New crim update, banks/drugs/weapon damage

[kawalis]

1. Just wanted to reach out regarding gangs losing their turfs, before all the bank updates, and drug updates we maintained them perfectly. It's literally impossible now, no one is brave enough now to cook, the convenience has fully dropped. Regarding banks, they were already hard enough to do before the update, due to the fact that it was the only thing's criminals did for cops to react on. For example before with banks you can hit a bank every 3 days and get the launderer fully happy 100/100. With this new update when you hit a bank, you've gotta launder the money through one dealer, getting the same amount of money, because the more you drop on a turf the less it gives, and that's the same in regards to the influence to that turf. Now given these circumstances, the cool-down regarding the banks have also doubled, which makes it even worse for a faction like us, who control's 2-3 launderer turfs. In regards to the new cooking update, where any table has a random chance of heating up, we're now going to need to have two people or more in one lab when cooking a batch, or we're going to have to cook on far less table, which is just going to nullify the money making difference from a legal job, to producing drugs. Regarding the damage on all the weapons, personally I do not think any damage should've been changed besides the SMG, and the Micro SMG, I'd like to welcome other people's opinions on this matter to. This whole update genuinely has de-motivated me and I can also speak for many more crim mains. I welcome opinions.

Edited April 20, 2022 by kawalis

[lSpixsy]

I agree with all @kawalis's statements. 

Edited April 20, 2022 by lSpixsy

[Killa]

+1 

 

[Waffle0]

+1
Cooking is to hard to do with not a lot of gain from it, as it now pays less than most legal jobs and has way too much risk to making the drugs.

 

[Yeager]

HUGE +1

 

[retronub]

I agree with this, the update has made it extremely demotivating to try maintain turfs. +1

[Dola]

+1

That update has demotivated our entire gang and probably a lot of other gangs. 

Banks and cooking did not need a change. 

.50 takes more skill than any other pistols, costs more and weighs more in terms of ordering and therefore should do most damage. 

[LucasJHughes]

+1, Cooking was the only viable way to make good money to be able to afford the extreme price of weapons, now it has been ruined in my opinion due to not having any water sources in a property now and the random ticker for the heat of the drug tables everyone is either to scared to cook or no one wants to due to the extreme inconvenience of it and that more than one person is needed for the task.

Cooking Calculations

Lysergic Cost : $12,000 for 240

Cost of ingredients : $48,000

Time needed : 1-2 hours depending on the size of the lab + 30 minutes to pick up the lysergic and materials.

Selling price : anywhere from 138,000 - 148,000 APPROX.

Profit: $70k - $85k

This may seem like a lot of money however, let's say I wanted to purchase an Assault Rifle the stock cost of an AK is $33,000 / attachments = $3,000 / 200 ammo = $18,000.

Overall with no additional taxes from gangs this weapon stands at the lowest $54,000 for one weapon with ammo, this cost is without any taxation whatsoever from gangs which usually add a 5-15% tax on their weapons. Criminals will pay insane amounts for these weapons only for them to get pulled over and chased to lose it instantly. Another point of interest the price of body armour which is often used in conjunction with this weapon would be $40,000 for an 100 AP armour. Personally I have experienced bringing out this combination of over $90,000 worth of equipment just to get chased and arrested within 20 minutes and lose it all plus prison fines.

Criminals need to make money as their cost of being in the city is greater than legal's this is due to the absurd weapon cost / jail fines which can be sometimes anywhere from 10k-40k / impound or moors fees. Currently due to the cooking changes barely anyone cooks anymore and there is literally nothing to do to make a decent amount of money. I wouldn't have minded the cooking change if something was introduced as another way of making money, an example of this would be to make static drug labs up north actually viable for making money which would increase criminal interaction and make labs more active such as it was previously.

