In-depth Article (3/15/2017)

[Rally3]

In-Depth Newspaper Section

Disclaimer: This features a wonderful 2000+ words, a personal record of mine, and has a readability level of a college student. If you are not one for long texts or complicated words, you can safely exit this section of the newspaper and head into the cover. You can continue at your own discretion. You've been warned.

Timeouts, more Timeouts

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Timeouts, ddos, attacks, and more were the words often thrown into the chat by several players in these past weeks. Timeouts is the most accurate one out of those, since a number of players spontaneously timed out at random times of the day. One could play for some time and then out of nowhere, boom - timed out. A restart was found to be a temporary fix at first, but the developers knew that a permanent fix had to be developed.

Many players took it to heart to attempt to inform others of what was going on in the forums, but failed to realize that an official announcement was made 1 week prior to all the surge of topics that the "Bar" sub-forum section was a victim of. Their efforts were well intended, and most of those topics were well structured, but they lacked a purpose since the issues were explained earlier in an official announcement from part of the administrative team.

Developer CXdur answered to one of those topics saying the following: "The issues have been caused by an attacker most likely, at first we didn't discover this but we noticed a few days after it started. I personally don't reveal too much information out of fear others might try to replicate it, it is also motivating to the attackers."

Some days after that reply was posted, a permanent (or so it seems) fix has been found. Of course, I can't go into detail about it but for all we need to know it works and it should continue to work fine to avoid issues like the ones we suffered in the past two weeks.

Huge thanks to those who devoted their time to troubleshoot and fix this issue, since it is for them that we can play normally as we did before in the server that we all love.

The Event Takes Place!

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An event took place this Sunday, March 12th of 2017. It was hosted by me, and it was meant to be a "Protect the President" Event. I had created the topic with all the rules and the registration procedure for the event 10 days prior to the event's date, that is March 2nd of 2017. However, I am not new to Lsrcr and I knew that the event was trying to be too sophisticated for it to run well.

Some people could not make it, which is understandable. All I ask, just like anyone else who would organize an event of this magnitude, is that you please let the event organizer know at least 24 hours before the event takes place. Anyways, I joined 1 hour before the scheduled time and I was really anxious, to say the least, for the event to start and for it to go perfectly.

Soon I found out that perfection is never achieved, since we had a large number of players and none of them had read the rules on how the event was actually supposed to work, and whatnot. I found myself in a position where I had to force the event to turn into a Team Deathmatch or else it would have been a major disappointment to everyone involved.

There were issues, like players didn't have weapons at times, but overall, people seemed to have fun. I mean, what else can I ask for in an event than people enjoying it and having a good time. It was a perfectly imperfect event, if it makes sense. I have plenty of more ideas for new ones, so stay tuned and remember to check the "Events" sub-forum frequently!

My Mistake

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Yes I am aware that every week I seem to turn into more and more of a narcissist. I am sorry for that, and I am sorry for this brief upcoming article, but I feel that this is a sort of apology that I have to make to everyone, publicly.

On Monday, I had my tag removed because of a request to get it removed. I was upset with several things revolving the tag and how the system works, so in the heat of the moment it seemed like a valid solution to the problems, at least at the time.

I was arrogant enough to ignore all the warnings and pleas for me not to do it, to re-think what I was talking about, and I decided to just ask different people to get the job done. After getting an answer for a yes, I felt relieved to be honest, as if I had solved all of the tags problems by simply dissociating myself from them. Sort of a child that gets called slow and doesn't run track for that, or as a girl that gets called fat and doesn't work out to ignore the problem.

I got a huge amount of positive words and concern about myself, people thinking that I had actually broke a server's rule or whatever to get my tag removed. It felt annoying and like people were only interested about it because of the tag I wore, but after some thinking and after talking with KnifeBoss, it soon became clear that those were all well intended concerns and interest from people that knew me and wanted to know what happened.

So, to sum this up, I'd like to publicly apologize to everyone. Funnily enough, after acting all high and mighty and as if I was the only member who deserved to wear the tag, I proved myself to be a part of the problem I despised as well, taking on such an immature course of actions. Thank you to everyone who sent out positive messages to me, and sorry if I made it seem like I was mad at you or anyone, it was just that I was very frustrated at this and at other things non related to video games. Anyways, a smart-ass, know-it-all type of character as myself has to really fuck up to actually pronounce the words "I was wrong, you were right", but it seems all of you guys were right.

I still think there's a lot of things wrong about how the tag works, but I'll try to work on them instead of avoiding them altogether.

