I don't support bringing back WB death because it basically encourages you to wait for the larger guns to WB and kill themselves. Plus, the fluidity it provides (in the form of having larger guns dying) is unnatural and tends to have a more negative impact on the game than a positive one. Putting the onus of taking out big accounts on a RNG instead of the players is a very poor suggestion, in my opinion.

We have not had shorter cycles with larger BG amounts. Some leaders would die with a lot of BGs, but as far as a full cycle of leadership, the cycles were extremely long. Marietta, ThomasRourke, Deimne, Roman, etc. These leaders were in place for a tremendously long time. Plus, the distinction I'd make there is that features have been introduced to drastically increase the economic product of players; OCs, drug unit availability, CAs, districts, etc. The game has offered more and more functions to make money, increasing the prevalence of BGs.

I will admit, though, that there is an unwillingness for change. So even if I think I'm right, I'll accept that if I'm in the minority of players then we should have a higher BG cap. I think 100 would be a good start, though.

I would like to include a more subjective viewpoint; high BG caps ruin crews. The focus of crews shouldn't be to simply earn and earn and earn endlessly to get your CL to cap. But for the most part, that's their purpose. And there's no counterplay to that; crews have to do that in order to compete. They can't afford to focus on other things because the only thing that matters in their survival is making enough money to get those defenses up.

So either we come up with some counter-play to stacking tons of BGs, or we reduce how many BGs you can get. Otherwise, every crew does the exact same thing the exact same way.

I've said this before and I'll say this again.

Since districts came in, the game has been way, way too big for the community.

It's been around two years now (funnily enough, about the same length of time since that announcement that admins were stepping back, perhaps a little shorter), and I honestly don't think there has been a point where districts has actually worked. 

We've had the big site war that was supposed to be a reset and was supposed to even things out and make districts look useful. We've had wars in between, we've had plenty happen, but the only thing that districts has done, in my opinion, is make it even more advantageous and even easier for "cliques" to join together and run the game. 

There never really has seemed to be any kind of increase in userbase since districts so I'm assuming that advertising hasn't increased at all. It actually feels as though there's been a bit of a decrease in the size of the userbase since districts came in, although that might not be the case.

So I dunno.

Districts have made power, in my opinion, too easy to come by and too easy to hold on to. When districts came in, we had as many Godfather spots available in two cities as we did total in the game previously. Cliques of 9, 10 people can easily all build large accounts and ALL be given the top level of power, ALL be allowed to control what basically functions in the same way as our old cities did.

Now, it's all well and good to say that we don't HAVE to use all those Godfather spots, but why the hell wouldn't people, when it's so easy and so advantageous? That same clique of 9-10 people are made even more powerful by the boosts attached to the Godfather rank. 

I honestly think that that, more than the BG cap, is actually the problem here.

Things seem to have gotten worse since LA and LV were added, to the point where the players had to balance that by closing a city themselves. We've basically gotten to the point where anybody with a crew who wants to become Godfather basically has to live long enough, have the units and have the people already in the Godfather spots trust that they won't be a threat to them, or know that they'll take them out themselves as soon as they become one, and that is NOT just the 303. Things were pretty similar while Czylharz were the dominant clique. And who can blame these groups for functioning in that way?

If there were only 6 Godfather spots available on the game, perhaps it'd create a little more tension between these groups, perhaps their reigns wouldn't be quite so long if they had more individual interests to balance rather than being able to satisfy anybody.

I'm well aware that what I've said is most likely to fall on deaf ears, it generally does, but I honestly think districts have been a thoroughly bad thing for the game and that we'd have a way better state of affairs if we went back to just cities, no districts, limited Godfather spots.

^^^ what she said

If there were only 6 Godfather spots available on the game, perhaps it'd create a little more tension between these groups, perhaps their reigns wouldn't be quite so long if they had more individual interests to balance rather than being able to satisfy anybody.

