Bala

With all respect to those people that are taking part in these jobs, this is absolutely not a priority area for the server to build upon at this time and is something for down the road. The criminal side of the server is been in decline for the best part of two years and we're discussing updates here that don't have anything to do with the criminal side of the server. Any and all developmental resources need to be diverted towards the creation and implementation of the correct criminal updates as a matter of some urgency. These are, but are not limited to; The re-implementation of the public drug labs, as they were in 2019. The re-implementation of the public chop shops, as they were in 2019 with a cap on the payout so to not cuck the player owned chop shops. A reduction of cost for the player owned chop shops by 50%. A reduction of cost for heavy imported weapons by 50%. A reduction on the amount of repetitions the lockpick mechanism asks for and the amount of time you have to complete a repetition. A reduction of cost in the prison fines by 25%. Those changes above are changes that the more reputable or significant criminals on the server requested as matters of urgency. They were put forward to Osvaldon and all bar the prison fine change was approved by him, however, in his absence over the past two weeks, we have gone down a different route. With the exception of the alright underway updates for the clothing and the guns, the criminal changes are the most significant update possible for ECRP. Those changes above stabilise the criminal side of the server and will allow us for some breathing room. Current factions will experience a resurgence and energy in being able to do criminal shit. There will be a reason for players to make criminal factions again and in turn, there will be a spike in the server's population as well as the amount of profit that will come into the credit store. Following those above changes, the Prison needs to be completely reworked. We have an entire faction that is solely based there and it has been a miserable and punishing experience for players on Eclipse in the 3 and a half years that I've been here. Not just on an in-character level which one expects, but also and more corrosively, an out of character experience. Part of the reason criminal roleplayers on Eclipse hate law enforcement so much is not that we have the advantage. It's not even necessarily that they lose. They are just charged an obscene amount of money which in 2022 you have to mind-numbingly grind out AND then they're stick in a location with things like playing poker for stamps and digging on a concrete yard to occupy them for 2-3 hours. I know now that no one is going to listen, either to me or any one else saying these things. But whoever is making the decisions and captaining this, how can you not see it? It's so bloody obvious and they are such simple fixes. We lack attention-to-detail. It's why we put Halloween decorations up in early October or release the Mall with no shops in it, killing it's hype. It's why we add static drug labs with no materials spawning in them. It's why you have to press your spacebar 50 times but also account for client side latency to be able to steal a high end vehicle. It's why you had to rob a store in increments of $2000 for however long it was. It's why there is only one hospital in the server you can change your character and why you can't drop a body off properly without admin intervention. You guys know I'm not saying these things to be be toxic right? I'm just pointing out that we've got our priorities scuffed and there is clear, definitive reasons why things are the way they are. If you seriously want to make freelance jobs better, you just need to pay attention to the small details. Get rid of the lockpick type mechanism for jobs like the oil worker. Absolutely no need for it, it was fine as a loading bar. Eclipse systems work best when you don't have to overthink. Reward players for repetition of the same job. If you fish one time, you get the same payout and experience as if you fish for the 100th time. You cannot catch different fish, there is no reason to go to a specific place to fish for a specific fish. You cannot do anything to make your fish catching different. Fishing is an experience you can do alone. Remove the weight impact on the Journeys for the Mining. You guys killed the job off when you did that. No one wants to be driving 15 minutes to the mining drop off in a Journey going 20 km. The Journey storage wasn't intended but it was a case of players being geniuses. Move the animals for hunting where it makes sense for them to be. Cow on farm. Rat near dumpster. Pig on farm. Deer in woods. Fluctuate the fuckin prices for them to drive people to go different places. They spawn in the roads and it's the same locations every single time. Connect the bus routes. I did a big suggestion thread a while ago where you could basically service the entire LS/Blaine County with six different maps. You get variation with the jobs but on the off chance someone actually needs a bus, they can go wherever. Get rid of the freelance jobs that don't have a purpose or they're not exciting to do. Less is sometimes more. It is easier to balance a smaller amount of jobs than a larger amount. Job sites also create interaction between players, less job sites = more players in one spot. Tollboothes, are they needed in ECRP 2022? We don't have 20 buses waiting outside them anymore. Courier, when was the last time someone sent a package to someone in game? Job Uniforms I've been making uniforms for a lot of the jobs on the server, because you should be able to tell what someone is at a distance like you would in real life. If you look the part, it's easier to RP the part. If you can RP the part, then you're a part of the world. Eclipse from 2019 to 2020 grew exponentially, we went from being a server that had 150-200 players with a balance between crim/cop, mostly located in Los Santos to spreading out into the county as the player base went to 300.. 400.. 500. We do not have that player-base anymore and we're not going to get that again if we don't change it up. Even our efforts to downscale the server lacked detail. We removed hospitals and PD/SD spawn locations but we are still spread out all over the map. There is no clear vision and plan for how the server should go from here but for me, it's really simple, go back to basics. Figure out the ingredients of what made Eclipse successful in the first place and pour that formula into every single thing we do from now on. The reason why the clothing update is going to fucking slap is all the attention to detail that's being poured into it.

