How do you fall behind if everyone is using them and you are not? So you're saying all these leaders that just lost their NPM's are more advanced than all those leaders that didn't because they had none to lose? But before I thought the consensus was they made you a lazy leader? I am confused now.

Perhaps you would be less confused if you paid attention to obvious facts.

If you have 10 free spaces, they make you nothing.

If I have 10 free spaces, these make me nothing.

If you have 10 NPMs instead of 10 free spaces, you make approximately $30,000,000 profit more than me by doing absolutely nothing differently in terms of your leadership.

Because you now have 10 NPMs instead of 10 free spaces, unless I'm prepared to accept losing $30,000,000 profit per month more than you, which will obviously lead to you becoming stronger than me in terms of bodyguards, I have to either join you in using NPMs or neither of us use them.

As the leadership didn't like NPMs, rather than all using them and hating them, nobody uses them and everyone wins.

This, in addition to being a very basic concept, is now redundant because the NPMs have been removed.

~G~rin.

I believe Grin was referring to the crew leaders who choose not to utilize them fall behind in a financial sense, as that is all NPMs have to offer our world, nothing more, nothing less.

Why is it fair that a crew leader who chooses to lead a crew in the correct manner, who is an integral and valued cog in our community be at a disadvantage from a crew leader who is too lazy to get out of their lazy-boy to actually make a significant contribution to our world. Who instead would prefer to sit back through sheer laziness, having little if any impact being left to count money that they have no right to have earnt in the first place

Jax

beat to the punch

But a good leader who fills those 10 spaces with humans rather than fills them with NPMs is at an advantage isn't he? That is of course making the link between being a good leader and being able to fill your crew, which I'm not sure works that well in practise.

Why is it fair that a crew leader who chooses to lead a crew in the correct manner, who is an integral and valued cog in our community be at a disadvantage from a crew leader who is too lazy to get out of their lazy-boy to actually make a significant contribution to our world. Who instead would prefer to sit back through sheer laziness, having little if any impact being left to count money that they have no right to have earnt in the first place

What about those leaders and even regular people who choose to utilize methods that could be considered "lazy", from a certain point of view, to increase their gun stats?  The fact is that we still pay to shoot a "robot" quite often and yet I've seen no response from the anti-NPM folks about why they think it's not okay to employ a robot to earn money for you but perfectly fine to pay to kill one. You don't want people to grow their families or increase the money in their pocketbooks the easy way by utilizing robots but it's okay to do so for gun stats? It makes no sense to me and perhaps even a bit hypocritical.

Perhaps I'm missing something and would love for someone to explain it to me. It seems to me that the people who are so anti-NPM that they had to outright ban them and (inadvertantly) possibly put the future of the game in jeopardy should also never pay for a kill or tip for good drug prices.

It's also likely that someone has responded to this query in a different thread and I missed it. I work a lot and unfortunately don't have the time to read every single post in every single thread. My apologies to those who may get annoyed by this question, in that case.

I'd also like to point out that normally I would not take my opinions public like this as opinions shared in public that differ from what the leaders of the moment espouse often leads to said persons untimely demise. I decided to post anyhow this time since Godfather Worley stated at the start of this thread that he was open to "everyone and anyone" giving their respectful opinions. Which is something I hope I have maintained throughout this post. I have nothing but respect for my fellow MR players(whether pro or anti NPM) and have no desire to show any of you any disrespect. Especially to Detroit. A fine city I have chosen to make my home with quite a few of my characters.

No one ever said that robots made the society better.  The poor choice in this decision wasn't in getting rid of robots, but it was getting rid of income of the creaters of the game.  Without the income, there will be less advancements in the game, admins will put less time into the game, because everyone needs some sort of income and if they cannot get it here they will go elsewhere to look for it.

The income from the NPMs also largely goes to advertising.  This community prospers when there are more players that play the game.  Without money or less money to advertise, we will have less new comers, thus digging the game in a hole in the long run.

If the purchase of NPMs are so vital to the running costs of the site then why have them as an optional purchase, why run the risk of losing that income stream if they are a requisite,  if that is indeed true

It should never be the case that us as players, making perfectly valid and within reason in-game decisions are able to put the welfare of mafiareturns.com in jeopordy. Players should be able to play the game, making choices that they have been allowed to make by the coders without any thought for how they may impact the grander scheme, other than that of a playing level

NPMs where detrimental to the gaming experience and were in place for the wrong reasons. They should never of been allowed to be thought of as intrinsic in their current fluctuate state. They bred a culture of contentness and a without risk, reward attitude amongst the leaders, if indeed you can call some of them that

The last thing I want is for the maintanance and development of the site to be affected. I have huge admiration for Squishy and the team and think the job they do is admirable. But there are other revenue avenues that can be looked at and considered that don't have a negative impact on the enjoyment of the game

Jax

I am not a fan of NPM's, I am not a fan of BG's.  I know massive amounts of money in the game contribute to massive amount of bgs and stagnancy down the line as we have watched recently.   For now with this drop in income i see a bigger gap forming between the top and bottom so will wait to see if is changes to bg limits and defence especially if we see ia/npc amounts altered.  I also wait to see if any changes to oc's come after knowing how much better a robot was then someone who actually worked hard on a character.

