Bala

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.

Let me ask you a question, is it worse to be in the dark about whether anything is coming or is it worse to expect something to come that does not arrive on time? It would be really good to have a roadmap for the community to see the development plans but it would be even better if those plans could be stuck to and delivered within that time frame. Alexander Pope once said blessed in he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. Alexander was half right, he shall never be disappointed but he'd always be surprised.

The cop experience is very much tied to the criminal experience, which is why I've banged my drum so often about improving the criminal side of things. I think in some respects @Jett_J is right. this is a server that favours action over the role-play more times than not. It has always been that way and I dare so fundamentally, it'll always be that way. That's not to say that people cannot go in-depth with their roleplay and flesh things out in greater detail, of course they can but someone has to break the law before you can arrest them. Someone has to commit a traffic violation before they can be pulled over. Someone has to run before they can be chased. I think with respect to what MrDisciple suggested, those sound like lovely ideas but given what sort of players we have and how many of them we have, these ideas are for a different server. For some reason we keep fighting to go back to the basics and what made the server a success in the first place, I really don't understand it.

backup rule went brr because crim groups were acting mad you brr'd yourself

End of the day, some chases get a little excessive but with the way things are in terms of the PD at the moment, if we limit the amount of cops that can be in a pursuit we'll lose cops and ironically enough there is quite a big portion of the day where we don't have enough units. The difference is, we're sending more and more units to STOP someone committing a crime which would RPly be in the interests of the city. When a gang has a large convoy going after someone, they're committing crimes and drawing a lot of attention to themselves which is not really realistic is it?

I was about to +1 the suggestion then I realised it was mine What a bozo Anyways, brought this up to the big boss and he likes the idea so here is to hoping we see some action from it.

I think the word fight is a good way to describe it, it is a fight. It's a fight to get people to understand other perspectives. It's a fight to get people to stay invested and not cling onto a negative attitude. It's a fight even to get things done by yourself. That said, despite what some youtube videos and other servers might tell you, Eclipse is not dead and where the server is at is not irreversible. I don't think there's anyone in the staff team that wants it to fail, I just imagine it can be a difficult to find the right combination of things to get it to succeed. You need the staff, the devs, the factions and the players to be all facing the same way and buying into the same vision. We had that when I joined and then we started going in different directions. I can't answer what the future holds but I think as long as there are people that are willing to try to change things, we've always got a shot. It's safe to pretend there are no issues and it's easy to be critical without offering solutions. You've tagged me but there's lots of people, both in and out of the staff team that are still committed to making things work. I don't think any one has the intention to let the server rot, we just have to all give that little bit extra.

I think it has to be the time in 2020, I was on duty as a taxi driver and thought it would be funny to go into the Zetas Compound with my taxi and tell Jay Gamble that I have his taxi waiting for him, to see what the reaction would be. I did get into some shit for doing that but these days it would be a permaban if I did it. https://streamable.com/kf7q1 Honourable mentions for the following; Tara trying to get me to go out with her on a date. https://streamable.com/0vrxhk https://streamable.com/nhs081 ADAM Patrols with @poptarts in XRAY. @MEGN playing the Ukelele and singing to me while we were patrolling. Callum and Durry finding a mountain lion in their cruiser. Abusing @Shining0103 over her time at LSC with @alexalex303. Seeing who between me, Steel and @Westy can say the most questionable shit to each other. Jess Sanchez getting terrorised by Scott Dunbar in an alien costume. The PD LINCOLN Awards, every damn time. Screaming at @Kris at a PD Supervisor Meeting. The Chazs interrupting a Supervisor Meeting to hoover the room (it had wood floors). Zayn Mullings getting called out at a 10-1 for stealing PD weapons and him pretending to go AFK. Travis Palmer and Chloe Bailey screaming at each other while I was in the car with them as a Cadet. Patrolling with Palmer and Reefer. Asked Osborn if he thought it was ironic they put a Police Department on a road called Sinner Street and hearing him crack up on the radio. Watching Tavares fall out of a car then get hit by an ambulance, only for a really high pitched medic to rock up with @Pazz Aldarine and ArcAngel's characters getting into an argument for an hour at 4am, because Jessica stole Aldarine's fish.

