TLDR

Make War part of the grind, not the end of it.

Why?

Increase the relevance of our crew system and general activity by making war a recurring part of the gameplay for everyone, rather than the end of full crews and their accounts in a nightly attack.

Main points

• On a recurring schedule, pitch two groups against each other in a turf war.
• Groups can be individual crews, districts or cities, impacting the scale of the conflicts, but also defining the boundaries.
• Win Requirements are introduced in relation to the scale of the conflict: First to kill N Made Man wins.
• Topics like upper activity, streets activity, active wackers might influence selection for a turf war.
• Help from outside is not possible: “As you pull your gun, you realise a turf war is going. You quickly holster your gun to make sure you don't drag your family into the conflict.”

Cons

• It'll be a huge shift in dynamics. Possibly too big to consider a tweak.
• Code-wise I guess it's not horrible, but also not an afternoon of work.
• We expose our accounts to more danger, but in the end, who signs up for a game like this just to bust people out of jail for three months?
• People might carry grudges beyond the conflict and ask friends to take revenge as soon as the official turf-war is over.

Pros

• Being part of a crew means something: you live and die for your family.
• Everyone is relevant: From gangsters to pro shots to offensive actions by trained wackers.
• Having trained wackers becomes important for a family, not a reason to go swimmin with da fishes after two months.
• All these points require motivation and training within crews, which should increase activity across the board.
• The moments before a turf-war should see increased activity as well.

Timing

• A turf-war can only start if none is active.
• A turf-war should start at different times, to allow for focused participation across time-zones.
• A turf-war start could be announced (Turf war starting in 12 hours and 15 minutes), without knowing the participants yet.

Alternative

This can actually be self-organised by the user-base, but requires determined leaders to enforce it. This might be challenging given even the "strongest” enforcers might end up in a turf-war. In short, it needs buy in that the turf-war experience is more rewarding than the alternative.

Additional thoughts

• Regular wars initiated by users can still happen of course.
• Betting systems can be introduced:
• Part of the total bets going to the victors of the turf-war (reward for participation)
• Part of the total bets goes per ratio to the betters.
• Buy-outs could be considered (although I fear many would chose this by default)

What next?

Please, share your feedback.

It's quite a big change, but it is for a clear purpose: Make war a gameplay element of participation, instead of frustration. The latter can still happen of course, but by making war part of the grind our community would become more lively and dynamic.

Few More Cons:

• The game becomes primarily about preparing for war cycles.
• Making war recurring could lead to players feeling exhausted or burned out from constant conflict, especially in a text-based game where interactions are more manual and time-consuming than in action-based games.
• If war becomes routine rather than climactic, players might feel that victory loses its weight. War may stop feeling like a meaningful accomplishment and become just another chore in the game cycle.
• Requiring active participation across time-zones can still leave some players consistently disadvantaged. Turf wars during their inactive hours could lead to helplessness. 
• Players who log in casually or have limited time might feel punished, as they’ll repeatedly get caught in wars they can’t meaningfully participate in, leading to frustration or flatout quitting the game. 

While Satan loves death, I vote no. 

Ah yes, take the one thing that people get the most excited about, stay up for actual days for during planning and surviving and take all of the strategy and joy out of it. 

I'd rather it be applied to OCs with bigger stakes NY vs PH etc or something without any death. 

Thanks for sharing that Satan.

Those are fair points, but also solveable points. Issues as "Recurring" or "Repeatedly get caught" are matters of timing and "selection odds". It shouldn't lead to that if we callibrate things well enough. I'd argue though that majority of the players currently aren't caught up in anything at all. I admit, I haven't been around for a while so I really have the recent Katerina situation to reflect on. But I assume that the vast majority of wars that happen are really well planned take-downs where the results of failed shots and cleanup take up most of the "war time". 

I like to highlight where you said "players might feel that victory loses its weight". When takedowns are majority of the war effort, I think the "war" itself gives little accomplishment or sense of victory too many people people. I think knowing what's coming and ending up in stand-off requires far more effort than the typical war. It also requires far more interaction across the board. Fighting a war on equal terms, fighting alongside your brothers and sisters should give more sense of accomplishment.

Reflecting on the Katerina situation, that's something that stood out. 1 or 2 hitters that ravage the ranks across the country for five days. Unless that was a chore no one was interested in, that sounds like an opportune moment to celebrate a victory for any family. But most families, despite their numbers, lost it. And I suspect that's because there was no communal motivation, or even skill, to fight, because war isn't something families typically need to do. War is something a select few practice, but many more suffer from.

The objective is to level that: everyone is involved, everyone wins and everyone suffers.

Elodia, thanks for your thoughts.

First off, all that can still happen with any user initiated war.
I think what I propose requires as much strategy and surviving as parties are motivated for.

If at 11:59 you're not in war. But at 12:00 you might be... you better have a plan. You might not, but if a possible opponent has that plan, at 12:01 you might have lost. However, if both have a plan, you might end up with interesting battles that last days that require all that strategy you require.

If by strategy you mean stay offline, till the Vision person filled the spreadsheet after spending 50 million on private flights... well, you know what, you can even have that. The thing is your possible opponent might have that spreadsheet as well and isn't sleeping this time.