I've been thinking on this for a couple weeks now. I'm expecting very little support, but feel I would be doing a disservice not to bring it up.

The five districts per city code that was put in a couple years back is, in theory, excellent. But it is made for a much greater population of the game. Now I'm sure Scott has plans to advertise even more and try to get our numbers up to where we can support the type of features he envisions with the districts.

But for about two years now we've been sitting at around 750ish players at a given time. And we've seen not only districts, but entire cities lay empty for extended periods of time. Part of this is, I think, because people see each district as a mini city, and want to have 3-4 crews in that district in order to be considered strong.

What I propose, is putting a one crew per district limit on each district, and then opening all five districts in each city. The only exception to the one crew rule would be once that district gains a godfather, a second crew would be made possible. Aka, one GF crew, one captain. I for one would really like to see all six cities with 5 possible travel destinations. This would add so many great elements to the game; be it coordinating drug runs, hiding/searching in wars, maybe make jails district based?

To prevent districts being left open, rather than just closing down a district, if a district is left open for 30 days, the NPCs come and take it over. And not the pussy ones that are just target practice, the ones that will cost you millions in BGs and forts. No drugs in that district, no shooting of IAs in that district etc. They have complete control until removed.

I realize a lot of moving of the current crop would have to be done, but I think we would have enough open districts to make it possible. Even with limiting the crews per district, we still might not have the numbers for this even. Just tossing it out.

Pros 

Would prevent the lopsidedness we have seen in the last couple years, where one city gets massive and the rest are either tiny or empty

Drug runs would take more strategy and player interaction

Wars would be much more difficult to plan and execute, and give the defenders a slightly better chance of hiding.

Possibly some new features might be possible when all districts are open? Who knows.

 Cons

Would even further water down the rank of godfather. 

Moving current leaders/splitting up cities even

Not enough population to support the format

Happy to hear your opinions, negative or positive.

I read the first sentence and cried. Then I read the whole thing and I was no longer crying tears of sadness but tears of interest. Sounds like a good idea and would be interesting to see how the current game population changes and adapts to the change.

I'd give it a +2 Could be interesting to see especially with the NPC Part.

What I propose, is putting a one crew per district limit on each district, and then opening all five districts in each city.

Immediate problem I see is the monopoly on HQ boosts. I get that rogues aren't very common, but the ability to hard-code out someone's ability to buy an HQ just feels wrong.

I think the suggestion here should be to expand cities to five districts and leave it at that; because the limit is something players can impose on themselves but have chosen not to. I'm going to write a OOC thread concerning my thoughts on this topic; so for now I'll just say "this is something you can already do, short of opening districts." If you present it to your leaders and they don't like it, then it's a bit absurd to take it to Izzy instead to hard-code it into the game. If you present it to your leaders and they do like it, then you've made a fantastic change to the game without requiring any changes in code.

What if instead of limiting HQs per say. Each city has 3-5 districts. One crew per district. When a Godfather is in place in a district a new crew can setup.

Next, if each district of a city is then occupied with a Godfather and crew then open HQ purchasing can happen. No real limit.

It would force people to not be authed and grow under one district but force people to take the Godfather role.

There is no diluting the Godfather rank more than it has. Bloodlines have seen Godfather 2, 3, even 4 times I'd assume by now. This would allow for even more auths that lead to Godfather. If you don't help the other districts stay stable, your district doesn't grow.

If the intent is to get more players to try MR, and stay, there needs to be a way to keep the 'new' players interested.   I appreciate the amount of time, number of lives and detailed understanding of history that the top 50 or 100 players here have.  And being a mafia game, that old world, old school mentality makes a lot of sense, but for MR to draw new players and keep them, there needs to be a way to encourage them to come back. 

Saying this may not be good for my health... but whatever.  I've already noticed that it doesn't matter how many hours i put in, or how hard I try to impress my family, it will take YEARS before I'm given the respect that so many of you have earned.  

Now to be clear.  I don't deserve it.  I have a LOT to learn and would be a fool to say I should be considered anywhere near an equal.  That said, I'd like to see the districts vary in strength.  Of the 5 districts 3 can be full crew of 40, one 30 and one 15 where  younger  players are protected by being part of a bigger family, are in a position to learn and get better over time, but realistically, those districts wouldn't have the strength to  threaten the main districts, leaders or Godfather / mother.  As players  develop and prove themselves,  they get moved up, and sponsors start in the smaller crews.

If you're wondering why the player population hasn't increased much, I would guess that dedicated new players, figure  out pretty fast that any chance to gain real game experience is years away, even if they work  harder and earn  more than some of the more experience players.

Once a family takes control of a city, they can open up these smaller districts and use them as a form of training for up and comers.  This would get the player population up, and with that, you can expand into every city and district.  