I would like people to actually look at the list of retired Robots and ask themselves, do you really think all these Robots having such a valued status in our community was good?

Do you mean rank wise? Blame the CLs, although in the robots defense they did more and earned more then some people who are promoted to made +. Shocking! Maybe since their robot "parents" earned so well when they're eventually brought back they'll be given the rank of made without doing shit to earn it! The future is looking bright people!

No one ever said that robots made the society better.  The poor choice in this decision wasn't in getting rid of robots, but it was getting rid of income of the creaters of the game.  Without the income, there will be less advancements in the game, admins will put less time into the game, because everyone needs some sort of income and if they cannot get it here they will go elsewhere to look for it.

I think they made our society better. They provided an alternate way for crew leaders to improve their gun(like you would with a contract) and make some money at the same time. An added bonus to getting their bold suit. A reward for the hard work and effort they already placed in getting to that sort of position. In addition, it allowed for private conversation without the RH seeing the mail. Which was a feature I used a little when I had my own crew last time.

I had hoped that the admins would not have deleted this feature because I'm sure as soon as the Godfather Council died/fell apart(that's not disrespect. it's just a fact. Everyonoe dies eventually.) it would have been possible that the new people in power would have gone back to using NPM's. Now, sadly, that won't be possible because of the actions of the few in power.

Oh well. Life goes on.

Grin did a great job explaining why it can't be "let everyone else buy them, but don't buy them yourself." I'd just add that his analysis stops one step short -- it stops on the CL level when the city level is a concern too. As a city, there's also an incentive to set up NPM-shop CLs, or shift your real players between city CLs in order to maximize the number of NPMs as well. If one successful CL has 50 real members, and one less successful has 30, you can shift 10 people and buy 10 more NPMs.

Moving on to what's actually prompted my post:

What about those leaders and even regular people who choose to utilize methods that could be considered "lazy", from a certain point of view, to increase their gun stats? The fact is that we still pay to shoot a "robot" quite often and yet I've seen no response from the anti-NPM folks about why they think it's not okay to employ a robot to earn money for you but perfectly fine to pay to kill one. You don't want people to grow their families or increase the money in their pocketbooks the easy way by utilizing robots but it's okay to do so for gun stats? It makes no sense to me and perhaps even a bit hypocritical.

Personally, I think a lot of the RP reasons to oppose NPMs are also applicable to MIAs. So in that sense, I'd agree -- MIAs aren't the greatest either. But that only considers the costs side of the "cost-benefit" calculation. NPMs benefits are (1) shoveling IG cash into the site, and (2) shoveling money into the admins' hands. MIAs benefits are (1) balancing out what would be an even more unbalanced wack code by adding +1s to big guns, and (2) helping the less active get up to a minimum set of kills to hit bgs, and thereby helping to balance out the bg code. Further, the RP costs of MIAs sting a little bit less because RPing of wacking at present is a little strained anyway. It's not like real people walk around with 800 kills under their belts. It's not like real mobsters would really care that much about lazy people who don't actually work any turf or have any boss, but call themselves gangsters. So inserting another paid feature here that (1) helps (rather than hinders) actual game balance, and (2) may be unrealistic, but is inserted into an already-unrealistic aspect -- it's just not the same cost-benefit calculation.

So that's why I think people are less stressed out about MIAs than they are NPMs. The same RP-straining aspect is still there, but the benefits of them overall are a lot larger than most people perceive for NPMs.

"Now, sadly, that won't be possible because of the actions of the few in power."

Wrong. It was the GF Council's decision to ban the use of NPMS which would have presumably lasted as long as their tenture. Conversely, it was the admins' decision to remove them from the game entirely.

I beg to differ. It all started with the Godfather Council. The admins may have removed it but they only did so in reaction to the reactions of what I believe to be the minority.

That's like two people getting in a fight and then saying that it's not the fault of the person who started the fight in the first place but rather the person who is defending themselves or attempting to retreat. The GFC threw a punch and the admins reacted.

The GFC didn't 'throw a punch' at all. Are you seriously suggesting that this entire initiative was nothing more than an attack on the admin team in an effort to make their jobs more difficult? If you truly believe that's the case, it's time to take a step back from the game and stop letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement before you make such wild claims...because that really is quite ridiculous.

The GFC didn't 'throw a punch' at all. Are you seriously suggesting that this entire initiative was nothing more than an attack on the admin team in an effort to make their jobs more difficult? If you truly believe that's the case, it's time to take a step back from the game and stop letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement before you make such wild claims...because that really is quite ridiculous.

My apologies, Sprozz. I did not mean to suggest that. I know that the GFC were simply trying to make the game better and I should not have used that simile.

To be honest, I thought I had deleted that entire second paragraph before I posted but obviously that is not the case.