Changes to Crim Discussion

[RJThompson]

I think what @crank said it literally exactly perfect. 

[Larry Wrzosek]

I see a lot of players saying "i'm bored" and nobody planning or proposing to use their current resources to open up any RP opportunities for the entire new FiveM platform that has 270,000 players on it right now. Surely there will be a lot of new faces soon. The real questions are - How are we going to welcome them as a pre-existing community? What current existing criminal features do we think best represents the fun to be had on ECRP as a criminal? Because we need to showcase that to new players.

I'm going to address one thing right now: The features you may find boring, is exclusive to ECRP. New FiveM players can easily fall in love with ECRP's game mode, the same way a lot of us already have. A lot of FiveM servers are made and rebalanced off of features that are open sourced and the servers piggy back off each others features. ECRP has not done this, we have a lot of one of one features made in house that are better.

Now this being said, there are some open source features that are better than some of our in-house features. Specifically speaking for criminal features: Racing, Boosting, 6-player Heists are all features that need to be improved upon.

However our drug lab system & car chop shop system is one to none. It's been our bread n butter for a long time and if its rebalanced back to what it was when it was first introduced, it was well designed for new players to figure out cooking drugs.

My suggestion is not about making these features more fun for the current players. If you've made drugs for 500 hours on ECRP I cannot erase your mind and provide a new experience. But what I can promise is that if we give some room for some new players to come in and have a good time, new unique RP opportunities will arise. From new gangs being created, to new business opportunities, the influx of new people to recruit to your gang, the fresh blood that actually will DM someone over 50k worth of stuff will be hilarious. My suggestion is to make an easy path for new criminals and at the same time keep it in a controlled space to make it easy for everyone to find the new people to RP with. 

Restructure Public Drug Labs & Public Chop Shops

-All drug labs are constantly active (disable rotations for some time to make this more easily grasped for new players)

7 Drug Lab Locations: Chilliad, Braddox, Sea Lab, North Lab (Hole in the Wall) Garbage, Voodoo, Island

-Make it so there are shelves that restore martials to manufacture drugs at that lab every in-game hour + keep humane labs ingredients for bigger cooking sessions.
(This allows new players to figure out drug recipes more easily and at no cost, promoting more activity at labs)

-Chilliad, Sea Lab, North Lab and Garbage should include all the features of making drugs on tables, public chop shop, and growing of marijuana.

-Braddox will remain for marijuana gathering and drug manufacturing.
-Voodoo will be there to support more drug manufacturing in the southside gang part of LS.

-Island will remain to retain a good lab for gangs to hold down for bigger operations and not have any police intervention (for the most part)

Gangs and Criminals should be more open-minded to interactions with new players

Increase gang member counts by a little bit, we want some new faces to find a home in the current gangs
(Don't increase it too much because we also want new gangs to be created with the new influx of players)

With these changes current ECRP criminals should be more open minded to working alongside the new criminals that come along and put them onto game with any tips or tricks, give them a goal to make 500 cocaine or something then recruit them into your gang. There will be plenty of people interested in making money, if you are a gang leader come up with goals for these new guys to chase after to earn a spot in your gang.

There are a ton of options to be creative and give goals to the new players that want to figure out the criminal features. From drugs, chopped car parts, marked money to small RP jobs like muscle or security for a meeting or a job. Gangs currently have millions to work with. Hire some new players to do something, it will make them feel special and they may grow loyal to your cause if you pick them up early on. Yeah it's usually not needed, but it enhances their experience and makes you look like an OG. Once the move to FiveM is made you should be prepared to offer these opportunities in one or multiple ways as an existing gang. Spread the wealth and opportunity like a wild fire.

If all you are interested in is logging in with your millions and arsenal of guns to shit on new players at labs then you are doing a disservice to the server that has already decided for you to keep your stuff and withhold a multitude of advantages from financial, to experience, to power. This would be something I would suggest the staff team to be enforcing moving forward until the FiveM move is properly established and growing. Enforce less of little rule breaks to new players, and enforce more quality from the senior player base specifically in excessive robbery & killing than normal. 

