1. Increase the BG cap

This is going to piss a lot of people off even mentioning it. I assume the admins will not like it either. When the BG cap was higher you could not 1 shot someone. You needed to organize hitters to go after the BG’s first! Organization, timing, loyalty from numerous members, and trust was all needed. You NEEDED other people around you to be successful.

Currently, cap hitting is a thing. You can 1 shot anyone, and you KNOW for certain you will hit. This forces the top to be paranoid. They could die at any moment if they allow someone that they don’t 100% trust to obtain a large enough gun. So, while most blame the person/people at the top they should be blaming the game. The game is creating an environment that is forcing their actions. In order to guarantee your stay at the top you must not allow anyone you don’t trust to build a powerful gun because all it takes is 1 person to get a cannon and kill you.

1. Remove rolling stats and change the written answer results

Again, I suspect that this will be hated but I believe that it would be for the best. Previously you had a system where a new player was instantly disadvantaged because they didn’t already know how to generate the stats they wanted by answering the questions in a specific way. So, rolling your stats was implemented. No more instant disadvantages. Everyone is on an “even” playing field. Though, while it does even the playing field it doesn’t address the underlying problem. Controlling the outcome of your stats in that way is not a good thing. It should be a skill based/work based system that is generated throughout gameplay OR have each account start at the same stats and different answers allows stats to grow at an increased rate.

I prefer the second option but acknowledge that it would be difficult to implement. As an example a person could roll to have a tendency to prefer wacking and a dislike of information. Call them whatever you want but one is a plus and the other is a minus. Creating a system of skill preferences like this could allow someone to actually build a character to their desire. Depending on your chosen preferences skills when training would gain and lose at different rates. Training your wack may cause your information to decrease, but if you prefer the information skill perhaps your wack goes up by 1 and your information is unaffected while someone who prefers wack would increase by 2 but lose 1 information. This creates character customization as well as specialization which will force cooperation significantly more. It does cause a steep and difficult learning curve for new players but a great solution to that would be to use the new “training/work” mechanic that is already in the game. Using that to list what is happening early on would insure that new players at least are aware that what they do will affect their character.

I don’t have anything that I can think of saying at the moment but I know I will think of something else. This is also more than enough for me to try to defend once people start posting. There will be a part two but these first two are a great start to generate conversation. Let me know what you think.

1. I agree on that point, its useless having more than 100 BGs if someone can kill you in one shot. Then dont hire BGs and only work on your offense, it seems more valuable.

2. I also agree on that point, we should all start a new account with the same stats or no stats at all (everything at 0%) and then we build our character based on our favorite skills.

BG CAP

I said this in IRC and I'll say it again, because the BG Cap has been adjusted in the past a lot of players view it as the only mechanism by which we can balance the wack feature. It's not. The truth is, there is no situation where having BG wackers is useful and the BG cap has nothing to do with it. If a city could control who all was training their gun, the best strategy is to have all available RIAs put on a single gun. Why? Because it's easier to shoot over an additional BG (5 kills) than to kill an additional BG (100+ kills). It's simply never worth the effort to be a BG wacker. Be a proer? Hell yeah. Kill target proers? Hell yeah. But not BG wacking.

Until that discrepancy is fixed, there will never be a time where having a great many guns can defeat a single big one (which seems to be the effect you're looking for). Raising the BG cap only exacerbates that problem by making it harder for the lone gun, and it will not push them to rely on others for BG wacking. They'll simply get the necessary kills to shoot over the BGs rather than rely on anyone for BG wacking.

There are a number of ways to fix this. I can elaborate, but usually it's just a waste of time because no one cares.

ANSWERS

It should be a skill based/work based system that is generated throughout gameplay OR have each account start at the same stats and different answers allows stats to grow at an increased rate.

The answer sets were designed in a time when account were much shorter; having wack answers meant you'd probably be killing someone a week later. I would not be opposed to having "different answers allow stats to grow at different rates," but I don't think you'd see any discernible impact on the game. Though good luck finding a way to "increase stealth," which is something that I've been fighting for years. Flat "startup bonuses" will likely never change, for better or for worse.

Until that discrepancy is fixed, there will never be a time where having a great many guns can defeat a single big one (which seems to be the effect you're looking for). Raising the BG cap only exacerbates that problem by making it harder for the lone gun, and it will not push them to rely on others for BG wacking. They'll simply get the necessary kills to shoot over the BGs rather than rely on anyone for BG wacking

I believe this is a great point and one that leads to the conclusion that: The wack stat is over powered. So much so that it MUST be balanced by increasing the power of other stats. The first one that comes to mind is Defense.

That is the mindset, not, lets allow the masses to beat one person. Truly wack is the single most valuable skill in the game, so much so that is has become over powered. 

Increase defense or diminish wack are your only options. Lowering wack/making it riskier reduces fun/reduces interactivity. So...you aren't really left with many options. 

I would love to hear your ways to fix this! Because frankly, I dont have any.

