Bala

In the meantime, you can CTRL+X and rotate to open and repeat the same process to close it.

If that’s the case, then that is silly. If you are aiming a gun at him and he still decides to ignore you doing what you want them to, what are you meant to do, put it away or give the gun to them instead? The best rules stem from common sense, they are the easiest to follow.

Let me start by saying that I applaud the staff team for taking steps to combat some of the server's problems. It's a thankless task because if you do your job correctly, you are just doing your job and if you get it wrong, you're fucking things up. There is a tendency for players here to look past changes like this and look for script updates or updates that personally benefit them. Not a lot of people will say this, but thank you. That being said, I'd like to discuss some of the changes in a little more depth. The line that I instantly focused on was 'It's very important that we as a community do not take this as an opportunity to go back to the past.' because as I alluded to in my art of gang warfare thread, I still don't feel like the staff team understands the issue here. The restrictions on violence have negatively impacted the criminal side of things, as much as apartment drug labs and lack of development updates have. I have no desire to see clap crews roaming the server again, shooting at anything that moves. At the same time though, the criminal side of things, update or no update, is not going to improve until the staff team understands that violent actions aren't always negative actions. The problem was never the violence itself, it was those players that only wanted the violence and had little time for anything else. The default response to every issue we've had since the removal of the original drug labs has been the creation of more and more rules. This has limited and limited the options open to our criminal role-players, which has also in turn negatively impacted our law enforcement factions, resulting in the server feeling increasingly stale. The heavy burden has in part been created by staff, by adding so many circumstances where someone might have broken a rule. This gives the losing party more and more cover to hide behind and increases trepidation amongst criminals who have to instigate situations to create criminal roleplay. Seeing that sentence was a little triggering for me because with respect to all the good developments we've made since 2019, there is a lot to be said for Eclipse in 2019. Eclipse in 2019 with the extension Coronavirus gave us is the reason why we're still able to ride this wave in 2021. We've spent so much time over the past 18 months trying to turn Eclipse into something it's not and we're currently stuck in limbo, both in development terms and roleplay terms. We don't have the player-base to be one of those super serious roleplay servers where people talk to each other for 3-4 hours and only pull a gun on special occasions. That is not our player-base and it's ignoring the player-base that is ruining things. Eclipse works when it's the middle ground server. One where a new player can pick it up quickly and an experienced player still gets enough juice to tidy them over. One where you can get good roleplay situations in but still has enough action to keep you wanting more. With regards to violence, whether you want to call this California, Los Santos or just GTA, bad shit happens all the time. This is not SimNation. If the role-play supports fucking someone up, why shouldn't they be fucked up? There is nothing like the threat of violence to keep people in line. If you are living the gang life, death could come at any time. We're getting to the point where we don't have criminals here any more, we have civilians that just don't really obey the law. I'm tired of banging the same drums, on the off-chance that the people that can make the changes listen. I'm tired of losing friends and some of those good quality veteran role-players from the PD because they can no longer find the fun in it. I'm tired of constantly trying to convince people that things will get better and I'm tired of spinning my wheels trying to convince myself that any of my efforts actually count for anything. The player base is tired and I know for a fact half the staff team are jaded. That's why the LOAs come and the amount of time that gets spent in game drops off. We're pinning all our hopes for a change in fortunes solely on NBDY and Osvaldon delivering the white whale criminal update but is that fair? They're obviously really busy people with a number of responsibilities besides scripting in Eclipse alone, plus the pair of them have real lives. Could they bring in more people? Sure, but then that's an issue of compatibility and trust and time even to get them the right level of access. They have hundreds and hundreds of people waiting on them to deliver, that's a massive burden to put on people's shoulders. It's not all on them to bail us out. It's 6am for me and I've spent the past hour writing all this out. So, there's going to be no more bala suggestion threads or in-depth discussion topics after this gets posted. My final offer to help is that I will gladly meet with the entire staff team or whoever needs to hear this and explain to them where we're going wrong and what we can do to fix them. I'm not a staff member so people feel more comfortable telling me shit. I've been here a long time and I stick my neck out for people so they feel more comfortable telling me shit. I voice my opinions and I've got a lot of good ideas apparently so people tell me shit. If you're in the staff team and want to listen then my DMs are open. Now i'm going to sleep, good night x.

