Pazz

Reporting it through IC means certainly will yield change. If there is a pattern or a surge of any sort of incorrect use or application of policy and it is recognized as an issue that affects more than one or two specific individuals, it is commonly swiftly followed by a faction-wide IC notice that aims to educate and steer faction members in the right direction and subsequently makes it easier for supervisors of the faction to proceed to disciplinary actions.

A Google Form should be sufficient to cater to the vast majority of the player base, to be fair. If it still requires a picture of /license and then a picture of the game panel and all characters, the voter fraud and "one vote for all characters" rule can be enforced all the same. I believe that it may be beneficial to, outside of the GOV forums, create a subforum in the in-character section of the main forums that allows all factions, such as SAGOV, LSEMS, LSPD, LSSD, SADOC, JB, etc. to repost their press releases. Basically, it can be posted on the GOV forums, and then a picture can be taken or the text can be copied and posted on the main forum's in-character press section. Relevant news, eg. SAGOV appointments, JB precedents, LRC changes or elections, LSPD firearms regulations, and SADOC changes that affect inmates, can reach a far wider audience.

For the sake of transparency, tazers, or less-lethal force, are specified under two of the LSPD's force levels. There is a difference between the two, though, which is that one level requires a verbal warning prior to the tazer being used, and the other does not. If a suspect is resistive, not following instructions, or has committed a criminal offense outside of a citation, but is not assaultive, then there should be a verbal warning prior to the actual utilization of less-lethal force (tazers). If a suspect is assaultive, then there is no need for a verbal warning. These levels and prerequisites make sense and exist already, primarily because it is logical to use the verbal warning and de facto threat of being tazed to gain compliance, and it is illogical to ask someone to stop beating you up with the threat of a tazer. Basically, the policy exists and it is logical - if someone is simply being non-compliant, use the verbal warning and basically the threat of a tazer to gain compliance prior to actually using the tazer, if someone is being assaultive (eg. attacking an officer or another player) then there does not need to be a warning because the threat needs to be stopped as soon as possible. While labeling things an "IC issue" is one of my pet peeves along with "find out IC", these are things that can be followed up with a formal in-character complaint. In the past, there have been formal disciplinary actions and suspensions issued to members of the LSPD faction on the in-character basis that they did not adhere to the force levels and their prerequisites, by, for example, not issuing a verbal warning prior to tazing a player that was simply being an IC nuisance by not complying. That said, it occurs far too often that a player gets tazed and then simply ignores these effects and has to be tazed another seven times before they either give up and comply, or an administrator needs to get involved to put the roleplay back on track. It is unreasonable to, beyond the initial verbal warning, expect continuous warnings when the players themselves fail to roleplay the tazer effects realistically, and, personally, if a player fails to hold themselves accountable with regard to roleplay standards and failing to roleplay these effects realistically by constantly running after being tazed, then I won't be holding a member of the LSPD faction accountable for having to taze this player seven times to gain compliance without six more different warnings after the initial one. I think that there's a middle ground that can be reached. The policy and prerequisites are in place for it, the IC investigative entity is in place for it, it just needs to be watched closer in-game, and the players that thoroughly enjoy running after being tazed for the seventh time should probably reconsider whether or not they're providing good interactions and roleplay as well.