Not ALL of them. I can think of one particular example

GEE THANKS..

As far as I know, the house robberies are still going to be a thing. I don't really talk to NBDY much so can't offer you any kind of real answer on that. It was a good idea when we came up with it and i'm sure it'll be a nice addition when it arrives. As for supplying countless ideas, i've done that myself but what with so many voices on so many threads, who do you listen to? Which ideas are the ideas that would benefit the server and which ideas are those that would benefit the individuals suggesting them? I'm not saying that I understand the frustration you and other criminals to bullshit you, I do empathise with the frustration. I think sometimes people forget that cop and crim are linked. Crim being doggy as another thread put it leads to cop being doggy. Personally, even as a full time cop roleplayer, it's in my interest for crim to improve. With regards to the drug labs in apartments, you have a little bit of misinformation there Shawn which I'd like to correct if I may. Drug Labs were removed from apartments because it was no longer deemed a good gameplay mechanic to have players hiding in separate dimensions and essentially being able to print money for hours on hours. The unfortunate part of that was that the replacement for that was supposed to come in and hasn't yet. As for the gun attachment update, Osvaldon was in the process of finishing the update and readying it for implementation when he's had some personal issues which have limited his time and focus temporarily on development matters. I'm not going to share specifics as they are not mine to share but as much as people are looking for new updates, we're all human beings and life still happens outside of Eclipse. It would be fool hardy to make any kind of promise regarding some of the issues you've mentioned but what I can say is that those issues have been brought up and the response was both encouraging and positive to at least fix some of the criminal systems which are out of sync. They are not necessarily things which require a lot of development time which is advantageous but they are certain things that through discussions with some of the veteran criminals on the server, we've found to be the main issues. As for Eclipse 3.0, I don't think that a full wipe would ever be considered for obvious reasons. The modder team has been in the process of working on new clothing and uniforms for the best part of a year, which is now also during to a swift conclusion. Government factions have been creating their new uniforms. The plan is for jobs to get more realistic uniforms. Additionally, a lot of new hair styles and extra clothing will be available for people to wear as well. This is in addition to the character customisation update. Making or editing a character has been a painful experience for every single one of us for years so while it's not the drug update, it is necessary. With regards to criminals and clothing, almost every current faction on the server has some kind of custom clothing item so every corner of the server will be represented in some form. I will share some examples of that work below; I respect the output of other servers but often times, good or bad, these projects are being taken on by 1-2 people. It is really fucking time consuming. Even just the clothing update alone has taken Arrta and myself hours and hours and hours to do. Timmaayy has helped out where he can as well. We've had people giving their input into things and doing all their uniforms. I was accused and warned not so long ago about not being able to deliver or making promises I couldn't keep. So, to be clear, this clothing update is either going to fucking blow people away and put so many smiles on miserable faces or I will die trying. I want everyone to know we're not sitting on our fingers, we're actively trying to make things happen. The annoying thing about Eclipse Roleplay is that at any one time, it's a couple steps away from being a really good fucking server and it has been since 2020. I'm going to keep it real here and I gotta watch what I say because I'm racking up the forum points but you could fulfill all the development requests people want and the server still wouldn't be quite there. There are issues aside from a lack of development that will need addressing and best believe when the patches come, that'll be the next order of business. There are genuinely some really sick updates coming and I just ask you to be patient a little while longer. I know, it's a big ask but just keep the faith a little more.

