Oh how it pains me to be the one to bring this out here as I'm sure a few people will not like this at all. However, after speaking with a few people that have been admin/helpdesk or what have you I decided it'd be worth bringing out to the pubic. Hopefully it will be a means to help making wack much more unpredictable without too drastically changing things in the long run. So here we go.

Right now, as common knowledge and the general consensus when shooting is that 5 kills per bg seems to be the best guess at what you need in wack to counteract defense. So that's 5 kills per one bodyguard. 20 bodyguards? 100 kills. I have a few suggestions in how to alter this.

For awhile we've been worried about BG cap, but this may even eliminate the need for a cap in complete honesty due to the shear expenses it would take. Is it possible? Yes, but likely? Not unless you're a millionaire in real life or have an extreme addiction.

So a lot of people these days demote for Insanely Well Protected. Which is great, people need protection. However the fact that a BG at thug to godfather does the same difference but is only harder to kill is foolish. So here's my thought on how we can work on this.

Say you demote for bgs, instead of it being 5 kills for wackstat to hit through one bodyguard it's now 3 kills. (Keep reading)

The reason for this is simple. Whether you have the money or not, that bodyguard isn't going to protect you the same as the ones at Godfather. So it's rather simple in this math.

In the first column is rank clearly, the current cost per bodyguard at each rank, the suggested wackstat to kill the bodyguard at that rank (what we want to change it to). This will be the building blocks.

Rank Cost per BG New defense of bodyguard
Thug - $750,000 3
Gangster - $1,250,000 3.25
Goomba - $1,750,000 3.5
Earner - $2,250,000 3.75
Wise Guy - $2,750,000 4
Made Man - $3,250,000 4.25
Capo - $3,750,000 4.50
Boss - $4,250,000 4.75
Consigliere - $4,750,000 5
Don - $5,250,000 5.25
Godfather - $5,750,000 5.50

So what you see here is this. Quite simply, you can buy bodyguards at every rank. Not only are they harder to kill as you buy them at higher ranks, but they also do more for your defense. This also helps keep demoting possibly at a lesser occurence. Why? Because people will see it's more worth it to buy them at higher ranks. The way the game was intended. However, it keeps the option that if you want to demote you still can.

Now next is another thing I'd like to add into this. This ultimately could differ people from spending money on credits and on bgs period. But this method will help. I suggest that their be a new "train" button made for bodyguards that actually does train them. What this would do is perhaps cost $550,000 to train your bodyguard. In the long run, it costs a bit more than buying them at the ranks. However, anything you can pay over time does. So what you do is say you buy a bodyguard at Gangster. He has a defense vs 3 wacks, but you train him for $550,000. He now has 3.25 defensive stat. See what I'm getting at? It still keeps demoting as a viable option to at the very least get the defense most need to make runs, but allows for people to still train those bodyguards up once they get to the top.

So far, we have a decent amount of money leaving the game here. I mean, your bodyguards aren't as effective but they can be. It's up to you to teach the guys you picked up when you were a thug and to teach them how to become a sincerely good bodyguard. Though, it would take by my math, if you bought a bodyguard at gangster to get fully trained to equivalent of Godfather bodyguard:

$6,250,000

Which as you can see is $500,000 more expensive than buying one at Godfather. However, the ranks should allow for more benefits in this aspect and so on. Plus the predictability on someones wackstat vs. defense becomes much more complicated. It also pays into the hands of those that don't demote more than ever which it should.

One thing I'd like to make clear is I understand that it would effect those at the top now and make them a bit stronger, but everyone dies. They always have and always will. This I believe is the answer to the problem we've been looking for.

In regards to taking money out of the game, we have to find a way to put it back in. Which I'm simply suggesting we add one more on the cap of CA's. Instead of two it would be three. CA's on average make a profit at this moment in time around $1,500,000 at least. So you would be able to gradually train those bodyguards purchased at lower ranks and get them more effective.

