This is not aimed at any one person, any of the current Godfathers, leaders or any other player, so please dont take it as a personal attack on anyone, because its not. However, I've been back a few weeks now and as well as my own opinions, I've been getting plenty of comments from people talking about things that they or I think should be changed, so I thought I'd put them all down in one thread and hopefully gather some more opinions from people.

1. The cheapening of ranks.

I do understand the argument for the current system. People like to rank and to feel important and dont like waiting for promo's, especially when they have the points to rank.
 But once you get to your leaders rank there's nowhere else to go, so why such a rush? The fact that I can make the 3rd highest rank (consigliere) in less than 3 weeks (20 days)  is quite... silly in my eyes. Achieving such lofty status should be a far more daunting task than click, click, click, jail, jail, jail for 20 days. Now... some may say that changing the min times would be silly if people have already got the points, so how about making the ranking a little bit tougher? With maybe a little more emphasis on crimes (and maybe posts, although this could create a lot more spam) and less on the jails. I do realise that the jails make the owners money from people buying credits and they are not going to be too keen on the idea. But eh... sometimes the game matters more.
We never used to have Godfathers and everyone stuck around in the hope that they would be the first, but now I hear of people making it on their 3rd try here. So they come to our world, achieve everything they can achieve and then what...? Some move on... some stick around but dont feel the need to contribute anymore.

2. The forums

They are dying off, slowly but surely and this saddens me.
I've spoken to one of the admins recently on this subject and their words on the matter after I said how highly I regard the forums were "fighting a losing battle, I haven't given up yet, but I just cant make these people use the forums".
The problem here is fear... fear that people will get shot for saying how they feel... but being shot for speaking out isnt the massive problem, being able to do nothing to retaliate however, is. I told the admin my solution, which would be to get rid of failed wack attempt witness statements, so people could "rogue". I do realise that some people think I'm a kill crazy retard, but I honestly believe that this would help. If people said what they felt and got killed for it, it would be possible for their son/daughter to do something about it and lets face it, everyone loves a rogue. Whether it be for the kills they make or... hunting one down, whichever side you're on, it is fun all the way. I also feel that this would bring more leaders to the streets as they would have to use the power of speech more ( instead of just hiding behind their rank, status (ie. leader) or Godfather. They would have something different to worry about which may just give them the kick up the ass they need.
Fear creates excitement, focus and purpose. It adds an extra dimension.
Also... get rid of the outside forum. This is what the chat applet/IRC/IceChat etc is for. General chit-chat.
Any other suggestions here would be very helpful because this is the only way *I* can think to change the current state of our forums.

3. Credits

I know this will be a touchy subject, but I feel I need to bring it up. Credits are good in some ways, like being able to throw your own jails, buying timers, seeing which your weakest city is in the achievements and being able to sell them for game cash.
But there is also a downside. Your average Joe who earns minimum wage or has lots of outgoings that almost match their wages and plays for 5-6 hours a day is at a serious disadvantage. They cannot afford to buy credits, therefore have a harder time jailbreaking, making money for BG's and ultimately ranking.
I don't really have a solution to this, so anything on this subject would be appreciated.

4. Bodyguards

A lot of the people I have spoken to have raised this issue. The amount of BG's some people have is becoming ridiculous. It sort of touches on the "rich man" issue again, where your average Joe would have to spend a lot more time, effort and energy to as effective as a rich man. Personally, I believe there should be a limit. I have no idea what sort of limit as im sure people would be pissed off if they've bought say... 300 BG's and the bar got lowered to 100. the BG wack feature was a great idea, but if someone has 300 BG's and your whole city only has 300 members in its families, of which... gangsters and goomba's cant kill BG's, quite a few are NPM's and lets say... 25% wont be online at the time they are needed... and that's just for ONE person. I see many "Insanely Well Protected" that to take a city down is as close to impossible as it could be see as we have a relatively thin userbase.

5. HQ sizes

I do believe something is being done that will allow leaders to buy slightly bigger HQ's than the current maximum of 50, so i wont drag this one out. But having bigger families would probably mean a few less families, which all in all would be a bad thing. The position of leader is supposed to be a priviledged position that few get the honour of getting and sorry to keep harping on about the old days but 3-4 crews per city was a brilliant formula. I also believe that bringing in bigger HQ's may result in a few power grabs if the amount of NPM's is limited.

6. Voting

The current voting system is great, we vote, we get exp and cash and the site is high up on all the websites who advertise our sort of games but it could be a little better. If you added an extra click to earn that exp and money it could bring more people in. I already do this but... instead of just voting, get everyone to click the "MafiaReturns" banner on every voting site so the amount of votes "out" goes up, "out" meaning the amount of people that have used whichever voting site and have clicked on our banner to come here. If it looks like a lot of people are coming here, surely that would drag a few extra people in.

