State of the Community

There's a few things that I've noticed whilst playing on the server. One of my hugest gripes is the lack of communication between staff and players.



Now this is roleplay, and most things should be kept in character. But, even in text-based roleplays (something that I come from an intensive background of) discussing in out of character directions and state of things is always IDEAL for a happy balance of community involvement and healthy roleplay. For instance, me and DraKo were talking about the state of gangs within the city. I said, that it feels less like people are trying to play gangs and involve themselves in gang politics, and more so playing cops and robbers like children used to in the playground. Why do I say this? For a few reason's. One, there's a lack of conflict within the city. A 'Kumbaya' as some of us have dubbed it. Another thing, is for instance the ballas are to me no longer a street gang and are closer idealized to a mafia. The reason I state this is because the Ballas own an insurance company, a luxury auto and the benny's, not to mention an extensive amount of money within the city. Also, when raided by the police despite the findings of the police, no one was arrested for possession, possessing illegal weapons or what have you. Now one could argue that that is how charlie is running her gang. But, therein lies the problem. That would be taking the ballas nature, and removing what the ballas stand for entirely. IN GTA, the ballas are closer to the bloods, and the families are closer to the crips. In real life, the crips and bloods have been at war since 1978. It formed after the crips murdered a teenager and this counter group called the Piru Street gang formed, clad in red. They eventually formed into modern day bloods and have been at war since. They aren't just going to magically stop shooting one another, even if they've forgotten the reason for forming their gang in the first place. Sure, in a high school where people are pretending to be crips and bloods they crips and bloods may get along. But these people don't understand the severity of what it means to be in a street gang, to take a life, or to walk the life that real gangsters lead.



Then therein also lay a problem of territory and a lack of people understanding the meaning of what a street gang is was something I spoke of to a leader of a known lore tied gang. After doing so, he wanted to get an strictly out of character ticket with leaders of gangs to discuss the future of gang politics and discuss... gangs. Which in a completely out of character fashion should be no problem, something that WOULD have benefited the server quite deeply as the server is in a chaotic state between every single street gang in the city. But the ticket was closed and told that any gang politics should be discussed in a strictly in character fashion. But, that's another problem. How do we have these discussions if no one gets on their gangster's or, want to sit down and have these sorts of discussions or gang politics not to mention the conflict rule, which prevents you from getting on a character to 'pick a side'. Which said pick a side mentality has also directly impeded the ability to continue an RP plot point, which I'll go into brief detail in the city, there was a coalition planned against the ballas, thoroughly planned out and meetings were hosted to 'blind side charlie' everything was perfectly planned. Plotted, and what have you. But because of the redundant conflict rule, it prevented roleplay from happening because charlies player CHOSE a side and picked their lieutenant. Thus collapsing a plan on itself. Which is another problem with the conflict rule, your halting any other form of roleplay to focus on a singular conflict when there were other things banking on your other character's involvement in the city. Such as you being a leader of a gang, or what have you. But 'pick a side' even if that side, ruin's other RP's.



Discussing these sorts of topics is incredibly hair pulling as someone who puts extensive research into not only gang's, gang politics, and the mentalities as to why gang's in america have formed. (Mafia something, I love researching but due to the lack of interest find myself unable to partake in one, street gangs, cartels and what have you.) Whenever you discuss them, people say 'All gangs are different' which, yes but if your say, playing ballas and tell everyone to not wear purple your diminishing the point of a street gang, and are going against the mentality that this is camaraderie, but what if you want to shoot up someone anonymously. Drive Bys exist, but I can't even do a driveby because I cant shoot while driving, so I'd have to get out of my vehicle to even shoot someone or have someone in the passenger seat but what if I'm the only member in my gang because my gang has to pick a side, and they pick the opposing side?, then I'm getting lit up because of a stupid conflict rule that is preventing me from having backup. With how small gang's are, (believe me, the Vagos are tiny.) this rule prevents fluid roleplay, maybe if the gangs in this city were much larger and had more active playerbase this rule could exist and would make a lot of sense, in any roleplay I've been in, garrysmod and what have you I've never seen the restriction of being stuck to simply one faction and stuck to one conflict because, neither of my characters share the same ideology goals, or interactions as other characters, matter of fact my characters don't even know each other exist. Nor are the factions that I'm playing for sharing the same goal, so playing in either of them for 'my own goals' would be illogical and impossible.



