Family Jobs.

I am not referring to character created roles/titles, but rather, something that can be assigned IN GAME to members.

A friend of mine asked me, "What real motive does a person have to be a protection wacker?"

This got me thinking.... these people(protection wackers, untrained guns) are extremely useful. However in fairness to them, they are somewhat limited to in-game actions such as wacking that they must refrain from. Why would someone refrain from training a gun, which in many people opinions, is one of the most involved aspects of the game.

At the same time, I was thinking of new features that were more "mob" related.... construction jobs, trucking, and other ventures such as heists and so forth.

I had recently watched all 6.5 seasons of The Sopranos for the 3rd time... (my gf had never seen it, so I watched it with her). Now, I know the time frames are completely different, but we can still related and modify to fit the time periods.

Ralph Cifaretto ran the construction job, which was later ran by Vito Spadafore. After Vito, Bobby Bacala. At the very end, it was offered to Paulie....

I think crews should have certain "jobs" such as this. The crew leader would have to assign the job to a specific person from the crew page. This person CANNOT be the RH/LH.

The jobs would be sent to the user randomly through as a personals notification, or even mobmail.
It would be something such as:

"There's a site in Chicago with tons of copper pipe laying around. Fly there and get it".

The person assigned to the job has 1 hour to fly to Chicago to complete the task.

There are, lets say, 6 of these sent out in the course of a day, purely random.

The more jobs the person is able to complete, the more money he makes.

The money is 100% untaxed. It is up to the person to claim how much he has made. So if lets say "Bob" claims he got 4 out of the 8 jobs and pays his boss 35%, but he could have actually gotten 6 and made some extra cash to himself.

This would make assigning who gets this position something a leader would have to think about... see who is able to earn him the most money, try a few people out, etc.

Also, as the jobs require them to be completed within 1 hour, this will make flight timer management interesting.
Most hitters use IA lists to plan their flights for the day. This position would be more beneficial for users who may want to keep their flight timers clear, so that they can achieve more jobs.

This would give someone who is NOT training a gun, some incentive to not train a gun, and still have fun working.



Additional notes/thoughts.

Some of the jobs can be independent of other crews, other jobs can be "first come first serve".

For example, lets say there is a job/position for Alcohol Trucking.

Using the same tool that randomly generates the Rogue, this can be used to randomly generate a job that is sent to everyone who holds that position in all the crews. Whoever is able to complete the job first obtains the payment. These jobs should obviously play significantly more than the other jobs.

Example:

A notification is sent to all users who are designated as "Trucking" from all crews.
"A buyer in New York is in desperate need of alcohol for an event coming up. He needs 10 crates ASAP!".
Whichever person can fly to their home city then fly to the destination city and sells the load (This could be entering a code into a specific page while in that city).
The user would only get the code when they are in their HOME CITY (where the alcohol is stored).
This would promote certain people to stay in their home city as often as possible, since this would give them the advantage of flying directly to the destination, rather than having to fly to their home city to prepare the shipment, then to the destination city.


Also:

I think the job positions should not be eligible to be changed frequently. Maybe setting a timer for 3 days. This will prevent crew leaders from switching the person assigned to the job to someone who may have a flight timer cleared and so forth. This also gives each person assigned to the job at least 3 days to try it out.

I'm definitely going to need some more time to think on this thoroughly, but off the bat, I find this to be a really refreshing idea. It's interesting, it engages players and it bolsters the importance of pro-wackers, giving them something else that they can work on in place of training a gun. So much focus is placed on building a gun that all too often, the significance of pro-wackers is forgotten and I would like to see this remedied. I believe this is an excellent suggestion towards the cause.

Most importantly, it adds another dimension to the game which I think is wonderful. I'm not sure how the coding would work, whether it would be difficult or cost much to implement, but I tell you what - kudos for coming up with something completely new.

I'm interested to see what the admins say to this one.

So I'm trying to get this idea straight so let me try and imagine it... lol


TonySoprano | Las Vegas | 6/50 | Paulie | Carmela
Petties: 39% | Felonies: 39% | Drugs: 44% | Pay Day: off | Total Earnings: $757,071,595
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Members | Armory | Toolbars | Auth. Req.s(0) | NPMs | Invites | Mass Mail Members | Crew Settings

Name Rank Units Loc Earn.

Ralph Cifaretto * & $ Don 45 NO $13,367,495 133
-------------------- Demote Take Gun Kill Mail Remove PermAuth Remove Sponsor

Vito Spadafore $ Consigliere 44 PH $3,000,000 134
-------------------- Demote Take Gun Kill Mail Remove PermAuth Remove Sponsor

Bobby Bacala * & Consigliere 43 SL $4,586,913 79
-------------------- Demote Take Gun Kill Mail Remove PermAuth Remove Sponsor

Paulie & Consigliere 40 LV $7,671,177 70
-------------------- Demote Take Gun Drop Kill Mail Remove Sponsor

Carmela & Consigliere 40 LV $7,671,177 70
-------------------- Demote Take Gun Drop Kill Mail Remove Sponsor

So you click on Crew Settings...

RHM : [Paulie]
LHM : [Vito]
Drug Front Soldier: [Bobby Bacala]
Gambling Soldier: [Vito Spadafore]
Construction Soldier: [Ralph Cifaretto]


So Bobby Bacala has been instructed that a Drug Front is potentially at risk from being clamped down by the feds.

