DeadlySin and Jackpepper are indeed the exceptions to this rule. However they both started when demoting for bodyguards was in practice and were in fact under the protection of others or worked with others that had demoted for bodyguards at some point. Some people may say that this does not matter and I am not here to argue them.

Regardless I am all in favor of stripping down the game, making bodyguard cost constant at the highest price you can buy them at, and removing Durdens and RIAs as well. I agree, a thug with hundreds of bodyguards is nuts.

The problem we are trying to solve is not keeping people from becoming IWP. That is actually not really an issue. The problem we are trying to solve is 2 month old Don's playing, building up money and guns, using a feature that is widely seen as a punishment to demote with all their stats, not losing a single thing in the process except units which are easy to gain back and being rewarded with hundreds of bgs. To try to prevent players from becoming IWP is just silly.

Asylum, I did not easiest, I said simplest, in terms of coding. Your idea doesn't even actually really put an end to demoting for bgs, which is the whole purpose of this. But your idea does mean changing MANY game features, instead of this idea which changes one. Why do we need to make it so complicated? The answer is... We don't. Sure you're trying to blend your idea with this one, but it's still your idea you're trying to shove in there. The bodyguard system does not need a complete overhaul. It just needs to see an end to demoting big accounts to bg them up.

DeadlySin wasn't under anyone's protection when buying his Bodyguards at full price, he was a Crew leader in Las Vegas at the time.

If demoted, take away their gun stat... :D

"The problem we are trying to solve is not keeping people from becoming IWP. That is actually not really an issue. The problem we are trying to solve is 2 month old Don's playing, building up money and guns, using a feature that is widely seen as a punishment to demote with all their stats, not losing a single thing in the process except units which are easy to gain back and being rewarded with hundreds of bgs. To try to prevent players from becoming IWP is just silly."

In that case you would see no problem with making bodyguard cost constant across ranks at the highest price it is possible to buy them at since DeadlySin is the example that it is possible?

There is no fair way to fix the issue of demoting for bodygaurds without changing the pricing for bodygaurds as it stands currently.  In order to encourage genuinine effort from everyone, you have to make it that there is no advantage from receiving money at any given time in an accounts lifetime. 

As PC-Grin said himself. "As to having to sacrifice an account to appease an imaginary unrealistic constraint on raising protection that makes no sense in the realm of rational thought whatsoever, please explain to me how it is realistic that a nobody Thug would have 100 bodyguards in the first place?"

PC-Warrior, whose the last person to do that? Please, tell me. Give me one. That started from nothing and climbed to the tip top as they went. Someone whose had a similar reign. Because it's been a long, long time.

PC-Cassiopeia, it stops demoting but what do you wanna bet this favors those who have friends at the top even more? When I was a leader or Godfather I bged up people I never met because they proved themselves. People I had already known came to me and often got BGed off the bat just because we were friends or because they were consistently proving their accounts.

So this would hurt anyone that no one knows for sure. And the predictability factor is still there. I can take an educated guess on almost 20-50 kill range of being sure of hitting a shot.

Those likely DeadlySin should be rewarded with better bodyguards. His bodyguards should do more, not the same as every rank. That makes no sense and even furthermore could lop side things. Is it fair that someone whose Don can sit under a Godfather and be taken down by anyone with 150 kills because they can't get the bodyguards to defend themself while thug's can sign up and through friends get bodyguards that not even top guns can touch? I don't think so.

So simply taking demotion out isn't going to solve a lot of problems. If anything it's going to cause more chaos and make people hate that system more. Demotion is a punishment as is. A big enough punishment? Probably not. So take away the benefit of demoting to an extent and less people would do it as often. There are other options but this is the SIMPLEST and EASIEST thus also being the laziest. It needs well thought out before "Hey guys, this should be purely a punishment. Plus it's easy to implement." Really? If the idea came up with wasn't my idea would it change it? Because that idea was actually discussed amongst other people so not all of it is entirely my idea. I just happened to put it all together and make it public.

Why not make the price double? When they first start off they are 750k as usual, then once they demote back down they are at 1.5mil. Then if they rank up again and demote again for BGs make it 3mil per BG

Why not make it so that only Made Man and above can purchase bg's! It would make more sense i think.

