Oh man. Being honest with admins isn't easy. You always have to worry about saying something wrong so honest criticism is difficult to come by. IMO. 

With that said: I may be misunderstanding this but it comes across as you thinking you/this game should be the center of our entire worlds. It isn't. I know tons of people that only play this game because we've always played this game. Its more of a room in our house rather than the entirety of the house. We play the game WHILE we hang out/do other things. This is the thing we do on the side in addition to. 

I think you need a suggestion box where users can tell you how they truly feel anonymously from the playerbase's vision

I agree 100% with BigEasy. I've played this game for 24 1/2 years. Longest I've ever been away was a year when I lost my shit with Tiggy once upon a time and got an admin ban for a year. I play because I have always played. And while the social aspect was good when we had crews of 100+ people, it hasn't been that way in a long time. I'm genuinely sorry, but there are people who play the game that I genuinely don't want to socialize with, so I can honestly say that its been 4 or 5 years since I have used Lounge, I can't honestly remember the last time I used the chat app, and the only reason I ever interact on the crew/city chat at all is because the game forces me to. 

The people I chat to the most are the people I have been friends with for 15+ years, and we chat whether we are in the same crew, different crews, or aren't actually in a crew. So I don't think another Chat app is going to change things.

I'm over 50, I have a brain tumour, my wife is disabled, my daughter has AUDHD, I have a high pressure job, I admin 3 pages on Facebook, I have interests in AI art and Music, and I play other games as well, so as much as MR is a part of my life, and has been for 25 years, it is no longer my life.

I agree with BigEasy. I don't think players should be forced to not use WhatsApp or Discord, for whatever reason may arise. It's an online game, and if players want to make little groups for hanging out elsewhere, that's entirely their decision to make. If you found out some MR hung out at bars and went out to bowling alleys and talked about literally anything other than MR, will you ban those players from going out to social parties? or from MR? Or should MR players have no other contact with each other outside of MR's IRC, mobmails and OOCs? As I see it, MR brought many of us together, and what player do in their own time and privacy is entirely up to them.

I can totally see where you are coming from and this has been plaguing the game for years. I am glad you are talking about it but I am just really surprised that it comes now rather than between October 2023 and July 2025, when it was so desperately needed and these exact behaviours got so terrible that basically every active experienced player outside of the handful ruining it allied together to remove them. It was truly a poor user experience on a scale which I had not seen before. The only thing to come from it was that unifying act was, in effect, one your ripest chickens coming home to roost, as it showed that if enough people are unhappy enough and prepared to take action they can change things. 

But anyway, yes, outside interaction is a big problem. It has probably always been there to some degree but is now compounded by dwindling numbers, relatively little dilution of the veteran playerbase who have already had a lot of the "debates" which can be had, and the changing desires of those who remain. When I joined .org for example, the Streets were considered an essential component of the game, whereas now I think I could name the people who post regularly in one breath. That isn't to my taste but the appeal of the game has seemingly changed and few want to interact and those who do seldom can do so with any separation between character and player. 

I personally do not use Discord much at all, although I am aware a lot of others do. I do not pretend to know what every member of Detroit thinks and certainly not of the whole game, but it would seem that in this time, where so many accounts have the days and the wack skill to remove those at the top if they so wished, and they are choosing not to, maybe it is not quite such a universal view that the current leaders are the problem. And I'm not trying to hold Detroit up as some paragon of greatness for the game, as we can do better, but I do think we've tried to undo quite a lot of the harm which has been inflicted during periods of clique hegemony. For example, there actually is no WA or Discord group for Detroit. There is no private uppers chat at all; there is a Durden notification group and that's it. Virtually all of the communication is done in Home City chat or the forums. Nobody is asked for past accounts. Everyone in my crew who is Made is bought bodyguards. We are just over here playing the game and I've enjoyed it. 

So whilst leaders and uppers do need to reflect and accept we can put more in, which is a fair criticism, and taking the conversation out of the game is also damaging, I think you also can sometimes miss the wood for the trees. Things are probably not exactly as bad as whoever the jaded people who are complaining to you say they are. 

I am a firm believer in crew communication in the game. I have been blessed over the years to be part of a crew(s) where CL's and their uppers are actively involved with the entire crew in game. And I led crews who actively engaged in crew lounge. 

I am not a fan of discord and WA for such. The only time I found WA to be of any use was when we had a very close knit city. I am also a fan of mail. 

This one is rich. I have witnessed too often. A CL pops on and runs to main lounge to either keep up with status quo (Activity time) or just to socialize and sometimes at great lengths and not a word in their crew chat. 

I agree with all of your points. And just in case anyone does not know. "I don't kiss ass."  I am a beat to my own drum kind of gal. I can think for myself. 

Squishy, no, I didn't want to lead a family. I was effectively retired from this game, I had no intentions of ever being a hand again, or a CL, but due to friendships that I have had for the last 25 years, I was asked to be a LHM last character, and this character I was asked to be a CL to help out.


