This is a "I could never expect that a suggestion that brings up a topic like this could ever receive a long response like this" moment.
I was writing this last night and ended up forgetting about it. There's a TL;dr at the bottom, but I recommend that those who are actually interested in the topic of this thread read the entire message. It brings up points that half of the people who have posted something here did not think about, but points that are actually important to be brought to your attention.
Before I bring up anything: 90% of the mute characters we have nowadays are result of an IC in-server reason; a.k.a. got their throat cut or something else of the kind. People who
create mute characters, on the other hand, often put effort into them. There is no reason for you to
willingly go through the IC limitations of a mute only to roleplay it poorly, unless, as I said, your character lost their ability to speak because of a major. It's common sense; if you
made a mute character, it means you
want to roleplay as a mute, naturally.
Most, if not all of the people would
not put as much effort into a character who is mute because of an IC consequence, than they would if they
wanted to develop a mute character
from scratch. Therefore, the "people make mute characters and end up not putting much effort into them" argument is, at least 90% of the time, incorrect, for those who brought this argument up.
On the other hand, however,
most of those who had lost their character's ability to speak
through an IC mean do not, indeed, value and properly develop their character's
muteness. Most will simply use TTS and ignore the fact that this tool isn't as reliable and effective as sign language, which, IRL, would be a must-learn for any person with verbal and/or hearing disabilities.
At the same time, another issue comes up; this change would make almost, if not
all major perms be delivered in one single way: throat/tongue cutting. Imagine 80% of majors ending up in your character being mute, because, to half of the GangRP community, cutting your character's tongue would be the option that would make your character's life the most difficult. This would make the SRP environment
more robotic and mechanical than it already is.
Knowing the current GangRP community that we well know, Kana, I'm more than sure that GangRPers would make this change a problem that would deteriorate the current state of SRP scenario in general, which already is very spoilt. Yes, a simple change like "let's disallow TTS to make things more realistic" would make things turn pretty fast.
At the end of the day, it's all the same thing.
Bringing more limitations to a type of roleplay that's already very limited would: 1. make most people throw their characters away as soon as they suffer a major and 2. turn almost, if not every major into a tongue/throat slashing shitfest. As funny as this sounds,
we all know the butterfly effect this would cause; , because
we all know the kind of community we're part of. Players would start complaining about majors just as much as they complain about KPS. Tongue/voice box damage would become the number one option for GangRPers when it comes to applying majors, because it would also be the option that would bring more limitations to a character than just cutting a limb, or taking an eye, and the characters who loses their ability to speak would immediately seek a prosthetic voice box, since they'd have
even more limitations which would make what's supposed to be fun, boring and extremely limited. The
immersion,
realism and
coherence that most feedback threads demand will only go lower, because the already mechanic GangRPers we know would become even more mechanical as they make every major being a damage against someone's throat or tongue.
On the same note, the server is supposed to be fun. No one wants to play a restrictive mime. TTS is a way players can get over the fact that their character is mute, just like characters get prosthetic replacements for their lost lim,
even though, IRL, prosthetic limbs are an expensive and hard-to-maintain state-of-the-art tool, being almost luxurious for one to acquire, and people who lose a limb don't immediately buy a prosthetic one.
"
If you don't want to lose a limb or a tongue, simply don't get yourself major perms" should not be a valid statement when you remember that you're playing on a server composed, by its majority, of perm-thirsty players.
This server's culture itself needs to be changed. Me and other players have been saying this; it's been spoken about in this thread:
SUGGESTION/RANT | GANGRP IS RUINING THE SERVER.
The toxic majority of the community that surrounds Criminal/GangRP made the criminal environment be the root of most of SRP's issues nowadays.
Yes, it's an actual butterfly effect. Although this suggestion has the intent of making the roleplay universe of SRP a more realistic and coherent environment, most players don't notice that, in order for the server to be
more realistic, the community, and not from whether mutes can use TTS or not, because until those changes don't happen, small, generous suggestions like yours will be stomped by the toxic scenario that is nowadays SRP,
because the community simply does not know how to role play.
In (not so short) short words, I agree that mutes using TTS 24/7 as if it was a normal way of communicating is not realistic. It's a very unrealistic way that players who roleplay mute characters adopted to communicate ICly (however, mute characters who find a way to balance their way of comunicating and not relying only on TTS deserve my respect), and yes, all mute characters should give JSL the importance it deserves, and recognize that, realistically, the sign language is a must-know to both mute and deaf people. But at the same time, this change would bring more limitations to mute characters,
enough limitations that would make playing a mute character unfun and would certainly turn the direction of every single major.
From my point of view,
TTS is not a big problem, and shouldn't be considered as so. Of all the mute characters I've met, most of them managed to balance between TTS, JSL and other ways of communication. I feel like there are more important areas that need much more attention than what this suggestion proposes, otherwise, minor changes in the roleplay environment such as this one will be crushed by the bigger problems the server currently faces.
SRP is in an almost paralyzing state, with complains regarding its roleplay dynamic coming from everywhere, where countless changes need to be made for the server to be a more organic and dynamic place to roleplay on. Whether TTS ir allowed or not, it won't change a lot of things, if anything. Overall, it's a
-1 from me.
Important reminder: this is purely my opinion. GangRP should
not become the point of this thread, because it's not what it proposes. My point is, it has come to a point that the real issues need to stop being ignored and
worked on, so they don't become large enough to be the root of the server, leaving suggestions with the intention of making things more verosimilar like this one almost impossible to work because half of the community would simply ruin it.
The "I hate reading" people's tl;dr: 1. This would make a type of roleplay that's already extremely limited, even more limited, mostly because of server-side and cultural limitations that take place on SRP; 2. The toxic (majority) side of the GangRP community wouldn't react to this in a nice way. Majors would be about one thing and one thing only; the removal of your character's speech abilities; 3. Whether TTS is allowed or not should
not be the focus of nowadays concerns regarding the server's dynamic and
organicness (find a better word). The community should, instead, think and suggest other ways of fixing the server's majors problems that we daily face.