State of RP in general from Crim perspective.

[cheatonus]

My goal here is to be respectful but also honest. Please understand I'm approaching this subject with a clear head and trying to remain objective. To put it in a nutshell I'm quite confused about what the goals are for the server in regards to where criminals fit into the picture. Frankly, regardless of all the script support and the fact of the matter is it is currently extremely difficult to be a criminal on ECRP. I do not, however, agree that crim RP is dead but I do think that the underlying game support for criminals is extremely... and I mean extremely, out of balance.  I'll try to be concise and hit on a few major points here.

Realistically criminals, especially when you consider our characters being playing characters, should not be struggling day to to to make ends meet. There is very little reward for the risk right now, especially if you're avoiding min/max type scenarios. Drug sales pay very little, chops are few and far between because cars despawn off the map, weapon sales are difficult especially now with the raise of the price of heavy weapons. Meanwhile police officers are driving supercars, living in mansions, and basically have carte blanche and zero IC repercussions in an RP scenario involving criminals. We have full time cops owning and running the largest mechanic shop in town, which in and unto itself should be a full time job. Moreover these jobs and positions are considered "government" job, which is a discussion for another post but also doesn't make much sense outside of actual government services. 

In the real world criminals, especially higher-ups in organizations tend to be quite wealthy. Police officers on the other hand tend to be rather poor or middle class, even high ranking officers would be far below that in wealth of a high ranking cartel member. However, every few months an update is made to ECRP which further makes the grind more and more difficult for a crim, but not for any other player in turn. Beginning with the rise in the fines for prison, which was followed by a heavy increase in police presence, which was followed further by a decrease in the vehicles available to criminals with which they can realistically escape a police officer and now an increase in the price of weapons available to the criminal which will further reduce the income to payout ratio. In short it has become much much more expensive to run a criminal character than it has any other type of character on the server while the risk of loss for the character has also increased. This is a huge balance issue. I won't cover the time spent in jail as an issue other than to say on top of fines the extreme amount of time spent in jail also reduces the ability to generate income for the character.  

It seems to me that the powers that be have set up a scenario whereby they want to reduce the overall criminal population on the server. To that end they have succeeded. There have been quite a few notable criminals players who have either switched to legal or law enforcement characters or left the server entirely. This trend continues.  I myself admit I contemplate being done playing altogether because I have no desire to play a legal character. However, the time invested in my character and the friends I've made keep me playing here. Most of this is in relation to financial hardships for my character and inability to make any sort of gains for my character. No matter how careful I am/we are or try to avoid interaction with police but ultimately it happens and the jailtime and fines quickly add up and any gains I've made are quickly wiped away.  It's extremely frustrating.  Inevitably someone will respond to this by saying "if you can't do the time don't do the crime" and my response is I'm not a criminal, my character is and all things being OOCly fair my character shouldn't have any more trouble accumulating wealth than anyone elses, it would just be done by different means. And if the risk is going to be so high then the rewards need to be far greater. Chops need to chop for more, drugs need to sell for more, and guns should be prolific and cheap. 

My personal opinion is every day I feel more like I'm basically playing a mob that is here for the entertainment of the police department. This feels like a PD RP server where I'm making the choice to play a character that is fodder for PD RP.  It seems I'm intentionally being made to struggle to keep my character weak and easy to take down. This is how I feel and I would like to think I'm wrong, but with very little communication from the administration about where crims fit in the overall picture and what the ultimate balanced picture of the world in which we RP looks like it's very difficult than to just form my opinion based on my observations and the current state of my character and those I RP with. I would ask for the senior administration to please reply to this post or create their own post outlining their goals for crims and how they see us fitting into the world, because currently we really don't.  And again, this is ignoring the script support, which is extensive and I think is quite good, this is purely from an IC and RP perspective. this is purely an attempt to quell some frustration many of us feel in regards the utter poverty of our character and the inability to make any headway in improving it without what I would consider hardcore hours and effort in gaming terms.

