One key feature that has caused a lot of controversy this round is the State and Nation Don feature. We are roughly 9 months into round 7 and still we are yet to see a first State Don. In this article I will be attempting to find out what has happened and why we are yet to see our first State Don. It is certainly a very peculiar thing, causing vast opinions throughout the bootlegging world. We were informed by BSF2000 that there was indeed a bug in the feature, but with the feature being one of the key parts of the game, surely it would be one of his priorities to make sure this was fixed as soon as possible, right? Now, I am not a programmer, so I cannot comment on how hard/time consuming it would be to fix this, bug but I did venture into the forums and ask people to give me their opinions on the matter at hand, least to say the Buzz had some interesting replies!
There has been so much talk regarding the State/Nation Don feature so far this round. Some saying that it was a plot of BSF2000 himself, to try and stop a group of people implementing their power early on and making the game unplayable, similar to last round. Some say that he is just lazy, this would be an easy problem to fix and it's ludicrous that he has done this on purpose. The latter would suggest that this could actually be a very serious problem that could take time to fix, showing a bit of support for BSF2000. Regardless, here is what some of the public had to share. Ex moderator DejaVoo told us that she thought that BSF had indeed implemented this bug, she told us, “I do believe the State Don "bug" was implemented on purpose. Last round (before this one started) BSF himself stated it would be different because he had new features that would stop large groups of people from ruining the game like TT/TF. Now he did not say TT/TF but I did and we all know thats what he meant. I think this issue as well as the "gym" feature were an attempt to stop and/or slow down these groups. However I feel that they have effected more people than anticipated.”
ShitneyReturns had his own idea about what was going on, he believed that BSF2000 has lied to the community, and told us that the feature has been fixed when in reality it has not. He went on and told us, “It worked just fine last round. So unless BSF was trying something different, it shouldn't have just broke. I doubt he was messing with that feature. It is possible features are too dependent on each other. I really don't believe he fixed the feature, and just told the bl community that he did. You know as well as I there are people out there with the required stats to become State don. My question is: why does BSF feel this feature needs to be disabled?” We at the Buzz hope that, if you are correct your question will one day be answered! HermitTheFrog shared a similar opinion to ShitneyReturns in the sense that he wondered why the feature just, “stopped working” although he did then go on to say it was maybe due to some programming errors.
OhNoYouDidnt had a completely different take on it all together, he said, “The feature should be completely removed for the balance of the round to be fair to all the legendary dons who have come and gone and missed out on the opportunity because someone couldnt fix his fu**ing s**t properly and within acceptable time parameters.” This is a fair point, why should those who have already reached the applicable XP to reach the rank State Don, which is a pretty big measure, not have the chance to do it because they were killed before the bug was fixed? This opinion can be argued both ways but it is indeed an interesting one.
Burn was more than happy to leave his opinion. This user claimed to know a bit about programming and was in a way defending BSF2000. Here is what he had to say, “Talk to any major company and there are always issues when releasing patches due to editing many files, and how much the files rely on each other, things do break. I remember this especially from my youth WoW days and the dreaded Tuesday patches, and when there were issues causing a million or even billion dollar company to delay for 2 to up to 8 hours.... working with several, most likely top notch, programmers. Take some issues and throw it onto one programmer, it can be a lot. For all we know he might have had to re-write the s.don/n.don thing and then to make sure it's still not buggy, and solve issues. It does take time. It's not as simple as fixing the code and plugging it in, it's making sure it's bug proof, since we don't want any exploits ruining the game.”
So that is a brief over view on the “bug” itself, but what happens now that the bug is indeed fixed? Shouldn't there be a State Don already? In the forum not so long ago, a user named Alexander posted his statistics on the game forum, claiming an impressive near 400 oc's! Surely that is more than enough XP to gain a State Don invite, as last round, 400+ oc's was the requirement for not just State Don but Nation Don! This was indeed a shock, considering we had been told the bug was fixed! RecycledLJ came up with a reason why he may not of received an invite, he said, “If I'm not mistaken, I heard the s.don invitation will be sent out at a specific time of the day.. and I also believe alexander got shot the same day he came out of vacation.. so what if he missed the daily round of invitations?” If this was still how you got the State Don invite, this could well be the case, but now? We will never know.
So what do you make of all this, is it a cover up? Is it laziness? Or is it genuinely some hard programming that needed time to fix? There is no real answer, only time can tell! Once there is a first State Don of the round, we will be sure to let you know!
