Why do Civ jobs actively discourage RP?

[Demonmit1]

Just to preface this, I've been playing on the server for two weeks, so I'm likely going to have some misunderstandings of how some of the Jobs work in the city.

In my experience trying out the different CIV jobs available, I've noticed that the jobs that typically pay the most for the time you spend are secluded solo jobs. Some of the jobs you're even having to directly compete with other players working, or are on edge worried about getting robbed for the work you've done grinding out the job.

To point out some jobs that you are actively punished for RPing and working together with people on would be Oil Drilling, Mining, and Trucking.

Putting a group together to all go oil drill, having workers drilling, and people doing deliveries back and forth from the fields to the drop off, is a great situation that encourages RP, having to organize people to work together, people all in close proximity to chat and hang out, etc. But when three people in 30 minutes worth of mining can drop the price of the entire oil market by nearly 35% (oil barrel price went form $115 to $84 from just selling $22k worth of oil) , the job is actively punishing you for the time and effort it takes to organize teams to run oil work. 

Mining works the exact same way. the market crashes so incredibly fast if players put any effort into organizing.

Trucking at its core discourages group interaction, as the whole job system is highly competitive. only a certain amount of jobs come in, and certain jobs are more valuable than others, and only one person can do that one job. I'm not really sure how to fix this one, i just wish there was a better way for groups of friends to be able to do this job and work together, without having to compete and directly impact each other's income.

The faction jobs I personally haven't tried, but ive talked to a lot of people who are involved with that, and there's some things that just don't make much sense to me. First off, its good RP if the player working there wants it to be. you have to sign up with another player, RPing the situation. you have to go through training, once you're hired you're job is to interact with other players on the server. thats great, the jobs do a great job of encouraging RP in that way. BUT, then the problems start to show up. All that time and work spent into RPing your way into a faction job, and your compensated by being paid half or less than half of what a freelance civ job would pay. ($5500 starting salary for mechanics vs $10k-$14k for the better Civ jobs) While, it makes sense that Faction jobs pay less because its salary and its 100% ensured you'll get paid that amount every hour you're signed in, It just seems really low for the effort it takes to get that position and provide good RP with other players.

I was shocked to hear that taxi drivers and mechanics don't make commission on top of their salary pay for doing work either. A lot of people are frustrated with the taxi service, as getting one to show up can be difficult. Taxi drivers should be incentivized to actually drive their taxis around for people, by getting a percentage of the charge the player is paying to hire the taxi. 
The same goes for mechanics. They have no incentive to actually respond to mechanic calls, and people are amazed if one actually shows up to assist you, due to how uncommon it feels to get a response from them. Mechanics should be encouraged to respond to roadside service calls by getting a commission pay based on the percentage of what the work costs. it blows my mind that's not how the system currently works, cause right now the system encourages mechanics to stand around at their jobsite, semi-afk passively generating their low salary income. 

To point out two Civ jobs that i feel work correctly, would be Road workers and fishing.
Roadwork job is great. it actively encourages player interaction and cooperation. large groups can finish jobs faster and more efficiently to make more money, and players are in close proximity to each other to encourage interaction and conversation. Though the pay is on the lower end of civ jobs, the core mechanics of how the job works is great.

Fishing is extremely popular. It can be extremely social, or extremely secluded, or anywhere in-between, and you can chose what level of social interaction you want to be involved in by fishing in different locations. The job is entirely non competitive if you're nearby other players. while there is nothing specifically encouraging cooperation with other fishers, there's nothing actively discouraging players from fishing together either. The only downside is the profit per hour is quite considerably low compared to most other CIV jobs available.

Anyways. that was my wall of text rambling on about how Civ jobs work and how i wish they would be better and encourage players to RP within the civ jobs more. If theres anything i got wrong, more than happy to learn and fix things. let me know if you have had similar experiences with jobs, or your opinions on how you would like to see some of this get changed. thanks

[Ash]

8 minutes ago, Demonmit1 said:

I've noticed that the jobs that typically pay the most for the time you spend are secluded solo jobs

Road working has been the best paying one since its release and it's also the most social one so I would disagree with that statement. You must not have had a good run if you consider road working to be on the lower end of payment. Job boards are worth a mention though as when road working is most popular the pay goes down.

Your idea behind the potential RP behind oil drilling is a great one...But not how it happens really, when that was the best paying one it was people solo sweating it and not high in roleplay.

Trucking is nearly mostly driven by player businesses so sometimes you'll get totally shit orders not worth the time and some you'll get a pretty decent haul.

Faction jobs pay less than freelance jobs to compensate, faction jobs have MUCH more potential for roleplay and to have more fun than freelance jobs which are more of a lonely grind half the time. Bunch of factions have bonus systems as well. doing 10 hours of a faction job is generally a lot less mind-numbing than 10 hours of any freelance job. A lot of people don't play faction jobs purely for the money, they do it for the roleplay and the money just adds up over time. People working faction jobs don't really have many outgoings for their cash beyond cars and houses and properties, all of which just come with time in a faction job.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Ash

[Demonmit1]

41 minutes ago, Ash said:

You must not have had a good run if you consider road working to be on the lower end of payment.

