Let's talk about the state of our current community of Firestone. My reflections of our view of our current community and the recent POST graduation

Firestone Discussion
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I’m going to take this post seriously today.

Instead of being my usual dark humored and comical/satirical person that I portray in Firestone, I am going to be my serious self. For those who have ever seen a post from me, I am well known by regular users of the Firestone forums to be a satirical shit poster. For those that say “YoU aReN’t FuNnY, nObOdY lIkEs YoU.” Believe it or not, some people actually find satirical humor funny. And whenever I make a post on our Firestone forums, I get flooded with DM’s praising me for my take on firestone related news or discussion as it was a much needed comedic relief.

So now onto POST and POST Class 53s graduation.

1,515 days ago…. That was how long ago my post graduation was. To put that in English, that is 4 years, 1 month, and 3 days. I graduated POST in Class 05, yes, I’m that old to this community, I literally graduated in the first few months of Firestone ever existing. The thing about my graduation is that I remember almost every detail. Who my POST Director was, my POST Head Instructor, what it felt and what it was like to be on that stage and what it felt to recite the oath. I remember the songs that were playing, and the general atmosphere of it all.

Now, do you know how long 1,500 days in general is? To put that in perspective, the comment awards/text to speech meme shows that almost everyone watches was first aired in 2017. I graduated POST in September of 2016. Since then, we have gotten a new president of the United States. We’ve gone through a fucking solar eclipse, something that happens once in a generation, we’ve seen rebellions, rise of the Bitcoin Billionaires and Millionaires. Additionally, I’ve seen so many Governors and Sheriff’s of the SCSO come and go. Superintendents, Colonels, Generals, and Secretaries, real people coming and going. And just like clock work, throughout the years, new people come, go through FFA or POST, and become new members of the government sector of Firestone.

Yesterday I did not realize we would be having a POST Graduation until I was notified as such. I rarely have the time to attend a graduation especially now that I have a job. To show respect to those who have trained so hard to enroll and graduate POST, I decided to attend. During this classes POST graduation, I saw new people I’ve never seen before, people I’ve known for years as POST Instructors, numerous people among the crowd coming to see the new POST Cadets graduating, of which, some of them will be inspired to enroll in the next class and soon become a sworn Officer in the future too. And as I saw these eager Cadets take their oath, the class speaker spoke, and selected members of differing departments gave their speech too, I stopped and thought for a little. I thought about my first call I ever got in Firestone that I still remember to this day, I was young and eager to become an Officer and finally get my call sign. I remember I was at the FSP Station in Prominence back in V1, a Deputy pressed their panic button and I responded to the SCSO station. I remember how thrilling it felt to go on my first ever call. But that was back then, when most of the current community members in Firestone were younger.

I remember the days when people would come up with creative or interesting ways to break the law and get into felony pursuits and shootouts to give Officers and themselves a little bit of entertainment while RPing. Old members who are no longer with us (as in terms they grew up and left Roblox) such as LawOfficerPaw or now P_aws was a major criminal but yet he respected us and roleplayed to the fullest realistic extent. In our current community, famous and current well known criminals are known to get in their Dodge SRT and do everything in their power to be a nuisance to everything and anyone. Constant ramming is a common minute to minute occurrence in Redwood, so as it seems at least. It seems impossible to have any tad bit of fun roleplay or any civil interactions with the public anymore. Which is something that makes me sad. When I think about it, my beloved community, a community I’ve stuck through through it’s ups and downs is now populated with undesirable characters who constantly break game rules and ruin the fun for other players including Officers for their own personal amusement. New POST graduates will rarely or never experience the fun or enjoyment old veteran officers such as myself felt back in 2016-early 2018 while interacting with the community.

So that begs the question, “how and why did we get here?”

