NCZ Suggestion

[GRIMobyus]

To start, there is a huge problem with gang activity in the server. Mainly the Zeta's, they are literally the biggest faction on the server, and are aligned with the other top factions. This presents a huge problem for anybody new or existing to play the game. The Zeta's literally outnumber any group or faction. You cannot drive or do anything without running into them. They never not rob a person unless its their friend or a fellow gang member. Numerous times I have been approached with no hopes of getting out of the situation without losing something. 

Gangs do not just drive around cities and find people to rob. This is not true to real life. If its thought that gangs operate this way, they have no experience with the life style. I have personally been directly around a Tongan gang for years. They never once acted in this manner. Most only will have friction with cops, opposing gangs, or random people who step into trouble. 

With the above being said, the clothing stores should be free of crime. Cannot ever sit in a clothing store to look through the items long enough to buy an outfit desired without taking ten trips. This is also partly due to how fast the time out before going to Schematic View. Its like seconds before, this continuously keeps the player using F2 to disable mouse to turn in order to see view the potential clothes. This time out happening extremely fast is causing lost time on trying to counter the time out or preventing it. This in turn makes you stay at a place way longer than one should just to get robbed by the over zealous Zeta's. It would be nice to comfortably look through the clothing to choose something out. 

New players do not have groups of friends they can play with. Once the New Player tag is gone, which can be fast, you are subject to immediate robbery. If you later want to change your clothes, its not safe. 

I would love to have the clothing stores considered for an NCZ(No Crime Zone) as to help with this issue. 

The parking lot, its the only place one can store their vehicle unless they get a house. Houses are not cheap and not really available for new and newer players. The one parking lot has been subject to massive groups of people sitting and waiting for people to get their car or park their car and then rob them. I get IRL parking lots are not protected but groups of people in reality do not sit at a parking lot waiting for random people to show up. The cars come out of the parking lot open and if they are quick, they pull a gun and take the car before you can get close enough to lock it. Which means, people get their car out to drive and participate in the server community and just lose their shit and have to wait hours to get their vehicle back. This seems absurd if you want to have a live city with up to a thousand players actually making Los Santos come alive. Currently, everyone sits at the bank, works a normal job, or joins the Zeta's. I cannot even use the car I paid 50 EUROS for as it gets destroyed. The import car thing was a way to deter people from chopping them but now they just destroy the. I prefer to not drive at all due to how many times I have seen issues at the parking lot. 

I think the Parking Lot should be NCZ to spread the players out from the bank and to keep people driving around town. 

 

I am not trying to soften the entire city, just need something to mitigate getting robbed at the clothing stores and the parking lot. These places are normal to go to. I like to change my attire often and like to get to my vehicle and park it when I am ready. 

Others might not agree with this but I do feel the New Player experience is suffering heavily from these points and other points. 

[alexalex303]

The robbing sprees are a symptom of low consequences for criminal behaviour. If they can rob ten people and then get caught, have a fun shootout, scramble their frequencies and then go do an hour in prison, then people will do it.

Real life gangs don't do it, because armed robbery will earn you 8 to 15 years in prison, and shooting at cops will get you killed or in prison for life. There is no need to add more NCZs, but to increase consequences for crimes.

 

[GRIMobyus]

I am not sure I agree with that perspective. However, just using the correct forums to make a case. 

[djnugget]

it has been said a few times now that we do need either NCZ or more parking lots, currently there is only one lot which means crims know where to gather to await prey. Maybe instead of one lot being NCZ have many lots around town and sandy/paleto that arnt NCZ but create problems for these robbers and also more options for Civs

 

I get robbed by zetas alot but thats because i am a rival criminal, which i accept, the robbing civs thing needs to be toned down alot i feel

 

also i think that longer prison sentences would be better if they could be served out of game or at least a portion of them, you may see this as a soft option for the criminal but if they cant access the city for a long period of time it shoudnt matter if its done in game or if they have to stay off the game for that amount of time, either way you have less criminals on the streets?

 

 

[GRIMobyus]

I had this same solution go through my head as well. Add more parking lots, it spreads out the criminals and the over populated single parking lot. 

[Wifye]

28 minutes ago, alexalex303 said:

The robbing sprees are a symptom of low consequences for criminal behaviour. If they can rob ten people and then get caught, have a fun shootout, scramble their frequencies and then go do an hour in prison, then people will do it.

