We are all voyuers, and irl, you can mug or bribe a postman, to get him to give you mail before it is delivered. I have come up with a few ideas of how this could work in game:

Bribe Postman

Like you can pay the FBI/Cops to tell you drug prices, stop you getting arrested, you should be allowed to bribe a postman. This would allow you to read anothers unread (not UNREAD = not yet delivered!) post. And depending on how much you pay, depends on how much information you recieve. It could be done in stages:

Stage 1: Random piece of unread post from a random mafioso in your city. Very cheap, random, and you the postman still delivers the letters.

Stage 2: Same as above, but postman does not still deliver the post. You keep it. More expensive, but still random

Stage 3: You get to request which mafioso's post you want to read, from someone within your city. Expensive, read the post, postman still delivers letter, risk that if there is no unread post, you sitll have to pay

Stage 4: Same as above, but you get to keep the post, vv expensive.

You could then have additionals depending on the characters 'info' stats and 'stealth' stats. Depending on how these outwiegh eachother (between the info of the person who's post is stolen and the person who steals' depends on whether you find out about the stolen post. Again, a few stages:

'You notice that your post has already been opened'

'You notice that a letter is missing'

And potentially, you never know anything!

On top of this, everyone will also be able to bribe the postman to stop them selling post to others. This works in the same way as you having to brimbe the FBI to stop them raiding your DFP, or the way you bribe the cops to ensure you never get sent into jail. It would cost a decent amount a week (say $1million) to ensure your post is not read. Howver, if someone offers your postman enough (such as $2million) they can then still bribe the postman by offering more then you.

Also, if you are bribing the postman, he will often tell you who stole the post. Ranging from full name, to ??*n*K

Rob Postman

Another option would be to allow us to rob the postman. You get random pieces of unread post for mafioso in that city. What you get is completely random, and your ability is based on a mixture between your PP stats and your wack stats.

Depending on your stealth stats, hsows what WS's go out, it will work in a similar way to wack.

Nobody saw it

You saw someone rob the postman

you saw *n*K

You saw DnaK rob the postman

You saw DanK rob the postman

These are just a few ideas I had when laying in bed last night not being able to sleep. Still probably need a bit of developing, dont know if it will add enough to the game, but would assist in taking money out of the game, and give different ways to attack people, causing more conflict, which is always good!

Thoughts?

Well...I can see how this would be beneficial to a family during wartime, but how else would it even be remotely useful otherwise? I mean no disrespect, but I have no desire, and I am sure my fellow players are with me on this, to read somebody's mail.

Anthony, I do partially agree, all it will do is make people stop sending MM's to eachother and use other forms of communication (facebook, irc, etc, etc). And you are right, it doesnt really add too much to the game, except for taking money out of it!

However, one advantage is every crew has a HS leader. You find out who that is, and what day they usually collect reports from their members. You then rob his postman throughout that day and find out every hitter in that squad...its only a minor idea, but can be used to great effect

Okay, let me bring up a hypothetical situation. Let's say the average crew has...8 full time hitters in it. The average crew has about 25 members (not counting godfather crews). And this would definitely be an expensive thing to use; I mean how could it not be, with privacy at stake? So lets put the cost...oh at $500,000. To discover the names of every hitter (if you could offer the bribery on a shot-report day, would cost at least $4,500,000. and thats if you found them all out one right after another. So wouldn't it be easier (and cheaper) if your in a war to see who takes a shot at your family, or your bodyguard by finding the witness statement, and then killing them? Or even better, just putting so much lead into the air that you kill the entire family?

Anthony, I wouldnt make it cheap to bribe the postman, on the 4 stages I men tioned above, it would cost maybe 10mil to get the post of a specific person in the same city. With it maybe costing 1mil to buy the bost of a random person in the city.

Also, it could be done so that the more post you get depends on how much you pay. So the naybe it costs 5mil for 1 piece of post for a specific person, 10mil for 2 people, and so on. It would be expensive, but a good source of infortmation?

to be honest with you, i see my mail as personal, also where does it stop, intercept who is buying credits, what happens for example if i am mailing helpdesk, or admin for something account related rather than game related . and then you intercept that mail. now my mail dosent get to helpdesk and i then get pissed off because they havent bothered to look into my issue, when actually they didnt get it in the first place?

You've said it yourself-- people would simply stop using mobmail for any meaningful purpose. Families would stop sending out any sort of sensitive information, leaving those who choose not to use IRC(what?) or those who simply could not access it on a particular day completly out of the loop. On top of that, it would cease even to be a tool to connect and/or bullshit with people one has formed a personal bond with, beyond the context of the game.

So much of the actual human dealings already take place off of the site itself, why would you add to that?

What would be the next step, coding in the 1% chance of randomly dropping dead every time you post in the streets?

Thanks for killing my idea guys! But like all god inventors, when one idea is killed, a new one will have to be created...

So, what about privacy? One topic no one has discussed is the fact that at times (Very often actually) people discuss their personal lives via mobmail. How would you feel if part of a mail such as this were released to someone it was not intended for?

This feature would invade player privacy.

I say screw the city thing, I think robbing the postman should let you intercept a random player's incoming mass mail. Mass mails are usually less personal life and more, "our family needs to do this." The only question would be, do you get the next mass mail to be sent, or the last one that was sent, and does a player not get their mail or was the postman just given some extra's he can sell off? I think it can work, not to mention the only thing to counter it would be for families to send a bunch of mass mails randomly with no info on it, but would they? A CL can be very annoying if he/she has a family sending out more than a mass mail per day. 

Canucklehead, didnt really think about the privacy point. and i guess that put the final nail in the coffin and kills this idea.