Aldarine

Thank you for this feedback! There are some items that are very small such as a table settings that are purchased individually to then be placed within a property for decoration. For items like this it is very 'off balance' from the larger ones where it would make sense. Would you be opposed to a reduction of half to 5 vol as opposed to 10 vol to basically split the difference?

Hello Team! A topic that has come up many times lately is, yup you guessed it by looking at the title, furniture. I've put together a list of suggestions that I have thought of with other people as well as looked through the forums for. I thought it would be good to have them in one place so it could be easily reviewed for possible adjustments. Please do read through the suggestions, comment, give feedback and show support or open discussion for modifications. I will continue to update this main post with additional good ideas that are healthy for the server and/or remove those that are not. Thank you as always for your time reading this over! Current Problem When players want to be creative and open custom businesses or renovate their homes the process of doing so is both timely and costly. The time and cost associated with obtaining the furniture is a deterrent and does not present feasible options for a vast majority of the server population to renovate, much less try out the system itself. Suggested Solutions 1. Reduce Furniture Price - At present time as an example, a long wall which costs $2,000 will cover a wall with the length and width of 1 unit by 1 unit. The smallest property size is 1x1x1 and to cover all of the walls this totals out to be $8,000 which is quite absurd of a price. As Property Requests grow more popular and players look to create new areas for roleplay and engagement, the burden of cost lies in two places - the property itself and the furnishings. While the Property Request Bureau in SAGOV is doing great work at trying to keep properties affordable, this then leads to the massive burden of furniture to fill these spaces. Therefore, I believe a reduction in price across the board for ALL AESTHETIC furniture items will be beneficial. Furniture which have utility purpose (doors/safes/storage) can remain as is with their pricing.. A reduction of 80% (furniture costing 1/5th of present cost) would assist with more availability of aesthetic building of environments. 2. Reduce Furniture Weight - With each furniture item weighing 10 vol, a player can only transport so many pieces be it on their person or within their vehicle. This creates the need for very frequent trips to the furniture store or the rounding up of a large group all with trucks to assist. While I do think that trips to the furniture store are good, the amount needed is unnecessary and too high. Using the above example of the 1x1x1 size, 4 long walls are needed to cover the sides which translates to 40 vol. This is the smallest of sizes and with properties being much larger, I believe it becomes clear to see that the amount of furniture needed only exponentially increases thus increasing the number of trips needed - even just to complete the task of what would be considered painting. I think a reduction in weight by 1/4 would help with the ease of transportation. This would make furniture items 2.5 vol as opposed to 10 vol. 3. UTool Furniture Store - While it is amazing that we now have furniture stores in both Los Santos and Paleto, I do think that Sandy Shores could use with one as well. UTool would make a fantastic area for a furniture store and in the future can also expand to include other items that we look towards adding in the future for increased quality of life. 4. Furniture Store Interior - When previewing furniture items, the store interior itself presents with numerous issues. The first is that you cannot always see the full object itself because of visual limitation and also the color is not accurate due to the lighting inside the store. I believe that to fix this one of two things can be done. The first would be to simply overall change the interior of the furniture store and brighten it up and the second would be to make the furniture store into a catalog interface which would show accurate display and colors due to it not being affected by the lighting or angles. 5. Proper Labeling and Categories - Going through the furniture store UI and categories as well as the descriptions, so much more can be done. Now, do not get me wrong, I am aware this is a very large task to go through each items and recategorize and label it, however doing so would be a huge increase in QoL. Creating more categories with accurate labels and furniture names will give players the ability to easily find the items they want for purchase. It would not take massive amounts of time scrolling through searching for which category a specific item falls under only to discover that it's not in the category you would expect. I like to think of the furniture store as aisles in a department store where the above signage is specific and allows for much better navigation. 6. Furniture Return - Many times when a player builds something they either make mistakes and have to repurchase items or they may want to change something up in the future. What comes from this is having excess furniture that players have nothing to do with. Now, player to player sales of furniture is always an option but lets face it, it's not something that is common nor would I presume it ever to be - so how do we help get rid of this excess furniture in a meaningful way. I propose a buyback to the furniture store (or UTool specifically to give it an added purpose) at either 25% or 50% of the original cost. This change would encourage players to change up their interiors for events or new businesses and also take away a bit of the fear of so much lost money. I apologize for how long this suggestion is but again, appreciate the time to read it. All of these changes are QoL changes to encourage more players to utilize the store and building systems for aesthetic and roleplay reasons. I would love to see more creativity and the fact that the furniture system and aspects surrounding it are such a barrier, easing it would only provide positive outcomes. Please provide any and all feedback - I look forward to reading!

