Yes I know this is a subject that has been discussed a lot and changes to demotion have already been done, however, I beleive that the most important aspect of it was not changed.

In my views demotion is a punishment, there so, if a player is demoted he shouldn't in any way get advantages. It is very clear, that is not the case here, nowadays we rarely see a demotion being done for punishment reasons, we only see demotion being done so that people can enjoy the advantages and certain finantial benefits.

While I totally understand that people can come here and say that I have benefitted of such action, which is true, I'm a firm beleiver that players should enjoy whatever facility the game offers in order to mantain themselves as equal competitors against other players. Which is why I'm bringing this subject up. I see this facility as totally unreasonable, and I will offer a suggestion to fix the problem.

I find it totally unreasonable and unacceptable, that a player can start their account and play during months training their guns, raising their skills, then be demoted for non punishment reasons, keeping all the skill intact and buy bodyguards for the price of a starter account.

Why should a Capo, a Consig ever be able to buy bodyguards for the prices a thug can? While the Consig and Capo have spent months working, raising money, building skills that he will not loose with such demotion. Why are we letting demotion actually be an advantage here?

If a Consig is taking a demotion but he is keeping the skills, the kills, why shouldn't he also keep the same prices for a bodyguard? I know that prices of bodyguards are only based on rank, but rank clearly doesn't mean a thing anymore when you have mademans, consigs taking demotions for an advantage. Rank also doesn't mean shit, once you have a goomba with 700 kills that can kill leaders.

So with this in mind, my suggestion is that once someone gets demoted, their bodyguard prices do not reset, or that the prices of bodyguards are made variant through that account's lifetime and based on the skills level of such account.

As with all threads that discuss this problem, I'm hesitant to spend too much time on them, because it seems obvious at this point that we have a problem from a game-play perspective with the BGs. This stems from account length and is compounded by the demote facility, much of which has already been discussed in detail elsewhere.

I can't fault the logic here at all and I do believe that double, triple, quadruple demotions for bodyguards are just further highlighting the problems that we have in the game and sucking more fun from it.

However, I do not believe that you could enforce such a change upon a live game. It would be present a huge advantage to anyone who utilised a demote feature to purchase their BGs which is a significant percentage of the population. I firmly believe this needs to be addressed, but only if it will affect everyone universally in the form of a reset. Otherwise, a near unassailable gap will exist.

~C~

I couldn't agree with this more. The current system is broken- yet, to remain competitive, people who do not necessarily agree with the way things are must continue to act in a non-desirable way to avoid a practical suicide.

I have an extremely simple suggestion: Only Made Men+ can purchase bodyguards, and every bodyguard at every rank costs 3 million (or some other static number).

Realistically, no mere associate is going to have bodyguards. This also makes the rank of Made Man more important, which is always beneficial.

In advance, the big (and justified) complaint about making this drastic change is going to be that people who have loaded up on BGs with the current system will have an advantage over characters in the new system.

To which I offer the following easy remedy: Announce it so far in advance, that it's fair.

If the administration comes out and says "BGs will cost X at any rank and be available at Made Man+ only beginning on January 1, 2012." who can complain? Game-changing announcements, I believe with regards to becoming a GF, were announced 90 days in advance. Give people a date that is 3-6 months away so everyone has a chance to benefit under the current system, and then when the day finally arrives make this desperately needed change and improve the game.

For the record, I would also be in favor of Katarina's suggestion. Anything that fixes the problem, really.

The system is so skewed at the moment that nothing short of starting over would reduce the gulf between the established accounts and new post-change accounts.

Picking any date, 3-6 months in the future would not be sufficient. That is nowhere near enough time to close the gap between new and old accounts. Indeed, we would be once again in a scenario where we had Anita's account built on a different wack/defence system against everyone else's. That resulted in a reset, because she was virtually unassailable. Similarly, I believe if this was to be implemented, others would be unassailable and the balance would be unfairly stacked against new players through no fault of their own.

