Marksy

+1 on this

-1 terrible idea. The worst ideas of all ideas... Ever Such a terrible idea.

Hello there, Anyone who knows me will know that I don't write many things on the forums unless it's something either I feel strongly about, or it's something I know the general community have a similar mind set on, todays suggestion may not be seen as a major issue in regards to the crippling amount of issues the server does face unaddressed, however it's one that requires 0 development work and the people who CAN make these changes are at least semi active in their role. I'm referring to the massively outdated regulations that come with some of the staple businesses within the server, ones that have dire consequences for general server operations and can affect the experience of most players on a daily basis. I am of course referring to businesses such as Benny's, Bayview and DCC hell even Weazel. Now it's been a long time thing that to work for these specific scripted businesses that a player will ICly need a 2 week clean record from criminal activity. Be that when you apply to join one of these businesses or actively working for one. However we can be honest in saying the server is not at all as populated as it once was, most of the playerbase we have now are loyal players of many years as the core community. The server doesn't have many "legal" characters left, I'd go as far to say most people now are either cops, criminals or have both. With this being said I don't believe we have the luxury to be so picky and choosy on who we let be mechanics, taxi drivers and advertisers... If I'm being honest, mechanics and taxi drivers are actually vital to the server, with no mechanics there aren't hot spots to hang out like Benny's and Bayview but there's also lines of angry community members who can't get their vehicles fixed and it heavily affects their roleplay. Taxi's are needed a lot to recover lost vehicles, get a ride from prison, if you get stranded, hell even on my PD character if we get killed we'll get a taxi back to Mission Row. Not having people working these jobs is detrimental to the overall health of the server in general, for several reasons, obviously the first reason was listed above we NEED mechanics and taxi drivers, second being lets be honest most of the criminal playerbase will work these jobs during down time, less active hours for their gang myself included in this, it gives me a reason to still be on the server without having to be on PD or doing hood rat shit. It's just been brought to my attention that majority of these companies have had their employees bonuses rejected now I can't stress enough that this isn't the reason for this post but it's a contributing factor, money isn't hard to come by so this isn't by any stretch a "waaaah why didn't I get my bonus", but why are we so hell bent on being strict with virtual money to a point where people put in the same long hours to help these factions run and are met with an inability to be awarded for it because they have a felony? The biggest problem I see with this is for people who are active criminals on the server, if there's no place like Benny's or Bayview or DCC where we can relax and take some down time where we still get to actively engage in something that isn't criminal roleplay or let's be honest PVP, then we're in danger of breeding the mentality further that basically all you can do as a criminal is criminal activities which 99.9% of the time result in some form of PVP, a mentality we shouldn't be encouraging as the only roleplay available to you as a criminal, for transparency and as an example, the night crew at Benny's are pretty much ALL criminal players part of active gangs, if none of us are there, then nobody in the city gets their cars repaired, we've seen this film before when nobody worked at LSC and everyone was pissed off. The server has been in a little bit of a freefall and lord knows my last post about several issues was met with a lot of the community feeling similar, I honestly believe some of those issues overall have been addressed and things are looking a little brighter, but the server is still losing numbers slowly, it happens this community has been up and down for years, hopefully we get a more active peak again in the near future, but for now, it's the small things like this that we need to look at and say are we being too over the top in certain aspects on how we run things?

Vehicle Name: Elegy RH7 Type of Feedback (Visual/Performance/Price): Feedback Notes: I love it and it's amazing and thank you

