Bala

Server Direction Personally, I feel that over the last couple of years especially we've tried to fight against what the server actually is and try and make it into what a small but influential people want it to be. I think we need to be okay with the fact that this is never going to be a heavy role-play server and that while we should maintain a reasonable standard of role-play, it's important to realize that this server works best when it's somewhat light hearted. Faction Managements That isn't a personal attack, but I do feel that sometimes the direction of the server is more about what those with certain colored names want than what the majority of the player base wants. I've been on about this for a while but I think communication within the staff teams is sometimes pretty bad and often times, dealing with faction management or legal faction management is at times, a drawn out and exhausting process. I feel that quite a few of the problems between criminals and law enforcement would be resolved if communication was better and those teams worked in sync with each other, with the factions to resolve disputes in a timely fashion. I don't think having two heads of faction management makes any sense whatsoever, at least not anyone. We need consistency across all factions and any real functional organisation has one leader, not two. I personally feel that @Lewis would be the best person for that job, as he's not only got the diplomacy necessary for dealing with different types of people, he has the activity and also, he's not a pushover either. That isn't a reflection on the work that aleks or Bakmeel does either, but I've noticed it loads with the mod stuff and trying to navigate that minefield, that we get bogged down in the fucking bureaucracy of seperate teams, and it holds the server back. I'm also of the opinion that discussion and compromise between crim/cop faction leaders would often times sort out problems a lot quicker than going through a third party. The only time you should need a third party, is if you can't resolve a situaiton satisfactorily yourselves. Why couldn't the leader of Souls and the leader of PD have a discussion on how to resolve a situation, for example? Why does it take the UN and two weeks to fix an issue. Community Focus I think we need to understand that it's cop and criminal that is the back bone of Eclipse and had we put the same care, attention and effort into developing those to work in sync with each other, rather than focusing on other niche areas of the server then we wouldn't have strayed from the path and needed to try and rescue the server. Your core factions are criminal factions and PD/SD/MD/DOC. If those areas are adequately supported, you've got a popping server, if they aren't you're in trouble. When new stuff gets added for criminals, law enforcement needs to be considered as to how they will be able to respond and adapt. But the same goes for law enforcement, criminals need to be considered as to how they will be able to respond. How many development updates have we had where stuff is added and then the other side has to just sort of figure it out or deal with it? This is supposed to be an exciting and engaging experience. Your average player plays maybe two hours, you should be getting to the end of those two hours and thinking about maybe playing a little more, not feeling that you've played too much or wasted your time. The Quality of Life Osvaldon asked me for some ideas for criminals, I've sent them over. But, for me, the main focuses are as follows. The Impound. It's a frustrating experience, with a lack of quality and service for all areas involved. We can't make it automatic, because we'd lose too much person to person roleplay but a semi automatic system to account for people not having to wait an unreasonable amount of time would be a huge fucking dub. The Prison. We have an entire faction that is based inside the prison, but the experience of the criminals being there is an OOC punishment. It shouldn't be a rewarding experience in-character that you wanna go to but I can understand why criminals get fucking pissed at losing, when they've got to endure that. I wouldn't want to waste my time. Laundry takes five minutes. Picking up litter and chucking it in a bin. Digging a hole in the yard, inside a prison? I've talked with DOC about this. Re-add the old poker system to pass the time. Allow certain areas of the prison to be used to make illicit substances that can be used or sold. Allow for a grace period for players to stay in prison to finish their RP instead of ejecting them involuntarily mid-rp. Police Involvement. Criminals probably won't like this but we need some small RNG in the alerts that cops receive about robberies. Right now, the law enforcement experience amounts to either clean-up of situations that have expired or paper work about situations that have happened. I get criminals don't want to be harassed and followed on traffic stops all day, but have we considered that people gravitate to where the action is? It's why the Sheriff's Department comes into the City so much, we meme about it but there is fuck all happening up north, just SD chasing tumbleweeds. We cannot ignore the negative experiences of 200+ characters, any more than we can ignore the negative experiences of criminals. The Court System. I said it in 2023, I said it in 2024 and I'll say it again in 2025. The courts system has absolutely no place being added to Eclipse. We sometimes had the people necessary to make it work but honestly, how much longer does this have to go on before we acknowledge that we tried it and it's not really worked out. We don't have the player base that appreciates the nuances of law roleplay, they either just want to make sure people stay caught for shit or they want to get away with doing shit. Having to have mandatory arrest reports and all this extra forum work, to justify a law system on a server such as ours is the poor quality of life for the server. Cops should be out there, role-playing or responding to stuff in game, not playing paperwork simulator. Los Santos Customs was no longer serving the server and got taken out, but neither is the Judicial Branch. I respect everyone that has tried to make it work, including the people there now but it's like trying to catch water in your hands. Criminal Risk v. Reward. If criminals are not doing something because it's not financially viable anymore, then it's out of balance and needs to be balanced. We all know the penalty for getting caught, so we need to make sure the carrot is good enough for them to want to risk it. Criminals doing more criminal shit is good for cops as well. But beyond that, why would robbing Pink Cage Bank pay the same as robbing Chumash when the risk level is completely different? What is the point in robbing a store if another robbery pays so much more? It should be able what the player wants to do in that moment, not what they have to do, in order not to fuck themselves over. I'm not going to go into the list of things I recommended because it'd be a page in itself but suffice to say, tweaking the police involvement but also putting the opportunity out there for criminals to do some worthwhile shit is how you make this work. I've been trying to do this shit for years now, it ain't hard. You ask people what they want, ask others what they feel about it, find a compromise and make that happen. It ain't rocket science.

