Here's a suggestion that might help create more activity in the business districts forum:

Allow anyone that opens a business in a district to respond to it regarless of the city they are in.

This way, people can keep up with the action in the shops they have opened across they city streets and respond immediately when someone visits their property.

Hmm this suggestion is good :) or even if you could just see the forum.

I meant topic not forum

I don't mean to sound harsh or that I dislike your suggestion, but how does this stick to role play?

For example say you are in New York and your business is the type that requires you to directly server your customers, but are in New Orleans. How are you going to serve a drink or sell an item to a customer when you are not there to do it? Don't you have to physically be in your place of business to directly serve your customers? How can you do this from a different city?

Erm, I mean serve your customers....

If this was to shorten the time it takes business owners to reply and thus increase the activity in BD forums, I would be in favour of this idea. Even though it has some drawbacks, which Ms_Molson pointed out.

I know that some kinds of business require you to be there and serve your customers. But when you're running a restaurant or a bar, you can have waiters and bartenders and it can run "on its own".

On the other hand, people often don't respond in their BD threads even when they're in town. So I'm not convinced implementing your idea would change the situation much.

I understand your concerns on the matter from an RP perspective Ms_Molson and my reasoning is in line with GiovanniTosco's explanation.

While I understand that being able to post in your own business from any city might not motivate everyone involved in this thing of ours, it would definately give them the opportunity to decide just how involved they actually want to be.

From my experience it seems that the most active bars around are those in the families, and I beleive that the fact that bartenders can participate regardless of their location plays a part in this.

I certainly understand the point raised about Ms_Molson regarding the roleplaying aspect of this change. However, given the recent implementation of some features that minimize and negate social interaction due to the inclusion of fake players and accounts, I could overlook the slap in the face to roleplay of this suggestion if it did, in fact, boost activity in the forums. Since very few players who open business district threads make money from their businesses (because anyone can walk in and post, but you can't make them pay you), business owners have to work on petties and drug runs to make money. The stock market was supposed to make money for businesses, but due to lack of activity there, the motivation to post there is minimal.

This is one of the changes I could see being implemented where I could overlook the roleplay aspect. Not every feature in this game is strict to how things should be, but if this did spark more social interaction, I think the ends would justify the means.