Bala

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.

I can't lie, I can't hate on your level of commitment to this, lmao.

I figured this was probably going to be the best and most organised way to allow the community to share their feedback on the cars, so that might be how the car turns, it's speed, it's price etc.. That isn't to say that there will definitely be a change to a particular vehicle but obviously if there are outliers and changes we can make then we'll look to make them if we can. I would withhold giving feedback from the RH7 currently, as it needs a server restart to resolve the crashing issue.

I'd take a shadow or outline on the lockpicking minigame so it's visible when it's bright outside at this point, or it being somewhat simpler to do. Stealing a car in GTA shouldn't be as different and latency dependent as it is.

Time to give the people something to really complain about.

The videos have to be encoded with a certain quality to play I believe, which is why some dont work.

I said it to Osvaldon and I’ll say it here. There is absolutely no need for every door in the prison or in fact the server to be unlockable. While having dynamism is a good thing, we have to make things for the server we have and the idea of people smuggling in lockpicks is memey as fuck. It’s just going to be another meta exploit. Cell Doors, Doors to the Kitchen, Shower, Rec Room, Infirmary and Yard should be all unlockable. Allows you to get out of your cell and go and do stuff. Everywhere else should remain locked as before. I don’t want to personally see people reducing the prison/doc’s experience to lockpick/prison break simulator or have to put up with people unlocking the doors at mission row to dump all the food out of the vending machines.

I must have missed the part where VIP was anything to do with my thread, take that somewhere else.

I don't associate with this guy or this idea, don't want it in my thread.

To an extent, forget about fair and respectfully to anyone really that is personally petitioning the devs to be do this and that, we have to be really careful about how the time spent on development is used. The server started going downhill when development lost focus and became less and less but at the same time, we started looking away from what brought the server to the dance in the first place. As I said in my last post, fixing the criminal activities at a base level is exactly the part of the server that we should be focused on because it directly effects the playing experience and activity of. Rooks, Lost, OTF, Eastside, Shadows, Souls, Empire, Waterfelons, Milestone, Bratva, High Rollers, Alliance, Locos, SVR, Dark Army, Mid Night, Rose Quarter. PD and SD Department of Corrections Los Santos Emergency Medical Services Judicial Branch Looking through the panel, that effects 362 criminal characters, 193 police characters, 50 prison guard characters, 15 court characters and 57 medical characters. That is for the playing experience of 677 characters alone. Additionally, new players coming to the server and playing, people like @garybruce will be looking for accessible and easy to use criminal content. Stuff that doesn't require an instruction manual to use. Beyond that, I think it would be fair to say that most of the VIP for the jail time or at the very least those spending the money on the pay-to-win vehicles that support the server are criminals. And for yourself, when it comes to Bayview and Bennys, having more active and motivated criminals will directly lead to more people wanting vehicle mods for their cars to do criminal deeds. I'm not in any way suggesting that other groups of the server are not important, but they are not as relevant to the server's health and growth as the criminal player base. Fix the important aspects of the server first, by implementing the things in this thread. Then you can do things like faction vehicle maintenance and cooking recipes. Cooking Recipes is another one of those ideas that people will like for a couple days and then they'll forget about. We've had too many of those ideas and it's hurt us. To a certain extent I'm happy that roadmap was not completed because the focus was way out of sync with what this community needs. This thread and the original post was bang on the money. Tell me I'm lying, anyone?

Maybe inquire privately what I have so I haven't wasted my time working on these projects? If you cannot naturally generate enough activity to support something through normal means, then you must fake it until you make it. If no one calls a taxi, then DCC is useless. If no one calls a medic, then MD is useless. If no one comes to a mechanic shop for repairs/mods, Bayview/Bennys is useless. Obviously at peak times that doesn't happen but in the quiet time-zones? If factions haven't been asking for these things, they've not been asking the right questions, especially DCC which is on the fringes. As for civilian content, while civilian content isn't irrelevant, it is unfortunately less relevant than criminal content because criminal content effects not only all the criminal factions and criminal role-players on this server, our two fully sized police departments/Judicial Branch/Department of Corrections factions are all dependent on criminals doing criminal shit and if we deep it, more work for LSEMS. More criminals with a better experience reflects better on the server in general, which means more people for events and other enterprises. When you have people logged in and motivated, you can do more with them. We gotta re-start with the basics first though, like learning to walk again after a bad car accident. We're all acutely aware of what has happened or rather what hasn't happened. That Roadmap has been and gone, it's dust at this point. The only thing is what happens next and that something happens. A community meeting would do the same thing the LFM meeting did last week, all roads end up leading to the right kind of development needing to happen and in the absence of it happening, an empty feeling in the pit of one's stomach like we might be cooked. Even with threads like this, people will look at it, think the things are a good idea but then have the same attitude that @SneakySniper276 has where nothing will happen. It's a really understandable attitude in the circumstances but it's probably not healthy or helpful to think that way. We'll never get it back 1:1 like it was, product of it's time but when there are patterns of behavior that clearly the player base gravitate to or elements of play that the player base enjoyed, lean into those as much as possible. If we have to resort to giving away cars via raffles to get people together, tells you something ain't right about the social aspect. Tequil'la is convenient, casino games are fun for people. This shit doesn't have to be rocket science but we make it harder for ourselves.

