As I created a thread before about exploitation of demoting a member to purchase bodyguards, I came up with a new idea that should be addressed due to ranking being easily achieved these days.

As a demotion in this case actually is a good thing, able to lower the cost of bodyguards per rank, one should be penalized more. Penalized as in lose all skill points. Wacking skill, Jailbreaking skill, reputation with FBN Agents... Anything gained from the second they did their first petty when they first joined the game.

Because after all, a demotion should be a punishment not a reward.

I like this a lot but to be honest I do not think this could be done without a reset. Too many existing characters have received demotions in order to buy cheap bodyguards.

I Think this is good idea to.

I totally disagree on the fact that just because I get demoted doesn't mean my skills get worse. I'm the same person I was at any rank. A sgt in the military gets demoted to a private does he forget how to do his job? Nope. He loses pay and he loses all the prestige and respect he had at his previous rank. Same thing happens here in a way. I don't lose my skills but I lose the exp I had before. Your rank boost goes away. You have to earn it all back just as before it just takes less time cause you don't have to worry about min time. I don't make as much money as I did before either. I start all over except my skills.

To fix an exploitation. The fact that you can instantly move down to Thug, purchase bodyguards at a large mass and rank back up your rank in a couple of weeks or longer. Nothing harmful comes of it and I feel their should be a setback or something in place to regulate this.

If it is bodyguards having a set cost at all times, demotions removing skills/reputation, so be it. I think, many others do it seems from the look at the streets and other suggestions in this alley, that its an exploitation.

What are you exploiting? How is it harmful to anyone else? Do my bgs threaten you? If anything I'm the one losing out. As I had to pay for them I lose money and lots of it that I earned while moving up in rank and spending time making it. So I actually can lose twice. Not only have I lost all that time and work put into the account the first time I ranked up now I have to do it again and if when I die I lose all that money I spent on the bgs and the time I spent ranking again. You lose nothing.

Some further regulation of BGs may be in line down the road, but I disagree that this is the step to take. Cap the total number of BGs. Set limits at each rank. Whatever. You can make good arguments for those.

But demotion also exists as a way to punish people without sending them back to square one with a bullet. What you're proposing would essentially negate this purpose.

To pretend gaining 80+ BGs is anything other than a massive bonus is ridiculous. The harm to others would lie not directly in the 80+ BGs you've gained but what that would potentially allow you to do. It isn't the bodyguards themselves, but the extra security they provide. Lets not kids ourselves on this, you know the benefits they bring or you wouldn't have sacrificed a high ranked account to gain them.

However, you specifically can do whatever you like as far as I'm concerned. I don't think a modification like this would be to the betterment of the majority of users, as it would in effect be denying them the opportunity to repeat the same move. It would also negate the demote feature, which although underutilised by the misconception a bullet is the only punishment, should be an important tool in the crewleader repetoire.

Any change like this should only be implemented after a reset when the playing field is level and the effect is neither greater nor lesser to anyone.

~T~

Just as a tip- when you get demoted you do lose all ranking points and do get penalized on the drug units. Just an fyi.

Which kills your earnings and makes it very very hard to even pay for these bgs so the whole time you are working on ranking you are just putting all your money into training your bgs.

Tallien's response is a better one of my own towards yours Paul. Marietta, I fear that just isn't enough. Rank points are easily regained after a few jails.

We need something more.

I say we don't. This is the first time I've ever done the demote thing for bgs and I would do it again. I have no problem with it at all. I've never seen a problem with anyone else doing it either. No matter if they are going to be a RH or LH or just a family member. If they have the money for it and want to take the demotion and the things that go with it then so be it. It is their money and their account.

I think what is being ignored too is that this isn't a foolproof strategy. Time and time again I've seen people get demoted, buy a huge amount/maximum amount of bodyguards then their crew ends up in a war and they either died immediately (when it was 10 bgs), get worn down and die or wackback off something.

The BGs belonging to an Earner are far easier to kill than those belonging to a Don. So whilst you may purchase 80 at Thug and start on your merry way, a whole host of people are going to be able to BG wack those guys and kill them, who wouldn't have had a hope to kill a handful of them at a much higher rank.

~T~

Considering it is something everyone can do provided they have the money, I don't think this is 'harmful'. However, the positives far outweigh the negatives in this scenario. If man A, as a Consig, take a demotion to thug, he can get Obscenely Well Protected for a staggering $200,000,000 dollars less than he 'should'. With min times now out of the way, the odds are he will be Consigliere again within 2 weeks, especially considering if he has the friends to bankroll 50 bgs, he probably has the friends to bankroll his jails to regain his rank quickly, thus negating Tallien's point about lower ranked BG's being easier to kill.

Even if we implemented the harsh punitive measures for demotion suggested, would they really outweigh saving 200 million dollars? I don't think so. Personally, I feel the easy solution to the problem is to increase bodyguard price per additional bodyguard, not per rank. I know it's been suggested before, and I really have no idea why no one's taken heed.

A potentially beneficial aspect to FlyingMonkey's suggestion that BGs become progressively more expensive due to your number of BGs, is that it could be implemented relatively painlessly. One could just make an announcement that the change will take effect in x amount of time to give people an opportunity to buy them, and that from that point onward the new system would take effect, in which the cost of a BG would "increase bodyguard price per additional bodyguard, not per rank".

This way, you're not punishing anyone who currently has bodyguards. You could even structure in more simply than each individual bodyguard, and adjust the price due to your protection level. So if you're currently Protected they would cost x amount, Well Protected would cost x amount, and so on and so forth.

As a final note, I'm not convinced that a change to the bodyguard system is currently necessary. As Squishy stated in a recent post, many of the people who are complaining about the effect of Bodyguards on the game fail to realize that there was no attempt to neutralize this apparent "advantage" in the most recent war. I did, however, want to offer my two cents on this idea.

The fact he has friends in high places and can attain his rank again quickly does not negate the point that lower ranked BG's are easier to kill, because they are still easier to kill. It just means you have a smaller window of opportunity.

~T~

In all honesty just because they are easier to kill in a war your not going to kill them. Your going to be going for the bigger fish than a gangster. However this makes the person as near as damnit unshootable for his rank. An EWP gangster could really only be hit by a crewleader or godfather.

You now have an uber pro wacker.

One way you could police it more is to increase the retrain costs of these bodyguards, because lets face it no decent bodyguard is going to work for a gangster when there are dons out there to be protected. The kudos etc of looking after a higher ranked person is far higher than protecting a mere gangster.

That fact that people would choose to shoot irrelevant high ranking accounts, rather than an important 'uber pro wacker' is as much a failing on behalf of idiot players, as it is on the game allowing demotions and purchase of bodyguards in the first place.

~T~