The example of the GF ranking change is not a worthwhile comparable to the BG problem. The GF ranking change did not cause any significant change in the game because most accounts already exceeded 3 months in length anyway and I would say that only a handful, if any, missed out on the opportunity to become Godfather because of it. This on the other hand, would definitely cause a significant change in the game because most accounts would be adversely affected, whilst others remained untouched. I would argue vehemently against any change that caused a schism between new and old, as it must cause problems where everyone is not affected in the same way.

Addressing the symptoms of the problem is not a viable solution. It is the cause which must be addressed and to do that the dynamics of the game must be altered. That can only fairly be done on a level playing field, which would require a reset. Any after the fact changes, like all those we have seen from the moment the BG cap was removed and the credit marketplace subsequently introduced, will continue not to fix this.

~C~

No matter what, i totally agree with Katarina and have been trying to discuss on the thread lays below 

http://mafiareturns.com/comm/thread/170137

Purpose of these topic is a bit different ( - it was a discussion about reality and bodyguards, but at the end reaches up the same point )..Demotion to buy cheaper bodyguards kills the realism of game and there must be a rational solution of this dilemma

Another fantastic idea - both Kataina's and Crawford's, that will simply never happen. Which is a shame, but eh, what can you do?

This is a problem that needed fixing for a long time, it could have been dealt before much easily but for some reason the admins decided to not, now it seems that it is impossible to fix while still being fair to the entire community unless like chuckle said there was to be a reset but I am 100% percent against a reset. Yes the game would improve greatly if one of these many solutions to the demoting problem were put in place. But like few people said it wouldn't be possible to put into place without making it greatly disadvantaged for those who haven't taken a chance at this flawed system.

What could be done is for example if this idea were implemented the admins would then approach everyone who had taken a demotion for bgs and offer them a refund for the price they paid when demoted for all their bgs or the person pays the proper price for their bgs at which they were before they received the demotion. Only thing that would be difficult would be the guys who took multiple demotions. Also give ample time before this happens so people can save up the required ammount of money which would be easy considering the amount of cash the floats around the game now.

But anyway I dont think the admins want to fix the problem cause I'm sure they make money from people buying credits so they can sell them then get demoted and get shit tonne of bgs. If that werent the case why else didn't they fix it before when they could? This is just my thoughts not accusations so please correct me if i'm wrong in this judgement.

"now it seems that it is impossible to fix while still being fair to the entire community"

this is a very short term view of things.

Admins of a game need to think long term, which is why I would dare say, thats not why it was not fixed or changed yet.

you make a change, eventually the existing players's accounts die and the new generation ranks up based on the new rules.  Changes to the way things work happens all the time.

So with this in mind, my suggestion is that once someone gets demoted, their bodyguard prices do not reset, or that the prices of bodyguards are made variant through that account's lifetime and based on the skills level of such account.

i dont understand why it`s impossible to bring this feature in. It really makes no sense that a Crewleader's demoting his man just to buy cheap bodyguards. Officially kills the realism of game

2 points:

1) Changing it now will upset the live game:

Solution is easy, get rid of ALL bodyguards everyone has, and give the cash back, at the ammount they bought the BGs. So if someone got demoted, bought 10 BGs at 750k, and is now an Earner, they will be returned $7.75mil, and then have to rebuy their BGs at the Earner price, given them 3 BGs. This will keep it fair and allow the system of demotion and buying BGs to be reset...

2) A possible solution

When you get promoted, your Bg's approach you asking for a wage increase, due to the extra danger of protecting a higher ranker. This wage increase is basically 50% of the increase between the rank you were, and the rank you are now. So if you are a gangster with one BG, and get promoted to Goomba, the price difference between them is 500k. therefore, the wage increase will be 50% of that, or 250k. You basically have X amount of days (maybe until the next time you are available to train?) to come up with the cash? If you fail to pay the money, your BG then quits. If you pay, your BG then remains by your side. And for the lower ranks where you might rank again between the moment you first rank and the deadline day for payment? Well this roles through and the BG then asks for a bigger wage increase by the end of the deadline...This wil

a) mean people cant afford to be demoted to Thug and then buy 100's of BGs as they wont be able to afford to keep them

b) Take some game out the game as folk buy BGs then cant afford to keep them when they rank, so lose them and then have to rebuy later when they can afford them.

