Jasmine

Welcome to Los Santos! ((And the Eclipse Roleplay Community!)) By: Jasmine Gray Being a new citizen in Los Santos can be a bit disorienting, luckily there are plenty of people in the city willing to help! ((Great! You have gained your approval to log in and create your character, you have a bio in mind, you picked the coolest name this side of the sun, so now what?)) Anytime you feel lost or confused about what you should be doing, don’t be afraid to ask! You may not always get the best answer right away, but just keep making friends and eventually you will get the knowledge, connections and means to achieve your goals! Getting Started Upon arrival in Los Santos, you may be asking yourself what your priorities are. A job? A house? A car? The answer to this question is ultimately up to you! Gaining some sort of income will be a requirement to achieve certain goals, and that is a good place to start! From there, you may want to start getting to know some of the people in the city ((and developing your character’s story arch)). You may have a clear idea of what direction you want to go, or you may want to create a new story inside the borders of Los Santos. Either direction you go, you can then start setting some goals for yourself. Suggested first steps: 1) Use your phone 2) Find Transportation 3) Use your GPS 4) Get some food and water 5) Get a job 6) Stay safe 7) Get a car 8} Consider housing 9) Make connections 10) Profit! Using your phone: ((The phone is controlled with the mouse cursor. If you need to use your mouse cursor, press F2.)) ((Clicking on your phone will bring it up, and your character will animate holding the phone in their hand.)) The phone can be used for several functions, most notably the “dial”, “messages”, and “contacts”. Using these features is pretty easy to figure out, with one exception: When using the dialer, you can use text entry mode. This is also required when calling certain services such as EMTs or Taxi’s: ((To do this, use the dial feature, once the phone is ringing, click the phone to lower the UI (your character will still hold the phone). Then press “T” to bring up the text entry. Simply type and press “enter” as normal and the text will be sent to the recipient and show on their screen as you are talking to them on the phone.)) Finding Transportation: Now that you can use your phone, it’s time to move around the city. There are several methods of getting around the city to choose from: On foot: Takes quite a while, and can be unsafe, but also requires no money! Bus: Most bus routes are completely random, and even the driver doesn’t know them! Not recommended. Occasionally, DCC will run a bus route with a pre-determined route, run by a professional driver, look online for more information! City Bee: Rent a Faggio motor scooter at any of the City Bee rental sights on the map. One is located right at the bus depot where you arrive. Downtown Cab Company: If a cab driver is available, the City Bee will be shut down, and you will instead need to call a cabbie. Simply Dial 1111, and follow the prompts using the text entry method. - Cabs cost a fair, but the cab drivers are a wealth of information and generally enjoy helping new citizens! This is a great way to get around the city, while also asking any questions you may have. A car: You will not have a car right away, but once you purchase one, of course you can use it to traverse the city. Just remember to be safe and know where to park! (see “Get a Car” section below) Ask someone for a ride: Not always safe, especially if you ask strangers, but sometimes it is the only option you have! And who knows, maybe you’ll make your first friend this way! Use your GPS So now that you know how to get around the city, where should you go? Stop by a store and pick up a map or a GPS, this will activate your GPS ((ESC menu)) which has icons on it showing all the important locations you might need as a new citizen. If you are the driver of a vehicle, you can select a location and your GPS will mark a route for you. Here are a few of the notable icons that may be of interest to you: Bank or ATM Police Station Hospital Side Jobs Market Store DMV Get some food and water On your way to your destination in Los Santos, don’t forget to stop and grab something to eat or drink! As you explore Los Santos, you will become hungry and thirsty. Having something to eat or drink on you will save you from starving or dehydrating. Food and water can be expensive for a new player! No need to overdo it, there is usually plenty of time to get to a store if you happen to be thirsty and do not have water on you. If you do not eat and drink, you will become very weak, and the slightest injury could cause you to pass out and eventually die. If you end up getting injured, and you cannot