I remember a time when the game had cities not districts and I think the game was in a better state then. The Gdofathers has more liberties and there was a more spread of power where CLs and GFs could truly run their city how they pleased. My proposal is right now we have 19 districts in 7 cities. I think we should condense the game down to 15 cities in 5 regions of the country.

Northeast:

Philly

New York

Boston

South:

New Orleans

Miami

Atlanta

Central:

Chicago

Detroit

Indianapolis 

West:

Los Angeles 

Las Vegas

Seattle

Midwest:

Denver

St. Louis

Kansas City

With this change I think we give our nation a better balance of power as well as getting diversity, I know I was never one who wanted districts added in the first place. Also think it would add a good change of pace to the game, and put us closer to the roots of what made this game what it was back in the day. As well as changing up the way we fight our wars. Open to others opinions, and input from admins to see if changing back to cities is even possible.

What differences would you suggest be imposed? For example, how long would a flight between St Louis and Kansas City take? Would it use district timer or flight and if so, for how long?

How would this differ from how we currently have it, besides the rebranding of cities into regions and districts into cities?

It would slow the pace of the game so we don’t have people going between the districts making millions like it’s nothing. 

I don't see how this would benefit the game. Your suggestion is against rewarding activity (someone being active to travel around every 5 minutes should be getting something out of it) and kinda makes levels obsolete, which in turn also doesn't reward activity (why would someone be active to use his jail timer if levels aren't very important).

Making people less active and promoting the "casually login and do stuff a few times per day" mentality is definitely a step in the wrong direction in my opinion

I agree with you up to some extent, but I think we need to understand the value of the districts from a gameplay PoV before all. First there's mechanical depth, in that districts add another physical layer to the tactical plane, making it 3 dimensional as opposed to a more blunt approach that requires less tactical prowess. While each character's potential skill-growth is limited in it's defensive counter-part, the offensive side is not, so districts actually help to tackle the trend of ever easier gun-building. They add weight to both stealth and street smarts and by forcing the players to make use of both they expose aggressiveness before it takes place. On top of that there's both micro-dealing of drugs (selling between districts), and also gun-building exposure. So from a mechanical point of view, districts promote and reward activity, give depth and create new features while adding a new layer of protection which allows you to make your adversaries slip.

On a social note, they make each city's political landscape alot more interesting by creating possible fractures as autonomy is more or less granted by the the central power and new captaincies are assigned into the secondary districts. This wouldn't seem important but districts do put secondary Godfathers in a more comfortable position both defensive and offensive wise, which can both help boosting the cities' skill threshold and also make it much easier for an internal coup to take place.

You make the case that the state of the game was better at a time when districts weren't yet a thing, that power was more balanced and there was more diversity across the board, but you don't provide any reasoning as how the districts being a thing relate to that extent with the quality of your experience here. Couldn't it be that there was a bigger playerbase at that time? Or that this place was still so young that most people were still locked behind the vagueness of it all? Discovery and ambition are common propellants of motivation.

I did say I agree with you though, but only up the point where districts shouldn't be tied to the size or strength of a city. My two cents on this, is that there should be only one Godfather in each city with the tittle of Don being accessible by crew leaders only, and then crews shouldn't be localized in districts but in cities alone. Right now each city needs at least 6 crews to reach full potential (2 per district), which means 945 open spots on a bare minimum amount of crews across the board. Given that we're sitting on 645 players as we speak, we will not be seeing a new city unless each crew's size is reduced further or we get a baby-boom in playerbase. That is, if the goal of having a new city opening is really a thing. Having cities that harbor less crews (from 6 down to 4) and still remain competitive should be a thing, but for that to happen we need to add more weight to the CL position (by restricting the Don Rank to CLs) so that they get closer in strength to what a secondary GF rank is now.

Because this is my suggestion I'll do the work to supply the cities and districts, I'll start with 3 if the idea gets support and another is requested by admins or the active player base I'll more than happily supply more.

Northeast:

- Philadelphia:

South Philly, Bella Vista, Old City District

- New York:

Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx

- Boston:

Allston, Fenway Kenmore, Mission Hill

South:

- New Orleans:

French Quarters, Uptown Garden District, Treme

- Miami:

Bal Harbour, Cocunut Grove, Coral Gabels

- Atlanta:

Brookhaven, Emory, East Atlanta

Central:

- Chicago:

The Loop, South Side, Gold Coast

- Detroit:

12th Street, Corktown, Bricktown

- Indianapolis :

Augusta, Mile Square, Holy Cross

West:

- Los Angeles:

Pasadena, Hollywood, Crenshaw

- Las Vegas:

The Strip, Summerlin, Paradise

- Seattle:

Waterfront, Pioneer Square, Waterfront

Midwest:

- Denver:

Five Points, Highland, Colfax

- St. Louis:

Granite City, Kirkwood, East St Louis

- Kansas City:

Blue Hills, River Market, Westport

As I said in my previous statement it doesn't make a ton of sense for each district (neighborhood) within a city to have multiple crime families running amuck it just wouldn't make sense for so many criminals to be running around and them have enough land to not have infighting and work cooperatively. I think this would make the game look much better as each family would run a certain part of the city as well as give each family another layer of identity and give them something to look on as theirs. As I said I'd be more than happy to give each city another district as I know back when cities were smaller 4 families was standard, but I know if we had 3 families each for the cities it would help to keep cities from overgrowing hence helping them keep members localized and promote recruiting and teaching active members rather than racing to get 4 families to look as big as the other cities.