Unfortunately, I do not have the answer or know how to respond to my own question. Somewhere along the timeline from 2017 to current day, we fell apart as a community. We gave up on trying to reprimand bad sportsmanship and actively condemn those who became nuisances to our community. Ramming and general FRP isn’t something new to Firestone. I’ve seen it since my first week working in FSP back in 2016. However, the rate of it has seemingly increased. You’ll see people dressing up as distorted cartoon characters, or being unoriginal and dressing in all pure black robbing ATM’s and driving off the map to escape and elude from Law Enforceemnt, or maybe it’s a fake hostage scenario where a group of friends try to pose as hostages while robbing the bank before fleeing away in Dodge SRT’s, that or the annoying group of girls who smack people on the back of the head, and then try and FRP or use other methods to avoid getting arrested before trying to cry their way out of getting arrested, or people generally acting a fool driving around Redwood Boulevard ramming into people and cars just for shits and giggles. The point I guess I’m trying to make is this, even in the beginning of your shift, you will deal with nuisances all the way to the end. It is a rather solemn occasion to not get shot up in the car dealer parking lot, or have someone ram into you intentionally to slow your response down. And after all this, some of you might think to yourself “Why am I doing all this, putting in patrol logs, trying to remain active, and doing my best when I deal with this? Where’s the reward?” or “Even with all this, people still run for office? People are still writing laws and deciding Mens Rea or Actus Rea in court, and we still have people lining out the back and around the block to enroll into POST? How, and why?” Then you think, you remember, sometimes it’s not all bad, maybe once in a while, you can meet someone cool, be inspired, do something cool, learn from someone or something, and do something and be someone.

At the end of the day, I pray that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That we can actually end this horrible period of being nuisances to each other and come out the other end a better and more fun community.

And to:
Svxra (class speaker)
Coolgxry
AceSouthern
ThinBlueRespect
RobbingTheWolves
Zanelo
Range_Law
ZZ7Agent
Avia_Rio
OfficerTechUnit
V_15K
Facchiano
Vehicle_Law
Sprxngviibes
TheDarkBite1
Pearished
StealthyEagle97
Francisco_Mango
DevelopingThinBlue
Staceyvx
RehabSider
Obey_Cycle
mdwe007

I wish the best for you, our POST Graduates of class 53. From a graduate from over 4 years ago, to a graduate from just a few nights ago, I want to see you secede and have fun in Firestone. No matter which you will join, you’ll meet some amazing ass people. You will find people who you will talk to for years to come, some people who are no longer on Roblox, you will rise up the ranks, and sadly, some of you will fail. You now have multiple options. Do you want to join the Sheriff’s Office and maybe get into SWAT or another division of the SCSO? Do you want to join the Firestone State Patrol and get into Traffic Enforcement, or Aviation Command, or maybe understand the thrill of pulling over into a blind spot near a county road or off a highway and spiking someone and watching them slow down as other units get ready to box them and conduct a thorough and entertaining Felony Stop?

And to clarify for those who are active criminals who actually abide by the rules, and report FRP and rule breaking, both on citizens, criminals, and Officers alike, and find creative and fun ways to RP, I am not talking about you in terms of destroying our community, in fact I love you, if I was gay, I’d go down on you. I believe guns should be cheaper and easier to obtain as long as we can work together on weeding out FRPers. You are misunderstood, you chose a different career pathway in Firestone that you enjoy. And I vaguely understand your troubles of dealing with toxic Officers. Constant FRP and nuisance players makes us Officers burn out easily if not controlled or dealt with correctly. Which causes toxicity in our community.

If we really want to help our community, we need to actively condemn people who break them and make it a nuisance to deal with. We need to report rule breaking to admins, and hope they take steps to punish rouge players that infringe on our enjoyment of our beloved community. Just semi actively condemning such actions by saying “we need more accountability” is not going to work. We need to take serious steps in order to make change.

Also lidels, please unban me from the state discord <3

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If you wish to talk to me directly, you can shoot me a friend request over a discord DM @ mrpoliceemsfire1#3620

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Thanks for posting that, made me change some of my opinions.