Another thing, I have a major gripe with, is the lack of Show, don't tell. No one cares if you go on hour tangents about how much you've put people in the dirt. Or 'don't be messing with my OG Cuh.' Or white girl twitter wars. People should settle beef, with bullets, words, or with honor. Not immediately going to twitter to post something for clout. No gangster does that in real life, that's an easy way to self incriminate and what you post on twitter can be used against you in the court of law, a gangster doesn't want to be attached to the crime. People seem to wanna be gangsters and not deal with the repercussions of being associated with a rival gang. To further that, there's a lack of territory and a lack of rules in the city amongst gangsters. Like, when Charlie said everyone who sells owes her 10 grand weekly. Not only is that a great way to get every gang in the city turning against you. (which, practically almost happened) it's illogical for a street gang to simply just claim they own the city. If you want to think that you own the city, and spread an influence from afar, make a mafia because that is something more catered to the organized crime that mafias partake in, think of them as modern day robin hood's, a Mafia has a balanced activity between criminal activity and the organization of enforcement and illicit agreements through the acts of violence, extortion, corruption of public officials, gambling, infiltration of legitimate businesses, labor racketeering, and numerous profitable schemes. They are heavily different from a street gang, which all a street gang knows is systematic oppression, and lack the capabilities to get anywhere in life due to their world view. Whereas a mafia, have the schemes and an extensive history to pull off what they need to and will even go to the extent of manipulating STREET GANGS, and making them associates to further detach them from the life of crime that they live. Another thing, the conversation had in discord when someone said 'Play one gangster' ignoring the fact that there is next to nothing to do in the city except do crime. There's a lack of activities for me to do if I want to go be a normal person. Which I think is something that is heavily impeding on the success of the city. I'm not going to name drop, but there is someone that I know that only get's on to interact with a character of mine that would likely enjoy if there were things to do in the city as their character is almost 100% not involved in any form of crime.



What I'm saying at this point not only feels repetitive, but I feel like I'm echoing the words of other people more often than not, and speaking on matters that I hear just standing around the city and I've not even been in the city for a month. Maybe, changes in leadership for the vast amount of factions would go a long way to increase the longevity of the server, as many of the leaders are frequently complained about from player to player. I know from both word to mouth, and other players recounting their experiences, the police department is in an incredibly rough spot currently and is increasingly going ignored the further the server goes along, and with the conflict rule, given that every cop seems to have a criminal either criminals who are involved in RP plot points are not getting on because of other conflicts involving the police, or police officers are not getting on when desperately needed because of their criminals involvement with a specific conflict. That is, from both a roleplay standpoint and player perspective incredulously stupid, and exceedingly self-sabotaging, as your not only preventing the flow of roleplay but you're putting a strict guideline on how someone should play their character, when and where they should play their character, and at that point it is no longer roleplay and I am just playing a simulator and abiding by whatever rules are given to me simply because I'm told too. It's like in star wars, with the empire where they place an extensive amount of restrictions and prevented alot of freedom from person to person. They were heavily controlling, which lead to a rebellion for their own freedoms. People don't like it when they are being controlled, which is another point of crime. They want to be IN Control, they want to take back their lack of control and express their freedom. We want to PLAY our characters, not abide by a set of rules that restrict our character's reactions and restrict player freedom. OR, restrict us, from playing other characters simply because a RULE dictates that we cannot be in the same conflict with the same group of people. Which would in turn make us have to intentionally force our characters to go out of their way, to avoid someone which would in turn be avoiding RP and preventing roleplay from happening which also hinders any form of development and interaction on the server, which would also further hurt the server's playerbase because you have people in the city that you'll never see because they're attempting to avoid a interaction due to a conflict that happened on a different character that logically this character knows not a single thing about. The flow of roleplay becomes broken when your intentionally hindering yourself from playing a character to match a set of guidelines given to you. Simple as, this mentality  as well as problems in the community indirectly causes alot more trouble than it's worth. Maybe we could have the community, sit down and discuss what they want out of the server, as well as faction leaders sitting down to discuss the state of their factions and what can be fixed and what needs to be fixed for the longevity of the server. I have alot more that I wish to say, but I don't want this ESSAY to prolong any further. So I'll hold the rest of my thoughts for now. 

