ECRP - A Way Forward [Feb 2026]

[Ritchie Stones]

at this point i dont know anymore. Everything implemented is kinda halfway and not as direct as promised, 

we are also a lazy player base though

[Kazjii]

3 hours ago, Timmaayy said:

I would rather see content that affects the server as a whole; focusing on a select number of players isn't fair, in my opinion. 

I would like to see any content tbh

 

3 hours ago, Timmaayy said:

There are a lot of great ideas out there that would do this. Whilst I can't promise what is developed and delivered, I am trying my best to consolidate a list of suggestions to be passed to the developers to be worked on in future roadmaps.

This has been done multiple times. I can only assume they have a folder labeled "Suggestion list" that never sees any attention. Why give them suggestions when they cant even uphold a roadmap they begged the community to believe in to save the dying status of what the server was

[DaddyShrood]

4 hours ago, Kazjii said:

This has been done multiple times. I can only assume they have a folder labeled "Suggestion list" that never sees any attention. Why give them suggestions when they cant even uphold a roadmap they begged the community to believe in to save the dying status of what the server was

Fr, like the prison update would be one of the biggest QOL changes for a fairly sizeable population of the server, and it's 3 months late with no current ETA. 

It's pointless submitting new suggestions if the pre-existing ones haven't been fulfilled yet. Giving us false hope yet again.

[Timmaayy]

The roadmap is still being worked on; new suggestions will be added to future roadmaps if required.

[DaddyShrood]

2 hours ago, Timmaayy said:

The roadmap is still being worked on; new suggestions will be added to future roadmaps if required.

But there's limited communication from the Devs around timescales, we're still waiting for things which were supposedly meant to release in November 2025, it's now February.

[Eliza]

I think it’s just shitty to promise your community an entire roadmap and only release two things from it, being the criminal activities and an incomplete racing script that still can’t have community tracks added, with no communication from the developers on what the progress is. It just makes me distrust that we’ll get future content at all.

[Aezeryst]

On 1/31/2026 at 8:49 AM, Bala said:

Store Robberies

• Add the ability to steal money from the back room safe to store robberies.
• Replace the manual aim at the cashier to initiate the robbery with a command and aim animation, this avoids issues with latency and issues outside the player's control.
• Allow for solo robberies of stores, since the gun would be no longer required to be aimed, to allow the person holding the gun to help collect money, albeit at a 25% reduced rate.
• Increase the pay-out for stores closer to police stations, to incentivise taking a risk.
• Increase the pay-out slightly for players not wearing a mask, to incentivise taking a risk. Everyone wears a mask and theres no reason not to.
• Add a very small random chance for the cashier to hit the silent alarm when the robbery starts, to give the robberies a little RNG danger.
• Allow for players to switch between stealing packed money and pocket cash BEFORE they start robbing it. Newer criminals want cash, not packed money.

Bank Robberies

• Replace the manual aim at the tellers to initiate the robbery with a command and aim animation, this avoids issues with latency and issues outside the player's control.
• Allow for just the bank tellers to be robbed, without doing the full scale bank vault robbery and would function like a store robbery
• Allow for a "bank security guard" NPC to be taken hostage (in the hostage animation) to avoid those fucking awkward situations where people take their friends or another player hostage then we have to worry about the complexities of whether or not a player can be killed or not.
• Roof Access.
  • Once the vault door has been breached, you could use the world interaction UI to enter the vault from the roof or from the vault to the roof, giving another method of access or exit by teleporting up or down.
• Tunnel access.
  From anywhere in a 100m radius of a bank, allow people to dig a "tunnel" from the point of their dig to the interior of the bank (outside the vault), this would help ease one of the problems with Fleeca banks, that there is only one way in and one way out. Small chance for tunnel teleport use to trigger a silent alarm for cops that something is happening at the bank.
• Controlled Explosive.
  Allow instead of a drill, for the use of controlled explosives that blow the vault door open a lot quicker, the weight is less than a drill but comes with a very loud bank.