Leo Marks $7,000,000

It's been emotional gang

Oh well

I wanted to take some time to write something out, get my feelings out in the open, feelings I know are shared by many people I've spoken to and dealt with during my time in FM and just generally as a long tenured player on this server in general 5 years to be precise, I've seen the server go through so many stages of it's life cycle and through so many player bases. This might end up being deleted swiftly, and if it is then I think it only further proves my point that I'm going to attempt to make. Firstly, I'd like to start by touching on Development, now we've all seen the recent announcements about "saving the server" and I commend that FINALLY someone noticed and said hey, things are not good right now and we need some changes, we'll not talk about how long it took for this realisation to slap the face of those who can make changes. HOWEVER, although we all like new and shiny things, and lord knows the server has needed some fresh activities and scripts, lack of development to the server really only contributes to about 10% of the problem that has alienated the once loyal player-base. The other 90% of the problem is as follows; Law Enforcement and the divide between LFM and FM and the divide between LEO and Crim mains. The power that is wielded by Law Enforcement is frankly, insane. I've played a lot of hours on both sides of the server (LEO and Crim) and can honestly say sometimes people be complaining about certain things they believe are overpowered etc and are usually complaining about the wrong things. Exhibit A: Everyone's favourite branch of the Law Enforcement factions... GND, some of the servers most god complex players, like a toddler who just discovered candy for the first time and they can not be handled when the sugar rush hits. The real stain that has caused so many issues that LFM have continuously failed to address, understand or honestly even care about addressing, a branch of players who play and act like criminals who enjoy the freedom and power they get without any of the risk of losing anything (Let's not forget that most of them also played as criminals and know how shit it can be to be abused by LEO's and still went out of their way to join GND and do it to you), you can find GND most of the time rolling labs in criminal outfits, hiding in labs dressed as gang members, smoking blunts and using other drugs that effects were added as a way to give a bit of an advantage in a fight or perhaps level the playing field against LEO's zero recoil Special Carbines and Bullpup MK2's and their 150AP's (or 100AP if you want to be a staff member who pretends that it's just a visual bug). You'll find this same division who have a blank page to make a "Casefile" on just about anything they want that's gang related and guess what, it gets to pretty much ALWAYS stay open so they can pull you over whenever they feel like and tell you it's "FoR aN iNvEsTiGaTiOn" How many of you have heard this blanket phrase that acts as a free pass to do whatever they want with you and give you pretty much 0 RP balance besides evading, yeah good luck evading from Air-1 and everyone on shift as you drive on the open empty roads giving them an easy target to follow if they're even semi competent drivers, sure you can get away with a bit of luck and some level of skill but mostly, you're going to DOC to sit in an empty prison that might have the occasional AFK player and even on special occasions the odd AFK DOC employee that's stood there salary farming in a job that gives them 0 rewarding RP and the LTU with 3k XP that wants your stamps and attacks you with no prior interaction. Exhibit B: K9... Oh yes, the biggest power play in the LEO handbook, hey man I just pulled you over because I saw your 4 stacked Kamacho driving through an empty street (one that would be RPly populated but due to 0 NPC's you stick out like a sore thumb) and now I'm gonna grab my dog that can sniff out anything illegal you might have in that car, I'll throw in a few lines of /me and /do for some top quality immersion as I walk around your vehicle with my spawned dog and your only option is to run from me. The less I say on this the better, it's a disgraceful way of Power gaming and should never have left the discussion phase of implementing it to the server. Staff incompetence/Inconsistency/Laziness Now this one is going to hurt some feelings but to be honest, you need to hear it and have your bubble burst if any of this applies to you, if you are a member of staff and you feel offended by this following blanket statement, then you should do some self reflecting as it clearly applies to you. I'm gonna start by saying that this absolutely DOES NOT apply to all members of staff, there are some people in the staff team with a heart of gold and who have the purest intentions for the community and some I consider friends that I have spent a lot of time with. A huge issue with ECRP is that there seems to be a large amount of the most senior staff members that simply DO NOT PLAY ENOUGH OR ARE SO OUT OF TOUCH WITH SERVER OPERATIONS ICLY, I understand we all have lives, we all have other things we like to do, some of us have families and jobs etc etc, however there are some members of the staff team who have progressed to a point that they lost their spark or commitment to their role within the community or genuinely swan about with a holier than thou mentality where they believe they absolutely can not be wrong about anything and you're in the wrong for disagreeing. There are people within the staff team who don't conduct themselves in a way they should and I can think of a situation within the ECRP discord recently as a perfect example; Empire had a little squabble lets call it over the fact they hadn't received their clothing, they were mad, some others got mad, it happens we're all human and we blow up sometimes. But we saw a Head Administrator put a snarky comment thanking the Modder team for their specific item of clothing, instead of defusing the situation or approaching it with some fucking decorum that should be expected of someone of that position within the community. We have a one sided divide in staff that doesn't represent a large quantity of the community, almost all high end staff are high ups in