1. "One-shotting" has always been a thing and probably always will be one. If you increased the BG cap as it currently is, I suspect you would only achieve in increasing the length of time the build/grind period will last until people can get to the one-shot phase again. When 300 BGs were possible, people just waited longer until someone could shoot through it; I suspect that would still be the same. 

The game has always created an environment where the only true means of guaranteed survival is to ensure their is nobody alive able to shoot at you and yet it almost never descends to that point. Eventually someone always trusts the wrong person or circles of influence expand to a point where those with ulterior motives enter into them and the landscape changes via implosion. That has been the MR paradigm for as long as I can remember.

Whilst their is inevitable paranoia from those at the top, it is their failing/strength on how they deal with that. If anything I would be an advocate of lowering the BG cap, because it really doesn't say much if you stay at the top when nobody else can kill you; true quality is shown by staying their when plenty of people can.

1. Without disclosing any game secrets, there is pretty much only one worthwhile stat that you should bother with at the beginning and it is the only one that you can't train, because over the duration of an account pretty much everything else can be sorted out just by living long enough. If I'm going to be racking up over 1000 kills, what difference is an extra 60 or 100 to make sure I have other strengths? Very little.

So I think it is something definitely worth exploring because the jack of all trades, master of all trades accounts that we have at the moment make the answers/roll totally redundant. I would like to see stats being heavily, heavily tapered if you choose a certain set of answers. Like, if you want 100% info, that's fine, but it is going to take you a very, very long time to reap the true benefits of it; i.e. a great gun. If you want 100% defence, make that a worthwhile choice, like BGs give you much more protection than if you are on wack, but the trade off is a terrible attack stat that builds much slower. Things like that, where there are genuine differences, rewards and consequences in the choices you make in your account, which aren't locked in until after you complete the tutorial period.  

1.1 You kind of touched on this with your first point, which is the general knowledge levels of the users as to the mechanics of the game, which has been a real issue for a number of years. Since the BG to kill ratio became common knowledge (major finger wag at Anubis), experienced users actually know whether or not they are going to be successful with a shot. That lack of mystery has destroyed something special and contributed to the grind period, because why would I risk shooting you on 500 kills when I know I don't have a hope until I clear 700? I wouldn't and people don't. That sucks. 

Tapering the top % of guns was an enormous step in the right direction in achieving a bit of mystery and really I'd like to see that expanded to say at point X your stats will be affected by amounts Y and Z  etc. but you don't know when that kicks or by what amount it is. That would really make people have to gamble more. That could then be increased to all other stats too. You could buy 300 BGs, but you have no idea from what point they stop helping you by the equivalent of X kills and are only actually helping you by the equivalent of Y kills. If this was coupled with a behind the scenes rejig of the current formula and this was not disclosed to anyone, then nobody would know what "one-shot" range is. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that encourage organisation and teamwork and BG wacking?

People are smart. They would figure out the new formula and we'd be back at the same spot.

I've compiled all of my thoughts on fixing the system here, Googlez.

The wack stat is over powered. So much so that it MUST be balanced by increasing the power of other stats. The first one that comes to mind is Defense.

I don't believe it's overpowered. I don't think wack is any more important than vision or defense. In fact, I think defense is actually more potent per-dollar than defense. But I do believe my suggestion in the suggestions forum would resolve that problem.

Increase defense or diminish wack are your only options. Lowering wack/making it riskier reduces fun/reduces interactivity. So...you aren't really left with many options. 

My solution would be to increase defense but also buff BG wacking. That way the solution can no longer be a one-shot kill.

If a whole committeedesigned a horse - it would be a camel, g-get it? hehe.

Tempy, whilst people are smart they aren't miracle workers. You can't work out the formula unless you have a controlled environment, which unfortunately we did. It became easy to work out what each BG was worth when you knew what each kill and each BG kill are worth and thus, before long, figures like those quoted by Cato became common knowledge.

However, if you don't know what a BG is worth because you don't know what the BG cap is and you don't know at which point BGs stopped being as effective as they had been before and you don't know when your kills stopped being as effective as they were and you don't know when your BG kills stopped being as effective as they were, then you're just throwing a whole lot of shit at the wall and hoping it sticks. 

Most crews last for months. You aim to tell me you can't create a controlled environment withing a crew to theory craft? If that is what you are trying to say, I strongly disagree sir.

I think we should be making people easier to kill, not harder. Why make it harder to topple those at the top? Realistically it shouldn't be that hard to do. Unless of course they have an army of loyal mobsters at his or her disposal. The more people that are loyal the harder you are to kill. The loyalty option is underused, as is the take a bullet option, if we lowered the BG cap and encouraged members to use this I'm sure we'd see a big shift on how leaders act.

Making it easier to kill leaders and having them rely on the loyalty of their members would mean they would strive to interact with their crew and be active rather than just sit behind their wealth of BG's that are fully trained and take the earnings of their crew, while never actually having to interact at all.

There's lots of ways for the game to change for the better, but I honestly don't imagine it will be changing any time soon. At least not in regards to the wacking aspect of it.

If you think that isn't remotely possible, then I don't think you understand what I am advocating.

Jeez. That was meant to say:

If you think that is even remotely possible, then I don't think you understand what I'm advocating.