Shifting the focus back to gun balancing, not every single gun can be painted with the same "50%" brush it has made things completely imbalanced more than before, the only weapons that needed a buff on damage was the micro and the SMG, however every single weapon got a buff including all pistols, in my opinion this was clearly not tested as every gun doesn't need a 50% increase. Horizontal recoil change, Im not completely opposed to this even though personally I do not like the new change but I'm curious to who asked for this change to occur as it was fine previously and now a lot of the automatic weapons are near on unusable due to the insane recoil spread. I feel as tho every weapon needs to be tested and opinions from people who actually use these weapons everyday need to be brought into consideration. I propose revert all gun changes apart from the SMG and Micro damage buffs, if changes outside these weapons where to be made first test them instead of a one shoe fits all policy of increasing damage.

Over the last week is the least motivation I have had to log in to my criminal character ever since I Joined this server, however I do love this server and want it to prosper but changes need to be made is the criminal count is dropping day by day, I also have a character which is active in SD for the last 4-5 months and I know how important criminals are to LEO role-play, the more criminal activity = the more activity for LEO's. You Need Criminals To Have Law Enforcement.

I respect all the developers for actually being proactive, putting in the effort and making changes however I believe this needs to be tweaked, overall I hope for more changes to be made and for the drug update to be successful, personally I would gladly help or share my ideas or make them known to any developer as I want to see the criminal scene thrive again.

 

[alexalex303]

The fact is that with a ~12 hour cooldown and four banks that means eight bank robberies a day, up to eight two hour long hostage situations per day. Add onto it people regularly checking timers and hitting banks almost on the dot did not help the issue. I for one did not appreciate the amount of bank robberies and wish they were more special than just another check-list grind activity.

Alternative ways to get packed money were added with the ATM robbery mechanic which requires very little investment but provides you with packed money. A group of people can easily farm them with almost no risk. On to the point of not being able to sustain three turfs of the same type, maybe that isn't needed. Do you really need all three turfs for roleplay reasons, or do you want them for imports? If you want them for imports, then more grind is more benefits.

The damage on weapons could've been more selective, however, in my opinion, the only damage buff that should be rolled back is on the pistols. I think that heavy weapons in general should be more scary and do more damage. Having a heavy weapon should be a huge threat and even the AK sometimes felt tame, especially when everyone had body armor. That's no longer the case.

I understand why people might be a bit disheartened when a way to make money was patched, but a lot of the things that were being done were not healthy for the server. I get that currency opens up avenues, but can anyone honestly say that refilling bottles in a mega property with sixty tables from the floor was good RP or provided any RP? Sitting in that same interior for hours or days, with the only requirement being materials that can be stacked in safes on walls?

All of the things that were added, the bug fix for the water, the more danger to the tables, no more cooking in apartments, they were all added for interaction, for roleplay. I get that when you're making money interaction is your enemy, but this is a roleplay server and interaction is the basis for roleplay. Being locked away in an apartment for hours is being locked away from roleplay.

[LucasJHughes]

2 minutes ago, alexalex303 said:

The fact is that with a ~12 hour cooldown and four banks that means eight bank robberies a day, up to eight two hour long hostage situations per day. Add onto it people regularly checking timers and hitting banks almost on the dot did not help the issue. I for one did not appreciate the amount of bank robberies and wish they were more special than just another check-list grind activity.

Alternative ways to get packed money were added with the ATM robbery mechanic which requires very little investment but provides you with packed money. A group of people can easily farm them with almost no risk. On to the point of not being able to sustain three turfs of the same type, maybe that isn't needed. Do you really need all three turfs for roleplay reasons, or do you want them for imports? If you want them for imports, then more grind is more benefits.

The damage on weapons could've been more selective, however, in my opinion, the only damage buff that should be rolled back is on the pistols. I think that heavy weapons in general should be more scary and do more damage. Having a heavy weapon should be a huge threat and even the AK sometimes felt tame, especially when everyone had body armor. That's no longer the case.

I understand why people might be a bit disheartened when a way to make money was patched, but a lot of the things that were being done were not healthy for the server. I get that currency opens up avenues, but can anyone honestly say that refilling bottles in a mega property with sixty tables from the floor was good RP or provided any RP? Sitting in that same interior for hours or days, with the only requirement being materials that can be stacked in safes on walls?

All of the things that were added, the bug fix for the water, the more danger to the tables, no more cooking in apartments, they were all added for interaction, for roleplay. I get that when you're making money interaction is your enemy, but this is a roleplay server and interaction is the basis for roleplay. Being locked away in an apartment for hours is being locked away from roleplay.