You can state what you like, the people that make the decisions on these things aren't reading the thread.

There are some days where people are paged 2-3 times and there are days when no one is paged at all, so i'm not sure what you mean by regularly. It's more than it's on a case by case basis AND usually in relation and in reaction to something that said large armed group has done or on the off chance we get to do a raid, which is again not really that often. The criteria for using the pager is large scale situations, warrants and training sessions. Not for every run of the mill situation. It's only a double standard if you assume that we're intended to be treated the same, we're not. Our roles within the server are completely different and while we all share the server rules, our faction rules and specifically on those around the pagers are well regulated to the satisfaction of the server staff. So, yeah, it is fine.

For the record, at least in my mind, the whole point of usadding a bunch of labs was so that they could be raided and people would just go use a different one. You ain't supposed to be constantly at the same one. I just think maybe the rotation might be scuffed or others have different ideas.

Are these 'alot of people that agree with me' in the room with us? There wasn't a need for boats and helicopters before the bridge. There was a two week period when NBDY added in buyable boats where people bought them and maybe you get the odd ERPing couple but that is about it. The bridge didn't do anything but make the island accessible. In an RP stand point, it's known as an idea where people go to hold events and @Lewis and GSB went to torture people (allegedly), but since that probably doesn't happen anymore, it's not a problem? It takes away the challenge, creativity and realism of the server. Does it? The same server where someone walks around in a wolf mask making wolf noises, a criminal faction goes all Iranian embassy on City Hall on a weekly basis and DOC leaves the confines of the prison to go help law enforcement factions fight criminals. That's not a dig at the server, it's just what we are and I get it, you don't like the bridge but I'd say that the bridge offers something different and tonally, is pretty much in keeping with the world we RP in.

I'd rather be banned than see everyone that is banned, be unbanned. If they really liked the server, they wouldn't get banned in the first place, that shit ain't hard. The man reason people ban evade is to be a fucking nuisance and ruin the enjoyment for other people with their bullshit.

We don’t need to limit the amount of guns, let’s face it, this is Eclipse, we want gun fights to happen. Just think I speak for everyone here when I say that we don’t want them to be unbalanced. Perhaps something to consider is how houses work, because right now they’re essentially unraidable stash spots and you need a warrant to raid one. Perhaps if the stashes were a little more in world, then that would keep a more natural lid on the amount of guns people have stashed. Throw in some safety deposit boxes for a small amount of safe storage and you’re laughing.

