Weazel News / Reporter Job / Paparazzi Activities and more!

[Salvick]

Hello guys, I'm making my first post and have choosen this section since I'm very excited seeing how well scripted the Badlands RP server is and maybe this suggestion could fit with the server and could help to keep improving the server which is already great and plenty of activities.

This is a re-post from another community where I've been suggesting this idea I had, hoping that you like the idea I wait for your feedback to update the original post and discuss about.

I have more ideas I'll be posting later too!

 

Weazel News Reporters

Concept brief:

The main idea is that you have to drive the Weazel's News van (or a Boxville truck instead?) through the city to refill the newspapers vendor machines (or probably just the stores).

Also, there would be different positions that allows you to be a Journalist (news reporter) and use an emote to take pictures with the camera, add to that the ability to hire paparazzis to get pictures of an specific person allowing other players to become paparazzis as freelancers and as another position some players could pilot the helicopter to report the traffic and other relevant events around the city.

Different positions provides different incomes but depending on the assigned tasks for each different job the time it takes to finish each of these would be balanced to ensure balanced incomes, although hierarchical positions involves more responsability which would be translated in better incomes..

Note: The helicopter should stay limited only for some sort of whitelisted members or a player who demonstrated his commitment with the server to avoid abuses. If there's no need of being so strict then it would be just limited to 1 or 2 helicopters at once while the hierarchical job position should allow only 2 or 3 vacancies per session to become on-duty for the specific job position while there'll still be as many journalists/news reporters as you want.

Weazel News building:

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Weazel News van

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Newspaper vendor machines:

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Traffic Report Helicopter

Note: this is a mod that would be needed to incorporate to the server, otherwise the regular Maverick would fit just perfectly.
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Weazel News building location
Lindsay Circus & Palomino Av., Little Seoul.

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Job Positions:

 

• Paperboy
•   Journalist
•   Paparazzi
•   Traffic Reporter

 

 

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Average Incomes:
To do/Need suggestions

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Description:

 

Paperboy:

Your job starts at the Weazel News building's garage where you get the van and you load it out with boxes which contains the newspapers.
(I also think maybe the Boxville/Bimbo truck could fit way better for this but I'm not sure about the available skins which could break immersion.)

Once you get in the van you get the first waypoint to deliver the newspapers at the vendor machines around the city.

Each box should last at least 5 or 10 drops and the overall load could be around 4 or 5 boxes so you can start a new run once you depleted your load.

 

Journalist:

If you already completed the Paperboy job several times maybe that would get you promoted to gain access to the option of become a Journalist but this position could also be attached to an application form to apply on forums in order to be approved for the job. (This would be to ensure the player will stick to a proper roleplay behavior at all time although there shouldn't be a specific limit of vacancies for the position in my opinion.)

When you are a Journalist you can get the van at the Weazel News building but this time you won't be able to start the Paperboy job and instead you'll just have the option to turn on-duty to report any events around the city which will also enable some blips in your radar to alert you of relevant events.

This job does not provides any waypoints to follow but instead it will give you alerts about different events that may be happening around the city such as gunshots, robberies, traffic accidents, injured people, police operations, other crimes that are also reported to the police, fire department and EMS services, as long as for roleplay purposes any player's announced events such as parties and other kind of meetings might be encouraged to be reported. The possibilities here are infinite.

Maybe once you reach an area from one of the alerts your incomes might raise a little bit to encourage the presence of the Journalists in the area. You're compiled to report the events through the /breaking news channel to improve the RP quality of the server anyways.

 

Paparazzi:

To become a Paparazzi you need to be hired by a Journalist who will assign you different objectives (relevant characters such as gang members or celebrities) that you will need to find, follow and report and a the payment would be set aswell by the Journalist who will have a fixed budget assigned by the company. (Similar to assigning hitman rewards as seen in some RP servers before)

To do this the Journalist could be able to select a player and without specifying where exactly the person is, you'll have to follow any possible hints you can get In-Character to find your target, once you find it you must aim your camera (crosshair) at him and get an specific amount of pictures in a determined amount of time. You could get a motorcycle for this job or simply use your own vehicle (I think a motorcycle still fits better and makes the chances more even for every involved player). There is no limit on how many Paparazzis the Journalist can hire (assign the task) and only the first to get the task done will receive the payment once he reports back with the Journalist at a specific location.  We could say this is like some sort of treasure hunt I think.

 

Traffic Reporter:

The Traffic Reporter is in charge of  piloting the helicopter and report the traffic and other events through the /breaking news channel that the players have the option to turn on or off as their desire.

There would be only 3 vacancies for this job and every Traffic Reporter has to be in the helicopter in order to receive their payment. Also the Traffic Reporters gets alerts about possible events of interest as the Journalist does and its at the discretion of the Journalist the assignment of the most relevant events that he wants to have the helicopter to report but only withing the RP criteria. This means that you can fly around the city as you want (sticking to RP rules and making sure you provide and entertaining time for everyone by reporting the news in the /breaking news channel) but as Traffic Reporter you are still under the Journalist orders.

The application for this job might be through forums although if there are no Traffic Reporters online the Journalists  could be able to do the task only if there are no players online assigned to the job.

