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Conversation #2: Not Valuing Freedom

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rayuu
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Read the Introductory Post before you start reading here: https://feedback.newchance.network/en/communities/1/topics/422-operation-lets-have-a-convo

Given a lot of warning levels have been escalated because of this rule, we would love to get some feedback on what some of you think about this rule in particular! Please keep the conversation civil and I hope we can get ample feedback for it!
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Not valuing your freedom
Committing loud or highly visible criminal acts, violent or non-violent, in or near areas that would be highly populated such as, government buildings, job locations or business' within the city is not allowed unless proper logical RP has taken place prior.

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Barry S | Stanley K

(sorry, this got a little bit away from me...and I may have suggested an entirely new punishment system, but if you can stand it, I think I might make a coherent point here somewhere...)

I think the most problematic part about the current way the rules regarding this are written is that it's actually included in 2 places, but worded ever-so-slightly different.

While you have the original post portion of the rule, there's also a section in the Rules of Engagement section:

  • Be mindful of highly visible public locations, Food joints, public job locations, public buildings. Places what would have some sort of CCTV and pedestrian presence, have some imagination.

This expands on the rule above to include "pedestrian presence" and the concept of "have some imagination".

Like Zopfco originally mentioned and both Pedro and Jimmy touched on, not only could you make the argument that CCTV cameras would be on every business, but also most or all higher "class" apartment buildings would have them, and a lot of parking lots even have them. 


Also, some CCTV cameras are pretty good these days, so that expands the plausible distance away from a one of these building types that a person using their imagination may feel warrants a report for breaking this rule.

Heck, with Nest and other smart doorbell systems nowadays, someone could argue that most of the homes in the richer areas would have their own motion-sensor activated doorbell cam. This makes break-ins in those areas effectively rule-breaking and reportable offences.

Then, if you bring in the "pedestrian presence" factor, which, in the context of the first and last parts of the sentence, is basically everywhere that isn't "rural" when it's daytime.

The ambiguity in the language really leaves so much to interpretation that one may not even know they are breaking a rule purely due to how someone else interprets the language.

Additionally, and I think this is tangentially related, what happens when you interpret this rule "the right way", say by not engaging someone who shoots at you at a public job location, but you have to respawn because there's no EMS on and you lose items? Are you able to request a comp in that case?

Sure, the offender may get points or even a ban, but if you can't make that request or the request gets denied, it has the potential to turn the non-offending party off the server entirely. I know I'd be pretty irritated if I had just bought drugs to sell and downed me improperly and I lost everything because I followed the rules and they didn't.

I'm sure that last point has a different, more appropriate section, but I do feel it helps make the case to create a system, like the suggested greenzones, where that situation is unambiguously dealt with in the same way every time:

- You are in a greenzone and get shot at and don't retaliate, you can be comped what you lost.

- You travel to a greenzone to avoid getting killed, regardless of retaliation, you cannot be comped.
- You are in a greenzone and attacked and you retaliate, you have also broken the rule and you cannot be comped.

While I do see an argument that could be made about greenzones being inherently "anti-RP" (i.e. not trying to get political, but people still bring guns into 'gun-free' zones IRL), I think that creating places where illegal activity is unequivocally disallowed is necessary to avoid ambiguity and to restrict the interpretation aspect of punishment enforcement to only those places where that enforcement was intended.

(Now, in the rest of this post, I'll fully admit that I've never been arrested in city, so I have no idea how long people usually get sent to jail/prison for...also, I fully acknowledge that this is like, a complete overhaul of the idea of NFV, maybe prison/jail as well, and extremely ambitious, so please bear with me...)

Finally, I agree with Blanco that different characters should be allowed to value their freedom differently.

Additionally, I think that I might have come up with a potential way to handle that (this is where shit gets...complicated?...):

If the greenzone system is something that is possible, infractions inside a greenzone could be considered a "mitigating circumstance" and the report and evidence from the "greenzone cameras" could be used as cause to apprehend the suspect and increase their jail time from a normal charge, rather than putting it through the points/ban system.

So, let's say, for example, "assault with a deadly weapon" is 20 "months" for a 1st offence. Well now, it's "assault with a deadly weapon in a hospital zone/governmental zone/etc" and it's 30 "months" instead. Each subsequent greenzone-related offence is an increases in this time: 60 "months" for the 2nd offence, 5 "years" for the 3rd, and keeps increasing from there (numbers aren't particularly important for the example).


This way, the punishment would be more like an IRL 3 strikes rule, where the frequency of the same/similar NVF behaviour would eventually put the character in jail for so long that character would effectively be banned. The offending player's only options would be to sit in jail/prison, where they can't do that undesirable thing again anyway, or they just have to spend their entire time in jail/prison anyway, away from other players and the possibility of doing that particular action.