I want to say that I appreciate the support that I got from those that that liked the original post. While not every body is going to share my opinion, I feel that my thread was as much for those people that do not feel comfortable speaking up themselves on these issues or lack the right words to express how they feel the server needs to change. To those people, I encourage you to stick with this and be open-minded that things will improve over time and you can all find more enjoyment in the server. I'd would like to offer an apology to the Sheriffs Department for any unintended insult that my words might have caused. Aside from a professional rivalry of wanting to be the best police faction, I have nothing but good vibes for SD. My words merely were to illustrate since the creation of the Sheriffs Department in mid-2019, we have expanded our government and civilian areas which as the population has eased off has left our current available pool of criminals looking rather shallow. I also feel that for my own faction, far too many PD officers are moonlighting in government because they are not quite getting what they want from the current PD experience, which is what I wanted to improve. However, based on some of the negative feedback and criticism I received privately today for making this thread despite good intentions for doing so, there is nothing further I can now offer at this point to try and improve our situation. Creating threads like this only serve to incite others especially when the sort of things proposed don't happen and I don't wish to make a difficult job more difficult by trying to force a resolution. I've made a commitment to my friends and people I respect on this server to give them that dope modded shit and I do keep my promises. Once those projects are submitted, I will be looking at whether I can still find enjoyment in this current set-up. It may be that our interests do not align anymore. Thank you once again and if a staff member would be so kind as to archive this, I would appreciate it x

Well it’s important to bring up such issues especially when it affects everyone, either directly or indirectly.

Posted some stuff that is relevant to this thread in here.

