IGN: IssuesIncluded
DATE: Jan 1st
WHAT YOU WANT TO SUGGEST OR MENTION: I hope this thread isn't seen as "another cliche anti-GangRP suggestion topic", because that isn't what this topic intends to be. The contrary, this thread supports the existance of GangRP. It brings variety to the server. However, over the course of the years, bad management has led to awful mores adopted by the community and unruly development of the GangRP environment that has taken us to the creation of at least five feedback threads against/complaining about GangRP every month, and sometimes, the solution for an issue might seem, at first, like it doesn't have anything to do with the problem itself at all.
In addition to the countless feedback threads posted in the last few months regarding the same exact topic, GangRP, this thread, just like the other responses I've posted in a few GangRP-related feedback threads, seeks to bring up points that were not discussed in any of the threads but that, in my opinion, would change things for the better. With that being said, buckle yourself up.
1. "GangRP is ruining the server":
This was the title of this thread (this inserted link also takes you to my response, which criticizes the server's current state, the way that the management deals with it, and most of the community's lack of creativity. Consider reading it), a thread with the intent of bringing up a few solutions to one of the main issues the server is currently facing (which, in my opinion, weren't really suggestions that would change anything, but instead make the roleplay environment more mechanical). Most, if not all of the problems brought up by the thread's poster were already acknowledged by the server's management. However, I felt like those proposed suggestions weren't consistent.
In my response, I made it clear that the issues brought up in the thread were deeper than most members of the community imagined. The current rules force the roleplay environment to be less dynamic and more mechanic. A list of permissions and when you can or not use them is certainly something that simply kills most (if not all) of the authenticity; you don't feel like you're roleplaying anymore. Although you are, indeed, playing a character, this server's culture acquired over the years, and the way things have developed force the character to follow strict guidelines as if they existed in the IC universe. It's impossible to have something organic when you realize that the rules forced upon the player make everything robotical and mechanical.
I'm aware of KimiNoUso's response explaining that the permissions system is being revamped. Even though, I didn't feel like I've had made my point clear, and maybe this first topic could change the track of a few things.
2. The solution for criminal factions with little to no supervision: (for further reference, the word "faction" refers to criminal families and gangs)
What was written above is the reason why the GangRP community is so toxic. Rules that naturally drive players into treating this server as game more than actual roleplay are the reason why more than half of the GangRP community is toxic. And worse than that are criminal factions led by toxic players admitted by staff members and the server's management itself. This was another point I brought up on my response.
2.1. The creation of a better (and more effective) Faction Team;
For a criminal faction to be disbanded, it needs to either 1. Be reported by a lot of people or 2. Have committed the mistake of their lives (and be caught doing so). Most, if not all of criminal factions are not surpervised. This means that if a faction's leader is banned for toxicity, or if half of that faction's members are constantly being banned, or if those same members constantly receive warnings and are known for being rule-breakers and/or FailRPers, the faction will not close, unless it is 100% unbearing. As I also said in the previous thread, GangRP is driven by the many criminal faction we have. If the GangRP community is toxic and unbearing for most of the community, then it means someone is going unsupervised. More than half of criminal characters belong to a faction, and more than half of the occurrences of rule breaking are made by players who belong to a faction. This is not me saying that a faction should be punished everytime its member receives an administrative sanction. The point is; in order to make Gang and CriminalRP a more organic and less-toxic place, factions should enforce the own server's rules just like they enforce their own, and factions which have a lot of constant and insistent break rulers should be punished. The staff team should keep an eye on every faction.
With this being said, I remind the two previous quotes located above of the previous paragraph. And beyond that, I suggest more.
2.2. [!] Factions Information sub-forum and factions topics;
A sub-forum (area in the forum) that would contain every faction's thread, criminal and governmental (criminals, governmental; KPD, City Government, The Shrine, Christian Church, etc.), posted by their respective leaders. This would guarantee faction transparency, communication between every faction's leadership and the SRP community and would, at last, showcase the faction's information, roleplay quality, activity and more, attracting more members and, most of all, diversity within the server. The idea of each topic would be to showcase and present the faction to the community, containing its lore and any additional information the poster might want to include.