Well Ho, if there are not enough cops on to provide more than token resistance to your bank robbery, then it's a bit too easy isn't it? Might as well have the NPCs giving you the money without having to open the vault if that's the case.

Here's my two cents on our prison. The intention by putting someone there and keeping someone there is that they are punished in-character for their in-character actions. If they have committed a lot of crimes or the crimes that are a lot more serious, they should be spending less time doing what they want. Now, what it SHOULD NOT do is punish the player out of character or become a place where it's acceptable to ignore/skip roleplay and idle until you can go outside. We have an entire faction of people that depend on activity in the prison to function. As much as DOC can practice transports and use their firing range, the whole point is to watch over the prisoners. We have a fantastic interior for Bolingbroke but it's just that, a building. Being in prison puts limits on freedom but on the type of roleplay that can happen inside there more than the outside so I'm of the opinion that you need more script support in there to stimulate role-play. Especially since the mindset has always been to idle the time away. Capping the times again is a band-aid. You just have people idling for two hours instead of four. Lowering the fines or the time also lowers the consequences for getting caught. Yes, Prison in-character should be a certain experience but it needs to still be a place to engage in roleplay and for that, it requires sufficient script support. Currently though, there are other areas that need it as well and more.

@CalvinKlein That's not what the topic is about, if you want to discuss it, then make your own thread please. Keep it on the topic at hand.

To be clear because sometimes these kinds of threads come across like folk just want to avoid the rules, because every one responding has some kind of story. If you (attempt to) kill someone on the server for no reason, then you deserve the deathmatch punishment. That being said, I think the core point of the thread and what most people have alluded to is that we've become overtly controlling on the violence in our server to the point that we've gone from it being out of control and needing admin intervention to being actively frowned upon and kind of needing to happen to an extent. We've over-balanced the scales basically to the point it's negatively impacted the criminal side of things. I can appreciate that some of you have openly said or indicated you've given up but don't do that, we're not at the point where it's unsolvable but in order to resolve it, we've got to treat it with the same energy we'd treat a bunch of ban-evaders or hackers. Now is the time, not 3.. 6.. 9 months from now.

In terms of realism, the LAPD of which the LSPD is based has 6,000 police vehicles at it's disposal as well as 26 helicopters, 3 planes, 40 horses, 20 german shepherds and 2 police boats. There are 9,900 police officers sworn in, in the LAPD also. So in terms of the amount of vehicles, even taking artistic license, we're going to have quite a few. In terms of our factions, both PD and SD, we have a certain amount of IC restriction on which vehicles can be used depending on certain situations. In terms of the game and roleplay elements, I think in general our server doesn't really care too much about our vehicles, especially the ones that are spawned by the server. Crash one car, grab another, kind of mindset. I've done it myself upon occasion to be honest. I think that any restrictions or sanctions that were put in place for any faction that spawns vehicles would need to take into consideration the nature of those factions. While I can appreciate the desire for balance, it also shouldn't hamper the factions or overly complicate matters. Eclipse works best, when it's simplified. This is another one of those points where while I agree with you in principle, I think it's not a PD issue. It's a server issue. You say you see so many cops pushing dangerous situations, I see so many criminals doing reckless things too. It's not a faction specific issue, it comes down to it that aside from the contents of your inventory, death means very little. In fact, if you die in a shootout as a criminal, you actually get away with the crime so there is in some ways an incentive for dying. In terms of police equipment costing, that throws up other issues, like how does the department then make its money? If it's through citations and fines then that potentially leads to accusations that these factions are doing this to make money rather than to preserve the law. Perhaps giving each officer depending on their rank an hourly budget for their vehicles and weapons might be a good idea. They use the budget when they go on duty and return it when they go off duty. If they go over budget, it costs the department extra. With respect, no one is going to want to spend 10 minutes in the hospital on this server. It would be treated the same way prison is treated, something to endure through until you can do what you want. Keeping it simple, if you die, you can be held in limbo for a short period and the amount you are in limbo for will depending on when you last died. So if you died on the regular (say like twice a day), you'd take longer to heal than someone that dies once every six weeks. But even then, you wouldn't want to keep them healing for longer than say 2-3 minutes because it'd get very old, very quick. The speed cameras are an OOC measure to stop reckless driving around no-crime zones. It has nothing to do with IC, but it has IC consequences. PD and SD have no control over this whatsoever. It was a script addition by the devs.