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Mechanics:
(Or what the script would be about)

A /breaking news chat channel would be needed in order to have the news broadcast server wide and players should have the ability to choose if they want to turn on or off the /breaking news.

The payment for each job its at the discretion of the developers/admins and experienced members of the community, please feel free to make your suggestions about this here.

For the Paperboy job we only need the basic mechanics we have in the Truck Driver jobs and simply adjust it to provide a Weazel News van at the mentioned building and give some chat messages with instructions for the player. Then there should be a bunch of waypoints set among the newspaper vendor machines or stores around the city providing enough of these to ensure the time it takes to finish a round of deliveries is something about 10 minutes and once you deplete your load of newspapers you can drive back to the buildings where you refill the truck which could be maybe more than just the main Weazel News building in the downtown.

We could stick to the metropolitan area for this task, although the activation of the job might be manual so if the player wants to drive to Sandy Shores or Paleto Bay areas he can start over there and get a different route which means we could have some different routes for this job and even a couple of different spots to refill the van/truck. (Or could these be just random checkpoints that are generated near the player's location?)

For the Journalist job we need to set the same alerts that the emergency services usually gets and provide some help for the player to find the locations. Also the Journalist should have a menu or a set of commands that allows him to assign some sort of "reward" over a player of his choice (considered a celebritie or relevant civilian or criminal) and assign a player or a group of players who are able to get a /tweet notification as if they were the Paparazzis getting info about a relevant person they have to follow.

The proper assignment of the task could be something like /paparazzi [ID of the target player] [Payment $] [Hints about the possible location or area to look for him] (The hint could be optional?)
Then it returns a message asking the Journalist to assign as many players as he wants where he could do something like /assign [player ID] and once he finish picking his Paparazzis he just type something else like /start or just /assign end, or whatever fits better so the "hired" pkayers gets an alert that there's a reward in place for such photographies the Journalist wants to get.

As Paparazzi we'd need the ability to aim to the assigned target/player and press the interaction button which would return a chat message saying something like "/[player] took a picture"
and maybe a timer which might be set by the Journalist or can be just at a fixed amount of time like 5 or 10 minutes.

Also the Journalist has the option to send /tweet messages to every other Journalists and Traffic Reporter (or maybe instead of tweeter just a private chat channel for them?) in order to report strictly IC any events they want to spread the voice about. This way the Journalist would be requesting the pilot of the helicopter to quickly reach an area while he travels in his car or the news van to the target spot.

At last, the Traffic Reporter  same as the Journalists , gets chat alerts with the relevant events in the city and map blips with access to spawn the helicopter at the heliport near the Weazel News building in case it is not already there. Other Traffic Reporters might be able to fly with him and the Traffic Reporters are the only ones with access to a /breaking news announcements channel which broadcast messages for every player that choose to have the /breaking news channel open. The color would be different and pretty showy to catch the eye when they report. Also I've found there's a script for a functional Helicopter camera which would be just great to have.

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Overview/Objective:

The main goal of this is to enrich the RP experience for every player in the server and not only the ones who are playing the role of this jobs and add a more immersive interaction between players. In addition, someone could take the role as the Weazel News Director in order to have a post on forums with all the details and maybe make of this idea a business that allows a experienced player to lead the reporters faction where they get an stable income which could be also attached to the activity.

Other related possibilities:

Something else that could be done in relation with this is the access to the newspaper from your cellphone and even buying it from the store or at the vendor machines.

By reading the newspaper you could have a list of available jobs and its locations and probably you could also choose a job you're interested in and get a waypoint set in your GPS to follow the path to the job starting point.

Also it could be nice if players could put an add that last as long as they are in the session to promote their services.
Even illegal activities might be announced or requested on a totally undercover way.

In addition, if it would be possible to have access to different sections of the newspaper we could have some commands to browse not only jobs but also the available houses, another section to find relevant shops (like car shops, etc) and such

 

The End

I could keep going into details but I think this has become too long and I feel there's already more than enough to think about the idea and see how feasible and desirable a job like this might be as same as if it is possible to do it from a deves perspective. (Which obviously I don't have )

I wait for your feedback from everyone around, specially regular players and not only devs/admins/staff, let's get involved in this guys and bring your opinions, critics or corrections that you may want to add to my post if you feel something like this could be and deserves to be implemented and I'll be updating this post with your suggestions.

Regards!

 

Edited November 29, 2017 by Salvick

[Johan]

Didn't read all of it because I'm so tired atm. But this sounds really good! It would need pretty much scripting and some changes as well to fit badlands but overall, really good suggestion. I personally don't like the fact that someone gets a free car, I would say that you need to buy the Weazel News van etc.

[Salvick]

6 minutes ago, Johan | ynzx_ said:

Didn't read all of it because I'm so tired atm. But this sounds really good! It would need pretty much scripting and some changes as well to fit badlands but overall, really good suggestion. I personally don't like the fact that someone gets a free car, I would say that you need to buy the Weazel News van etc.

I agree that you'd need to buy or rent the vehicle, also I've been thinking of provide a bike for the Paperboy job indeed but didn't suggested it in the post. Thanks for your feedback though!