In order for a faction to be recognized (be able to be verified and even advertised), it'd need to have its topic, meaning that one of the first steps to create a faction would be to create a lore and post a topic presenting it on the new factions sub-forum. This would also lead to more lore-driven factions, dynamic and creativity, since a topic of a copycat faction would probably be made fun of, therefore, descouraged.
No, the point of this isn't to simply showcase factions, but also to increase transparency and better administrative monitoring methods within the staff team, since they would have knowledge of (almost) every faction that takes place on the server, and so would the community. Topics would be open; this means, anyone would be able to comment. This would bring more room for discussion; just like it works on the characters biography section and a few factions who happen to have their topics on the roleplay documents section.
Those topics can also be used for lowkey announcements made by the faction, which could be exposed to the public eye. Obviously, factions could advertise themselves through their own thread; advertising their Discord, services, etc.
2.3. Faction Rules;
If a sub-forum for all the factions is created, I also suggest the creation of faction guidelines, a simple, short set of rules that would guide leaders and the factions' own members, acknowledging faction leaders that they are responsible for the faction's roleplay quality, that the server's rules must be enforced within the faction, that staff members (or F action Team members) must have full access to their Discord, that the faction's leadership must maintain and cherish a non-toxic external relationship with other factions and leaders (and expect their members to do so), and other types of rules that would enforce general authenticity, quality and, most of all, less-toxicity.
Holding faction leaders accountable for their members' actions is extremely important. If this was a rule before, the GangRP community wouldn't be as toxic and reckless as it is nowadays. Leaders should also be responsible for making sure that the faction's portrayal is realistic, and that its members know how to separate OOC from IC (and vice-versa), do not metagame and abide to the faction and server's rules.
3. Rule suggestion; Character Development:
The rule that is about to be brought up can heavily impact the current roleplay scenario in every way possible. It's important that you expose your ideas about it.
3.1. Character Development (a replacement for Rule 10);
Every player must keep a coherent line of development for their character, making it punishable if a character who was once a gangster decides to be a Police Officer or a Medical Doctor with little to no reason or development. This does not only include inconsisent/irrealistic IC profissional decisions, but personal, financial and social choices as well. Characters must be as realistic as possible, who make realistic choices based on their story of life, personality and other types of points that may be an influential change-point in their life.
[!] For example, a Police Cadet who already owns one of the most expensive cars in the market without having an actual development for it, or a gang member who suddenly decides to snitch on the entirety of their gang, causing serious IC consequences that wouldn't happen if the player who played said character followed their character's development properly. Or even so, a player who completely changes the development of their character to avoid some kind of IC consequence. In the same fashion, throwaway characters would automatically fall upon this rule.
"There will never ever be a way the staff team can enforce this rule"; this statement should not be the reason for not adding this rule. No, admins and moderators don't need to watch every single character to find out who is following the rule or not. Players who have enough evidence that someone is poorly developing their character (or simply not developing at all) can report them, or staff members who somehow happened to caught it happening can act. Just like the current Rule 10 is a hard-to-prove rule, this suggestion is just the same. However, it covers more things; it makes poorly developed characters actually punishable.
Poorly developed characters often bring inconsistency to the roleplay scenario, and can often bring other players IC consequences that simply would not happen in real life because, in real life, people have consistent reasonings to do things. and will never break them.
4. Staff Reception & Support:
A lot of players have waited for a response from the staff team regarding a project they were working on, but received no response (I brought this same topic up here). A server where almost (if not all) projects are dependent on the player and the player only (because the staff will not offer you the support that you sometimes need) is expected not to have much creative projects. Me, and most players can assure that most of SRP's factions are copycats of one another, with exception of a very few. If the community received the support it needs, this server would have lots of more diversity, and would be a more dyanmic place to roleplay on.