Hope that statement doesn't upset anyone lol

I agree with Cato, on the detriment of hard coding a 1 crew per district rule. It would permanently eliminate the potential for a rogue to set up. Although rogues aren't as popular as they once were, this would absolutely put a nail in the coffin of the rogue element.

Other points. I liked the idea of there being more districts available. Especially when it comes to the war the city has to get involved in order to open them by removing all the NPC mobsters, like it was done when the feature was first introduced, and the fact that your members BGs were shot at, and now the forts too. To make it a costly venture for the bigger cities to expand.

another good point is this would create a slight nerf to the 1 sidedness of a first strike. Seeing as 5 districts would grant people on stealth more places to hide out, and spread an invading force thin, thus making it more difficult for a city to just travel in and attack. as well as instead of just flying in and instantly have a 50:50 chance of find you 5 seconds after landing in your city.

It would also create more connectiveness with drug runs than it is (though this already happens if a family/city chat is being used properly) for just the 3. from past experience i know the extra places to go do make for more lively updates on drugs.

This idea would be nice to see brought in but as there are currently 6 cities with 3 districts each and 8 of these districts (1/3) don't have a soul in them, presently, it would be premature to add more places for people to go.

I agree with Big_Al on his points, excpet the numbers he quoted of 50-100. It is less right now.  As it stands, the schematics are treated as top secret and always  have been for the most part.  The current events right now and for the last few months  show  insanely low active mobsters being authed. And they lack knowledge to boot. It is being presented as "new ones get a chance" and only to aid in  this game of chess we got going on.  There is no challenge and those who are and were far more active then many of the upper structure who got the years in and been GF over and over and over  is quite boring to the many who pulled up and are just as qualified if not better. They lack one thing and it is years of being up in here. That there will not keep them. You better start working  a lower rank and giving what was so freely given to you 10 years ago.

Also, the idea would not limit or prevent rogue activity. There is unsettled business as a direct result of rogue activity that is being masked with the bullshit line "intel told us.  And all in the name of unsettled business. Do you honestly think that will end?  The fact once dead all is forgiven is not happening with this "handful of mobsters " that are killing the population.  In addition we just recently had a rogue act (and sorry it was who it was) because of this game of chess. Just proves further the leaders do not give a shit about their underlings.

I think this idea has some serious merit. Obviously, the decision of where to auth new crews is a player decision entirely. But game changes have been implemented by the admins to nudge players in particular directions before; the one that particularly comes to mind here is when new crew limits were added to encourage more and more people becoming leaders- as opposed to one giant crew of dozens/hundreds containing multiple subcrews. That doesn't directly apply to this topic, but it's just establishing the precedent. 

Anyways, it's logical to think that rather than stacking multiple crews in the same district, it would make more sense for organized crime organizations to look at empty cities and try to exert their control. The thing that I really love about this suggestion is that it presents both challenges and opportunities for having empty districts. The original post mentioned that if a district did not have a player crew established, then an NPC crew would come in and set up. Not a Durden pushover crew, but a number of high ranking NPCs (10, 15, 20, whatever number) that would require careful planning and coordination to remove. And there would be penalties for being in a district in NPC control. Perhaps drug deals would be far, far less lucrative. Perhaps after a certain amount of time in a district you would have to suffer an NPC mug attempt every hour that could have a real chance of success against all but the most protected players. Perhaps players ranked Wise Guy or below may even deal with credible threats to their life, or at least to the lives of any bodyguards they have if they remain in these districts too long. 

Perhaps drug deals in ALL cities would go up or down depending on how many districts are player controlled?

In essence, leaving entire lucrative cities abandoned would have some sort of negative consequences.

Taking over these NPC districts would add a challenging new element to the game; again, they wouldn't be full of 2000 free kills- but a smaller number of high ranking, difficult to kill enemies that only a powerful crew could remove, while still possessing a risk of losing someone in the process. 

NPCs here would not move into an empty district immediately- but only after there have been no player crews there for a certain amount of time. 72 hours? A week? 30 days? But there would be no insane rush to start dodging NPCs if a CL dies. Perhaps the number of powerful NPCs would increase, depending on how long it has been since a player crew was present? Or the defense or difficulty of  the NPC would increase?

The one issue that I've read in this thread that would shoot down this idea is what it would do to the rogue element of the game. But I'm not proposing a hard-coded limit on 1 HQ per district (or a GF and then a captain); I'm just proposing that incentives and penalties are put in place. Ultimately, the decision is still up to the players. They might look at a bunch of powerful NPCs in Vegas and decide that it isn't worth making a move on, which is fine. But instead of giant, empty swathes of the country simply lying dormant, empty, and IMMEDIATELY ready for business for anyone who shows up to buy an HQ, this would provide more consequences- and rewards- for player choices.