Council of Commerce - Rework

[Mark]

This suggestion is about bringing Council of Commerce more into roleplay and maybe including some more people into the line of work of CoC as five is not enough to cover all these businesses.​

Council of Commerce Rework​

Council of Commerce is an organisation that keeps businesses active by repossessing inactive businesses and the irresponsible owned ones. ​

I want Council of Commerce to be brought in-game fully, new building, applicant process and to bring more roleplay to businesses.​

How would it work?​

The process of Council of Commerce will change, for example instead of taking businesses away it will be roleplayed out to the fullest potential -​

Example:
The owner/manager of ( _______________ ) Shop has not restocked, advertised or woken up in a few weeks...
This will result in a text message sent to the owner of the establishment saying the following;​

"Hello Ma'am/Sir of ( __________ ), we have noticed the inactivity of ( _________ ) and would like to reach out to ask why there has not been any activity with this business? Please do message us back otherwise further action will be taken."​

Now let's say it's been a few days still nothing that is when someone from Council of Commerce will be sent out to inspect the business and take photos of the upkeep, and if nothing is done then another message will be sent out;​

"Hello Ma'am/Sir of ( _________ ), we have not received a reply from you in quite a while we would like to call a meeting with you regarding your business neglect, if you do not as such as reply with a date that you are free we will have to take legal action and repossess the business"​

Again let's say hey they're not replying, not putting any effort into staying active with it that is when the business gets locked, a sign saying "Repossessed" and then an advertisement is put up on Billboards and Tweedle about the new business being set up to be re-sold and interviews being booked.​

Also with a building/office this could bring interactions to another level, someone has a report of a business being inactive? Go to the desk and use the eye and fill out a form or be seen by someone there.​

Roleplay​

With the roleplay of this, this could bring meetings into play with business owners, so if a business owner is wanting something done to their business and wants someone for Council of Commerce to inspect and see how it is for instance lets do an example.​

Example:​

Name: Business
Subject: Smoothie Maker​

"We would like an inspection done on our business to see if a smoothie maker would be able to be installed at this establishment, we have consistently done advertisements and fulfilled customers needs, so we would love an inspection"​

Upon seeing this a member of Council of Commerce will inspect the business not just for a day but for quite a bit, not for hours a day but here and there check the business over, check their activity and ask for paper work and proof of demand, then they can take that back to the higher ups of Council of Commerce and see what they have to say about it.​

This causes interaction and roleplay to happen between two different parties and this will encourage people to roleplay more with their businesses instead of idling money intake.​

And if the owner wants to actually keep their business it'll cause roleplay to reply to the text and sort a meeting with Council of Commerce and they need to persuade them to not take it away.​

Rhetorical Questions​

Why should Council of Commerce be brought more into the server of RPUK?​

Because I believe this could be a turning point within the server's roleplay, this will give business owners more responsibility and prove their roleplay standards, this can create more opportunities in the server for people looking for more challenge within roleplay, this can create interesting roleplay with meetings and jobs for people to work for through roleplay and not a hundred percent money orientated.​

This adds more realism to the server instead of one day a business gets repossessed out of nowhere, imagine a group of people walking up to a business and using the eye on the business "Repossessions Notice" put that on the door after many attempts of contacting the owner / manager of the establishment.​

How will this change / improve the servers role-play?​

This will change the roleplay because with the increase of Council of Commerce workers within the server this will open up more roleplay interactions, for instance "Is this business up to this standard?" / "Is this business working to improve it's work?".​

Meetings can be made with the owners of the businesses talking about their work, what are they doing to provide to their audience? Are they ripping people off? Are they gatekeeping their work from others? With Council of Commerce in the actual server this can open up more alleys for people to apply for Council of Commerce instead of five people consisting of staff who are busy this can give opportunities for people to build a character up through it and be willing to devote time to this making it more roleplay orientated.​

May I also add instead of things being only done through google forms, how about we do it through roleplay? Imagine the process of sitting in a room with well dressed people judging your character, judging if they will be suitable for the business, writing down, listening, eyeing you down as you explain why YOU would be a good fit for owning the business.​

Why Council of Commerce?​

Council of Commerce has always intrigued me, I have always seen potential on how it can create a new standard of roleplay for businesses, it will put in-game businesses to the test to see if they are truly worthy to put the time and effort into roleplaying a business and to run it.​

Council of Commerce in my opinion should be ran by the five people running it now, and have applicants on the forums for it so they don't have to do all the work and also in long story short, help the server gain more roleplay.​

 ​

Pros and Cons​

Pros:
New Roleplay for businesses and people
New avenues for characters
New whitelisted job​

Cons:
CoC might prefer it as it is
Developer Work​

 ​

This is all my view and suggestion if you have ANY opinions or suggestions leave them below​

 

[Jason]

Generally suggestions are for developers and a lot of what is here will require development work but thought I'll post something as I am very pro your ideas. This comes from my personal opinion and not from the staff.

I have recently re-joined the LS Chamber of Commerce and immediately started work on more in-game work. I created a spreadsheet of all the businesses and we grade them based on stock levels and for dealerships perceived activity at the location. If stock is low, we set a review date for say a weeks time. If a business is doing well, maybe review in a month, if it consistently does well maybe only review every 2 months. We can make note of the stock and if it doesn't change or restock we can note it as being of concern. We also listen for general concern spread amongst the Los Santos community - for example "I've not managed to buy a vehicle from x dealer for a while" and similar conversations. If upon investigation there are issues with a business we will reach out by SMS and give some notice. We then reposes the store if we get no response and put it out on the tender process we have on the current form. The application and individual who scores best then gets the store, if they can pay the price for it.