I feel this argument can be flipped around; if there's only 6 spots and all of them are occupied by a clique, how could that possibly create tension? The number of godfathers is somewhat irrelevant, in my opinion, because at any point they have no incentive to "create tension". They have to keep their nose to the grind for months to get to a point where they can compete with established players, and by then it's not worth it to compete. I don't think the number of spots available impacts the tension at all; I think what impacts the tension is the ability of people outside that group to impact the game. It's natural for us to only allow people we trust into positions of power, so it would be foolish to think we'll start authing people or allowing people to GF up if they aren't liked by the other leaders. There's no "tension" in the number of GF spots available; it merely means that if everyone in the clique has a GF spot and some are still open, the clique has to trust someone outside their group to set up, or restrict everyone. I think if the game restricts the players (by only having 6 spots), there's no tension. If the clique restricts them (with districts), there's tension. And if they don't restrict them, then you have non-clique players in powerful positions, independent of the clique.

For example; if there's six spots and the clique consists of 5 people, there's one GF that's not in their group. If there's 20 spots and 5 people in the clique, there's (at most) 15 people outside their clique. I don't think either of these scenarios really promote tension any more than the other. I think empowering non-CLs and subordinates will do more to empower them than simply removing available GF spots. If the BG cap were lowered, every CL could threaten a GF; and the focus would be more on social strategy than simply being months and months ahead. And I think in that environment, the number of GF spots available is irrelevant; the capacity for tension will be much higher.

Most cliques have more than 6 members, few cliques have 18+ members. 

You make no accounting for individual ego within a group in your dismissal of my argument. 

We've had none clique Godfathers going alongside clique Godfathers. It rarely ends well for the none clique ones.

All lowering the cap does while we have so much money in the game because of how profitable selling credits is, is mean that there is more money running around the game than can reasonably be spent. 

I'm not fully brushed up on clique statistics, my contention was merely hypothetical. My point was that the size of the clique is irrelevant in correlation to the number of GF spots available. Plus, at the end of the day, GFs have very small crews. They do rely on their underboss for power.

I don't account for individual ego because it doesn't realistically affect the game anymore. What individual would betray the dominating clique of the game, their clique, and risk losing everything simply because of their ego? Players like that are exceptionally rare, an I think it would be a poor decision to use that as a foundation for an argument for or against districts.

Non-clique godfathers tend to overstay their welcome. Very very few actually take advantage of their power and influence when they have the chance, and most just get destroyed. I think that if the BG cap were lowered, those not belonging to the clique would have a greater capacity to challenge the clique, too.

Lowering the cap does much more than just free up unspent funds. However, "selling credits" doesn't create money. They have to be sold in the marketplace for money that's already been made from drug deals, OCs, etc. Selling credits may be profitable, but it has nothing to do with how much money is in the game. And we never run out of "reasonable" ways to spend money. I think it would be beneficial to be able to spend money on things that aren't just CL and hitter BGs.

Lowering the cap just seems like a bad idea when we already have so very many more ways to build a huge gun than we used to have. Like, when there was no cap, when the cap was higher before May, we didn't have all the durdens, we had half as many MIAs, etc. So, I don't now really understand why people think that lowering the cap is some kind of magical band aid when the cap is already lower in real terms, but also training a gun also in real terms is so much easier and without WB death being a risk on so many shots, there's less risk attributed to training.

I just feel like it's an overly simplistic answer to a problem that runs a hell of a lot deeper. 

Even if we do have shorter lifespans, do you genuinely think that the userbase size/level of activity that we have is in proportion with the amount of districts we have, and the way we use them, which is basically as we used cities pre districts? 

With the amount of kills in the game lowering the BG cap would be stupid if you were going to lower the BG cap you would have to do a few things

Completely remove durdens or only make them available to spawn maybe once a month

Lower the MIA count back to down to 8 every 4 days

Its pretty easy to build a big gun nowadays so lowering the cap any further would be stupid

Three years ago I looked at the endemic problems of MafiaReturns and proposed some solutions to them. Looking objectively at the game at this moment in time and comparing it to what it was like then, I think it is vastly improved. This tells me we are moving in the right direction, albeit more slowly than some people would like and despite Squishy's response here being virtually identical to the one he made three years ago in our discussion, he has altered things.