move, simply call 911 on your phone, and use the text entry method to call a medic. If you are able to move, you may be able to make it to a hospital, and you can ask for help on a walk-in basis. Remember you will still need to eat and drink something or you will just remain weak and prone to injuries. Get a Job Undoubtedly, one of your first priorities in the city will be getting a job. When you first arrive in the city, many jobs won’t hire you until you have lived in the city for a while and earned some reputation in the city. Luckily, there are plenty of side jobs willing to hire on an hourly or contract basis. Additionally, to help new citizens, the city gives a welfare check to all residents based on your wealth. Your wealth is a value assigned to you based on the value of your cars, your houses, and your cash (in the bank, unpaid salaries, and on your person). This check starts at $1500, and will go up slightly as you become experienced in the city, and go down as you gain wealth. There’s also a tax assessed on any money you earn. This is also tied to your wealth, and goes up at $500,000 and $1,000,000 in assets as such: $0 - 499,999: 5% $500,000 – 999,999: 15% $1,000,000 and up: 35% The meager welfare check will barely be enough to cover your food and water, and if you want the nicer things in life, like a home, you will need a job. There is a listing of all available side jobs, info on government jobs, as well as an FAQ about the city at this link: Click Here Stay Safe a) ATMs and depositing cash ATMs and banks are marked on the map with a $. You can both deposit and withdraw cash at these locations. The ATMs have limited capacities for cash, so may not always have enough to draw out, or enough room to deposit. The bank will always have enough for both. Use some common sense when carrying cash, you never know what might happen in Los Santos! b) Carrying valuable The same goes for valuables, or anything with a cash value in Los Santos. The economic conditions in Los Santos can lead people to do crazy things! I’ve heard stories of people so desperate, they would steal a bottle of water, or a hot dog! Be smart with what you carry. c) Complying with demands Inevitably, living in Los Santos you will be robbed. A lot of new citizens find this unnerving, and make the classic mistake of trying to aggressively defend themselves, or worse try to seek revenge on their assailant. Take it from someone who knows, this is rarely, if ever, the best reaction. Your assailant most likely has more friends than you, who are much more dangerous than a solo citizen seeking revenge. The best way to protect yourself, is to comply completely with any demands, give up any cash or valuables you were silly enough to carry, and move on with your job as quickly as possible. You will lose more time and money seeking revenge than simply complying, and getting back to work. d) Safe Areas ((NCZs)) Los Santos is a dangerous place, and working long hours to achieve your goals and dreams can be stressful and exhausting! Luckily, there are a few places in the city that are relatively safe for regular civilians for various reasons. When you are overly stressed, and just want a break from the chaos of a hard job and a chaotic city, swing by one of these safe areas and talk to fellow citizens, and relax! e) General Warning As a new citizen of Los Santos, it can be a very difficult and dangerous. Sometimes as a new citizen, you will be targeted for attack, because new citizens tend to make mistakes! They may carry more cash or valuable, may give assailants a reason to shoot you and take your stuff, or carry a valuable pistol and not know how to use it! The best advice I can give a new citizen…be smart, and be safe! Rarely will you be able to outwit and/or outgun an experienced criminal. Do what they say, and get back to your life as quickly as possible. Get a Car Eventually, you may want your own car. Make sure you stop by the DMV to get a license first! If you are pulled over by the PD, and have no license, you will surely be fined. There are a few dealerships around town, and two used lots. You can alternatively search the classified ads ((forums)) or the Weazel news bleets for cars being sold. Or even write your own ad to buy a vehicle. As the city can be dangerous, and scams can happen, I recommend using one of the dealers or lots for your first purchase, as it is the simplest and safest method. ((To place a Weazel ad, use the command /newsagency)) Parking in Los Santos Parking your car is an important decision in Los Santos, and finding your car if it comes up missing can be confusing. This section will cover what you need to know to park safely, and find your car if it is towed or stolen. a) Where to park – Public parking explanation. There are a few options for