If i might be so bold, I think that we're at a moment in the server where we have to be really careful about these sort of significant changes, because I don't think we can afford the luxury of pissing any section of our player base off and alienating them out of the server. I'm of the opinion that these sort of situations are somewhat born of a lack of communication between the core legal factions, the illegal factions and the legal/illegal faction management teams and perhaps worse, the absence of an actual strategy for an overall direction of the server. Something that we have seen eat away at the community for years now. DOC shouldn't be leaving the prison to come fight criminals, in the current climate I can see why they are chipping in. Cops grab the heaviest weapons they can, in the anticipation that, criminals will be rolling around armed to the teeth. Criminals roll around armed to the teeth in anticipation that cops will be rolling around armed to the teeth. It's a constant fucking hamster wheel and all it does is spawn pissed off cops that are used to having the upper hand more often than not and pissed off criminals that get mowed down with very little chance of a favorable outcome. LFM, FM and the official legal/illegal faction leaders to discuss the best way forward on this subject and to work out a solution that EVERYONE lives by. There is fuck all point in having every random crim or cop spilling their guts but we don't control our factions, our faction leader does so it's on them to make sure their faction adheres to this. I include myself in this, PD doesn't belong to me, i'm just a member but if everyone has a say, no one does. Suspend any new imports of the biggest armor and the OP weapons immediately. People could use their stock piles as and when, but the route to new imports of these would be closed. Give a fixed window of opportunity for criminals to use or refund the armor/weapons in question, with a published end date, say like a month or two from now. That way everyone knows that one way or another this has an end date. At the end of the window of opportunity, wipe any remaining armors/weapons that are out of balance but also at that point, reduce the cop 150 APs to an amount that still gives them a slight edge but more in line with what is available for crims. Periodically, criminal factions could get controlled deliveries from The Cartel of some heavies and armors that are more closely moderated. Not dissimilar to what Ballin used to do with the plane crashes in the Alamo Sea. There is a finite amount of weapons and once they are used or confiscated, that is it until the next one. By the same token, in the instances where the roleplay calls for it (like the latest Shadow terrorist stunt) or the controlled deliveries by the Cartel, the use of the OP weapons by law enforcement factions would be allowed by Legal Services on a timed basis. Everyone needs to accept that the balance should always be somewhat in favor of law enforcement because order always has to be eventually restored but that shouldn't mean a back hand for criminals either. Criminals should always have a chance to win but a likelihood to lose. Also, controversial but if law enforcement agencies can team up, then I think in the circumstances where it's RP driven, illegal factions should be able to team up once again as well.

I'm not saying it Hardy

You see this is the sort of thing that I'm talking about though. The incident in question was that, during a heated exchange with the Waterfelons, I said to Aurora that "I didn't recognise her with her clothes on". In isolation, that seems like an out of pocket statement to make to a person. But, when you consider that I said that exact line to multiple people, male and female, with the intention of it just being something edgy but funny to say to people, off the cuff. I've said it to Skylar Dawson but I've said it to Jason Steel, I've said it to Lewis Langley, I've said it to Lola. They're all friends of mine. On my previous interactions with Aurora, we had talked shit back and forth so as far as I'm concerned, the same thing applied to her as the others I'd mentioned. But then consider, I didn't say that to her privately nor in a setting I had control of and I didn't continue to say it, despite never being prompted to stop. It became clear from her lack of responses, she didn't like that joke and despite being under no obligation to do so, I contacted her privately and apologized because not everyone is going to take something well and I'm not looking to upset someone out of character. Her reaction to the comment was understandable and when it became apparent, I did the right thing and apologized. I've got no problem with doing that, even if I don't necessarily believe that I went too far because it's not for me to make someone else feel like shit is it? That being said, your overtly protective, over-reaction of trying to make me feel like I was one of these predatory motherfuckers that be trying to force people into fucked up situations was uncalled for. Truth is, I misjudged the rapport I had with someone, said something stupid without thinking that they got embarrassed about, with the intention to be funny and then apologized to them for it, not because it was even really over the line but because it made the person behind the character feel bad. That's it, really. It's not for me to make judgement about why you choose to take the stances that you take, at the same time though, there is a difference between someone being a bit of a dick in the heat of the moment saying something stupid and someone that is actually harassing people. Using my platform to try and force these ORP changes into existence is one of the best things I've been a part of in Eclipse because the people that actually need targeting and removing, should be cast out of the community. Eclipse is not a Twitch friendly server and shouldn't be either. Just follow the server rules, respect the person behind the character you are interacting with and be willing to apologize if you make a mistake. No need to water the server down even more.

