I believe if we reworked the original premise of this thread, ie the not-killing-on-special-days-so-people-can-spend-quality-time-with-their-families, into the game as a social construct rather than as a coded in feature it may have less potential for abuse. 

People in the game who hold a significant share of the power should spend time purposefully negotiating to avoid conflict on these days. For them to have incentive to do this, perhaps a show of popular support would help. (Give the people what they want!) 

Granted, it's shaky at best. Unlike real life, there is much less (relative) consequence for starting a war. There are no guarantees.

There have been many discussions in the past about godfather councils, etc. This suggestion thread seems like another issue that would be able to fall within a council's jurisdiction and prevent harm on all sides. Obviously this doesn't stop rogues (or even more, trolls,) but if the game adopts this principle (not shooting during the holidays) as a norm, much like its penchant for respect in funerals, it can drastically reduce the amount of conflict on these days.

If the people who are in power aren't successful at keeping the peace during these times specifically, well, you know somebody's gotta go.

I like the ideas floating around so I would like to suggest some variations.

Suggestion:

Create a location, i.e. Mafia Island (Tanzania), where you can travel to and take a vacation. While in there, you will be isolated to what is happening in the US but of course you can still do your crimes like petty, felonies, etc. Add some district too for drug trades, if that is not too much. The caveat is that you can only stay there for let's say a total of 100 hours bi-anually (I'm just throwing some number here) and if you've used all that vacation time, the Feds will find you and be deported back to your home district. The wack feature may or may not be used in the island (people on the Mafia Island may kill each other). Or if you want, the wack feature is completely disabled in the Mafia Island. What's important here is you can still log in to the game to communicate with other players and post in the forums and maybe do the daily Hustle. It should also use the travel timer, maybe 24 hours since it's far away from home. It adds a lot of layers strategically but of course that is only my suggestion and may be too complex to your liking. 

I missed a bit so I'll catch up but I'm replying to this first

Dalora, I do think you have a good argument here, which is why I addressed it in the initial post.

1) Debate over which holidays is less important than a general yes/no at this point. If you’d be in favor of this happening even one day, then you’re in favor of this suggestion with only the details to be worked out.

2) As I said, the most important thing here would be finding the right balance. We don’t need to go overboard here and disable walking for every holiday in every religion and country. Part of this can potentially be addressed through demographics. Some of the best players I’ve ever played with have been internationally based, but aren’t we overwhelmingly from US/UK/Australia? What are the percentages there? Even if this is piloted with 2 days only like Christmas Eve/Day which the vast majority of people seem to celebrate either religiously or culturally) I think that would be a step in the right direction. Would you be opposed to 2-4 days? Or is it the general principle?

1) Tbh I'm not in favour of this happening on even one day simply because there will always be someone who loses out on their major holiday not being included. 

2) Basing the days off-limits on where people live isn't practical. Maybe there is 80% US playing, so what you assume all 80% are Christians? Maybe a poll would surprise you and show a large proportion who observe Jewish holidays or Pagan holidays over Christian ones. (Yes I'm aware there will be overlaps). 

It's the general prinicple of basing off-limit days based on a random selection of where you're from. I prefer Squishy's idea of picking 7 days holiday or whatever, but on the condition you had to pick your 7 days holiday within X time of creating a character. Since your argument is this is about spending time with your family on major holidays/birthdays, those days don't change dates every year, therefore you should technically know those dates when you create your character. This would mean people couldn't change their mind every so often on their 'holidays' because they feel their more at risk on that day over another, or they plan to wave a city at 23:59. Leaving it less open to abuse since most people will have a good mixture of off-limit days and you would still have the benefit of a majority probably picking Christmas. Maybe if you have wacking disabled for certain days it also makes you unkillable that day. This could be a surprise in what someone thought was a well-thought out wave. A huge gun just happens to have wacking disabled that day because it's there mother's 80th or something so they know in advance they want that day as a holiday. His city gets waved, but surprise they can't kill him and when he logs on he can cause a bit of chaos.