parking your car, I will cover them from safest to least safe: - Your house – If you have a house with a garage, you can park it there. But you probably don’t! - The parking lot near the Hospital marked with a green garage icon. Although it can be dangerous getting your car in and out, once it is parked, your car can neither be stolen or towed. ((use the UI to /park, which will permanently store your car until you use the interface again to take it out)) - Parking lots in safe areas ((NCZs)) – Although cars parked here are technically protected from theft, theft still occurs here. Cars can also be towed, if there is a parking ticket meter for the lot. The positive to these lots is you can not be robbed in the lots, making parking and retrieving your car safe. These are great short-term solutions. - Other parking lots and street parking – This is a park-at-your-own-risk solution! Parking outside of safe zones and approved long term lots mean you are not protected from crime, vandalism, and if you are parked illegally, getting towed. This is not recommended unless you are staying in the area with your car. b) What happens if your car is missing? If you return to where you parked your car, first use your vehicles tracking device ((/vehiclestats)) This will give a list of your vehicles with their statuses: - House parking – Your car is in one of your house garages - Impound – Your car is at the police impound lot, you must go there and ask the police to remove it. (this means it was found parked illegally and was towed) - Mors Insurance – Your car was destroyed or chopped, and your insurance company has provided a replacement at Mors. There is a 4 hour wait from the time it was destroyed, so you may need to wait for your car to be available. - On the map – Your vehicle is somewhere on the map! Use your GPS to locate it ((/showvehicles)) o If no icon is shown, this means someone is in your vehicle, most likely stolen. o If an icon is showing, use caution! Running to retrieve it may mean you are running right into the bad guys hands! You may want to wait until the car is in one area for a while, or call the police to aide you. o If your car is on the map: You may travel to it and find it flipped, stuck, or damaged to a point it will not start. If this is the case, simply call for a mechanic who will come to your location and take care of it. ((use /mechanic and use the text entry method)) Consider Housing At this point you may be wondering where you should live? There are several options for housing: Rent from an owner: There are no government or privately funded housing options for the poor. Real estate is owned by private residents who then rent out rooms, apartments or entire houses. These can be found in the classified section, or by watching for Weazel news bleeps. You can also place you own “looking to rent” ad. ((Use /newsagency for in-game bleets)) Buy a house: Similarly, most houses are traded and sold by private citizens. Use the same method to find houses for sale that may be in your price range. Occasionally, the city will auction off houses at special auction events, or in the auctions section of the city website. Sometimes you can find houses for sale in the city that are not advertised, you must stumble upon them, or have a friend show you where they are. Live out of your car: Although this may seem like a strange option to have listed here, a surprising number of residents, especially new residents, do not rent or own homes. The housing market can be rather unstable in Los Santos, and for new residents the price of rent means it would be difficult to save for the house or car of your dreams. So many of us resort to sleeping in our cars, under the stars at the beach, or my personal favorite, the pool table at Tequi-La-La. Of course, this is not the recommended option, but may be the only option until you get your feet underneath you. Make Connections Now that you have the basic necessities to survive in the city, it is time to start thriving! There are many options in the city, get a better job, work for the government, become an entrepreneur, get rich playing poker or slots, or be a beach bumb! It is all up to you. Most of these lifestyles will require connections, and lots of them! With your growing bank account and new car, get out into the city and start meeting new people. Who knows what opportunities await! Remember to stay safe and stay away from crime! There will be people and organizations trying to recruit you to a life of “alternative income”. Be warned! We all came to this city to be honest, hardworking citizens, we didn’t come here to seek a life of gunfights and car chases. Stay clean Los Santos! Profit…. Remember the words of the great Bob Marley: "The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively."