You're constantly being told stuff is in the works, because stuff is in the works. "Seeing" it isn't really relevant because you aren't in a position to use it at this time. You saw the drug update preview and how did that go? You feel better or worse for seeing it? I'm not downplaying the concern that things are tough for criminals, I know how bad they are and I don't want to tongue my own testes when I say this but you'd struggle to find someone that has gone further to fix those issues than me. The founders are aware of the situation and the discussions were positive but there's no point coming out now and saying we're doing this or that if it's not ready to be pushed. That would just be a repeat of the drug update situation. As for the clothes and malls, development team isn't been eaten into by adding those things. I'm not a developer, I'm a modder and I've been working on these clothes for months independent of any development. Adding the mall was literally dragging files into a folder. Part of the reason for the clothes taking so long is that I didn't want just civilians or government people to get something from it, I wanted crims to get their share as well. Don't misrepresent the situation because of a lack of information. Stuff is in the works and you'll likely see it on the server before you see photos of it, at this point.

LOL you don't even go here

With all respect, I mentioned what was happening a couple of posts up, you don't need to go bothering the man by tagging him. The updates are still in development, especially the character customisation update but what seems like a straightforward process to you, is not. Be patient or don't, but it's not going to effect how long these updates take to drop. From what I've seen and what I've contributed, they're very nice.

In my experience, criminals and cops don't need to be balanced. Criminals just need to feel that they have options when it comes to what to do when it comes to being logged in AND also feel like they at least have a chance of getting away, even though they'll likely be caught. The real difficulty is when the experience of actually doing the thing you are getting caught for sucks, because getting caught and going to prison sucks. So it's a double suck. If I'm having the time of my life boosting cars or cooking with the boys, I'm not really going to give as much of a fuck about going to prison for a couple hours because it was worth the time.

What the fuck

I can't promise anything because it's not me that does the work but I spoke to the big guy and told him of some of the troubles and forwarded some small suggestions of ways in which we could improve a lot, with minimal effort. It was a positive conversation and hopefully we'll see some movement in the next couple months, even if it's baby steps but it's a process. The gun update is something for every body, not just one section of the server. It's not a stone cold criminal update but there is stuff in there for crims and a greater variety of weapons to use, even the permit stuff is getting a revamp too. After that, it's the character customisation update. Again, that's something for everyone. Being able to change or make a character easier, with a better UI. Government Factions are getting new clothes but i don't want to see people tripping about that because thats been in the works for like 14/15 months. We got new clothes for civs, so many fucking hair styles for everybody, even trying to do something for the official crim factions. There is a drug update out there somewhere, but probably in the short term, we need to put crim in recovery mode. We stop the infection spreading further so we don't lose more factions and good crims, then we hook up the IV to replenish them lost fluids with some of the short term solutions people have suggested then we look long term about where things should go. I've been pessimistic and frustrated about the server in certain periods this year like a number of you have been. Royally fucked off at some of the decision making and thought about jacking it in. What I realised is that this server is a camel's testicle hair away from being good and has been for the past two years, we just have to realign the pieces and we're back in play. Dead servers don't get three figure player counts, but we also shouldn't be naive that a player count is respective of success. We've been poor this year, for sure, but I got optimism for 2023 that we'll make positive strides again baby.

Let's not get bogged down in back in the day or play who is the biggest neek? because all that does is destroy the credibility of what people are actually saying here. Appreciate people are sceptical and cautious about things changing, but as long as you keep an open mind and room in your heart for hope, things can always change.

Nice, you are in the Sheriffs Department now.. Sorry that you left us

@Thommy You don't even play here, quit trolling. As for your signature, thats from another server lmao.

