"We have killed the casual player from having any input into the game and we need to find a way to bring them back."

Another valid point. The casual player meant much more in the past. In the days of capped BGS, any single member of a family was important in war due to the the boost they gave their leader. As the report highlighted, this is now frankly negligible due to the self sustaining angle the game has taken. Even with the 2:1 NPC example used in the report (many crews have a higher ratio) it is possible for a Leader to rely on no one but himself to care for 123 bgs a day. If he wants to dabble in the credit marketplace too, all the better.

BG wack as I understood it was a feature to bring the casual player into the game. With this perk (and other contributing factors) the opposite has been achieved. Now, a leader does not lead loyalty from the casual player. Oftentime, the first words a casual player may read from a one to one mail from his leader are 'shoot his bgs'. So yes, they're 'involved' in war time, but largely ignored in the 99% of the time that peace reigns.

Is this a criticism of the current leaders? No, I know about 3 of them so I wouldn't do that. All I can say is that if I were a leader now, I'd probably be ignoring my members, and I'm a player who when placed in a position of leadership or authority, relishes the prospect of earning his crew's loyalty.

That loyalty is largely redundant now. You don't have to have members willing to die for you because if they die it doesn't affect you. You've still got a legion of 100+ self sustaining bodyguards. That's a fundamental flaw for me, and it removes itself too far from a roleplay aspect for this game to ever replicate the mob experience.

Sprozz?

Welcome back.

Can I have your babies now?

The longevity of accounts is still one of the fundemental flaws in the current game. Which I remember at the time we encouraged. It could have been 2 years ago now when we decided we wanted more cities and more crews in each one. Meant so that a war didnt nessesarily involve the entire game. A war was between two cities and everyone else would lock their doors and pull the shutters down until the morning. We also wanted to give new accounts the choice of where to settle themselves. Previously the choice was one in six. Each city had 1 leader. Well they certainly have the choice now!

We certainly dont need the room those extra families provide. Lets take Chicago for example, no particular prejustice just a prime example and the first city on the crew list. Excluding the GF family, there are 277 inhabitants shared between 9 families at the time of writting this. An average of 30 members per family. Take the NPMs out of that and it proberly halfs to 15. (Im sure squishy will pull me up on that one :/)

So we find that the families although they look enticing with 30 or so members are really quite short of members. Consider then that of those 15 or 20 members you have your veterens. You, your right and left hands then your hitsquad leader and your family consigliere. knocks that number down again to maybe 10 or 15 guys. A couple may be IA. A couple maybe new players, first time accounts.

In years gone by a family was just that, 50 guys that were loyal to one person. The CL didnt take part in the getting to know of the first timers he was too busy running the family. Now we expect that leader to do so much more.

We see the veterens now holding every bold or underlined job going. They are spread amongst the cities not really acheiving much. It meant so much more when you had 15 or 20 veterens all working togethor. I digress.

My point is that the idea of dividing and conquering clearly isnt working for us. Is it not time to go back to the 1 family per city? Obviously with the GF rank coming in it would have to be 2 or 3 CLs under the GF but 9?