Mafia RP. But wheres the RP?

[DwayneJohnson]

     Over the past couple of weeks on this server I have been roaming the city.  I have been going from place to place, getting into fights, outrunning the cops, and doing anything a normal criminal has done.  I then realize something very important, where are the Mafias?  Where is this so-called "Mafia RP?"  This is where it is folks.

drumroll please!


     Nowhere!  Yep, this Mafia RP is nowhere.  All of the mafias on this server sits inside of their bases and just make drugs and nothing else.  I have, on numerous occasions, tried contacting and becoming a member of a Mafia, and one after another the characters were either PK'd or just ignored by the mafias.  Is this seriously how Mafia RP works?  Is this what people truly want to experience when they join this server?  I will answer this rhetorical question with a simple answer; N.O.  

     The so-called "Mafia RP" of the server is non-existent all they do is sit in their little hotel or motel or compound and make drugs, they just sit there and don't do anything.  I have seen no one, not one actual RP encounter occurs.  There is no corruption, no embezzlement, no gang shootouts, nothing!  The extent of the RP I have seen is some bald person in a white shirt that goes by the name Grim Reaper of the Lucahese family gun down 5 people in front of their hotel for asking for a room and to join their family.  These mafias bring nothing good to roleplay other than cock blocking most of the civilians in the game of precious resources such as Cold Medicine and Muriatic Acid.  The lack of Upper Administration enforcement of actual RP has caused these little cliques as they are referred to now, not even called mafias, to become just husks of what an actual mafia is supposed to be.  A mafia is supposed to ensure their PR is spot on, they should be familiar with the police, they should be attacking passively or actively other mafias in order to establish a monopoly on the drug, weapons, or whatever trade they provide.  They do none of those!  They do not even operate how a mafia is supposed to work!  I cannot stress that enough it is shocking to someone who not only understands roleplay but understands mafia life as a whole.  

     Along with all of that, these mafias extent of their RP is buying up as many properties as they can.  I have counted and calculated that 95% of the buildings in the server are owned by two different mafias.  What?!  How can a normal civilian do anything enjoyable when they just get blocked by mafias trying to buy more buildings to make drugs in.  Along with that added so many new factions like there is shouldn't be a thing.  This is Mafia RP, not gang RP!  There should be 1 Triad, 1 Cartel, 2 Mafias (Mafias are Italian families), 1 Mob (Not Italian families, Irish mob, the Russian mob, etc), 1 Gang, and that's it.  Having 5 different families and 3 different mobs that all have fewer members midday on a weekend than a police force at 3 am on a Monday every day is absurd.  I don't understand what goes through the Upper Administrations' minds that decides; "Oh there isn't much RP and a lot of people are complaining?  Let's just add more factions."  It appears that the Upper Administration has never run a server before so let me quickly run it down for you; The more factions you have, the more spread out the manpower is, if you have 10 crime families (which is about how many there is), and you have 20 people each one is going to get about 2 people.  But, if you have 6 crime families, you will have more people per faction.  Upper Administration believes that diversity through multiple criminal organizations makes RP, but they fail to realize that it is not based on the diversity of organizations, but the people who run it.  I made a Triad organization application that has been denied and would have actually had proper roleplay in it but was denied due to not being on time.  That is fine it is my fault for not applying in time, but what is confusing is adding 3 more Italian criminal families when there are already so many.  If you want to see the application it is found here:  https://divergenetworks.com/forums/showt...hp?tid=231

     So my readers, what is the solution that Mr. Johnson proposes to make Mafia RP a proper and enjoyable experience that can rival even the infamous Mobsters Paradise?  It is simple, Upper Administration gets off their ass!  The UA or Head Gamemaster should actually enforce activity and enforce roleplay in each faction.  They should monitor, in secret, each family and what they do over a course of a week, once they do that and see what each family does on a normal basis without Upper Administration telling them they are monitoring them would show what they truly do on a daily basis.  Once that is established you go into a faction leader meeting with all mafias, and you tell them to get off their asses or their application will be revoked.  You should then revoke whoever application that did the least RP and tell the rest of them to get going.  The Gamemaster team, if there even is one, has become Laissez-faire.  They are not only RP controllers but are also moderators.  You need to have a dedicated Gamemaster team, if you don't, your RP dies.  If you don't have a proper Head Gamemaster, your Gamemaster team dies, if you don't have a proper Upper Administration, your server dies.  People will complain about Gamemaster involvement, which is fine.  You cannot start a dead engine if you do not jump start it.  