I never said "but don't want me to take that burden off of you... but don't want to do it and won't allow others to do it." I don't know where you are even getting that from. All I stated is why I don't use the Games built in chat anymore. If you want to implement something to enable people to chat and commune with each other, go for it, it is your game. But unless you are literally forcing people to talk, I don't expect it will make any difference to the current state of affairs. 

Again, you have misread what I said. The reason I don't participate in main is because there are people I have no desire to talk to, and to be honest the level of conversation in main is often puerile and inane. Those people are not in my crew, and chances are they would never be in my crew, so again, I have no problem with them being in another crew. All I gave were my reasons for not interacting on your chat applets.

On my job, I have access to personal information for clients, credit card numbers, family members, passport numbers, etc.  Security here highly frowns on social media accounts. They recommend you don’t use them.  I used a special phone to log in to WhatsApp and Discord, but you will rarely see me chat.  I am more social on the game.  

I have mixed feelings about what is being said here.  Checking in once in a while, I enjoy seeing the interaction they have on WA and Discord.   Then, on the other hand, it’s almost a requirement to be in the so-called “inner circle”. 

LOL, and then there’s another “inner circle” that you aren’t invited to.

But it’s all good, but in-game needs more attention, and it's much more rewarding.  JMO

Firstly we're 3 weeks out from Thanksgiving and about a week out from Christmas, people are busy and games don't take priority to most people during this time. Granted this is a much larger issue that's gone on for longer than this little bit of time, personally I think the root of the issue is the game in it's current state forces the most active players into leadership roles because they're the only ones with the time to do so whether they want it or not. This makes us have a bunch of people "in charge" who don't really care nor even want the position they're filling, so they put in minimal effort. I know many people with crews and holding hand positions for the current leadership group that are doing it purely as a favor to their friends, you should see the hoops people jump thru these days to find a auth and two hands for them. I think this issue is being highlighted by the effort DT is putting on right now, open invitation to the game at large for anyone to be a leader... what do ya know crickets. Now rant over, and a good rant is just useless bitching if a solution isn't suggested.

My suggestion, stop forcing active players away from each other. Bring back larger HQ sizes and bring back one Godfather per city, the new removal of districts may plan for this long term. If it does great, but I think the sooner we start localizing our active player base the sooner the game will start to feel more alive and active. Right now within each crew chat there's a given 3-5 people that make up 90% of the chat logs, imagine having HQ sizes of 50 where everyone in a city minus the Godfather crew is all under the same crew banner. Now all those people spread out, are able to stay within one HQ. That way when new players join the game and they join a crew, it feels alive and active because it will be. The game feels dead because we have to same group of 3-400ish people playing 22 different families when realistically the active player base can probably fit into half that especially with added crew sizes. Now I feel like I'm starting to ramble, I hope this makes sense and I hope someone smarter than I can pick up a few of these points and possible expand on them. *cough* "Beluga" * cough*.

I agree with what Dean said. Many HQs atm might have 25-30 members, but when you discount inactives or people that play on other timezones, you might only see two? maybe three people during your online time and no one talks (I never talk when i'm on mobile for example). It can be discouraging to feel like you're in an inactive crew when you might just be on an odd time zone or there really are just a lot of inactives.

I think going back to less HQs (50 mans?) would be much more ideal. More people in a family, the more you'll see people and the more activity/conversation you have with other people you may want to consider logging in more often and contributing instead of just logging in, seeing no one talking out of you and the 1 other person online in your family at 5 pm and thinking "Man, this sucks".

Dixxon's family before he sent out two thirds of his family to be crew leaders, hands and transfers to help build districts and cities had 30/30 active members and our chat was POPPIN. 

If we had FIFTY? spots, it'd be insane. We could all have so many people in one centralized area (One city, no districts x D) rather than 4 CLs with the same amount as one big 50 man hq has lol.

I have read all of these comments and have been an on and off player for ~23 years (I started before the split) so I have thoughts.

how can we drive more traffic to the game that isn't surrounded by +$10k per vote?  maybe advertising is worth it... because I feel like we aren't bringing in new players while we are losing long time players.  

should we go back to being 5 cities and larger hq's? deleting a city hasn't been mentioned but larger hq's have been.  what if we went back to a 5 city game? 

I remember when this game used to have 400 active players on the 60 second list.... before all of the regime blood lining nonsense.  I (personally) quit in 2009 bc of the Anita regime blood lining everyone. I can only imagine that sort of behavior has chased away countless users over the years.

I think that at the end of the day, we have to figure out how to grow the community and not be concerned when a few users have their own discord chat or WA group.

We have to focus on generating new, long term users first and once that happens, we (the user base) can focus on rebuilding the community. 

this game has always been controlled behind the scenes in secret chat's, regimes set on purging people that maybe said something they didn't agree with in IRC... and that can be agreeable to a certain extent... but from what I understand, allowing that sort of thing (long term) has driven away numerous long time players, in an effort to appease a select few. 

but when the voices and actions of a few are able to chase away users (that bring in income for the game) in droves, I would begin to think about if pleasing the few offsets the benefit of keeping new and potentially longterm users.   