Honestly my other thought on this is it really only has a huge effect on rogues. If we look at how wars have been going recently. Say you're the agressor city, well you have a wave or two organised right? Your a step ahead of the city you're taking out and maybe you can wipe them in one wave, they can't react or you only lose a few people. You're an important person so one of the people 'on call' during situations. Well you would plan this wave for when you are available or organise yourself a pro with someone you trust in advance. If you're the city being attaked and someone important, chances are you die that first wave and can't do much or if you're very lucky they accidentally pro you. If you did get pro'd but it's an important family day well that's your choice to attempt to fight back/stay pro'd or duel and get it over and done with.

Where your proposal comes in handier is facing the rogues that know striking at X time on a certain day will mean most of the Upper Structure are asleep or busy. Those rogues tend to get off a shot or two before half the people needed to organise stuff can wake up/get online. 

Mostly caught up:

I also really like Gray's proposal. This allows you to have a 'holiday' day, or however long, at random times through your career but it still has it's limits like x hours per year etc. So instead of having to know the specific days like I mentioned above gives more leeway should something important crop up, maybe a whirlwind wedding for example. 

Dalora:

Basing the days off-limits on where people live isn't practical. Maybe there is 80% US playing, so what you assume all 80% are Christians? Maybe a poll would surprise you and show a large proportion who observe Jewish holidays or Pagan holidays over Christian ones. (Yes I'm aware there will be overlaps).

You will never please everyone, and you should not try. If we could set these on days that say, 70% of the community would be ok with, that'd be good enough in my eyes. To be honest, I dislike this response, because you've come off as taking a shot at the person behind the argument.

Honestly my other thought on this is it really only has a huge effect on rogues. 

I don't disagree with this. but my response is "Yeah, so what?". Sure, it disproportionately affects maybe 2% of the population? see my point about how much of the community would be a high enough percentage for me. But more importantly, This is a game. If a player wants to rogue and fuck up the game for me? bring it the fuck on. but defend for me why that should interfere with the few times in a year where my entire family is together?

Since your argument is this is about spending time with your family on major holidays/birthdays, those days don't change dates every year, therefore you should technically know those dates when you create your character.

Ok, this one? No, No, and a thousand times No. bullshit those dates don't change. In my family we currently have 0 people who are not beholden to school schedules, and guess what? Those haven't been the same since I started in school. Even without that, We cannot always get the same days off of work. and there hasn't been a year in the last ten where a member of my family didn't have to work a holiday.

Dalora

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

1) Tbh I'm not in favour of this happening on even one day simply because there will always be someone who loses out on their major holiday not being included. 

Honestly, I'm okay with this. I don't think there's really a perfect solution, but I think there can be a better one than what we have now. If you told me that 30% of the site could still hypothetically get pulled away from their families during a holiday, I don't like that. I wish the number was 0%. But I think 30% would be better than 100%.

2) Basing the days off-limits on where people live isn't practical. Maybe there is 80% US playing, so what you assume all 80% are Christians? Maybe a poll would surprise you and show a large proportion who observe Jewish holidays or Pagan holidays over Christian ones. (Yes I'm aware there will be overlaps). 

I think depending on the numbers, this could be very practical. I don't think 80% of the site is U.S., but let's say that's hypothetically the case. Wouldn't it to be easy to say that wacking gets shut down for Federal holidays? That wouldn't solve everything, but it'd still be an improvement.

Personally, I'm 100% okay with Squishy's concept of 7 days holiday being implemented. I fully support any solution that tries to address this issue, whether it's my original proposal, Squishy's proposal, or Gray's proposal.

And Dalora, the reason I would propose a survey is that I want to be surprised. I'd never assume that everyone is U.S. based and Christian. If we did do a blanket implementation of 'days off', I would want that to apply to our actual community and their preferences and not anyone's biased views about what they think the player base is.

