Joey Figliani

I took a year break and have been playing with me and a couple friends for the past couple days, and I gotta say, I'm extremely disappointed. I feel like the RP that goes on in this server is comparable, if not worse than a lot of those un-whitelisted servers nobody should play on. When I loaded back into the city in the first time in a year, I was extremely disappointed to find the pier to be an absolute ghost town, where it used to be 40+ people having fun and talking and making connections, and felt like a big party. I asked around and found the new spot to be the burger shot, I thought to myself, "no problem, new main hub, lets check it out!". The things I have seen at the burger shot were sad to say the least. What I found there was just people dancing on top of their cars blasting dubstep or trap, which is fine I guess, still kind of jarring. But the absolute worst part was the interactions. Tons of 16 year old kids just walking up to me for no reason screaming "WHATS UP PUSSY!" over and over again, just to try and bait you into saying something back so they can start a physical conflict. One time I was there for about an hour to try and find a connection to buy drug tables, and within that hour alone I saw 4 dudes get shot in the face because of the same old, "whats up pussy? You look like a bitch! Fight me f***ot". And that's how most interactions seem to go now. It's very possible that I have just gotten a string of bad luck, but it's been a couple days, and I have yet to see anyone actually roleplaying as something other than an online asshole version of themselves. I wish there was a little better of a screening process, and more bans to losers who think it's fun to treat GTARP as if it is VRChat. I can understand the whole "gang RP", but it gets to a point where it's just not fun, and nobody is trying to create a fun experience or atmosphere for those around them. Before I left a year ago, I remember hanging out with a ton of people who all had very fun and interesting characters. That being an Australian outback guy who wanted to make meth, an african DJ who was a satanist, an old hasidic jew with a ton of health issues and talked with a lisp, and even an old biker guy who sounded like Lemmy from motorhead. and many more. When coming back I messaged them and asked if they would want to come back to play on this server again, I get nearly the same response, "no, that server does not care for actual RP". I dont mean for this to come across as a diss, because I love this server and think it has a ton of potential to be one of the best. It's just really sad to see, and feel like I'm not welcome with the amount of arbitrary toxicity that happens on a hourly basis.

When I first joined this server, I would walk up to people with these nice cars and I would ask, "how did you get that? What you do for a living?". Every single time I hear the same shit. "I fish". The next dude, "I fish". Next person, "Oh I fish". Why is this? Because nobody can even be bothered to waste their lives doing this boring and monotonous script jobs. So what's the next best thing that creates some social interaction? "Well I can just stand here and fish for hours and at least here I can talk to people while I grind". And the reply here is always, "you do not have to grind, join a faction". These factions do not align with my character as a roleplayer, if I want to start a business, I need a ton of capital. I want to make my money doing jobs that align well with my character personality and goals, not join a random group just so I can get around grinding these script jobs. Make more apps on the phone that are for hire services, and change the script jobs to have some sort of delivery systems for these. You can weed out the bad RPers by creating systems where people can more easily achieve their character goals without having to grind hours on end without much player interaction.

The hostage rule in place is to prevent 30 hostage situations per day from happening. How about making robbing banks not the only viable form of making a bit of money so people stop doing them as much? I play Joey Boots Figliani, I want to open up a pizzaria, I dont even want to rob banks. But the alternatives are abysmal. You say that this RP server is not about the money, and I 100% agree. But then why overbalance it so hard so that it makes it really hard for ANYONE to have money? Money should be plentiful. It should not matter at all who is rich, or who is not. It does not matter if you have a sports car or not, or a fancy apartment. It only begins to matter when that's what your CHARACTER wants. I do not want to be a fisherman, I do not want to be a postal worker, that is not my character. I should not have to grind for 100+ hours in order to achieve one of my character goals. My character shouldnt have to go to the mines for an hour, and spend half of what I just earned on a $500 burger, $500 water bottle, and $3000 of gas. Money should be plentiful, it should be easy to get money, because it does not matter, the point of the money is to play out you character correctly. So if you are just grinding in order to get the best shit even though that conflicts with your character ideals, there starts to be a problem. As an RP dev team, your job is to weed out the grinders, and bring in the RPers. But you guys shoot yourself in the foot so hard, by making the only way to live out your characters goals, as small as they may be, requires an absolutely stupid and unforgivable amount of time to do so.