ATM Robberies provide 1k per robbery, These packs are being dropped on our turfs by other people due to the accessibility of the ATM robberies ruining the price making it obsolete.

I agree with your point on the banks you shouldn't be able to have eight bank robberies a day its just to much.

Damage on weapons has been to generalised with this update, I'm not saying AK shouldn't be buffed at all but why exactly 50%? Its too much, the AK was already a good weapon in my opinion and many others agree and doesn't need a 50% increase maybe only a 5-10% for example, WEAPONS NEED TO BE TESTED INDIVIDUALY and yes I agree heavy weapons need to be scary especially for the price of them.

Regarding the Drug tables change as I said nothing else has been integrated to make up for the loss of drug making and the nerf regarding that, I mean personally I don't think its unrealistic to have a water source in a property. I second that cooking doesn't promote interaction however there is nothing to substitute cooking and with the price of weapons and the cost of being a criminal without money it is impossible.

[Phantas]

Turfs have become a mmo daily checklist of tasks you need to complete for the day with all the limitations in place currently. You can not attack anther gangs turf without being ready to send FM a 9 page manifesto of all events leading up to crippling anther gangs turf or wanting to take a turf for yourself. Making it harder to maintain turfs I believe is an unattended side affect of the changes made and could definitely use a looking into for influence values and decay values. I for one am happy with the change up in importance of daily drug cooking and bank robbing but hope these don't end up getting replaced with repetitive tasks such as atm robberies and store robberies that will just replace what was being originally done in excess. 

[Beet]

+1 

I think the main issue is that criminals have very limited ways to make meaningful resources of income to be able to roleplay. There is very little player to player interactions to be able to make income. I think a large reason for this is the very small number of the community being 'mere' civilians. Most members of the server are either in a government faction or a criminal one. This means that there is very limited scope for criminals to exploit members of the public as they would realistically do in the real world.

That being said, I think we have to accept the current state of affairs on this fact and there needs to be some achievable balancing for criminals to make money through one medium or another. Having ATM robberies so widely available, easy to do and frankly from an LEO standpoint unmanageable was and is not the way to do it. I think large scale and chain robberies do nothing to promote roleplay and instead encourage a culture of cops v robbers. 

Some sort of balance needs to be struck between asset gain and roleplay. The current state of affairs is untenable. 

[Sarahh]

+1 
I agree with @kawalis too 

[Cyrus Raven]

34 minutes ago, alexalex303 said:

The fact is that with a ~12 hour cooldown and four banks that means eight bank robberies a day, up to eight two hour long hostage situations per day. Add onto it people regularly checking timers and hitting banks almost on the dot did not help the issue. I for one did not appreciate the amount of bank robberies and wish they were more special than just another check-list grind activity.

Alternative ways to get packed money were added with the ATM robbery mechanic which requires very little investment but provides you with packed money. A group of people can easily farm them with almost no risk. On to the point of not being able to sustain three turfs of the same type, maybe that isn't needed. Do you really need all three turfs for roleplay reasons, or do you want them for imports? If you want them for imports, then more grind is more benefits.

The damage on weapons could've been more selective, however, in my opinion, the only damage buff that should be rolled back is on the pistols. I think that heavy weapons in general should be more scary and do more damage. Having a heavy weapon should be a huge threat and even the AK sometimes felt tame, especially when everyone had body armor. That's no longer the case.

I understand why people might be a bit disheartened when a way to make money was patched, but a lot of the things that were being done were not healthy for the server. I get that currency opens up avenues, but can anyone honestly say that refilling bottles in a mega property with sixty tables from the floor was good RP or provided any RP? Sitting in that same interior for hours or days, with the only requirement being materials that can be stacked in safes on walls?

All of the things that were added, the bug fix for the water, the more danger to the tables, no more cooking in apartments, they were all added for interaction, for roleplay. I get that when you're making money interaction is your enemy, but this is a roleplay server and interaction is the basis for roleplay. Being locked away in an apartment for hours is being locked away from roleplay.