     And so my fellow RP'ers on Diverge Networks.  This is the state of RP from a third-person perspective.  Agree or disagree is your choice but this is exactly what occurs despite the personal opinion of the matter.  Thank you for reading and send this to Upper Administration and tell them to get off their high horse and start enforcing for RP!  

Truly yours,
A person who cares.

[Pendred]

I agree with basically every point you've made, but this is what MafiaRP has been for a while now, this is what people want.

[Sydney]

So I am going to both agree and disagree with you on this one. There are specific points that I do agree with and others I do not, so let me explain. 

For the mafia families only staying in their properties and doing drugs: Not inherently true. I've been in mafia families for a while now, and let me tell you, most of the exciting things happen behind the scenes. They are things that aren't seen in broad daylight. Deals happen behind doors, parties are thrown for those exclusive enough, and killings are almost always private. That's the point of mafias, they're not supposed to have these insane shootouts and news-breaking headlines that everybody on the server knows about. They work from the shadows, and if you have the patience and hard work enough to endure it, you will see things through the cracks. It's more intricate than you realize. Two weeks isn't enough for you to see even a sliver of things, I can promise you that. 

For the (lack of) RP going on: I am annoyed at the lack of roleplay, to be honest. There is rarely any passive properties open--MafiaRP is all about making money now, which saddens me because my favorite part about RP is passive properties. Whether it's bars, clubs, or parties happening, there seems to be a complete lack of it. I get bored because everybody is making money instead of roleplaying. While it makes sense, it's frustrating. I do everything I can to try to keep up passive RP by going to bars, throwing parties/events, and having conversations, but there's only so much one person can do. Events shouldn't just be "here is this thing that's going on, and here are weapons/drugs you can have." There should be festivals, parties, concerts, etc. that happen, even small things like mysterious figures, tensions, or strange happenings going around the city as events. There just needs to be more roleplay and less worrying about the economy. In my opinion, Mobster's Paradise was at its best when the economy was broken because people could actually roleplay and have fun instead of being obsessed with making money. That's probably a pretty controversial opinion, but for me, that's how I feel.

For the factions: I agree that there are way too many factions. There should be five main families for mafia (as it is MafiaRP and, in real life, there were five main families in New York), but it seems like we have too many factions that have 1-3 people online. Like I understand why, it's just that there are too many factions which I think causes disorganization in the server. I do like the diversity, but it may be *too* diverse. 

For the UA and Gamemasters: I hadn't seen an event happen until a few days ago when I said something, so it is nice that there are finally becoming events. That being said, as I stated above, they are lackluster and don't bring much to RP except for a couple of minutes. But yeah, I have to agree that UA is rarely on, at least as far as I'm aware. I had the same problem with MP as I do with Diverge's staff team--there seems to be a huge disconnect between staff and members. Rarely do I even see staff as roleplay characters and too many tickets are taken saying that "sorry can't do anything about it" and ignored. It's annoying and happens too often. There are a lot of questionable people being promoted while I only see about three staff members consistently on a day. I think RP needs to be more heavily enforced 100%, as it's been pretty boring for the last week or so. 

That's really all I have to say, as I just wanted to add to that. Thanks! <3

[einxsa]

I agree with basically every point you've made, but this is what MafiaRP has been for a while now, this is what people want.

