Bala

Listen, he is raw. Are you? Are you raw, Jason Steel?

Eh, I don't feel like PD is necessarily in the wrong here and a detailed explanation of the hows and whys of PD isn't always possible for a multitude of reasons. It might be because to give the how away compromises the ability to catch someone else because inevitably it turns into a anti-cop meta, it might be that something is time sensitive and to explain, is to compromise the safety of a situation. It also removes the room to frankly, within the rules, to be a bit of a dick to someone who is likely being a dick. Like, I feel like if you're being reasonable, complaint and engaging in roleplay, a cop will be more forthcoming about the situation than if you're being an gaping asshole. We had a thing a few years back, where our faction members would have to take crazy amounts of abuse and couldn't give anything back, until we brought in a policy to allow a proportionate response to match that energy. For me, the problem isn't the withholding of information by PD, it's the misguided entitlement from some people to know every little facet of a situation, so either they can try and weasel out of it or alternatively, be able to cheese their way out of it down the line or maybe they just want something to bitch about. If a cop breaks the rules, they get dealt with. Happens all the time. The courts taking too long, I mean, the court system is complete waffle that doesn't serve any body but the people still pretending it's viable in 2026. The only use the court system has now, is if you're a criminal getting arrested and you don't like the cop, you plead not guilty so you waste 2-3 minutes of their time (which they get paid for) doing an arrest report. I respect and support Silky's position on it as the PD leader but for me, I don't think that fixes shit, tbh.

Appreciate that, they know where I am if they want to turn this thing around Pad, but i dont expect to get the call. Just as well I love ECRP as much as anyone and want to see it get better, otherwise I'd make my own thing and sink it, sadly wouldn't be that hard neither.

Based on the current situation that ECRP finds itself, the pragmatic view would be to make peace with the idea that the server is coming to an end and rather than waste our time and energies trying to fight what seems inevitable, we probably would all be better served, quietly accepting that and spending what time ECRP has left having a good time. When I heard we were being forced to move to FiveM, my first instinct was that it's over. Going from RAGE where we were even at our worst, a decent attraction to being put on a platform with 200 servers just like us, that's a tough ask. After spending some time on FiveM, I realised that actually the possibilities, if we made the right decisions, are endless. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to see a continuation of this verision of ECRP on FiveM, because as much as I love ECRP, this version of ECRP sadly kinda sucks. The way forward for ECRP would be to view the migration to FiveM as a fresh start and a new beginning for people. But, the last 3-4 years has taught us, we probably cannot change enough, quickly enough to escape this black hole we've made for ourselves. I don't personally have really any thing negative thing to say about the criminal player base, if I'm honest. In fact, I'm actually lowkey amazed that some of you have stuck around as long as you have with the environment you've had to play in and I commend you for it. I've seen all sorts of suggestions in this thread. Re-adding private labs, introducing the rule of six, removing reports for assets. All kinds of ideas, the forum is full of them. But they're devoid of an actual overall strategy. They're bandages, quick fixes. For me, it's more than that. The fact that these discussion threads about cops and crims are separate, sums it up for me. They are the two foundations of any roleplay server and they're basically two halves of the same coin. Continuing to view them separately when they're linked will continue to get us absolutely nowhere. Fundamentally, what do you change with the move to FiveM, particularly with what effects crims? THE TLDR Version Focus the players in LS but give crims space to do illegal shit without two departments breathing down their necks. Put the casino shit in Tequil'la and make it a NCZ again. Give crims a meeting spot to socialise where no one is at risk of dying for being there. New players would love it. Make basic criminal activities like chops and labs more accessible to do, like they were in 2019. Labs, you can buy all the mats you need on site. Small labs allow for shit drugs to be made but factions can't go and gank people there. Big labs allow for the best drugs to be made, they are a free for all. Chops, on rotation, with a timer. If your vehicle has enough still attached to it, you can drive away if the cops/ops come. Involve cops more dynamically in crim activities. Redo prison times, to have reasonable jail sentences, without VIP devaluing the whole thing. Change the banks from Fleeca to the bigger scale banks which offer less tunnel vision and would hopefully lessen the amount of bullshit. Make stealing a car more fun and easier. Change the attitude to PVP. Remove the biggest OP weapons but allow people to import the others as much as they can. Add server generated random crim content that presents crims with on the spot activities. Remove steroids, they're broken. Cap the vehicle speeds at 200 km/h. Trust me, with the NPC drivers, you'll not want to go much faster. Above is just some of the ideas but it follows the jist. Also, if you're not actually going to do shit, stop asking for feedback. The more you do it and don't follow through, the less people trust you. Oh and encourage faction leaders to sort their differences out between themselves where possible. Faction Management doesn't need to be the centre of the universe, just dip in and out where it's needed if people can't be adults and come to reasonable terms.