You'd think and hope that would be the case, wouldn't you? Unfortunately though, without getting into specifics and earning myself some sort of community punishment, not everyone that reported did so in good faith and there was in fact, some instances of it being argued that it was misused for personal reasons. The problem with that being the case, besides it being a pretty scummy move, is that it makes it more difficult for genuine people to be taken seriously and believed, which was the whole reason behind the change in the first place. I'm glad we've switched it up, it's one of the best things we've done but it certainly opened my eyes when it comes to trusting people at their word. You said some people need firm boundaries and it's very true. If we deep it, Eclipse is a multi-national and multi-cultural community with individuals from all different walks of life. Some of our members are flag-waving pride allies, some are genuine feminists or social justice warriors. But also, some of our community come from corners of the world where seeing homosexuality as wrong or women as objects is somewhat second nature. Right or wrong, that's something that is ingrained in some people from an early age and like it or not, if that is in them, they'll bring that behavior online with them and not feel the same way about how those things effect a person, that you might. Some of our community have negative relationships or have had little positive interactions with women or trans people or gay people. Some people don't read social cues very well or at all. Some people are just content to push the envelope with people as far as they can, safe in the knowledge that they are somewhat anonymous on the internet. I don't say this to defend any sort of negative behavior but to explain that, what may seem like a clear signal to you, might not be clear and definitive to someone else and it may be necessary for you or someone in your position to go into /b and be clear that you're uncomfortable with it because there is a definitive line established then and if they still continue then you have them bang to rights. I feel like to most people, there are clear lines of what is acceptable negative roleplay scenarios and actual harassment. I just don't want Eclipse to become too sanitary in the process of not enough people knowing where those lines are. It's not hard to take not interested for an answer or not use derogatory slurs in an argument with someone, or at least it shouldn't be.

Eh, this is not going to be a popular statement to make but I think it's also important that we don't get the stance on offensive roleplay twisted and end up in some sort of situation where you can't really say or do anything negative to another person without it turning into a report situation. The ORP rules are there to protect players from extreme cases of those actions that we don't want on our server. I think it's really important that we don't use these rules for situations that they are not intended. Because these rules aren't an invisible bubble for you not to have to deal with a situation that you don't like, it's for the situations where things go way too far.

Honestly, I'm somewhat mixed on the whole episode. For my involvement in the whole thing, I don't feel particularly good about the personal reasons about why I got involved because unbeknownst to me, it was built on some bullshit. I still get pissed off about it when I think about it now, but that's my problem to deal with. That being said, we ended up being pretty matter of fact and explicit about how we felt about that sort of behavior and made it really difficult for a small minority of people to behave like absolute shit bags to people. It was stressful for the people legitimately on the recieving end of that stuff, it was stressful for the people that wanted to see something done about it and it was stressful for the people addressing it as well. That being said, we're a better community for it now, so that will be my take away.

The actual balancing isn't the hard part, it's convincing people that the split isn't supposed to be 50/50 because the roles are different. Criminals have the advantage right up until the moment they act, then it swings in favor of the cops for the reaction as cops are reactionary in nature. They do X because you do Y but without your X, they can't do Y. Ultimately, you cannot please everyone but the best solutions are sometimes the ones that sting the most people the least times. PD and SD are products of their environment, as are the criminal factions.