*carries on the 'why not' theme*

Why not... just have no BG's at all? :)

Because BGs, or the Credits often utilised to fund BGs, are a major source of the games income.

No BGs = less credits bought for the purchase and training of BGs. Look around at the game and see the amount of BGs in use, removing such a tool would be a really poor move financially for the game.

I still would love to see something like BGs remaining at any Cap they met; i.e. Ranked to Gangster then even if demoted to Thug your BG will still cost 1.5 mill. and so on.

We are back to the double demoting stage, so the time to fix this with the least possible impact has probably passed. Hopefully we won't regret it.

Double demotions. What a joke. A total and absolute joke.

why not just limit the BGs?

thug can buy 1

gangster can buy 2

etc...

till made man and at that point the limit is taken off and the player can buy as much as he want/can

Jabruu, I've often agreed this should be the way of it.

I don't think there should be a limit of how many you can buy based on rank as there are people who will gamble that they are going to have a good account that will last a while buy a lot of BG's from the start. Most times they do this by selling credits on the marketplace thus flooding the market and bringing the prices down.

There is another suggestion for making the BG cost a single static price which can be found HERE

Don't know if this has been suggested, but I see the simplest way of making a demotion into a punishment is this:

If you are demoted, the game looks at the average stats of everyone playing at the rank you are demoted to, all the thugs, all the gangsters, or all the Earners etc.

It then resets your stats to that average. So if you have 250 kills, and you are demoted to Gangster, and the average kills for a Gangster in the game is 8 then your kills are now 8. Same with all the other stats.

Sure this doesn't take into account your initial answer set, but so what? Demotion is supposed to be a punishment, not a bonus. If you are demoted and your Wack or Def is now lower than when you first started, then that's your own fault for being demoted.


At the moment the things you loose when you are demoted are easily replaced, Drug Units, DFPs and the like, plus you can now buy 100s of BGs at next to nothing. This effectively makes demotion a non punishment, which is why you only ever see it used to BG up RHM and the like.

Seems like another solid idea to me.

I doubt it will be considered viable though.

Sounds like a sensational idea to me, also.

Sammo, I would suggest you create the suggestion to see if any other users wish to add their thoughts on it.

As much as i would like a fix for this problem the truth is you have too many people who have benefitted from this already, so any such system would have to change to a time of reset in my mind; not that i am prompting one.  The truth is i would do away with fortifications and bgs altogether if it wasn't about bringing money into this game as after over 10 years of this and org i just look at it as overly defensive(the removal of wb even if not a perfect system another step in making people almost immortal, i just wait for 1%'s to go next.).

The truth is you punish the gun for demoting you slow any chance of overthrowing a system, you punish them financially you slow the rate of change.  We regularly hit these points some call stagnancy others call rebuilding, and we know at the end the bigger the ranks the bigger the decimation at the end.  If we never had the bg's or fortifications maybe the game would be more unstable and exciting like when i first started playing.  Maybe is romanticism or maybe is just watching the money build up and bg build up in the game which some of us fought against in the roman era but the truth is i know have an ability to just walk away from the game and not give a damn like i used too.  i don't play hardcore anymore partly due to work, partly due to i look at all the effort to a degree and think what else i can do with that time and for a newbie especially coming in and being hit by realisation i honestly wonder why some bother.

I'm sure this has been suggested before and I apologise for not re-reading this whole thread or the multitude of others elsewhere on the subject but why not just remove the need for demotion at all. 

Since tapering is the phrase de jour at the moment taper the costs.  Have it so your first 10 bodyguards cost 500k each.  Anyone can pick them up at any rank, it costs the same whether you're a thug or a don.  Then step it up 250k for the next set of 5:

1-10 - 500k each

11-15 - 750k each

16-20 - 1000k each

21-25 - 1250k each

26-30 - 1500k each

31-35 - 1750k each

36-40 - 2000k each

41-45 - 2250k each

46-50 - 2500k each

etc etc etc.

Therefore to get to 50 you spend $57 million and that can be spent throughout the lifetime of your character, all at once or whatever and it doesn't require the ridiculous demotion.  The figures are for inicative purposes, getting to IWP costs 200m+ with this costing. 

It allows the casual user to bg up throughout their lifetime rather than feeling left out of the loop once you hit earner.