I'll be completely honest, we could take care of every single thing on this list and two weeks later, people would find a new list of things to complain about. The reason being that cops aren't the problem and creating this thread or even like a thread where people can complain about criminals, isn't the answer. It's not to say there aren't some valid or fair complaints in here, it's that PD isn't the problem, it's the setup. You're not fine with tasers being shot from cars but you're fine with steroids being abused. You're not fine with too many cops on a situation but you're fine with crims hunting down cops in low pop time-zones. You're not fine with cops using meta cars but you're fine with crims using meta cars. Tasers were considered too OP as they are in GTA Online, so we changed the way they worked. That suggestion came from me, a cop. K9 was considered too OP because there was no way to get away from it, so we made it a dice based system. The gunship was indestructible from gunfire above 400ft so we made a rule we'd have to operate it from 400ft when we fire from it. If you actually care to look at the facts, there is a clear pattern of PD wanting to play fair and a lot of it isn't coming from LFM or the staff team, it's coming from us. We bend over backwards a lot and when we want/need support, we get ignored or shafted. On some real shit, the stuff we add to the server, it does feel sometimes like we just make half this shit up as we go and there is a lack of understanding or thought about how adding something for one section might effect another, either in the short term or the long term. We're just doing shit to do it. If something creates a good experience for PD but creates a shit experience for crims, it's a shit addition. Same thing applies if it's good for crim but a shit experience for PD. Both crim and cop being a more exciting and dynamic to play is the way back for the server. But, if we keep trying to build one side up at the expense of the other, then we're just gunna be left with Raffle RP.