I agree with everything said here.

However, I sympathize with the need to add replacement activities when making these drastic changes. Perhaps as @LucasJHughes pointed out, public labs should be given a boost, adding incentives to occupying and running labs out in the open again, high-risk, high-reward while scaling payouts with law enforcement on-duty as a means to avoid grinding in dead hours.

Introduce new lab locations that can be built and dismantled by groups when they feel like cooking. An absolutely incredible change that we saw recently was the addition of the new free lance job that promotes team work to get through the tasks. Why not use a portion of that system with regards to setting up labs, chop shops, etc... If Gang A wants to cook at sea lab, don't just have the lab already be there, instead the group arrives, they set up the lab, cook  however much they want and at the end they can either leave it up or dismantle it. Have mini-tasks/games after it has been initially set up used to replenish supplies, grow marijuana plants, etc...

[Zoah]

The turf decay system was developed and balanced off of the old drug and money laundering capabilities prior to these updates. This has obviously made it quite a bit harder to maintain turfs.   There are always unintended consequences with these updates, sometimes it's hard to think of them all before releasing the changes. Despite the good intentions of the update some further changes definitely need to be made to accomplish the original perceived goal.

 

I would love to see people get out of their properties and be forced to RP to produce drugs and make money. The goal of making it so people don't have to sit in their houses/apartments/properties for hours was not accomplished. The main reason criminals do that is to order items from the Black Market. In order to maintain turfs criminals will have to spend even MORE time cooking to compensate for slower drug production from the table heat randomness nerf and the water bottle nerf.  

No matter what some players are going to want to grind money and not RP as much as others. Different people enjoy different aspects of Eclipse, if the idea is to drive out players that don't enjoy a server that only offers civilian RP and high risk no reward Crim RP then the update is fine. Maybe I'm not the type of player that ECRP wants on their server. This is just my analysis of the situation. 

The money laundering issue is horrid, the benefit of doing banks was that you were able to sell a higher $ value of packed cash to a single launderer in a single sell. Now with the 2000$ packs you get less influence and less money from your cash. With a constant strain already on money launderer turfs prior to the update this just creates more frustration and demotivation for criminals. 

I can see that the .50 and pump were deemed overpowered for their price to power ratio. I don't understand how the conclusion to just simply buff every other weapon by 50% was come to. It just seems not thought out well or tested well. So many unique weapons with unique powers and different useful situations being given a blanket multi weapon buff by the same 50% value can in no way be balanced. It's just going to change the meta, people are going to figure out what's best for their $ and gets them the most kills. 

 

My solutions to these problems. (not considering the planned drug update that I know nothing about)

 

Drugs- remove the random heating effect. add water to certain furniture pieces. Or add actual value to the drug labs. Then instead of people killing each other at labs out of boredom there would be an RP monetary reason for conflict and control to be maintained of labs.   

 

Money Laundering- either make it so you can combine stacks of packed stolen cash into 1 stack or add a 3 minute timer to Money Launderer NPC's where all money laundered within the 3 minutes all sells for the same price/influence. 

Banks- Add a little more time allowed between aiming at the tellers. Sometimes poor ping and lag causes a bank to fail because 2 players were milliseconds off of each other on aiming at the tellers. This wastes the time of Cops and Crims. Why should players have to look at each others ping to see if theirs matches when trying to hands up some bank teller ladies? It feels very OOC and not immersive.

 

Weapons- This doesn't bother me much as people who are heavily into PVP will just find the new meta and the supply/demand of those new best weapons will follow. This is a bit annoying for people who stashed many weapons that WERE good. It's pretty hard to RPly justify a change as big as 50% dmg increase. Like Woah !! these weapons that were sitting in my safe are all of a sudden killing people significantly faster... And these ones aren't.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Yousef Assad

[Harley]

+1. Turfs, and especially money laundering turfs, have turned into a grindy mmo system, and I personally hate it. An easy solution would be a rework to how turfs decay. If gangs don’t NEED to rob a bank every day, the amount will decrease a lot

[alexalex303]

45 minutes ago, LucasJHughes said:

Regarding the Drug tables change as I said nothing else has been integrated to make up for the loss of drug making and the nerf regarding that, I mean personally I don't think its unrealistic to have a water source in a property. I second that cooking doesn't promote interaction however there is nothing to substitute cooking and with the price of weapons and the cost of being a criminal without money it is impossible.