On the day of the Community Meeting, it seems somewhat like the right time to post this. I will try to be as fair but direct in the things that I'm saying as possible because I know a bunch of these get made and sometimes bits and pieces happen but too often they don't. The Road Map is going to unfortunately be one of those things that inevitably gets brought up negatively because it was a self-declaration from the developers that significant and structured change to the community to attempt to alter it's fortunes would be forthcoming and as of the 31st of January 2026, the final day of the three month roadmap, the only official releases from that roadmap were Fishing, Criminal Odd Jobs and the Racing Script. There were mitigating reasons why certain things were delayed but to be completely honest, in the grand scheme of things it hasn't really had a positive impact on our community or it's fortunes really has it? The reason why I bring up the roadmap is not to take an unfair cheap shot at the developers, it's to point out two very important points. One, is that actions speak louder than words. I find it somewhat incredible that even in the circumstances of the last couple of years, we still retain a loyal player base who continue to play week in, week out but also, donate quite significant sums of their money towards the continuation and betterment of something that they enjoy. Where there are players, there is still opportunity. If you say you are going to do something, then you have to do it and if you're not able to do it, you explain why you are not able to do it and when you may be able to do it. Most of you know that I spend hours of my life some weeks creating custom content for this server and I take the responsibility of me saying I'm going to do something extremely seriously and I'd like to think I do what I do somewhat well. I don't have a financial interest in the server but like so many of us, even though there may be times I don't like the server, I still fucking love this shit. I do not want appreciation and enjoyment for Eclipse Roleplay to be because of memories, I want people to play Eclipse for the experiences of now and in the coming weeks/months, however long we've got left. Two, is while the incompletion of the Roadmap is significant for the community, the contents of that Roadmap was in some points misdirected and ineffective in putting development where it would make the most positive impact. We need to stop the occasions we create and put out random updates that address niche areas of the community. The foundation and cornerstones of this community is it's criminal player base and by extension, it's law enforcement. Those two areas are the largest groups of players in the community and while everyone else is important for the roles they play, the stark reality is that you won't get more players in the server by making the civilian aspects better but you will get more players in the server by improving the aspects that effect the areas the majority play. @risk has frankly done an excellent job of turning faction management around in her short time being appointed but she's fighting a losing battle trying to keep the train on the tracks when the fundamental experience of being a crim, I'm talking the basic stuff like the store robberies, the banks, the labs etc.. is the same it was 3-4 years ago. That's reflected in our law enforcement factions with SD having to resort to finding reasons to come into the City because there isn't enough going on up in Blaine County to sustain them and the effect that has on PD, but also, the experience of being law enforcement in general has decreased significantly over the last year and that is directly tied to the criminal experience. So, the way forward, as the title suggest is for the developers to finish up the Mining Update and to finish up the Prison update but then set about taking care of the these fundamentals in a meaningful way, which I will give some basic ideas on now as I'm typing this at 8:30am. I feel quite strongly that if we do most, if not all, we'll be in a much better position at the end of it in a lot of ways. Labs Introduce my new lab locations to the server, for freshness. Expand the amount of active locations available at any one time, to give smaller time criminals more opportunity to cook without getting ganked but also, to avoid the weirdness of cops having to ignore them, if not in use. Knocking down a lab should either instantly or within 5-10 minutes spring one up elsewhere. Add an NPC at an active lab location that will sell you the materials for cash (there will be a replenishable limit to avoid overcooking) you need to cook at that laboratory and fuck off the Humane Labs treasure hunt aspect of resource gathering, to add convenience but also, add a lower barrier of entry to using labs for criminals. This was the 2019 approach, except the materials were free in 2019. Introduce a robbery rule to the lab locations about only being able to take illegal items from someone if you catch them slipping at a lab. Add a mobile drug lab item that can be placed in certain vehicles like the Caracara RV or Journey, that allows for players to make their