I can go on further with what features can be implemented or improved but I think this is a realistic work load dev wise as it is simply using all existing features. This requires a little work for a big effect in my opinion so it's a fair ask from both the devs and players. Keep in mind its just a few weeks away so we can't bite off more than we can chew. Do this and atleast new players will have a unique feature that is beneficial to activity, character progression, criminal and PD RP. Rome wasn't built in a day. Eventually down the line finding some new features from other FiveM things could be in the talks. For now tweak what we have that works to be as easily obtainable and for our players to make it as special as possible for a new influx of players.

[EL Doggo]

Make scripts that help faction go in a different direction, for example my goal with locos was to eventually open a taco shop that runs like burger shot, without this being available most of my members get bored and just PvP just to have something to do.

why cant factions be given scripts to create rp

imagine Lost Mc had a repair shop in sandy that worked like benny's. 

OTF had a strip club that people could take packed cash to. (similar to how other servers deal with dirty money.

Rooks had a script to support the Hotel they own, and new players could rent rooms for an early form of housing.

Highrollers had casino like gambling games where players could bet drugs, cars, houses, guns.

Shadows had a script/ability to make explosives like c4 and grenades to further their terrorism story line without needing admins or staff.


Is it a lot to ask for... YES, but will it create more rp and push factions away from PvP....YES. Does the server make enough money to make such things happen for fiveM....YES









 

[YasinByn]

4 hours ago, Lewis said:

How do we become less asset focused and more focused on roleplay?

* Weapons should last a maximum of two weeks, and the import prices for weapons and body armor should be significantly reduced. This should apply to every gun, all imported weapons would expire after 2 weeks and need to be imported once again. Weapon durability should also be removed and replaced with a timer if this does happen. 

* We should consider adding private labs. There's really nothing to lose by trying them. Maybe make them limited somehow

* Increase the payouts for chop shops and house robberies. Right now, the only activity that's truly worth doing is cooking drugs.

* Significantly increase the payout for chopping police cruisers and selling their parts.

* Have more higher staff members who main as criminals.

* Reduce DOC time and fines significantly

Edited 2 hours ago by YasinByn

[YasinByn]

20 minutes ago, EL Doggo said:

Make scripts that help faction go in a different direction, for example my goal with locos was to eventually open a taco shop that runs like burger shot, without this being available most of my members get bored and just PvP just to have something to do.

why cant factions be given scripts to create rp

imagine Lost Mc had a repair shop in sandy that worked like benny's. 

OTF had a strip club that people could take packed cash to. (similar to how other servers deal with dirty money.

Rooks had a script to support the Hotel they own, and new players could rent rooms for an early form of housing.

Highrollers had casino like gambling games where players could bet drugs, cars, houses, guns.

Shadows had a script/ability to make explosives like c4 and grenades to further their terrorism story line without needing admins or staff.


Is it a lot to ask for... YES, but will it create more rp and push factions away from PvP....YES. Does the server make enough money to make such things happen for fiveM....YES

yes this would be amazing

Edited 3 hours ago by YasinByn

[AtlasOLimbo]

I am struggling to wrap my brain around the point of this thread. There is nearly a decade of backlogged suggestions, lots with extensive support from the community. These focused threads have been made before and gone nearly nowhere, with maybe one update stemming from them with a fraction of the suggestions implemented.

We can sit here around the campfire and discuss as long as we please, but until there is some level of content steadily added to the server, it all amounts to nothing. With that being said, I will try and echo some of the points that've been said here.

The level of equipment used on the server needs to be toned back. It's not fun. Everyone's basically a militia, including what are meant to be 'low level street gangs'. Gangs should be encouraged and rewarded for partaking in 'canon equipment' (shitty vehicles, sidearms, that kind of thing.) Heavy weapons need to go back to being expensive and heavy. I believe the reason they were modified was to counter PD's level of kit. That's a separate issue which I think has been discussed in the PD thread plenty.

There needs to be stronger enforcement of RP standards and expectations as well. I have raised this before, but the amount of contrast between most factions & their lore/threads is actually astonishing. 

DOC has already been gutted into the ground. We need some kind of consequence for crime. DOC needs more content, not to be made even easier to get out of.

[Ritchie Stones]

its fucking straight foreward, when crims make 10X their investments, crime rockets through the roof, and cops have suddenly a lot of better things to do then pulling over speeding cars giving tickets.