ECLIPSE Autumn 2022 Criminal Improvements Suggestion Thread I'm going to be as upfront and honest as I possibly can be with people because there is such a lack of communication in the community that when frustrated players are left to fill in the blanks as to what is happening, they naturally assume the worst. First thing is first, we have to be honest with ourselves about where we are. Criminal Roleplay on ECRP is horrendous and it's been bad for a couple of years but over the time it has gotten worse. While there are some good role-players on criminal, the whole system is rigged to backfire every single time. In order to improve criminal role-play and in order to get the server back to being successful, we need to take a long hard look at what we're doing here. The Staff Team and Server's Change of Direction - 2020 to 2022 I have to blame a certain amount of the blame for this on the staff team. The reason why is that through the decisions you have made over the past two years, you have lost sight of Eclipse's identity and pushed the community in a direction it does not really want to go. It is to the point now that people are not angry, they are bored and I think for some of you, you are also bored. The server does not have that same level of excitement and dynamism that it used to have. Everything criminal feels so clinical and pre-ordained. I'm not a full time criminal, I'm a cop and I gotta be honest with you that in August 2022, cops are nearly as fed up as the criminals are. When this server became popular in 2018-2019, it did so because when you played, you were either a Police Officer or you were a Criminal with civilians in the minority. It worked best when it was a cops and robbers server. I know that might seem like a dirty term to some of you but it was a really good cops and robbers roleplay server. In August 2022, the criminal side of things has been chipped away and through the establishment of the Sheriffs Department, the troubled integration of the Judicial Branch and the expansion of the Government Faction, criminal factions are now marginalised. To clarify the above comment, have absolutely no issue with the Sheriffs Department at all, just was an explanation that over time the available player pool for criminal role-players has been decreased over time. Pre-JB, the levels were perfectly fine but with the creation of JB and the expansion of the Gov Faction, on a 250-300 max player base, the available pool of criminal role-players has decreased. I also feel that it has had a detrimental effect on the factions where members of the government faction have alts, such as PD. I feel some of our PD roleplayers are going to GOV in part because they are unfulfilled with the current environment within the PD. Don't believe me? There are currently 215 player characters in the 8 Official Illegal Factions. There are 634 player characters in the 15 Official Legal Factions. I think our staff team suffers from a lack of representation for the criminal roleplay side of the server. If you look through our Head and Senior administrator teams, how many of those individuals are full time criminals? One? How many have criminal alts that they play weekly, 2-3? These are your main voices, your big personalities and the gamechangers but the simple fact is, they are not going to be as invested in criminal roleplay as they are government roleplay because they have no vested interest in that area of the server. It's a pretty natural attitude to have and I can't criticise any of them for what they enjoy but it is what it is. The staff team has to remember that they serve the community and what it wants, not the other way around. I love quite a lot of you and got nothing but respect for the time and effort you guys put in but you are making the decisions, not us. I think you really have to lean on your reliable criminal faction leaders to guide you. If you are not a criminal yourself and you're making the decisions, double down on consulting them before you make them so you aren't acting at cross purposes with your player-base. Eclipse Roleplay is a lot of good things but our players don't want a heavy standard of roleplay, there are other servers for that. They want some medium roleplay with a lot of action to supplement it. They've shown you that with their unwillingness or inability to be able to adapt to what you are expecting of then. I'll keep it 100, there is quite a large portion of the day where driving around Los Santos feels like I'm on my test server by myself. Solutions and Limitations Communication I said it at the start but the radio silence from staff or the founders is so counter-productive. The fact there are so many of us even in the current circumstances tells me we have a pretty loyal player base but that loyalty has been really tested beyond it's limits over the past year. People don't necessarily need to know every detail of what is going on but they want to know the direction the community is heading and whether the obvious issues are going to be addressed or are being addressed. If the founders don't have time, then select spokespeople from the staff team to do it. I offered myself to do it, but didn't get a reply when I asked. Whoever does it, be willing to work with your criminals and give them what they need. Overall Server Direction Recognise what your player base actually wants and give it to them. It sounds like an over-simplification but why the fuck do you think I've spent the last year creating mods for the server? To be able to provide the player base with a more custom and fulfilling gameplay experience here. This server needs to start placing importance on Criminal again, because it's a formula that works and it is what our success was built on. Change the attitude towards action in the server especially where there is legitimacy and common sense for a player or faction's actions. We need to look at scaling back the Government faction. We have 50+ player characters in the Government faction, three of them are leaders of official factions and we have so many PD and SD officers/deputies moonlighting in that faction. With all respect to those people because they are all lovely people, we don't need you to be standing around at City Hall waiting for Lewis to log-in. We need Police Officers to go to the impounds, Medics to respond to emergency calls, mechanics to repair vehicles etc.. I also have to question whether something like the SAAA is good for the server. We need as many people on the ground and doing things in the world as possible, we don't need people crashing because they flew over the Courthouse and their planes/helicopters landing on people. I look at SAAA and think to myself, you know what, if we had 500 people and everything else was popping, it'd be a nice idea but currently, I just don't see it and I think the continued persistence with it is symptomatic of the neglect to address the real server issues. Finally, I think we also have consider whether a court faction is also in the best interests of the server. Our criminal and our police departments seem generally confused at the changes to the penal code half the time and I can't help but feel like the court faction and it's verdicts are not as reliable as they need to be for something with such significance. I think things like mandatory arrest reports put unnecessary pressure on some of our police role-players and it's taken some of the fun out of policing for what I can see is very little gain. If it was hitting the mark a lot of the time, I could see the merit but it just seems to bug people half the time. Server Rules