I do think that one of the things that would overall simply easy the 'burden' of it is the furniture cost. While the lease to own option is fantastic, it still doesn't mitigate the need to spend hundreds of thousands to just make the inside of the property useable. If furniture prices were lowered all around then the use of buildings would be much quicker and people could proceed with the intended purpose of the property.

Here are a few comments/feedback I have for this suggestion: 1. I do have to say that I agree with this sentiment. As somebody who recently put in a property request, the purchase price listed was extreme. While I do understand that the property in particular is large, I do think that more thought should be given to the present economy on the server. Yes, some properties are much cheaper than others due to the interior size but overall if more thought was given to the economy/prices (more on this below)/request/RP reason then prices overall would be lower. There is always the ability to take back a property if the roleplay intention of it is not being utilized and somebody just wanted a cheap property to meme around with. 2. Absolutely! Furniture should be much lighter to carry, stackable or orderable to a property. Continuing from above as I do believe that they relate, prices of furniture should also be lowered. It's quite absurd how expensive renovations are when you want to create something nice and creative. This would help with more people looking towards property requests because as it stands now not only are properties expensive but the furniture aspect of it makes it almost unimaginable and hinders creativity/roleplay opportunities. 3. I would really like to see a way to sell back furniture at a lower price to the furniture store. A lot of the times people buy furniture and then it doesn't look good or they want to redo something and just have all this extra furniture around. Selling back at a much lower price would get rid of the furniture and allow players to feel like they can make new renovations without having this massive money sink. 4. Yes! This promotes activity for scripted businesses and gives them something more concrete instead of simple passive income. 5. Great idea which gives more diversity. I wish stores could be limited on what they can/cannot sell with just a few items to pick from instead of the whole catalog. 6. Neutral on this one - I moreso wish that the jobs were more indepth than they are now, possibly with the reward of more money. 7. More social activities would be fantastic! ----------------------------------------------------------- 1. While I do know that there are Prison Rules that have been worked on and implemented, I think that they should be enforced more within the prison. The higher enforcement would lead to the lightbulb going off for people to think that it is unacceptable behavior. Until the enforcement increases, I don't see much change coming. 2. A vehicle list is an interesting idea, perhaps two-three vehicles that have a premium for the chop. The only thing I can think of going wrong is it would prompt players to not take out these vehicles on those days which would make it a moot point. There are, however, other suggestions such as new lockpicking systems, security systems, etc. that I think would help this issue that I personally have recently been very vocal about for consideration. Thank you for the suggestion and I hope my feedback helps drive more conversation! Awesome thoughts overall to benefit the community as a whole

Thread archived upon request!

Claps all around from me!

The only portion I would be in support of is a reduction for new players, everything else can remain as it is. Increasing the chop time isn’t beneficial in the slightest on the actual criminal side when you can only chop one thing at a time - I would much rather see the mechanic of stealing a vehicle improve instead that way it is harder.

While I wish I had more time to respond to this thread I don’t because I’m at work but I do want to chime in on this even just a bit. I have and always will be a big advocate for pushing for more roleplay at scenes, especially ones that cross factions as I think these can create such enjoyable encounters. However, there is a very large and blatant thing that is somewhat preventing this from happening when it comes to banks and that one thing is reliance. Now let me explain… The reliance on packed money is a huge contributing factor to behavior when robbing a bank. Banks are not only limited in number but they are also on a timer, the primary source of packed money and limited based on LEOs. While many may not see the large constraints these things pose, they are very real. That said, it is incredibly reasonable for those who are robbing the banks to immediately try to flee to keep their investment as the opportunity doesn’t come available as often as people would like. That said, more roleplay can always be had but with the immensely large LEO risk compared to the scarcity of the gained resource can you really blame the quick getaway?

Apologies but I completely disagree with this suggestion and I was the person who pushed for relaxed hostage rules by separating it from Deathmatching requirements. Rules that promote random acts against players with no reasonable escalation or fault on the players side should not exist. There should always be an action and reaction and the player should be aware of why they are being taken hostage - not just a simple, oh you’re an easy target let’s go with you. That is in no way a healthy environment to promote. While I do not believe that OP’s intentions are malicious or anything of the sort, you must think about the server and community as a whole and again I do not see any adjustment promoting good roleplay.

