Thank You Squishy,

I think this new system is better than even the previous designs discussed.  It also closes that final loophole once and for all.  

Perhaps some of us who griped, gripe too much.  But this is a true compromise and I'm happy to see the community pooled together enough ideas and arguments to warrant a significant, and fair change.  

I agree, this change is great and the BG price is a fair compromise asked for buying the highest tiers of protection. Great Change Squishy.

This system does create one potential problem for new players. 

I am unable to pp someone who is protected. I was one grave rob away from completing the final level of the achievement when I was made, so I did do the grave robs, but the majority of people have bgs. (And it's not an issue with my vision.) Personally I'll just chase CAs and probably catch up, but my prowess hovers around 600%, I don't think that's as much of a solution for most new characters with normal activity levels.

Maybe more CAs should be active? -48s or RIAs pp'able?

It takes quite a few bg's (at least at 10 HP) for the impacts to really kick in, at least in my own experience Insidieux.

I tend to have no issue finding players, even higher rankers, active and at a low enough bg level to PP (while I managed to max the grave robs, I've been much slacker on actual PPs) or CAs if I take the time to look a hanful of times. Given how beneficial PPs can be now (I'll let people figure out for themselves why this is the case), I don't believe it should really be significantly easier to train and if anything wouldn't mind seeing it become a little more difficult.

Satanta I just came up for a pp recently, in PH. I had tabs on 358 people. There was one active person who was np and I pro'd him. (I actually specifically tried him instead of a CA because there are several thugs here and they wouldn't have been able to pp him because of rank difference.) I don't know what you mean by HP, I am taking it as 10 full bg, this would mean only full and fully trained protected would be a problem. It's posible that I just encountered that situation, but I think it's probably unlikely.

I doubt very very much your prowess is anywhere near 100 though, and you're definitely not a new player, so what you're saying doesn't impact my point.

If you want to make them more difficult at higher levels fine, raise the number you need to do for each say 10 more bg. But at the beginning is not the place to do that.

Just tried another protected and failed btw.

By HP I meant health points. It's possible for a person that's tagged as "Well Protected" to have significantly less than 1 effective bodyguard and it's possible for someone who is tagged as "Protected" to have as high as 9 effective bodyguards, depending on the training and healing they are giving the bodyguards. I just thought I'd mention it, as sometimes the tags can be very misleading (hence the importance of pp'ing ;P).

My prowess is around the 600 mark as well, so similar to your own situation. Though I did manage to max out my grave robbing achievements, as Flash is a bastid at giving out buttons (and rightly so) and took me a few days over min time to get that promo. I'm certainly not new though so fully take on your point of it being easier for someone like me or you to train up a skill than it is for a newer player (at least, until they get the correct guidance... which they should all be getting but sadly don't).

As it happens, I was in the same city and did the same thing very shortly after posting my earlier reply. There were multiple CAs there (potentially pro'd I will admit), multiple low rankers with no bg's, multiple high rankers with little/no bg's and various ranks with a large number. I guess this could be the real difference/difficulty being faced. If a new player doesn't have high info or work at building it, it will hurt the ease at which they can train the pp skill (that's a user issue in my opinion, for both the people training new players and the new players themselves, not something that requires a code change).

Yes I knowabout why pp'ing tells something, but it did in the previous systems too. And that's what I meant by full. I doubt I'm just encountering 10 effective bg protecteds.

 We did a lot more, and knew what to do at the start of our characters so we'd get more done anyway, but also finding graves is a pain in the ass. How many people actually made it through the first 75? 

I'm still in PH. I've been here all day. Aside from the first one alphabetically, all the NP here are explicitly not pp friendly or only to family/city. And the first one is actually undeclared. I have high info, could be worse if I didn't.

In that case, either I'm incredibly lucky (or you're incredibly unlucky) or you don't actually have high info.

I did a quick scan through the locals just prior to posting this. I found 3 unprotected gangsters, 2 unprotected goombas, 2 unprotected wise guys and a single unprotected capo and consig that are all pp friendly or at least undeclared. This doesn't include the numerous people that were simply "protected", that could be as low as 1HP of protection (of which there were at least 5 that I recall). Nor does it include the 5 CA's that happened to be active at the time (one of which has always been unpro'd for the last 3/3 hours that I've been in Philly in the last 6 or so hours).

Is your local population over 400 at the moment? If not, this may be the difference. If it is, perhaps I am just very lucky with my timing.

Squishy

I don't think BG health should affect PP defence. This is coming from a player that has always been a prolific PPer.

My reasons is thus:

I look at BG health as BG skill. The higher that skill, the more chance of them intercepting a bullet, and laying down suppressive fire to prevent their Mark being killed.

PPing is about stealth and finesse, therefore, large numbers of BGs should make that more difficult, regardless of their defensive capabilities. 200 people surrounding my target should make it substantially harder for me to PP regardless of their skill level at taking a bullet. I'd expect someone with 200 Bgs with 1 HP each to be every bit as hard to PP as someone with 200 BGs at 100 health each, or god forbid 130 health each :p

Being able to work out roughly how many BGs a target has is sufficient intel without allowing people like me to then turn around and say "So and so is IWP, but all their BGs are weak as fuck.

Also, where do you draw the line. Does someone with 100 BGs at full strength require 500 PP successes before you can pick their pocket, where as someone with 100 BGs at 1HP each only require 5?

Also, for those of you who have suddenly found it harder to PP due to the BG change, so what? I've suddenly found it harder to kill. You just need to work harder to PP :p