Suggesting leos and criminals to read it.

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Mhm, this is a one fine post one should say.

I do agree with things, there has been a drop in imagination. Pretty much not it’s all about responding to distress calls (shootings on LEO or Public Employees), random 911s that lack of imagination, hostage situations left and right, bank robberies and so on.

The amount of times, where I hope that was a real role play scene. Would love to see more scenes where we actually have to investigate on scene and get everyone’s say on topic in order to move on! but eh, highly doubt that this will change with the amount of random ass things we have to respond.

Maybe in v3 we could get some change to this, but most likely not.

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SO BASICALLY, I read absolutely nothing from this but I understand the concept is that you like people who graduate.

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Not at all… not even close… read the post

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What happened is that the group increased in members, which caused roblox to give it more attention, which caused people who don’t take roleplaying too strictly to be attracted to the game. When Firestone still had few members, all of the active members enjoyed and valued roleplaying and played the game so they could roleplay. Now you’ll have new people joining who don’t know what to do and just decide to ram everything they see because that’s funny, right?

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man you didn’t even read it.

that wasn’t even IN the post at ALL, he was stating how everything has change compared to when he joined in class 5, and that he prays that the new POST certified individuals to actually have fun and not just become a nuisance.

and he spoke about how the community has been separating more and more unlike how it use to be "more united.

idk where you got “I like people who are post certified”

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Very interesting post, I enjoyed reading. Firestone used to be a small community - everyone knew each other, everyone understood roleplaying. We now have over 100,000 members, and most old faces are gone. Times change.

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I thought I mentioned this, but I wished I did.

After spending weeks planing on how you will enroll into POST, finally enrolling, going through training, passing tests and exams, graduating, reciting the oath, applying to a department, getting into a department, going through their basic training, getting a call sign, going through additional field training, and finally going alone on a patrol, this is going to hit you like a box of rocks. You’re going to discover what it feels like to call 10-8, get a 911 call about someone playing WAP uncensored and base boosted at the car dealer parking lot, have a group of girls come up to and smack off your campaign cover, while having people run into you with a car, over and over, and over again.
After all that, where’s the reward? Getting to keep your job? Even after that, you got to log trainings, patrols, attend events, deal with dumbasses who think they know everything about the law, and so much more.

After all that dedication, that is what you get.
That was the message and base of my reflection. Reflecting on my past experiences as an old veteran Officer who slowly adapted to our changing climate with bare minimum requirements to become an Officer entering our modern day and age in Firestone. When I first joined Firestone, you got into POST by clicking join pend on the group and attending a tier 1. Somewhere down the line we got enrollment applications, we had more stricter standards, all while our community slowly became what it is to this day, a modern day but somewhat realistic cops and robbers, if you will.

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yeah ik I’ve experienced all of that already during my time, I was recently in DOC and SCSO Sergeant, and been employed for a year and like 3 months, I was kinda forced to resign but tbh I feel much better after doing so since I don’t need to worry about inputting my units logs on top of doing my logs.

especially feeling better after I didn’t have to deal with literal gorillas jumping on my car and arresting the same people for failure to comply 15 times a day for them standing ontop of my car while driving

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As a state patrol sergeant who spent a year in the department, it is true that firestone at the moment is chaotic, I hate it when SRT drivers ram scenes and successfully evade us since our vehicles go 10 SPS less than SRTs and we also have to spam the “R” key to increase our speed to catch up to the suspects. But one thing I always loved within the state is actually doing things. This is way better than City of Raddleton (full of 12 year old powerhungry cop wannabes) and Mano County. Another thing I enjoy is training new Probationary Troopers or hosting a training for the department in general which I have also been doing for a year now surprisingly. I have seen a lot of these guys grow within the department. Anyway, hopefully the current firestone mess ends soon and the criminal community realizes that what they do that makes it unfair for us LEOs is getting boring and they do rps like what I always heard about from my time in the department.

