Remove job titles

[Arkten]

Hey fellow community members.
This is something that I have been thinking on a while and I still do not understand its purpose. While I initially wanted to make a suggestion about it, I thought I should at least get some clarification. So here is the question:

What is the use of job titles?

For me, all it does is provoking metagaming. People instantly know that you are a criminal they should stay away from, an undercover cop that they will find a good reason not to invite into their gang or a harmless citizen. The government can take a look at the scoreboard to see how many criminals (a job title that is debated about as being to unspecific) rule their cities. They can immediately distinguish banned groups amd only ask them for identification instead of everyone else, etc.

I do not see any reason why one could possibly know so much about my character by just looking at it. Not even in a semi-serious game. I feel like it destroys too much RP possibilities (especially the ones relying on deception) and does not make sense at all. In my eyes there is no need for this feature to exist for the broader mass. Of course you will recognize the president/vice when you see him. But police/swat already has their uniforms and anyone else does not need it. An exception could be if someone was wearing a nametag with their job name on it, but other than that, I cannot think of anything.

But I am probably overlooking something, which is why I wanted to post this thread first to get your ideas about it. Please refrain from answering with "because semi-serious" as that is no reason not to add a bit of realism and remove a destructive feature currently ingame.

TL;DR
Job titles are just used for metagaming. Let's remove them.

[Pollux]

I do like having job titles for some roles like merchants or government, however I get that with criminals and such it does provoke metagaming.

I'm a bit neutral on this as there's benefits and drawbacks and I'm not too sure which is better atm.

[Arkten]

I do like having job titles for some roles like merchants or government, however I get that with criminals and such it does provoke metagaming.

I'm a bit neutral on this as there's benefits and drawbacks and I'm not too sure which is better atm.

Would love to hear the pros and cons so I can understand that topic better.

[PhantomSolaris]

You're completely right about metagaming.

I can near guarantee you that technically everyone, regardless of rank subtly metagames due to the job titles.

As your example said, people check the leaderboard to gauge how many criminals there are.  UC police won't be able to infiltrate because people won't accept them.

For all merchants, job titles are a must.  However I guess non-government/non-merchant jobs could work without them.  I find it difficult to say that though because I'm so used to them being there to a point where I want to say no.  It's a significant thing to get used to I think.

Overall I'd say I'm neutral on the idea.

[Haarek]

I agree that it gives a metagame problem, as you are not able to avoid the information and leads to spoiled potential RP.
I always thought that these job roles dedicate your character to a specific type of role-play and prevents failRP and acting outside your characters job or background.

I.e a citizen would not randomly pull out a pistol and mug someone; as a citizen you are expected to act like a regular person.
(So if you want to mug people you need to dedicate your job role and set up a proper RP background.)

So this begs the question if the job roles should be kept out of the scoreboard and character description; and rather be only visible to administrators that can regulate proper RP backgrounds and failRP.

[pilip]

If we can get some rules about wearing outfits and make some outfits, only for a specific job. I think this can be a good and funny thing

+Support if they work this idea out with perfect outfit idea's

[Arkten]

You're completely right about metagaming.

I can near guarantee you that technically everyone, regardless of rank subtly metagames due to the job titles.

As your example said, people check the leaderboard to gauge how many criminals there are.  UC police won't be able to infiltrate because people won't accept them.

For all merchants, job titles are a must.  However I guess non-government/non-merchant jobs could work without them.  I find it difficult to say that though because I'm so used to them being there to a point where I want to say no.  It's a significant thing to get used to I think.

Overall I'd say I'm neutral on the idea.

To be honest, even merchants dont need such a description. You can just set up your shop and advertise. No need for everyone to know that you are a shady black market dealer or a chef (which you will most likely see because of the model) already.

[Arkten]

I always thought that these job roles dedicate your character to a specific type of role-play and prevents failRP and acting outside your characters job or background.

I.e a citizen would not randomly pull out a pistol and mug someone; as a citizen you are expected to act like a regular person.
(So if you want to mug people you need to dedicate your job role and set up a proper RP background.)

Now that is actually making sense with our current definition of FailRP. PErsonally I am aginst the idea of a FailRP rule as it makes no sense to me as well, but that is for another thread.

So this begs the question if the job roles should be kept out of the scoreboard and character description; and rather be only visible to administrators that can regulate proper RP backgrounds and failRP.

I doubt though that anyone will bother to change job titles just so admins can see whether they roleplay correctly or not. :(

"/job criminal and equip Galil to win."

[Pollux]

I agree that it gives a metagame problem, as you are not able to avoid the information and leads to spoiled potential RP.
I always thought that these job roles dedicate your character to a specific type of role-play and prevents failRP and acting outside your characters job or background.

I.e a citizen would not randomly pull out a pistol and mug someone; as a citizen you are expected to act like a regular person.
(So if you want to mug people you need to dedicate your job role and set up a proper RP background.)

So this begs the question if the job roles should be kept out of the scoreboard and character description; and rather be only visible to administrators that can regulate proper RP backgrounds and failRP.

I disagree with job names forcing people to have a good background RP, as most people just wait a bit before doing /job criminal and whipping a galil out. It does I guess help a bit with powergaming but I'd argue metagaming from jobs is a bigger issue than the potential for people to powergame. Background RP is extremely rare nowdays meaning there's even less of a reason to keep job names around. We have gamemode features such as passes and associates which would help reduce powergaming even without job names.

After a bit of thought, I don't see many downsides to this apart from merchants being even harder to find. Metagaming is so common even if unintentional, you can't say you've never pressed tab to see how many cops are on or who's a cop before doing something or treat someone differently after you see their job name (for example a fake or undercover officer).

Something similar to this worked extremely well when undercover cops could first request their job colour to be changed to green and have an obscure job. I was able to actually become part of criminal groups as an undercover officer simply because the colour of my job was green when people hovered over me other than blue. Nowdays its hard to do this again as people know about the undercover feature. A change like this would for sure improve the quality of roleplay a ton, so I'm for it.

[MrFinnConlon]

+support