Real life gangs don't do it, because armed robbery will earn you 8 to 15 years in prison, and shooting at cops will get you killed or in prison for life. There is no need to add more NCZs, but to increase consequences for crimes.

 

This is pretty spot on.

The crime situation has many issues and there's not just one easy fix, it would take a multitude of things to improve the situation.

The first and most debated issue is prison time obviously. People don't want long times as it's observed as an "OOC punishment" which is understandable to various extents. Obviously increasing prison times will discourage people from going to jail because they don't want to be secluded from the game and just sit around. Sure giving them actual activities to do might help pass the time but increased jail time still be negatively received by the majority of criminal players resulting in community backlash. 

The factor that's not taken into consideration by most is the "ooc punishment" that player victims take from criminal players. When a criminal robs a player, takes their phone battery/radio, and steals their car, that player victim now has to spend their time running around "hampered" for awhile just to become "efficient" once more. The further away from locations to "re-equip/recover" at, the longer the time the player spends unable to do much except run to wherever or hope someone friendly stops and help them. So for an example, if you mug 4 different people and take their battery/radio and a vehicle if they have one, depending on where each mugging occurred, you could cause 5-15 minutes of "hampered" time per player. In all actuality, you now have 20-60 minutes of other combined player time spent just trying to recover from IC actions that they probably didn't provoke and the rp was probably streamlined in a minute or two.(hand up, give me your stuff, *frisk, then the criminal is gone). 

When you take that last bit into consideration, you have to have balanced effects that are relatively equal. The more time your criminal actions "hamper" other players, the similar amount should be at least expected in return and that's not even counting the financial loss vs time to obtain the finances. Once you add that bit in such as a phone battery, radio, any pocket money, mors cost to replace a vehicle(if applicable), time loss if they were working, etc. 

Adding all those bits together, you should end up with jail times that line up to something similar to the potential impact the crimes costed the player victims in order to have a fair and balanced system. By that logic, if you hampered 30 minutes of other people's time, you expect the same, if you been running rampant for awhile and rack up 4 hours worth of other's time hampered, you should expect the same.

 

The next issue lies with having enough activities and options available to criminals to lower the "desire/need" to target other players. Obviously actual mechanical turfs give gangs something to do and pits them against similar players which is a good thing. Gangs should be able to acquire bootleg or illegal goods similar to those sold in stores in order to "fence/sell" them to other players thus promoting non-hostile encounters with other people. If criminal characters had such items, general population's opinion and attitude toward them would change entirely since they could potentially buy cheaper products through them and both parties make money happily without violence or inconvenience.

In order to implement such a mechanic mentioned above, perhaps criminals could spend $20,000 to "bribe" shipping personnel on the location of a truck with $25k-$30k. Once entering the truck, there could be a notification to the police about the theft thus creating a risk of hauling the truck around. Sure the criminals could try to escape with the truck or they could try to unload the "cargo" from the truck on site and escape with it via other means. Obviously it would need fleshed out more but y'all probably get the general overall idea I'm going for with this whole mechanic.

 

All in all, everyone is on the server to have fun and nobody wants to sit around with extended "hampered experiences" whether robbed, jailed, injured, etc. Everything has to have balanced risks vs reward for every player otherwise disgruntled groups emerge with not always positive intentions or actions for the collective community as a whole.

Thanks for reading all my ranting and I hope it helps some how.

[citava]

+1

[MusketDeezNuts]

Gang gathering = a crime = not allowed in a NCZ. 

(Cant remember the IRL charges for it)

[trashplayboi]

-1 on the additional NCZones, I'll lay out two things I think could be done though.

• Add a second parking lot - some people have found some locations that work.
• Increase time in jail/consequences of actions, however don't make them unreasonable. 

These two should hit those points about the parking lot thieves and should detract gangs from wasting time robbing someone that could get them a longer prison sentence.

Edited May 23, 2019 by trashplayboi

[abixo]

-1. We should be limiting the success of gangs but I don't think adding more NCZ's is a solution. I'd increase (potentially even double) jail time in certain situations before I did anything else with NCZ's.

[BallinByNature]

We have implemented robbery rules which will help with this suggested issue.

Thanks for your suggestion.