Any idea involving BGs will need the feautre to be reset. To make it fair, you would maybe have a wack amenesty for a 24 hour period, told 1 week in advance, to give those who lose their BGs a chance to buy them back, without the fear of being wacked. and then the feautre is reset and can be controlled again 

Two points i`d like to state now

1 - ) Yes Mr DanK, i totally agree what you just suggested above. But especially first one would change all the determined and made strategies and frankly, none of the crewleaders would like to see this change..But still, to me ,that seems the only way to change this demoting bullshit logic.

2 - ) Second point is , :)

Let`s keep this thread alive until The Almighty Admins change their minds and , find a proper way to bring a new rule that makes sense and keep the realism of game

Thanks

Totally agree with you Katarina "nowadays we rarely see a demotion being done for punishment reasons, we only see demotion being done so that people can enjoy the advantages and certain financial benefits."

you hit the nail on the head, the only reason why people get demote is  for BGs! It's Unrealistic. As for the solution I like both yours and Crawford idea, something needs to been done.

Some precautions have stepped in to neutralize this issues, for example, you used to be demoted and keep your same start time ... meaning if you were demoted to thug but had 4 months game time played on your account, thoerectically you'd be able to make Godfather as soon as you got the points without having to wait another 4 months.

The problem is not totally with the  feature though. We've come to the point where we want to live as long as possible, build up as much defense as possible, attain the highest ranks possible. Because of this new mindset that has developed over the years there are more people with lots of money and nothing more to spend it on, there are lots more bodyguards because people can afford to pump lots of money into them.

In the old days wars were far more frequent, money stockpiles wasn't nearly as much, ranks were worked hard for and not given so easily.(Don in minimum time was almost unheard of unless the player went absolutely nuts and never left the game and wrote insane amounts of business threads.)

Needless to say we've come to a new age where a feature that used to work fine has now come to be a burden but its a burden that we've created and I think that we will have to work on solutions to this problem ourselves. I don't feel its necessary to burden the coders to fix this problem for us, but thats just the way I see it.

Another suggestion would be to fix the kill/bg ratio for example it takes less kills to kill an IWP than it currently does and then it would fix the having to raise up a gun verse the have to raise up the money for bg issues.

1) Changing it now will upset the live game:

Solution is easy, get rid of ALL bodyguards everyone has, and give the cash back, at the ammount they bought the BGs.

Easy? How about this scenario; I sold my credits when I signed up to buy some of my BGs. I was never demoted, never took advantage of that feature, and made an investment when I felt it was worth it. I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea; because I shouldn't lose some of my bodyguards because I had cash on startup. This is preposterous, and shouldn't even be reasonably considered. Sure, it may combat the ones who were demoted, but at the cost of every single BG someone bought without abusing the demote feature? No way.

Pharol, surely the admins can look through the logs and see when BGs were bought? If they were before a demotion, they keep them, only those bought after a demotion get 'bought back'.

Not really FattyFats they don't hold onto that information for very long, imagine how much code they would have to look through for how many people determine who and how many bgs where bought before a demotion ... or how about this say they were demoted and then rank back up to Made Man where they buy 10 more bgs ... does that count ... see how fast it gets really confusing, theres no real simple solution except for maybe what I've suggested and make the gun to bg ratio smaller than it already is. For example say its 10 kills required to take out 1 bg and then 10 kills more per each bodyguard (not saying these are the stats just using an exampe) so 2 bg = 20 kills and so on just make the ratio of 1bg:10kills down to more like 1bg:3kills

i got a better idea. lets just get rid of bgs alltogether and go back to offense vs defense answers.

TheKing, it's a business now. They can't do something like that; something that would essentially remove a huge money-spending aspect of the game. No way.

Nah TheKing can't do that, it's a good feature for the game, it's just being abused.

I still like Katarina  idea, It's definitely heading in the right direction

her suggestion "is that once someone gets demoted, their bodyguard prices do not reset, or that the prices of bodyguards are made variant through that account's lifetime and based on the skills level of such account. "

This would discourage demotion, also  the start dates should remain the actually start date of the character. Like previously stated if bodyguard prices drop to rank when demoted then there achievement could also drop to the demote rank.