Drugs

[Immigrant]

Drugs need a little bit of work​

Drugs are a really big part of the FiveM criminal market. This being said they are quite bad at that and in my personal opinion need to be reworked. Players always choose cocaine over making any other drug and the majority of players don't even know about the existence of meth or LSA. This large bias towards cocaine is easily explained, it is simply because cocaine is the easiest/fastest drug to make.

LSA is a drug that requires you to pick INVISIBLE CHEMICALS in order to make. Furthermore, you need 3 INVISIBLE CHEMICALS to make 1 LSA. All of that being said you would expect LSA to be worth a fortune don't you? Absolutely not, in fact the black market laptop doesn't even offer a price for LSA. Oh well since one can't sell it that means it must have a very overpowered ability that it grants upon the user, however; LSA can't even be used. So with all of that being said, there is a drug that is very hard to make and it offers no purpose what so ever.

Meth is another drug that requires the harvest of INVISIBLE CHEMICALS in order to make. Now meth is without a doubt the most time-consuming chemical to make. In order to make meth one needs to harvest INVISIBLE CHEMICALS and then take those chemicals to where LSA is produced in order to make them into different types of chemicals and then take them yet again to another location where only then meth is made. So, meth takes 3 chemicals per one meth and 3 different locations. Getting the chemicals alone is 3 times more work than cocaine so one would expect a payout which is 3 times higher than that of cocaine right? WRONG 1 bag of coke is worth $273 and one bag of meth is worth $423. That is a little less than double the money of coke. Is that really worth more than 3 times the effort of doing coke? Once again since meth doesn't really sell too good on the black market means it MUST grant the user and ability, however; itis just another drug that when used makes the user just walk around as if they are drunk.

INVISIBLE CHEMICALS is a statement that I have used a lot throughout this whole peice of literary ART. Invisible chemicals sound like a secret phrase or something of that nature, however, it is literally my biggest problem with meth and LSA. When one goes to collect chemicals one would think that they would go to a chemical lab of some sort or a warehouse. Which is correct to an extent. In order to collect chemicals, the player must go to a certain warehouse and collect chemicals which they cannot see. Literally the chemicals are in a field behind a warehouse and have no sort of visual to signify where they are. The player must run around the field spamming E hoping they walk over an invisible chemical.

Prices of drugs may also need a little bit of tweaking. Many may argue that the prices for every drug are relatively reasonable. Which I agree with to an extent. Drugs, in my opinion, should be a means of HIGH-risk HIGH reward which they obviously are, however; you can make that same amount of money (if not more) in the same amount of time doing the slaughter job, and on top of that the slaughter job is way less risky. Most of the time if people go to rob a guardian and they see that it has the goods of someone doing a legal job they let them go about their day without really robbing them. Therefore I believe drugs should receive a SLIGHT increase to price to make them a little more worthwhile. This would likely motivate more players to ride around looking for more of these trucks to rob and overall create more roleplay scenarios.

Here is some of the solutions that I could come up with. (I know only basic Lua and know nothing of its integration into FiveM so bare with me) An easy solution in my eyes would be to just remove the chemicals, therefore, getting rid of meth and LSA as a whole. The better solution in my eyes would be to just replace the current drug script with a different one. Finally, the hardest solution would likely be to find ways to fix the chemicals and tweak the prices of everything so it makes every drug viable.

Prices for drugs (I did have LSA in my inventory for this pricture):

View attachment 22969


A note to my personal FBI agent: Listen man I know I mentioned a lot of drugs throughout this but it is for a game I promise.

 

[iLLusion99]

My personally believe that the drug locations should be moved to areas which better suit the drug. Also, maybe make the areas have an increased police presence. This would allow drugs to have a higher risk aspect. Then give the prices a bit of a pay increase allowing them to be more rewarding for the new added risk.

I don't know if i would want chemicals removed as a whole but maybe add a texture to them so they can be seen by players like heroin, coke and weed are.

 

[Alex]

There's an issue I see repeatedly see brought up in these threads.
"Drugs need to be worth more"
"Drugs don't give enough money" etc.

Here's the thing. Instead of focusing on making money off drugs, and grinding to get that $3 million dollar sports car to run from police, why not create RP with them instead? Go out on the streets with them and act accordingly. Create interesting scenarios that give your character growth, give other people the opportunity to interact with you.

Every single thread I see is focused on the MONEY aspect when in reality, that's the thing that kills RP servers. Hell, it's the reason I didn't have a civilian character from April of last year to March of this year. If you want to go grind, try a different game.

TDLR: Focus on roleplaying, instead of making money. 20 quality roleplay scenes with drugs is worth INFINITELY more than one armored car running & gunning cops down.

 

[Immigrant]

Although I do agree with the fact that drugs could make a great roleplay scene. Most of the roleplay scenes that can be created with drugs (on the criminal side) will conclude with the criminal going to jail and paying a fine. Why would I want to spend time collecting drugs only to lose them and lose money? Also let's all be honest, at the end of the day everyone's end goal is to have at least one of their dream cars in their garage.