Please don't comment if you're against it and don't explain why. In order to see changes we must see ways things are flawed and beneficial, not simply shoot them down. Hopefully this system can be implimented soon. Thank you and have a good day.

~Asylum

Damn good suggestion. I like this.

I think you have missed one fundemental point, demotion is not a reward. At no point in life is demotion a form of reward it tends to be a punishment.

I have long felt a far better system for sorting out BGs etc is capping the cost of a BG at your highest rank achieved. You rank to Don then for the rest of your characters life any BGs you purchase are of a Don price.

The reason for this is simple. Whether you have the money or not, that bodyguard isn't going to protect you the same as the ones at Godfather. So it's rather simple in this math.

I am not 100% sure I agree with that comment, a chap throwing himself in the line of fire can't overly do it better no matter what rank you are. If BGs did more than stand there and get shot then I would agree. For example if a BG was consistently shooting back at the person shooting at you then the more expensive they were then the better shot you would expect them to be.

Just because I am slow in the brain I wonder if you can clear this up for me and others who may have this question:

7 BGs bought at thug would still be better than 1 BG bought at Godfather? (21 kills to be able to hit that person vs the 5 for the Godfather?) I've probably missed a trick here just thought it was worth asking.

El_Nino demotion is still not a reward here. I don't believe you read the thread properly.

Currently all bodyguards are roughly a 5 wackstat or it takes 5 wacks to shoot through one bodyguard. Now by DEMOTING and buying bodyguards at LOWER ranks they're not as effective as you paying for bodyguards at the rank you are.

I.E. you buy a bodyguard at thug it only protects against 3 wacks where as if you're Made Man it would protect at 4.25 wacks. In order to train the thug bodyguard to the Made Man you would have to do 5 trains at $550,000 a pop. Which would be $2,750,000 million on top of the $750,000 you paid for it. Ultimately making it $3,500,000 instead of simply paying $3,250,000 at Made Man.

So basically, you would still be able to buy bodyguards after a demotion however they're not as effective at each rank. You can train them to become as effective but to even reach the even 5 wackstat that we see now it would cost you for demoting and doing it:

$515,000,000

Where as if you bought Insanely Well Protected at Consigliere it would only cost you:

$475,000,000

Thus it'd actually be cheaper to buy the more effective bodyguards without demotion. This way people would be less likely to demote. In order to counter act this people would have to buy 183.33 bodyguards to get back to the wackstat that you see now. Which would cost:

$137,497,000

Which is an increase in $37,497,000 in expense to make it more beneficial to demote. So it'd be more expensive. Understand now El_Nino?



Chuck_Bartowski. The new system would make seven bodyguards have a wack defense of 21 instead of 35 which it is now currently. A godfather on the new system would get 5.5 instead of the current 5. So if you have seven at godfather your wackstat would be 37.5 as far as defense goes in terms of defending against said wack.

I don't see the 7 to 1 ratio that you mean. However, 7 thug bodyguards would cost the same as one godfather bodyguard. However most Godfathers are at least 100+ Which would mean you'd have to pay $137,500,000 to equal them instead of the current $75,000,000 as most people typically only get 101ish bodyguards.

Also El_Nino if you picked up a bodyguard from the streets. We'll do this for example. You're a thug, you pay someone $750,000 for their assistance. They have some self defense classes from the local YMCA and they are big. However, they're not thoroughly trained.

A Godfather bodyguard would be comparable to secret service. They're better at protecting you. Finding routes to get you out of a dangerous situation etc. Thus making the ones you pay more for better at keeping you safe.

Making them simply harder to kill would be more prone of them shooting back as your arguement would be since that's an offensive move, not defensive. Their ability to protect you would be better since you pay more and they're better trained.

But my point was if I am going to pay close to 6 million for protection then I'd rather get more for my money as it were. 7 Thug BGs have a combined defence of 21, ergo they are better than 1 Godfather BG with a defence of 5? Obviously if I buy more Godfather BGs they are better in the long run, but they also cost a lot more too... do you see where I'm coming from?