Thing is though, the cap doesn't really fix the problem, it just adds a ceiling on it. A better prison system would be in the interests of the prisoners and DOC. I think that's perhaps part of why it has the problems it does with AFKing and fighting and such. But, a cap also devalues committing an excess of crimes as well. It doesn't take much to add up to 120 minutes in terms of the penal code. At that point, particularly if you are flush with cash, you can just pump out the crimes and it becomes an all you can commit buffet after a certain point. We tried it before and it's why we don't have one now.

Following a recent report, of which I don't want to specifically delve into the details of, I'd like to raise a discussion topic regarding the attitude (specifically staff attitudes) towards shooting and IC violence between our criminal factions as I think we're reaching our nadir as far as the criminal side of things in Eclipse. While a lot of that will be to do with the lack of any real update for the criminal community in quite a while, it also has to do with the options currently available to our criminals at this moment in time. I've been involved in GTA roleplay for the best part of almost 15 years and during that time, one of the key areas when it comes to criminal roleplay is the expression or act of, violence. People pick criminal roleplay because they don't want to play by the IC rules. It's supposed to be dangerous and exciting. The interactions are best when they rest on a knife's edge. The intrigue, a powder keg waiting to explode. That's part of the appeal for criminals. Actions should come with consequences. What concerns me is that in my view, Eclipse is becoming increasingly bland and conservative when it comes to the action side of things, particularly over the last twelve months and I feel that it's contributed as much as seasonal change and easing of COVID restrictions to the decline in the popularity of our server and the alienation of long-term players. Requests for easing off in these matters is shut down and branded anti-roleplay. We've all seen the "it's a roleplay server, it's not cops and robbers." comments but with the respect, we've were always a server that has balanced the action and the roleplay well. That is why I feel we became successful in the first place. There are other servers that are full action, there are other servers that are full roleplay but the charm and USP of Eclipse is that it's a middle-man server. A server that beginners can easily get to grips with, with enough sauce to keep the better standard of RPers entertained. I feel that there is a lack of meaningful representation for criminal role-players in this server and there has been a push particularly over the last 12 months for Eclipse to become less dependent on cop/robber roleplay and more on making it inclusive for the civilian. This is in my view in part due to the amount of representatives within the staff team that do not hold place as much importance and value on criminal roleplay, in part because they are not actively involved in criminal roleplay themselves or they don't want to be on the other end of this kind of roleplay. I've been a big supporter on improvements to the criminal side of things without being a criminal myself, partly for selfish reasons. I'm a cop, catching criminals is my business. The more crime, the more there is to do for myself and my fellow faction members. I'm of the belief that this sanitising of criminals in our server has had an adverse reaction, not just on the server overall but on the law enforcement factions. There are significant portions of the day where it's boring to be on duty because nothing is happening. Yes, I could ticket a car or talk to someone at the pier but there is a time limit on that stuff for a lot of people. The intrigue is in variety, not doing the same thing over and over. I don't advocate for turning this into a gangsters paradise but at the same time, you've got to let a gang banger be a gang banger for fuck sake. I see complaints about rule-playing and people abusing the report section for petty reasons but in all honesty, if you add rule after rule, what do you think is going to happen? It's more and more reasons for the losing side to hide behind. Our player-base has become soft and unable to take anything that resembles losing and why? Because the option of fighting in-character is becoming less and less acceptable. Someone loses their bag and gun, they don't fight back in-character, they now fight back on the forums. If you are my enemy, I don't win by beating you in game, I win by getting you banned from the community. This becomes an OOC fight which leads to people taking sides and spreads OOC toxicity amongst the community. That shit spreads like a wildfire and eventually, it consumes communities, even communities as big as this one. I've experienced it first hand before and I don't want ECRP to go that way. Shooting for no reason is unacceptable but at the same time, I think the staff team needs to take a broader view on what is and is not an acceptable reason to try to kill someone. While you might think that gangs trying to kill each other is anti-roleplay, consider the following; PD and SD require criminals to commit crime in order to function. MD requires injured players in order to function. Yes, people might fall off things or crash their cars but crime creates injured players. DOC requires caught criminals in order to function. That is the four most populated factions on the server that all benefit directly off of crime being committed. Criminals are the most important competent of our roleplay ecosystem. I'm not someone that likes constant shootouts but I do enjoy them from time to time. We should remember that this is a GTA roleplay community and not Second Life or The Sims. We should strive for realism but not just when it suits our argument. The world can be a violent, aggressive place and our server should reflect that. Shootouts between rivals can serve both an IC and an OOC purpose. It's a chance for disagreements to be settled and for people to also blow off steam. It ends and creates other roleplay. It's also allowing a natural hierarchy to form. I didn't like The Council being on top of the criminal world for so long but that was a natural evolution of things, they earned and protected that spot. Good and bad. I apologise for the directness of my post but quite frankly, I don't want to pussyfoot around. I'm not trying to disrupt any server operations, I'm trying to improve them. If we want good, solid criminal factions to grow, we need to be supportive of the things those factions are supposed to be doing. Right now, it feels like any criminal faction that does well is doing well in spite of the server, not because of it. That's a problem, so how do we fix it? Work with the criminal role-players to amend the rules and expectations of criminals in the server, in a way that both encourages roleplay but also, a certain amount of action in the server. Understand the important of criminal role-players in Eclipse and back them accordingly. Stop with the mindset that shooting is bad or that cops and robbers is a dirty phrase. It's the milkshake that brings a lot of the boys to the yard. My direct messages are open for any staff member that wants me to elaborate further.