The following is a quote from my response, taken from the previous link;
4.1. Projects;
This thread was not made to blame any staff member. However, it's simple; from an outside view, the staff team either has strict guidelines which stop them from giving players the support that they need for their project, or staff members simply are not encouraged to support players with their project.
There should be a system in which a player can present their (faction) project (in case they feel like their project could reach its maximum capacity if they had the Staff's support) and present a list of what they would need to give continuity to their project, for example; a player is working to prepare a criminal faction. However, due to the faction's nature, their leader would need to be an adult for better immersion. Said player presents their project; their faction's lore, how their faction would act, planned members, etc. Simple as that. A player shouldn't wait for half an OOC year to be an adult, or work for 2 to 3 months at a job where they do not want to be.
Players should not be taken away from their fun by a single argument; "the server is named SCHOOLRP" (this argument shouldn't be valid since all of these factions hold student characters), nor should they need to wait 2-6 months to actually do what they want to do, and supply the community with the amazing projects they have in mind, held back by a system that severely limits your experience. From what I see, there is no reason the Staff should have strict guidelines regarding this. Simply formalize a way to receive and rate projects sent by the community, accept promising projects and ideas and supply the leaders of said projects with the things they need to begin their project. I have met people with amazing promising projects of civilian factions that were simply held back by the strict guidelines of "wait 6 months or get a job". If only projects were taken more seriously, maybe the server would be facing a different situation right now.
Reminder: if projects were taken seriously by the Staff Team, we would be facing a completely different reality. Let go of strict guidelines that limit the community and start to make exceptions for actual promising projects. Make a system for the receiving and evaluation of projects and ideas sent by community members.
HOW WILL THIS BENEFIT THE SERVER/COMMUNITY?: The changes mentioned here would not solve all of SRP's problems regarding the GangRP environment, but with the changes that are already being worked on by the staff team, and the changes proposed over the months, along with this very thread, I believe that it'd be a great step for the SRP's community itself.
I know that no one will agree with all of the points brought up in this thread. With this being said, it's important that everyone leaves their opinion about what was written here.
DATE: Jan 1st
WHAT YOU WANT TO SUGGEST OR MENTION: I hope this thread isn't seen as "another cliche anti-GangRP suggestion topic", because that isn't what this topic intends to be. The contrary, this thread supports the existance of GangRP. It brings variety to the server. However, over the course of the years, bad management has led to awful mores adopted by the community and unruly development of the GangRP environment that has taken us to the creation of at least five feedback threads against/complaining about GangRP every month, and sometimes, the solution for an issue might seem, at first, like it doesn't have anything to do with the problem itself at all.
In addition to the countless feedback threads posted in the last few months regarding the same exact topic, GangRP, this thread, just like the other responses I've posted in a few GangRP-related feedback threads, seeks to bring up points that were not discussed in any of the threads but that, in my opinion, would change things for the better. With that being said, buckle yourself up.
1. "GangRP is ruining the server":
This was the title of this thread (this inserted link also takes you to my response, which criticizes the server's current state, the way that the management deals with it, and most of the community's lack of creativity. Consider reading it), a thread with the intent of bringing up a few solutions to one of the main issues the server is currently facing (which, in my opinion, weren't really suggestions that would change anything, but instead make the roleplay environment more mechanical). Most, if not all of the problems brought up by the thread's poster were already acknowledged by the server's management. However, I felt like those proposed suggestions weren't consistent.
In my response, I made it clear that the issues brought up in the thread were deeper than most members of the community imagined. The current rules force the roleplay environment to be less dynamic and more mechanic. A list of permissions and when you can or not use them is certainly something that simply kills most (if not all) of the authenticity; you don't feel like you're roleplaying anymore. Although you are, indeed, playing a character, this server's culture acquired over the years, and the way things have developed force the character to follow strict guidelines as if they existed in the IC universe. It's impossible to have something organic when you realize that the rules forced upon the player make everything robotical and mechanical.
I'm aware of KimiNoUso's response explaining that the permissions system is being revamped. Even though, I didn't feel like I've had made my point clear, and maybe this first topic could change the track of a few things.
