Welcome to Vice!

Hi,

Welcome to Vice Roleplay’s first development blog! In this series of posts we‘ll share the progress we’ve been making behind the scenes, and give you more context about the project’s identity and features as we make progress towards the project’s initial release.

We would like to start by introducing ourselves and tell you a little bit about what this project is and how it started.

A brief story about Vice

The Vice Dev Team had been working on a variety of Grand Theft Auto Multiplayer projects since 2011 (the SA-MP era), including paid and non-paid work, community contributions and self-started projects of varied kinds, ranging from Trucking, to Roleplay, to Zombie servers.

During the pandemic in 2020-2021, the project’s Lead Developers felt the frustration of the community with some of the most popular Roleplay Servers in GTA V Multiplayer platforms. We witnessed projects with great potential slowly adopt hostile practices that go against core principles to us.

By introducing loot boxes, gacha-based mechanics, and other aggressive micro-transaction strategies, their economies became extremely hyper-inflationary. But the problems didn’t stop there. By allowing non-curated players access to the same environment as experienced committed role players, their community became extremely dissatisfied with the overall Roleplay experience.

With the admittance of inexperienced Administrative Staff members and the consequential lack of proper support and rule enforcement, entire communities of players in the Northern American scene were affected by the negative perspective of what a Roleplay experience should look like.

That was when we decided that we had enough. We had been working on Roleplay projects for a decade. We could and we should do something different. And that’s how this project started.

Our Principles

We deliberately want to state our non-negotiable governing principles from day one with you, so you can hold us accountable in case anything we ever do break your experience, and the story we just told you above never happens again.

Our principles are:

• Player Experience Over Profit: your experience playing on our servers is our utmost priority. We are committed to never adopting pay-to-win mechanics that will break your experience. Our business model relies on cosmetics and convenience mechanics to ensure that paid players do not have competitive advantages against non-paid players.
• High Ownership: we will only ever admit experienced, competent, committed and honest staff members. A fair and professional administration team is one of the key factors that determines the success or failure of a project.
• Life Learnings: while playing on our servers, you will notice that mechanics are intentionally crafted to always teach you something new in a fun, creative and imperceptible way. The goal is to spark a silent and perhaps hidden curiosity inside you that might elevate you in your personal life, beyond the gameplay session. For example, if you decide that your character will graduate in medicine, you will complete mini-games that will invisibly expose you to basic biology concepts, and that knowledge is something you’ll carry with yourself for the rest of your life.
• Immersive Mechanics: every single mechanic we ever introduce on our servers is highly detailed and highly immersive, and go much deeper than you initially think of them. For example, imagine your character just committed a bank robbery and successfully escaped the police before you abandoned the getaway vehicle. The detectives involved in your case won’t have access to your fingerprints as you wore gloves, but did you speak something while not wearing a mask, or were the windows down and the wind blew on your hair while escaping? The detective mechanics to collect leftover saliva and hair DNA might be used as evidence against you in court a week later if you were not careful enough.

Crafting A Unique Roleplay Experience

Did you ever ask yourself what a game needs to be considered good? We did, repeatedly, and we found the answer. In the end, it all comes down to crafting a balanced and fun experience for the players. But how can Roleplay Server creators achieve it? By asking ourselves that exact question, we found our way to start learning and getting obsessed with Game Design.

Most of the Roleplay Servers out there today consist of a conglomerate of fun but completely disconnected scripts and ideas. They have great features most of the times, but there's no underlying foundation linking them, thinking of your overall experience as a player.

When we started this project, we decided to do it differently than other servers do. Instead of creating another pile of disconnected systems, we decided to think of our players experience as our guiding star, and use our acquired knowledge in game design to craft what we think might be the most innovative experience you will ever have in a Roleplay server. We often partner with talented creators, create our own in-house tools and engines, but we also acquire scripts from talented creators as long as there is enough room for us to significantly modify them to fit our needs. Not a single system gets introduced to the server without passing our quality standards of review and deep customization by our rigorous team.

Interconnected Systems

In Vice Roleplay, every single script that we introduce serves a purpose. Each and every single one of them connects to another system, that connects to another, and so on. The final experience is a web of interconnected systems that make the world of Vice Roleplay feel like a living city.

To better illustrate that, let's take a look at this diagram showing some of our core features:

As you can see in the diagram, systems like factories and basic jobs are connected through features like the central market, and the business system is connected to both.