Assuming that you are being serious about asking, I'll give you a serious answer. While I'm not someone that makes the decisions on what factions we have or who runs them, I think I've got a pretty good idea of how stuff works. You are new to the server and while I respect your enthusiasm for wanting to bring something that we do not currently have, there are a number of issues at play here which would make it very difficult for you to realise your ambition. First things first, no one knows who you are. The people that run the current law enforcement factions have been on Eclipse for at least 2-3 years at this point. You don't have a positive or a negative reputation in the server so there isn't really any currency for you to be considered for what would be a very important position within the government hierarchy. Establishing a good reputation takes a lot of time and establishing a poor reputation is very easy. Secondly, competition. As I said in the first point, there are current leaders of law enforcement factions that have been here multiple years but also a number of other roleplayers in those factions that have put a similar amount of time into the law enforcement side of our server. They are familiar with our penal code, our server's style and the rules. They have demonstrated their capability for being able to roleplay in a law enforcement faction on Eclipse. They would have the obvious advantage if something like this was considered to be given the role. Better the devil you know, pretty much. Lastly, I can tell you that between the activities of the LSPD, Sheriffs and to an extent Judicial, there is very little room for a faction like FIB in the grand scheme of things. The Sheriffs Department was an admin-run passion project that developed in line with the server developing in size. The server expanded to the point where Blaine County became more used in the server and LSSD could justify their existence. When you break it down, there isn't really enough demand, especially with the criminal side of things right now for a third LEO faction. Once again, I applaud you wanting to get stuck in and I implore you to get a feel for the server and perhaps when the time is right, consider joining either the LSPD or LSSD. See where that takes you. I don't wish to pour water on your idea but I just cannot see it happening.

So there is a chance for me to start the Park Rangers after all?

Folk are going to have differing points of view on specific things but for the most part, I think people seem to dig the suggestions which is nice. More so though, I think people are just so ready for change, period. It's not necessarily even just specifically my changes, just that we all need a bit of a shake up.

Appreciate that there are still so many of you reacting and commenting to the thread.

It's an awful way of looking at it, but it's a pretty accurate representation of the mindset to be honest. Eclipse feels like a completely different server now to 2019 and while we've improved in some areas, I think we've regressed in others. Even getting reported can be a stressful experience, I remember getting reported for talking about LS Drift in a song. That shit was stressful, I like it here, I don't want to get banned. You have the opposition putting their spin on things, then it's debateable whether or not the initial ruling the mod+ makes is legitimate and will stick long term. But also, I'm on a final warning for OOC toxicity since late 2019. You know what I've done for ECRP in that time, yet that final warning still hangs there. It's a lot easier to not be toxic out of character than it is to not get a Non RP/DM, situations often happen with little time to react, you can't plan for stuff sometimes. The line between DM/NonRP when you're on the criminal side of things seems very very slim, which leads to a toxic paradox. You want criminals to play more on the server but in doing so, there is more opportunity then for a slip-up which can result in you not being able to play. If you care about playing on the server which many criminals still do, it's an anxious spot to be in. Sometimes as a player, it feels like there is a genuine disconnect between staff and players.