Review the server rules that apply to criminal factions to see whether they are a help or a hindrance to them. From the outside, our current rules are unnecessarily restrictive and it comes back to the rulings not being representative of those that have to live by them. We have created the environment where it's more acceptable to play to the rules than to roleplay a character. That is not a choice, it is a necessity. It seems ridiculously easy to fall foul of the rules and catch punishments for doing things that actually probably make a lot of sense. Criminals shooting each other is natural. I hate the realism argument a lot of times but go and watch the gangs on a show like The Wire and tell me that how we approach violence is an accurate depiction of real life. Yes, the shooting used to get out of control in the server at times but it's really simple. If groups are shooting at each other too much in a certain moment, all you do is have staff call a temporary ceasefire. They can't go after each other in that period of time, they have the time to do some passive roleplay and let things cool off. Then, if they have reason to go back to it, they go back to fighting. Something to consider is that gang violence in the server also brings a lot of good. It increases the need for imports, which regulates the economy. It increases the amount of crime being committed which gives the police more to do. It increases the amount of people going to prison, which gives DOC more to do. It increases the amount of injured people which brings EMS into the fold. If you want to know how the rules should be structured, especially when it comes to criminal shit, consult people like @Tee @alexalex303 @poptarts because they have been on the server long enough to know what works and what doesnt, but they've also proven themselves to be rational thinkers and debaters. 2019 Labs I'll be completely transparent here, there is a group chat with pretty much most of the criminal faction leaders, the administrators, the founders and the mod team specifically for discussing crim. The main topic of discussion over the past ten days was the restoration of the previous labs set-up from 2019. That suggestion was universally supported by all the criminal role-players in that chat and while it's still currently pending staff decisions on it, it is absolutely something we are pushing for. We did not have the Sheriffs Department in 2019, so some of the labs would ideally be removed. I took it upon myself to create three new locations for drug labs, which would add an extra one to the server and also, to move two of the county ones to the city for balance. I think as is, the locations make it impossible for them to be ignored in certain places. If the main SD highway covers two public labs, then it's going to be hard to ignore them. I'll explain more about why the labs are important in the next sections. 2022 Chop Shops The scripted system that we introduced this year is good and as a crim group, we agreed that this was the way to go for chops. The thing is though, the values and expense involved do not make it a worthwhile investment of money and time. The chop shops need to be expensive enough where you don't want to be completely reckless with their location but at the same time, if you get caught running one it's not the end of the world. If they are regularly used, that's good. If criminals shy away from using them because of the expense involved, that's bad. The Prison One of the biggest pet peeves of criminals on the server is when they get caught and have to go to prison. Going to prison should be an in-character punishment, not an OOC timeout for you playing your character or an OOC punishment. Currently we have stamps which are not a viable currency, a mining job where you are digging in the middle of a prison yard and a poker table that no one can afford to play. On top of that, you have a bunch of other players that are as bored and uninterested as you are. Listen, changing the prison times won't make a difference right now because 30 minutes or three hours, it's still a shit experience. If you lower the IC consequences for getting caught doing crime, it gets really dumb we've done it before. What we should do instead is focus on working inside the prison and incentivising people doing things as a means to lower their time. If you want to AFK and do very little, you will have to do all your sentence. If you want to break the law or fuck about, you'll get more time. BUT if you are willing to grind out the prison jobs then you can work off significant portions of your sentence. Some of the jobs you could do is stuff like using a version of the cooking system to make prisoner meals, cleaning areas of the prison, fixing bits and pieces, working in the yard weeding and if you are a trustee, having DOC take you beyond the walls to break rocks outside the prison. I'll leave some photos here so you can see an idea of what they'd look like. They don't have to be massively in-depth and can just be copies of existing systems but with a variety and geniune reason to do them for the player, they would make all the difference. Creation of Legal and Illegal Roleplay Hubs The most important thing on a role-play server is being able to find individuals to interact with. It doesn't matter what faction you are in or how new you are. If you can interact with someone, you can create a story. You can get to network with people you wouldn't necessarily meet. It's why I actually like the Impound. It's the only time as a cop I can interact with anyone in the server no matter who they are and it's a civil conversation. To this end, I had put forward the Los Santos Shopping Mall suggestion thread for civilian/legal roleplayers to meet up and roleplay together. There are a number of shops there such as a 24/7, gun store, barbers, clothing etc.. which would drive players to that location. This is similar to how the Los Santos Pier used to function and the Bank before that. It's located between the parking lot and burger shot so it's ideal. For criminal roleplayers however, this is where your chop shops and your drug labs are important. As someone that never joined the big crim factions in 2019, you could get by as a small time criminal by creating business relationships with the bigger fish. You could use the chop if you paid tax. You could use the labs if you knew those holding it down. Yes, factions will go there to hunt for one another but roleplay servers work best when you give people the tools and let them come up with the story themselves. The static drug labs were a perfect example of this because every interaction was different, you were never safe from danger either from PD or other criminals and it was the purest, rawest experience in Eclipse. Basically, by having locations that players know they can always find players around, you connect people. The more people connect, the more they enjoy the server. The more they enjoy the server, the longer they play. They longer they play, the more chance they have to connect. It basically becomes a bootstrap paradox. The roleplay being created in these areas creates the roleplay. This took me two hours to write out. I'm aware of what the suggestion forum is like and I say these things, not to be a cunt but because like so many of us, I've put a lot into the server and I want to see it thrive. I hope that people are on board with what i've suggested and the best way to see these kinds of change in the server is to make something like this thread undeniable. If every body fucks with the ideas, they are more likely to go in.