I still believe that the game would be significantly improved if accounts didn't last for anywhere as long as they do now, but I can't help but notice many people also post conversely saying how easy it is to train a gun and get to the top. For me, 12 months on any one account is nonsensical, but if the majority of the players want it to remain that way, and it remains economically viable for it to be so, who am I to ask for it to be changed? 

If my view is in the minority and most people are happy with account length, then I would rather we focused our efforts on other areas of the game, like splitting cities into districts and dramatically increasing flight times, which I have seen no practical benefit from. 

You're right that it's overly simplistic; but that's what Noah really seemed to recommend. Shortening cycles would solve some of our problems. I'm arguing that reducing the BG cap would shorten cycles, and effectively accomplish what Noah is looking for.

Quite honestly, I don't care about districts. I honestly don't think they have a tremendous effect on the game, so getting rid of them, adding more, making sandwiches out of them, I don't care. So if you want to push for that, I'm not trying to stop you. I'm simply saying that the problems we're describing won't be solved by it.

Do I genuinely think the level of activity is in proportion with the amount of districts? No. Are we using districts the way we used cities? Yes. However, I don't think that really matters. I don't think there's anything wrong with having 20 "cities". There's no objectively better ratio of crewleaders to members  than any other. I think those ratios sort themselves out naturally as players come and go. I don't think smaller leader to member ratios contribute to larger cycles. I think you can have long cycles regardless of that ratio, and you can have short cycles regardless of that ratio.

What will actually shorten the cycle is making the path of power something worth pursuing. Presently, it's not.

DamonSalvatore I appreciate your wanting to contribute to the discussion, but I would appreciate it more if you'd elaborate on your thoughts and not simply conclude with "it'd be stupid" and then just repeating it. Why is it bad to reduce the number of BGs? Is it bad to be more realistic in these numbers? Is it bad simply because it's different? Please help me understand instead of just reducing the entirety of your response to "it's just stupid". Because that helps no one.

Okay so you have 16 Mias every 4 days which equals out to about 120 kills a month

A durden spawn from Mias every 3 dayish so lets say 10 durden spawns a month - which with bgs and a kill lets add 20 kills

Than there is always gonna be random durden spawns by users or someone getting godfather.

So without even Ia racing you are looking at about 150 kills a month so why would be drop the amount of bgs when kills are so easy to come bye?

How about we estimate how many game hours it would take to hit cap. I think it would be up around 1000 hours, but for the sake of argument, I'll say 700. 700 hours to get 1000 kills seems like a conservative estimate, yes?

Let's say you're putting in 40 hours a week to train (a full-time job in America). That's 4 months of 40 hours a week. That is not easy. I refuse to agree that four months of 8-hour days is "easy". Even in your estimate of 150 "easy" kills a month, you're still putting in over 30 hours a week to get those "easy" kills (which, aren't easy because credits don't grow on trees).

I'm tired of hearing the argument that MIAs make training a gun "so easy". Sure, people who can throw hundreds of dollars at the game can do that, but that's not the average player. The average player has to get $2,000,000 a day to pay for those MIAs. Whether or not you consider that "easy," it still takes time.

Anything that takes 3 months of 50-hour weeks, 4 months of 40-hour weeks, or 6 months of 30 hour weeks (as you described) is not EASY. "Easy" is signing up. Easy is making a million dollars. Easy is your first IA. Training a cap-hitting gun is NOT easy. Can we please stop pretending that it is?

We shouldn't require 4 months of a full-time job's worth of time invested in the game to make moves like that. Would you work at a job for four months just to kill someone at cap? No? That seems a bit excessive just to take a shot, doesn't it? Because it is.

Why is someone being actually killable a bad thing, anyway?

what if the GF loses some defense and other stats permanently if he did some  things.

like, if he didn't logged in for 3 days or  if his OC's failed or if he shoot someone and failed or if he post in the street in less than 10

words or he allowed a member of his crew ranked lower than Consig to have his own family or he failed to attend a set GF council

meeting and so on.

i'm thinking maybe it will help encourage others to take a shot at a weakened GF even if the GF belongs to a cliques, hopefully lowering

the life cycles.

sorry for my english.