Sunday, December 17th, 2006
Issue: 1   Editor: Nobody


New Features Klea
Welcome to Bootleggers. The first message everyone saw when there was a rush to be the first person to sign up. However, this message was overlooked with a fantastic new feature which had been added by BSF2000 on the News page. The News page now comprises of miscellaneous statistics and character statistics of your own account. You can now look up how many crimes you have succeeded in and how many you have failed. Other options you can see are the organized crimes total, jail busts and Auto Burglary's.

There has been some pro's and con's of this new feature. A lot of help desk operators have complained about the amount of game forum topics made by players asking how far they have to rank up, by the amount of organized crimes they have done. The pro's of the news page statistics are that it is now easier to estimate the amount of organized crimes to make the 'higher' ranks such as Don.

Along with the miscellaneous statistics are the character statistics which include the percent of each statistic you can find. Your rank percent, your gun and protection percent and your money percent. The percentage for rank is calculated; when you start out as a Scum your rank percent is 8%. There are 13 ranks in the game and the 8% is a 13th of 100%. This however is NOT a rank bar. Contrary to rumours.

A few weeks in and there came another feature introduced by BSF2000 which was the Crew Boss updates which include the profile updates. Crew bosses now have the option to alter their crew without the need of help from Moderators. For a set price (which does change and increase when the crew size is upgraded) the bosses can; change the crew name, change the crew colour and set a successor. Setting a successor adds some security to your crew spot. When a crew boss dies the crew will drop to the highest ranked member, unless there is a successor set. The boss can decide to set the successor to anyone they want although they must be in the crew. Along with the crew alterations crew bosses can now see which members have donated to the crew bank on a list which states the players' name, amount of money and the date that they submitted the donation to the crew bank. Due to the crew colour being accessed by the bosses to be changed, the colour and name of the crew you are currently in now appear at the top of your profile.

With a new reset there comes the thought of a lot more kills. When you want to search more than one player you have to select every state individually. This can become a hassle in itself and can take up some time. For example, the T Brothers Organized Crime, where you have to search all the T Brothers and invite them to your own organized crime to complete the mission. This can become a hassle to search every brother in every state. Cleverly, BSF2000 added a Search All States addition to the kill page. Which, in addition, you can now add the name, set time and select Search All States and in one click, 9 searches are provided for you.

The layout to the mailbox icon is yet another update. As well as a mailbox icon there is included a police badge, which in itself, is to provide you with information about the city's jail. When the police badge is lit it means that there is someone in jail. In addition to this, if you wish to find out how many people are in jail or how many messages are in your inbox (which are unread) you can hold the mouse over the icons and a message appears. For example; 2 new messages!, or for the police badge, 20 inmates in jail!

One feature that got a lot of contraversy is the new mission rewards. After the third mission when you are advised to kill DionOBanion, last reset you would have received your 5000 bullets back, plus a little extra more. Due to the complete reduction of bullets, dupe kills are now slowly becoming extinct. No one now can; make a new account, rank it to boss, buy the best gun and complete all the missions, shoot a player and just log off. That has now been nearly obliterated with the new reward system. A lot of players are extremely happy with this idea. Reducing dupes in Bootleggers is completely neccessary but there are still some critics to this new system. Most of whom are the ones who wish to dupe.

Another feature which has caused a lot of debate is the new amount of crews which can be created. The current number is 10 and as far as we aware this is the amount of crews that will stay on the statistics page and in the game. A lot of players want to see the amount of crew spaces being increased to at least 20 spots. The 10 spots were quickly grabbed up and now the crew spots sell for a large price instead of a dear but cheaper one, as seen last round.

One extra feature that has only recently been added was the 'idle' text that shows on a player's profile, after a certain amount of time where the user has not actually used Bootleggers. After reaching in contact with BSF2000 he stated that the time it takes before the text appears is "5 minutes".

Other smaller features which have been added so far include:

- Online crew dominance
- New forum layout
- New wealth statuses
- Keno's now drop
- Busting becomes harder
- Overall prices (Including; cars and guns/protection)
- Jail timer

It looks like BSF2000's promise last reset about becoming more involved in the game is finally paying off. He is concentrating on the game a lot more and I can see a lot of people are glad to see him back to his old ways.

When we first logged back on after the reset, the Welcome Back game forum topic included a little more than we bargained for. BSF2000 had mentioned of a BIG new feature to hit the game when we rank up to the high ranks. He also stated that last reset something in the game had lied and this reset it will be true. I will leave you to ponder on what you think the new, BIG feature will be.

Hope you enjoy these good additions to the game.