I feel like it's a simple answer but a difficult task, within the boundaries we find ourselves in. You have to retain the interest of current players, re-ignite the interest of former players and also, recruit new players. If you can manage that, your server population grows. How that is achieved, obviously isn't so simple but this is what I'd do. Firstly, I'd focus on the playing experiences of the primary government factions (PD/SD/MD/DOC) and the criminal on Eclipse. The reason being, they're all linked. PD/SD are antagonists for criminals, criminals are antagonists for PD/SD, DOC is reliant on criminals and quite a bit of the need for MD comes from criminal activity. I'd split the task into two phases, the first being consolidation and the second being growth. The first phase of consolidation would be looking at things like the quality of life and how can we make things more convenient for these players to do what they do, in ways that make sense. Less about something being a PD or a crim buff but more of how can we change the every day playing experience to be more interesting or rewarding or convenient for all these people. Whether that is what happens in prison or how the impound is used or how MD heals people or how crims rob a store or whatever Stuff that we have in the server right now, that can be repurposed to give us easy and instant wins. People don't really want change, they want improvements on what they know. I wouldn't focus on criminals as faction members or whole factions but looking at those criminals as just regular criminals and how we could make the activities that they do to make money, more engaging. It doesn't need to be rocket science but even a splash of flavour would be an improvement. We've got a loyal player base and if you reward that loyalty, they'll show up for you. The second phase of growth is where you build on the base you've re-established in Phase 2. This is about adding in new ways to make money or activities that pass the time. You can support the other factions down the road, but without crims and the primary gov factions, we don't have much of a server.

It's a simple answer but not really a simple solution. Do things that allow the people that play here, to enjoy themselves more frequently and to give those people that have stopped enjoying it, a reason to try it again. Embrace the server we have and focus on the things that Eclipse does well, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or make it like another server. Money is meaningless, once you get past a certain point on Eclipse. You can't bottle that genie at this point, just don't make it worse. Other than that, quality of life the fuck out of the server. The less minor irritations and unnecessary inconveniences the player has, the more enjoyable the experience. End-game games do that all the time. They know they won't get the buzz they got around release back but if they've enjoyed sustained success, they can prolong the life of their project by placating their player base. If it can work for World of Warcraft after 20 years, it can work for us.

At the end of the day, there is a small percentage of the complaints that people have against PD that are legitimate complaints. By legitimate complaints, I mean times in which we've actually fucked something to the point someone else has to step in and correct it. The majority of time, it's either people making accusations without actually knowing the extent of a situation (because we don't broadcast how we do things) or simply, because a situation didn't go the way that person wanted it to, then it was "wrong". You mention "PD's GND that had to make a public OOC statement." but respectfully, we didn't have to do shit. Legal Faction Management didn't ask us to ease up, it came from Pazz who is the faction leader of PD. It was met with differing opinions but we were committed to following that, right up until the point when criminal players started trying to use that statement against our faction members OOC. At that point, we withdrew the statement and we continued to act within the boundaries set for us by Legal Faction Management. We have a literal section on the GOV forums, for roleplay feedback, where we have a dialogue with criminals about how we handle situations and where we could improve. I'll be honest, there are some real care bears in PD's leadership when it comes to how people perceive us, to the point where I don't always agree with how much of a platform we give people. I don't personally think a lot of the people that complain a lot actually want things to change, they just want to moan at somebody. We're the main antagonist for criminals on the server. We're given all our resources for free, we have a lot of resources while you can lose yours, we send people to a prison people don't enjoy being in and we're pretty rigid in doing so. We're an easy target for people's frustrations, not just in-character but out of character as well. You can't talk shit about the founders, you'll get banned. You can't talk about the staff team, you'll get banned or de-tiered. If you make suggestions about the script, you're ignored. So, you come for the next best thing, which is the PD faction. PD has to deal with some real difficult people whether they're being vile/abusive, flat out argumentative and refuse to role-play or are just here to fuck about. That doesn't make a lot of us particular sensitive to your view points. We're more than capable of acknowledging and addressing our shortcomings, but when we do, it doesn't really capture the imagination like when we don't. A lot of us in PD aren't stupid either though, we fully realize that we need each other to enjoy our time on the server more and I'll tell you right now, we're about to hopefully embark on a consultation period on how we can better improve the criminal activities on the server to make them more engaging and rewarding to be involved in, both for crims and cops alike. Whether that bares any fruit, I don't know but that's coming from me, a long time and full time cop. End of the day, if you as a crim, are enjoying your time on the server, you'll play more so we'll have more to do and you're less likely to be abusive because you're playing with a smile.

