By demoting there still is a punishment, you pay more to get the same benefits. It's a happy median. I understand why you guys want it that way, but it's not as plausable and benificial to the game as well as userbase.

I am not sure I agree with that.


Say I want a defense that means someone needs +300 on their gun to hit through my BGs, that is 100BGs at 3 a pop, and 57ish on 5.25 a pop.


At thug that costs $75 mill


At Don it costs £299.25 mill.


Demotion is a no brainer, you chop the cap and Joe Bloggs just buys more BGs at thug to cover the defense he wants.

Another way to look at this is BG's currently offer the same protection no matter what your rank or cost to purchase so how about set the BG cost to 2 - 3 mil per BG regardless of rank. As long as BG's are cheaper at lower ranks people will always demote for BG's.

PC-El_Nino, it still is a punishment and you looked at it in one way but not the other.

If a Don has 100 bodyguards someone has to demote and buy 175 bodyguards which is $131,250,000. So it becomes more expensive than the current system to match someone at Don. By that, say I buy my bodyguards at Don and get to 100. You demote and get 100. You're defense is now 300, mines 525. So yeah, I'd say that's pretty fair, no?

Not to mention capping would lose its effect. People demoting to get a of 250 would only be able to obtain a 750 wack defense whereas a Don would have 1312.5, once again whose winning here? By demoting and filling your bgs up someone can still benefit more.

PC-El_Nino, demoting to get bodyguards isn't the only way to punish someone. However this is a start. You can, yes, still buy a good chunk of defense cheaper. However, in the long run the new system is better due to the fact those that BG up without demotion get more defense. Though for demotion minimum times could be double or something. Feel free to work on that though in another thread.

PC-Flash-Fire, that's a possibility but it makes bgs less common and harder to get. I think if that happened then people would spend less money. If you charge that for bodyguards there has to be a new way to get money into the game. Whereas the original idea is simply a modification of the present system. Though that's not to say it can't be worked on. Maybe add like 3 or 4 CA's to the cap limit? Not sure.

I also believe for this to work there would need to be a reset (which I am firmly against) because even if you give notice of 2-3 months or whatever there will still be those that have an advantage from buying theirs from the old way.

Flash-Fire why would there need to be a reset? Everyone dies from wackback, being wacked or something eventually. It's been proven that regardless of how many bodyguards you have if enough people want you dead you'll die. I don't see that being a large obstacle in the way. Though anything worth doing never is easy I suppose.

Issac the key word there is "eventually", until they "eventually" die they will have an unfair advantage over the newer players.

Any heavy game change will, especially making bodyguards one flat rate or unable to demote for them and re rank for cheap. So I guess both those ideas are out then.

PC-Asylum I think we fundamentally disagree with what a punishment is. To me there should be no advantage from being punished, in your case here and in the current game people get a demotion to obtain something cheaper than they can currently get. That isn't a punishment it is a reward.

Sorry, I'm not following here.

Can you explain what you mean by this:

Grin and Nino, the problem with limiting it to whatever rank is the fact that the game cannot grow. If you haven't noticed over the last few years why has it grown or prospered so well? Because accounts have the ability to live longer.

By demoting there still is a punishment, you pay more to get the same benefits. It's a happy median. I understand why you guys want it that way, but it's not as plausable and benificial to the game as well as userbase.

Took a while to read every post here.

Think the idea in general is a great idea, however... I think it's going to be REALLY tough to settle on the figures, I sort of wish we could trial run this on another server or something to see what kind of figures we'd actually need.

PC-Asylum:

Your last post isn't entirely true, according to the suggestion in the main post: The training of bodyguards for a certain fee to up their stats as the player ranks.

In the long run, it all becomes about who can afford to buy the most CA's and make the most money, which isn't really what this should be about.. just because someone donates $500 or $1,000 it shouldn't give them that much more of an advantage to any other player, if someone has 10 bffs out there and they send them credits to buy 2 CA's each, that's ~120 mill for that person in a month, and that's not including whatever that person makes himself in that time.

If we were to follow the original suggestion, this "Not to mention capping would lose its effect. People demoting to get a of 250 would only be able to obtain a 750 wack defense whereas a Don would have 1312.5, once again whose winning here?" - Just means both will have the same stats when the Thug reaches Don, just that the one who bought them at Thug will have A LOT more to start with while a Don would have to steadily buy his or hers a few at a time rather than a few hundred at a time, which means we're back at square one where the lowest rank is yet again more protected than the highest ranking members of a family, which means everyone will yet again be taking demotions for bg's and slowly build up their army of bodyguards to the max stats for their current ranks.

Nothing would change, except for the cap being gone (which I do not want to see happen), and it costing people more to achieve the same results as we have now... but as I said above, money isn't really that big of an issue for people who can afford to waste credits or those who work hard at making it. So if the solution is to just make it cost more to reach the same results in the long run, we may as well mix the suggestion from PC-El_Nino and JakeSully's to make it work without the need to pay to train your bodyguards to get better stats, demotion WOULD be a punishment as the prices would not change for them (a Don would keep Don bg prices) AND on top of that their bodyguards would lose their current stats to whatever rank the player was demoted to, which sucks, as it should for anyone who has been punished with a demotion, promotions would also be more valued as with a promotion the leader would be upping their members overall defense with .25 for each bg they own.