I think this adds an interesting set of effects/benefits:

1) It takes the punishment portion of this type of infraction out of the hands of staff, freeing them up to address other reports.

The reports of these infractions could still be initially reviewed by staff, but enforced directly through the police/legal system itself in-game.

I know that's probably not a major difference, as the reviewing of the report is probably the most time-consuming part, but I think it still affords the opportunity for the offending party to explain their side of the story, using RP, without wrapping up staff.

2) This change provides additional RP for police/lawyers/judges in the apprehension and ensuing court case.

3) It provides those players who are looking for an RP situation that puts them in jail longer (being a 'lifer') an additional opportunity to get their time up very quickly, while also penalizing those offending players who are not looking for that.

I fully acknowledge that this may also require some sort of secondary punishment system in the jail/prison where, if someone who is guilty of these offenses becomes a problem (read: troll) inside. I was thinking about a solitary confinement system of some description OR problem players (read: trolls again) can just be dealt with conventionally and banned for as long as staff feels is appropriate, as that is always an option through the current Warning & Punishment System.

I hope I didn't Billy Madison that description up too bad and, as I said above, I acknowledge that it's quite far-reaching and potentially way out there, but the idea was sparked and I figured I'd share it to see if I could start a fire.

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Diezel

First I would like to touch on Green Zones aKa Safe Zones. I think the most logical places need to be safe zones. Taco Libre was mentioned somewhere and I do not feel that qualifies as a Safe Zone. It is located in Vagos territory. If you made the inside a safe zone that would just be as good as spitting on the Vagos by putting a spot like that in the middle of their place.
However a rule we used on a server I was an admin for was basically this. If you are standing in a Safe Zone, you cannot cause any violence. If violence starts outside of a safe zone and it is brought in, the RP is allowed to continue. And it should only be applied to the big places. Zonah, Any PD department, Fire Departments, City Hall, Licensing etc...


However i don't think anyone likes the idea of hearing the word Safe Zone or Green Zone in RP. So I present 

Low-Crime Areas

  1. There are no Crime Free Areas. We define areas that are traditionally “crime free” as Low Crime areas. Criminal activity can take place in these areas but the crimes are generally “victimless”. So while you can't be robbed or murdered in these areas, you might find someone selling drugs there.
  2. If you are committing a victimless crime in a Low Crime Area, you may be the victim of a violent crime (so you aren't safe from a beatdown by your rival gangbangers just because you're selling weed near the bank).
  • If a crime was initiated outside of a low-crime area but the scene moved into a low-crime area, the scene may continue. The crime must have been CLEARLY and IC'ly initiated.
    1. If you've already fired shots at someone or, in no uncertain terms, verbally initiated them of your intent to do them harm, and they run to the bank, you may still assault them at the bank.
    2. If all you've done is chase a character, you may not initiate a violent crime in a low-crime area.
  • If a violent crime is committed in a Low-Crime Area (per the rules above), the perpetrators are still subject to any IC results that may occur (due to these places having CCTV).
  • Low Crime Areas include:
    1. Government buildings (I.e., police and fire stations, prison and city hall).
    2. Hospitals
    3. Banks (ATM's not included)
    4. LS International Airport (the other airports are not Low Crime areas!)
    5. Player Businesses/White List Job Locations
    6. Ammunation

Then making clarification around violent crimes that would happen in these places to spell out the situations better for easier understanding.


Murder and Contract Killing

  • Murder

There are dangerous people in the GTA Universe and dangerous people sometimes have to deal with other dangerous people. All too often, when one dangerous person causes too many problems for another, the end of that story involves murder.

  • You must always have a good reason to kill someone. It shouldn’t ever be done out of convenience. The goal for everyone on New Chance is to create interesting, ongoing stories. Players should look for alternative ways to deal with their problems than simply turning to murder as soon as it becomes convenient or they feel “eligible”. When a murder happens, you will almost certainly be asked to answer questions about the death, why it happened, what other avenues of resolution you explored, etc.
    • It should be noted that a good reason doesn’t always mean you’re defending yourself or others, but those are almost always the easiest to justify. In example a gold-digging mistress who would prefer her rich lover’s wife was out of the picture, but knows her lover would never leave, and would likely dump the mistress if her lover was forced to make a choice. The mistress might have “a good reason” as well. We don’t want meaningless, random murders but a player with a really good story shouldn’t have to fear letting it get told.

Contract Killing

Contract Killing is the act of hiring out the task of committing a murder. On New Chance we see a contracted killer as a catalyst: we understand that a murder attempt would likely happen without their involvement; the killer is just the "weapon" being used.