I think these guys are spot on, I'd love to see fewer crews, fewer auths, no districts, larger HQs, centralized activity. The abundance of crews and necessity of two hand positions per crew naturally splinter activity in a way that goes way beyond anything any regime does to drive people away; 20+ crews in a game like this is pointless, it's asking for trouble. I couldn't name more than half the CLs in the game right now off the top of my head and from what you hear day to day, about that amount of them have any desire to actually do it, and that is true of every single 'regime' (whatever you want to call it) of the past 10 years. 

And I don't think changing the entire system to reinforce the behavior that's being criticized is necessarily the optimal method or outcome. Why not focus more effort on incentivizing behaviors that will make the game healthier? Drive behaviors that reward users for stepping up rather than wholesale discipline that only addresses the people currently in charge. This is a game, and a game naturally drives channels of activity by the way it is arranged.

For example, larger and significantly fewer crews would allow for the opportunity to get rid of individual recruitment and rebuild mode and all of these arbitrary ticking-clock punishments and simply streamline new users choosing what family with open spots they want to be a part of, automatically joining them, and entered into an associate subcrew where the sponsor is personally incentivized to see to their activity and success, and where the natural disposition of a larger, centralized crew offers a higher floor of around-the-clock engagement. 

Change the tax system so it works from the bottom up, force all under-Made members to be designated associates of Made+ sponsors, and have taxes paid out directly to sponsors and not crewleaders. Incentivize sponsors to train and elevate their recruits, and create a system that funnels activity from the area where it seems to be currently needed most (recruitment) to the area where it is most meaningful (social interaction). Work on ideas that create a mid-game that forces new, more obvious and immediate silos of activity to take place and herds users into engagement where otherwise you just have a big, meaningless middleground. 

All of this discussion about top-down changes speak exclusively to the hardcore players who cycle in and out of their desire to rule the game every regime change, who are the ones grouping in 3rd party platforms, but don't offer much to casual players who have been pushed out at every turn with credits, hustle points, expense ceilings, expiring guns, the disincentivization of allowing strangers and new users into auth and hand roles on account of the waiver holding CLs accountable for their "past, present and future actions" and leadership group-wide DDs, and the presence of cliques that have naturally formed as a result of the same users playing the same game for decades together.

As a casual player with no hustle or credit bank to speak of, it is way, way more important to me to talk about the practical methods to building a more involved userbase and a more social game, than to watch the whip get cracked for the same reasons every regime that has ever been on top in this game finds it difficult to inspire people to be motivated to go the extra mile and engage. I would like to see users empowered from the bottom up and allow for a more equitable distribution of responsibility and presence in day-to-day activities, than to be cast as perpetual victims of a disinterested community that they are equally a part of. I am part of it and feel it every day, despite LittleSi having no 3rd party communication platform, an active lounge chat, regular communication, and a very fun family, it is simply the nature of my time commitment to the game that puts me in a position where I log in with no direction to go. 

Would that be entirely different in a larger crew? Probably not, but there isn't one magical fix that's going to make the game an incredible joy at every level. What I can be sure of is that it allows for a host of opportunities that simply do not have a place in a game of 20+ ten-to-twenty person crews, where active users are fractured and parceled out to keep the whole thing functioning. 

There are ways to make it easier, more fun, and more rewarding for every user to be involved, that go beyond looking at the group of crewleaders that create any regime and going, 'These guys have got it all wrong'. We spent like 2 years with the last group creating one of the most boring, pointless environments I've ever encountered on this game and nothing was ever really addressed in the manner it has been over the last 2 days. It is a social game, change the game in ways that invite people to be more social, and not just individual administrators of their personal recruitment timeslot, or means to an end. 

This is a game that we're all playing for fun, with the negligible free time many of us have to do so in our adult lives. I don't hold it against anyone for not speaking on lounge, for not being able to keep up personally with every person in their crew, for not having the time to post in the streets, for logging in for just a minute on mobile to shoot a Durden and missing sponsor alerts, it's a commitment. And the conclusion shouldn't be that the game should be even more exclusive and even more catered to the hardcore players who have the time to give, as seems to be the end-game of any criticism that involves motivating this userbase. 

I, and most of the long term player base, don't think that there is a simple solution to a larger problem.  

At the end of the day, we all want a more active player base... I would love to see even 100+ on the 60 second list. 

and while I can appreciate every, single point you made... we, as a community (admin or not) have to work on adding and maintaining players.  Without new and long term players, we cannot sustain as a community (or as a business) and I am sure you have realized that over the years.

I cannot tell you what I think is right or wrong for the game.... nor can anyone else, even though we have our opinions.

but what I can tell you, is that at the end of the day we ( all of the long term players) want to have the activity of "the good old days".  

I can't tell you what that looks like, nor what most of the core player base wants it to look like.  

But I can tell you that we want more players so the game is more active (in both irc and the streets) and that the game played liked it used to.  

I can't speak for all of the uppers in all of the cities, but if (almost) everyone is opening up their cities to anyone that wants to set up AND offer incentives to do so,  we may be in dire straits as a community. 

I remember the first person to help me out - Lexicon.  Someone else told me that all I had to do was fly X drug from X city and then buy X drug and fly back to X city, and I'd make money.  But it was years before I found out about wack math, and that wasn't in the group chat.