This is the kind of feature integration that most Grand Theft Auto Roleplay servers lack, and this is precisely how every mechanic in the Vice Roleplay work: whether you’re just a newcomer working on a entry level job gathering metals, or you’re a veteran who owns your own business, you’re always contributing to the ecosystem, not to an isolated system.

In this first development blog post, we will show you a bit of two of the core systems: the Factories and the Central Market systems, and how they are interconnected.

The Factories System

Factories are the key components players use to transform raw materials into processed goods that can be sold to other players, to service providers and businesses. Alternatively, these items can be exported to the server for a fraction of what it's actually worth. In other words, they're the first layer of the transformation engine players will have access to.

From time to time, the server will announce factories to be auctioned in the official's auction house system, so every player in the city that accumulated enough resources will be able to place a bid for it, with no favoritism.

Machines

As a factory owner, you’ll need to purchase machines to produce items in your factory. Each recipe you choose will require specific types of machines. For example, to produce lean ground beef, a production line will require at least one available meat grinder.

To purchase a new machine for your factory, visit the machine shop page in the factory’s dashboard:

When you build the logistics for your factory’s production line, you’ll have to build the machinery within your factory, part by part before activating your production line.

In the screenshot below you can see how we use one of our internal administrative tools to create immersive modular scenes that our players are able to interact with and complete mini-games. We'll show you a bit more about its capabilities down below.

When your production line’s machinery is successfully installed, you’ll need to hire worker NPCs to work in that production line. Worker NPCs will perform basic tasks such as basic operations and maintenance, keeping the production line active. But watch out, their productivity will decay over time if you don’t keep them engaged, and that might affect the number of items your factory produces.

To restore a production line’s productivity back to 100%, a player employee will have to complete mini-games producing items themselves in each machine involved in a production line.

You’ll also need to execute repair operations on your machines from time to time. Each repair operation requires you to complete a specific mini-game and clean, replace and repair some parts of the machine. Failure to complete a repair might further damage it, costing you more than it would originally to get it working.

Production Lines, Licenses & Recipes

To create your first production line, you can look at the available recipes in the "recipes" tab and inspect the requirements for each item to be produced. You'll also be able to organize your production line using our embedded blueprint editor to maximize the effectivity of your production line. Add more machines to produce more items quickly, use your factory's warehouse as a buffer while producing intermediate goods using additional machines, the factory floor is yours to explore, be creative and have fun with!

Input & Output Warehouses

Each factory has a limited capacity for goods they can store. From time to time, you'll be faced with challenges to manage your warehouse inventory. Produced way too many goods that the market is no longer interested? Maybe you should consider posting them below the Fair Market Price for an increased chance of selling it, or maybe get a direct contract with a business owner to supply them for a discounted price. Do you have some extra space on your Central Market Warehouse storage? Perhaps it could be a safe way to store them for the long term. Or maybe you need some instant cash, so in that case, you might consider exporting those goods to the Global Market for a fraction of the price the goods are worth. Whatever the challenge is, there are multiple solutions, and the system always favors the ones that involve player-to-player interaction.

Manage your factory's inventory wisely. A full warehouse inventory might halt your production lines.

Factory Logistics / Hauling

Items produced? Now it’s time to sell! Use your factory purchased vehicles to set up transportation tasks between your factory and the Central Market Warehouse.

Navigate to the hauling tab in your factory’s dashboard and set up outgoing and returning goods to seamlessly deliver and retrieve goods from the Central Market warehouse.

Once the transportation is completed, the items in your factory’s vehicle trunk will be swapped. The items coming from your factory’s warehouse will be automatically moved to your factory’s central market warehouse, and any returning items will be automatically loaded in your vehicle’s trunk. You’ll also be able to change the returning goods while you’re still at the Central Market’s loading bay. To bring back supplies from your Central Market Warehouse to your factory's warehouse, drive back to your factory’s loading bay and unload the returning goods.

Business Management

On the business management side of things, the factory dashboard will offer you several options to expand and upgrade your factory operations. From managing licenses to measuring workforce productivity, the dashboard offers you plenty of operational information for you to stay on top of your operations numbers.

The Central Market System

The Central Market is a system where players, businesses, factories and even the server itself trade items for in-game money. Players collecting raw materials sell them to factory owners who will compete for these items to transform and feed the supply chain. Businesses purchase processed items in the Central Market and pack them so that players and server NPCs acquire their stock. The Central Market System is the hub that connects all the parts together, and turns the economy into a living and breathing ecosystem.

Loading Bay

When arriving at the central market, you'll be able to park your vehicle at the loading bay. If it's a factory or business vehicle, you'll have access to the quick load/unload system where you can manage returning goods. For personal vehicles, you'll have access to the vehicle's trunk contents via the central market Warehouse page in the dashboard.

