There's very little input I can say that hasn't already been said but there needs to be somewhat more of a roleplay option. The in game text is good but honestly after a while it becomes a click monkey site where there is little to do other than achieve stuff. You have to KNOW people in order to roleplay and often the RP's that do happen are between friends or family members who have been doing it a LONG time. There's no real reason for a newbie to come in and go "oh yeah I can join that" because a. it's all done back alley and then slam posted to the streets, or b. there's no incentive for anybody outside of the closed RP to join. Yes I know businesses are a thing which does help but my experience was at least back in the day, crew leaders specifically had crew themed RP's.

Secondary to this is what others have been saying. The cities HAVE to stand for themselves. There is SO MUCH cross city fealty that ends up in betrayal that it's not NY for NY sake it's NY fighting for Phi and Chi and SEA fighting for LA and LV. Like...each city needs to stand alone and protect their own. We need to encourage city leaders to recruit and keep their underlings safe and protected and...when a crew splits off to go to another city, leave your friendship in IRC and treat the new city with honor and dignity and integrity, but ultimately as a completely different city than yours. They are no longer your responsibility or your true ally in that, they may have come from your city but they are now independent and it is their job as GFC to look after their city and recruit new members. 

Last but certainly not least is...districts. When I played in 2010 there were no districts. I understand that this was an a way for more people tho have leadership but in the past 3-4 years I've been playing...it's also caused way more takedowns IMO. I can't keep a character long enough to flesh out an idea with how I want to play them. 

This game has gone from Fun RP and in city chats to idk who is who and where is where anymore cause we're all friends until someone gets angry and decides to completely take down a whole goddamn city because they can. It went from "kill upper structure and leave the kids under made alone" to "fucking wipe everybody out" and frankly...I quit the game over it. I came back this character as a favor to someone who wanted to do something they have never achieved and I am here to see it through but honestly I was going to be done with it and walk away. 

dadadada makes a very good point. If you have a solid group with you at the top, you can easily play it well and only risk dying from a DD nowadays. It is too easy to keep the competition down if you control the game, you'd only have to worry about Izzy really and that's where a lot of regimes crumble, not by other players. This is a fatal design flaw. If you have to micromanage a game that much, something needs to be redesigned.

@Adoona & Vintage there are a few reasons why the same people always end up in charge. The first is that MR is not a hard game to learn, but it takes years to master. If you look at the people who are always near the top its because they have been here for years. They know people, and for the most part they are trusted by their peers.

Zek you called out a good friend of mine. You are clueless and quite frankly you are part of the problem if you think the above explanation is reasonable for the same people being at the top. News flash Zek, you called out a bonified vet of this game. And it did not taker them years to master.

Trust is a two way street.

Honey hit the nail on the head with their thoughts of the game. It changed and became very toxic because of the same people at the top. I am not new either. 

We need street gangs or street hoodlums in addition to crews. For both old and new Members alike. Crimes will earn you less money and you can't run OCs but you can run your own street gang of fellow street hoodlums as the streets are far more chaotic. From here you can learn the ropes of the game and then move onto a Mafia crew if you want or you can stay in the street hoodlum gang. Think of it like the street gangs in HS.

Honestly, fuck all of them and you. Your heat isnt enough, keep  burning bitch

This place has imploded because of the leaders here. They sit on their pedestals, do nothing but build their gun and can't be bothered to teach their crews. Why don't they teach them? So those who don't know this thing of ours never learn what is needed to lead. 

People who think leaders should be rewarded for what they should be doing all along are bent. 

Killing to keep people from building and oppressing them by not teaching them are among the biggest problems. I believe it has gotten worse since we got new admins. They've shown they can't be objective and have given their friends free reign. That's the way I see it anyway.

I'm not sure there is a fix that won't either be exploited and/or won't cause the pedestal squatters to react in a manner to damage the game further. They are butt hurt and as such shouldn't be running this game.

I do believe increasing the Gangster protection to 5 or 7 days and leaving the penalty at -10 should be coded in. 