Just gonna say something here, if that is how the conflict rule is meant to be or how it is perceived to be then I want my warning removed lol. I had two separate characters fighting the same faction for two separate goals.


I also agree with your last paragraph, there is a hard disconnect between staff to player and then whomever to mailbox and the Dev team at large. Mailbox said this himself in that community meeting that one time: If it isn't reported I can't know about it. it is the sad reality we play in but it seems there needs to be maybe a better liaison for the staff to player relations, perhaps one of the helpers could be a PUBLIC RELATIONS MAYNE. I feel like they can be the middle man so mailbox knows what is going on the ground while also the helper being in the server on the daily.

I would like to point something out as a former player and Main Cop character for the most of my time on time served.

One thing I feel that was not done right at all was the PD. I know I expressed a lot on how much I disagreed with Ricky being in power but its moreso the department as a whole.

Moving onto greener pastures I've come to find we've been really restricted when it came to being an LEO on Time Served, and I realized many reasons why we couldn't retain officers back in the day was due to the fact we were so hard on them without giving them any benefits of staying. Whether it be getting strikes/reprimand for stuff that didn't matter or not allowing any freedom with uniforms or vehicles it all added up.
I drive my own cruiser along with every other officer in the dept, added with the fact we have freedom for clothing within the bounds of professionalism. All in all a big issue here was the lack of fun created by the people trying to make this a strict job and not a fun roleplay experience for everybody involved. If that was the intent here, well then my bad.

I came here not to gloat or talk shit, but because at one point this was my favorite server despite having many others out there with a more consistent population and I still have some luv 4 it in my heart. And seeing Mailbox post in the announcements of discord a post regarding the "State of the Server" I just had to read it.

Have a good 2022 ya'll! Stay safe.

My only response to your absent minded reply is that all I did from the beginning was voice my opinion and all I was ever told was "its the way it is because its how we designed it"

I joined because of the things you pointed out, such as growing features, adapting current scripts and adding new ones. I was excited for all of that, but not for the way you run this community and how its clearly given many people clear favoritism. Added to that point, the staff were NEVER active so their viewpoint would never make sense when evaluating anything going on in the server.. I've been apart of many growing communities but as this post can clearly point out it is not growing at all. (Which btw this server is just as old as ya'll if not newer).

I helped build a RedM community from the beginning and watched it burn the same way I see here. We jumped off the ship because its behavior we've seen repeated over and over not because we didn't want to see the server grow. I couldn't care about QOL scripts on another server that TS didn't have, but I definitely did care about pure incompetency within PD and the lack of actual structure or management.

I wont be returning to the forum, because as you said I guess you'll be taking my words with a grain of salt so there is no real reason for me to return to give my honest opinion.

Already having a blast in greener pastures, hmu if you ever wanna know more

Why does it need to be helpers? If you feels there's a disconnect about something then here and now is the perfect time to detail out what you mean by that instead of just shoving it off onto someone else. Where is the disconnect?

I mean this in decisions or actions of staff or the priority of development. We can't change your priority for development, but we could hold more community meetings and see what more people want overall and focus on that and even then still keep in touch so it isn't like new points of development come out and people are asking "Why?".

As for staff, there is one or two instances when they made a decision that was proclaimed as a "Staff Decision." and got a lot of push back. If you recognize that making the decision will require an explanation to validate it in the face of the players.