It's almost like I asked the criminal leaders on the server what the issues were

Oh boy, criminal roleplay isn't kind of doggy right now, it's on life support and the prognosis is not good. It doesn't really feel like there is any one individual factor that has lead it to that place but a series of negatives that make playing crim I would imagine, a frustrating, unrewarding and ultimately boring experience. You can get pissed off at stuff on here and complain but the real issue is when people actually stop caring and I'm seeing that more and more particularly from those criminal roleplayers that we should be building that side of the server around. Looking at criminal factions for a second, I don't see any factions with presence that can dominate the scene. I see different question marks around all of them in terms of factions that could inspire how criminal roleplay goes in Eclipse. But, the factions are an extension of how the individual experience of being a criminal in Eclipse is. If fundamentally, there is not the right kind of activities to do, you are only left with the RP you can come with and to be honest, we don't have that kind of server. Eclipse is an Action RP server. We do roleplay but you also need someone to fight, something to do, something to build towards. We had a criminal discussion chat on Discord, I say we but I got the boot for saying some stuff. But in this chat, we'd discuss the issues that you see in game and on the forums. We'd come up with a clear solution of what to do and then over the course of going through faction services or the senior admins or the developers, somehow it would end up either as a half measure or not really what we're going for. We're at some what of a crossroads as a community right now. We still have players, loyal players, and all they want is to log-in and enjoy themselves, no matter what it is that they do or which area of the server they are in, this shit is supposed to be fun. It hasn't been for more and more people for a while. The crossroads is that if we did tackle this issue properly, now, our server would be fucking popping again by the end of next year. If we ignore it or half arse the response, I'm not exaggerating when I say the future looks really fucking bleak for us. For us to change it though, every body has to put on their big boy pants and properly fucking commit. No more half arsing, no more half measures. Not just the criminals but the criminal factions, the criminal faction leaders, faction services, the staff team, the modders and the developers themselves. Listen to what the criminals need and where you can, give it to them. I've been a cop almost the entire time I've been on the server in the last 3 and a half years so I have a unique perspective on criminals but I see either good criminals disinterested in playing because of how it is OR I see people acting stupid and baiting because it's the only way they can find any enjoyment. So, what's the answers, genius? We need to look at what worked for Eclipse and lean into that as heavy as we can. Consider that people choose going crim because they want the freedom to act how they want to act and reap the financial rewards for the risk that they take. I'm here to say that we're massively out of fucking balance on the risk. Bring back the 2019 static drug labs, until the drug update comes. This was the pier for criminals essentially. Their meeting spot. Where factions could interact, negatively and positively as well as the individual criminal could get their foothold into the criminal hierarchy by negotiation and risk. I did suggest removing a couple locations as we did not have SD last time and they are a little too public and moving them to nearer the city. Bring back the rotating public chop shop. This would be the old chop shop system, where you just take a car to a rotating location on the map and chop it there. It would again be a meeting and encounter spot for criminals to engage. There would be a cap on the pay out to not impact the private chop shops financially but you would be guaranteed a location to take a stolen car to get money no matter what. Reduce the price on private chop shops significantly and treat them as disposable. Right now they are a criminal enterprise that requires significant investment to run and the chances of them being raided or stolen by others dictates that the financial risk heavily outweighs the reward. If it's 10 people running a chop, sure but if it's two, that's a lot of money. Instead of the parts being so expensive on the initial outlay, what about making it so that the chop shop needs power from a generator and the generator runs on fuel which comes from the oil refinery job. The refiners could either sell their oil as normal or trade it for fuel. They can sell the fuel to the choppers for money, you get the person to person RP then. If your chops generator runs out of fuel, you can't use it. Reduce the prison fines by 25%. Stealing a car costs you $7,500. Evading in that car would cost you $3,000. If you felony endanger, which is almost every pursuit ever, that's another $3,000. Those crimes are already like 3 hours of prison time plus $13,500 in fines. You know how many stores you'd have to rob to afford that? Just for stealing a car and evading.. For the more established criminal, that's not as impactful but if that's a criminal which not much money? That's like three hours pay grinding a legal job. Reduce the cost of illegal firearm imports by 30% A shotgun currently costs about $24k I'm reliably informed to import, which seems massively out of wack. I get that perhaps the prices are high to dissaude shootouts but reality is, this is GTA not the ballet and if you want criminals, they're going to want to kill each other every now and then. Reducing the import prices by 30% would encourage more imports which comes with risk of discovery but also at the same time, would bring the price of a shotgun for example down to around $16.8k. That's not cheap cheap, but it's cheaper. So what does that do? Well, it gives criminals of all sizes a real opportunity to do what we want them to do which is commit crime. It's not entirely dependent on players availability so you could do it at any time of day AND it also brings the risk more in line with potential reward.