If I can be a bus driver, fish, or deliver parcels for 16 hours a day, I should be able to be a mechanic or police officer or news reporter for 16 hours a day, if the time I have permits me to do that. With how many robberies and crimes against other persons occur on the server, "in the real world" the emergency services would authorize overtime for its employees, so that would make this null and void from the aforementioned realism perspective to begin with. When you start capping emergency services, you start reducing availability, when you reduce availability, emergency services are at risk of being overwhelmed, and when emergency services are at risk of being overwhelmed, a state of emergency is declared which futher permits overtime. The real world is used as an example of limiting work hours, but now you're drawing a comparison of real-life employment to video game faction membership, the latter being something that is used by many people to get an escape from the former. People should be able to play as long as they want to play, and in doing so, they should be able to do what they want, so let them. This applies to ALL players in all circumstances, not just "legal factions" or "criminal grinding". If someone has fun as a mechanic or officer for 10 hours a day, good on them! If someone has fun stealing cars or whatever for 10 hours a day, more power to them! Let them.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that VIP reduction not being applied to charges applied after imprisonment is a massive oversight, I do not believe that this was intentional at all. It's probably worth submitting a bug report if one hasn't been made already. I can't see any fathomable reason why it wouldn't be a simple oversight given that it is a paid perk, and with payment comes expectation and the delivery of promises made. I don't think exceeding the cap of prison times is an oversight, given that it was implemented to ensure 'consequences' for committing further crimes while incarcerated. Or, rather, so that if you beat someone to death in prison, your murder charge will be added on to your ongoing time, as opposed to being released with an active felony hanging over your head which will only result in being picked up and sent right back. That said, personally, I was not aware that it functioned in this way and only found out last night. I believe that there are more good intentions (e.g. placing a charge so that a suspect may be processed while other charges are sorted as to not prevent them from starting their timer) than there are malicious intentions, but I can see that even the best of intentions may have a negative impact, likely unbeknownst to the charging individual. I'll see if I can get the ball rolling in LSPD leadership and liaise with LSSD leadership to determine if there is any OOC policy that we can introduce to possibly prevent this by ensuring charges are applied prior to imprisonment so that VIP reduction and the prison time cap are taken into consideration by the script. That said, that may result in two or three more minutes of idling in a cruiser, so it'd probably be a sign of good faith to cut down the harassment of law enforcement roleplayers if they take a minute longer than you'd prefer.

seems a little low effort for one of your suggestion threads, there's no table of contents, a novel, or a song, but I guess it's alright

This has happened twice in the history of the server, I was here both times and both occurrences are not similar to each other but definitely enough to cause distrust when it comes to onboarding new developers. That said, while it is understandable, it is not an excuse. The last time this had occurred, it happened because the developer in question was given full access to the live server, and this access and trust was then misused and abused. There are ways around that. What they need to do is take the time to implement an infrastructure that allows for additional help. Developers do not need access to the live database or server, they can do their work on a dated copy of the database, or, frankly, they can be given the database structure without any data from the live server and base it on this. I believe they have mentioned that their codebase is done in a specific way that wouldn't really allow for easy help, but then the key word is easy. Frankly, it could be done, the time just needs to be taken to set this up properly. I like to think that with the time in between updates of significant scale as well as the time between any sort of communication, the time to set this up is there. Is the willingness? We've lost too many talented, skilled developers interested in helping with this server to other communities simply because of an unwillingness to accept their help, or a lack of communication. That's not even covering the issue of a total lack of communication on feature updates. We know we're supposed to get an update for drugs, weapons, vehicles, clothing, character customization, etc... but, when? Where are they at in terms of progress? The features don't even need to be finished, communication will go an incredibly long way.

I do not often involve myself in topics regarding law enforcement and time served because I think we all know how those topics turn out, but I would like to come forth and say that LSPD (and by extension, LSSD) has had a note on our development requests for at least 2-3 years now, if not longer, requesting that the /jail and /prison commands be amended to allow a time reduction based on percentage, with the requested percentage being up to 30%. When you consider how high times can go and the scalability of such a percentage relative to those times, that could be a rather significant chunk of time cut off someone's otherwise rather lengthy sentence. That is to say that we have been looking at ideas like these and different avenues to compromise, notwithstanding charging methods, because frankly, contrary to popular belief, we're not as player- and fun-hating as we're made out to be and we have been pushing for smaller changes like these that impact the time spent in jail and prison significantly, we just have not received any developer support or acknowledgement of these requests at all in the last many years.

I'm glad we all got a commemorative t-shirt for surviving.

I don't think not finding anyone has anything to do with any sort of lack of difficulty. I don't personally know just how easy or difficult it might be because it's not the side I play on, but it's a new feature so there's bound to be a larger number of incidents right now. With that in mind, if LEOs arrive at a house robbery and no one's there, I don't think it's fair to immediately assume the worst and say that it is because they're too easy and ask for it to be made more difficult. I imagine that players are still getting a hang of the system and that they're just getting out of the place when they know police might be coming. Even if they make it out with some stuff, good for them, they paid for the contract and potentially got their ROI. Give it time before immediately assuming a negative stance with a rather unfair conclusion. TL;DR, empty house and no arrests does not mean it's too easy, you're assuming that they even made it out with anything to write home about to begin with. They made it out of the area in time, that's life.

