Lower the LEO cap, Keep the gang cap the same

[DoubleA]

I’ve seen a lot of people recently saying we should lower the gang cap from 40 players, which to me I see why that could work but at the end of the day I see a lot of issues with it. Yes you’ll get more groups of people, but you’re going to just end up having groups with 30 active members daily rolling everyone and 4-5 groups of people who can barely get 10 online. It’s already a bit of an issue now and I think that it would just continue to worsen that issue.

 

I have spoken to a good amount of people who seem to be on board with placing a LEO cap for PD and SD. I am not 100% sure if there even is one in place, if there is then lowering it is the argument. At the moment if I’m not mistaken there are 110-120 people in SD, not sure about PD I would need to check F4. I believe that while a lot of them are criminal alts, I think less people in both groups would allow for more people to join the civilian jobs that keep the server alive, like bayview, LSC, DCC, weazel, etc, and for some it would give more RP for gangs and criminals as a lot of the people would most likely move over and try crimRP out. I don’t think that the biggest issue with crimRP is that there’s nothing to do script wise, I think the problem is there is too many people that do LEO and there isn’t enough players to give crims as much RP.

 

definitely open to hearing counterarguments to this but I think it would be more fair as well as more fun for everyone on the server. 

[AtlasOLimbo]

I've played both sides of this coin and I don't think this would be good unless the limit was much higher than that of gangs. PD and SD need to have at least a couple officers on duty at all times. Gangs do not. The huge numbers account for this in LEO factions.

[Ash]

There's 165 people in official illegal factions alone compared to 216 LSPD and LSSD combined. When factoring in the unofficial gangs and the solo criminals do you not think those numbers are rather balanced?
I feel number of people in the faction or online isn't really the problem. And it's hard to really make an argument for limiting to X per scenario as that'd have to be applied both sides for it to not be crazy.

Obviously there's the backup rule and stuff but that's kinda hard to think of a way to balance that against LEO if that comes up as a topic.

Said as someone rather impartial to this whole topic as I'm neither LEO nor a serious crim.

[alexalex303]

I think this starts from a supposition that crims should be able to wipe PD or that it should be "balanced". That's not the case.

Your goal should never be to fight PD/SD, but to avoid them. They could have 5000 people or 5, it should be the same. We already see how people regularly shoot cops in OCE time because there's not many online, the last thing we need is to bring that to EU. 

[Requiem]

I don't think you can just apply the same concept to PD/SD as crim faction caps. If someone new comes onto the server wanting to play as LEO for their character only to find out its at the cap and is forced to do something else they may not enjoy or want to do, you're just turning away new players from the server. A crim faction cap would still allow someone wanting to be a criminal to either be solo or just join a different criminal faction. If someone was unable to join PD/SD, they can't just go start their own LEO faction. This wouldn't help anything but upset people and turn players away from the server. 

[Mikazuki Ueno]

2 hours ago, alexalex303 said:

I think this starts from a supposition that crims should be able to wipe PD or that it should be "balanced". That's not the case.

 

Yet this keeps being something people need to be reminded of. PD/SD is supposed to outmatch and have access to more resources than civilians or criminal characters. There are heavy IC and OOC rules in place to make sure interactions are fair but a 'balance' is not the intent. This is a roleplay server.

[Osborn]

SD member count is skewed as we've removed our hour requirement with respect for people's mental health, given the lack of activity up north most hours of the day. However, despite having the number of people on paper, we tend to have 5-8 on duty at most hours of the day, it gets especially bad towards the later hours.

PD/SD is an RP service meant to be available 24/7 for ALL players, not just one group or one player at a time. For example, If two banks are robbed at the same time, PD/SD is supposed to be able to respond to both banks, and 911 calls in between etcetera - and at the moment, despite the great numbers you see on paper, this is not the case, we usually only have the numbers at one given time to deal with one group, and not even that at some hours of the day. A few days ago I responded to a 911 call of a shooting at Ace Liquor, I arrive and see a shooting, but end up just leaving as there was 0 backup available to me, I just couldn't do anything!
 

Quote

Yet this keeps being something people need to be reminded of. PD/SD is supposed to outmatch and have access to more resources than civilians or criminal characters. There are heavy IC and OOC rules in place to make sure interactions are fair but a 'balance' is not the intent. This is a roleplay server.

Even if we take a quote like this, while it makes sense from a realistic perspective, it's far from the truth of what's happening the majority of the time. We almost never except for maybe Sundays have the number of people online to "overpower". Several nights in a row you'll see SD patrolling the city, because PD doesn't have more than 2-3 officers (while the server is at 120-130 players), sometimes you'll have SD asking PD to patrol the county because of the same scenario. SD/PD rarely gets to intercept and stop a bank robbery, there's often a single unit that has to watch as 10+ people run out and drive off - this is not saying that there has been a few times where PD and/or SD has been able to mobilize and intercept a robbery mid-through it due to having information of it happening.

So us having the number of people that we do on paper =/= active people. We are just trying to ensure that we can provide our RP service adequately to a degree 24/7, again, for ALL players. We cannot properly have a cap and also expect to be able to do that, without enforcing a shift system and requiring people to actually log in, which at that point, we can throw mental health out the window.

I also think it's important to once again reiterate that PD/SD is reactive and they don't plan their response unless it's a planned operation e.g. a warrant execution. Criminals can plan their situations most of the time, you can decide how many people you want to bring to a bank robbery, to a store robbery, or to run labs, whereas PD/SD simply has to react and adapt to the numbers that they have available, which at most times, don't exceed an absurd number. 

