Back in the day, many players may remember a feature called Establishments, where they could buy and sell land, and make a little extra cash on the side. Should they be brought back, and if so, are there any potential buildings which would benefit the players and community?
At the end of Round 5, most players didn't know that Establishments wouldn't be showing up on their menu bar at the beginning of Round 6. The Elite Guard decided to remove Establishments at the start of round 6 because they added a lot of money to the game, and had little to no purpose. The Buzz caught up with Mika, advising us that the original idea was to redo them and maybe add them again at a later point in time.
When asked if there are any talks of Establishments making a re-appearance, he responded:
"We have talked about them coming back in our Elite Guard meeting of last week. While we certainly want them to make a return, it is unlikely that you will see them during this round. We would want the feature to be well thought out this time around, so it will be a while, for sure."
Within establishments, you could purchase two properties, a Safe House, and a Garage: but surely many more buildings could be added to increase gameplay?
Yes, yes, this isn't from BL, but maybe it could look like this in future...
We took to the forum to hear from the community, and spoke to (now sadly deceased) Lakedaimon:
"Well the problem with establishments has been that they were either used to bring large amounts of money into the game, or weren't really useful for anything after that. My idea is to give people the possibility to build a wide array of buildings that fit give small benefits to their playing style.
Some people steal a lot of cars so give them a small benefit from this (e.g. a few bullets). Some people do a lot of booze runs so give them a small benefit from that, such as cheaper self-distilled booze to run.
You could even add the crew gym, doctor and shooting range to the establishments meaning that the crew council needs to own land in the state in order to be able to build them.
With this you could add some sort of crew turf war where the dominant crew gets a cut from all the proceeds (a few %). With a gang being too small to own a state, a crew being able to own 1 state and a family being able to own 2. You could even tie this in to the current system of State Don takes from oc's, to make that system more dynamic."
As Mob conflicts in real life have often been about real estate and control over states in the past, why not tie the establishment system in to that? Possibly even to the point where you control cities that are part of the state, making it even more elaborately tied into the crime system and allowing for smaller scale conflicts?
Players also discussed the possibility of being able to build a personal bullet factory. Some were for the idea, while others were against it, as it would mean players would find it more difficult to rank.
It certainly is food for thought, and a good thing that the Elite Guard will consider for the future.