It's hard to have any sort of meaningful debate about something, when the words that someone posts are artificial slop. Congratulations, you've been here for six months. Those people who have decided who can do what and how, have been here for a significant amount of years. You would be hard pressed to find people that care more about the public perception of the PD faction than the people leading it, or that the faction follows the server rules as well as it's own faction rules. Part of the reason cops don't tend to get in trouble for rule breaks, in comparison to criminals, is that the grounds for doing certain things are ingrained in the rules of the faction, they go hand in hand. People do get reported in our faction, people do get punished, on a weekly basis. If it's a significant punishment, it'll be public. In future, if you want to try and make some sort of a point here, use your own words man.

I was initially going to hate this idea but I actually sort of love it. Obviously the encrypted leo frequencies would only be able to play in the appropriate vehicles but that'd be good immersion perhaps.

Magic. Never bought a license on my crim and obviously never lost it on Bala so, I didn't know.

I'll repeat what I said in another thread but there is a fine line between something being unnecessarily punishing and being without consequences. 24 hours for the most serious traffic offences, is reasonable. I think between 12-24 depending on the severity is absolutely fine. You could log off after getting prisoned, come back on 12 hours later, do your final hour of prison and get out, then go grab your license. Alternatively, don't even scuff the license completely where they have to retake anything, just have it come back when the suspension is over. No need to inconvenience players for the sake of more payout. But there does need to be consequences to your actions.

There is a fine line of balance. Make something too strict and it negatively impacts players. Make something too relaxed and it invites negative behaviors and a lack of consequences. Also, to your point about the credit cars, you're paying for a car that you use in-character, not out of character. It's subject to the same in-character laws as anything else in the server. Jail time is usually around 1-2 hours. Most people would probably play 2-3 hours at most in one go. At that point, there would be little point suspending the license at all, for the sake of maybe an extra hour of suspension time. Also, bare in mind, it's OOC time, so you could get put in prison, log off, log back on later that same day and you can grab your license again? That's silly. I think that 12-24 hours, depending on the severity of the crime would be fair. I'm not sure if the license automatically comes back when the suspension goes or what you need to do to get it back, but i'd have no problem with the license being valid against after the suspension period is over.

At this point, it's not about reinventing the wheel, it's about fixing the wheel up so that it supports the momentum of the vehicle. There are plenty of FiveM servers where the "rule of six" works, but typically, it's enforced for a number of reasons. FiveM has additional performance constraints that are not (currently) on RAGE, Eclipse has an unusual amount of law enforcement compared to those servers and ultimately, Eclipse players would be more interested in the 'zerg' mentality than nuanced story telling. The imbalance issue for Eclipse is actually the opposite to these FiveM servers, where at times in the day, we have too many cops for one situation (like 3-4 cop cars for a traffic stop or more) You fix that by increasing the amount of situations happening, not by telling that 3rd and 4th car they can't be there via the rules. That's really awkward. It's an interesting take, given your amount of time on the server but I honestly feel like it would be the fastest possible way to kill the server off. You could make all kinds of questionable and debatable choices, like looting cops or the three strike death penalty law for crims or whatever, there would still be enough people willing to swallow that. That being said, for an advancing number of people, they're playing here still because they're attached to the friends they've made here and also, to their accumulated stuff. It actually don't think it would be an exaggeration either. People would HATE that, even if there is some sound logic to the other part to what you said. You do the things you talked about when you make a new server, not one that has been going 7-8 years.