The difficulty the CoC has is we do not have immediate or quick time access to data around restocking dates or customer purchase history. For places like vehicle dealerships it is difficult to have a good oversight on what goes on as I can only really see if staff are there and even then checking if they are regularly there isn't easy. We could probably pick out the stores falling short of expectations easier if this was the case and then perhaps challenge earlier the store owners. We can get this information and it is available, however it is limited to only 1 very busy individual who probably has better things to do; so not something we want to request too much unless we really need to.

Admittedly I've not been on the server as much the last month or so, but a few businesses will have noticed us pop in and see how business is doing and I would love to see this become more of a regular thing. It's probably not how the CoC originally envisioned to be exactly although it has always had an 'in-game' presence, it's probably not a very overt one.

There is an element of OOC information assisting with the role which was really put in to maintain the economy so businesses were made free for people when they were abandoned by others. To prevent stores (especially niche ones) preventing anyone from purchasing stock they cannot buy elsewhere. For the reason of OOC information being shared, some of which is sensitive to staff-eyes only we would need to consider if non-staff do become privy to the role how we separate this. Further, there is a lot of money being passed between CoC members and owners of businesses which could be exploited and I'm sure the CoC would never be somewhere for which there is an opportunity for corruption. Rules could enforce this but I'm not sure how TinyBigJacko (who put forward the concept of the team and got the ball rolling with it) would  feel about it.

But overall I would love to see more interaction within roleplay and I've kind of taken it upon myself to try that - I just probably haven't been the right person to do it in the past month or so due to IRL commitments. I would personally prefer the applications led to an interview afterwards for those meeting a certain threshold and then scoring on that, but the CoC would become overwhelmed in it's current staffing model in doing this; so possible expansion. This wave we've already had approx 50 applications which we are working through and of course some are very detailed so take longer than a few seconds to read.

To be clear I include my thoughts personally on the matter. What I've said above or response to this doesn't suggest the CoC will take on the ideas as ultimately it needs Management and Dev views to wherever or not it is feasible.

 

[Mark]

Generally suggestions are for developers and a lot of what is here will require development work but thought I'll post something as I am very pro your ideas. This comes from my personal opinion and not from the staff.

I have recently re-joined the LS Chamber of Commerce and immediately started work on more in-game work. I created a spreadsheet of all the businesses and we grade them based on stock levels and for dealerships perceived activity at the location. If stock is low, we set a review date for say a weeks time. If a business is doing well, maybe review in a month, if it consistently does well maybe only review every 2 months. We can make note of the stock and if it doesn't change or restock we can note it as being of concern. We also listen for general concern spread amongst the Los Santos community - for example "I've not managed to buy a vehicle from x dealer for a while" and similar conversations. If upon investigation there are issues with a business we will reach out by SMS and give some notice. We then reposes the store if we get no response and put it out on the tender process we have on the current form. The application and individual who scores best then gets the store, if they can pay the price for it.

The difficulty the CoC has is we do not have immediate or quick time access to data around restocking dates or customer purchase history. For places like vehicle dealerships it is difficult to have a good oversight on what goes on as I can only really see if staff are there and even then checking if they are regularly there isn't easy. We could probably pick out the stores falling short of expectations easier if this was the case and then perhaps challenge earlier the store owners. We can get this information and it is available, however it is limited to only 1 very busy individual who probably has better things to do; so not something we want to request too much unless we really need to.

Admittedly I've not been on the server as much the last month or so, but a few businesses will have noticed us pop in and see how business is doing and I would love to see this become more of a regular thing. It's probably not how the CoC originally envisioned to be exactly although it has always had an 'in-game' presence, it's probably not a very overt one.

There is an element of OOC information assisting with the role which was really put in to maintain the economy so businesses were made free for people when they were abandoned by others. To prevent stores (especially niche ones) preventing anyone from purchasing stock they cannot buy elsewhere. For the reason of OOC information being shared, some of which is sensitive to staff-eyes only we would need to consider if non-staff do become privy to the role how we separate this. Further, there is a lot of money being passed between CoC members and owners of businesses which could be exploited and I'm sure the CoC would never be somewhere for which there is an opportunity for corruption. Rules could enforce this but I'm not sure how TinyBigJacko (who put forward the concept of the team and got the ball rolling with it) would  feel about it.

But overall I would love to see more interaction within roleplay and I've kind of taken it upon myself to try that - I just probably haven't been the right person to do it in the past month or so due to IRL commitments. I would personally prefer the applications led to an interview afterwards for those meeting a certain threshold and then scoring on that, but the CoC would become overwhelmed in it's current staffing model in doing this; so possible expansion. This wave we've already had approx 50 applications which we are working through and of course some are very detailed so take longer than a few seconds to read.

To be clear I include my thoughts personally on the matter. What I've said above or response to this doesn't suggest the CoC will take on the ideas as ultimately it needs Management and Dev views to wherever or not it is feasible.

Thank you so much for your reply and its really opened my eyes to the CoC, I just wanted to maybe improve roleplay on the server and I was thinking maybe this could be a way to do it.

But after reading this I get why its made like that, and again thank you for your opinion and your view as a CoC member!

 

[Dave Sancho]

+1

 

[Niamh]

+1  theres way too many businesses being unused in the server. 

 

[Nikolai]

i like the idea, but changes to the commerce is merely up to Recon and TBJ due to the nature of it, we can suggest stuff, but end of day it would have to run through the higher ups

 

[Katelyn West]

+1