Central Market Warehouse

From the Central Market Warehouse dashboard page you are able to transfer items between your inventory, the warehouse itself and your vehicle's trunk (so long as your vehicle is parked at the loading bay). Your warehouse also has its own cash balance, separate from your pocket money. All your market sales get deposited there, and all your purchases are paid from there. Need more storage space? Hire Logistics Manager NPCs to expand your warehouse capacity, for a daily fee of course. There's no free lunch.

Buying & Selling

The heart of the Central Market is players trading with players. Every item page shows you everything you need to trade smart: the current Fair Market Price, a full price history chart, active sales listings and open purchase orders, all in one place.

Selling is simple. Deposit your goods into your warehouse, pick your price, and list them. Your price is yours to set. The market will show you a badge letting you know how your price compares to the current FMP, but it never stops you. Undercut the competition to move stock fast, or hold out for the price you believe your goods deserve. If a buyer already has a matching purchase order open, your sale can even complete the moment you list it.

Buying works both ways too. If the item you need is in stock, buy it instantly and it lands in your warehouse. If it's not, or if the current asking prices don't suit you, place a purchase order at the price you're willing to pay and let sellers come to you. Businesses and factories will rely on this constantly, keeping standing orders open so their supply chains never run dry. For sellers, those open orders are a live map of what the city is hungry for.

Watch the charts, learn the rhythms of the city, and you'll find there's real money in trading itself. Buy low, sell high. Some players will make their entire living without ever touching a factory or a field.

Global Market: Importing and Exporting

Sometimes there's no player around to trade with, and that's where the Global Market comes in. Think of it as the city trading with the outside world: you can export your goods for instant cash, or import scarce items when nobody in the city is selling them.

But here's the thing: the server is intentionally a terrible trade partner. Exporting pays you only a fraction of what your goods are actually worth, and the exported items leave the city forever. Importing costs you a steep premium over the Fair Market Price, and your order takes real hours to arrive. That's plenty of time for a sharp player to notice the demand and undercut the server before your shipment lands.

This is by design. The Global Market exists as a safety net, not as a shortcut. It guarantees you'll never be completely stuck: there's always a buyer of last resort for your surplus, and always a seller of last resort for that one item nobody stocks. But the best deal in the city will always, always be another player. Every mechanic in the Central Market is built to push you toward the same conclusion: talk to people. That's the whole point of a Roleplay server, after all.

Fair Market Price & Anti-Exploitation Layers

Every item in the city has a Fair Market Price (FMP), a living reference value that you'll see everywhere in the Central Market. It's calculated exclusively from real, completed player-to-player sales, and it's recalculated throughout the day as the city trades. When demand for an item rises, its FMP rises. When the city is flooded with supply, it falls. No admin sets these prices. You do, collectively, every time you trade.

The FMP never blocks you from anything. You're free to list your goods at whatever price you want, and the market simply keeps you informed. Price below FMP and buyers will see it flagged as a deal. Price way above what importing from the server would cost, and buyers will see that too. Informed players make a healthy economy.

And for the clever ones already scheming how to game it: we thought of you first. The FMP is engineered from the ground up to resist manipulation. Wash trading between accounts, coordinated pump attempts, and flash-crash tricks are detected and neutralized before they ever move the price. On top of that, the market has automatic stabilizers that kick in when an item's price overheats, and when they do, it's never in secret: a public banner on the Central Market dashboard tells the whole city which categories are under intervention. A fair economy only works if everyone can trust the numbers, so transparency isn't optional. It's the foundation.

Future Integrations

The systems will be expanded over time as we bring new updates. For example, when we introduce the University & Degrees system, players with certain types of degrees will be able to provide consulting services via their own offices (—feature to be announced—) or work as full-time employees for factories, performing specific tasks that only experienced players will be able to do.

That concludes our first development blog, thanks for tunning in! We're super excited for the next ones. We have SO MUCH MORE to share with you soon!

MORE DEV BLOGS COMING SOON...

• Entry Level Jobs: Farming, Oil Rig, Mining, Lumberjacking, Hunting, Fishing, etc.
• Businesses & Service Providers
• Gangs, Families & Territory Disputes
• Heists, Drugs & Illegal Activities
• Law Enforcement, Investigation & Forensics
• Character Fun, Moods & Addiction
• Universities
• Many other features to be announced

Stay tuned! Join our discord server using this link to receive the latest updates about the project!

- Vice Roleplay Team