own mobile drug labs out in the world. They would still cook in the game world, with the vehicle engine switched off and it would generate a significant amount of smoke but players could seek their own enterprise for drug manufacture. Chops / Car Stealing Reduce the amount of repetitions needed for the lockpick minigame and make the lockpicking easier even for the higher tier cars. This is GTA and that minigame is latency dependent. Text a number on your phone and when you do, it will give you a specific civilian vehicle to steal along with it's location for a bonus payout. Random small chance for cops to be informed about the robbery and what sort of vehicle to be on the lookout for/what area its being taken from. Replace the current system of the chopping with the old system of waiting for a timer, where you wait in a certain area for a timer to countdown. This allows for greater flexibility in locations for chops as you are not confined by the equipment necessary allowing you to park. The more time you wait, the more damage your car takes so past a point you wont be able to start it. Increase the amount of civilian vehicle spawns and the amount that spawn. Removing GPS' from Government Vehicles should come with a timer to prevent people just stealing them so easily. Store Robberies Add the ability to steal money from the back room safe to store robberies. Replace the manual aim at the cashier to initiate the robbery with a command and aim animation, this avoids issues with latency and issues outside the player's control. Allow for solo robberies of stores, since the gun would be no longer required to be aimed, to allow the person holding the gun to help collect money, albeit at a 25% reduced rate. Increase the pay-out for stores closer to police stations, to incentivise taking a risk. Increase the pay-out slightly for players not wearing a mask, to incentivise taking a risk. Everyone wears a mask and theres no reason not to. Add a very small random chance for the cashier to hit the silent alarm when the robbery starts, to give the robberies a little RNG danger. Allow for players to switch between stealing packed money and pocket cash BEFORE they start robbing it. Newer criminals want cash, not packed money. Bank Robberies Replace the manual aim at the tellers to initiate the robbery with a command and aim animation, this avoids issues with latency and issues outside the player's control. Allow for just the bank tellers to be robbed, without doing the full scale bank vault robbery and would function like a store robbery Allow for a "bank security guard" NPC to be taken hostage (in the hostage animation) to avoid those fucking awkward situations where people take their friends or another player hostage then we have to worry about the complexities of whether or not a player can be killed or not. Roof Access. Once the vault door has been breached, you could use the world interaction UI to enter the vault from the roof or from the vault to the roof, giving another method of access or exit by teleporting up or down. Tunnel access. From anywhere in a 100m radius of a bank, allow people to dig a "tunnel" from the point of their dig to the interior of the bank (outside the vault), this would help ease one of the problems with Fleeca banks, that there is only one way in and one way out. Small chance for tunnel teleport use to trigger a silent alarm for cops that something is happening at the bank. Controlled Explosive. Allow instead of a drill, for the use of controlled explosives that blow the vault door open a lot quicker, the weight is less than a drill but comes with a very loud bank. Also, add the Pacific Standard (LS Bank) as a robbable interior for some actual variation. Money Truck Robberies Think of these like mini-dynamic banks. Every hour or so, a broken down locked money truck will spawn locked, in secluded locations around Blaine County or LS. Inside the truck has packed money and silver/gold bars. You can use various different methods to gain entry to the truck, each with their own time, like bolt cutters, crowbar, con saw etc.. Once you are inside, it's basically a smash and grab as the alarm goes off, informing the police where the truck is. You gather up as much cash as you can then dip. Staff would be able to add locations for the truck to spawn, so there would be plenty of variation and environments to tackle. House Robberies Add a couple more interiors, including the Diamond Casino and Franklin Apartments. Add a burgling skill, that dictates which interiors you may be assigned, with unlocks along the way making your robberies easier like quicker safe cracking, more room to make noise etc.. Tweak the payout to reflect this. Instead of people just doing the Vinewood mansions every time, variety is good! Make the job accessible at ANY time during the day but limit the player to doing a robbery every 14 in-game hours, which reflects the 10 hour window they have now. Add a very small random chance for the neighbourhood watch to call 911 when the robbery starts, to give the robberies a little RNG danger as right now they only exist for cops at the end. ATM Robberies Reduce the amount of times you twat an ATM with a