Sunday, December 5th, 2010
Issue: 58   Editor: AldarionIsTheStig


Crimes Revamped! AldarionIsTheStig
Earlier today, the crimes feature was completely renewed. Having been tested by HDOs in the previous weeks the community finally received a long awaited update to the game. And it is not just a small update either, there is absolutely no way anyone can recognize the old crimes in this update: it is a complete redesign. As a result of the update, the newspage now offers more statistics than it did before.

It was quite a shock for me when I clicked the crime page to do just another crime. Instead, a message popped up that I had to message my brother TonyT. He then shortly explains what you have to do to use this feature. In case you need more help you can always send ‘Help’ to TonyT which gives you a more detailed explanation of what you should actually do. BSF2000 assured people that they will not face any problems if their account had just died.

The feature aims to be helpful for both low and high ranked players. To achieve this the distinction (as far as we know now) between petty crimes and major crimes was removed. However, players can now steal from different cities where each city has several businesses. These businesses within cities have different difficulties (and payouts), based on their offense, defense and the amount of police patrolling in the area. Committing crimes grants a player experience, which he can use to access other businesses or other cities. The better a player is, the more cities he can access. The better the city, the higher the payout.

Several existing features in the game influence how good you are at these crimes. BSF2000 about this, “Your health, gun, shooting skill, protection, and protection health all directly impact your chance of success. So if any of these change (such as you losing health or buying a new gun) than your percents will change accordingly as well.” He did however state that players cannot lose health by doing crimes, but a lower health will inevitably influence the chance of success.

The feature offers better graphics than before as well, a nice bar shows how much time is left before the player can commit another crime and this bar changes color as the timer gets close to zero. The different consequences of your crime (e.g. you being caught) are shown in different colors, too. Another new, and pretty cool thing, is the ability for players to evade being caught by the police. If they click a button within a specified amount of time, the player will escape. Otherwise, the player will end up in jail.

The community reacted very positive on the update and for me it shows that the feature is a huge improvement over the old version. When things only improve a tiny bit, people tend to complain because they are used to the old feature. The updated lay-out is a nice example of this as you barely hear people about that nowadays whereas everyone went crazy in the beginning. The fact that there is nowhere near that much criticism on this feature shows that it is a definite improvement. I think it’s safe to say that, if things continue like this, things are looking good!