But again, I'm up for any move that tries to address this.

You will never please everyone, and you should not try. If we could set these on days that say, 70% of the community would be ok with, that'd be good enough in my eyes. To be honest, I dislike this response, because you've come off as taking a shot at the person behind the argument.

Of course, we should never try to please everyone, but game populations change. I understand the chance of this one changing dramatically isn't that big. I'm just putting forth my opinion and counterarguments. If you read this as me taking a shot at the person behind the argument that's your prerogative,  but since I was addressing him and that statement followed a quote a wrote that statement as if I was addressing him in a one on one conversation. Would it really make you feel better if I rephrased it? 

Maybe a poll would surprise people and show a large proportion who observe non-Christian holidays over Christian ones, or the biggest population live in Canada and observe Candian Thanksgiving dates.

With regards to rogues I was just mentioning the type of player it was most likely to affect. Rogues will rogue on whatever day they want, if this was implemented it wouldn't change that. I don't see what I need to defend since I'm a bit confused what you're asking? You say if a rogue wants to kill you bring it on, but days you spend with your family are off limits. I'm reading a contradiction whereas I don't think you intend that so I'm unable to respond tbh.

My whole argument is your few times a year your entire family are together could be entirely different to another cities GFs important days for example, but they lose out because they don't fall into the 80% demographic. Yes you can't please everyone, but every single person on this site is included in the everyone. In my opinion it's better to be mediocre for everyone rather than the best solution for a large percentage and worthless for the smaller percentage.

I'm not sure if you responded to Squishy's suggestion of 7 days holiday, as I've said I much prefer that idea over giving a blanket ban to, say, the same 7 specific days every year. This allows each person to chose the days most important to them. 

Ok, this one? No, No, and a thousand times No. bullshit those dates don't change. In my family we currently have 0 people who are not beholden to school schedules, and guess what? Those haven't been the same since I started in school. Even without that, We cannot always get the same days off of work. and there hasn't been a year in the last ten where a member of my family didn't have to work a holiday.

Please reread what I wrote. The argument was to have major holidays set as non-wacking, suggestions included "New Year's Eve/Day, Easter, Independence Day (US- is Guy Fawkes Night as big of a deal?), Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve/Day". It has nothing to do with whether someone would be at work that day or not, or school schedules. Major holiday dates like those are the exact same every year. School schedules change, vacation dates change, but the holidays suggested do not. Someone mentioned a birthday, once again they don't change. It would be unreasonable to pick dates with regards to school schedules for everyone as even those aren't the same across a country. Which is why I like Squishy's 7 day suggestion. You could pick your own days you wish to be off-limits. 

Replying to Gavin, sorry I don't remember how to tag in posts.

I'm sure the majority of us have been on the receiving end of waking up dead on an important day to us. Or maybe we were just about to log off to enjoy a celebration with our family. I can totally see the reason you brought this solution up an appreciate it, I'm just the sort of person that prefers to consider counterarguments and reasons why it may not work. It helps bring a better balance to suggestions. I like to consider everyone's opinion and how it would affect them even if they are in the minority. This is something I've always done since I was a teen, even if it meant taking the least popular opinion, or an opinion I did not agree with. 

I think depending on the numbers, this could be very practical. I don't think 80% of the site is U.S., but let's say that's hypothetically the case. Wouldn't it to be easy to say that wacking gets shut down for Federal holidays? That wouldn't solve everything, but it'd still be an improvement.

I do feel if this was the way chosen forward it would be an improvement but not the best solution. As I said above I like to think of everyone's perspective. This is a small community so it's not unreasonable to assume a large percentage of the population would come from a specific region. I frequent a knitting forum, yes I knit as a hobby, they started to put a tiny national flag at the top of the forum for specific holidays/remembrance days.  If I recall correctly it started off small, only one or two country/movement flags. It became a huge deal to those who weren't being represented and the staff had to draw a line or half the year would have a flag, so they drew the line. It still raises issues every year on specific days. It's one of the reasons I'm putting out those questions since the same could be asked here, 'well why not x day' etc.