Some of you will know me but for those that do not, I'm Dezzy Bala and I'm the #3 in the LSPD faction, been here since 2019 and all that good stuff. I feel like I should say that my opinion is my own and not necessarily shared by the LSPD faction but also, that I haven't really read in depth this thread as I didn't want to find myself trying to defend my faction or for my opinion on things to be altered by feedback. Some of these aren't gunna be completely LEO related but the overall experience. Now that the pre-amble is out of the way, Ill get to my response. While I'm sure that the intentions behind the creation of the thread are positive, I see it as ultimately another one of these situations where people give feedback and it doesn't really get handled with to their satisfaction so they feel like they've wasted their time in doing so, which is probably worse than just not asking. It's also unfortunately a platform for some individuals to give PD a beating. I recognise that while some of the opinions on this thread might not be factually accurate, these are how law enforcement is viewed in the eyes of people sharing, right? It's not really for me to debate the validity of how individual's feel about PD. I can't be arsed typing PD/SD or Law Enforcement every time so I'll just say PD every time, but i'm talking about both. LACK OF DIRECTION It's a big statement but I don't believe PD to be anywhere near the biggest problem on the server. The main underlying reason for the server being in the state that it is in, is the lack of a single cohesive direction in the community and this has been the case ever since COVID. If you ask ten different ECRP players to explain what sort of a server ECRP is or what it should be, you'll get ten different answers. That lack of direction is clear as day in how PD operates, how criminals operate, how the script is developed, how the rules are made, what factions we have, what custom content we make and anywhere else that you can. We're actually all over the place. When I came here 7+ years ago, I could tell you exactly what type of server we are because it was obvious in everything we did. ECRP thrived because it was focused around cops and robbers, it was easy to get involved in and you didn't have to think too hard about it. If you want examples; We introduced a fleet management system for GOV factions. The intent, I assume, was to make GOV factions accountable for their use. Except, the treasury pays for the repairs and there are so many vehicle options that if you fuck one car you can grab another. If the intention was to give the mechanics more things to do, we didn't improve the roleplay experience of the mechanics but we added to their workload. Subsequently, all three mechanic factions have activity issues. Fleet Management does not work as intended, it's just an annoying inconvenience for everyone involved. We have a court system on a server that has limited knowledge or interest in law roleplay, except when it comes to them getting out of charges and not facing the consequences. Court RP overly complicated the role of being in PD for little to no actual benefit. The fun aspect, is the in-game bits. Not being alt-tabbed on the forums doing fictional paperwork. Prison times are essentially rendered useless by VIP anyway. I see people complaining on here about things like tasers from vehicles but then we have crims running around on steroids which are broken and over-powered. If you are to address one facet of balance, you have to address the other. If we consider how tasers used to operate and how they work now, I don't think it's necessarily as bad a trade off. We're moving to FiveM in August and we'll be on a platform with a lot of new potential people but if we can't give them the experience that we had when we joined where we understood what sort of server Eclipse was in the first few minutes/hours/days of being here, they won't want to stay. POPULATION IMBALANCE AND ITS EFFECTS Cops and Robbers is used as a dirty term in this community but in most GTA Roleplay Communities, aside from those try-hard Twitch content servers where everyone is the main character in their own little story, Cops and Robbers is the framework on which most roleplay servers are built. That isn't to say that there isn't room for alternative forms of roleplay and different things but Cops and Robbers is the bread and butter of any successful server. That mentality got us to the dance in the first place. We have a population imbalance in Eclipse. We do not have enough criminals, committing crimes and generating that kind of RP for the amount of PD that we have. We also have too many civilian role-players which when we have a limited player base, makes the pool for both cops and criminals shallower. Why is this bad? If you are a cop and you log into the server and there is nothing happening for 20-30 minutes, there are only so many circuits of the city you can do before you log back out. Cops NEED criminals doing illegal shit for them to have something to do, which is why despite never really being a criminal, I understand the importance of crim. In some timezones, there are too many cops. In some timezones, there are not enough. But why you might see say 10 cops in a chase or 4 cop cars in a traffic stop is because that might be the only thing happening for 20 minutes. Cops are the true antagonists for criminals, so it's important there is enough of them to present a real challenge but not so many that the odds are insurmountable. If you are a criminal and you log into the server during a time-zone where there are a lot of cops online but there isn't enough happening, you will become a focal point for cops looking for something to do. Crims like to paint people like Jason Steel, Cyrus Carver and Samuel Martin in a negative light with regards to how they play the game but actually, I feel the reality is that these guys simply are proactive in how they play and they are simply playing offence. They actively look to make a situations happen where as others within PD may simply wait for a call to come in or be told what to do. But I put it to you that the reason you feel like you are being harassed is because there is less criminals overall for cops to engage with, so the ones that are active end up being the ones getting engaged with. It's a perpetual circle of fuck where the more someone is negatively interacted with, the less they want to play and then because they play less, the ones that do play get interacted with more. If there are 10 active factions, overall the amount you'll be interacted with us by GND is less than if there are 5 active factions. Criminals do not just provide roleplay opportunities for cops, they tend to be the ones causing injuries which means more activity for medics, they tend to get their cars modded or damaged more which means more activity for mechanics and they go to jail, which means more activity for DOC. When it comes to non-Cops and Robbers, while they are still important, they do not quite generate the same amount of roleplay as cops and robbers. The focus on civilian roleplay should be less of a priority than the cop/robber dynamic. Inevitably, because there is a shallower pool of interested people for joining PD, we perhaps have to take chances on people that may not be the best cop roleplayers, because that is simply what is available to us. The quality is in applicant and really roleplayer in the server in general has dropped off. LEGAL FACTION MANAGEMENT This is a controversial one but out of respect for the individuals involved in LFM, I will choose by words carefully. I do not feel that LFM in it's current form, is necessarily best equipped for moderating the PD faction in a way