 

[Alex]

Most of the roleplay scenes that can be created with drugs (on the criminal side) will conclude with the criminal going to jail and paying a fine. Why would I want to spend time collecting drugs only to lose them and lose money?

Create the character purely for roleplay, and going to jail won't be an issue. Go get a drink or something while you serve your 2-5 minute sentence.

The best roleplayers will plant a few on themselves purely to create roleplay with the cops. And every single cop will tell you that the scene with the guy who had a few bags of meth is better than the criminal who ran in the sports car.

And as far as having a dream car, I completely agree. There is a very fine line between being focused more on money than roleplay, and just acquiring something cool that you may enjoy.

 

[Marcoboy24]

Until you realise that getting money is actually worthless compared to setting up a nice roleplay scene, there wont be an end to the posts of nerfing or buffing drugs

 

[Immigrant]

If getting money is worthless then all of your garages should be empty. Otherwise, the statement you just made is hypocritical. Also, you can't make a good roleplay scene without using the money for it in one way or another.

 

[osmosis]

His point is that you shouldn't be focused solely on making money, obviously having it has a possibility to open new avenues of rp, but you don't *need* to have money to make rp

 

[Immigrant]

I understand that fully. His statement was pretty irrelevant to the post I made. I was simply just stating the many different problems with the current drugs and suggesting solutions.

 

[Alex]

If getting money is worthless then all of your garages should be empty. Otherwise, the statement you just made is hypocritical. .

I know you aren't talking to me, but, fun fact, mine are.

Also, you can't make a good roleplay scene without using the money for it in one way or another.

Oh you ABSOLUTELY can. Most RP I make on my "designated civ RP character" is free of charge. Off the top of my head one I can remember, myself, Matt With A Cat, and Moyye had a solid 45 minute RP up at Paleto Bank where we roleplayed as Gruppe 6 members. We got an entire investigation going with the PD without a single shot fired. The cost? $0. We simply found a Gruppe 6 truck. Super simple. If you think all good roleplay scenes require money, try making some without spending a dollar. I think you'll be a bit surprised

 

[Immigrant]

I did a roleplay exactly like that where a friend and I were Gruppe Sechs employees and we "accidentally" tripped the bank alarm while trying to load the money in the truck. We actually ended up getting a police escort to robbing the bank. I couldn't find Gruppe Sechs truck so I just bought one. But yeah that statement I made is inaccurate I should have been more specific.

Like I said previously the main idea behind this post was to bring attention to the fact that the drug system is a little iffy in my opinion.

 

[Chicken Noodle Soup]

In that screenshot you provided, it showed that 2 meth was worth twice as much as 4 coke, that means, for 4 meth, you’d get 4 times the amount of money as doing coke, for only three times the effort

 

[Immigrant]

No, it shows the price of 1 bag.

 

[Gucio]

You are absolutely right. Drugs need to be re-worked definitely. Even though this RP server isnt a "money and cars" server, no way should you make more money slaughtering some chickens then you would trafficking drugs. The reality is people do want to make money on this server. Every time I do chicken runs, I see a shit ton of guardians, but rarely see anyone doing drug runs.

It's a difficult situation, but a solution needs happen.

 

[sesh99]

Throughout this thread I found these following arguments:
1. Buff the price of drugs to encourage more criminal RP
2. Buff the price of drugs to make High-risk work (so more people can do it)
3. Drugs are only for the use of specific RP scenes, therefore the prices do not need to change.

However, I see an issue with argument #3. The reason why we have characters is not for singular RP scenes but to ROLEPLAY the character as a whole. I have seen hardened criminals move to do chicken just to make money for RP scenarios where they ROLEPLAY as criminals. In my opinion, the character itself should be developed in regard to what they do and who they are.

EX. Hardened criminals with large records will continue to do illegal activities, however, they feel discouraged after finding that their high-risk job is not worth since legal jobs pay more, destroying the character development portion of RP and not just RP on a scene by scene basis.


TLDR: Buff drugs so crims can develop their character better.

Also, it would be cool if we could sell to locals again

 

[sesh99]

In that screenshot you provided, it showed that 2 meth was worth twice as much as 4 coke, that means, for 4 meth, you’d get 4 times the amount of money as doing coke, for only three times the effort

Realistically that won't be true, take into consideration other factors such as transport, robberies, and lost goods due to carelessness.

 

[Alex]

TLDR: Buff drugs so crims can develop their character better.

Why does the price of drugs determine how well a character can grow? I'd think the money value has minimal to no effect on how well a person develops and changes.

 

[Gucio]

Like he said earlier, they found out they can do chicken jobs and make more, with less risk etc. What dealer would want to sell drugs when they can make more money, less risk doing a legal job? It's unrealistic. Something needs to be done to encourage people to want to take that route, it will improve the RP for everyone involved. Cops, criminals, Etc. The only way I see that happening is if you get rewarded more then you would doing a chicken job.