Actual, REAL role play needs to be more important to this game.  Anyone can click buttons, but the heart and soul of a game like this comes from the stories we tell. 

Almost all of my long term friendships in this game were established during role plays.  Also, the the tags "Open" and "Closed" need to come back because that was a very clear indication anyone could hop into your story if they wanted.  Sure a strong story that's cohesive is fun, but so is a gonzo freeforall where people are encouraged to RP as they see fit. 

GET MODERATORS. Even if they are part time or volunteer.  Like dedicated, mods who patrol the forums and make sure stuff is in character or appropriate for the game (I know, I know, we have mods, but like, even getting mods who mod but don't ever play) 

Make RP count for more.  Like, a LOT more.  Let GF's of heavily role played cities have more perks like a buff on bodyguards, or VIP points boosting $$ payouts to CLs who have active crews.  Something that incentivizes community participation ON THE SITE, not just in chats off site.  There really needs to be a closed loop if you will. 

I know I mention other games sometimes but for reals, besides community events there needs to be a new member initiative where you get a new player to make an account and then you reward the recruiter after a certain (SECRET) set of requirements such as so many posts, mobmails, achievements,  etc.  In other words, they really need to get into the game and play, not just bring in warm bodies for clout. 

Ice people, PERMANENTLY.  Don't let shit keep happening.  If someone is verbally abusive in the game, DD them, if they come back and it happens again, ban them.  Yeah this is a small community, but it's not so small that we can't afford to ban troublemakers.  I honestly don't know why people get so many chances around here when they just take advantage of the admin team.   Sexual abuse, verbal abuse, TOS abuse should all be bannable offenses. 

Encourage the whole game and players to rework the community.  I have been in so many families that really had their shit together and I have loved those lives.  I have been in families where no one gave two fucks.  I didn't live very long on those accounts.  Basically family should be everything, INSIDE THE GAME.  People really need to pull the sense of familigia and community together and focus on keeping things running smoothly for those they are with at the time, not looking to the past.  

IDK if any of this made sense but I'll end with the fast I have been playing some sort of version of this game, with a lot of these same players for close to 20 years.  I want to see it keep going. 

whatsnew i called out no one, I replied to two people who made similar points. So what if they are a vet, so what if it didnt take them years to master, there are exceptions to every rule. So what if you have been here years, so have i, it means fuck all in the grand scheme of things.

I made a point, a point which I believe, if the same people arent always at the top because of who they know, then why is it, or has your hatred made you blind to what i actually said and made you see what you wanted to read?

The same people always being in charge may be part of the reason why the game is 'toxic' but so is the fact that many old players have thousands of credits saved up, facilitated by admins pay to play attitude, and with everything else being equal their ability to quickly train massive guns, start IWP within days of creating a new charcter and having friends on top is why they always end up on top.

It is increasingly more difficult to rank up and do something about it, as the old adage goes, when you don't have $2,000 worth of credits to invest in your character so that you are even close to a level playing field. 

Ham, there is already a recruiter incentive. If you bring new talent to the game through yiur inique recruiters link you get cash and credits everytime the complete an achievement in perpetuity. I still get rewards for an associate that i signed up many, many years ago.

Zek I guess I was speaking more to an idea to not only recruit, but also get new recruits to stay.  Like, the recruiter gets the lion's share of rewards, but the new recruit earns something smaller the longer they stay, thus encouraging direct recruiting, rather than just relying on new players to come through ads.  That way we can build on the idea of family more.  Plus, there is full incentive to keep players playing, rather than joining and immediately leaving once their sponsor gets goodies. 

as I said, I'm still getting rewards after 12 or 15 years, so its in your best interests to keep your recruits here and keep them playing.

Actual, REAL role play needs to be more important to this game.

Actual REAL role play? LMAO you can't even get people to RP to civilians/gangsters/petty thieves to get them to join 95% of the time.

Mostly you get a mail that asks if you are new/ simply says "want to join us/ or is a one liner most of which are sent out to people who do work and the recruiters are obliged to mail them. I just had a character that ran around here for two days, never said anything until the 2 days nearly were gone and not one person sent a mail. Why? Because I didn't do work and force them to.

