Crime Bosses and Disappointment

[Rain]

As you may be aware, if you fail too many jobs for a syndicate crime boss they'll get upset with you and block you from jobs for a while. The traditional remedy for this is to hand in the head of one of your enemies, or a specific item stolen from them.

Unfortunately, because some of you can't be trusted to treat your crime syndicate membership as a real actual IC thing that your character is deeply involved in and instead view it as than nothing more than a source of credits, this has lead to the ridiculous situation of people making arrangements with rival gang members to exchange heads for credits, sexual favours, a back rub, whatever.

I shouldn't need to remind you that being best buddies with people in opposing factions is frowned upon. Yes, you can interact with them to do business, your bosses understand that sometimes you have to do something distasteful - but you'd best be damn sure that you're planning a way to fuck them over as soon as the business is done.

As such, code change time:

• Having your head turned in to an enemy faction will raise your faction's disappointment with you.
• Having your disappointment raised will negatively impact your reputation with your faction depending on the amount of disappointment you have. This means that you won't be offered the tougher and/or better paying jobs until you've worked your reputation up again (and might be beneficial if you're struggling with the tougher jobs).

Additional changes, just because I'm nice:

• Lowered the time between bosses forgiving your past fuck ups significantly, so you don't have to be jobless for as long.
• Raised the number of times you can fuck up before you get cut off from jobs. Remember, the more you fuck up, the lower your reputation will get.

Additional code change I'm tempted to add but haven't yet, I'll see how I feel:

• Potentially adding disappointment for ignoring your boss when they message you about an ongoing hit.
• Potentially adding disappointment for messaging rival crime syndicate members just after your boss has told you about an ongoing hit, just to check if it's them doing the hit before you decide to sit in your cube and hide because let's face it, you weren't going to get involved anyway, were you?
• Potentially adding disappointment for walking past an enemy crime syndicate member who's actively involved in a hit against your faction and emoting ":whistles innocently" before running away to your apartment to hide.
• Potentially adding disappointment for having your groin uncovered in front of your boss.
• Potentially adding disappointment for breathing.

[Jesper]

If the last eight years haven't been proof enough of needing to raise actual participation incentives or fencesitting problems for mafia/yak members I don't know what would be!

If a character is trying to be neutral to that conflict it is still far more sensical from a game mechanics standpoint to join one or the other to get the extra cred flow, because people will just laugh and shrug it off unless you piss them off for some other reason or they otherwise would like the IC reason to mess with you.

Point being a character who tries to be neutral and acts accordingly is punished compared to someone who tries to be neutral and minmaxes profits by being in a faction consequence free.

[dicanomi]

If syndicates are supposed to hate each other, can Merc Guild get added to some hitlists? I think it's silly that they get a free pass and noone can collect their heads.

[GrimNocturnal]

I've heard ~rumours~ that that's being worked on and in the mean time they're gonna be taking a pay hit or something of the like. Don't quote me!

[Crux]

If syndicates are supposed to hate each other, can Merc Guild get added to some hitlists? I think it's silly that they get a free pass and noone can collect their heads.

I wouldn't worry too much about them...

[Minotauro]

Preview: Re: Roleplaying
As much as I appreciate the admin changing things around, I don't think it's fair for them to be spending so much time on twinky players.

Why not just warn the player/s. If they do it again, give them a one month ban/newt. The admin's time can be better spent on people who actually want to play it.

The admin are not being paid to do this. It makes no sense for anything other than minimal resources to be spent where they're not needed.

[Mattski]

If syndicates are supposed to hate each other, can Merc Guild get added to some hitlists? I think it's silly that they get a free pass and noone can collect their heads.

free pass? its not like youd be hunting their members any more than you already are if you could collect their heads. free pass is a misnomer.
and the door swings both ways. we cant collect anyones heads. we'd all be millionaires if we could cash yakuza, mafia and russian heads.

edit: after thinking about it a little further i think dicanomi's proposal should be implemented. add mercenary guild to all of the other syndicate hit lists, and add all of the other syndicate members to mercenary guild hit list .. it will create in-game balance and promote interaction between the syndicates.