If we agree that cooking was very bad for roleplay (no interaction), then I think the focus should be suggestions for a new way to make money, not just asking for unhealthy changes to be reverted.

[LucasJHughes]

9 minutes ago, alexalex303 said:

If we agree that cooking was very bad for roleplay (no interaction), then I think the focus should be suggestions for a new way to make money, not just asking for unhealthy changes to be reverted.

Yes well the issue is that nothing has been done as a substitute to this, turfs will have to be changed to how they work and also either reduce the price on weapons or alternatively introduce new ways to make money which neither of these things have been done.

Also my suggestion was that cooking in static labs should be be made viable to substitute cooking in an apartment

Edited April 20, 2022 by LucasJHughes

[Paulius]

Turf decay will be adjusted to counter this issue.

[Paulius]

Static labs will also be boosted until reworked drug content comes out.

[Stew Walker]

8 hours ago, alexalex303 said:

I understand why people might be a bit disheartened when a way to make money was patched, but a lot of the things that were being done were not healthy for the server. I get that currency opens up avenues, but can anyone honestly say that refilling bottles in a mega property with sixty tables from the floor was good RP or provided any RP? Sitting in that same interior for hours or days, with the only requirement being materials that can be stacked in safes on walls?

All of the things that were added, the bug fix for the water, the more danger to the tables, no more cooking in apartments, they were all added for interaction, for roleplay. I get that when you're making money interaction is your enemy, but this is a roleplay server and interaction is the basis for roleplay. Being locked away in an apartment for hours is being locked away from roleplay.

Before I comment on any of this I wanted to first clarify that I have always been against cooking long hours every day, especially when done in lux apartments. Cooking isnt fun. We all log in to goof around with the community, not sit in an apt listening to JRE and a 3min watering timer. 

Crim staff has guided many players on how to roleplay refilling water bottles in a business property (Bar, Club, Drug Lab, ect). Installing a sink, bathtub, watering station, from the furniture store would provide all the RP necessary to refill water, as typically businesses have access to these commodities. Would it not? This just seems like removing something that was formally convenient to the limited amount of criminals that had access to the limited number of available business properties. Let alone these properties cost around 10x what a lux apartment cost; factoring in the necessity of smoke vents costing 50k per (I personally have 24 so 1.2m in vents to even begin a cook), the convenience of refilling your water inside only seemed justified for the risk. Similarly, retrieving said materials hosts a myriad of RP in itself. Holding drug labs and retrieving shipments can prove to be exhilarating experiences that I believe is appealing to a large majority of the serious criminal community. Many many many different and unique RP ops come from these scenarios. 

I can understand the frustration of the community that crims are spending around 30 mins to 3 hours cooking (Vol of cook x Time to cook / Number of tables) everyday to make a - as mentioned above by @LucasJHughes - enough money to purchase 1 weapon. However I don't believe that the solution is to make it more difficult. 

7 hours ago, Yousef Assad said:

I would love to see people get out of their properties and be forced to RP to produce drugs and make money. The goal of making it so people don't have to sit in their houses/apartments/properties for hours was not accomplished. The main reason criminals do that is to order items from the Black Market. In order to maintain turfs criminals will have to spend even MORE time cooking to compensate for slower drug production from the table heat randomness nerf and the water bottle nerf.  

No matter what some players are going to want to grind money and not RP as much as others. Different people enjoy different aspects of Eclipse, if the idea is to drive out players that don't enjoy a server that only offers civilian RP and high risk no reward Crim RP then the update is fine. Maybe I'm not the type of player that ECRP wants on their server. This is just my analysis of the situation. 

 

I could not agree with what Yousef said any more. To add onto his statements at the end of this quote, when asked what the "problems" are or what "solutions" we could express to resolve them I always come back to the quote above. The problem's I see are most likely my own and not that of the community as a whole. That being said if these issues are not resolved then clearly it was just that and ECRP was not meant for players such as myself.  

