Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Issue: 32   Editor: HowlingMadMika


COLUMN: The future of missions Altro
In times gone by, missions were a hotly debated topic given the scale of the reward. Are they too low now? Well they were too high then! During the first half of the game’s life, they provided a guaranteed influx of bullets, giving around 20,000 bullets for those that completed all of the missions. These 20,000 bullets were often put to use. If you were around back then you may remember the arguments, the injustices of dupes ranking a little, doing the missions, shooting one account, and disappearing. Only for the cycle to then repeat itself. Given the excessive duping at the time, it was players who saw missions as a key problem. The ‘problem’ was rectified when players logged in for the first time in round five; a reduction in mission bullets. Users now would only gain a profit of 2,750 bullets for completing all of the missions, hardly enough to do any real damage.

A revitalisation of the feature during the latter half of round five came with the new booze feature. Not only did the prices for wine change, but so did the pay out of the mission. Rather than a measly $20k reward, users were given double what they put in; seven million became fourteen million. This locked new players out of the feature for a while, but once more gave older users a reason to dabble. Alas this revitalization did not stretch across all missions, but did spark interest. Then came round six and the upper hand was removed. Lowering of booze prices and a change in the mission from wine to beer, as well as a lowering of the amount of booze required killed that incentive for many a player. No official reason was given but could it be the feature was meant for new players? So why now do missions? A question often asked of the Elite Guard in the past, with the stern reply of “it adds to the game”. It does, those days when you feel bootleggers has dulled or those times when you want to quit for boredom, picking up a mission not for profit, but for sheer fun, can be a game saver.

Those older players with a good memory may remember the closing days of round four. A topic on the game forum from a then administrator Nohau asking for possible future mission ideas. Ideas from players, that would hopefully be implemented in the coming rounds. Despite hundreds of replies with hundreds of suggestions nothing became of it, we never saw a single new mission. Shortly after the reset Nohau fell inactive, and players attributed this to the lack of action. Those of you who regularly come up with ideas will know how long they take to implement, if ever.

Given that BSF2000 has major overhauls planned for Blackjack, War and Poker to bring them to the same specification as Roulette, which has even more planned updates, or so we are told, missions are probably low on the list of features to be looked at. A shocking shame considering they were a key feature to place Bootleggers.us on the map, a feature that had not previously been seen in the genre. A feature that now falls behind many other games. If missions were to be remade a lot could be done to bring them once again to the foreground.

Possible recurring or daily missions could be implemented with time limits. It’s not hard to imagine players racing against the clock to transport booze, steal a few cars, or even killing fresh targets daily for a small reward. Active players would be rewarded, an extra reason to travel to those pesky inactive states and yet more incentives for staying logged in. Given the small rewards now it is unlikely to cause vast inflation, it may help reduce it.

Community missions could also be implemented, be it crew or general friends, working together to complete missions. Take, for example the booze run mission. Is it unreasonable to up the amount from 25 to 250 but making the mission a group co-operation? A crew could easily complete the mission within a few hours, earning money for the crew bank to pay crew taxes, even receive crew bullets, crates of protection or guns as a reward. The killing mission could turn from you taking out one account for your family to your family completely taking out the other family.

Storylines in games in general tend to be static, but some of the most popular games on the market today contain branching and changing storylines. Simple choices changing the game makes the user feel in control. Instead of killing TonyT you could listen to his story, accept his side of events and turn to his side, trying to take over control of the family. Users are therefore compelled to sign up again upon death to play the alternative storylines.

So why have these ideas not already been implemented? The sheer complexity of the task to incorporate these changes may be a factor, creating reluctance in the staff to attempt such a feat. With the new booze system and the new kill system, we saw confusion while staff members scrambled to fix missions when new versions were released that were incompatible. Missions were the afterthought in the feature. Every time someone travels extra server strain is required to check if they have already completed the first mission, or if the mission is even relevant in this situation. Finally the time taken to design suitable storylines, test, implement, check payments are right and the effect on the bootlegger’s economy and rankings are ‘pitch’ perfect. A project, that could take months from design to implementation followed by weeks of testing.

In my opinion, it’s worth it!