for ECRP to be able to also offer a quality RP experience and personally believe these changes are necessary to ensure the longevity of the community. Also if you've made it this far I'd like to apologize for the horrible run-on sentences and unorganized thoughts contained in this thread.

Please archive post @Dqniel. You've been incredibly helpful and professional through the entire faction process. Thanks for being the best faction handler on! the server (sorry others) L'ultima Famiglia its been real!

Thanks for the goodbyes everybody! Will miss yall.

Bye guys! I've decided to move on from ECRP. Thinking about maybe making a thread under server suggestions discussing why. Cheers to everybody, its been a pleasure meeting each and every one of you!