I'm an advocate for maintaining the mystery of the game.

Anything that gives people information about the strength of either themselves or another user in the game, presents them with an advantage.

One of the most obvious advantages given to players at the moment, which can be easily rectified, is the bodyguard protection level shown in profiles.

What I am suggesting is that the incremental levels displayed in the profiles are removed and replaced with simply either "Protected" or "Not Protected".

Advantages

- Lack of information

The reason this is a plus is because it would bring an element of mystery back into the game. The person you're attacking could have 1 bodyguard, or they could have 200, you just don't know. This will make it significantly more difficult when planning wars and remove the element of certainty surrounding a large number of shots.

- Removes the importance of other known information

Sadly, most people understand the ratio between kills and bodyguards. By taking away the knowledge of who has how many bodyguards, this information is less important than it is at the moment, because you could put a top gun on someone with 1 bodyguard making their top gun unimportant.

- Excitement

Wars are always better when both sides are around to fight. Adding in an element of uncertainty will lead to more difficulty in planning, more difficulty in execution and thus more missed shots. Missed shots will lead to more people around from a planned takedown, which in turn will lead to more excitement.

- Secrecy

People are unable to hide their protection level at the moment and everyone else knows straight away how strong someone is. This is a factor in many things within MR and it isn't one that should be readily disclosed. Choosing to BG yourself, if you wished to be selfish, should be a valid option. Choosing to pool your money to BG one of your friends secretly should be a valid option. Lying about your protection level should be a valid option. These avenues of playing the game are currently removed and takes away another fun element.

Disadvantages

- Lack of information

People won't know about everyone else. To me, this is great. To others, I imagine this will be worrying and make things more difficult.

- Realism

I suppose it is slightly more realistic to know if someone has a shit load of protection, because you would be able to see them. However, as the game currently doesn't factor this in when considering whether you can see people in the locals, I guess we don't know anyway?

I'm sure there are more to both categories, which you guys can point out shortly!

Big supporter of this idea. More mystery, and uncertainess is needed in this game.

I must say I really do like this suggestion. It would add a whole other aspect to this game and make it that much more interesting. Now it is fairly easy to determine how many bgs someone has. The Tiers tell us their minimum while if you keep watch of the game stats for the site wide effective bg count you can see how many bgs someone gets when they demote by how much the stats go up. The only plus side is when someone’s bgs effectiveness goes down then we don’t know. So they might be IWP but have the defence of 50 bgs. So we might over estimate. But now with this new feature, we could begin to under estimate a whole lot more.

Another massive advantage would be to the overall game play. Cities would need to start organising teams to try and calculate the amount of bgs people have. More people will be keeping an eye on the stats. Also, as kinda already the case, pick pocketing will become a great advantage on working out the bg levels of your enemies. You will need people who are full time pick pockets and are absolutely pro at it like the pro hitters we have out there.

The only con I can see people drawing on is lack of information which I believe is a pro and something really needed in the game with so many new features and the overall mystery of the game slowly diminishing.

I wouldn’t say this removes any realism to the game Donbot. Not all bodyguards are the obvious suits standing always in close proximity to their employer. There might be two guys enjoying a beer at the other end of the bar looking like they are off their face when really they are hired muscle. Could be a guy sitting in his car across the street, keeping watch. All the kind of things that would make it hard to walk up to a person and kill them. This feature would be just like that. You will know your target has protection. But you won’t know if the waiter pouring your drink is one of them.

Nice idea, but if you were going to shoot someone who had 10 bodyguards in real life, you would see the 10 bodyguards surrounding them. If not bodyguards would be useless.

When it comes to bodyguards, realism should never be brought up. That is the one area of this game that has absolutely no realistic qualities. Not even the president of the united states has 230 beefy dudes surrounding him at all times. Until the BG cap is returned to 10 (never going to happen) all arguments for "realism" pertaining to BGs should be thrown out the window.

Nice idea, but if you were going to shoot someone who had 10 bodyguards in real life, you would see the 10 bodyguards surrounding them. If not bodyguards would be useless.

