Bust competitions have existed for a long time in Bootleggers. Many people see them as a good way to earn money from busting, which is true. But what exactly is there to gain for the person running the competition? They pay out cash or points, usually to first, second and third place, sometimes with the added position of ‘lowest ranked buster’ where they have away cash and a car for an organised crime.
Well, a bust competition is very beneficial for the host. Busting is a statistic that counts towards your rank and obviously if 75% of the people in jail are trying to bust you, then you get a lot more attempts at busting than you normally would. It’s normal to get busted out a few times during average time in jail. However, the odds of being busted out when everyone is focusing on you means that you spend a lot less time waiting to get out of jail.
Another example could be that you’ve started doing crimes in a higher city. If you have a low percentage success rate, and high percentages for the police, then the chances are that you’re going to get arrested a lot more from committing crimes. If you have lots of people trying to bust you out of jail during this time, then it isn’t quite as frustrating.
The final benefit is to busting itself. Many believe that the more you bust the better at it you become. The faster you increase your busting stats, as well as your rank, then the better at busting you will be. Many players play Bootleggers without busting at all, or it’s something that they do on a rare occasion because they aren’t very good at it. Well, when you first start playing the game you aren’t very good at crimes or GTAs either. Busting takes a lot of time to improve your success rate, but it offers important experience and stats for ranking.
When everything in the game helps ranking, why would you ignore something as simple as busting. Bust competitions aren’t that expensive to host. Some people do smaller competitions with a total prize pool of $100,000. Something like:
First place: $60,000
Second place: $30,000
Third place: $20,000
It really is a win-win situation for those involved. If you win then you get cash for doing something that you probably would’ve been doing anyway. And for the host, you get the chance to quickly improve your busting stats. Even if you do not win, a competition can sometimes make you pay more attention to busting, where maybe you will try to bust every five minutes, if you’re trying to win a competition then you might be busting every two minutes.
Here are some bust statistics provided by Skeggi, who ran a short bust competition in Illinois. There were prizes for first, second and third, as well as the lowest ranked buster. The target number of busts was only eight. The competition lasted for roughly 40 minutes.
Stats before the competition started:
Busts (Success): 591
Busts (Failed): 3,132
Busts (Total): 3,723
Stats after the competition:
Busts (Success): 612
Busts (Failed): 3,217
Busts (Total): 3,829
Now, you might look at that and think “it’s only an increase of 21 successful busts.” However, it’s a total bust increase of 106 attempts, in 40 minutes. If no one busted you in a 40 minute period, you would only normally have 20 attempts. This was also a small competition. Most players set the winning amount to somewhere between 10 and 15.
Here is another example of bust competition stat improvement provided by Yazoo. He ran a competition in Michigan, and posted the thread announcing the competition an hour in advance. He also offered 50 points for the winner and 25 points for second place. The winner was the first to get to 15 busts.
Stats before the competition started:
Busts (Success): 776
Busts (Failed): 3,676
Busts (Total): 4,452
Stats after the competition:
Busts (Success): 821
Busts (Failed): 3,794
Busts (Total): 4,615
That is a total of 163 attempts in just over 1 hour and 10 minutes, which is a fantastic ratio. Not getting bust at all for an hour would give you enough time to attempt 30 busts. That is if you were constantly attempting to bust every two minutes.
Some tips on running a bust competition:
Post your thread in the Game Forum announcing the competition with around 20 minutes to spare. This will allow players plenty of notice to join the competition.
Rather than updating the thread after every bust, keep a notepad file open and update the bust list in notepad. When you have a longer period in jail, update the thread. Players will become frustrated if they are trying to bust a player that is hardly ever in jail.
Be on guard for players sending false bust messages. Some players will attempt to send fake bust messages if they see that your jail timer is about to run out, in the hope that you will not notice that they didn’t actually bust you.
Try to run the competition in a popular state. Illinois is the clear choice to run a bust competition, purely because the jail is almost always active.
In conclusion, bust competitions are an excellent example of player created competitions. Many players like giveaways and dice games, but neither of those offers anything genuine in terms of your actual gameplay, they are simply designed for players to get money or points.