[Ptolemais]

Preview: Re: Roleplaying
As much as I appreciate the admin changing things around, I don't think it's fair for them to be spending so much time on twinky players.

Why not just warn the player/s. If they do it again, give them a one month ban/newt. The admin's time can be better spent on people who actually want to play it.

The admin are not being paid to do this. It makes no sense for anything other than minimal resources to be spent where they're not needed.

I feel like it's counter-intuitive to just start banning people from being able to play the game. It makes more sense to handle things from an IC perspective in response to people behaving a certain way in-game, plus it also generates a more healthy atmosphere for the game world itself.

As for the admin spending a lot of time on twinky players, I like to see it more in the light of the admin are working to improve a system in such a way that non-twinky players find themselves rewarded. So at the end of the day, this work benefits people the most who are doing the things they should be doing in an IC sense, rather than simply being about punishing those who don't. And I honestly can't find any fault with that!

[Minotauro]

I feel like it's counter-intuitive to just start banning people from being able to play the game. It makes more sense to handle things from an IC perspective in response to people behaving a certain way in-game, plus it also generates a more healthy atmosphere for the game world itself.

As for the admin spending a lot of time on twinky players, I like to see it more in the light of the admin are working to improve a system in such a way that non-twinky players find themselves rewarded. So at the end of the day, this work benefits people the most who are doing the things they should be doing in an IC sense, rather than simply being about punishing those who don't. And I honestly can't find any fault with that!

It isn't counter-intuitive. I am speaking from experience watching admin try to deal with things ICly involving twinky players on another game. It's a waste of time. The fastest and most effective way of dissuading such behaviour is simply taking the person responsible for it out of the game. A twinker will only look for other ways to further twink.

Your statement implies that the changes are for the game's improvement, especially for players that consistently remain within the proper IC boundaries. We must note that this is a reactive measure to a twinker, not a situation whereby the admin take a look at the game and what the players have been doing over a period of time, then try to implement something that would make their experience better. Any admin code change takes many things into consideration, but there is a huge difference between making a code change to enhance everyone's fun, versus a change in relation to keeping a twinker in check. I personally would rather have the admin look at the game with positive changes in mind, not have them keep watching the twinks and play catch-up to them.

The players playing properly benefit from admin making code additions that help them. A twinky player that is not newted for repeatedly circumventing in game systems does so because he/she knows that they'll just get a slap on the wrist and try to do it again. It may not be for the issue they were spoken to about, it'll just be for anything else they can exploit. Again, this is a waste of time and resources.

You should also be aware that if you have a player that is allowed to twink continuously, they in turn will show their associates how best to do so. If a good noob comes in, they unfortunately get roped in as well. There are many other points that can be be brought up on why the best solution is to just newt the offending player, but I'm sure the other forum players can figure those out.

[Ferachio-hime]

Unfortunately, because some of you can't be trusted to treat your crime syndicate membership as a real actual IC thing that your character is deeply involved in and instead view it as than nothing more than a source of credits.

I'm really glad factions have become more dynamic. In reference to the above quoted portion, could we get more interaction for the faction members? For a lot of people, it's just that. A job to get creds with a few limitations. I completely understand why our faction boss wouldn't want us cozying up to the enemy, but beyond creds in the form of regular jobs and turning in heads, can we expect any more incentive to play aligned with our faction? I don't have many solutions to offer here, beyond suggesting creating a culture around them.

An alarming number of faction members just hang back, some even rarely do jobs, because they don't see it as anything but "Kill AHABs/Run Packages, wash, rinse, repeat". And most faction leaders don't speak up unless something has gone terribly wrong.

I expect maybe this is what this update helps reign in, however I think the culture around each faction (PKs rarely being anything aligned to their creedo for example) needs to be bolstered by some means other than 10k for John Doe's head. Whether faction leaders are RPing with their members, RP being recognized, or something else to further each faction's respective goals.