I liken this to being in a hardcore raiding guild in WoW or being competitive in a shooter or RPG game. RP, in general, shouldn't be a huge grind and frankly the fact that a huge grind is required to stay on top of your characters financial wellbeing as a crim leads to a lot of the min/max attitude people seem very determined to deter on ECRP.  Players who choose to keep their characters legal never have the same constraints or hardships applied to their characters. They may have some mandatory hours and participation requirements but outside of that there's zero risk to their characters wealth or status.  In other words legal characters have zero risks and pretty decent rewards. Crim should be high risk, high reward, and currently IMO these are intensely out of balance with one another.  I'm not looking for my character to be rolling like a playboy in Vinewood. But living well in Vespucci canals shouldn't be difficult. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my post. 

 

[Pegasus_]

And your suggestion to fix this is?

[cheatonus]

4 minutes ago, Pegasus_ said:

And your suggestion to fix this is?

There are several suggestions within my post on how to improve this. The overall suggestion is increase the reward and/or reduce the risk for the criminal. Do you have any suggestions or feedback on my suggestions and feedback? 

[CalvinKlein]

I read all of it, it’s really a great and objective way of explaining a portion of what the majority of crims have been experiencing and that’s something I preached a lot at one point and tried going down this path to help fix it, right now I am not sure whether I should voice out my opinion or not, one of the main problems is lack of communication and as long as there is a TREND of players / community members who get banned for simply voicing out their opinion, there’s something wrong there.

It’s 2021, this is a gaming community on the internet; it’s sad to say some of the worst countries irl have less restriction on what us humans can SAY or not SAY, compared to here. 
 
Constructive criticism should be much more welcomed as it currently is.

Edited February 13, 2021 by CalvinKlein

[MarmadukeJinx]

I agree with your bit about crims being fodder to an overpowered PD. I think the PD should have a budget, where bullets cost money, fuel does and vehicle repairs and wages.  Limit the number that can be on duty. They ask us not to rob 2 banks at once, so why not limit their numbers. Also, hurry up and bring in the legal system where they actually have to produce evidence rather than making charges up.

[pepijn26]

PD should indeed pay for the items they take out of the faction. Currently PD/SD are able to spawn unlimited amounts of guns/vehicles without any loss doing so.

have PD pay for items when they go on duty, right now they drive their vehicles back to PD and just spawn a new one with 1000 health, or use the /fl command to spawn in a gun with 150 bullets. In my opinion PD is to OP. They never lose anything. And if they are losing a fight, they will call NG with GODMODE to finish it

[CalvinKlein]

18 minutes ago, pepijn26 said:

PD should indeed pay for the items they take out of the faction. Currently PD/SD are able to spawn unlimited amounts of guns/vehicles without any loss doing so.

have PD pay for items when they go on duty, right now they drive their vehicles back to PD and just spawn a new one with 1000 health, or use the /fl command to spawn in a gun with 150 bullets. In my opinion PD is to OP. They never lose anything. And if they are losing a fight, they will call NG with GODMODE to finish it

You know if PD didn’t keep pushing in in tiny waves ranging from 3 officers alone then kept peaking the door alone or pushing in small waves against all of us inside, from an IC RP standpoint, in other words “They fucked up” now as they started to gather up outside, had we really used a “clap” poor RP mentality, we would’ve pushed outside and started a shootout, instead we kept getting pushed by small waves who got themselves killed then a .50 cal would drive in alone and the gunner gets shot in seconds, from a tactical standpoint, the was a mess, we played smart and did what a cartel would do, held our ground and you guys decided to execute your entire “operation”  operation (speaking from an IC standpoint) and the need for all that unnecessary wrongfully used force wouldn’t have existed if they tried to outsmart us and just hold it tight on the outside, holding their ground from the outside, setting up properly as we did on the inside and RPed the situation out., either we try to surrender as we get bored of being stuck there, we would’ve either surrendered (most likely not) or tried to escape and as we leave some of us make it out and some dont, or we push it out and start a fight where you would be setup and take most of us down, having multiple casualties from both ends, possibly a few people making it out , some dead , some in prison.