Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
Issue: 3   Editor: Mika


Crimes - Harder work for more returns? Sky
Crimes are a staple to climbing the ranks, and when Major Crimes were released, climbing them became much easier. Suddenly the crimes percentage became a subtle, but reliable rank indication. You could see how close you were to being promoted by the percentage of each crime. This was generally popular but spoiled ranking a little bit, it took the surprise out of hard work.

The system has been reversed however. Crime percentages are no longer an indicator of rank, and now increase with every crime you do - as they used to. However, now that we've been spoiled with this glimpse into the inner workings of the game, can we really go back to the original system? Crimes are harder now, that's for certain. It's probably because everything you did made crimes easier. Organised crimes, bootlegging, stealing cars - they all increase your rank and so increased your crime percentages. Now however, only crimes affect your crime percentages. It's safe to say that we've all suffered at the hands of these impossible crimes, but does the extra work we put in reward us fairly?

Notorious ranker, Kamikaze, former Nation Don and twice State Don, certainly thinks so. When asked for his opinion of the update, he replied, "Now the glitch within the crime system has been fixed meaning crime percentages no longer directly correlate to a players experience as was the case in round 5, I feel it has been an overall improvement as it now rewards the players who put in the effort in the same way as auto burglaries, busting skills etc improve with experience."

As cash starts to trickle back in to the game slowly but steadily, it may be true that people stop doing crimes altogether. One Organised Crime equates to around 250 petty crimes, a hefty amount. Eventually, as people die, Organised Crimes will be used to rank up more so than crimes, as was true last round. So crimes will be left for the friendless, the poor, and the bored. It's conceivable that someone could reach high ranks without ever having done a crime if they so wished. "Certainly at the start of the round doing crimes can be very beneficial as they are one of your main sources of income so the time and effort needed is worthwhile," Kamikaze continued. "However as the round progresses and players start living off their bank interest etc you may see a general reduction in the number consistently committed."

Think about it for a second and you'll realise that - though crimes take an eon to get good at - once you are good at them they return a lot of money for just ten seconds out of your life. The better you are at them, the less likely you are to spend some time in jail, and other things can be done to fill the time - you can start a ritual. Commit a crime, steal a car, do some arm wrestling training, repeat. If you get a good rhythm going before you know it you'll be swimming in money. When we put this to Kamikaze he replied, "The early crimes 'beat up a blind man' and 'scare an old lady' do not appear to be any harder than round 5, but now crime experience is completely independent to other features within the game trying to be consistently successful at the later crimes takes a lot more work. For instance I'm currently doing the 'Steal Petty Cash from an Office' crime and it is taking 82/83 attempts to see a 1% rise in the 'Rough up a Gas Station Clerk' crime".

At the rank of Boss, with the Petty Cash From Office crime maxed out at 94%, it's very easy to make $50,000 a day, or more - quite a large amount so early on in the round considering the average cash per player is around $83,000. It's enough for an entire inventory of booze, any position in an Organised Crime, or an enjoyable but brief visit to a casino. However, it takes a long time to reach Boss, and it takes even longer to max-out each crime. We asked Kamikaze for his take on this, "I certainly prefer the new crime system as stated above due to it rewarding the players who put in the effort plus it makes the whole side of ranking much more of a surprise for all, rather than being able to look at crimes and go 'only one more percent and I will be a boss' etc. However if you happen to be killed under this new system you will then be faced with the prospect of needing a few thousand crimes again so that you can successfully commit 'mug a yuppie' or 'steal petty cash' consistently, whether or not this will put players off especially if they are killed frequently only time will tell."

Crimes seems to be evenly weighted. They take a while to become good at, but once you are good at them, they make a lot of money. If you do two Organised Crimes a day, you've done the equivalent of 500 crimes, on top of however many crimes you've done. If you plan your day right you could be doing upwards of 300 crimes a day, essentially committing three Organised Crimes a day. While crimes are no longer useful to gauge your rank, they are incredibly useful for making money, quite an oddity for petty crimes. They make take a while to get good at, but they are certainly worth it. Crimes are certainly more likely to play a bigger part this round than in previous rounds.