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Q & A

By Bramblerose   1/3/2010   14:20 pm

Dear all, After we asked you all to send us questions for the IRC meeting we got a total of 9 players (on all versions) who actually did send us questions. After a discussion here at the office it’s therefor decided to ‘just’ answer them in here so everyone can read them including the answers, instead of having an irc meeting. We hope on a better reponse next time. Take care, Bramblerose Omerta 1.What was the reason for deleting the codes for inactive players, and don\'t you think this is unfair for active players if they need to buy bullets with the codes ? (Shizzz) Than the codes, you removed them, without noticing anyone, or talk it over. For busters special this codes mean a lot, as they worked there way to the top with codes, and than suddenly the codes got removed, and ppl can bust like crazy. I saw things where done already to correct a bit, but than still. When you remove codes , you say we make it easier for new players to play, no longer codes needed, and is easier game for ppl that are not so much on-line. How about your players that play much ? It looks you guys try everything to make them stop playing. You punish them in every way for playing. (Jans) The idea behind connecting the codes to the activity mode is that if you don’t rank much, there is little chance you’re cheating, so no need for us to check up on you/ having you typing the codes. It’s true that it’s easier for new busters to gain a lot of bustouts, but isn’t everyone benefit from it? Players have to spend less time in jail, so I don’t really see a problem here. We don’t punish players that are online a lot, nothing has changed for them, they continue to play as they did all along. 2. Isn\'t rob to easy to get, buying obay, only 175 np who are pretty easy to have,... What you want to change about it, if you also think he\'s too easy to get ? In usms allot of suggestions are given alrdy, but nothing happens with it or at least we don\'t hear a thing about it but the call from players to do smth about it is big. So an update would be nice (Shizzz) What about taking Rob out of the equation or at least prevent Rob from being sold on Obay? If all Players had to train their own Robs because none were allowed on Obay then it would make staying alive much more of a challenge and possibly create more wars because 50% of bullets shot during war wouldn\'t be spent on Robs. (Redneckab) We don’t think Rob is too easy to get, ofc you can buy him on Obay but fully trained it will cost you a nice amount of money. ‘We know that a lot of suggestions where given, get rid of Rob totally’, ‘don’t sell Rob on Obay’, now with Mia a whole different era has started, before (almost) everyone had a Rob, now you never know if one has a Mia or a Rob, what makes a totally different game play. 3. What about punish the family from which the don is akilled ? UG gave a suggestion about this to the office, but we hear nothing from that, an update would be nice and what you wanna do about the problem. If you tell us nothing you give a pretty clear signal the scripting is allowed imo. (Shizzz) We certainly don’t allow scripting. We have discussed this at the office and there are some ways to deal with scripters within a family. We will come up with a few suggestions soon and have you guys vote for it. 4. Lack of communication is a big problem in this game, wouldn\'t it be easier to make a news msg before you delete the codes than after, give us more updates. Can you do a meeting once a month, to give updates to players, tell us what you are doing for the game... Communication will help allot in not having angry reactions on new changes (Shizzz) We agree that communnication could be better and we’re working on it. Infact, unless something do come up on short notice, we will let you know about changes before we implement those changes. Unfortunate we can’t have a meeting each month, simply because we don’t have time to do so right now, but I do think a more recently meeting can’t do any harm, so it might be something for the future. 5. Isn\'t the ka too hard. We only see one war in a month, if you want to look for other fams to help starting a war most don\'t want to take the risk. Yes, this is also fault of the style of the players, but also fault of ka. You need too much people to make a fine war, and that is what families want, a nice and clean war and that\'s only possible with an easier ka. So, are there any changes you wanna do with ka for next version or do you think this one is very good and you wont change a thing ? (Shizzz) No, we don’t think KA is too hard and there are no plans to change it in the near future/ next version. 