The federal bank feature. It is the place where you can manage your cash. You have the ability to send your cash to other players and check your history regarding transfers and receivables. All very fancy, but there is more. You can also deposit your money into the federal bank. Doing so will give you 3% interest after 24 hours. No matter how small or big your deposited amount is, you always receive an interest of 3%. For real, I am not a communist, but I believe a Bootleggers world without an interest of 3% is a very interesting thought. How would the game look like if we remove the entire interest feature?
The first weeks of a new round are extremely important. In order to make some money, you have to work hard and play the game properly. Commit a crime each two minutes and try to steal as many cars as possible. Calculate the most profitable booze runs and try to negotiate the prices of the booze. Invest your earned money wisely in promising stocks and start hoping that they do not crash. You have try to commit two Organized Crimes a day and get a fancy part of the total vault. So, in order to actually mean something on Bootleggers you have to work hard, very hard. This is how every starting player starts his/her Bootleggers career, whether it is the first week of a round or the last week.
When you have a nice amount of money, earned by Crimes, Auto Burglary, Organized Crimes and so on, you can start banking your money. With a fancy ten million dollars, you receive approximately $300,000 each day. Earning such an amount by actually playing the game is not very easily. The result? Eventually you won’t be playing the game as much as you used to, simply because you are earning your money by banking. Lazy, but clever. However, a new player has to start from the scratch. At this moment it is impossible for a new player to compete against a player who started at the start of a round and is already loaded with a fancy income. So, what would actually happen if there was no more interest percentage?
It is a drastic change, which will probably not be implemented very soon, but it is a very interesting thought. I believe the entire game-play of Bootleggers will significant change if there was no interest feature anymore. No more interest means every player constantly needs to play the game in order to earn his/her money. The game will be more balanced, because the differences, between players who started at day one and players who just registered, are less than when an interest percentage is used. However, what about the quality of the game-play? Will this change result in a better quality of the game-play? I doubt it.
As nobody has a steady income with no interest feature, players will most likely invest in properties which gives you a steady income. There is only one property on Bootleggers which gives you a proper steady income and that is a Bullet Factory. I believe that when there is no interest feature, the Bullet Factories will play a crucial role, too crucial that is. We might witness less shootings, because killing a lot players will be extremely expensive. These shootings will probably be less random than the current shootings on Bootleggers, which is a good thing. If shooting players is expensive, it is a need to make sure that you kill the right person. At this moment random players are being killed, because they might be an underground banker or shooter. Being killed is part of the game, but random shootings is not very fancy.
The interest feature is a crucial feature on Bootleggers. Everything changes when there is no interest feature anymore. Whether it brings more balance to the game or not, I believe it slows down the game too much. That being said, I think the current set-up of the interest feature is wrong. No matter how active you are playing, you always get 3% interest. A few months ago I read a suggestion of making the interest percentage activity based. When a player is actively playing the game, he/she receives a higher interest percentage than an inactive player. I love the idea, however I have no clue how to this idea can be implemented. It surely is an important feature, more important than most players think. The Bootleggers economy starts with the interest feature, unfortunately it also ends there.