I don't believe your proposal is in any way bad, just slightly flawed because I do believe it would be open to abuse (or maybe call it new strategies?) I also feel the scope of your proposal is narrow, limiting to specific major holidays. Whereas Squishy's and Gray's proposals have a wider scope which will still encompass what your original proposal intended. Is it possible to consider it the proposals could work together in a minor way, coming up with something to satisfy most people?

And Dalora, the reason I would propose a survey is that I want to be surprised. I'd never assume that everyone is U.S. based and Christian. If we did do a blanket implementation of 'days off', I would want that to apply to our actual community and their preferences and not anyone's biased views about what they think the player base is.

But again, I'm up for any move that tries to address this.

If you do feel this was some sort of shot at you it was not intended as such but more of a question to consider. I live somewhere where biases are deeply ingrained in our society, people assume who you are because of where you live, what school you went to etc. The question wasn't intended to imply that you or anyone here is biased but simply a question for all reading to consider would you still be happy with this proposal should the days chosen not apply to you in any way. I could have changed the religions about, or used countries but the reason for the question wouldn't have changed.

Dalora

(For record to tag you just do an "@" immediately preceding the persons name. It's not required, of course, but you mentioned you were sure how to tag so I wanted to put it out there.)

I can totally see the reason you brought this solution up an appreciate it, I'm just the sort of person that prefers to consider counterarguments and reasons why it may not work

Sounds great to me. That's why I threw this out here. I'm trying to identify a problem and solve it as best I can, and I'll happily contribute to the discussion by sharing what I think the best moves are and why, but I'm very happy for anyone to poke holes in this suggestion if it helps us find a better one.

For your other points, I think if I replied we'd both be re-treading on ground we've previously covered, and I don't want to be repetitive. 

I never thought you considered my proposal bad or that you were taking personal shots at me at all; I just wanted to make it clear where I was coming from.

Barring other questions or proposals, I don't think I have much more to add. You've made some really good points here, and I think that it's most likely we wind up going with the solution by Gray or Squishy. When/if we consider ways to limit abuse, I'll happily join in that chat as well.

I'm just hoping that something happens to address the problem behind this suggestion- thanks for your contributions!

@delora gavinbyrne

My original comment about taking a shot was based on this one statement "so what you assume all 80% are Christians?" In my own personal experiance(not at all unlike what you describe delora), when that question, phrased that way, is tossed out there, it tends to be indicative of

"I think you're making this assumtion, and so i'm going to call you biased(or closedminded if you perfer) and discount the rest of your statement"

with that in mind, and please give me some small allowence today as I am ill and stuck at work and the combo makes grouchy and prone to be short of thought, I interpreted your question as I did, and stepped up to counter with the response that I usually use to the train of thought I mentioned above. 

I apologize for being sharp-tongued and short sighted. Please carry on, because i do want to see where this goes in terms of what changes may come of it.

Sometimes you can be here, and sometimes you cannot. It's just the way it goes. I've been around since 2003 (if you go back to the old .org format - most old timers consider this as a continuation of that game). I can't tell you how many times I had to leave in the middle of a war to go to work, to university, or to fulfill some other obligation. It has never once occurred to me that I need an online "safe space" to protect my game account.

Some people will not be satisfied until guns are completely gone from this game and it is nothing more than a social media platform were we sit around holding hands and eating pudding all day. The fact is, this game draws many different types of players. For the person whose focus is on writing and making friends, I can understand how getting a virtual bullet in the face can be a disincentive to playing. For me, personally, I was drawn to this game because of the competition to be on top, and to enjoy the adrenaline surges associated with never knowing who or when the time would come to fight for your life. For players like me, the continual erosion of the competition aspect of the game is a disincentive to playing. You cannot make everyone happy, but it's fair to try to balance the scales somewhat to make this place as enjoyable as possible to all different types of players.