The platform used for LifeInvader (Sngine) already comes with a direct messaging feature/module, but it was disabled on Eclipse's end, presumably because of concerns surrounding proper moderation of the feature (either a lack thereof through no features allowing for it, or the amount of effort it would require) as well as it allowing players to message each other while out of the game but allowing for it to be IC, and the only way to restrict the latter to reduce the attention needed for the former is a whole other conversation, which is restricting logins to LifeInvader to only be pushed through when a character is logged into the server. At this stage, though, I don't really see it happening, the focus is entirely elsewhere, and if the scope somehow comes to include LifeInvader again, the focus will likely be the lack of proper usability you mentioned because of its speed. When it comes to the actual phone in-game, I like all proposed features, but if the attempt at social media from before is anything to go off of, adding two more platforms is probably better left alone for now, given how the implementation of LifeInvader went. At least, when it comes to forcing the player base to use a barely usable platform instead of its substitutes that worked perfectly fine. LifeInvader needs some love before any more experimentation is done with IC social media. A re-work of the texting system is probably also long overdue when it comes to group chats; texts don't properly sort based on when they were received or sent, names are cut short if you use too long of a name for a contact, if your messages are too far up and you scroll there, you'll automatically be moved down again, etc. I think the phone in its current stage, while exponentially better than the old phone script, still leaves a lot to be desired, and finer details should probably be taken care of before adding anything new to make it even more "fancy'. That said, if anything, a priority (as far as QOL priorities go and not actual "content" prioritization) should be the re-work of texting and the introduction of group chats. There's also an argument to be made that phones could and maybe should be inventory items that will allow players to A) have separate phones (i.e. work and personal, or burner and personal for illegal roleplayers), and B) for phones to be stolen or confiscated by other characters or law enforcement respectively, but that's an entirely different direction.

Either a phone app, or add it in the form of a UI similar to the one used for the farming job, /help, /vieworders, and so forth. The UI is already made and put to use in multiple aspects of the server, so I'm not too sure why the decision was made to put it into the chat. Then again, I like things being present in the chat, but with no offense intended, I'm not a fan of unformatted clutter or text that looks like a Christmas carnival because of the random selection of colors that seem to have no purpose but to.. well, be random. I suppose it stands out, but at what point does it stop being about catching someone's eye and becomes cluttered and 'unprofessional'. I'm going on a tangent here, but the random selection of colors with the randomly chosen highlighted words just make for a messy chat, this includes the job board that, if not changed to either a phone app and/or UI, should probably at least be brought in line with other chat-printed elements of the server, like bracketing "JOB BOARD" and the "1#", etc.

Vehicle dirt sync and "washes" shouldn't have been added as a half-assed feature and should've only been implemented in conjunction with actually functioning car washes for reasonable prices. Controversial opinion, I know. I'll do you one better, too. They could've been a new player-owned business.

Applications take under 24 hours to be processed. Generally 24 to 48 hours. You should receive a response within 24 hours!