Well, I guess this is one for the archive.

To answer your question, the drug update has been postponed for the time being and the next couple of updates will be the weapons update which was recently posted about in the development discord channel earlier in the month followed by the clothing and character customisation update. But again, regarding the drug update, it's been started so it will definitely be worked on and implemented down the line. I don't have dates and times, but you asked for clarity and now you have it. Weapon update, then character customisation/clothing then, drug update.

Boss man, if you read the discord, you will see that there was a development update in the 17th of September?

You will get it before the Pier comes back, I'd guess. The pier wasn't removed, people made the conscious decision to stop going there and I can understand all the reasons why but it's like the bank before it, new things comes along and there becomes somewhere else to hang. These things don't tend to catch fire when they are engineered, better that they happen naturally.

I don't think that going back to the Pier is a good idea, the popularity of the pier happened naturally. I mentioned some time ago about the implementation of the Los Santos Mall and as far as I'm aware, that's still the plan in the future so that should be quite the meeting point, a little more organically than the Pier given what there would be to do there.

I don't know what faction services would want to do but if they wanted to make it part of the tier system, then we could look into it down the road. Practicality reasons kind of dictate that it likely wouldn't happen though to be honest for the reasons people have mentioned above.

Making the Jugular faster as we speak!

What if you have no life but you don’t want to interact virtually either? I don’t believe that the criminal side of the server is dead. I think it’s dying a slow death and has for the past two years but it’s not beyond the point of resuscitation yet. I certainly haven’t put in the effort I have on a lost cause. That said, so far every effort to revive it has seemed like a half measure. Staff don’t fully commit to going the necessary distance needed. Whether it’s just not what certain people want or what, I don’t know. Yes, the script stuff would really help but it also comes down to the rules of the server, how factions are managed and the amount of available role players to play criminal on the server. Until such time as things really change, people will just blame the police departments and make threads like these because there’s no other outlet for it.

I'd like to explain something regarding the chop shops. I was part of the reason why the changed in the first place and the reason for them changing was to give factions the opportunity to operate them as a sort of pop-up business that they would have to setup, maintain and secure to keep it running. You would in theory get out of it what you put into it. We had a group chat with all the criminals in the server and then the staff team got involved as well. The expression too many cooks spoil the broth is a little apt and it began to spiral off into becoming something else and the end product ended up being something almost entirely different. The idea that we came up with is solid and makes a lot of sense, but the execution of the idea was way off the mark. Simple fact is, the hotwiring change is horrendous. We have gone from it being out of the players control as it was luck based before to having very little control over the hotwire as the whole system is dependent on how much a person lags in the server. Also, having to repeat the hotwiring thing like 50 times is mind-numbing. So, we've gone to change something for the positive and actually managed to end up worse off than we were before. The circle mechanism is not a good mechanism as is, I don't know why it needed to be added to everything. I can't comment this in the criminal chat anymore, since I got the boot for suggesting that people that hide behind rules are pussies but suffice to say, chops are easily salvaged. Lower the prices of the chop shops to set-up in the first place. Make the amount of repetitions to steal a vehicle a lot lower. In terms of gameplay, it should probably take about 15 seconds to steal a vehicle so set the limit between 10 for shit vehicles and 20 for the high end ones. Slow the wheel down a little bit and make the room for error a little wider, so even if you do lag a bit, you don't have to try and guess where to press SPACEBAR to get it. Listen to what your player-base wants but also, keep things simple. No one plays Eclipse for complex and difficult script systems, just keep it real straightforward to use and understand. It really isn't that difficult..

I live in the real world, not in the fantasy of suggestion forums. There is limited availability to work on things and lots to implement. All corners of the script need something, everyone has a case where it should be their area of interest that gets updated. Even loose estimates of timeframes are not given because at a guess, they don’t want to be beholden to them. I know, because I’ve tried asking for one. These updates will come if and when they come. Asking to be kept in the loop would be nice but I don’t think it’s going to happen from my own experience.