I can see your point of view here T-Man. However, these 10 bodyguards would also jump in front of the shot. They don't do that here, you can choose to shoot at a Bodyguard or at your target, which could realisticly mean the bodyguards aren't actually in plain sight and so though they are near the target enough to help protect him, they aren't so much as a sheild that would mean they were obvious to someone looking in the direction of the target. Thus its conceivable that you may be totally unaware of the number of BodyGuards.

Nice idea, but if you were going to shoot someone who had 10 bodyguards in real life, you would see the 10 bodyguards surrounding them. If not bodyguards would be useless.

I can see your point of view here T-Man. However, these 10 bodyguards would also jump in front of the shot. They don't do that here, you can choose to shoot at a Bodyguard or at your target, which could realisticly mean the bodyguards aren't actually in plain sight and so though they are near the target enough to help protect him, they aren't so much as a sheild that would mean they were obvious to someone looking in the direction of the target. Thus its conceivable that you may be totally unaware of the number of BodyGuards.

(Epic fail on my first post there..)

I'd like to see more mystery, but I don't see this being a big game changer. Pick pocketing is used to estimate how many bgs characters have. It's not hard to figure out the big IWP gap when you can successfully pp a member with 125 to 150 bgs and fail to pp a member with 200+ bgs.

The difference there Brandy is that people have trained that skill, so they should be able to find out this information if they choose to work in order to gain it. At the moment, it is freely disclosed to every lazy bastard in the world.

As i have said many, many times before, anything that brings the what if factor to the game can only be a good move for it. The only reservation I have is, how would this sit with the current crop of members who are already iwp, we know as a user base who is already protected and who isn't, simply hiding that now, would be an actual disadvantage to those who already have 6 million bgs, beacuse we then wouldnt be wasting the biggest gun ona chance that a person may only have 1 bg.

Having said that, I'm a massive supporter of this idea.

I'm a massive fan of this. As Brandy has said, it's possible to find this information by pping someone - but that's exactly why it's such a great idea. Rather than just having the ability to glance at someone's profile and see what's what, either you, a member of your crew or a friend must build up the ability to PP that level of account to make a rough estimate.

However, if this were implemented, I'd be in favour of restoring the 1 attack timer for everything. In a world where protection was 'unknown', the skill of pping someone to find out (to a degree of certainty) *should* be a valued and difficult skill, and I dont think it's unreasonable to have to choose to either be a top hitter or a top 'info guy'. Thoughts?

Would love to see the old ways back in this... knowing how many BGs there are about is a nuisance...

The gaps in the bodyguard tier's are so large (especially at the top ends) that it doesn't give away that much info especially as someone could be Insanely Well Protected in their profile yet never trained a single bodyguard and could only have the protection of someone Very Well Protected.

As for pick pocketing to gauge someone's bodyguard levels you would need lots of people with differing pick pocket skill to pick pocket the same target to gauge their protection level at which point someone would surely notice and shots would be fired against the would be aggressors.

What Flash said.. it IS possible to hide your true BG status. I think the problem would be when to implement this idea as if you did it right now, the people already IWP would be at a disavantage. People already know they are IWP. If someone else gets demoted for BG's the IWP's wouldn't be able to tell if they were Protected or IWP.

Good idea, just not sure it would be fair to implement it without a ridiculously size war that smashes into the userbase, or a reset.

We've just had a war that smashed a fair bit of the userbase Countdown.

Personally I find this would help bring a lot of the unknown back. Its not just IWP folk we are talking about. When planning a war people are often assigned based on gun strength, this would make it much more difficult if you didnt know the strength of many of your targets defence. This could actually encourage people to also purchase BGs at a later stage other than demoting for them, as it would mean people are less aware of the BGs stacking up on your character.

My last CL character was able to quickly build 50 BGs up very quickly, I dont think its hard for a general user to manage this with some dedication. As i said, a war could see plenty of people sending small guns after "easy" targets who turn out to be not so easy after all, making the whole war a bigger drawn out affair and allowing a larger part of the userbase to get involved, instead of dieing after 1 shot in the first wave whilst your asleep.