  1. The character for hire is called the patron. The employer is called the contractor and the intended victim is the target.
  2. The patron is responsible for abiding by the server rules and guidelines regarding the killing of the target.
  3. The contractor is responsible for ensuring, to the best of their ability, that the patron is not DM’ing. The Patron is technically the Contractors weapon. So hiring someone to kill someone for no reason would be no different then you DM'ing someone yourself. Making you just as liable.
  4. Payment may be cash, favors, material goods, or whatever other considerations the contracting parties might be willing to accept.
  5. The patron and contractor may be in the same organization, in different organizations or they may not be in organizations at all. In example a mob boss telling one of his underlings to kill someone is, essentially, contract for murder, as is the drug kingpin who puts out a hit on the detective who is about to close down his operation.
  6. There should be some kind of proof of the contract. Either Discord written statements and agreements, or a recorded memory of the verbal agreement.
  7. Unless an org receives special consideration, no organization may exist with the sole purpose of committing murder.

This would be a much nicer route to go. Vague situations makes things overly confusing. Spelling it out a little more not only defends the player but the server for situations.




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rayuu
I don't think I can personally see us using IC methods to deal with this. We have tried in the past but that relies on a strong front from the police themselves and also a lot of people just being unable to roleplay at their favorite places.

Before we invented NVF, we had people posting clips of them shooting up police officers at our old police academy, a place that was meant purely for training new officers. They found some reason to go in there and murder 4-5 officers.

We also had people having shootouts at Pillbox and Mount Zonah, like a LOT of them. We had atleast 3 or 4 major incidents at the hospitals where people were constantly at war as soon as they came out of the ICU.

We also had numerous shootouts at Burgershot, which was a public job AND right across from the police station to the point officers could not leave the area to give roleplay to different areas of the map because shots would ring out. We even took a stance before we implemented this rule and roleplayed as security guards to survey the area and generally make a stance against the shootouts, and someone tried to pull out a gun unprompted to shoot us down. (Luckily we had automatics that mowed him down instantly-- which conflicts with this rule now but that's kind of what you get when you mess with a security guard!)

People will see it as a fun RP opportunity to get in trouble with the cops if it becomes a means to have fun in game at the expense of ruining an otherwise chill environment. So that's one thing I cannot see us doing without it costing the quality of life of people who just want to go to a place and hang out and not die.

Also, @Barry S | Stanley K | Quincy, I don't know where you got this assumption that you can't get a revive after being a victim of this rule or any other rule. We revive people all the time in these situations. All you have to do is ask in your player report for a revive.  If you make the choice to go into the ICU or to respawn we just can't help via a comp.

With that aside, I have taken some notes from this, thank you guys for your conversations on this topic! I know I'm coming in a bit late but it's because I'm actively now in the process of writing down everyones feedback and ideas. You are all very appreciated.

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Zopfco
Before we invented NVF, we had people posting clips of them shooting up police officers at our old police academy, a place that was meant purely for training new officers. They found some reason to go in there and murder 4-5 officers.

We also had people having shootouts at Pillbox and Mount Zonah, like a LOT of them. We had atleast 3 or 4 major incidents at the hospitals where people were constantly at war as soon as they came out of the ICU.

Right, if it's a rules violation to do that in those locations (as I agree it usually should be) they're effectively green zones anyway.  May as well mark them clearly so there's no confusion or excuses.

If someone has a good RP reason to try a jail break or kidnap someone from a hospital, a good plan, & the means to pull it off maybe let them open a ticket and get a mod to sign off on it. Give PD a little bit of a heads up that something might happen.  Same rule could apply to raiding houses & other situations where it's not really fair to do it unopposed just because the other party isn't available in that moment.

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rayuu
Quote from Zopfco
Before we invented NVF, we had people posting clips of them shooting up police officers at our old police academy, a place that was meant purely for training new officers. They found some reason to go in there and murder 4-5 officers.

We also had people having shootouts at Pillbox and Mount Zonah, like a LOT of them. We had atleast 3 or 4 major incidents at the hospitals where people were constantly at war as soon as they came out of the ICU.

Right, if it's a rules violation to do that in those locations (as I agree it usually should be) they're effectively green zones anyway.  May as well mark them clearly so there's no confusion or excuses.

If someone has a good RP reason to try a jail break or kidnap someone from a hospital, a good plan, & the means to pull it off maybe let them open a ticket and get a mod to sign off on it. Give PD a little bit of a heads up that something might happen.  Same rule could apply to raiding houses & other situations where it's not really fair to do it unopposed just because the other party isn't available in that moment.

Most jailbreak or kidnap situations really have no time for you to be able to give a simple nudge to mods and I feel like by the time mods would see it they may say no but the guys done it anyways lol. I wouldn't encourage that method. I do agree with the raiding thing, but the notion that someone is doing what is usually a rulebreak for a reason and giving them that ability to do that will stir up waaaay too much discourse.


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