I think focusing on the player count is part of what got us into this mess. We expanded the server outwards in 2020, added a bunch of extra support for civilian role-play and when the population boom was over, we never actually resized the server for the population we have. We have a lot of bloat. We have too many cops, in PD and SD combined, for the amount of criminal situations that crop up which leads to in-fighting. The discrepancy happens because SD is the same size as PD, but most of the population is focused in the city. Everyone wants to get on duty and have a pretty steady flow of situations to get involved in, whether you are PD or SD. Right now, we cannot achieve that. We have too many middle of the road criminal factions and by that, I'm talking about the sort of cookie cutter, dime a dozen factions that come and go, not really standing out with an individual identity. The biggest faction we have has 31 members and the smallest has 10 but we have 22 total factions. That gives the illusion of choice but how many of them actually stand out and have a real reputation? We have too many mechanics, for the amount of work that happens. Benny's and Bayview are social hubs and big factions, they're meeting spots and they serve the server well. Los Santos Customs, I'm afraid, doesn't. I see no reason for LS to need more than one mechanic faction. We have too many Government factions whose job it is, to stand around in-game and use the gov forums. It's unnecessary and detrimental for GOV to be as big as it is, but it's gotten as big as it has because no one has considered the larger strategy. You need people going places and doing stuff to stimulate interactions. Look at how many bar properties and restaurants we have in game, and almost all of them have been used a few times and that's it. I say this, with all love and respect for the community but we fucking fail so much to do the basics correctly. Eclipse isn't a server where you need to think too deep about what you are doing at any one time but along the way, we strayed from our path and over-complicated the fuck out of it until it became a server for no-one. I could honestly talk about ways to try and get us out of this sand trap we find ourselves in, all day, but unless the right people are willing to listen and act, there is no point. I will stake whatever reputation I have, that if you created a better experience for being a criminal on this server, most of the problems would disappear. Crims dislike interacting with cops, because ultimately, they're the 'face' of the negative playing experience they have. From their point of view, they're facing off against a well-supported opposition and then being sent to somewhere where their money, their playing time and their enjoyment is restricted. Over and over again, like this shit is rigged. Cops for most of the day, have significant periods of very low call traffic even with 150 people online, so that then leads into cops trying to initiate interactions with other people on the server. Do this too much and it's then viewed as harassment. I'll be for real when I say this, but when it comes to things like the bank and house robberies, it's the same experience over and over and over again. If you exploit the meta, there is very little chance you get caught. If you don't exploit the meta, there is every chance you get caught. I can't imagine crims enjoy doing them after the first few times, cops neither. The Prison is a negative playing environment with very little to do, this then not only leads to criminals just fucking about to pass the time, it leads to a negative experience for DOC. Crims don't want to be there IC or OOC but because PD/SD send them there, they are not only an IC enemy but an OOC one as well. This for me is why we need to re-focus our efforts on this being a cops and robbers roleplay server. Whether you are a cop, a criminal in an official gang or you're a small timer just trying to save for your first Warrener, the experience should be rewarding and the situations should have a reasonable amount of variety to them. That is the difference between your average Eclipse player logging off after an hour or staying online for an extra hour beyond what they planned too, because they're having too much fun. Once you've done that, you can look at all the extra stuff but honestly, if the cop/crim experience isn't properly addressed, this will get worse. The additional caveat, if you need any further incentive, is that players having a lot of fun, are more likely to donate to support the server AND more importantly, players that are having a lot of fun, do not wish to do things against the rules which will impact their ability to play here. As always, I offer my services, free of charge (because I can't get paid for this shit ) to the founders @Osvaldon @Paulius if they want a tangible, direct and balanced plan on how to undo some of the damage that has been done. We probably can't undo all the damage at this point, but we can keep this thing afloat long enough for the GTA VI lifeboat to get here.

It’s almost like this shit was shoehorned into a server with a player base that either doesn’t understand or respect the nuances of law roleplay and just want to simply get away with doing some shit. There have been some people that have really tried to make it work and I respect the effort, I do. But at what point do you actually just call it? The mistake isn’t trying something, it’s persisting with it when you know it’s not serving the people it’s supposed to.