This is not necessarily true. I can do with or without the "monopolies" in the server, but some points might need clarification here. Yes, Weazel News did start out as a group of players that came together and decided to make it a reality, and it was turned into a recognized legal faction of Eclipse in some point of 2017, but I think it is important to remember that the server environment was inherently different, as well as the focus of development and faction management (or the lack thereof that existed at the time). Is it difficult to do what was done in a matter of.. two months, at best, in 2017? Yeah, and it is most certainly not achievable in a time-frame that is anywhere close to the time in which Weazel News appeared as an organization and then became a recognized faction. Is it impossible? No, not really, but the server doesn't really allow for it in most cases. Yes, the argument can be made that at the end of the day it is roleplay, which it is, but that's a very easy cop-out when you consider the changes that have been made to the server and the environment since the establishment of the faction and the evolvement thereof in terms of how the server favors it. The vast difference for i.e. Weazel News is that the arguments made do not hold up in 2022 as they did in 2017, and I don't think it should really be used for argument's sake; Weazel News did not have an in-game newspaper, correct. That said, they had the classifieds forum section that allowed for them to post their newspaper. It was done through i.e. pasting screenshots of an enormous word document together. I should know, I ran Weazel News for several months back in the summer of 2017. However, this has only just recently become available again to the playerbase, as for whatever the reason or poor justification may have been, someone along the way decided to forcefully move all IC means of advertising or posting on the forums to the LifeInvader platform which died out immediately, meaning that there was no proper platform for a competitor to arise until a couple of months back, at best. Weazel News had the upperhand in that regard in 2017, and continued to hold the upperhand in 2022, although not through means of healthy competition, but by indirectly being favored by the server. This circles back to the IC boards on the main forums; Weazel News did have a place to post their articles, and they did. They made use of the IC boards that, again, were removed by server management in favor of a poorer and significantly slower platform used by a fraction of the active players on the server, if that, which effectively eliminated any proper opportunity for any individual(s) to establish themselves as a competitor to a news agency that has the ability to sell newspapers in-game and post them in a dedicated forum section. Weazel News did have ads to run, because when they started, VIP players and Donators had access to /vnn and /dnn respectively. The players behind Weazel News (who were Donators, may I add), instead of utilizing these ads (which for the record to those who do not know, were unlimited, cost-free, and unregulated for the most part, bar criminal advertisements) for themselves, advertised on behalf of other players, either those that did not have access to such features (as they were behind a paywall) or those that wanted their advertisements to continue in timezones they didn't cover. Currently, the only type of advertisement that a competitor could do would be advertising on someone else's behalf on the forums through the classifieds, but that is by no means any competition to the server-enforced "monopoly" of in-game advertisements which is entirely in the hand of the already established faction. Competition is healthy, and the possibility to establish a competitor or a legal business/company that may become an officially recognized faction (with a salary, if we want to compare it to the mentioned businesses in the OP) is very much present. That said, while people have paved the way for others to go down this path too, I do not think it is fair to not recognize the significant changes that have been made over the last half decade and how they affect the potential of a competitor. In that sense, competition to DCC is much more likely than competition to Weazel News, but even then a player will have to compete with an in-game app that comes on every single phone and a company that pays their drivers at an hourly rate with funding from the State Government, which one player cannot sustain a network of, unless they're one of the three richest players on the server. Basically, it's entirely possible to pave the way for a new roleplay- or character-based job that earns you loads more than any other paying job would, whether that be something you can put your artistic skills to use for, i.e. Kellie's drawings, or something else. It is also possible to establish yourself as competition, but a very small possibility at that, and whether that'll be fruitful in the end, who's to say.

Date and time (provide timezone): 09/NOV/2022, 18:06 UTC. Character name: Elena_Blake Issue/bug you are reporting: When a player enters a faction vehicle assigned to a unit without being in a unit themselves, the printed message in chat that is supposed to inform you which unit a cruiser belongs to instead prints "{}". Expected behavior: For the message to inform you of which unit the cruiser belongs to, as opposed to "{}". Evidence, notes worth mentioning, steps to replicate: When in a faction with a unit and MDC system, as well as assigned vehicles (at the very least the LSPD faction), enter a vehicle which is assigned to a unit without creating or joining a unit yourself. Furthermore, I would like to note that I have reported this before, quickly approaching what is now three years ago, and it was archived without a single response. In the event that it was a duplicate bug report, it is still not fixed after three years, and no response was provided to indicate that it was indeed a duplicate report. Vehicle license plate number*: N/A

Way back when, the ability was available for every player to create an organization in the F4 menu for the price of (if I recall correctly) $10,000, which would allow them a faction-based treasury. Now, this would automatically assign the created faction the label of "Criminal", because truthfully that is what 99% of the feature was used for, but, in essence, it allowed for players to have a separate shared "pile of funds" from their own bank account(s). That said, this option was then phased out to allow for recognition and "awarding" of official groups, legal and illegal, which of course took that ability of having a treasury away. If management wishes to maintain F4 as an "award" for legal and illegal groups (gangs, businesses, etc.) that put heaps of effort into their roleplay and representation, then (for the purposes of this suggestion) I am inclined to say that it should stay as restricted as it currently is. However, an alternative should be provided for businesses, somehow. It is hard for players to truly realize a "business" with funds and expenses through the server itself without adding unnecessary effort to separating profits and expenses from personal bank accounts which in turn encourages the use of options outside of the server and game to track these things. Being perfectly candid, I don't think adding some sort of treasury system for businesses that aren't in F4 discourages the use of i.e. spreadsheets to track profits and expenses, but I'm certain that it would help with separating personal and business funds significantly, so I support that. With that, though... something was supposedly in the making, so there is hope yet, though this is now two weeks away from being two years ago, and it hasn't seen its implementation yet, similar to i.e. the teased and supposedly finished garage properties with housing.

