My suggestion is to get rid of the CL wackboost or to severely reduce it. This excludes all Godfather boosts, because I have no idea how great they are.

In my opinion, when it comes to leaders, there is an imbalance towards wack. The boost a leader gets just for having a crew (not to mention another boost for numbers and ranks) is way too powerful. It is also FAR easier to get a crew and fill it with people than it is to reach 100-200 kills. Sure, they did have to do some work in order to get authed but they already got auth, why would they also get a gun? Normally the rule of thumb is "you have to have done more or an equal amount of work than your victim, in order to kill them". When a leader shoots at another player, who is not bold, this rule does not apply.

From an RP point of view, the boost does not make much sense either. Defence, sure, a leader can hide in his HQ where he is surrounded by his crew members. But how will that help him when it comes to his aiming skills?

The old argument for the CL wack boost was that every leader should be able to protect their members to some extent. Now the question is, what are hitsquads for? Also, these days with MIAs and ranges anyone can train a gun. So if they wish to be able to protect their members themselves, they can easily make the effort to train a respectable gun.

My strongest argument for the removal of said boost is the strategic authing of hitters. A Godfather who does not auth hitters over other mafiosi who deserve it (possibly more) will have a serious disadvantage. For many players, myself included, the CL wack boost is the only (or one of the very few) reasons to consider going bold.

In a world without the CL boost, hitsquads come into focus more and the want to be a very top tier hitter doesn't necessarily have to go hand in hand with auth. Hitsquads won't consist of 80% leaders and there will be other things to aim for in life other than getting auth.

Now before you share your opinion, please be objective and do not reply just because you are afraid to lose your precious boost (if you are a leader).

It does appear that CL's and Godfathers get a massive boost when purchasing a HQ and making Godfather. But without knowing exactly how much of a boost they get i find it hard to say whether the wack boost should be reduced or taken away. Maybe reducing it slightly would be a good idea though.

Most hitters are better on familiar grounds. I know movies aren't the best reference but have you noticed in quite a few movies where they know their surroundings better they tend to have an upper hand advantage?

I can see your point on this though, maybe outside of their home city lower the wack boost a bit. As far as being in their home city I think the wack boost should go untouched considering it's the ground they're most familiar with.

An interesting and potentially great suggestion here.

I can see the original rp reasons for the CL boost as it stands, but I can't disagree with a single one of the points raised in relation to removing it. On the balance, I believe that removing it provides more positives than negatives.

Hitting is, and should be, an art. The idea of a 'magical' boost due to going bold doesn't encourage or reward hard work as it does in most areas of the game. A leader must earn their position, nobody will/should question that, but they already recieve numerous other benefits aside from the wack boost (defence boosts, control of finances, control of members, loyal following [if a good leader], etc etc) to more than reward the position they hold.

While I disagree that it forces a GF down the route of 'only' authing hitters (I personally have always gone for the best person for the job, regardless of a potential negative of adding a wack boost to a non hitter), it does remove a 'need' or 'strong desire' for hitters to aim for auth for nothing more than a gun boost. Being a hitter is a nieche that shouldn't 'require' auth to aid it.

Having seen this briefly discussed on IRC also (just as my ISP decided to play ping pong with me), as long as it is introduced in a gradual manner... I can't see any negatives to the change and believe it does make the challenge and rewards of training a good gun far more in keeping with the general ethos of the game. +1 from me.

I think this would be an excellent change, but would tack on a caviat to that. It would be an excellent change if and only if it were coupled with a simultaneous retroactive tweak that increased gun skill per kill. Otherwise, you're just taking a ton of wack out of the game at a time when defenses are already absurdly high, and it would just dig deeper into the problems brought up here. 100 more kills required to hit your target is another ~40% chance of death before you get there if you're on pure wack, even with a bodyguard (1/200 chance of death in each of 100 shots: .995^100 ~= .6 = 60% odds of living through all of them). Or at average wackback rates of 0.2%, that's still 20% more chance of dieing before you get there. The last thing we need right now is one hundred more reasons not to pick the answer set designed for killing if you want to be a killer.

I agree wholeheartedly that the balance in gun strength between bold and non-bold players is totally misaligned right now. RP-wise, hitters should be men who work in the shadows, not the people on top whose pictures are regularly seen in the newspapers. If anything, going bold intuitively would hurt your gun because of the notoriety you gain (realistically, it's probably healthier for the site to stay at "no change" though), but give a positively massive defense bonus per member since you have them as "super bodyguards" more or less.

Otherwise, you're just taking a ton of wack out of the game at a time when defenses are already absurdly high, and it would just dig deeper into the problems brought up here.

Personally, I'm not sure I agree this is an issue at all. I believe it really isn't. If people are willing to put the work into training a gun, it can and is very possible to do it. Look at our last number of big wars. LV/Chi vs. Det? Took a couple of hours for a powerful city to be wiped out. NY vs. STL? It was all but over in one wave. Phi/Det/NY vs. STL/NO/LV? Though it started off a touch slowly, once it got going it was over in relatively no time. If the effort is made, there isn't a huge problem with the wack/def balance at the moment. It just requires work and some strategy for it to work out.

For months on end people complained that Marietta was untouchable. At the time of her retirement, information was given on the level of protection she had. It was clear to all that there were at least three or four guns that could have one shot her, or with a bg attack in advance, many who could have. It wasn't that there was an imbalance in wack/def, it was just that the lady was damn good at her job, many of those that could have killed her certainly didn't want it and those that might have wanted it knew that it would come with a huge backlash from those that didn't want it (Read: I had yer back ho').

Some suggest that a change like this, even if implemented over time as has been suggested, is an issue as it removes wack/balance from the game. It really doesn't. It removes rewards which shouldn't be there in the first place from a very small minority of players (~20 players at our current figures, and only a removal of a 'relatively' small boost). With the introduction of MIA's (ignoring npc's and normal wacks), if a player was simply to keep to their mia limits they'd remain at the same level they were previously at the entire time, without even having to touch a 'normal' target. Fair enough, a 'normal' player would be moving ahead of their current wack during that time... but that just shows that the 'leader' is being allowed to keep this undeserved boost for an even longer time.

I think that the pro's of this suggestion far outweigh any of the con's... said as someone who will suffer the most 'losses' as a result of this change as the game currently stands.