I suppose so, i must have had a poor streak when i was gauging how much on average i was making per hour. In my testing i was making just under $9000 an hour on average over about 5 hours of Road working. its definitely not on the low end like Couriers or Money transporters, but from what i experienced its not up near the higher end from my testing, where Trucking, Bus Driving, and Farming were averaging around $12,000 an hour, and garbage pickup was closer to $14k an hour. 

 

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Your idea behind the potential RP behind oil drilling is a great one...But not how it happens really

It doesn't happen that way due to how extremely fragile the market is to a small amount of oil being produced. it seems a bit excessive that $22,000 of oil DRASTICALLY lowers the selling price of oil. The system significantly discourages groups from working that job and being efficient at it. Realistically, the job should not be effective for a single person to do by themselves, which it currently isnt, but its significantly worse to do it as a group, which is a bummer. If there was a decent price floor that oil barrels (or ore for mining) would sell for, that would keep the effectiveness for individuals to work by themselves low, but groups could be formed to work together to optimize the job, having dedicated miners and delivery drivers.
 

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Faction jobs pay less than freelance jobs to compensate, faction jobs have MUCH more potential for roleplay

Which I feel is detrimental, as LSC is regularly dead and no one is working there (more people prefer Paleto for being more active) Taxis are regularly short handed, and getting roadside repair service is like pulling teeth sometimes. I've talked to a fair few people who are interested in joining those CIV factions, but are reluctant to join due to how drastically lower the income is compared to working other jobs. Thats not to say the base salary should be drastically increased, or even increased at all, but it would make sense to me to incentivize players working in those factions to actively work in the job, and get paid commission or something extra for being active in doing the job, rather than passively collecting salary sitting around all day. I think that would be a overall benefit for the server in general, as mechanics would be more inclined to accept roadside repair requests which typically get ignored, and taxi drivers would be more inclined to pick up players farther out and get paid for the extra time. 

[Ash]

2 minutes ago, Demonmit1 said:

In my testing i was making just under $9000 an hour on average over about 5 hours of Road working

That's 1k more than being command/leader of any legal faction 

3 minutes ago, Demonmit1 said:

Trucking, Bus Driving, and Farming were averaging around $12,000 an hour

If this was the last few days I believe those 3 were all being boosted by the job board with like +15 or 20% pay bonus because not many people were doing them so that could be where your numbers come from.
Overall, in my opinion, the freelance jobs should be reworked to allow for more co-op play. 2-man money trucking or garbage job is so fun for RP but only one person makes money which can deincentivize a lot of people.

It's well within the faction leaders' right to attempt to get some sort of commission, bonus, or higher pay system implemented. I think the new LSC owner is yet to be announced so we'll see what that brings when it happens. The factions that do get short-staffed do seem to be the ones where there's less RP available to them that's obvious which probably adds up to it.

Maybe @Chunder can elaborate more but to my knowledge, the DOC implemented a bunch of bonuses as well as RP opportunities to keep people busy and engaged and it's been popping for a while the last few months. But incentivizing poorly-manned faction jobs is a whole other issue on its own I reckon. But I do think that freelance jobs should be reworked to be more co-op friendly for more rp

[Demonmit1]

8 minutes ago, Ash said:

Overall, in my opinion, the freelance jobs should be reworked to allow for more co-op play.

yeah, that would be great. it just feels like right now, a vast majority of the jobs either force players to compete with each other directly for the pay, have entirely no mechanic for group play, or actively discourage group play by making everyone's income lower for working together. which is the complete opposite of Criminal gameplay and money making, which seems to actively encourage group activities, which draws more people to play that. 

[Chunder]

3 hours ago, Ash said:

Maybe @Chunder can elaborate more but to my knowledge, the DOC implemented a bunch of bonuses as well as RP opportunities to keep people busy and engaged and it's been popping for a while the last few months. But incentivizing poorly-manned faction jobs is a whole other issue on its own I reckon. But I do think that freelance jobs should be reworked to be more co-op friendly for more rp

There have been a lot of discussions about promoting active RP in factions, especially when its quiet however DOC has not had that issue for a while due to how insanely busy the faction has been ICly reaching its highest at 70 active members. I have nothing but pride and astonishment for the work my faction members do.
I've always supported bonuses for people that actively engage in their faction duties, such as DOC employees getting a bonus each time they /prison an inmate. We ICly have a bonus approved for most processing's a week (if I remember to do it). MD already has this in place for each person they drop off.

At the end of the day the thing that incentivises you to do faction works should not be the money but the RP that is provided. I feel that's where freelance jobs and faction jobs differ, as stated above there is far less RP involved in freelance jobs.

[Tom Solar]

Back when I started playing taxirp, the starting wage was 4000/hr, even though the economy was more or evenly bloated as it is today. That was pulled up IC as most factions were doing the same to pull more trainees, even though troughout all that time the maximum someone like a ceo could earn was the same as today. Salaries do go up btw as you rise trough the ranks and there are different bonusses aswell.