this has aged like fine wine

Law enforcement is able to see the list of vehicles belonging to a specified player that are currently in impound, but the list does not give any indication of how much the release fee will be. I think the best approach would be to allow players to view this list for their own character, and then to add the release fee to the list so that both parties are aware of the fee. Currently, neither party is able to see the fee before releasing the vehicle is attempted. Having someone wait at the impound for sometimes extended periods only to be informed that they do not have enough funds in the bank to release their car is wonky at best and could be easily avoided.

The concept is pretty straightforward and insignificant, and it comes down to adding an additional (realistic and affordable) fee to the vehicle impound upon release for vehicles that are permanently stalled, which in turn would repair the vehicle to just enough health points to be able to drive to a mechanic workshop for a proper repair. This could be incorporated into the already-existing release fee. Not only do I highly doubt that any players on the server get enjoyment out of waiting for mechanics at a place as populated as the impound to fix the vehicle they had already spent a good chunk of time waiting for, but it also creates a logistical problem where the impound has limited space and release points that are occupied by permanently stalled vehicles. It is more or less a minor quality of life change that would solve a logistical issue with occupied spaces at the impound, as well as make it so that players do not have to wait at the impound with their vehicle after spending time waiting for it to be released, to begin with. Perhaps the consensus may be that this takes away the responsibility or roleplay opportunity of mechanics, but I think that based on the environment, it is probably better for mechanics to service a vehicle at their own workshop as opposed to at impound lots, which are smaller in space, and often also densely populated with players, more so than the interior of the mechanic garages. TLDR; introducing an insignificant fee of a couple hundred dollars to the impound to repair vehicles that are permanently stalled enough to make their way to a mechanic workshop to avoid perma-stalled vehicles occupying slots.

While I have always been an avid fan of using the forums, and I still am, I'm not necessarily against the idea of using LifeInvader's marketplace feature. That said, the removal of the classifieds section on the forums was rushed significantly, and in my honest opinion unnecessarily, when there were (and still are) issues to work on for LifeInvader, such as the speed or, right now, the complete inability to edit your profile information. The platform is a nice idea in itself, and I understand the want to incentivize the use more by removing the classifieds section, it was just done much too early into the stages of the website. Disregarding the speed of the website, as it is a known issue well across the board, there's also more minor details that need to be worked out; as it stands, for example, the standard (and unalterable, might I add) currency used by LifeInvader is euros when the game is set in the United States and even the server uses dollars as its currency Minor detail that probably doesn't affect anyone? Maybe, but it's the little things that create inconsistencies that make me do a double-take on whether I believe in its current state it is good enough to be forced as the only option for sales besides in-game Weazel advertisements.

I think that the script preventing players from taking the battery of a phone belonging to a handcuffed player is likely an oversight, as I see no valid justification that could back it from a balancing perspective. I'm personally not of the opinion that a handcuffed player should be able to very easily turn their phone off by themselves, but it makes no sense to me that another player would not be able to do so for them. Be that by means of battery removal, or by making the phone an inventory item that can be turned on and off inside of the inventory. Lifting the restriction that bars players from removing the battery of a handcuffed player's phone I imagine is easier than introducing it as a new inventory item with the option to toggle it on and off, though.

Date and time (provide timezone): 16/MAR/2022, 12:57 UTC Character name: Elena_Blake Issue/bug you are reporting: The ability to stack decayed food items with items of a higher (and lower) percentage. To specify; all food items in the inventory will stack to the percentage of the item the "STACK" option is used on, as can be seen in the video. Expected behavior: To not be able to stack items of different percentages and to not be able to turn decayed items into items of a 100% value again. Evidence, notes worth mentioning, steps to replicate: https://streamable.com/nxg787 Obtain two food items, store one in a refrigerator and keep the other in your inventory. Wait for one to decay below the value of the other, then hold both items in your inventory and stack them. Vehicle license plate number*: N/A