Legal factions, and they're also the ones telling you that these legal factions aren't too powerful or aren't prioritised while the crim scene dwindles and withers like a dead flower, tone deaf beyond belief is how I and many others have perceived this. Moving onto the inconsistency, we see with so many examples reports and punishments that will be accepted with punishments given one report and another with a similar situation not accepted and no punishments handed out. Why does the outcome of a report depend on which admin you get that takes it, it's like a lottery or flipping a coin not to mention the sometimes blatantly obvious bias from staff on decisions depending on which faction the player is a part of and if they're friends, conflict of interest is rife in the report handling system. Don't get me started on the lack of in game support and the lazy culture that has curated itself within staff, staff members with the ability to handle in game reports will sometimes accept a report and teleport to their friends at the drop of a hat to sort out a situation, however if little Timmy is having his experience ruined because of some Grade A bullshit and puts in a report 4, someone like me is going to have to tell him in 30 minutes that he needs to write an essay on the forums about a situation that's already ruined his experience and willpower to play the server that day which brings me nicely to my next point. Report Culture and OOC Toxicity The server has become a cesspit of toxicity, if someone doesn't like the outcome of a roleplay scenario you can almost bet that they'll be trawling through their footage for anything they think could be even a minor rule break and a player report will be made on it within the next 48 hours. It's tiresome, it's making most of the community feel like they need to walk on egg shells in every single situation, instead of fluid and spontaneous roleplay situations we have everyone second guessing themselves... Can I do this? Will I be reported for this? Can we shoot here? Where does it end, did we get that caught up in winning and shit talking each other over some pixels that we became that centered around getting people we beef with IC into trouble because we can't keep it in game and we have to hate eachother OOCly as well? Don't get me started on the threads that are made on these forums every so often where people try to bring some good ideas and sometimes extremely terrible ideas to discussion and it ends up with a fight, or with all LEO players telling crim players that their feelings are invalid about XYZ and the same vice versa when neither are experiencing each side of the server in it's current state but believe they know best for a pathway of character they don't even play. Conclusion The alienation of the player base to appease a select few has been a massive issue for at the very least a year now. Gangs are dropping like flies which is having a domino effect on LEO's wanting to all be involved in every situation or making something happen because they're also bored due to the lack of players, we lost the entirety of Off Grid due to unanswered concerns, we lost many other factions over recent times and the ones still surviving are hanging by a thread, one faction leader was recently threatened with a ban if they left the server and took their faction with them, crazy thought that friends would all follow eachothers decision to leave but it's been viewed with a tunnel vision of breaking rules by asking their friends to leave with them. The clear unwillingness for LFM and FM to work together has been a massive evident problem, FM try to make some changes for the criminal player base, it's shut down by LFM, same vice versa, these 2 branches represent almost the entire population of the server and instead of being a cohesive unit, they squabble like a married couple and basically never come to any kind of decision that works for anyone, too much gatekeeping of their own factions interests to consider the interests of the other side, this might be branded as untrue in a public space however the amount of times I've been told by high up staff members in both of these branches that have told me their hands are tied because the other side refused to compromise is actually laughable and detrimental to the health of the server and community. I just want to end this post with a thank you, a thank you for the memories that I've created in this community, a thank you to the players I've met along the way and roleplayed with over the last 5 years. It's been a blast and I've made some friends for life, I don't know if I'll ever be back, I don't know if I'll get banned for speaking so openly about how I feel and how others who have confided in me feel but I wanted to speak up on behalf of those to afraid to due to the potential consequences. I accept whatever outcome swings my way but the way this is received and the action taken will only shine more of a light on these issues. Much love to all those people who made this server what it was during the great times, and those of you who once did make this a fantastic place to be but became bitter, egotistical and uninspired during the time you've been in the positions you are, time for you to self reflect and step up.

Allow me to elaborate on my +1 I think we should be careful where we allow this to happen and under what scenario. I agree if you aim a gun at someone and they drive off then you should have the right to shoot, especially when people are using that blanket protection of it being DM to just drive around talking smack or baiting because they know they will be able to report it. I think location wise it should make sense, in a lab sure, but you shouldn't be able to pull up next to someone in the city and point and shoot at them if they drive off unless you have serious valid reason to do so aside from "I want to rob this person" there should still be sufficient enough escalation for example, if you're driving into a lab to talk smack to people who are in there to bait demands, expect to get shot. However if you see someone in the city and point at them because you don't like them and they drive off and you open fire that opens more opportunity for issues with the rule and it being bent to people's interpretation.

+1

Leo Marks - 2 entries