2. The solution for criminal factions with little to no supervision: (for further reference, the word "faction" refers to criminal families and gangs)
What was written above is the reason why the GangRP community is so toxic. Rules that naturally drive players into treating this server as game more than actual roleplay are the reason why more than half of the GangRP community is toxic. And worse than that are criminal factions led by toxic players admitted by staff members and the server's management itself. This was another point I brought up on my response.
2.1. The creation of a better (and more effective) Faction Team;
For a criminal faction to be disbanded, it needs to either 1. Be reported by a lot of people or 2. Have committed the mistake of their lives (and be caught doing so). Most, if not all of criminal factions are not surpervised. This means that if a faction's leader is banned for toxicity, or if half of that faction's members are constantly being banned, or if those same members constantly receive warnings and are known for being rule-breakers and/or FailRPers, the faction will not close, unless it is 100% unbearing. As I also said in the previous thread, GangRP is driven by the many criminal faction we have. If the GangRP community is toxic and unbearing for most of the community, then it means someone is going unsupervised. More than half of criminal characters belong to a faction, and more than half of the occurrences of rule breaking are made by players who belong to a faction. This is not me saying that a faction should be punished everytime its member receives an administrative sanction. The point is; in order to make Gang and CriminalRP a more organic and less-toxic place, factions should enforce the own server's rules just like they enforce their own, and factions which have a lot of constant and insistent break rulers should be punished. The staff team should keep an eye on every faction.
With this being said, I remind the two previous quotes located above of the previous paragraph. And beyond that, I suggest more.
2.2. [!] Factions Information sub-forum and factions topics;
A sub-forum (area in the forum) that would contain every faction's thread, criminal and governmental (criminals, governmental; KPD, City Government, The Shrine, Christian Church, etc.), posted by their respective leaders. This would guarantee faction transparency, communication between every faction's leadership and the SRP community and would, at last, showcase the faction's information, roleplay quality, activity and more, attracting more members and, most of all, diversity within the server. The idea of each topic would be to showcase and present the faction to the community, containing its lore and any additional information the poster might want to include.
In order for a faction to be recognized (be able to be verified and even advertised), it'd need to have its topic, meaning that one of the first steps to create a faction would be to create a lore and post a topic presenting it on the new factions sub-forum. This would also lead to more lore-driven factions, dynamic and creativity, since a topic of a copycat faction would probably be made fun of, therefore, descouraged.
No, the point of this isn't to simply showcase factions, but also to increase transparency and better administrative monitoring methods within the staff team, since they would have knowledge of (almost) every faction that takes place on the server, and so would the community. Topics would be open; this means, anyone would be able to comment. This would bring more room for discussion; just like it works on the characters biography section and a few factions who happen to have their topics on the roleplay documents section.
Those topics can also be used for lowkey announcements made by the faction, which could be exposed to the public eye. Obviously, factions could advertise themselves through their own thread; advertising their Discord, services, etc.
2.3. Faction Rules;
If a sub-forum for all the factions is created, I also suggest the creation of faction guidelines, a simple, short set of rules that would guide leaders and the factions' own members, acknowledging faction leaders that they are responsible for the faction's roleplay quality, that the server's rules must be enforced within the faction, that staff members (or F action Team members) must have full access to their Discord, that the faction's leadership must maintain and cherish a non-toxic external relationship with other factions and leaders (and expect their members to do so), and other types of rules that would enforce general authenticity, quality and, most of all, less-toxicity.
Holding faction leaders accountable for their members' actions is extremely important. If this was a rule before, the GangRP community wouldn't be as toxic and reckless as it is nowadays. Leaders should also be responsible for making sure that the faction's portrayal is realistic, and that its members know how to separate OOC from IC (and vice-versa), do not metagame and abide to the faction and server's rules.
3. Rule suggestion; Character Development:
The rule that is about to be brought up can heavily impact the current roleplay scenario in every way possible. It's important that you expose your ideas about it.