Right now, and actually, for some years now, the scales have tipped heavily in favor of longevity and non-competitiveness. To be quite blunt, I think this suggestion is ridiculous. Can we take a step back and remember that this is a game, and games, by their very nature, are competitive? A mafia game, in particular, should allow for more ruthless behavior. If that means you get shot in the face during Easter dinner, those are the breaks.

Jimmychamberlin, Yes, but also no. This is, as just put it, a game. the moment I have to decide between a game, and my real life, then the game loses no matter how much i enjoy it. and yes, the events of the past Easter and Christmas, might well be a disincentive to play if it were to continue.

@JimmyChamberlain

I started playing myself somewhere around 2003-2004 on the old game myself, so I don't think you can turn this into an old school vs. new school argument. There are plenty of people who have been around more years than me, to be sure, but I didn't show up yesterday and suggest this on my first account.

I can't tell you how many times I had to leave in the middle of a war to go to work, to university, or to fulfill some other obligation. It has never once occurred to me that I need an online "safe space" to protect my game account.

No, to do those things you just line up a couple pro shots and you're protected, and you come back to the game when your day allows it. I don't think anyone is asking for the ability to pause violence in the game. We all have day to day responsibilities that we need to balance with playing the game. What I'm arguing is that it is substantially different when RL holidays/family as a weapon; this is a situation where a war is happening because someone decided that attacking on Christmas would cause maximum chaos, and, as a reminder, we're not freaking Hessians during Washington's Christmas crossing of the Delaware. This isn't the real mafia, and we're not really at war. I spent most of Christmas Eve this past year on my phone at my parents' house dealing with a war. I spent a decent amount of Christmas Day there as well. If your response is that if I'm not willing to ignore my family then I deserve to lose, then I'd argue that's an unhealthy and unsustainable approach for the player community. If you repeatedly force people to choose between family/friends and the game, you're going to wind up with a relatively smaller number of people. 

Some people will not be satisfied until guns are completely gone from this game and it is nothing more than a social media platform were we sit around holding hands and eating pudding all day.

But if we take Squishy's suggestion, you can still shoot me 358 days a year. That seems a far cry from "a social media platform" and "holding hands and eating pudding all day". I'm a far cry from the men and women who can build a capkilling gun in 2-3 months, but I'm not ignorant of that aspect of the game either and have had some success there. I don't want to stop you from shooting me in the face. I want to stop you from shooting me in the face on December 24th because you decide that fucking with my RL will make it harder for me to respond, so I'd rather force you to shoot me on the 21st instead. 

The fact is, this game draws many different types of players. For the person whose focus is on writing and making friends, I can understand how getting a virtual bullet in the face can be a disincentive to playing. For me, personally, I was drawn to this game because of the competition to be on top, and to enjoy the adrenaline surges associated with never knowing who or when the time would come to fight for your life. For players like me, the continual erosion of the competition aspect of the game is a disincentive to playing. You cannot make everyone happy, but it's fair to try to balance the scales somewhat to make this place as enjoyable as possible to all different types of players.

I don't think getting a virtual bullet is disincentive to playing for writers; if anything, I'd argue the opposite. And again, I'm not trying to stop you from shooting me in the face. I'm trying to force you to do it on Decemeber 21st instead of the 24th so you're not intentionally using my real life and family as a shield for your attack. If 358/365 days of potential dying is not enough adrenaline for you, then just don't use your 7 days or whatever the number winds up being. 

Right now, and actually, for some years now, the scales have tipped heavily in favor of longevity and non-competitiveness.

I entirely agree with you here. Accounts are living much, much longer and wars are much less frequent. If the average well played account life was 30 days I never would have proposed this. But when most active accounts are measured by months, rather than days, it changes the calculus. Because wars are happening so infrequently, people often seem to be waiting to do takedowns on holidays, either to get more of their own people available or to make any response harder to coordinate. Either way, I don't see the game pooling takedowns around holidays as a positive thing, and it's within the administrators' power to fix this.