Ok but see? Everything we say here is getting half read and ignored and cast aside. I acknowledged previously in what I just said that I am well aware it's not all about the money. I get that. But like I just said, you need money in order to create more interesting RP sometimes. What if I want to open up a shop? Or make a party island? Or set up an event somewhere? All these things require you to have some sort of capital in order to pull them off. Sure you can create interesting RP without money, but there is no excuse for the terrible terrible grind on this server. Jobs should pay out more in order to create those interesting scenarios. This game should not feel like an MMO, money should be plentiful so everyone is capable of actually achieving their characcter goals without having to sacrifice 100s of hours of your life grinding boring and monotonous point and click jobs.

There 100% needs to be more incentive for legal jobs. All the payouts are absolutely abysmal. Nothing is worth it. Not only are the payouts not good, but the jobs are straight up not fun at all. Everything feels like such a grind. That's why we see 100 people just sitting at the pier fishing. It's NOT because fishing is fun, its because its the most mindless thing you can possibly do to make money in order to make any progress on the server. And although RP is not about progression, some of the more interesting stuff in the game requires money to achieve. Make some of the legal jobs pay more and have built in systems to promote player interaction. Pizza delivery jobs that can be summoned with an app on a phone, anything. Even the real jobs like DOC are stupid low payouts. I was offered to work there and when asked how much is the payout. I was told maximum of 8k an hour. Like cmon guys, 8k an hour? I can make more by fishing or mining. It really comes down to the horrible grind of this server, how am I sopposed to feel encouraged to work in the prison, the most toxic enviornment (story for another post), for a couple of cheeseburgers and gas??

Are you saying in a gunfight it's usually impossible for a 1v1 with a criminal to win? If you really want to pull the realism card, it shouldn't take 6 shots to the head of a police officer with a .50 caliber pistol to down

I understand it's annoying for the PD but it's also annoying for everyone else when their force is so big, that nothing can ever be done to counter them without an army. Each cop is built like a superhero out of an anime. Grocery store robberies are an absolute joke as well, I've don't countless stores and 70% of the time you get caught to no fault of your own, just one of the 40 police officers on the server rolling by and charging in immidiently, then have fun with your 3 hour prison sentence. Every single criminal I have spoken to in this game has called me an idiot for even bothering with those grocery store heists

That is just not an excuse. Hostages are the only way to ensure you do not get immidiently shot in the face by the 50 super overpowered police officers. There isn't many ways you can use emotes without breaking PowerPlaying in order to ensure that you don't just get blasted and sent to prison.

The rules on this server are completely out of wack. I got reprimanded by an admin for doing more than 1 hostage situation per week. I did one bank job earlier in the week, and then an admin appeared and reprimanded me in front of everyone on another completely unrelated scenario. I was using a FAKE hostage in order to get one of the negotiation officers from the other heist to come down and eat dinner and drink wine with us. Because before he previously stated to me, "Joey if you are going to fuck me on these deals, at least take me to dinner first". So thats what I did. I knew damn well I'd go to prison and lose money and shit. I did it because I wanted to create a funny and interesting rp interaction for the police. Admin comes in and pauses roleplay and reprimanded me in front of everyone for doing more than 1 hostage situation per week. Some rules don't need to be enforced for no reason just to make an example out of people. Meanwhile I go to prison and I see 2 guys, one role-playing as a racist, shouting the N word, and another role-playing as a straight up Nazi, but that's ok, that's good rp I guess

Bank payout is extremely low. You can only do 1 hostage situation a week OOC. sometimes I've gotten 300k. Split that between 5/6 people. So what's the alternative to do more? Either pray you are lucky enough to get in and out without a hostage, or any cops showing up. (Good luck with that, response time for that alarm is usually less than 30 seconds). Or amass an army of 20 people to shoot your way out of the bank against an entire police force. And then if you survive, great job, now split that 300k between 20 people and congrats, you just bought everyone 2 bottles of water and a burger

Oh no no no. They are just RPing as grumpy admins. Don't worry

Preach!