As always I am really wanting feedback on the idea from the player base and admins we have among us.

If the game were to keep at its current population, we'd need up to 9 "districts" in each city in order to have one crew per district. I don't think that's feasible nor beneficial. If you wanted to split the crews up more into their own smaller sub-groups, I think 2 crews per district and adding more cities to cover the overflow of crews we have would be the solution. Two crews being so you can have one Godfather crew and one crew per district. However, considering there is already an increased tax when you have too many crews in one district, I think this is something that's already been minimized.

This would allow for 45 families one per district. The game currently has 34 families, seeing as 6 were just killed the other day that's 40. I think space for 45 would be acceptable, with the possibility of opening up one more district per city if needed gives room for 60 families. Myself I've never seen the game that populated so I do not think 9 districts per city would be needed at all. At most 4 per city.

I see. I must have misunderstood. I thought your suggestion was to have one crew per district, not multiple crews in each district.

Yeah correct one crew per district and 3-4 districts per city. With 15 cities this would allow between 45-60 crews in the game

So where are we getting the people to fill these crews?

Are you getting the people ConstanceBonacieux? I mean if you recruit the people then yes, if you're asking for a handout from anyone no. Seeing as the number of crews we have now I don't quite understand the question, if you're asking to fill out every district of every city then probably not. It is open to have a few open districts within the game to promote growth and have room to constantly expand our horizons.

Districts should be removed and the cities should not be added except a couple more to complete the "mid-west" section of the game to go along with Chicago besides Detroit.

Also wouldn't mind seeing Boston added to the PA/NY side and perhaps something more to the WC side but we do not need to add cities to let people stay as a CL.

The game use to have loads of players the numbers today aren't much different and in fact may be lower than they use to be and we had didn't have districts and everything played fine.

Crews were real crews with numerous active ranked players not just fillers, GF position was mostly earned as there was over 200 players and what like 6-7 GF's I would say getting there is rather earned.

Since districts was added the game has gone down in terms of popularity and not sure it ever got back to where it was and I know a lot who lost the fire after things got easier which is basically all the game has done over the past years, added multitudes of durdens to allow racing to become less meaningful and increased MIA count to do the same and make guns easier. Added more crews so more can lead, more GF slots so more can get GF.

The game use to be hard and challenging, hell many will tell you how hard they worked back then to get their first ever Hand spot as it was very limited with the players to crews ratio it was an actual achievement.

Perhaps if the game goes back to these days things will get better? I don't really know but just a thought I have had for awhile now in terms of actual game play.

Newer players would like it I think because a common complaint I hear now days is how easy things are and that the same people rule constantly, well back then was a lot harder to get back into power once you lost it with limited spots but adding 6x the amount of spots certainly makes that easier.

I don't really know what to do to get things back to when I had fun and not sure what Squishy feels about his districts model now days so perhaps would be nice to hear from him in regards to what he may even be willing to change if he feels anything needs changing.

Honestly I'd love to hear from Squishy about this topic because I think it would be a great game to gaet the back where it belongs and away from the lazy dream land we play in now

I've been complaining about districts basically since their implementation. 

I think the problem is that districts have created the easier environment that we've grown accustomed to like Silence said. I crunched some numbers some time ago and found like given the site population and number of crews it comes out to like 15 people per crew.. Mind you this was not factoring in IA, NPC or anything like that.. Just straight numbers. This is why recruiting is kinda... shitty... Because it is numerically impossible to full your crew and by full I mean within seven people of actual full. 

Crews use to be bigger, so they seemed more active or full of life.. Instead of having a few crew members online.. Your 60 second list could be full of green on a weekend. When I started it was a 50 member limit HQ... We've taken 20 whole people from that equation and again.. Numerically we can only fill half that given the number of crews. I am in a GF crew now so this is a bad example but even in normal crews that I have been in recently it's very.... Dull, quiet.. At times I would be the only person online.

The complaint that the same people are in leadership over and over and over again has ALWAYS been a problem. Even before districts. The difference now is that authing a CL is expedited to meet the games occupation demands.. As in X number of crews need to occupy a space before things close. So this makes the problem more noticeable.. But it has always been a thing. So that's probably the one benefit to districts is that more newer people are getting leadership roles.. But of course it's at the expense of having an inflated number of leaders and thus loses the value of the position.

Essentially everything is inflated now.. Guns, access to BG's, money, credits etc.. So districts are not really our sole problem.. Because I think they will work better with some fudging. I have always been a proponent to one GF per city. It may be extreme but I think some districts or entire cities will need to be closed. If my numbers are correct we could in theory close two entire cities maybe even three and still be within a reasonable amount of the crew to people ratio. All we are doing these days is occupying space that we can't necessarily fill.

I don't know, I do not have all the answers sadly.. But I do know we need to make changes.