Most of these people running around here could give fuck all about RP. Many leaders and hands just log in to shoot and give no guidance or teach their people. It's shameful. So many care about themselves and that is all. I can name expections but very very few and a few of them I taught myself. I've seen one of them go rogue semi recently due to the state of things here and I don't blame them at all. I could have/I had the gun/ and didn't yet Chicago purged me by having my own city leader kill me. Why the fuck everyone was using SR urls that Grin built and had access to is beyond me. Only morons share information especially with other cities yet Grin and Curtis had access to it all.

Lidstrom, the only issue I see with that is if you get someone on top with a half decent gun and a bucket load of BGs, they will be harder to remove because more hitters will die trying to get the 1200 kills necessary to take out an IWP Godfather or Don. Plus once a leader has a half decent gun, they can still do what was done here, that is, keep the population down to maintain their safety. I'm afraid that dadadada may be correct and the only definitive way would be to redesign the game from the ground up, having said that, wealth was not what put the current regime on top, there was no wealth of credits or money like some regimes have. But it most certainly has become a Pay to play game if you are serious about competing. 

If you want people to play and stay you need to hook them in from the start. One way to do that was bigger crews. Back on .org finding a good sub crew to join and competing against the other sub crews was fun. Plus you had access to someone who usually was interested in you staying active and developing because they were hoping to catch the boss's eye and get a promotion themselves.

Another issue we have is people these days want to play games with awesome graphics and arcade action, text based games just aren't as popular. Perhaps more achievements more often would help, even if they don't give big rewards (a tiny amount of experience, no cash), first kill, first petty, first felony, first post, first message sent, first drug deal, first crew joined. Achievements that at least early on come thick and fast and would appeal to the modern generation with limited attention.

Another issue is the jobs board. The existing players don't read them at all from what I can tell. I've hidden credits in mine or specific instructions and no one has ever claimed them or followed them. Not sure how we can improve on the jobs board, but huge swathes of text doesn't interest new players, and old players just don't care.

Advertising. Not sure how much bang for your buck you are getting for your advertising Squishy. I personally, in 20 years of playing online games, have gone to any of the sites you use other than to vote and get free money in game. I would never think of using one if I decided to look for a new game to play, and if I google for suggestions of what to play, none of those sites even show on the first page. I don't know how much you spend on advertising Squishy, but it might be better spent elsewhere, targeted advertising on facebook for instance (only a suggestion, I don't know of the viability of that tbh).

Rewards for retiring? How about a reward for your next character only if you retire after x amount of time (Don+ and 90 days after attaining that rank) something substantial but not game altering. For Instance, WB death reduced from 1% to 1/10th Percent or increased risk of someone wacking back on you. 102 stealth or Info. +2 to available MIAs per 3 days. The specifics obviously could be worked out later, but an available bonus for retiring may persuade people to step down rather than sit at the top stagnating and waiting for a bullet, allowing things to change up more often. 

Godfather becomes a status rather than a CL. When you become a GF, you lose your crew and HQ entirely. Your RHM takes over as leader of their own new HQ (no forts but all crew transferred automatically.) The GF HQ converts to a mansion with no crew members, and all his bonuses and penalties are based on everyone in his districts loyalty. Any income the GF wants beyond his or her own earning power must be generated through taxes on the crews below him or her. This means you would need a fine balance between milking your crews dry and getting negative loyalty, or taking very little and having to work hard yourself to maintain your BGs etc. You could also set it back to only 1 GF per city so that it is a position that people may want to fight for, only 6 GFs (instead of 18)means if you want to be a GF you are going to have to take it.

Further points to add to previous suggestions

1) Remove/ Limit Bg's to like 5 - Justification = BG's act as a defensive mechanism, if we remove these and change loyalty (previous suggestion) to be linked directly and have a large impact on defense of CL's, then a slightly lower impact on defense of hands, lower again on made members etc.