I dont believe adding RNG is a good idea for the server, or any of the buffs/nerfs dependent on wearing a mask or closer to a station, i think we should look at it from a different angle such as stores that are robbed more often (as the reason for that is quite literally theyre not in patrol routes or near stations) have less money and the money they have in a treasury slowly regenerates (which i think already exists im not sure???) realistically not having a mask on wouldnt change how much money you get out of a store irl. we should be looking at more rply ways of doing things, not trying to balance the pvp aspect.
NPCs to be taken hostage wouldn't be a bad direction but honestly i think people should just get more creative with how they rob banks, personally ive found ways to do that. if you want a hostage get a hostage. if you dont have a hostage, theres literally 2 tellers, so theres a tip for you criminals

 

[EL Doggo]

i love Bala's ideas, this guy cares and really has some amazing ideas

but its unfortunate that the top dogs suffer from hearing loss, perhaps if we did a discord call with cams on, so we can do sign language to them so MAYBE they might listen or MAYBE JUST MAYBE GIVE A FUCK 

#GiveBalaTheArmBand


The road map was added as a lie just to keep people happy, a promise that's been neglected, guess we gotta wait for the VIP payments to slow down again just so we can get a new update !

Edited February 2 by EL Doggo

[AtlasOLimbo]

7 hours ago, Timmaayy said:

The roadmap is still being worked on; new suggestions will be added to future roadmaps if required.

Where? When? How? This is literally what we've been told every time concerns are raised. Things are "still being worked on". Discussions are "still being had". Any actual pointed questions such as these ones I'm asking are ignored or dismissed outright.

It is so utterly frustrating and I feel like an utterly broken record writing this but there is still some part of me that wants this server to succeed. The founders seem completely unwilling to do their share of the work in keeping the server afloat. There are people among legal factions, staff, illegal factions, civillians who put much more work into this server than the founders. By miles and miles. 

I don't know very many people outside of staff (or even inside staff behind closed doors.) who have anything majorly positive to say about the current state of the server or its future.

[Earl Mud]

If there isn't time to work on big stuff at least look at all the small stuff and the balancing we desperately need. I want the big stuff too but some of these small things would go a long way with day to day qol in the server. 

[Bala]

On 2/1/2026 at 11:12 PM, Timmaayy said:

I would rather see content that affects the server as a whole; focusing on a select number of players isn't fair, in my opinion. 

There are a lot of great ideas out there that would do this. Whilst I can't promise what is developed and delivered, I am trying my best to consolidate a list of suggestions to be passed to the developers to be worked on in future roadmaps.

To an extent, forget about fair and respectfully to anyone really that is personally petitioning the devs to be do this and that, we have to be really careful about how the time spent on development is used.

The server started going downhill when development lost focus and became less and less but at the same time, we started looking away from what brought the server to the dance in the first place.

As I said in my last post, fixing the criminal activities at a base level is exactly the part of the server that we should be focused on because it directly effects the playing experience and activity of.

• Rooks, Lost, OTF, Eastside, Shadows, Souls, Empire, Waterfelons, Milestone, Bratva, High Rollers, Alliance, Locos, SVR, Dark Army, Mid Night, Rose Quarter.
• PD and SD
• Department of Corrections
• Los Santos Emergency Medical Services
• Judicial Branch

Looking through the panel, that effects 362 criminal characters, 193 police characters, 50 prison guard characters, 15 court characters and 57 medical characters. That is for the playing experience of 677 characters alone.

Additionally, new players coming to the server and playing, people like @garybruce will be looking for accessible and easy to use criminal content. Stuff that doesn't require an instruction manual to use.

Beyond that, I think it would be fair to say that most of the VIP for the jail time or at the very least those spending the money on the pay-to-win vehicles that support the server are criminals.

And for yourself, when it comes to Bayview and Bennys, having more active and motivated criminals will directly lead to more people wanting vehicle mods for their cars to do criminal deeds.

I'm not in any way suggesting that other groups of the server are not important, but they are not as relevant to the server's health and growth as the criminal player base. Fix the important aspects of the server first, by implementing the things in this thread.

Then you can do things like faction vehicle maintenance and cooking recipes. Cooking Recipes is another one of those ideas that people will like for a couple days and then they'll forget about. We've had too many of those ideas and it's hurt us.

To a certain extent I'm happy that roadmap was not completed because the focus was way out of sync with what this community needs. This thread and the original post was bang on the money.

Tell me I'm lying, anyone?

Edited February 3 by Bala

[Ritchie Stones]

everyone is talking so much but one thing is for sure, the day they started messing with the private labs is when things went down, seen i crumble in front of me, but keep going, neglecting what is right in front of you.

crims HAD a reason to do what they do, you took it away and now everyting slowly crumbels, and i keep watching it crumble.