About our groups

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Army: Army has had its regular promotions just like every past month, however none of my sources were able to confirm with 100% certainty who the AMOTM was. Applicants are still being tested on their driving, shooting, flying and speed of commands skills, although the most important assets for an army member to have are shooting and flying. Unique events are still being planned by the Event Officers Team and members are ensured to have several challenges to complete in their free time when they want to earn a side reward for their efforts. Best of luck to our SA soldiers!

SWAT: Lots of mobility and different news on SWAT, as it tends to be the case. There was recently a shooting/training session where the officers who were present partook in a series of shooting and driving drills to refine their performance on said areas of skill. The results from that training session were used, along with general gameplay information, to form an evaluation of all members according to how they performed in each of the targeted areas. There were several promotions, but the most noteworthy ones are GalaxyGeri and M0z3eg, who were promoted to the rank of Sergeant First Class. There was a certain degree of discomfort among certain members that did not get promoted but I believe that has been sorted out by now. Congratulations to SMOTM Tyson!

Pagati: There's interesting information about the Pagati Organization, but by far the most appealing one is that member [Lsrcr]Invincible, also known by his character name Aryan Sharma, has been promoted to Underboss. For those of you unaware of an Underboss' responsibilities and duties, they consist of reporting to the Consigliere or the Don directly, and administrative say over Capos, Soldiers and Associates. None of my sources were able to confirm with 100% certainty who the PMOTM was, sadly. However, with that said, we wish Aryan and the rest of Pagati the best of luck in continuing to improve the roleplay scene!

Akatsuki: Similar situation to LSPDU, however there has been two new additions to the Akatsuki tester team. Congratulations to [Lsrcr]Scream and [Lsrcr]Simon for making it as Akatsuki testers! We wish them good luck in their duties as we are aware of how tiresome and demanding a position like that can be. As for the applicants, rest assured that they are a perfect fit for the job: they will test your abilities to the limit.

LSPD United: Nothing out of the ordinary at LSPDU, except for the fact that the faction's leader has had an unfortunate incident in his right arm. I'll let all of you to come up with your personal conclusion for this matter but know this: he will be switching hands every now and then to avoid a similar incident. Testers continue to test applicants who urge to get into the only official group revolving around law enforcement; some passed, some failed, but our advice is the same to all of them: there's no reason to get upset over ranks/groups such as this since you can experience the same gameplay as a regular cop!

Mountain Bike Riders: A group that hasn't had many changes in the recent times, but one that continues to be active. Whether it is out of enjoyment or a lack of money to get a real car, there's several players that can be spotted riding these bicycles of hell and hopping all over the city of Los Santos like mating rabbits. You can know they are on the server after reading the complaints of frustrated officers unable to cope with them. Just know this riders, when [Lsrcr]Rally goes into cop skin, you are going to Alcatraz.

Stunt Kings: Yet another group that hasn't had much changes in the recent times. After [Lsrcr]G.W.L took charge of the faction, things continue to go smoothly. Applicants interested in improving their skills or joining the team must first go through a Stunt Kings Stunt School to ensure that they have what it takes to be a true Stunt King. We wish all new applicants good luck and urge them to pay attention in the Stunt School, since it can have a big impact in your acceptance/denial into the group.

Taxi Drivers: Taxi drivers are being lightly more inactive than usual, but their leader bloackmaster is working hard to bring in something new into the scene to keep his drivers entertained and active. He plans to bring in a bus driver job, where a driver would have to stop at certain frequented spots in the city of Los Santos and pick up/drop off passengers as they reach their desired destinations. We'll see later on if this gets implemented or not, as well as if the drivers' activity comes back to what it was at the start of the group.

Terrorists: Applications are still rolling in at the Terrorists office. In fact, more and more people seem to be interested in joining these troublemakers. They have their own goals and their own system of allowing new members into the group, for they don't let just any regular Joe join their prestigious group. One must pass the test and then get voted by the members to have a chance to form a part of the team. Also, one its members by the name of Likewise has created some voting formats for the members to use when voting in applications; they are optional of course, since [Lsrcr]Kane noted that members would still be able to vote however they wanted.

The Clowns: Bet you didn't expect to read something about them here. Well, for your surprise just as much as hours, clowns have been spotted active along with their leader [Lsrcr]Pipo. Questions such as what were they doing, why were they doing that, and many more remain unanswered as one of the most mysterious groups in Los Santos Roleplay Cops and Robbers seems to be getting active again. We'll see in the next edition if they are still active or if it was just a one time thing.

Conclusion

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That's it for this week. You've now completed reading the 2000+ words in this in depth section of the Newspaper. If you've read the article in its entirety, we congratulate you! If you didn't it's alright, that's why the disclaimer was placed at the very top of this topic. Make sure to stick with us next time for the next edition!