This is probably not one of my most popular opinions, but could possibly be a solution to the current state of things.  And by current state of things I'm referring to the past several years, before many of your times, not this current crop of players.  Perhaps bringing back death wackback will help even the playing field out again?

Izzy said something in another thread regarding one of the changes he put in place...

Once you are a capped killer and are fully IWP, you can advance no more, so the next best thing is to slow down the advancement of those underneath you.  This makes using this as a strategy less viable.

I think this is of the biggest issues facing the game right now.  Once you've reached the pinnacle of success on this game, the top seat or whatever you want to call it, the only logical strategy is to keep other players from becoming strong enough to kill you. This isn't a new strategy, it's been going on for some time now.

Once upon a time you could death wackback by shooting at an IA, MIA, or RIA (I don't remember if Durdens were even implemented back when people were death wackbacking on NPCs).  It sucked.  It sucked when it happened to me and I imagine it stung even worse when it happened to people with huge and powerful accounts.  But it was a risk that was accepted when trying to build a massive gun capable of doing real damage.  Often times, the top guns would eventually stop training their gun once it reached a respectable level.  They could probably still one-shot most of the other players, but sometimes depending on the level of BGs a person had (there was no BG cap at the time either) it would require the smaller to more moderate guns to BG wave a particularly stacked player until they were weakened. 

As it is now, there is nothing in place to stop or discourage people from building guns with thousands of kills without consequence.  So what else makes sense other than to keep people from building those massive guns aside from eliminating those guns?  The BG cap only allows you so much protection, but guns capable of killing a capped person are not unrealistic to build.  I think not killing people before they are able to build such guns would be foolish, but at the same time has lead us to where we are now.

If death wackback was implemented again the way it was in the past, building a massive gun would still be possible but would be a gamble.  I think crews would think twice about attacking another crew and we would see more exciting wars as opposed to only one-sided takedowns.  Takedowns are all well and good, but don't make for especially fun or exciting gameplay for either side involved.

Granted it wouldn't eliminate the strategy of eliminating any other crew that would be deemed a threat, and I don't think it should remove that option entirely either.  But it might make a crew of people think twice about attacking another crew of highly protected hitters if their guns aren't the gigantic one-shot cannons that everyone aspires to have today.

So that would be the pro side or re-implementing death wackback as I can see it.  The cons would be that people who have devoted a lot of time, energy, and sometimes money into an account could lose it all just for shooting an RIA, which rumor has it was the reason it was removed in the first place.  Another possible downside, from a game admin perspective (and Izzy would be better able to speak on this obviously) would be the potential for people to not spend as much on credits for MIAs or these massive Durden spawns we've been seeing lately, which is another concern to factor in.

I was hoping to have more time to think this thread out, but wanted to throw it out there sooner than later now that tensions are seemingly rising on this game once again which sucks for all involved.  If anyone thinks this is a flawed idea, please point out how, as I'm not so much interested in defending the idea as I am coming up with a way to make this game more exciting again.

Wouldn't it also make it harder for those at the bottom to build guns to compete with the already trained cap killers on top right now?

Tyrion-Lannister,

It could, but only if the person on the bottom wackbacks.  There's still only a 1% chance of it happening.  It wasn't a very common occurrence, and it did suck when it happened, a lot in some cases. 

But it is the only thing I could think of that could possibly close the gap a bit.  Otherwise, if player ABC is sitting in the throne, observing player XYZ who is known to be power-hungry/ambitious, or a known hitter, or maybe just an enemy, ABC would have to be a fool to sit back and let XYZ continue training until his/her gun stat is strong enough to shoot ABC. 

But, would the threat of a consequence like death wackback keep XYZ from continuing to build a gun strong enough to one-shot kill ABC?  And at some point, even though he or she is on top, ABC would have most likely stopped training as well to avoid the potential risk of losing what he/she has to a death wackback. 

So ABC knows XYZ is out there, protected and probably building and plotting, but just removing XYZ isn't as simple an option as it is in the game's current state.

But to Izzy's point it does penalize a player for simply using the wack feature of the game, which is enough to make my argument null and void.  Sigh

Yes, I suppose you have a point :/

I didn't really think about how little a wackback of any type happens anyway.

I was just going to say increase the number of RIA's, wasn't part of the game when the death wackback was a part of it but was told that pure defense was a counter measure to it so don't think it will make much of a difference.

Romance is definitely onto something here - maybe a coder could let me know if my expanded idea has any merit.

How about in addition to fatal wackback, a police wackback - basically, an extended jail sentence and your gun is back to 0?

I really enjoyed when we had death wack back

Kuku  if you had a XXX gun and was training it to get to the top and you get say 2 days jail and gun back to 0 how is that helping anybody ?

same as if you are on top and get it then you are on the bottum ?

most will see it since its a longer centens in jail.

its better we just hold hands and not train the gun at all ?

What does jail have to do with a WB Death?