I'd like at least an explanation to why HE hasn't been expanded, or a new lot added. This change is asked for several times a week. Curious if its just technical and they will get to it, or they don't want to do it for some reason. I can't come up with any reason why this would be a bad change.

You nailed it with these two lines. The solution to this is tricky though. It would take some scripting and rule changes which most people (i.e. most criminals, i.e most of the server) will reject. It will take some changes to IC probabilities of being caught, increase in punishment, and also OOC enforcement of proper criminal FearRP. These are things deeply ingrained in Eclipse culture, and will be tough to convince people to change, accept and adjust to such changes. Hell, I am a Civ RPr, and that big of a change even scares me... I think it will take more civil discussion, and smart, calculated moves by the devs to get it right.

I play Civilian RP! Almost exclusively (almost). It is hard, it is painful, it is frustrating, it is downright awful! All that being said, I am still here doing it. It is possible to put up with the BS, and find those great moments you are looking for. It is a double edge sword, Eclipse being so light on RP standards for criminals. On one hand roleplaying a civilian can make you feel defeated, bullied, and frustrated. On the other hand, it keeps the action and RP alive. Their is no shortage of creativity and diversity here. I have played on strict RP servers and they stale quickly for me. I rather enjoy playing the victim in Crim/Civ RP, and would do it every day! But, it can be really, really, really hard! Many of my friends have left the server because the rules and enforcement of them is so heavily weighted to criminals. All I can do is keep trying to show Civ RP is fun, and important, and hope enough people see it and make it better for us.

The server gets crazy, often. Even more so as the numbers of online players goes up. What you describe, in my honest opinion, is typical Eclipse RP. It can actually get much, much worse (my favorite is the guys RPing horsemen and gingerbread men with guns on their hips inside the bank) The good news: There is some really great RP here! Sometimes it is hard to find, some times it seems it doesn't happen, but if you are persistent, and can put up with some BS here and there, great scenes and great people can be found. I have tried to quit this server several times TBH, but other servers lack character and heart that I can find in Eclipse. It is colorful, it is vibrant, it is alive. Yes, some of the time that just creates pure chaos, but in between the chaos you can often find incredible gaming moments. Stick with it if you can. And do like I do, keep hoping it gets better!

Try to steal my bike? Really? Everyone knows that's my bike! And you take it to Bayview of all things? Bad, Bad move!

Tow trucks everywhere! When Jas needs help, all of Bayview comes! 4 Tow Trucks, and a trick shot??

Playing with my Surano at the racetrack. Somehow it ends up in a race with an ambulance and a super car! Surano > Banshee 900R?? It is when Jas is driving it!!

A little party on the rooftop of the bank! We go on a party bus to a cliff, and hang by the pool! Who's cat is that??

I take a little nap in Lewis Pelletier's supercar, and wake up to guys pointing guns! Get me out of here Lewis!

Another trip to the top of Chiliad. Up was smooth, down, a little rough!

Jasmine Gray Common Citizen 270-7250

I think the entire outift UI needs an update. There are several issues with it that could use improving. 1) t-shirts not showing or clipping, and changing when you take them off and put them back on. 2) hats and other items just disappearing, and unless you want to buy a new one everytime you switch cloths, you just cant use them. 3) no way to save outfits and the item system takes up a lot of room, and requires remembering what ID they have. Most of us resort to using the same outift all the time because it is too much of a hassle to switch out cloths. It would be great to have a few save slots for outfits, and fix some of the quirks in the system.

Fair enough. Pick my battles. I clearly lost this one.

This is 100% correct. Unless their is harm to self or others, a law is being broken, or an arrest is being made, an officer has no more right to move or touch you, than any other civilian. Police officers only ever have power over you if you are breaking the law, or to protect you and others from harm (presumably because you are breaking the law). This is a basic right of civilians.