Expected Result = Families being more insular and supportive of members to encourage them to set loyalty to max.

2) Create a max on gun for example 100 - Justification = Having a max gun would eliminate a lot of the need for high BG numbers. Also training your gun irl would get you to a decent level, achievable by everyone, creating an even field as such. Far more realistic and enjoyable too when everyone can achieve this.

Expected Result = Again more isnular and supportive families as they will want all members to max their gun asap to have the most members be maxed. Would tie directly into the previous point as there would be no need of having large numbers of BG's once everyones gun has a max out number. Reduced time at the top for GF's/ CL's in general as it will be easier to eliminate poor families/GF's as would and indeed did happen irl.

I agree with Genco. Having an army of BGs isn’t exactly realistic. Perhaps make it so you can get your first as an Earner and then every subsequent rank up you can get another one. Maybe make it that you can get two at a time for every rank over consigliere. That would incentivize ranking up over sitting stagnant. That seems more realistic than a 200 man army protecting someone.

Okay so based on the main chat earlier, the main issue is jaded and bitter vets, to combat this we should turn cities to be more insular and supportive environments and alongside this, spice things up a bit.

So on to turning cities into more insular places and also adding abit of spice (competitiveness):

1 GF rank per city - max 5 BG's and no forts cannot hit but can upon taking seat begin a new OC "Plan war" this leads to a war with a chosen city and a % attack boost based on the amount of that OC that is completed. If a war is successful, GF awarded points, tracked on an ingame scoreboard based on level of success (ie number of target city members above made rank killed/wounded). Upon completion of 3 wars or 90 days (whichever comes first) GF is retired. 

1 Don rank per district - Max 3 BG's and forts can hit other city's members but not your own. Can be attacked by all ranks from target city durign war time. Gain GF rank when previous one retires, gains half points from city war to contribute to their scoreboard rank as GF when rankign up sould they survive.

Multiple CL ranks per district no sponsorship required and crucially no way to see which crews are operating directly in your district. Attains Don rank by dueling current Don or in the event of no Don/dead Don a random role between all high confidence CL's (see below for confidence)

Each crew can have a max of 6 members, cl, one consig, one rh, one hitman (more on this rank below), 2 soldiers however soldiers can sponsor associates outside the family and these lead to their own defense level as per calculation below.

CL does not get forts and 1 BG,  defense bonus based on loyalty of members using math I showed in chat (also below).

GF and Don defense based on loyalty and a vote taken in each family once per week measuring confidence in them throughout a city, impact of each vote is dependant on that charcaters activity level, so dupe accounts and inactive account count for next to nothing.

Cities when going to war fight over control of an extra district where Df's are constructed by those who contributed to war, ie killed someone, cities under attack can retreat to home district and not be killed but wounded (similar to being mugged).

Tie loyatly (percentage and amount) directly to taxes, so you pay over say $100k in a week in taxes to your sponser as a 2 week old wise guy. For your level and rank you contribute X and because you have contributed over the amount Y your total loyalty contribution is Z%.

Now to the bitter part, adding the scorboard above should spark some life and ecourage cooperation within cities and rivalries between cities. To stop someone from fro example getting a group of friends together and simple rinse and repeating their life to constantly rule one city and kill off each other city:

Introduce a cap on gun, a hard limit that cannot be increased over unless you have the rank of hitman and once done so, requires a daily payment to upkeep your gun level. As a hitman you lose all anonimity and your defence is based soley on the amount of money your CL puts into paying off the police in the area of operation (your own city and the next war target city most likely).  So you are at once visible to everyone as a hitman and also far less likely to be hit when not actively attacking another family. This introduces a new layer of strategy to managing your family and who is going to be your hitman for the next war.

Increase the bonuses and regularity available for RP'ers in terms of free VIP/timers/hustle points but base the % chance of a reward on words typed + tips recieved + numbe rof eligible posts.

Introduce a bonus to sponsors money generation capabilities whilst managing a certain number or above active, highly contributing players and maintaining a high confidence vote.