I hope I got my points across as to why it's not really possible to compare a criminal cap to a legal cap.
 

[DoubleA]

On 3/9/2023 at 12:11 PM, alexalex303 said:

I think this starts from a supposition that crims should be able to wipe PD or that it should be "balanced". That's not the case.

Your goal should never be to fight PD/SD, but to avoid them. They could have 5000 people or 5, it should be the same. We already see how people regularly shoot cops in OCE time because there's not many online, the last thing we need is to bring that to EU. 

its hard to avoid them when theres 60/70 on during peak times - im not making this argument so crims can fight PD, im making it so criminals can do more and have more opportunity, This at the end of the day is not a cops and robbers server right?? GTA is about criminal activities.

[Harveyyy]

1 hour ago, DoubleA said:

its hard to avoid them when theres 60/70 on during peak times

As Osborn states above, right now, you only see 4-8 SD on duty and we get overwhelmed with one situation. And if there are multiple, we most of the time won't have numbers to handle these situations. I've never seen SD rolling 30 people across the county.

I'm certain if we apply what you said above, you will never find any cop to release your car from impound.

[CoolDudeChillin]

Soft caps would be cool imo

[XxTheIrishGuyxX]

-1. I am against capping any faction, illegal or legal. I believe this hinders RP. I am especially against capping the LEO factions. If someone calls 911 someone needs to answer. On top of that I consider LEO's an essential faction. When other factions are low on players, LEO's handle it. No MD, LEO's got it. No LSC, we can tow you. Players always complain LEO's don't respond to the impound, capping LEO's will only exasperate the above problems. 

On 3/9/2023 at 2:30 PM, DoubleA said:

I don’t think that the biggest issue with crimRP is that there’s nothing to do script wise, I think the problem is there is too many people that do LEO and there isn’t enough players to give crims as much RP.

I do agree with your above statement, for the most part. The dwindling players base hinders the crim rp. I do not believe this is correlated with the LEO's though.

[Jett_J]

-1

Today I looked at fmembers when there were 300 players online, we had 10 SD.

I checked hours later when there were 200 players online, we had 3-4 on.

 

[Herbo]

+/- 1

I have played both LEO and Crim and I see BOTH sides of this argument. I agree there needs to be some change but I don't think a cap on LEO factions is the right one. I don't really know any other ideas but I think the main point Chase is trying to make here is that wayyyy too many cops respond to situations and/or pursuits. 

I have seen it from both ends having 8+ Scouts or normal units, a bike unit, a high speed unit, and a helicopter for one pursuit. I feel there needs to be some change in this. The sole amount of cops that can respond to some situations make it where there is NO option for crims to do anything but just go to prison. 

IMO, I agree with Rocky that a soft-cap could be good, an example of one could be like when there's 200 people on the server, there can be a MAX of like 30 on-duty LEOs between SD and PD ( Obviously not an exact number or anything just a suggestion ). This would make it where you're still able to avoid cops and don't have 100 units to your traffic stop for running a red light.

That's all I gotta say, I just think there needs to be some limits on LEO factions, just not sure limiting their player count is what needs to happen.

[TheCactus]

I am sorry but I do not see the logic behind capping factions that are vital for the server's roleplay and how it is going to improve criminal RP in any way other than reducing the amount of online cops even further, making it harder to fight crimes and pushing criminals to group up so they can outnumber the police force.

1. The amount of cops that are online is already an "issue" now and we "deal with it" by having SD in the city or PD in the county.

2. New players should have the opportunity to experience all kinds of RP the server has to offer. If they want to try something out and you tell them no because there is a cap, you're basically asking them to go on another server.

3. The amount of cops on duty/online players is monitored by the leadership of the factions. If there are too many crimes and no cops to react, they will recruit. If there are many members online and not enough RP for them, they will make sure recruitment is closed until more numbers are needed. They sure won't listen to what you feel like is right.

4. There's a reason why PD+SD=220 and that reason is we live in a real world and this is not our full-time job. We are humans so we have schedules just like other humans. Some players will do 60h a week, some will do 20, some 5, some none at all. Guess what: I've been doing 5 hours for the past weeks! 220 members doesn't mean 220 online cops nor does it mean 100 or 50. If there are 300 players online, you will probably see 30-45 cops. With 200 players you have 15-25 cops. 100 players sometimes equals 3 cops or less. If you want to play on Sunday evening you should expect cops to be on because they are humans just like you (damn, that's crazy) and there's a high chance that they will be free on Sunday evening just like you are.

If two gangs or even just one has half or 1/3 of their members online at any time from 6am to 3pm UTC they can do whatever the fuck they want and cops would have to watch from afar or even escape because some people really like to chase and kill cops at 1pm. That's because they have the numbers while others do not. Thing is I am not talking IFs, BUTs and MAYBEs. It has been happening for the past months now and I honestly do not find it enjoyable. I am not a fan of logging in when I know that we are going to be outnumbered and wiped if we try to do something such as our jobs (which they pay us to do), every time something happens. That's why you have only 3 cops with 100 players online and no one can respond to 911 calls about stolen vehicles or release cars at the impound lot. Maybe that is not an issue for you but it certainly is for us and any kind of cap is only going to worsen the current situation.

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by TheCactus