I really hope this would be put into play because I am a very big support of having some sort of mystery to your character. It would make the game much more exciting so please sponsor this PC's

I don't see this as a needed feature. In fact, I think this feature would have a negative impact on the game. 

We already have a decent amount of 'mystery' involved with bodyguards. specifically IWP. seeing how IWP is such a large range, and the other lower tiers are at a sensible range, enough to have a question in your mind as to the gun strength needed to hit them. 

During a war people attack those with larger guns, not larger BG protection. When assigning a person to kill someone you're also going to play it safely as it puts your shooter at a high risk if they miss a shot on someone.

Let me put it this way: In my opinion this will greatly disadvantage mid-level hitters. I am against this. Mid-level hitters are the lifeblood of our userbase - they are the ones putting the time and effort in to become a 'big gun'. This doesn't disadvantage a big-gun because big guns know who they can and can't hit. I see no advantage to the community to lessen the involvment of mid-tier guns. 

As i said, a war could see plenty of people sending small guns after "easy" targets who turn out to be not so easy after all, making the whole war a bigger drawn out affair and allowing a larger part of the userbase to get involved, instead of dieing after 1 shot in the first wave whilst your asleep.

I disagree with your thoughts. I think that this will make it so that upper structures will DISALLOW small and mid tier guns from taking on targets. Because then those targets have a higher chance to become pro'd and it does get 'drawn out'. I think that this would create a world where mid and low-tier guns never get to hit a real target (which is a bit of a disapointment to some)

Nah, this doesn't work for me. If some fella has a bunch of people protecting him... it's kinda obvious in a realistic sitation... And after IWP, you really don't know where a person stands... they could have double .. etc

It would totally change the way wars are run, and I don't think such a drastic change should be considered at this time. Knowing at least a vague estimate of where someone stands is extremely important. 

One possible way to implement this semi-realistically is to change Bodyguards to Protection, and instead of having '230 beefy bodyguards' surrounding the person, make it a generic boost based on Armour and Technology.

Everything else could remain the same - Training being replaced by a maintainance charge, but at the same costs etc. Shooting Bodyguards would become similar to attacking an HQ, with each successful attack further reducing the defence bonus.

This would enable admin to do away with the Bodyguard information. A guy with armour isn't necessarily any more obvious than a guy without. HQ protection status could remain of course, because if you are attacking a building with Barbed wire, reinforced doors and 16' high walls, you can kinda see those defences.


The only downside I can see with this is that Defence technology in the 20s and 30s is rather limited. That being said, few people actually ever pay attention to the time frame for the game, as I've seen people claim to be wielding laser pistols, lightsabers and M-16 assault rifles, as well as driving the latest Ferrari or Lamborghini.


Another bonus is that it could possibly solve the demotion for bodyguards issue, as I assume that HQ fortifications aren't based on the rank of the CL. This would allow the BG system to be brought in line with the HQ fortification system, with each additional fortification or level costing a set price regardless of rank. Each personal fortification could be broken down into something like Bodyguards, light, medium and heavy armour, as well as defence techniques such as evasive driving and suppressive fire.

Attacks on Defences could become a more generic 'attack' rather than a directed shot at a bodyguard, Evasive driving countered by a roadblock etc. Stuff that doesn't need to be detailed in the game, but just understood by the players. It would also lessen the impact of Protection somewhat, as you are now bringing personal fortification in line with HQ fortification, meaning that any member of a crew could assist in the takedown of defences, rather than only those with at least 25 kills. This would have the added bonus that there are less free kills in the game, taking out the thousands of BGs lying around after huge wars like the takedown of Innocience, meaning more game money spent in ranges, or buying credits to create MIAs or more fighting over the RIAs that pop up.

I'm gonna stop now because I'm kinda deviating slightly from what was meant to be my original less involved comment :D