Sunday, September 21st, 2008
Issue: 92   Editor: NYX2000


Abysmal OC Feature Must Be Changed LoserSeal
With a quick click on the Organized Crime page, one can clearly see a cosmetic change in the layout. This new layout I think is a positive feature, and while having nothing to do with gameplay itself, it makes the game look better, and therefore more attractive to old and new players alike.

Maybe you've ventured further, by actually starting an Organized Crime yourself. In fact I did that today for the first time in at least three weeks. In all honesty, it's much easier just to find OC's from the classifieds page. However I was going to help out a friend who is back on the game now, so I figured why not? I'll lead one myself. Once you've started the OC, the layout there is different as well, in my opinion also for the better. So we've got all the cosmetic changes. Yes, they're awesome. Now on to the change that affects game play.

Back in my OC, I had filled all the positions, clicked "finalize percents," then I clicked "commit crime." However upon clicking "commit crime," I was startled with the writing in red at the top of my screen, notifying me that a player in my OC was currently offline. Must be a bug, I thought. I clicked commit "crime again," only to get the same message. At this point I'm in a panic, as I am very particular about the ordering of my clicks. Luckily, one of my friends who used to play bl was there, so I went into the other room while he finished the OC for me.

So the admins went out of their way to make it a feature of the game that all members of an OC must be on at the time it is committed. I have to ask ... why? Do they not know that some people log on for a few minutes to join an OC and then log off to go about their regular day? Do they not know that sometimes it takes a while to fill an OC, so some members will naturally have to log off? Hell I counted at least a dozen threads on the first page of the classifieds looking for OC members, mostly drivers. More than half of these had been bumped multiple times over the span of at least five minutes, so there were bound to have been some users in those OC's who had to log out during that time. So now an OC leader has to kick someone who logged out, the person who got kicked gets pissed at said OC leader, and you've got a chain reaction on your hands.

So what I've got to say about the OC updates, yes the cosmetic changes are good. I love the new look, it's like an orgasm for my ocular orbs. However, the "all members of OC must be online" feature - seriously, what were you thinking?