A lot of people have been encountering issues with popping open a CA and I wanted to explain what created this situation, and some changes that are being made around it.

There was a personal quantity limit, a district limit, a city limit and a overall complete site limit.  The perfect storm was created when we dropped the number of districts, along side a huge war that left many dead, along with many new GFs/Spawns/MIA Purchases (which trigger spawns, and thus, auto-flash sales).  So there were a very large wave of CAs being popped at the same time.  Most of the time when we hit the limit in the past, it wasn't a big deal, a CA would die shortly there after and we would be below that limit.. but when a large chunk of the CA population was of similar age because of the perfect storm of the above factors, it could be a wait for some to age-out or die - creating large lengthy gaps in the ability to pop CAs.

After going through the math, the following changes are being implemented:

Personal CA limit: 22 (Goes live on or about Aug 18th)(You can be over the limit, but cant crack new ones until you are under)

District aspects of math: Removed, all cities are equal regardless of district count. (now live, but effectively doesn't change anything since all are the same size currently)

Temporary raised city/site max: Anyone within their personal max who has been trying to get their CAs open can do so before the limit comes into play.  (This expires on or about Aug 18th)

TonyTheTailor Having a personal cap stops people from pay to win

Having a city cap stops cities from bulldozing other cities

Having a game wide cap keeps a safety threshold to prevent things going out of scope.

The entire game is like a rube goldberg machine, you have to keep 500 things in perfect unison, if something goes out of spec, then it can cause a chain reaction with unintended consequences for other things that expect things to be within a certain range.

Does this mean the new limit is 22 from what it used to be 42 CAs? If so what was wrong with the 42 limit. It seems the new changes are designed to make the game more restrictive less enjoyable. It used to me unlimited CAs to 42 to now 22? Why and surely there should be a discussion if it is being reduced again. Suggestions to find a reasonable balance

Yes, we have dropped from 42 to 22.  What was wrong with the 42 limit was a few different things.  First, a little history - originally you couldnt have more than the 2 CAs, then we introduced Quads, which included code so that you could open them even if "full" since they were given out as prizes only. Later they were given out during flash sales. We ended up introducing the previous limit when I noticed a trend of legacy money growing exponentially creating an unfair distance between those who could afford an initial investment and those who couldn't, the breaking point was when i did the math and saw a player making about half a billion a month profit from their CAs.  Now, consider that CAs pay for themselves, its a self-sustaining thing that will pay for itself and snowball to more and more and more.  If unchecked, that player would be making tens of billions by now *per month*.  That is not sustainable.  It also creates such a distance between those that have and those that do not.

The reality is that I do not make enough money IRL to pay for the entire game for everyone by myself, it has to be semi self sustaining, so there are things that can be purchased which I believe strike a balance between "the game can continue to operate" and "its not too much of an advantage".  A player making hundreds of millions - billions - trillions are just not numbers that the game was designed around.  I don't think someone who swiped a credit card 8 years ago should be able to steamroll a combined 100 newer players who never have purchased in IRL.

I really do strive to create a level playing field for the 19 year old broke college kid and the 40 year old with a good job and a fair bit of extra cash.  With every feature that can be purchased, we try to make sure it can also be obtained/sidestepped in a reasonable fashion by good old fashion work ethic.

The reason a lot of users couldn't pop their CAs open was because of a fair bit of people rocking the full max max of quad CAs.  Prior to this announcement, 3.55% of the CA max was occupied by players who had the the limit of 2 or under.  The other 96.45% of slots were taken by the people over the limit with quads.  31 people on their own had half of the entire games limit. I have a hard time replying to people asking them to wait patiently for minority of people who are occupying the other 96.45% to retire theirs. 

Is reducing the max the perfect solution? No, but its a stop gap solution to hold us over until a proper one can be put in, (which might be along the lines of "max number of people on your payroll", so once you start getting into large numbers of CAs you have to make a choice on what you want to give up to go past any previous limits, but we are not at that point yet where we can have that discussion)

If you absolutely need to have more CAs, then lean on your family members.  I am sure quite a few players would love the ability to utilize your extra CAs just for the jail benefits, and getting the free kill while forwarding the cash to you.  You have an entire family whose purpose is to support each other, fill in each others gaps (get your mind out of the gutter!) and work as a cohesive unit.  

The goal isn't to make the game more restrictive and less enjoyable, its about trying to balance things so that the greatest good comes to the greatest number of people while keeping the game operating.  

Down the road when the CAs/Payroll are scheduled for their full rewrite, another discussion will be had with more input from users to help shape the feature, but in the meantime this is our temporary fix.

Tom_Hagen, I am really not trying to be a smartass here, but, every family has multiple places where they can speak in game: mobmail, lounge, HQ forum. Your family overall is only as good as the weakest link they allow, and your family's potential is limited by the weakest link in upper structure.  If your family is mute/exclusive to anyone not in the inner circle, then maybe offer to friends that are not in your family?  If you have no friends, you can utilize the above methods to meet some.

I do not dictate who the crewleaders are, if they go out of their way to alienate their own family members, then these are glaring red flags that you are working for people who want the benefits you give them, but not necessarily *you*.