To be quite blunt, I think this suggestion is ridiculous. Can we take a step back and remember that this is a game, and games, by their very nature, are competitive? A mafia game, in particular, should allow for more ruthless behavior. If that means you get shot in the face during Easter dinner, those are the breaks.

I don't think this game becomes radically less competitive by taking a few days a year like this.  A mafia game is still a game; rather than using the mafia aspect to justify being a keyboard warrior, I propose that when a pattern develops where a game's community is repeatedly forced to choose between holidays with their families and the game they play, then it's worthwhile to make minor changes to the game to ensure this doesn't happen. We already do this for something like V-Day, where peoples' "real" characters are safe for a day to run a different event. I'd be fine implementing that too.

If a pattern continues of people losing months of kills/character development because of repeated conflicts with holidays, I think many people will just decide that the game isn't worth it. I'd like to avoid that, which is why I made this suggestion. 

If you'd like to talk about how "the good old days" of constantly churning war and takedowns were better, I'd love to have that discussion somewhere else. I might even agree with you. But for this particular suggestion I don't think that's relevant, because I'm looking at the game we have right now, and I think that being able to take a few days to shield an account you've built for 6 months to a year is a move beneficial for the game and the community that will result in increased player engagement and investment.

Good points, Gavin. You convinced me.

I like the idea of voting on designated no kill days. Considering our day/night times are not all the same it would be great to access the game and go about our business on agreed upon holiday's with wack disabled. That way those that don't recognize the holiday can still get their MR fix. I also think it's worth mentioning the issue that some hitters/proers couldn't access the game this past holiday, which I imagine took up plenty of Izzy's holiday time as well.

I personally think the Vacation mode is the way to go with the stipulations Izzy has put forth in his original spitball statement, however, I do not agree that it should be posted on their profile or in view of anyone else on the site - to stop potential abuse of people attacking on the knowledge that they aren't around. Literally everything else I do agree with though, the money and expiring timers and such. 

I agree that something in general should be done about this holiday warfare to try and "fine tune" some things. 

While it is not posted on their profile or viewed anywhere, when someone DOES try to war someone and they find they cannot hit a couple huge guns, it makes things very interesting as to when people would need pros to protect themselves for when someone were to return and ultimately fire back as soon as they login because we all know people would inform those immediately of what is going on. This would level the playing field for people trying to abuse the fact that their said target(s) were on vacation mode. 

whatever else it is. I agree 100000% with jerry that if people are selecting their vacation days, their status of on vacation and return time should under no circumstances be posted on their page.

cause wouldn't it be nice to know that a GF is away that day, take out his family, and have all your hitters refreshing on him the second his vacation wears off......

Please don't put any of this in.  Their are many, many games that have "non-shooting days" or "safehouses" where players cannot be killed for X amount of time.  There isn't any real reason for it.  In every other game I've experienced this in the feature of safe houses or "going underground" isn't very popular with the players and is constantly shit talked.  It directly takes away from the time and dedication that others put in.  One of the beautiful things about this game is it's one chance at one life.  Once you die you start over.  A safehouse takes away from the careful planning and execution of wars entirely.  If I want to sacrifice my Christmas to start a war I should be allowed to do so. 

Criminals don't take days off for Chirstmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, or any other holiday and either should we.  I know that it is cliche as fuck but it's true.  One of the magic parts of this game is that something can kick off at any time, sometimes without warning and sometimes at a time that isn't convenient.  That's just life.  Anyone who wants to be baby sat and protected more by in game features are looking at their game play entirely wrong.  99% of the fun of MafiaReturns is the edginess of the politics and wars.  Managing relationships and knowing where you stand across the board.  I don't think we need to be spoon fed protections in any sense.  You want a vacation?  Risk it like we always have.

This gets the largest -1 I've ever given to any suggestion in history.