I think a way to counter the inflation seen by recent boons in player participation would be good. Boats, jetskis, houses, supercars, are were very cheap a long time ago, and have skyrocketed because of growth, or by simply removing supply while allowing items to stay in the market (supers, boats, jetskis). The only issue I see is how the metals price would be determined. You could use the housing market as the benchmark, as that seems to be the best indicator of the economy, although right now metal prices would actually be decreasing. If metals slowly inflated over time, it would eventually devalue other items, particularly cars and houses (provided the market stabilizes or goes down). Holding onto precious metals would be the safest and best investment. Which I suppose is the point. The choice with your cash at that time would be to risk the housing market or take the guaranteed, but maybe slower, growth of gold. So, I guess my concern would be player X buys 100k in gold now. And disappears off the server. Comes back 6 months later and his gold is now worth 300k, but the prices of cars, items, and potentially houses are still where they were 6 months ago. Also, base income and gov income will not have changed. TL/DR: I think for this to work, there would have to be inflation across the board, cars, items, salary, gov check. etc. OR the prices of metals is determined strictly by the housing market, and used as a way to hedge housing inflation (which seems to be the only true population-based inflation, the rest was artificially created by Dev changes)

The fact is, Civilians are the loot piñatas of Eclipse RP. Our purpose, is to serve as targets for criminals to chase after and abuse to get a few dollars. Constant harassment, attacks, and living every second of the day waiting to be attacked is miserable. And it is clear, after several reports in which not only are the reports denied, but each one of them instead the civilian was punished and reprimanded, the admins and staff have no desire to create a thriving civ community. The few of us still trying to do it either get so frustrated we turn to crime, or act as the punching bags for the community in hopes one day things will change. Civ RP is simply not supported, nor is it a priority for NBDY and the staff. If it is, they are clearly completely out of touch with the player base, and have no idea how to make it better.

Couple of points: 1) Alternatives to robbing should include criminal based activities, because many of the people robbing do it because they have no interest in doing regular civilian jobs. They want to do crime, but are not in gangs or are low-level members, but have a desire to be tough-guy criminals. So they buy a gun at the bank, steal a warrener, and go robbing people. 2) The solution to this problem will take more than just adding more civ jobs. Partially because of the reason above, and because chain-robbing is safe (far safer then mining or fishing or farming). There needs to be more risk in robbing, and IMO, higher RP standards need to be enforced along with the risk. As it is, chain robbing using the "hands up or I'll shoot in 5 seconds" technique is safe, effective, fun for some criminal-wannabes, and takes zero effort.

Aaah that's right, I forgot the goal of these changes is to ensure criminals can never be caught. It cant be for realism, because no criminal would rob somone for fish then speed away at 150 MPH smashing into lightpoles, curbs, bushes, barriers and anything else in their way with their 200k sports cars.

Removes barricades, make it so if you smash into a police car you stall instantly. Also make hitting poles and other objects stall or screw up the car making it harder to drive. Also require massive repair bills, or higher insurance costs when you wreck you cars over and over.

Disregard. You mean if you are carrying the bag around your waist. Makes sense. +1

Do you, are can you get a maxxed Specter Custom to test drive? (1/2 Turbo is A-OK) Jasmine - 2707250

This rumor has existed since the day I spawned into the Bus Depot. If you mean the apartment complex being built by a playet, its a ways off and is not gonna solve all the issues presented. If you mean the admin markers, they've been there years. As for the Metagaming comment...houses and apartment complexes don't just magically appear randomly one day. people would 100% have months or even years heads up. The way housing and businesses are introduced is a complete break of RP. Its chaotic, Unfair RNG, ruins any sense of planning or RP scenarios that could be played out leading up to the event, and creates unfair advantages for those "in the know". (Proven by your so-called knowledge of incoming houses...what prevents you from taking advantage of this knowledge?) There are so many issues within this issue, it hurts my head to think about it.

Not really for or against it. Two points to make though: 1) Just changing your name wouldn't all of a sudden make people forget who you are. I have plenty of people called "A-hole sexist" or "beach robber" or "car rammer" or "creepo". Changing your name wouldn't make me forget who you are..... 2) This might encourage even more bad behavior and RP if people know they can act like maniacs, then get a name change and everyone forgets who they are or what they did. This is not realistic. Again, not saying your points are invalid or these reasons is why you shouldn't make a change. Just some things to think about.

Creepy.....