I completely support this suggestion. It does get extremely tiresome experiencing the same time of day every time you are in game. I believe it would be a nice QoL change to allow players to experience a rotating cycle of day/night by shifting the cycle away from 4:1. Great suggestion!

Nicole Crawford - 4 Tickets

I will definitely echo what @Lola and @DrPathetic have stated - a lot of it is on the shoulders of the faction leaders. Throughout my time within Faction Services, we have had a considerable amount of communication with questions/responses being attended to typically within a day if not within minutes/hours depending on the time and the depth of the question. During our faction meetings, especially when given new factions, my team in particular talk about roleplay requests and how doors open when official status is achieved. Following receiving official status, this is once more echoed to give insight on expectations, standards and opportunities. If this information is not relayed to the rest of the faction then factions should potentially have more OOC meetings to discuss internally and come up with ideas that adhere to the faction's lore that are not always spawn/win-centric and instead are promoting expanded roleplay opportunities. Ultimately, roleplay requests (what people like to call 'alternative roleplay' aka 'alt rp') are really only for circumstances where deviation and/or special spawns are being requested. A lot can already be done simply by roleplaying and requires no special permission. If you have a thought for something fun and want a few staff members to participate for immersion sake and slap on a few PEDs, let your leadership know, they can relay it and the team would be more than happy to participate as time allows. That said, one of the things I am not a fan of is spoon-feeding factions things they should do - the factions themselves need to be more proactive in thinking and getting creative. I know @Lola for one has this in the bag. We, as FS, are definitely here to guide and encourage but factions have a responsibility to do a considerable amount of work. If the creativity dries up, I tend to give 'homework' by presenting thought provoking questions to spark some ideas but if I were to give specific ideas then the faction isn't doing much thought on their own which I believe is one of the most important aspects of having, building and growing a faction. This shows longevity in the faction and its members as a collective and truth be told, thus far, factions have been doing incredibly well at thinking outside of the box to which I'm immensely proud of them for. At the end of it, can systems be refined for more timely review of these overarching large requests? Yes of course and in full transparency I've finalized a spreadsheet to do just this which is being reviewed. In the meantime, faction leadership should communicate more with their members about ideas and relay those ideas to FS to see where we can input/help as needed. Communication can expand all around and things can be better if everybody works a little more.

@Harley I’ve got a list of a few suggestions and implementations that I do hope will ease burdens and show improvement. In the meantime I’d like to see more submissions with the current system so we can have solid grounding to stand on for said improvements and see where things can be better. I will always encourage submissions and do my best to push things forward where I can.

@Harley While I do understand that, the point still remains the same. There is a process already in place which is basically the same as what OP has mentioned yet the number of factions who have utilized it is slim to none. Without the submissions and attempted utilization, how can we advocate for something to improve? The process was made to give better and faster avenues of opportunity and communication. Much more people are involved who can pester for follow up and yet the submissions haven’t come. The amount of access is exponentially more than it has been in the past but there is absolutely no way we, on the staff and Faction Services side, can push for more adjustments if when asked what has failed, we have no answers or examples.

To be honest I’m quite confused reading this as it does come off as if there have been more requests that have been put in. In total there have been less than 5 submitted - all of which get forwarded as appropriate and then it is left in the hands of senior staff. Where they go from there, the time to review, follow up questions is again, in the hands of senior staff to then be relayed back with the updates. One cannot assume that special requests will be immediately approved as it needs to be fair, senior staff are busy, there may be other things not immediately thought of and now followed up on. Can the process be fine tuned? Yes, every process can, however, to paint the picture in a very different light than what it actually is, is a bit disheartening. I for one can personally say my own request took over a month for approval and I simply waited. Was it bothersome? Sure, but I also understood that it was a request to break the rules and get special permissions. OP, your faction in particular has actually had the most staff assisted things than any other faction and that has happened by skirting around processes that are being attempted to put in place. If more attempts were actually made for the process then more refining of the process can be done. You cannot adjust something to make it better when people aren’t properly trying it in the first place. I can say that I have spoken to @Jellay at length about the process with experience of my own by going through the system in efforts to get something more concrete that is good for all. The only way it can be improved is it there is proper feedback and the tracking to back it up which again, we have none of.