that leads to the best possible outcomes for those inside and outside the faction. When I look through the roster of Legal Faction Management, I do not, see really anyone senior within that group with significant experience of running/leading a Law Enforcement faction. You perhaps argue that HotPipinLeo has the experience but if you look at SD, it was and still is very much Osborn's show. I really feel this is really quite problematic because ultimately, they will not fully understand the nuances of PD is, the needs of the faction and why things operate as they operate. I wouldn't, for example, expect to go to MD as Assistant Chief there and really understand why things work the way they work there, because I have no experience of MD. I think that Legal Faction Management should consider bring Pazz aka Elena Flores into the fold, when it comes to police related factions, because during their time as Assistant Chief and then Chief of Police, the PD faction maintained it's highest standard consistently for around 3-4 years. They made rational and realistic decisions, but also navigated the OOC politics which is especially important. Despite their affiliation with PD, they wouldn't play favourites between PD/SD, they are extremely well respected within the law enforcement community to the point where if they make a decision, people don't really question it and ultimately, you've got someone with a lot of experience to help you make more informed decisions when it comes to dealing with PD. LFM and PD relations, this year especially, have been particularly strained, I would assume because everyone involved wants to try and prevent what seems like the inevitable from coming to pass. I also think that faction leaders should be encouraged to communicate directly more where possible, rather than relying on a third party and Google Forms to resolve their differences. I'd also like to see LFM address when they get involved and when they don't. I feel that they've become too over-bearing and involved in how a faction runs, while being slow to respond and support when PD needs something from them. PHASE MERGE PD/SD AND REDUCE AMOUNT OF COPS OVERALL We no longer have the server to justify having two full size Police Department factions and haven't had for some time now. When the server was on an upwards trajectory, having two Departments was a necessity but we don't have that server anymore. As much as people are attached to their factions, their buildings, their ranks and whatever else, the only thing that really should matter is that the thing they're involved in, serves Eclipse Roleplay in the best way possible. For cops, I have to imagine that being in SD and trying to maintain activity/morale in a jurisdiction where a lot less happens is quite difficult and I understand their desire to come into the city where possible. For PD, obviously the city is where stuff happens now and naturally they don't want outsiders encroaching and taking their situations away. Ultimately though, there are a lot of positives to come from a merge. One of them is logistically, it's a lot easier to organise one group of people than two, which means we can limit the amount of people involved in situations easier. While PD and SD are still separate, they are both trying to compete over recruiting people and I think inevitably it leads to weakening of both rosters overall. Having one roster of active, well-trained cops is a lot better than having a mix & match of two rosters where the overall quality is mixed. Overall, we currently have 189 characters in the two departments but ideally you'd maybe want to get to 110-120. By managing your intake, looking at removing some of the Reserve Officers and through naturally people moving only, you could achieve that within a few months. If you started tomorrow you could probably be halfway there by the time FiveM comes around. You could do it in phases, to allow people to grow into it and obviously it would pinch at first. Everyone would clock on at Mission Row for example, but SD would have access to their uniforms and vehicles in the first phase, before eventually completing the merge later on. No more competing for juros. No more inconsistent levels of policing. FOCUS ON LOS SANTOS IN FIVEM The smart play when we move to FiveM is essentially to leave Blaine County wild, with SD merging with PD but also, Bayview coming back to Los Santos. Not only are you then concentrating overall normal player activity with a reduced overall population to make it seem more populated than it is, which is really important especially for newer players that they can find people to interact with, you also essentially given criminals an entire county's freedom to do illegal stuff. No point having 100 people on a server if they're dotted all over the map. Better to have 50 people in a smaller space for interaction. But in those times you want to hide/do things in secret, space is better. Right now, in the City and the County, you've got PD and SD to contend with but by concentrating things like the chops and labs up north, as we did in 2019, you aren't putting crims under as much of a microscope. They have room to breathe then. CHANGES I'D MAKE Phase a merge between PD and SD, working towards a reduction to 120 people by Autumn 2026. Focus on positioning players in Los Santos and stop trying to make Paleto happen, with SD (and Bayview) moving to LS. Suspend SAJB and the court system, pending a removal. Approach Pazz about joining LFM, as a Law Enforcement Consultant. Encourage faction leaders to communicate with one another about grievances before going to LFM. LFM to scale back their involvement in PD and also, be quicker to support PD when needed. Stop cops tazing from inside vehicles. Stop criminals using Steroids, until such time as they can be rebalanced. 30 Second Grace Period - Cops don't try to end a pursuit within 30 seconds of it starting (30 seconds as a guide, no one needs to using a fuckin' stopwatch) Reintroduce officer discretion for Good Roleplay/Conduct, where some charges would get reduced if the crim went beyond the norm to show good roleplay/conduct, on a trial basis until FiveM launches. A player's charges that are older than say 6 months to a year should no longer be counted on their record, so for example if they wish to apply for firearms or join gov factions or whatever and they currently have historical charges that prevent it, anything older than 6 or 12 months could be ignored on that character. We're at the point in the server now where I just think, if someone can roleplay being a cop well, remove as many obstacles for that as possible. Revise the 5 hour mandatory activity limit back to 2.5, until Eclipse FiveM launches. Why we thought it was a good idea to force people to play double the minimum when the server is in a bad spot, I'll never know. Re-add the No Crime Zones at Police Stations, to put a stop to the troll behaviour. People putting fish in the PD lobby, peeing on the seats, writing FUCK ISRAEL on the walls. All of which happens. Do we really need to be doing that, what are we getting out of that? Ask the developers to change the self-repair stuff at Bennys/Bayview/LSC if no mechanic is on duty so it charges you the same way as a mechanic would. Ask the developers to allow gov factions to be able to repair their faction vehicles at their own headquarters if mechanic factions aren't gunna be active no more, because the fleet vehicle thing is absolute cheeks as it is. Slow down on hosting the events. Dragging everyone to your property for a dance and a raffle might seem like you're bringing people together but take away the raffle and see if they'd show. It kills the activity in the server when it gets done.