7 poorly trained BGs throwing themselves in the way of bullets are more effective than 1 super trained one even with your defence value scenario

Chuck_Bartowski. The problem is though that it would eventually run out. Say the bg cap is 250 then that means at most a thug can have a defense of 750 in terms of wackstat. Where as a Godfather can have 1375. So what do you think really pays off?

I will agree, the initial demote is still worth it. However in the long run, if you live 6 months or so as accounts have done countless times and seen Godfather. Which will be more useful? You'll spend far more training all those thug bodyguards.

I'm not necessarily trying to get people to quit demoting here. I'm merely trying to make it more of a payoff for those who don't.

There's also an argument that bodyguard cost should equal whatever the highest rank you've reached on that character. So basically, if you hit Boss, and demoted. The cost would not change. However, that would cause the game to have too high of a turnover rate.

Whereas this would keep it to where a turn over would be easier. People could become easier to kill, however they could be harder. Now to the same extent people could still live for a longtime.

I'm not trying to make killing other people easier, but more logical. I believe overall this idea is a very fair middle ground. People say the topic has been beat like a dead horse. Well after every war an argument such as this is brought up or people say this or that. It's simply gotten to the point people need to start working on the resolution together. Which I believe this is a good first step.

How do you see this being implemented, if it was to be?

Interesting. Very interesting.

Notes on the math: the cost structure this provides makes it four times more cost effective to buy your massive horde of bgs at thug, rather than the current eight to eleven times more cost effective we have at present. I like that a lot. I might even have pushed the thug effectiveness down a bit more to make it closer to 2x. But those are just details that can be hashed out later.

The other thing I like about this is that it gives an option to make initial bg purchases as a sort of down payment on the rest of the bgs. However, the numbers on that need a bit more work it seems. For example, for a GF to train up a thug-purchased bg to a GF-bg defense level would take almost the same amount as buying a new one, but with only half the benefit. $5 million for 2.5 added defense upgrading vs. $5.75 million for 5.5 defense -- it's no contest. Not just that, but you also get the added bodyguard with all the mess that entails shooting it during wartime (at least a dead proer, sometimes a dead shooter, depending on luck at the races, wackstats/defenses, etc.).

Because of that, I think the numbers would be helped a bit by making it cheaper per defense point to upgrade old bgs than purchase new ones.

All that said, I like the idea of revamping something about bodyguards to make thug mass purchases less common. I think it was Phil_Steak that said it best in another thread: with current pricing structures, it's almost stupid to spend your money buying bgs at any rank but thug. It's hard to blame players for exploiting that weakness in the current pricing scheme. And to be sure, I see any system that makes it smarter to hand your most trusted players a demotion/punishment than it does to hand them a check for bodyguards as a weakness in the current scheme.

I am presuming you propose changes to the current BG degregation system so that it is cheaper to maintain a thug BG than it is to maintain a GF bg?

I agree with most of what's been said here, I think maybe the numbers need a little bit more of a fine-tuned crunching if it were to be implemented, however I think the overall idea and reasoning behind this is solid. Promote the idea of buying at higher ranks, still make it plausible to do so at lower ranks however with less of a "reward" for the BG, with that little bit still in there about being able to train them...all in all, this is one of the VERY few newer suggestions that I would support 100% if I were on the PC team.

Grin, If the idea was to be implemented it would have to be like anything game changing. Once all the values are figured out and the coding is done probably give like a three month notice or something so everyone has a chance to demote or buy them as is like the coders already do I.E. The new idea on godfather they have to take out an actual crew and IzzyCreamcheese said people would have 120 days before that. Just for an example.

So basically people could use the old system and everyone knows of the deadline. Then once it goes as those old accounts die the new system will gradually be worked in.

Sayyid the fine tuning would clearly need done with talk of the PC crew. The above is clearly an example but I appreciate your input on the matter very much.

El_Nino, since you would have to be able to train your bodyguards to become more useful it maybe worth it to make it cheaper. That's something that the PC and coders would have to decide on. Personally I think it will need to be made cheaper but that's my input.

