In the past the people on the "best avoided" list don't stick around in the community anyway.
Their stream is great though, I have watched it and it is good to have this sort of advertising: I just wish that people would remember it's an RP server and cops are just people playing a game too. It's a case of outsmarting with good RP. Sadly players often default to screaming and breaking RP because they have broken the law and got caught.
it can be VERY hard at times to not take things personally and get wound up though. It's VERY insulting and pretty hurtful to get accused of metagaming / stream sniping / cheating when you're simply doing what you're supposed to do in game. Cops are not trying to fuck up someone's stream or knacker their two hours of in game work.
As a civ / rebel for six months+ I can tell you I RP'ed out of every crime I committed: I've yet to serve one second of jail time. I was pleasant, tried to make things fun and offered excuses: Once I was caught processing cocaine in a stolen chopper and got busted: I ended up getting a lift back to Kavala and the arresting officers gave me £300K to buy a Hemmit and do legit work... I'd been on the server for just a couple of weeks.
We've had 3 instances with cops that have pretty much left a bad taste in our mouths. First instance was an obvious stream-watch by cops who set up a "sting" on our truck they hadn't search (was clear of drugs, another person already stream sniped us on that one) and we magically had a bounty put on our heads for selling drugs as they spoke to us (before we knew the cops could just meta-game on the priest). Was pretty boring and pretty obvious.
http://i.imgur.com/0i7ovFL.png <- Even your admins agreed.
Second instance was when a helicopter "randomly" tracked us in UNMC territory (I say random because a few UNMC in our chat claimed they were stream sniping). Their characters magically knew about the drug dealer and the cops meta gamed and followed us to arrest us because, of course, there is nothing else out there other than drug dealer and we're obviously doing something illegal but wwhat'sthe point of even having drugs or drug dealers if the cops use thermal and camp the processing zones/dealers? If it was kept to strict RP, the cops would have ZERO reason to land a heli, drop people off, and come in with guns loaded. The video they showed for proof even had talk of them recognizing us as "Those streamers", loading up our stream and confirming we had weapons and that they were allowed to use lethal force before even seeing us.
If you want to keep it realistic, cops should be patrolling the border and watching people going into UNMC territory. But, fuck it, that's hard and boring.
Third time was when we were running drugs and tried to sell them in town. Bare in mind, we knew we probably wouldn't get away with it, but we thought it would be a bit more interesting than it was. We ran the drugs, the meta-game of questioning the drug dealer to get names gave us an instant bounty (which is completely retarded tbh) and 2 cops just happened to approach our location with their weapons drawn.
Not sure why cops are wondering around town with their rifles drawn. Great RP, btw.
So, whilst processing the cocain we had cops fly above us and check us out, cops with weapons drawn getting lucky and finding us instantly, our truck got robbed by an obvious stream sniper (we hid our vehicles and they get instantly lock-picked and stolen) and the truck that was full of coke but not being driven by me gets impounded and crushed! Quite surprised cops impound and crush stolen vehicles.
Bare in mind when this all went down there were only 5 cops online (I counted) and apparently all of them were focused on what I was doing.
But, you know what, I'm willing to believe the cops aren't stream sniping, but the meta-game is too fucking strong. Cops complain when we meta-game or don't RP but do the EXACT same thing.
I did ask if drug dealers and processing plants could be randomized and hidden from cops, but I was told cops would just log in as Civs and tell their friends the locations and log back in as a cop. He said he knew this would happen and he couldn't stop that. Yet, cops are using my stream to report people of breaking the meta-game rule (texting whilst restrained) and complaining about us breaking rules too.
At least it seems the admins are working to balance this a bit more. The server here is great, the admins are awesome but sadly I'm just not too sure the cops are interested in anything other than their own fun.