crowbar from 45-50 in half to 22-25. Add a very small random chance for the bank to call 911 about one of their machines getting smashed. In the case that players use a tow-rope, add a timer option for them to disable the GPS tracker on the machine if they're willing to wait at the scene of the crime. They will still have to pull it somewhere but the GPS won't be a homing beacon for as long. Tequil'la NCZ Casino Tequil'la was an important spot before the Diamond Casino, where players could meet and play poker against one another. Shut down the Diamond Casino interior and refit the Tequil'la interior with the tables and slot machines from that interior, it's easily done. Tequil'la is a lot easier to get into and out of that Diamond Casino and while Diamond Casino still gets used from time to time, players would be more attracted to Tequil'la and use it more as a result. Have Government allow players to rent out the venue for events and such. Horse Racing Think of this like a daily lottery but at 6pm every day, one of 7 horses wins the Los Santos Derby. You could put a bet down and depending on the odds, make yourself some money. Coroners, Fires and MD I know not crim, but MD is a big faction and Coroner is job in a terrible spot. Remove the coroner job and patch the dead body calls through to MD for them to respond to, by answering them, they generate money for their treasury. Add server spawned NPC bodies and server created dead body calls every so often to supplement the amount of calls that MD have to respond to, to encourage their activity. Also, like the incident workers, spawn random fires in locations around the state and have MD be called to put them out. This gives them a reason to have their Fire Department which adds something extra to their faction. The amount of server generated calls that come in would depend on the amount of medics on duty. Mechanic Roadside Recovery For some of the civilian vehicle spawns, spawn them broken and in need of repair, with server generated mechanic calls that mechanics can respond to and by answering them, they generate money for their treasury. When they get there they will inspect the vehicle and depending on what is wrong with the vehicle, they will use different mechanic tools to fix it such as a lug wrench to replace tires, socket wrench for car battery or a fuel can for adding fuel back to a vehicle. The amount of server generated calls that come in would depend on the amount of mechanics on duty. Fixing the vehicle will turn it into a vehicle that a criminal player can steal and use for their own gains. Server Taxi Fares DCC suffers from a lack of activity and requests for calls, so by server generating calls for NPC fares we can substitute the amount of activity they should have. If DCC are encouraged to be on duty then the more chance we have of people ordering a taxi. The amount of server generated calls that come in would depend on the amount of taxi drivers on duty, but you'd respond to the location. The NPC would get in the back of your taxi and you'd take them to the planned destination and they'd pay the faction treasury. It isn't the same as a real player but you have to fake it till you make it sometimes. Speed Cap Reduction to 220. I know some of you really won't like it but the reason why Rockstar made some of these meta cars go as fast as they do, is because GTA Online races were getting dominated by people with high end PCs and they wanted to give those with low end-medium PCs the opportunity to stay competitive. This was a GTA Online game mechanic, not a roleplay one and if we're being honest, a 240 speed cap means you've got sweaty people chasing sweaty people. The faster the vehicles go, the less control they have, which means pursuits/chases end prematurely and if crims feel that cops doing the most to try and stop them is truly an issue then by lowering the sweat levels from the speeds, we could look into other ways of pursuing. 220 is still fast and a vehicle that accelerates extremely fast is still going to accelerate extremely fast. It brings a number of other vehicles into play that are not currently meta vehicles and additionally, for those that bought these vehicles with real life money, you've still got your car that is still fast and you still supported the server, which was the point right? Not to pay to have that kind of advantage over other players. Across the board, no matter what side, tactics and skill should be more important factors that decide outcomes, not exploiting game mechanics. Interior Teleport Protection Allow the player to be invulnerable to damage for 3 seconds when entering/exiting an interior. There would be a cooldown of 10 minutes on this applying again to avoid people playing wack a mole on interiors. If they aim a weapon, the protection will be cancelled.

Having had some brief conversations with the developers about the prison in general, it would probably be better to discuss this after the update than before it. I don't disagree with some of your points but it may be somewhat pointless discussing it further depending on what happens.

We listening but can a homie get a full stop or a comma, a fuckin semi-colon or something.