Bobby Bacala needs to get to Los Angeles to send out a warning and then get back to HQ in Las Vegas. He is currently in Chicago with 20 minutes before the next flight. He has 2 hours and 30 mins to get his ass back to HQ or the boss will break his knee caps.


So basically if he does that flight run in the time limit he will complete the mission? If possible there is some sort of way to actually press some sort of link when he is in LA to warn them and then fly back and show that he has returned.

Does that look like its on the same sort of lines where you are coming from Phil?

This is pretty complex. I think something like this could be considered, but like... one position at a time. The RP element is nice, but I don't know how many people would actually bother with it, and how much coding would have to be done to make it worth a person's while reward wise etc etc 

Phil we spoke about this for a few moments the other day and I loved the idea. I still love it and I think it will go great with the new grid design. I don't know how quickly this could be implimented but this would go to the top of the list If I had my way.

I completely agree with the reasoning behind this and understand it fully. It's difficult to get non-hitters and or semi-active (casual) style players involved with the current design of the game. I think we can all agree that a common goal is to increase the playerbase (while still sticking to the fundamental structure) and I think this does it perfectly. 

{I know a grid type update is coming, I want this to go through definitely - can you tell us if this is already currently being worked on? No matter how much I'd like to see it pass, there's no point really if it's already being worked on}

I like the concept. I dont know about the mechanics, but I hope to see some support behind this. People always grip that they dont have enough to do, well this adds another option to pass the time between mias, drug deals, ect.

This needs further discussion and some detailed specifics, but it's the largest and best idea to increase player involvment and widening of the player base right now. This being an extensive idea I believe it needs lots of work about how specifics would work. I am definitely going to sponsor this right now to get the ball rolling (although before it goes through full i think we should all discuss it further and develop it a little more fully and discuss some more specifics. Phil I'm glad you brought this to the suggestions board and I'm excited to see it more forward. 

Some may say this will cause Game money inflation: My personal feeling about this is that it is a non-issue. I see people constantly complaining about credit prices in one hand, and then being overly worried about game-money inflation on the other. My suggestion for this would that it wouldn't be mainly about money but also experience points. Give somebody enough money to make it worthwhile (i would scale it to be about the same amount as one portion of an OC so like 50-100k) and then loads of experience as this is quite an involved task (more than clicking a button for a petty, much more hopefully) So hopefully that solves that 'inflation' argument.

I wanted to mention something about the alcohol example phil brought up. I think that would make a great random event. Doesn't need to be alcohol it could be any drug. 'I need 10 kilos of Cocaine in Detroit ASAP' then you can go fulfill this event and they'll buy the coke at some outrageous price (say 10-11k) 

As for it being specific to city or whatever, I think either way would be cool. I think that this could open up literally hundreds of new opportunities and possibilities. I can't even begin to write out every different thing you could impliment with this idea but I'll throw out a few:

Contract hits (like the rogue - maybe don't add to gun), 'No-Work' Contracts (just fly to a city and punch the clock at XYZ construction), Large-Scale theft (money trucks), Car Bombings, Arson, Money Laundering, Extortion, Blackmail (your boss hands you some embarassing photos of jimmy clamps, go squeeze some money out of the sap), Counterfeiting, kidnapping, Arms Trafficking.

These not only have great opportunities for player involvement but it would be a great way to put meaning back into ranks!! For example the larger crimes would only be comittable by the higher ranks. You're not going to let a goomba extort you - send a Consig. I also think that there should be some multi-person crimes of much larger scales. Make them difficult crimes to commit needing a few high rank people with lower success rates. (and very possibly make you put some money in up front - buying equipment etc) These could even be announced on IRC possibilities for Role-Playing afterward are endless. 

My suggestion for now though is that we start small, impliment one or two ideas and then move forward from there - step by step. I mainly suggest we start with mainly what phil has suggested - a simple fly and click or fly and sell with a small reward would be a perfect place to begin.

I think this is one of the best suggestions I've read in a long time. I'm not sure why you think people wouldn't bother with this Spike, as there are many people out there who are not hitters, that are always complaining about lack of things for them to do. This would be perfect. I'm sure between the PC and the players we can flesh this idea out see it implemented. Thank you Phil for brining this to the table. Definitely has my support.

It would seem that there's a certain vision in this that could actually be beneficial to players by giving them something to do, and since Squishy things it could work well with the new grid system, I'd definitely be up for more of a discussion about it, but there will be a lot of work to do in order to break this down. 

I think there is a good scope for more player involvement, thats a major plus for me. Whether the mechanics are feasible or not are more of a coders choice and we'll leave that to them to decide later, at this point I think the idea is a good one, though complex, but could be really beneficial to the players.

I would offer one other aspect of this that could enhance the feature.

Add in "Support for Roleplaying posts".

Since this involves traveling to various cities, part of the task could include adding a roleplaying post to dedicated thread.

This can use the same mechanics that are used to give xp/stats/whatever that regular postings give. 

I do not think the roleplaying posts should be mandatory,however it can be a bonus on top of the rewards to completing the "quest"

(yes, I play a lot of MPG's)

Well yes, I think that possibly posting and or roleplaying could somehow be incorporated in this suggestion :)

There should also be protection rackets implemented.

I think you have come up with somthing really good here GodFather Phil Steak as we know there is not much player involvement in certain areas of the game , With luck it can bring into more role Playing aspects to the game a big thumbs up from me