Bala is spot on, but nobody listens to Bala. That’s the problem

If we lower the prison times, people will have little to no consequences and do all kinds of dumb shit. Time is not the problem, it’s what you do with it.

All changing /fl like that is going to do is piss off another group of people. There might be a few petty criminals that feel that some how that is a win but it ain't going to fix criminal issues. To quote Dave, you're not stopping the pain, you are just moving it. The reason people are so anal about getting caught by the PD is because the experience of being in prison is awful. To the point where it's an OOC punishment to be there. You can give people less time but you're still going to have a shitty 30 minutes as opposed to a shitty two hours AND then you have the problem that people don't have consequences from crimes. If there's more to do and more ways to roleplay, some people will still hate the prison but you will get some people that are okay with it and some that actually like it. The staff team and also, faction management is far too overbearing as well. Roleplay servers are simple. You build the framework for people and then let them figure out the details. But it's like shooting is a mortal sin or something, it's Grand Theft Auto, not The Sims. Yet over the past two years, we've seemed intent on pushing the community in a direction that it is resistant to going in and for what? The roleplay didn't get any better. People did not enjoy themselves anymore. You cannot consider it a success when we have more legal government factions now than illegal ones. You cannot consider it a success when criminals have to play to the rules rather than to their characters. I'm lucky, I've been a cop for three years so it's been really easy for me to not getting any gameplay punishments during that time. But I guarantee if I was running a criminal character, I'd have at least a couple by now because it's that easy. I kept trying to tell you guys that it ain't PD's balance that is the problem, it never was. It's how we've set ourselves up. But, people are more concerned with maintaining the status quo than actually doing something about that. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

I dunno about that dawg. The moral high ground is nice and everything, but it does get a little old after a while. This whole be the change you want to see schtick doesn't really work does it? When the sum of their explanation of the injuries is /do broken back then what do I as a cop do there, I ain't got no ambulance and I can't let you force your own death. There's nothing in the BLS bag for that, best thing I could do is get the tire iron out of the car and end your suffering but that's an OOC violation. I hate to break it to criminal role-players but it ain't meant to be balanced. It's supposed to be weighted in our favour some what. You have the advantage before you do something, while you doing it it's equal and when you've done it it's in our favour. If you put in next to no effort in your medical roleplay, you are getting minimum requirement from me in terms of medical roleplay back. If you want to get into some Grey's Anatomy with me though then I'll meet that level. Give what you get back. Also, no cop paying for their cars and guns and shit like it's Warzone, you need to stop with that shit lol.

This again? Since you know so vividly what other people doing to you, maybe you can finally tell me what roleplay and description of your injuries you are giving to the medics? Also, you can use gauze when treating a gun shot wound, to put pressure on the bleed and slow it down so that is a correct part of your treatment. As for your golf course of injuries analogy, you can't force your own death so there's always going to need to be a reasonably quick resolution to treating your injuries. There's literally a timer. I'm sure the medical faction would have no problem dealing with your injuries in greater length at the hospital. This is of course before your prison sentence would start. I assume you would be satisfied to lay there in Pillbox for 30 minutes to an hour while you get the realistic medical roleplay you seek, right?