2021, crims cook in their houses, and then they just BLOW IT ALL. city was nuts!!
they where asshole people though.

you guys overcomplicate everything, you just need a gold rush, and people tune in, and it causes problems,
"controversial problems" and we love to hate it, its like a horrible accident, we know its bad but we keep watching anyway, accept that, where oppertunity is big, problems occure, and it draws in alot of people that come with their own character and story causing everything you dont like.
its psychological. stop being 16 year old 
 

Edited 2 hours ago by Ritchie Stones

[Masonc3434]

4 hours ago, Carl Vespucci said:

 - Ramming cars as players are getting out before a gunfight starts. This has become the meta and its horrible and someone guaranteed doesn't get to participate. 
Solution: Add it to the rules, people should only be hit by cars if they are in the path of escape.

- Fully automatic weapons being shot from vehicles - keeps fights in cars and no longer gives any reason to hop out, if you bring enough bullets, you can just follow someone and fire into them until their car explodes. 
Solution: Automatic weapons should not be fired from vehicles

- It should be encouraged to often have weekly wars ,sadly the war system is currently not working but I think this would end alot of beefs between gangs.
Solution: Rehaul the war system to make it a weekly thing people can look forward to all week to logging in, maybe something less strenuous then our current 3 day war system.
 

- Steroids are OP and I know we abuse that as criminals.
I've heard many things about the business/food update. Put in an equivalent to steroids in legal form such as an expresso shot or a coffee that has the same effect. 

 

How do we become less asset focused and more focused on roleplay?

The only way I see this happening is to make guns worthless. Fights usually occur over guns and drugs, and if they have no value then they no longer become an asset, but its also what makes the dopamine flow. 

This is spot on whats needed.

[Doctor_Diddler]

Considering my previous post is more relevant here (and I reiterate, I had no reason to believe any thread about crim RP would be coming since it's never been asked - part of the problem thjat), I'll do some reposting and add on:

Quote

Which brings me to my next point; there shouldn't be giant, city-spanning wars with law enforcement. So many rules are put into place from a faction-side because it's untenable without them. In a balanced system, cops should be something everyone wants to avoid altogether because they serve as the endpoint for supplies like drugs, guns, armor, etc. Police do not want your drug lab to make drugs, they want to shut it down. Fighting for a drug lab is a driver of crim rp and warfare. fighting with police is a one-time affair that ends in complete wipeout for one side or the other. You can't build a functioning system on one faction getting repeatedly wiped out entirely in the span of 30 minutes - who wants to keep RPing after they got slaughtered and now can't go anywhere in the city without getting hounded? Other gangs SHOULD be the primary conflict driver between gangs. Not police. If the server had more people, this would likely be less of a problem, but we can't fix the past.

Quote

Server should be focused on trying to make gang warfare the ultimate focus of crim gameplay outside of isolated crime. Sooo much dev time has been wasted on the faction war system that was shuttered when it was realized it was horrifically implemented (see: Pulling and then leaving ATM's, robbing your own bank so the other faction can't) and short-sighted. Wars become extremely lopsided affairs and turn into absolute jokes where one side is getting butchered by the other helplessly because the server has congregated around a small number of gangs that dominate everything. Nobody wants to start a small street gang on their own - why bother? You can't do jack shit. So any newcomer just ends up in the same factions inorganically, of which a select few have a massive advantage that makes inter-gang fighting trivial. This, is turn, means that gangs start fighting the police instead.

• I honestly think it would be better if some gangs were just persistent and your character were forced to stay there. I know this is an RP-light server, but being able to move your assets (like guns you own, for example) to another faction is what enabled a few mega-gangs to dominate in warfare and make it so consistent criminals end up going from local latino street gang to italian gangster. There is no gang identity. The RP aspect is limited to wearing the same colors while you drive around in multi-million dollar cars. 
• I think at this point an asset wipe is necessary and care should be put in place to dramatically slow power creep down. I know the credit sales were a big money maker but they also dramatically fucked the meta with the inclusion of cars like the niobe. The inclusion of NPC cars will put less emphasis on speed over driving. Use it. 
• There's nothing to do except farm assets. Many of the crim systems do not promote conflict with other gangs at all. This is something even GTAO mastered - the biggest strength of a server is interaction between people. Comped drops are the closest we get to inter-faction conflict and other gangs are almost never involved. 
• Drugs. Part of the reason why the taser-from-car epidemic started was steroid abuse. People will flagrantly avoid firearms in their face and just down every drug in their pocket so they can outrun everyone, which makes them an extreme liability to not knock out if they keep resisting arrest because you have no chance at catching them. LEO has no equivalent, so if you want to promote asymmetrical but balanced gameplay, there has to be some answer other than "lol good luck". 
  