Bump.

I would prefer, rather than a dramatic overhaul of the BG system, something akin to what El_Nino suggested:

I have long felt a far better system for sorting out BGs etc is capping the cost of a BG at your highest rank achieved. You rank to Don then for the rest of your characters life any BGs you purchase are of a Don price.

One of the biggest issues, and the key reason we haven't redone BGs is, how do you reimburse people for the BGs they currently have?

Is their records show when a person bought the bodyguards? A date time stamp when they were purchased along with a price tag?

Maybe if this was implemented, you'd be able to to figure out what they're really worth in this aspect.

The combination of the original suggestion and El_Nino's suggestion could also work... with a slight change to compensate for the issue enkindle brought up.

Instead of having to train them, why not make them better with age, and with that I mean the same as stated in the original suggestion: "Whether you have the money or not, that bodyguard isn't going to protect you the same as the ones at Godfather." - Meaning their experience goes by the owners rank, for instance if you bought all your bodyguards at the rank of Thug, as you ranked up they would get more accustomed to your day to day operations, what routes you take etc etc... and would be able to protect you better. And if you hired them at Godfather, well, at their cost, you'd expect them to be fully dedicated to their work and know exactly what it is they're doing.

Question would be at what rank would they protect you fully when bought/aged (wackstat of 5 per bg or whatever might be decided if changed), and also whether that stat would go down if demoted, in a way making demotions a punishment again as your defense would be going down along with your rank, while the price of hiring more bodyguards stays the same as the highest rank you've ever achieved.

I think this would eliminate the need to reimburse people, but as suggested by JakeSully: "If the idea was to be implemented it would have to be like anything game changing. Once all the values are figured out and the coding is done probably give like a three month notice or something so everyone has a chance to demote or buy them as is like the coders already do I.E. The new idea on godfather they have to take out an actual crew and IzzyCreamcheese said people would have 120 days before that. Just for an example."

The latter would be needed to make things fair for those who might have been planning to get a demotion to buy bodyguards sooner or later, or if any leaders out there were wanting to buy someone bodyguards, they would have the chance to do so for a certain amount of time before changes were made. After that it would really be more about adjusting the bg cap when the time comes which hopefully will be lower due to the change and what it will cost to bg up the ranked people.

Don't really see many more options without screwing with peoples accounts, so we know there will never be a reset, but no one really lives forever and the bg cap will sooner or later be lowered, and the suggestions this thread has brought up is one way to make that happen without screwing over people that have worked hard for what they have right now.

One of the biggest issues, and the key reason we haven't redone BGs is, how do you reimburse people for the BGs they currently have?

Alright, I was fairly certain I covered this and possibly multiple times. However, let's go for gold here. Say the new bodyguard system is to be implimented on August 27th. Any bodyguards bought before then are to remain on the system that is in place now. After that date, the new system goes into effect.

Everyone dies, gradually the new system will be in place fully and there is no need to reimburse anyone.

Grin and Nino, the problem with limiting it to whatever rank is the fact that the game cannot grow. If you haven't noticed over the last few years why has it grown or prospered so well? Because accounts have the ability to live longer.

By demoting there still is a punishment, you pay more to get the same benefits. It's a happy median. I understand why you guys want it that way, but it's not as plausable and benificial to the game as well as userbase.

El_Nino demotion is still not a reward here. I don't believe you read the thread properly.

I clearly must have.

Let me see if my stupidity can be clarified.


Currently I can get demoted from Don and buy bodyguards which give me a 5 wack a BG defense for the cost of $750k. Don BGs cost what $5,250k. So yeah Demotion there is quite clearly not a punishment.


Under your proposal I can get demoted from don and buy bodyguards which give me a 3 wack a BG defense for the cost of $750k. Don BGs cost what $5,250k for a 5.25 wack a bg.


Either way I am getting demoted to obtain cheaper BGs than I can currently purchase.

Am I missing something here. To me it is quite clear the demotion is not a punishment but a way to obtain something cheaper.