Maybe this is just me but like tons of in game wealthy civs that are LEO, Weazel employees, DCC drivers, Mechanics; all with super cars, 4g estates, business', when the majority of crims scrape by day to day to make money for an AK that they lose in 5 minutes and are even nerfed further. Leaders of gangs like the Royals, LSD, and even Rooks are not remotely close to the top 1% of wealth when IC'ly it would make all the sense in the world rather than a taxi driver, mechanic, or paperboy ...

Moreover on the topic of nerfs, banks are unreliable to say the least. Grab Cash anim bug still super relevant and causes the bank to be voided. LEO's very short leash given to criminals when RPing with them at a bank is the reason for the current bike meta so this could be resolved rapidly however, wont. 

Gun nerf. Pog, pumps were super OP for being nearly half the price of SMG ... 
This really just changes the way aggressive RP will play out in terms of engage. New gun meta will be recognized soon enough and people will migrate there.

 

[Dola]

14 hours ago, NBDY said:

Static labs will also be boosted until reworked drug content comes out.

Do you have a timeframe of when this will be introduced? And will it be like it use to be?

[IAmTurtle]

9 hours ago, DeanDolan7 said:

Do you have a timeframe of when this will be introduced? And will it be like it use to be?

it will be when it be. it is kinda smart to not give deadlines for this stuff bc it adds to much hype especially if they have to delay it more.

[Bala]

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time."
The community was crying out for change, for a year and a half and we're at the stage now where said content is finally happening and people still have to complain.

People are forming die hard opinions over screenshots and taking the initial patch as how it's always going to be. It's a process and in terms of the criminal updates, it is one that isn't even half done yet. There are areas that do need to be tweaked but they will be. We have a discussion group with leaders of the criminal factions, some former faction leaders, some cops that regularly deal with crims so it's not one person deciding these things, it's a roundtable discussion.

The update isn't just about adding new things, it's about changing how people operate in the server and naturally people are resistant to change. If i've built a super lab in an apartment and i'm making money hand over fist, I'm going to be upset that I can't do that anymore but at the same time, being shut away in an instanced world farming money does absolutely fuck all on an RP server. 

The over-reliance on bank robberies lead to an incredibly toxic atmosphere and I think when all the options are on the table for criminals, it will make a lot more sense. You just have to wait and see the big picture.

I think it's also unfortunate that some of the factions we had recently are now disbanded but it also gives people the opportunity to create new factions and I think by the time we are finished with the updates we will be in a much, much healthier place. Not just for criminals but the community in general.

[Dola]

Change is good, however ATMs and the ability to rob gun stores & clothing stores was definetely not a good replacement for banks, atleast not for the bigger gangs that is. 

On average Shenzhen would do a bank a day with a average cut of approximately 20k-25k per person typically cut between 10-15 people which isnt even enough in surviving the criminal day to day lifestyle - mors/impound fees, prison/jail/camera fines, equipment/.50s lost daily due to fights or cops. And thats not even involving the heavy weapons/body armor lost. 

ATM packs after laundered give an average of approx 1.5k. In order to make up for the bank cuts we would get, we would have to do 14-17 ATMs EACH everyday. I would say its only possible to do approx 15 an hour and that is without any disruptions from police and finding an ATM that is actually opened asap. 

Ive tried ATMs and i typically have to evade from police every 3-5 ATMs which will lead to me spending more time evading then actually doing them. This is just a long and grindy process to merely survive day-to-day crim life. Dont get me wrong they are fun to do but its just not a good replacement for banks. 

I feel like if static labs go back to the way they use to be (also with lsd lab re-opening) it would be the best possible move made for the server in terms of criminals and people will actually log in to play because yesterday a 36 person gang who use to be 18-22 deep at peak times not too long ago had 0 people on yesterday during peak hours after i logged in and seen i was the only member online. This is obviously due to the update (banks/cooking changes) and obviously a lot of gangs disbanding, leaving us with very little to do. The sooner it happends the better. 

Edited April 22, 2022 by DeanDolan7