One of the things that I have always been against in this game is seeing members of the same rank as their leaders. Whilst I've always understood that this was kept in the game to make it easier in times of death, I believe there are ways we could amend the current system to provide a more realistic experience.

To me, it's even worse when it's a Don serving under a Don, especially in our current climate, where we have a Godfather system in place. Everyone could come in and say "this could be ended by the userbase" however, when you have something available that will make your family so much stronger, which is considered legal by the game, you will obviously use it to your advantage.

These days, where we constantly have a Godfather in place within a city, I believe it could be the perfect time to make a change; after all, the rank of Don has seemingly lost its importance and prestige of late. I don't think the game has ever had so many Dons as we have seen in these past few months and as a result the importance attributed to it has slackened.

I remember when I first started playing this game, reaching the rank of Don was such an amazing honour; it was something really difficult to achieve. Perhaps as a result of the difficulty and the fact it was achieved by so few, it was afforded a much greater than it is in modern times.

It is with this in mind, that I wish to propose a complete change in the Godfather system regarding Dons and hopefully also a change of ranks that can join leaders in general.

I suggest that cities should be limited to a certain number of sponsored Dons. This could be a fixed limit or a proportional limit according to the number of families and members of that city. Obviously, all Dons would need to be under the Godfather of the city. So therefore the maximum amount of sponsored Dons within a city would be 10. The Godfather and his leaders would need to eventually choose between members who was truly deserving of such a rank, rather than handing it out to anyone.

I believe it would make the high rankers of this game work even harder and put more effort into every single aspect of the game, instead of the usual sitting around that most (including my latest character) high rankers do. I believe this could add a bit more of excitement for the players, after all it should take a lot of work to be one of the 10 members picked out of a city of 100/150 members and it could possibly also cause a lot of conflict, which is also needed to spice up this game for time to time.

Once the Godfather has his 10 Dons in the Godfather crew he only has three options: promote nobody else to Don, auth one of his existing Dons to be a crewleader or move to another city. All of these options are better for game-play than the current system and may prevent leaders from resting on their laurels.

So, now you may be asking yourself, "what about the usual members under a GF?" If the Godfather is allowed to have 10 Dons under him, he would have a total of 10 member spots, if he wants to keep Gangsters or Wise Guys instead of Dons, that's entirely his choice. However, I would suggest that RHM and LHM spots are counted as extra slots in addition to the member positions, bringing the total number of people in a Godfather crew up to 13 rather than the current 11.

In addition to that, now you may be wondering "what happens when the GF dies and these Dons are left unsponsored? Well, here comes the suggestion that I believe it should apply to the entire game. Considering that Don's would only be able to join GF's, these Don's would have a few choices: They could set up their own family; they could join another Godfather, or take a demotion and join another Don leader, which brings me to this suggestion.

For example, let's say I'm an unsponsored Don and I request an invite to another Don who is a crewleader. My request is accepted and the leader sends me an invitation, while accepting this invitation, the game would send me a confirmation, saying:

Accepting this invitation will demote you to Consigliere, are you sure you want to join XXX? Yes/No.

If accepted it would automatically demote to a rank below. After all if you are willing to change families, you should be willing to take a little sacrifice, and if you are not, you are not worthy of joining that family after all.

This should be applied to all families; after all it makes absolutely no sense having Bosses under Bosses, Capos under Capos, etc. The numbers here were only used as an example, if this idea was approved the number would be figured out by the coders obviously.

this has really no point because there are 6 cities and 20 dons so nothing is really going to change and you said Don isn't as great as it used to over the last few months it has been way easier to get well there were no wars so of course there are going to be more of every rank

The reason you can have Dons in a Don's family is because everyone falls under the control of the GF. you can only have one GF in a city, but any number of the subsequent ranks.

Matt, you are as always, a rambling twit. Moving on, JD, I don't believe the point of this thread was to ask "why" it's in place, as that's quite obvious. It's about changing it, and I quite agree. Maybe not so much on the first bit about not having the same ranked members in crews, because that's slowly been becoming the norm for quite a long time. But I am in 100% agreeance when it comes to either limiting or cutting out sponsored Dons. Like you, when I started, there were only... Let's see... Prem... JTG... Animal... Maybe two others? So altogether 5 Dons in the entire game. Now, that wouldn't be too uncommon to see in ONE crew.

I was here when they changed the rules allowing people to achieve the same rank as their CL. At that time, hardly no one had made Don and no one made GF, so generally unless you were a CL no one ever reached Consigliere, Boss was basically your highest achievable rank, and that was pretty frustrating. Also if your CL died of a WB, there was often no where for you to go as you outranked the other CLs, remember this was also a time where Made Men and Capos were often authed as CLs.

I wouldn't be for limiting the number of Dons, but I would be for a return to the old system of you can't have the same rank as your CL. I see no reason why a GF can't have 10 Dons in his own personal family. I actually discussed this issue with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and suggested running a family where rank had requirements:

Made Man - good earnings, street pressence, known to upper structure etc
Capo - Must have an associate
Boss - must have an associate who has made it to Capo.
Consigliere - RHM, LHM and Advisors only
Don - CL only.

However, as he pointed out, how many people would be happy working in a crew like this? How many would be happy working in a City run like this?

Ranking needs to be regulated by the players, not admin. If you ask Squishy, I'm sure he'll say that he is all for player autonomy and less Admin rules. IE we police ourselves and the game, and we don't have endless game rules saying you can't do this or that.

The difficulty with letting something like this be player run is akin to the demotion for bodyguards scenario.

Whilst I'm all for realism and I do try to make things as 'lifelike' as possible working with aspects of the game, when those same things can be the difference between success or failure, I'm going to put the advantage I can gain before the satisfaction of knowing we're being more realistic. That is ultimately the problem, we're not omnipotent observers and our decisions affect our families and members safety, which in my opinion is more important.

Therefore, I believe something like this would have to be hard coded. Player autonomy is a good thing, but some matters require a firm 'possible or impossible' from a coding perspective to be utilised.

this has really no point because there are 6 cities and 20 dons so nothing is really going to change and you said Don isn't as great as it used to over the last few months it has been way easier to get well there were no wars so of course there are going to be more of every rank
Reply by: Matt-Gondano at Jul 20, '10 18:49

I..I..I m..m..may n..n..not b..b..be the b..b..brightest t..t..tool in the sh..sh..shed b..b..but I count 8 cities.

Pi I was meaning the cities that have people in them I wasn't counting Detroit or St. Louis. I do agree with the idea to make it so members can't be the same rank or higher than there bosses.