I'll try to keep this one short, it's a pretty simple concept but there's a bit behind it. I'd like to hear from both sides whether like or dislike.

I think it's fair to say that the success rate of OC's has significantly decreased since the removal of NPM's, which has in turn lead to less income. I think an easy solution to this would be to simply lower the difficulty of OC's, and here's why.

Pro's - More success in OCs would make it like it was when there were NPMs, without them actually being there at all, we'd still get the money, and experience.

More money in our pockets means more people buying CD's, which in turn might help kick up the revenue for the games current ecomomic.... Troubles? Who knows, just a thought.

It'd most likely be easy, or relatively easy to code. (Granted this is based on my limited knowledge of coding, forgive me if I am mistaken).

Cons - One of the reasons NPMs were removed (cheers GFC), was to promote user activity between actual users instead of having a bunch of useless bots around. Instead of lowering the difficulty, users could have to coordinate more, or change something, because I myself have been invited to about 8 OC's today and I don't think a single one succeeded.

To finish off, I just think with the combined removal of CDs for achievements (though I did hear in passing that those who wait to cash in will get their CDs instead of extra XP[can this be confirmed or denied?]), and significantly lower OC success rate, it is much harder for a younger account to make money starting off, and it's probably frustrating for those older accounts who are used to regular successes on OC's to all of a sudden switch to failing them more often than not.

Seems you've had quite a spate of bad luck with your crimes.

I can only recall failing about 2 OC's in the last few days. I normally do at least a dozen OCs each day too, so I guess I have an abnormally high success rate if everyone else is failing so much?

I think your reasoning for this idea is fine, you want to offset the loss of the robot boost you previous had.. Well, correct me if im wrong, when the robot's were introduced the Admins didn't suddenly make OCs harder, did they? If not, then surely there can be no issue here as we once managed without the robots and should now be able to again (this was another reason for the TGC wanting them removed, too much people depending on their use - but thats for another time and place)

Personally, I feel people should just organize the organized crimes more. The more people you have available to you, the higher the sucess rate, the more organized would mean more people, ergo an actually Organized Crime should result in a higher chance of success?

Granted, being of a higher rank I could have a disproportionate view as my ability to succeed in these crimes would obviously be higher than those new to our streets, but you did want a broad spectrum of views. I'm eager to see how others feel with this proposal.

Aye, thank you for your input ma'am. I was merely basing this off of what I have experienced since the removal of NPMs (which even with this OC problem, I'm a huge fan of). I've also seen on IRC a lot recently about people failing more often, but it could be a case-by-case situation and I'm also excited to see the discussion I'm sure will follow.

This is an interesting one.

Now, my knowledge of OCs prior to the removal of NPMs is non-existent; at that time, all I had to do was simply click accept, and it either worked out or it didn't. To my memory, I recall the success rate being pretty much 50/50. Since the removal of NPMs, I must admit that in my experience, that has more or less stayed the same.

However, I now have an especially vested interest in OCs given that I'm organising my own, and to that end I'm curious as to how you can raise your chances of success. I'll be honest - NPMS, or lack thereof, never once entered my mind. Moreso, I figured (based on very early assumptions, I've been setting up my own OCs for less than a week) that it has more to do with gang numbers and ranks within that gang. It is quite difficult at times to gather up the right troops for the job, but in my opinion, this only adds to the challenge for me.

I actually enjoy the fact that OCs do seem to be quite tough; it makes me want to work harder at learning how to increase my success rate, in much the same way as when I first started jailbreaks, I kept hammering away at them repeatedly until I was able to hit higher guard numbers.

I must agree with Alabama that realistically speaking, it is highly unlikely that anything was actively altered with regards to the difficulty of OCs due to the removal of NPMs. I think its more that we're feeling the pinch, so to speak. As a player, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. Like I said, I'm a sucker for a challenge. However, there is that small niggling possibility that eventually, the 'pinch' might begin to irritate people. Who knows?

As for the changes making it difficult for new players...I really have to stand on the opposite side of the fence with this one. I'm still pretty new; I may have signed up late October, but I only started playing in November and I have experienced no barriers whatsoever to getting my feet off the ground. Its all about common sense and knowing how to apply a decent strategy, not to mention perserverence in droves.

I'll skip over the rest and get to the last point. While yes, it's true you've only been around since October, you still got time from minute 1 to have the credit for achievements, correct? I think I'm starting to agree with you two on the OC subject, so now I suppose my only complaint/suggestion is to switch that back. Civilians entering this world with few to no friends need that as a way to make money in the beginning, imho.

You are correct in that I was here early enough to garner some benefit from the former system - I overlooked that, so my apologies. It is late, I am riddled with baby-brain and hell, I can't be permanently splendid no matter how hard I try ;)

But no - as we've discussed (away from the thread, in my opulent Drawing Room while drinking Dom Perignon), there is a slight digression from the original topic that holds relevance here, that issue being the problems faced by new members. In fact, these are problems that new members probably wouldn't become aware of due to their lack of familiarity with the game, but it would certainly show in the numbers of those who hang around versus those who sign up and then bugger off after a while.

We sit and vote day in and day out to reel in the new signees - but how do we retain their interest? As StuPickles kindly reminded me, we now have a system in place where we receive some XP for our achievements, and that's about it. We don't even know how much XP or how it measures against anything else (correct me if I'm wrong, there, by all means). I do believe there needs to be a little bit more motivation between Civilian and Wise Guy, more to rope people in and have them really enjoy the game and all its processes. Right now, there just isn't the same monetary incentive there for reasons already pointed out - but what can we replace this with?

We'll we've decided to take out npms from the game and we've decided to move past this as a community and I think the way we need to adjust to the lack of npms is invite more people to our crimes, yes you get less than you used to with the npms but hey, you get more than a fail if you continue to invite more and more people to them.