7. IA's and the hitlist

Personally, IA's really piss me off now. It's just a case of whoever clicks the quickest. Maybe bring back the function that meant you had to hitlist an IA before wacking it with a minimum price of 1000 on gangsters and moving up 1000 for every rank? Maybe this money could go straight to the GF of whatever city the kill is made in.

I'm really not trying to bitch here, I've just listened to a lot of people's moans and groans since I've come back so I thought I'd share a few. I'm sure there's more that I just can't think of now, but its late and I'm sleeping very little at the moment. Please don't just put "I agree with number X", give us a reason as well.
Also feel free to add any of your own gripes, but again... please give reasons.

Regards...
...FFDP

1. I agree with the fact that the ranks are somewhat to easy to get, especially since people are now living a year or more on a single character. Perhaps if the ranking were made twice as hard for every rank past Made Man? Therefore, you could still get them in min time, you would just have to work much harder to do so. From what I've heard recently, it's entirely possible to get Made Man points in the first day of your character, which I find disturbing.This is also a part of the game that crewleaders should be controlling, rather than just promoting every member they have.

2. As much as I feel the forums need more attention, not everyone in the game is good at roleplaying or speaking. Therefore, you can only really push it so much. As for the failed wack statements not going out, I'm not sure how that will help at all. With the current bodyguard amounts, the person that would be rogueing would need to take 5 months+ just to get enough kills to kill the person that most likely killed or authorized their death. By that time, the person would likely have more protection and would be getting bored of their position anyway. I feel the lack of failed wack attempt witness statements would change nothing at all in this regard.

3. I feel that there are far too many features in game that people can use credits for, however, I understand the need for revenue for the owners. However, I believe something needs to be done about the rising cost of credits. Whether it be increasing the amount of real life money it costs to buy credits or placing a maximum amount of cash one can sell credits for. In the past, we've seen the credit prices drop dramatically after a war due to someone wanting their credits to sale faster than someone else for bodyguards and them having to compete. With the increase in price of credits, why would they sell them for lower? Also, we've not had a serious war in forever.

4. As Izzy has stated on multiple ocassions, the Bodyguard/Defense has to be equal to the Wack/Attack. If not, then it will either be WAY too hard to kill someone, or way too easy. I honestly do not feel there's any change we can make in this regard that will positively affect the game.

5. Increasing the HQ size will be good to a point. However, people will push more NPMs in them the higher their HQ limit.

6. Eh. I've not really anything to say about this. Your suggestion/idea has been implimented by many games and seems to work well. It doesn't particuarly hurt the game, just makes voters put forth a bit more effort.

7. If I am not mistaken, adding Ajax wack was an attempt to make it so everyone will have a fair chance at wacking, instead of it taking as much skill as the old way of wacking. If you have practice, it's really not that hard to snag an IA. There's certainly more to it than just clicking though. Having to hitlist an IA is not something I would agree with, as it would reveal you are a hitter to anyone that looks at the hitlist. If you chose to do it anonymously, you would be spending alot of money every time you attempt to shoot at an IA. Notice: ATTEMPT.

Those are just my thoughts on the suggestions/ideas you've placed forward.

1. The cheapening of ranks.

is not hard to be thug and ready for wg instantly. I never really liked waiting days to rank, and if i had my way would happily be made man day 2 however i know the chaos would create and the extra complaints of x,y and z they want to be crewleader or will rogue as they get consig in a week and a half. The truth is it is not hard to rank for most people, but 120 days for gf especially with recent wars is a long time to live.

2. The forums

I communicate by mails and irc as honestly watched the streets get worse and worse between threats, inuendo, repeats of the past arguments and plenty of people finding something out of nothing to be offended by.  I have previously tried working the streets but the truth is a lot of people rather click then rp.

3. Credits

everything seems to cost credits to keep up with the man next door and the stupid prices where people hoard and re-sell often i can understand why some people complain especially in the early ranks.  even at my rank i look twice before buying sometimes to see if i can afford them.

4. Bodyguards

i always hated bg's as survived happily for a long time without them, was talks about altering the system but kinda dissapeared in talk and i never saw anything ever again.

5. HQ size

i believe there should be a limit on size especially if to affect the defensive ability of a crewleader and financial clout for them. Maybe implementing up to 75 members but have to grow to qualify for each HQ in between. so create a money sink to as they buy different HQ's each time

6. Voting

this is part of the completion process on mafiamatrix and previously injustice which helped numbers.

7. IA's and the hitlist

i think this system though lacking skill, more luck is sufficient to attempt to spread shots round.