6. Please explain us more about mia. If we shoot 1 bullet with Mia we are able to kill the target his Rob ? (Shizzz) No, you won’t be able to kill Rob with 1 bullet, you will be able to remove all special levels of Rob, depending on the special levels of Mia. For each special level that’s Mia is trained she can disable one special level of Rob. 7. Wouldn\'t it be usefull to set some devs in the #help channels ? Unfortunate that’s not possible, simply because the devs are way too busy to spend any time on IRC these days. They use to hang out in the help channels, but than even the most simple questions where addressed to them, while every crewmember could answer that question as well. All crewmembers should give the same answers in the help channels, unfortunate we do notice that some are not and as soon as we find out we’ll update the crewmember and get in touch with the player who’s been given the wrong information in the first place. 8. I don\'t know what you admins do against scripting, but on .nl it\'s really sad. They admit on irc they script, make fun of crew because they know they don\'t do a shit. And too bad, but it seems they are correct on it. Scripters suiciding on manual rankers makes me really pissed. Scripting is a part of the game, and i accepted it on .com but never saw anything like that on .nl ! (Shizzz) We’re still trying to catch the scripters, problem is that if one tells on IRC that he or she script, we’re not suppose to kill just based on that. We need to find the evidence in our database. 9. If there\'s a VOTD, why not use it to really understand what the majority of the players want for the game, instead of idiot questions every week related with Celine Dion? For example, if there\'s an idea of an improvement/change, like the no-codes thingie, why not make a poll to get everybody\'s opinion? Imo, it\'d be beneficial for both parts, \'cause it would give you (crew/devs) the general feeling on any subject, it\'d make VOTD a lot more useful and it\'d help players believe Omerta is not a dictatorship and their opinion really counts. (Blizz) We have USMS where players can put their idea’s and suggestions. The Usergroup will discuss these and pass it on to us. We will change the VOTD as it is now, there are discussions going on at the office about it already. 10. How can you make the game interesting again ? (Redneckab) We’re always open for idea’s/ suggestions. Right now we’re working on a relaunch of Deathmatch. It will be a developers version, which means that all new idea’s will be implemented there first. If we notice that it’s a good implementation, players like it, we will put them live in the other versions. One of the first changes will be ‘in family ranking’. Besides that we have a few more idea’s that’s been discussed with the Usergroup and that might be in there as well, all in good time ofc. reasonable time. 11. Why UG-Members, Times members never gets any present for their job ? (Hellswift) We want them to help us out because they like to, not for the benefits only, that’s the main reason. 12. How come USMS, which basically is a good system, is so untransparant. Players dont get any feedback on closed topics, we cannot see how often an idea is voted for, and thus it is possible to manipulate the figures of votes if that is wanted. (Elenaconda) We have changed a few things on USMS, right now if a suggestion is rejected the player will receive an ingame message explaining why it was rejected. If a suggestion is closed there will be a message saying why it’s closed as well. The idea behind the not being visisble of the amount of votes is that it discourage players to vote for a suggestion with a smaller amount of votes since they think it won’t make a difference and then vote for the once with the most votest. If we wanted to manipulate the votes, you should only see suggestions we really like in the top 10, which is definate not the case . 13. How come the USMS idea that went from zip to top in like a week, \"Remove Bodyguard ROB from the game\", is interpreted by admins to add another bodyguard to rule out an active Rob? (Elenaconda) This is not correct, we already planned to come up with new bodyguards as we mentioned months ago. We already agreed on together with the Usergroup that it had to be an ‘anti-Rob’ bodyguard. And that is what we did. 14. Are you thinking of bringing deathmatch again and when ? (Pedro ) As said before, we will bring Deathmatch back, we can’t give an exact date yet, I can tell you that it won’t take several months anymore before we can re-launch the version. 15. Are you guys planning to do anything on the massive scripting this version, or will it remain the same as it is now with a large amount of scripted accounts? (Pedro ) We haven’t stopped trying to catch the scripters and we will never stop doing so. Continues on Q & A II

