Why not reset the game xmad or ny's day nd cap bgs to 100 nd just dont make as many ria's to stop guns been over trained to the bg ratio?

Question for Squishy... Was there ever a notion within the site's administration to simplify this BG scenario by drastically increasing the cost & effectiveness of a single BG thus lowering the #'s (cap)?

I remember it being mentioned in several of the old forums but am curious as to whether you gave it proper consideration or not? There's talk of the lengthy accounts here in this thread and it got me to thinking...?

If you upped the importance of owning BG's by making them uber expensive and played with the attributes they give the player - you could then justify an old account having an excessive number of BG's. (Whether bought or paid) Simply put - Same or better protection (per BG) at a higher cost = fewer BG's per account. A scaled down version if you will?

But some random gangster SHOULDN'T be able to go around and buy a BG. From role-play purposes alone, a BG should be provided to them by their CL for protection as a reward for, for example, exceptional service. And they SHOULD be harder to wack, but if, say, a BG has 500 health, that means 5 shots still kill it. You can re-work the way protection works for BGs to offset the more health, maybe instead of 4 hours protection, they only get an hour protection.

To be frank, Bodyguards need to stop being treated like so much disposable garbage, and be made to MEAN something.

But, if you're just looking for quick and easy fixes, here's two. Bodyguards can now no longer be bought unless you're Made Man or higher. Bodyguards lock price at the highest rank your character has achieved, thereby getting rid of this ridiculous "demote to load up on BGs" phenomenon. I have a hard enough time suspending disbelief enough to allow a Godfather to be better protected than the President of the United States, it's BEYOND the bounds of acceptability that a gangster be equally as protected.

If it being unfair to some players is the only reason you're not instituting either the Locked Price or No BGs Below Made policies, then I'm going to say this for the first time since I started playing this game, eight years ago:

Let it be unfair.

Yes, it will suck that (to take an example from my own crew) Duke was able to take advantage of the demote-load up on BGs move, and someone else won't, but it will make things more fair for everyone as things readjust and characters die and new characters are born.

Right now, there are three options to be able to put a realistic choke on BGs while a real, honest-to-god solution is worked out.

1. Leave it alone, which is the option we're going with now. Because, and I'm not trying to be an asshole or jump down your throat here Squishy - I hope you know that, this BG cap won't accomplish anything. It won't. The only way it could have was if there wasn't a week's delay implementing it, which just gave CLs the chance to get as much money as they can and artificially inflate that number as high as it can possibly go. Even if they just let those extra BGs die because they can't sustain them, the cap's still set at that number so their goal is accomplished. Obviously, I don't know what that number is. But assuming it's ~500... just from an RP aspect, can you imagine the logistics of that? If you're the Godfather of Hoboken and have 500 Bodyguards... what do you do when you have to pee? How can you fit them all in the can with you?

2. Implement a choke, which will be the most unfair option. But it's a real, feasible stopgap until something better is figured out.

3. A reset and then the implementation of one of those two options, or the implementation of a final working solution. Which we all know will never happen, so it's pointless to even talk about.

And as for the point of a Godfather having as much protection as the President... well, there are ~3200 agents in 28 cities nationwide, not all of them are guarding the President at one time, and even if they were... this game is set in the 1920s-1930s, when the protection details were much smaller, so either way my point, I think, still stands.

Yes, I suppose the functional aspects of the game outweigh the RP advantages that less BG's afford. On the other hand, if they were more costly and less effective then it just wouldn't be as fun! Thanks for the proper info. Squishy.