[Ritchie Stones]

Whatever excuse you keep pulling up, in front of you to keep convincing yourself anything if different, is just a curtain in front of your reality, and eventualy you wont be able to argue it anymore, its not working guys..... that it, wanna keep arguing? 

[Bala]

1 hour ago, Ritchie Stones said:

everyone is talking so much but one thing is for sure, the day they started messing with the private labs is when things went down, seen i crumble in front of me, but keep going, neglecting what is right in front of you.

crims HAD a reason to do what they do, you took it away and now everyting slowly crumbels, and i keep watching it crumble.

I don't associate with this guy or this idea, don't want it in my thread.

[garybruce]

12 hours ago, Bala said:

To an extent, forget about fair and respectfully to anyone really that is personally petitioning the devs to be do this and that, we have to be really careful about how the time spent on development is used.

The server started going downhill when development lost focus and became less and less but at the same time, we started looking away from what brought the server to the dance in the first place.

As I said in my last post, fixing the criminal activities at a base level is exactly the part of the server that we should be focused on because it directly effects the playing experience and activity of.

• Rooks, Lost, OTF, Eastside, Shadows, Souls, Empire, Waterfelons, Milestone, Bratva, High Rollers, Alliance, Locos, SVR, Dark Army, Mid Night, Rose Quarter.
• PD and SD
• Department of Corrections
• Los Santos Emergency Medical Services
• Judicial Branch

Looking through the panel, that effects 362 criminal characters, 193 police characters, 50 prison guard characters, 15 court characters and 57 medical characters. That is for the playing experience of 677 characters alone.

Additionally, new players coming to the server and playing, people like @garybruce will be looking for accessible and easy to use criminal content. Stuff that doesn't require an instruction manual to use.

Beyond that, I think it would be fair to say that most of the VIP for the jail time or at the very least those spending the money on the pay-to-win vehicles that support the server are criminals.

And for yourself, when it comes to Bayview and Bennys, having more active and motivated criminals will directly lead to more people wanting vehicle mods for their cars to do criminal deeds.

I'm not in any way suggesting that other groups of the server are not important, but they are not as relevant to the server's health and growth as the criminal player base. Fix the important aspects of the server first, by implementing the things in this thread.

Then you can do things like faction vehicle maintenance and cooking recipes. Cooking Recipes is another one of those ideas that people will like for a couple days and then they'll forget about. We've had too many of those ideas and it's hurt us.

To a certain extent I'm happy that roadmap was not completed because the focus was way out of sync with what this community needs. This thread and the original post was bang on the money.

Tell me I'm lying, anyone?

I think the focus should be on retaining the existing playerbase who are primarily interested in the gang/cop thing, and doing things which might encourage older gang/cop players to return. And new people should be encouraged to join factions early on. As the new people who do that seem to have a far easier time and it reduces the learning curve and frustration at how demented much of the game operates.

I don't think it is possible to make it that much more accessible to new solo players as it seems many of the accessibility issues are not seen as issues or problems by majority of the playerbase. But are just how things are and how it works, with a resistance to change. If things were changed to make it more accessible, it would likely just alienate and annoy the existing people who like it how it is, and who make up the majority of the players.

Edited February 4 by garybruce

[Ritchie Stones]

20 hours ago, Bala said:

I don't associate with this guy or this idea, don't want it in my thread.

but its how it went, you don't negotiate with reality, it went down since and thats it 

[Lue]

I dont really post or reply to these types of discussions because I'm late to this community but I've been apart of GTA RP since Godfather in 2008, SARP in 2009 and NGRP from 2010-2015 and I've genuinely never seen a communities leadership so disconnected from its community. Biggest proof in my argument is Bala has to make posts like this for information and conversation to begin. Bala is a literal modder and on the team. If the development leadership aren't listening to their own modders and require them to come to the forums to actually attempt to make change (To actually get attention from leaderhsip), Does no one see the disconnect? 

My biggest point here is nothing is going to change until the Servers leadership does, As someone who watched NGRP close in 2017 when just a few years prior in 2012-2013 we were averaging 800-900 players, opened up a second server, and the servers annual income was well over $250,000 and those were the numbers that I was allowed to see as Human Resources. 