That was a hell of a shot, whoever it was.

I vote unhappy every time because of this.

That would be a violation of the license.

It's fine, we getting private labs bro

I was just thinking about this the other way ironically

Would I support getting rid of firearms licensing? If the script implemented the same set of restrictions as the division does, yes. Would I support getting rid of the driving/trucking licensing? Yes, because driving is a core aspect of GTA, there is no skill live. Every procedural department within SASG? I would support getting rid of 90% of SASG because it's flannel. Weazel's Advertising Division? No, I wouldn't support that because it's the most important part of Weazel's operations. Get rid of DCC? The concept of waiting for a ride? No, I'd go with an uber type deal where if people meet certain criteria they can use their own vehicle as a taxi. But, the faction? Yes, it died wih LilyMay. The difference with this @Daxu is that Benny's and Bayview don't need this to survive. We've literally just dropped a bunch of new cars and there is about 80 new ones to come, there will always be a steady stream of customers for both while people still play the server. Ultimately, this is an unnecessary burden on the law enforcement factions and takes away from their role in the server. I'm sure some of the anti-cop weirdos love it, but because it's a kneecapping for the police rather than anything positive. I know the system isn't going away now, to our detriment, but there needs to be changes to it to make it viable for everyone.

It's a tone deaf addition to the server in general and all it does is unnecessarily inconvenience people. At this stage of the server's lifespan, it should be about making the most of what people enjoy, not adding pointless hoops for them to jump through. That in-depth pathway is overly convoluted and out of place on the server. People that go to get their cars repaired don't want an authentic and realistic mechanic experience, they want to get their shit modded/repaired and dip. As for LEO operations, sometimes it literally takes damage no matter what you do. The people that legitimately wanted this added to the server, i hope you stand on a plug.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it and if it works, don't change it. Perfectly fine aesthetically putting on the phone but the command is always more practical.

Agreed. An adjustment will hopefully be provided in a forthcoming update. I'll level with you Dox, this Buzzard is more for just your bog standard flying than using as a gunship so I'm not really too fussed about addressing the issue. Ideally, if you could have the livery AND the firing from it, it would be the best case but there is the regular buzzard for that. I've tried it out myself and its an electric vehicle, so the performance isn't going to really be anything special. Whoever priced it, probably was a little bit overzealous however. I can appreciate that maybe this isn't the car you thought you were getting but I don't really see a need to change it at this time. Agreed. The roof should stay in place and the vehicle's handling will be addressed in a forthcoming update.