I am not in support of this in the slightest due to it ultimately taking away the need to rob banks/stores as a whole because you could just get the money from drugs. What I would rather see are increased ways to get packed money that do not depend on a race against the clock. I, for one, am no fan of the limited resources and the dependency on a clock/timer/manipulating timezones all for packed money. I believe it does not promote fluidity nor does it encourage the smaller time criminal from stepping into the world of laundering. Things such as the following are quick thoughts that come to mind: - ATM robberies were mentioned and teased in the past which I believe should be somewhat “quick” with a much lower payout and still accessible by the solo criminal. - Ability to obtain packed money via RNG chance when chopping vehicles and selling drugs. The primary output will always be cash but depending on RNG there would be a possibility for a little packed cash. - Additional methods of getting packed money be it self printing after collecting certain items, rewards for F4 faction mission-type objectives, etc.

Per our internal policies, due to the amount of time it takes to achieve an Administrator position, we are exempt from conflict of interest as noted above by other members of staff. That said, it is not uncommon in the slightest for even Administrators and above to reach out in staff channels about these situations so others can interject to which I believe almost every Administrator and higher can say they typically do. As always, there is then the appeal process where we still have to explain the justification for the outcomes as well.

The staff members that have posted above have very properly covered our policies on conflict of interest and the way of escalating concerns. You are more than welcome to reach out to myself or my assistant Kat for further follow up as we review the majority of, if not all, the reports that come in. As far as what @Destuin mentioned, I have brought up staff removing their own personal genre of roleplay from report contemplation and reaching out for more opinions as well as understanding that escalation and rationale can be very different from what they are used to. This has been improving as far as communication and being more open to other opinions but we can always do better and we will be trying more!

Really great suggestion and a fantastic quality of life change! I'm all for this! Big +1

This will be my last post because I’ve already mentioned that I can be reached out to separately for player report questions or concerns. I will address a few things: 1. @alexalex303 I know you mentioned “theoretical” however there has yet to be a time when an uninvolved staff member who has not been on the reviewing team of a report gave out punishments. If this is seen please feel free to send it to my private messages and I would be more than happy to look at the flow of communication. 2. The way in which players “resolve” reports is important. I won’t go into too much detail here, however, each time it is reviewed on a case by case basis because reasonings can be extremely different and quick disturbing sometimes. 3. Each report is reviewed independently from the rest and players are encouraged to appeal should they feel a report was not concluded properly and they can get a lot more explanation on rationale and another look by a senior staff member who can void, reduce or increase a punishment. If players aren’t appealing for another look then not much can be done. I can only look over so many reports in my role and keep pushing for more consistency or addressing concerns. Players have sent things my way before and they have been looked into - there’s just a process to it as has been mentioned on this thread and I hope people take advantage of this!

Because I was mentioned here I’m going to quickly clarify one thing… there is not a single guideline that states a staff member must lock and archive a report after two people speak. I’m unsure of where that assumption comes from but players should discuss PRIOR to the report. Also regardless of any “resolution” all players should respond to an inquiry made on a report and not just ignore it. In addition to this, as Head of Player Reports I review as many reports as I possibly can from start to finish with my monthly targets being 100% of reports but of course I’m only human. Aside from that, any player is free to reach out to me if they have concerns and it will be escalated/discussed as it needs to. I’m a big advocate for transparency and understanding and mean it when I say that I will take the time to discuss something together or get further opinions. That’s all from me! Take care and happy holidays!

@Homast - This is in reference to regular gloves not the law enforcement faction loadout. That was noted within the above linked bug report following more testing and attempt at bug replication. What is being determined as human error is the everyday player simply wearing normal gloves sold at stores and leaving behind prints.

After discussion and also viewable in the bug report linked above - this is neither a bug or an intended feature but instead most likely user error. Should anybody encounter a bug in the future with gloves, please reference the above bug report and comment on it with evidence and steps to replicate so it can be looked over and addressed!

Thank you for bringing this up @Jay Endo Following this I will speak with fellow staff in regards to gloves as they are a fairly significant item that impacts a considerable number of players. What I will be looking to obtain clarification on is it this is intended or a bug. Should this be intended I will subsequently inform on this thread at a minimum. At this present time this has not been announced as a feature and due to this, @alexalex303 should you have a suggestion for legitimate, scripted and announced glove changes, please refer them to the suggestions thread so that it may get the proper attention for potential implementation in the future.