Until the change occurs up top. All these attempts at forum posts and conversations will never ever be enough. If I had to guess the owners are just killing time until the plug has to be pulled and seeing how the servers declined in just my short time here. I have a gut feeling we aren't too far off from the end. 

Edited February 5 by Lue

[Aezeryst]

imma come back to this thread and say this: if you complain about developers doing nothing and you still pay for VIP, you're part of the problem, no im not saying people are at fault for the lack of content and "laziness" but like, you wanna see change, stop funding them if you feel as if theyre not doing anything, its not worth supporting in my opinion. until real good change comes about maybe ill consider donating

[AtlasOLimbo]

5 minutes ago, Aezeryst said:

imma come back to this thread and say this: if you complain about developers doing nothing and you still pay for VIP, you're part of the problem, no im not saying people are at fault for the lack of content and "laziness" but like, you wanna see change, stop funding them if you feel as if theyre not doing anything, its not worth supporting in my opinion. until real good change comes about maybe ill consider donating

This. I know people who actively despise the state of the server and yet actively encourage this behavior by still throwing hundreds and hundreds of dollars at VIP to make the game slightly easier for them. :shrug:

[DaddyShrood]

39 minutes ago, Aezeryst said:

imma come back to this thread and say this: if you complain about developers doing nothing and you still pay for VIP, you're part of the problem, no im not saying people are at fault for the lack of content and "laziness" but like, you wanna see change, stop funding them if you feel as if theyre not doing anything, its not worth supporting in my opinion. until real good change comes about maybe ill consider donating

This won't do much. The devs primary income isn't ECRP, this is ultimately a side project for them. If they aren't earning from it they'd probably just pull the plug.

[RustyOsprey2]

10 minutes ago, DaddyShrood said:

This won't do much. The devs primary income isn't ECRP, this is ultimately a side project for them. If they aren't earning from it they'd probably just pull the plug.

Might not be their primary income, but they sure are making tons of money from it. Think you forget the amount of 50000 credit cars that get bought during each credit sale. And how many people buy VIP monthly.

[AtlasOLimbo]

14 minutes ago, DaddyShrood said:

This won't do much. The devs primary income isn't ECRP, this is ultimately a side project for them. If they aren't earning from it they'd probably just pull the plug.

I seriously don't understand why they won't put in the 10 or so hours a month a piece to do the most basic of QoL updates. They make hundreds a month off this server, if not thousands a month. Most definitely thousands during major credit releases or sales. I personally would put in that amount of hours a month to make that amount of money, but what do I know.

[DaddyShrood]

57 minutes ago, RustyOsprey2 said:

Might not be their primary income, but they sure are making tons of money from it. Think you forget the amount of 50000 credit cars that get bought during each credit sale. And how many people buy VIP monthly.

Indeed, but the point still stands, they won't do more updates, they'll just press the off switch if income drops so dramatically.

[Aezeryst]

1 hour ago, DaddyShrood said:

Indeed, but the point still stands, they won't do more updates, they'll just press the off switch if income drops so dramatically.

unfortunately i think you might be right, ngl the best outcome at this point would just be move to community to another more caring server or something. or hear me out for my discretion, replace the devs

[Mikazuki Ueno]

5 hours ago, Aezeryst said:

stop funding them if you feel as if theyre not doing anything

That’s exactly what I chose to do, but not lightly.

I did my best to add value to the server from 2021 onward. I know that doesn’t make me “old school” in the deepest ECRP sense, but I want to put some context behind where my opinion and ultimate decision to move on came from, based purely on time invested and lived experience.

Since 2021, my stats across two characters:

Total playtime:
345 days, ~2 hours
≈ 8,306 total hours

• ~1,660 hours per year if treated as one account

• ~4.5 hours per day, on average, for nearly five years

That’s effectively:

• A half-time job, every day, for almost five years

• Or 200+ full 40-hour workweeks

On top of that, I spent a significant amount of money supporting the server. I was Diamond VIP for as long as I can remember it being a thing.

After all of that, I decided it was best for me to sail off the coast of Del Perro.

That choice doesn’t come from bitterness. It comes from clarity. For some people, the server still delivers exactly what they want from their time, playstyle, and level of commitment. If they’re getting satisfaction from that, genuinely, I’m happy for them.

For me, it was simply time to move on.

 

Edited February 5 by Mikazuki Ueno