Sunday, March 8th, 2009
Issue: 116   Editor: Mikamon


Crimes Get Revamped! BrickTamland
You may remember back to Issues 71, 72 and 73 when the Buzz ran a competition where you, the reader, got to have your say on what new feature update would be implemented into the Game. The winner was decided and earlier this week, Bootleggers saw an overhaul to the Crimes feature.

The changes that were made include a new "Major Crimes" section where it is possible to steal from Crews, State or Nation Dons, Casino or Bullet Factory holders, or simply fellow players. This new section contains five separate types of Crime, with players being able to access more of them as they increase rank.

The standard "Petty Crimes" section has also been updated. All of the previous Crimes have been replaced with a total of 10 new ones, again, becoming more accessible through increased rank.

The payouts for Crimes have been increased, making them slightly more realistic. Major Crimes, although being harder to succeed, yielding the most reward which can include money or bullets if the Factory has any available.

The percentages for chances of succeeding a crime increase far less often either by completing an Organized Crime or doing a large amount of Crimes.

Once completed or failed a crime, you are still able to see the Crimes page, however, you are able to see the counter and a "Recovering..." bar replaces the button where you commit the crime.

The full list of Crimes just after completing one looks like this:


It has emerged that it only requires 24 Crimes to be able to steal cars instead of waiting for all Crimes to be above 50%.

If a player succeeds, or is involved in, a Major Crime against another Crew or player, they receive information about it, whether it's been that they've been pick pocketed for $40,000 for example or whether their Crew has been extorted. In the case of a Crew, a few members can receive the message with some being able to see who the culprit was and some not being able to. This adds a little danger to those attempting to steal from Crews as some players have already found themselves logging into a "You have been killed!" screen for it.

Of course, when updates as big as Crimes come into effect, there are a lot of topics on every type of forum, be it Off topic, Game or even Crew. The Buzz decided to venture into one or two of these topics to see what the different opinions of the new feature were. We also decided to get a Crew Boss' opinion of it all.

One player, kwee, felt the update was a negative thing, stating, "Personally, I am an owner of a garage and a roulette table. This means that I am screwed in 3 ways. First of all, I keep loosing money due to my garage getting hit. Second of all, my casino is not safe and finally I keep loosing money because I can't put in the bank due to my casino".

However, this was answered straight away by InfactuationCunt, "It's a mafia game. People steal from people. Deal with it". Most people initially were bugged by the constant bootmails they were receiving about being robbed one way or another. However, there was the occasional voice of optimism, for example, tippmann6150, saying, "Awesome. I've made about a mill so far. But this is a lot of crimes to try and get to 100% if it’s even possible".

So it seems it benefits more those who have less to lose. Any money not safely stored in a Swiss or federal bank could be going to a new owner very soon.

Finally, we caught up with IAmAldarion for a Crew Boss' perspective on the whole matter. He had positive and negative points on the issue, commenting that, "The petty crimes are fantastic, lot of options, proper pay-out, love them". However, he also mentioned, "I really don't like some of the Major crimes. For example, the option of players being able to extort a crew. The money stored is used for paying tax and protection/weapon upgrades, and that's the only thing they can use it for". He went on to say, "Crew bosses have no possibility of donating that money to anyone. Therefore, I'm just watching my crew bank empty by the minute. It went down at least 15 million in just 12 hours. If I would store just one million for paying the next day, I couldn't, as it'd all be gone. That simply doesn't make any sense at all to me".

He also took time to say, "Technically it's the same story for casino holders. It's hard to make some profit, and it really is if one gets extorted all the time", before pointing out, "Extorting a player has potential, although I think the amounts are just way too high compared to the old crimes". He ended on telling us, "All in all, I think the petty crimes are brilliant. Major crimes definitely need to be fixed, since "it's just a matter of time" doesn't apply to this update.”

With a rather large update came a large set of opinions. Whatever your stance, it appears this new version is here to stay so it'd be wise to get used to it, or just ignore Crimes altogether like some did before this was implemented.