  This is most noticeable when it comes to shooting. 100 AP + drugs is just barely under 150AP (reserved for SWAT + special detective/STAFF outfits) and no drugs, along with zero recoil. With a weapon that deals more damage like the heavy rifle, crims have a flat out advantage in foot combat. especially against the schmucks not yet in a division. Fortunately, law enforcement had an answer to mass gang attacks; gunship  nevermind, how about you just try hoping you never get into a gunfight.
  
  Hopes and dreams don't make balance and they certainly don't make it more fun for anyone but the people that log in once a day in the ass-end of the night to ambush cops. 
• Ditching your expensive car to go swimming because you know you can easily dodge a chase is stupid for obvious reasons. Either increase the impound price (not recommended as everyone would suffer) or stop water pursuits (which have their place). Of course, I have a third option here. 
• Remove reports replacing assets. This has created the absolute fucking worst type of people who will report every interaction and mistake to ensure they don't lose their guns. Tell them to kick rocks, instead. The admin oversight on this server won't be feasible if the server is more successful, so you may as well get used to it for anything but bugs and obvious cheaters. 
• Create more structured paths into criminal RP. As I mentioned in my last post on the LEO topic, it's impossible to tell how you're supposed to start a fresh crim character without asking a bunch of people, which is stupid prima facia; "Hello, where can I go to commit crimes?" The only MMORPG dumb enough to try and introduce mechanics with zero oversight was Fallout 76, and they walked that back quickly when it became obvious having nothing but interaction with other people was not suitable to teaching. 
  
  This could be a single text message upon making a character to visit 3 NPC's that give basic rundowns of LEO, CIV, and Crim activities.  You want to keep it all IC. Great. Nobody is going to sit down and explain that you need to go to a car chop at Chiliad and then sell your parts to certain NPC's unless they like you,  which they won't because you're new.
• Interact more with crims. If you're going to run a cartel and try to control other factions through imports, why not take advantage? The way it's currently set up, to my understanding, is that gangs and illegal factions are forced to do the same things like protect turf, rob banks, etc. to maintain power. That's stupid. The RP restrictions keep more creative and interesting endeavors from happening. Let me give you an example: After reading my favorite nonfiction mob tales, I decide to create a faction modeled after Murder, inc. We don't kill cops, we stay out of the limelight, and we don't protect turf. Our only turf is a grubby office building front. We take contracts from gangs and serve as mercenaries in wars but we don't get into fights ourselves. It is the opinion of this server that this faction is functionally worthless. So are racing gangs. Want a break from PVP? How about more PVP? 
• Server events. Holy fuck this seems so obvious. You could take naked inspiration from GTAO. Right now events are super rare and only offered by high tier staff which means even good ideas get filtered through bureaucracy. I know I complained about PVP a second ago but just as an example of an event I proposed once: Humane has begun a limited-trial steroid in very small numbers that is rumored to increase run speed (more than normal ones or something - it doesn't really matter). I, shady criminal man, want that drug so we can try to duplicate it. Every crim in the city is alerted to the transport and everyone converges on it. If you have it, you can choose to keep it or sell it. Smaller gangs can get more frequent events while larger ones get less useful awards to keep it more balanced between the gangs. One gang getting a little too strong? Now there's a bounty out on them coming from our shadowy underlords. Damn the possibilities are endless. It can't be that hard to think of something if I can just spit them out so easily. 
• Disincentivize large-scale shootouts. Idk if Fivem will fix this, but the server flat out can't handle giant, 12v12 confliots. It literally c0's everyone involved, so they shouldn't be encouraged. While I'm on the subject, just remove running into properties for gunfights. It only encourages script abuse because everyone puts their gun on their back upon spawning in, leading to one-sided shootouts with no counterplay. 
  