I think it's probably a combination of both. You want to punish the person to encourage them and by proxy, others, not to repeat a behaviour you do not want. At the same time though, you also want to get across that getting a punishment in isolation doesn't mean that you're persona non grata in ECRP but that you've made a mistake. To be honest though, with the way we are as a server, the game is rigged for criminals as far as rule breaks go. I've been here almost three years and I don't have one single active gameplay punishment on my record but if I had been a criminal for a sustained period, I honestly genuinely believe I would have gotten at least 1-2. Law Enforcement is easier in the sense that we follow two sets of rules but the IC rules we follow tend to be based around the OOC rules, we don't initiate these situations, we react to them. So we're to an extent protected. The very nature of criminal roleplay is to occasionally be violent, to group up, to put yourself on the line and that can come into conflict with the rules a lot more. Maybe some idiots would think that they can commit rule-breaks and get away with it once their time had elapsed on a punishment but then you're also going to get good, decent players that have made a mistake, who think well if I behave myself for six months, I end up with a clean record again.

Because you split people from seeing other people when you add multiple locations to something. It's why we don't have multiple hunting spots across the map or stuff scripted on Cayo Perico.

+1/-1 On the one hand, makes little sense that Fleeca banks are only used for robbing but on the other hand, the banks in LS and Paleto are potential meeting spots and NCZs. So, if Fleeca Banks were to be used, I think it might be a good idea to have them only open when the normal banks are closed. You can use the night banks if you absolutely have to, but there is a certain risk that comes with it.

I don’t normally find myself agreeing with @Ultra3D but since he linked a godly post, I don’t really have any choice. I have been on a final warning for OOC toxicity in public spaces for two years. That was my last punishment. That being said, if anyone in staff decides that I’ve violated that, then I’m gone, even after two years of behaving myself and being a thoroughly decent chap. Yes rule breaks are serious, but having an expiration date on the gameplay punishments means that those that have messed up in the past and aren’t fucking up anymore have at least some piece of mind that they’ll get clear of a mistake. It can be really easy to forget for Staff what it’s like to be on the business end of a server punishment. People go beyond not trying to break rules and they become fearful to do anything outside the same old safe roleplay for fear of the ban. Be firm, sure. But, this system is rigged for people in certain parts of the server i.e. to inevitably fail.

Say less

Trying to force people not to roleplay them as what they are is like peeing into the wind, you just end up with very wet shoes. How we choose to think of them doesn’t make a difference to the response. It’s a 911 call to a location, we respond and do our thing so the firefighters can do theirs. We then spend the next 30 minutes clearing it out and then go on about our day. Basically what Riggy said. It’s the same thing with the static drug labs and chops before. All this selective memory stuff becomes pseudo-metagamey and memey. At least at a chop, the person may or may not be chopping a car. Apartments go boom for one reason and one reason only. if someone goes into an apartment, I’m not gunna assume they are running a lab but if an apartment building goes boom then best believe I’m gunna assume something bad has gone on and respond accordingly. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I didn't take it off track. There was no original statement to reaffirm about this. Changing it now is pointless, for reasons that both you and I are both aware of. It's an explosion, a big explosion and the scene needs to be secured. Which means only people that need to go in (cops/medics) should go in. The end result is the same, so changing it makes no sense. I don't know how people can have expectations of PD/SD to be realistic then if they are skipping the realism part in order for cooking to be cheaper. I find that especially hard to take from someone that used to stand outside these situations and do the exact thing he's telling people not to do. Make your mind up, either we're going for realism or we're going by the game. It can't be both.

You want to talk realism from police? Okay, let's talk realism. Putting a drug lab into a high end apartment complex. This is akin to the rule about not being able to ram with $300-400k vehicles. Cutting the apartment in half with floating flooring for easier access. Putting a stupid amount of doors in an apartment even when it doesn't make any sense to do so. Using bolt cutters on doors that have hinges. No long-term damage to an apartment, despite a large enough explosion that half the city hears it. No damage to any of the surrounding apartments. Every time an apartment explodes, drugs or drug making apparatus is found inside. If you want to expect realism, then make it make sense. Until then, when we get a 911 call, we answer it. No one in PD likes attending these things, they are monotonous but it's part of a ever shortening list of situations we can respond to. No point arguing over short term fixes/problems/solutions and PD policy is definitely not going to be decided by any of us responding to this thread lol. This will go away if the Apartment Labs get replaced by something else, which has been suggested quite fantastically by yours truly.

What..

Yeah I know, SoonTM.