After a brief discussion on IRC and a smattering of 'check out this member whore' threads, I believe we may have stumbled upon a solution.

I am advocating that new players are displayed in a different colour on the 60 second list to the rest of us. This would mean that a returning account would be the current default colour and a new player would show in say, yellow. I will leave the actual colour to the admin discretion, but the benefits of the suggestion are as follows:

- This would allow genuinely new players to receive the help and guidance that they need
- We could come to expect some sort of standard from returning players, once they have been educated as to standards - approaching rather than being approached
- We wouldn't have to bombard returning players with invites and 'are you new?' mails

The potential pitfalls that have been identified are:

- What if I want to pretend I'm new?
- Won't this just make them targets?

To the first, if this is a toggle option, with a new master account having this defaulted to on so new players always show yellow unless they turn it off, an incognito attempt could still be achieved by flicking this on and trying to deceive people just as they do now.

As to the second, I don't think so. It is so rare now that we ever see innocent -48 hours Gangsters die. I do not think this would shorten the life expectancy in any way.

I am happy to hear of further potential drawbacks from this, but I think this might be a real solution to a couple of issues we have been having here.

~C~

I do not get why this will be needed. Whilst I understand it would be useful in terms of allowing us to help newer members, throwing love in them to make them feel wanted. Like you say, it makes coming back incog harder. Then you mention the toggle option which just makes it completely pointless. Surely then everyone is going to set up an account as incog, at least to start (which is what most do!) therefore making the option pointless as if everyone is toggling it on, and therefore making it pointless. Bit like in F1, teams spend millions to create a new part, only to have that new part copied once rolled out, therefore wasting millions of pounds. This will just waste coders time as everyone will start 'yellow' and therefore would leave us with the same status quo as now.

The majority of people who do not come back as incog now, usualy have a hint in their name, such as Jr, or II, etc. Just seems like it will end up being pointless as everyone will come back as incog...

I don't really understand your argument.

At the moment:

I am an experienced player. I die.
I come back and I have 5 mails asking if I am new and do I know what to do.

Equally;

I am new.
I have 5 mails asking if I am new and do I know what to do.

Where as with this suggestion:

I am an experience player. I die.
I come back and everyone knows I am an experienced player. I am expected to conform to a higher standard and not presented with help mails. Anyone who does is member whoring and can be dealt with at a player discretion.

Equally;

I am new.
I have 5 mails telling me what I need to do to succeed.

This helps the people who need help to get it, whilst filtering those who don't out of the process.

~C~

Chuckle, I have had a secondary thought to maybe advance this...perhaps each family should only be allowed to designate how many sponsers they are allowed, based on the size of their HQ? Maybe limit it to 1 sponser for every 10 total slots in the HQ. Therefore a family with a 50 HQ would be allowed 5 sponsers. This would then:

a) Make CL's think about who to make sponsers, based on game knowledge, how long they are online, how trustworthy they are

b) Reduce the amount of potential member whores as there would be less sponsers

c) Give a leader a non-fatal punishment for member whoring. Get caught doing it and they might strip you off your sponsership status, thus losing you the potential income

Just a though...

I see one problem here, and the current game events make it even more so.

While doing this will clarify who the new players are and help them get help and settled down... it also will flag returning players.  In particular ones who might be trying to start playing a new type of character without being labled by the old way they were seen.

This is very relevant right now, since there is a group of players who have been blacklisted and will need to change their names and ways if they want to survive.

Knowing that their characters are not new, is one more step towards identifying them.

I'd think long and hard if flagging new users is worth the impact of removing the protective blanket away from returning players.

That is why there is a way for returning users to flag themselves as if they were new. Hence the toggle option.

Ok, Let me say this about that.

DOH!

that will teach me to pay more attention to the original post than the last.

Chuckle, my appologies :)

Squisy, I agree the game is 24/7, and a limit on sponsers would make leaders think more when designating them. They would be crazy to make all sponsers be living in GMT time zone for example. They would need trusted people throughout the timezones around the world. Just like in theory, a leader should have a RHM in the opposite timezone as themselves to ensure the crew has someone online longer. But that comes down to leaders choice. If they decide that all there sponsers are in a single timezone, they have made that decision and therefore can not moan if they are missing out on potential members who join at 3am GMT, as it was there choice. All I am trying to do is force the leaders to think about their actions more, rather then make every tom, dick n arry a sponser.

I like this suggestion as it's really helping both sides here, for one you will hopefully not get spammed to shit when you sign back up, and it helps the ones who are accustomed to our ways help the newer players, not by whoring them to their family, but at least telling them what they need to do in order to be safe.

Plus it doesn't really affect the whole incog bit, in fact I think it actually helps those who want to remain incog, by allowing them to show up in a different color if they so choose when they return, much easier to play the part of a noob if you have the colors to show it, so to speak. And we all know that a lot of people die in wars, or be it as IA's on their first character, and at least for the next time, they already know what to do when they return and can do so without having to be bothered with a lot of people mailing them.

Thumbs up Chuckle!