Not necessarily, it's happened from the DarkRP community discovering our MafiaRP genre and coming over, bringing their ideals of RP over. This isn't what anyone wants, more like what people have just adjusted to in the past two years or so. If we took steps to better the RP and re-educate everyone on what MafiaRP ACTUALLY was, it would certainly take a good turn to becoming just like old MafiaRP.

[TheDroppedFry]

I believe if we can start imposing harsh penalties on families that don't encourage Serious RP or have mingey members, that would be a start. Furthermore, having Crime Families get involved in labor industries would do FAR more to encourage players to get involved with the families in a way that ISN'T criminal (yet).

There's things we can do, bottom line.

[Wish]

Pendred, maybe its time to revamp the drug making system.

[jerrys brand]

I like what you said besides the faction part. If there was actual enforcement I believe enjoyability, would increase. The only reason there are no fights is that pk wars are something people are afraid of. I have no clue why you think people that have never fought in real life would fight other families. They are too used to bitching up and listening to commands of their nazi superiors

[sacred]

Complaining about an OCG (Organized Crime Group) which is meant to operate behind closed doors w/ nothing getting out to the general public is ridiculous. The goal of these OCGs are to operate in a way in which they can make a huge amount of money whilst keeping it quiet.

One thing I think that needs to change is rackets. Drugs were forbidden during the 1980s. You weren't supposed to touch them as a member of an OCG. Why? Because no-one cared about them. They had other alternatives which had way better payouts, which needs to be incorporated in-game.

One thing I believe no-one realizes is that Italian-American OCGs are not drug trafficking organizations. The main point of their revenue comes from white collar crimes such as no-show jobs, medicare fraud, etc. One of the biggest examples of this was the Teamsters, a labor union utilized to extort businesses out of money. Extortion is another one of the biggest crimes that Italian-American OCGs are involved in, which I have yet to see here.

So, really? Start doing more shit than just drugs and guns. There's a lot more you could do.

[tylenol]

This is really what the gamemode has come to and it's sad to see. The main issue in my eyes is the staff interference in the FamilyRP. I understand that the staff don't want to see all of the organizations being wiped out and only like 3 remaining who are worth anything, but their solution is to just stop roleplay. I would say giving a new faction like a 7-day grace period would be fine, but after that, they should fend for themselves. If this was like 2017-2018 era MafiaRP, 50% of these shit factions would be dead by now. It also doesn't help that the game is filled with literal no-lifers who will annoy admins into compliance if they get pk'd. I understand why the staff accepts so many factions, it's because they should dwindle down to the few that are actually good at being factions. But staff are so beyond quick to stop conflict among the families that it doesn't even get the chance to happen. I know pk's and war isn't the answer for everything, but if someone were to break into my building and rob my guys, fuck having a sit down I should be able to deal with it the way I see fit. You also have to understand that gangs probably won't be as powerful as the families, that's just how it is. They need to realize that they don't garner the same amount of respect and fear as the families do, and it's their job to work around that. If a gang of like 8 people willingly go and fuck with a family of like 20+, let them die, they chose to do it.

[wackyTiger]

I could not have said it any better than how you have said it. As a Senior Officer in the NYPD, I can say without a doubt that a majority of the “RP” aspect of MafiaRP is just committing crimes and doing the same stuff you’d usually do in DarkRP. I have never gotten to experience roleplaying in MafiaRP, and I hate to see how the roleplay is absent. Hopefully someday in the future we as the members of the community can make this change instead of begging/asking staff to host more events or force serious roleplaying.

Forcing people to roleplay won’t necessarily work, nor will getting game masters to do their job will do anything neither. I have witnessed events go off first-hand as an investigative detective, and I can say without a doubt that the events are the only things in the server that display roleplay, however the game masters are living beings who are adults, have families, work, etc. They can’t devote their lives to MafiaRP and let MafiaRP take control of their everyday routine and lives, that’s not how life works (normally, at least)

I just want to say that the only way we’re gonna implement this change is how we ourselves react to it, not just staff. As in we should be the ones making change and being in charge of roleplay instead of having staff enforce it all of the time.