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I mean we can only do so much with the tools provided; a car, a gun, and 1-doored buildings

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I agree. Firestone was a smaller community back then. More active, dedicated longtime criminals. Good ole times. Games more popular now, and has more random players. Inevitably, the roleplay has decayed.

To any of the recent, or future post graduates (Or any academy graduate or department member for that member)
I wish we could give you the experience we had 10, 20, 30, 40 classes ago. The amazing roleplay, the small yet amazing and tightknit community. But make the best of what you have. It’s gonna be rough, gonna be constant harassment and ramming and bank robberies. But at the end of the day, just have fun. And if your not having fun? Change what you are doing! Can’t find fun here because of the way roleplay has turned? That’s fine too. Become a criminal? if that’s your thing, go for it. Good luck, amigos.

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Amazing post, whitelist system, maybe? Would have a significant impact on changing the way Firestone members in general role-play and interact with people in the county. How about making it FRP to role-play unrealistically in general, and then having LEO’s heavily enforce that? While there may be some options in potentially fixing this issue, Firestone will never be the same as it was before, but I’m confident that doing these things will have some sort of impact on role-play and FRP. Just some ideas I wanted to propose although I highly doubt that any of these will be considered taking into account how many CON’s that some of these ideas have.

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Me too man. I remember I was off-duty with a group of friends, I walking down an ally in V1 and I was targeted by a man I arrested. He took me hostage and while stopping at a nearby cafe out of many cafes in Prominence District, I was spotted by a fellow Deputy. A hostage situation soon a raised, after 20 minutes, the man who kidnapped me said to me “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right here, right now, and kill a few of your friends.”.
I eventually survived after he agreed to be sniped by an CRT Operator through the glass windows.

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I am a graduate of Class 05 from August 31st, 2016. My POST Certification officially became valid on September 1st, 2016, 1,516 days ago.

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“I remember… It used to be… Now everything is…”

YEAH, WE GET IT. We all know everything used to be so much better. That sucks, Firestone is different now and being nostalgic about the past wont help. We’re not going back to v1 and v2 Alpha, end of story. If less of these forum posts discussed unachievable goals and more focused towards the future of Firestone: v3, a game centered around development instead of obsessive roleplaying, then maybe we would come closer to that goal. We all know that v2 sucks and departments are failing and old community members are gone, TOO BAD, move on, we have to make with what we got and develop this State into the community we want it to be.

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Something I always wanted to point out, Everyone always says “Criminals in v1 did more RP and were creative” and tbh I watched some v1 SCSO patrol videos and I have to say it wasn’t so much of a difference than it is now in my eyes. I saw ramming but I guess it was different because all the cars went the same speed and Firestone had like 20 players max. I saw a WHOLE lot of lag. However, I have to say v1 shootouts seemed more fun because the guns were so hard to aim with. In the videos, shootouts lasted a full 5-6 mintues. Of course, I guess the best role-plays weren’t caught on camera.

My main point on "Everyone saying criminals don’t RP or do anything creative anymore

I honestly just want to say this, criminal role-plays are actually boring and I think most v2 criminals can agree with me ( @Cuxle, @b0org, @scriblelz tell me if I’m wrong). I really don’t want to sit there and type out a full domestic violence role-play or house burglary role-play. It was probably fun 5 years ago when I played Norfolk or Firestone once in a bluemoon. At this age I don’t want too. I played the game to have thrill and to feel the adrenaline in my veins when theirs a CRT truck filled with agents on my ass. Sometimes rps are fun but rarely, I’ll rather spend 15 mintues in jail after having fun. Not after typing out a cringe domestic rp

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that’s my thing too, we can’t be creative, or have an RP that everyone likes because in the end of the day, its more like the LEOs are the ones who only enjoyed it, for less then 5 minutes because they rushed at us

foot pursuits aren’t as fun as they are in other games, you get tased from over 100+ studs away which honestly doesn’t make sense lol

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