By Maartenn   1/3/2010   14:21 pm

Cool, deathmatch was awesome

By Aneed   1/3/2010   14:22 pm

2#

By Llover   1/3/2010   14:25 pm

I still seriously dont see ANY downside on showing how much votes an idea has on USMS, if numbers are low then at least you know you should rally the troops to get your idea higher in the list. About the removal of Rob, maybe the problem does not lie in the USMS ideas but in the UG, i applied for it in December, no response besides an automated msg, asked for action halfway feburary, NO reaction. PS. My name is Elanaconda and i thought this was supposed to be held on IRC, so we can interact with admins/ devs so if we still have questions after your answers we could continue asking..............

By Phobia   1/3/2010   14:26 pm

Can we get the rest too ?

By Asshole   1/3/2010   14:41 pm

\"\"We don’t punish players that are online a lot, nothing has changed for them, they continue to play as they did all along.\"\" L0L

By Silone   1/3/2010   14:42 pm

Read it a bit... Nice that the deathmatch version will be used as some sort of \"test\" version. Better have that more clear than feeling like .com is a test server where major changes occur mid-version So good. I\'m also glad you\'re \"still\" hunting scripters. I really thought you stopped doing that since everyone knows it\'s been used massively and we never really saw real movements against that. Maybe in the future? I\'m still sceptic about it. Just give us a program to install that checks for scriptive software or so

By Theangel   1/3/2010   14:45 pm

14. Are you thinking of bringing deathmatch again and when ? (Pedro ) As said before, we will bring Deathmatch back, we can’t give an exact date yet, I can tell you that it won’t take several months anymore before we can re-launch the version. last time that i asked was 5-6 months

By Zachariah   1/3/2010   14:47 pm

Quote: Llover on 14:25:19 01-03-2010 I still seriously dont see ANY downside on showing how much votes an idea has on USMS. +1

By Biomedic   1/3/2010   14:48 pm

The thing with scripting is that any captcha is \'cracked\' within hours till days after implementing. Captcha\'s dont protect against scripting. Apparently database analysis is the answer for the crew, but until so far there\'s been hardly no effect. I\'m still waiting for the day that CDs, GFs and FLs get a-whacked in bunches. We know they cheat, when will the crew bust\'m?

By Brojon   1/3/2010   14:48 pm

#5

By Grgapitic   1/3/2010   14:50 pm

You should just close all versions except .com, most of them (if not all) are pretty damn lame!

By Sincerely   1/3/2010   14:51 pm

The only thing I care about is that ppl cant buy cheap bullets when then must type a code

By Zachariah   1/3/2010   14:52 pm

Quote: Grgapitic on 14:50:31 01-03-2010 You should just close all versions except .com, most of them (if not all) are pretty damn lame! And then .com would be (even more) full of non-speaking-english players. It would be awesome.

By Biomedic   1/3/2010   14:52 pm

Quote: Sincerely on 14:51:18 01-03-2010 The only thing I care about is that ppl cant buy cheap bullets when then must type a code Pass by the Philly Bullet Factory. I\'ve got plenty of bullets you can buy for $1000 each. Fair price for the quality, if I say so myself.

By Manbear   1/3/2010   14:55 pm

I have a Suggestion. Why not reduce the amount of HQ for individual families drastically, and then allow existing fams to start \'branches\' in other cities? This will simplify the war process, result in less leaks, more wars, and still plenty of opportunity for tops to operate differently in different cities (e.g. no problem with too many captains of one ship).

By Manbear   1/3/2010   14:56 pm

Also it would allow a single family to have numerous GF\'s, CD\'s, Hammers, etc.

By Shotty   1/3/2010   14:57 pm

shizzz you crazy question spammer (soz )

By Joeyc   1/3/2010   14:58 pm

Quote: Bramblerose on 14:20:32 01-03-2010 Dear all, The idea behind connecting the codes to the activity mode is that if you don’t rank much, there is little chance you’re cheating, so no need for us to check up on you/ having you typing the codes. It’s true that it’s easier for new busters to gain a lot of bustouts, but isn’t everyone benefit from it? Players have to spend less time in jail, so I don’t really see a problem here. We don’t punish players that are online a lot, nothing has changed for them, they continue to play as they did all along. This is a ridiculous statement. Try to buy bullets or bust during peak times when you have codes, it\'s nearly impossible. I was on the fence previously to this change about starting to purchase/use DC\'s, only because of the rank punishment I was getting on b/n on an almost daily basis, but this change really sealed the deal that I would never purchase or use a DC for a game that punished me for playing more than other players.

By Popiejopie   1/3/2010   15:10 pm

The idea behind connecting the codes to the activity mode is that if you don’t rank much, there is little chance you’re cheating, so no need for us to check up on you/ having you typing the codes. It’s true that it’s easier for new busters to gain a lot of bustouts, but isn’t everyone benefit from it? Players have to spend less time in jail, so I don’t really see a problem here. We don’t punish players that are online a lot, nothing has changed for them, they continue to play as they did all along. You indeed have a good point. Nothing changes for the players that are online a lot, they continue to play as they did all along. The inactive players, however, get the benefit of not having to type a code and (to bring back shizzz\' initial point) therefor it takes them less time to fill in the form on the bullets-page, creating a clear disadvantage for the active players

By Jansie   1/3/2010   15:41 pm

thanks for the answers, to bad the meeting is of again. Hoped we could interact on irc about this questions and suggestions.