3.1. Character Development (a replacement for Rule 10);
Every player must keep a coherent line of development for their character, making it punishable if a character who was once a gangster decides to be a Police Officer or a Medical Doctor with little to no reason or development. This does not only include inconsisent/irrealistic IC profissional decisions, but personal, financial and social choices as well. Characters must be as realistic as possible, who make realistic choices based on their story of life, personality and other types of points that may be an influential change-point in their life.
[!] For example, a Police Cadet who already owns one of the most expensive cars in the market without having an actual development for it, or a gang member who suddenly decides to snitch on the entirety of their gang, causing serious IC consequences that wouldn't happen if the player who played said character followed their character's development properly. Or even so, a player who completely changes the development of their character to avoid some kind of IC consequence. In the same fashion, throwaway characters would automatically fall upon this rule.
"There will never ever be a way the staff team can enforce this rule"; this statement should not be the reason for not adding this rule. No, admins and moderators don't need to watch every single character to find out who is following the rule or not. Players who have enough evidence that someone is poorly developing their character (or simply not developing at all) can report them, or staff members who somehow happened to caught it happening can act. Just like the current Rule 10 is a hard-to-prove rule, this suggestion is just the same. However, it covers more things; it makes poorly developed characters actually punishable.
Poorly developed characters often bring inconsistency to the roleplay scenario, and can often bring other players IC consequences that simply would not happen in real life because, in real life, people have consistent reasonings to do things. and will never break them.
4. Staff Reception & Support:
A lot of players have waited for a response from the staff team regarding a project they were working on, but received no response (I brought this same topic up here). A server where almost (if not all) projects are dependent on the player and the player only (because the staff will not offer you the support that you sometimes need) is expected not to have much creative projects. Me, and most players can assure that most of SRP's factions are copycats of one another, with exception of a very few. If the community received the support it needs, this server would have lots of more diversity, and would be a more dyanmic place to roleplay on.
The following is a quote from my response, taken from the previous link;
4.1. Projects;
This thread was not made to blame any staff member. However, it's simple; from an outside view, the staff team either has strict guidelines which stop them from giving players the support that they need for their project, or staff members simply are not encouraged to support players with their project.
There should be a system in which a player can present their (faction) project (in case they feel like their project could reach its maximum capacity if they had the Staff's support) and present a list of what they would need to give continuity to their project, for example; a player is working to prepare a criminal faction. However, due to the faction's nature, their leader would need to be an adult for better immersion. Said player presents their project; their faction's lore, how their faction would act, planned members, etc. Simple as that. A player shouldn't wait for half an OOC year to be an adult, or work for 2 to 3 months at a job where they do not want to be.
Players should not be taken away from their fun by a single argument; "the server is named SCHOOLRP" (this argument shouldn't be valid since all of these factions hold student characters), nor should they need to wait 2-6 months to actually do what they want to do, and supply the community with the amazing projects they have in mind, held back by a system that severely limits your experience. From what I see, there is no reason the Staff should have strict guidelines regarding this. Simply formalize a way to receive and rate projects sent by the community, accept promising projects and ideas and supply the leaders of said projects with the things they need to begin their project. I have met people with amazing promising projects of civilian factions that were simply held back by the strict guidelines of "wait 6 months or get a job". If only projects were taken more seriously, maybe the server would be facing a different situation right now.
Reminder: if projects were taken seriously by the Staff Team, we would be facing a completely different reality. Let go of strict guidelines that limit the community and start to make exceptions for actual promising projects. Make a system for the receiving and evaluation of projects and ideas sent by community members.
HOW WILL THIS BENEFIT THE SERVER/COMMUNITY?: The changes mentioned here would not solve all of SRP's problems regarding the GangRP environment, but with the changes that are already being worked on by the staff team, and the changes proposed over the months, along with this very thread, I believe that it'd be a great step for the SRP's community itself.
I know that no one will agree with all of the points brought up in this thread. With this being said, it's important that everyone leaves their opinion about what was written here.
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