  This is a screenshot of a raid I wasn't involved in and I drew shitty paint.net boxes onto it to show just how you could easily abuse the script to never lose a fight again. Add in a door to the left and it becomes an easy killbox. We run in and hide and my modern art wood furniture blocks both your bullets and your eyesight while I freely shoot your legs. The only reason this doesn't happen is because nobody has really tried it, but the problem with it is obvious. 
• I'll probably have more later.

Edited 1 hour ago by Doctor_Diddler

[TheConfusedSquid]

1. New Player Experience for Criminals

I feel like the early criminal experience is more difficult than it needs to be for new players, and by new players, I mean people who are either new to the server or new to criminal RP in general. For example, my main is in PD and there is a very straightforward path to follow as a new player. You find a cop, you ask how to apply, you go through that process, and then have a structured way to learn everything. Enjoyable experience.

However, on my crim character, it's been the opposite. When trying to learn how to be a criminal, you either have to learn by guessing (usually resulting in being caught and getting set back even further), or you have to try asking around for help and hope that people don't take advantage of you for being new, which I unfortunately have seen a lot of. Unenjoyable experience.

I've been told about some gangs who are great at helping new players learn criminal RP, specifically Lost, but for some people, it may not fit their crim character's lore to join a gang. There should be ways for new people to learn criminal RP outside of gangs. I don't know if there is some way to provide people with an optional tutorial or something similar that teaches the basics, but anything that can provide more guidance would be helpful, especially as we prepare for more new players as we move over to FiveM. We don't want to get a massive influx of new players only for them to leave after a few weeks because they don't understand how to play crim or because they get killed when asking for help.

 

2. Content Variety

I've been playing on Eclipse for just over a year, and in that time, I feel like there hasn't been much new content added in terms of jobs or criminal opportunities. @Eliza said it very well when they said:

Quote

"I also think part of the issue is that there just isn’t much for criminals to do outside of stores, banks, ATMs, chopping cars, or cooking drugs. Once you’ve done those activities over and over, people start creating their own content, and unfortunately that often ends up being gang wars and constant shootouts because there aren’t many other engaging criminal activities to encourage different kinds of roleplay."

To add to that, there's not a ton of criminal opportunities for people who want to do crime on their own (whether that be lore related or based on the time of day that they play). Most crimes require multiple people (whether script reasons or safety reasons), which really inhibits the solo crim experience.

I'll also adding more opportunities (even if it's only 2 or 3 things) would help not just the criminal experience, but also the LEO experience. LEOs aren't just stuck patrolling around labs and other common areas for gangs waiting for something to happen. They get more calls to respond to, which in turn gives more freedom for crims to operate. Additionally, more opportunities gives crims more variety in their gameplay instead of doing the same couple things that they have been doing for years.

I'm also going to briefly mention the civilian side of things. New content would also be a great addition for people who don't want to play crim, join a government faction, or a mechanic shop. It would also be helpful for a crim players who want a crim/civilian balance. Just an extra point that I wanted to throw out.

 

3. The Grind

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this aspect since I don't have a lot of crim experience, but it is a common trend that I've noticed not only in this thread but also from conversations I've had with people OOC. If people want to make any progress, they have to spend dozens of hours grinding away. This also ties into the asset focused mentality that a lot of people have. They do all of the grinding only to lose it during one interaction with either LEOs or other crims. I'm a big fan of what @Jaxxon said previously in this thread about the grindy nature of the server.

 

Conclusion

Addressing all of those points I mentioned would help with long term retention with not only new players but also current. Content variety and the grind is something that a lot of current players are frustrated with, and the new player experience paired with the grind is something that we need to be conscious of if we want to keep any new players.

Thanks for the opportunity to share my perspective, and I hope you all have a fantastic day!

[tigerpet15]

I would say the biggest issue is script it self. During my time as criminal most of the fun unique rp was impossible to do due to rules and little support for alt rp. 
 

I believe the server is relying too on its script so it makes everyone unable to be creative. I believe if there would be wayyy higher alt rp support players would be able to come up with creative rp other than holding labs. I would be for removal of alt rp requests and allow it when its not breaking any other rules or have anyone support + be able to allow it giving staff some control over the rp. This way crims could be creative and acrually use /me and /do to rp something cool. 
 

lets stop relying so heavily on the script.