PC-Grin, what I meant was if you were to limit the cost of bodyguards to the highest rank achieved. IE, I got Don so the cost of my bodyguards are now $5,250,000. You force the game to take a much longer time to evolve. It makes it harder for accounts to last longer. The amount of kills/frequency in guns breaking 500+ kills would make www.mafiareturns.com the wild west.

It would force it to be difficult if not impossible for someone to see Insanely Well Protected, unless a friend helped a friend. Then, you have a problem that's even worse. People are showing pure favoritism to friends instead of rewarding hardworkers.


Now, next is Jaqen_Hghar.

Never, in the time I've played or since CA's have been around, have I seen a single person give out 200 credits to friends and take the money. Also, with the cost of credits, most people would only make $50,000,000 a month if they did the CA system that you're claiming occurs.

Roughly $2,500,000 (per ca in terms of profit each) multiplied by two equals $5,000,000 multiplied by ten (all "ten friends") equals $50,000,000.

If we were to follow the original suggestion, this "Not to mention capping would lose its effect. People demoting to get a of 250 would only be able to obtain a 750 wack defense whereas a Don would have 1312.5, once again whose winning here?" - Just means both will have the same stats when the Thug reaches Don, just that the one who bought them at Thug will have A LOT more to start with while a Don would have to steadily buy his or hers a few at a time rather than a few hundred at a time, which means we're back at square one where the lowest rank is yet again more protected than the highest ranking members of a family, which means everyone will yet again be taking demotions for bg's and slowly build up their army of bodyguards to the max stats for their current ranks.

Actually, what that part of the post means is actually that they wouldn't. I feel that you didn't even read the suggestion. Since how much defense you get depends on the RANK you BUY the bodyguard at. Then, in order for it to get up to Don DEFENSE STAT you have to pay to train it, separate from the current training system.

So say you demote for 100 bodyguards at thug.

That's $75,000,000. Each bodyguard has a defense wackstat of 3. So their defense is now 300. In order to reach the Don defense equivalence. They would have to pay $550,000 for every rank, for every bodyguard. That would be NINE trains for EACH bodyguard. So that would be $4,950,000 for EACH bodyguard.

Total for a demote to thug and train to Don equivalence would be: $75,000,000 + $495,000,000 = $570,000,000

Now say you're a Don. If you do not demote and purchase your 100 bodyguards at Don. Each one has a defense wackstat at 5.25. Which makes their defense 525. The total cost to purchase 100 bodyguards at Don, at $5,250,000 each, would be $525,000,000.

So if you've followed it would COST MORE TO DEMOTE TO GET THE SAME DEFENSE. Basically, the person who demotes, reranks, their defense is 300 in terms of bodyguards against a non-demoter who has 525. Also to not demote you save $45,000,000 in this example.

ALSO, all numbers are suggestive at this point and a basis to work with at this time.

If no one picked up. JakeSully, Issac and PC-Asylum are the same. People have died and also misposted on accounts accidentally.

Would it be possible for this to receive coder confirmation that it is even viable and would be considered for implementation should it get the necessary sponsorship? Otherwise, I don't see much point in discussing it further.

Grin, I'm no Pc, or admin. but i garuntee that if the PC/game as a whole pulls this shit togetehr and works it out, the admins will do it. it's the thorniest problem since...shit, i have no analogy. but i think it will take the efforts of the entire PC plus many of us average buggers to make it work.

that said, the numbers need some changing, but it sounds viable in princible. I think you'd have to see the cost to trian increase per the level of effectivness you are training too. perhaps two seperate training modes. one the health setup that is now in place, aone the effectivness level. mabye with the 550,000as the increase cost from thug to gangster and going upward by 10 to 15% per rank effetivnewss. so if it costs 750,000 to buy 1 BG at thug, then say 350,000 to train it to gangster and a 15% increase in cost per rank trained, it would be 6,779,495 to traing your BG from thug to godfather's level of effectivness. total cost 7,529,495 total for a godfatehr level BG if you start at thug. Versus the base godfather price of $5,750,000 thats a million dolalr difference Per gaurd. and that is, for me, damn near the lowest amount i'd be willing to go for the increase per rank. plus cost of upkeep, and the cost gets pretty damn high to start at thug, work your way to GF, and train BGs along the way.

AND, let me remind you all taht at thug, i can only do a small number of crimes, and should have to rank up myself before i can add the next level of effectivness to my gaurds.

Philli, a suggestion on bodyguards received much discussion and consideration only to be rejected the moment it reached the PC.

I think it better to know now whether something like this would be considered.

I would like to see a change to the bg system, although I'm not too keen on a change to bg system and the wack system at the same time. I don't really see any issue with the wack system that it would need a revamp along with the bg system, which is mainly why I haven't supported this, it's a bit complicated and changes too many game aspects.

But as Grin said, we already mostly agreed on a system it made it all the way to the PC for discussion and voting and was told it wouldn't be coded even if it were to pass a vote, so it would be better for us to receive feedback from a coder that this is something they would consider before we put time into it.

PC-Cassiopeia, I've spoken with coders/investors in the game. This is most practical thus far from business and gameplay sense to make both sides balanced. I said if I stayed on PC I'd get this issue worked on and achieved. So, time to see what we can do with it.

Changing it so a demotion isn't as beneficial may not be as drastic as not being able to demote. But it's a happy median.