I know that back in the day, taxidrivers (and i presume other jobs aswell) were payed on commission. That was changed to an hourly wage, I dont know exactly why but I can imagine the following reasons:

- Payment on comission is unfair towards players who cover lower pop hours, less customers less money

- Payment on comission is unfair towards characters who rp management roles, at least in DCC's case i know that everyone inclusing management takes calls but sometimes management members are roleplaying management work, depending on the work available, this can take up a large portion of their time on duty.

- Payment on comission creates competition, like you mention at roadworkers people attack eachother for taking their "jobs", wile this is a DM breach sure and I expect people in a whitelist faction to behave better, it will cause some players to take ALL the jobs and leave non for the rest.

Is there a problem with the wages, yea there is, sometimes theres 300+ players on and id be surprized if more than 15 are roleplaying a whitelist job if you exclude PD/SD. I could stand behind a system where we keep the main hourly wage and then a small bonus, like 25/50% of the cost from the customer.

There is also an issue coming from the civilians though, to continue from the example you made, taxidrivers are incentivised plenty to take calls and from what I can see, calls are being taken as mush as possible, some players just dont understand that on a server with 300+ players and only 3 taxi's that sometimes they might have  to wait a wile for it to get accepted. A lot of characters actually cancel their request after like 30 seconds without it getting accepted or they will cancel when they see we have to drive 10km towards them.

This is the same for any other faction, I see alot of people complain about the mechanics but there is a very large group of the community that chooses to treat mechanics like shit, wether this is coming from a roleplay standpoint i dont know but alot of people like to complain on the forums instead of signing one of their characters up for a faction job themselves.

[Demonmit1]

3 hours ago, Tom Solar said:

some players just dont understand that on a server with 300+ players and only 3 taxi's that sometimes they might have  to wait a wile for it to get accepted.

taxidrivers are incentivised plenty to take calls

alot of people like to complain on the forums instead of signing one of their characters up for a faction job themselves.

well yeah, there lies the problem. Taxi and Mechanic RP can be quite a lot of fun but people are turned off from getting involved in it due to how drastically low the pay is across the board compared to freelance civ jobs, not to even mention criminal income. Faction jobs require a significant amount of more effort to work for and require a base level of RP capabilities, but the in game reward for the job doesnt match the effort required. 

 

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- Payment on commission is unfair towards players who cover lower pop hours, less customers less money

Lower population on the server would mean theres fewer players in the civilian factions to compete for the extra commission, so it would more or less balance out. all the factions should still be making their base salary, but should be incentivized and rewarded on top of their base salary for completing tasks for the job. (taxi getting % on driving fee, mechanics getting % of repair fee and roadside fees)

 

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- Payment on comission is unfair towards characters who rp management roles, at least in DCC's case i know that everyone inclusing management takes calls but sometimes management members are roleplaying management work, depending on the work available, this can take up a large portion of their time on duty.

yeah, that's a fair argument. I can see that being discouraging for people within management roles. while they do have a higher base salary, its still considerably low compared to way lower effort freelance jobs. we'd have to brainstorm a way to work some commission system in for managers, without them having to take job requests. Maybe there's some way to set up a system that managers get some commission based on how active each of their subordinates are that are actively working, or maybe they get a bonus if they delegate a job to a worker, and that worker completes the job, the manager gets money for that?

 

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- Payment on comission creates competition, like you mention at roadworkers people attack eachother for taking their "jobs", wile this is a DM breach sure and I expect people in a whitelist faction to behave better, it will cause some players to take ALL the jobs and leave non for the rest.

some competitiveness isnt a bad thing in a job. actively participating and playing the game should reward you with more pay. with faction jobs, at least everyone is getting a base amount of income, and if you want to make beyond that, you can be active and be a bit more competitive on responding to job requests for players.  Managers should be able to manage whos taking what jobs, and IC guidelines can be created to spread out the workload if the work is coming in slowly. 

Overall, how the faction jobs play is great, but theres not much incentive gameplay wise to put in more effort to play the role, vs standing around and passively collecting salary chatting. a big part of my original post was wishing there was more co-op ways players can work together on freelance jobs, as my complaint was so many are either entirely competitive for work, or actively discourage people trying to work together by paying less than doing it solo. Faction jobs encourage working together, thats what they do great.
 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Demonmit1

[Tom Solar]

17 hours ago, Demonmit1 said:

vs standing around and passively collecting salary chatting.

What I was trying to make clear in the previous post is that this quoted section simply does not happen, what you describe is called salaryfarming, its a rulebreach and any whitelist faction pays heavy attention to this, if you do notice anyone doing it, I advise you to report them to an admin or on the forum.

I can understand that you feel that way when you're on the receiving end but from what I can see, your request not being taken before you cancel it is not because people are "standing around and passively collecting salary chatting." This statement is also very disrespectful towards the players who are still serving you non the less, I would advise you to experience a whitelist job before making such an assumption.