As the round continues to gather pace and the players consolidate their positions and resources, ideas for change and improvement are constantly thought up by players and posted onto the Game Forum for all to see. These threads allow the community to have their say, place a vote and generate the hype required to hopefully have good ideas seriously considered by a member of staff.
Occasionally, a player suggestion may make it to Elite Guard level discussion, and some may even be eventually implemented into the game. The fate for a large number of suggestions however, is to be forgotten and consigned to the forum-deletion dustbin. Some ideas may have had plenty of positive votes but not enough exposure, and some could have just too terrible to even to be considered.
This past week, the Buzz posted a topic on the Game Forum asking the community for ideas on how they would improve Bootleggers. In addition to this, we carried out a sweep of the forums and looked for ideas that had both been put forward and were well received. The ideas that made the cut would be placed into an article and hopefully passed on to administrative staff for consideration.
In order for an idea to be included in our breakdown, one of the following criteria had to be met.
The suggestion is for a minor visual or gameplay ‘tweak’, such as the addition of a timer or similar tool to make gameplay more efficient/convenient.
The suggestion is for a major gameplay/feature change, and yielded a respectable number of votes on the forum. Furthermore, at least seventy-five percent of total votes had to be in favour of implementing this.
Community feedback was varied, as was the range of feature suggestions and tweaks provided. The ideas that made the cut are as follows:
Small Changes/Tweaks
* Booze Profit/Loss Counter – Suggested by Eredin
* Stock Market Profit/Loss Counter – Suggested by Limed
* ’Profiles Viewed’ Counter (In relation to profile views cap) – Suggested by Grimes
* Show Jail Security on the States page – Suggested by PeterGriffin
* An ‘On Mobile’ profile status – Suggested by WarawanaiNeko
Major Updates/Changes
* Stockbrokers Suggested by TrevorPhilips
A new feature that can be bought using gold, where a player can hire a Stockbroker and manage their full stock portfolio regardless of state they are in. Cost would be similar to the ‘Timers’ option that is current available.
* Advanced Message Filter/Searching Suggested by Scarcio
Allow a player to search through all of their messages from certain players/containing certain words.
* State Garages Suggested by CaveJohnson
Allow a player to buy a garage in each state that they can use for cars there, replacing the current ‘floating’ garage that is used now.
* Real Estate/Businesses Suggested by Tony_Salerno
Further information: http://bootleggers.us/forum_new/index.php?flag=1&goto=59020
Players would be able to purchase Real Estate/Houses that can be built up and displayed as part of their homepage character model (potentially with in-game benefits).
Players could have the option to purchase and run different types of businesses, with a view to employing other players in a paid capacity if they wish. Ideas from other contributors also included the possibility of running a speakeasy that would sell different types of booze (to be gathered by the player smuggling) for a nominal fee [Unique_Death].
* More Missions Suggested by alexfernandes98
Add more missions beyond the current eighteen mission cut off point to keep longer serving/higher ranked active players more engaged.
* Tweak the Witness Search aspect of Private Investigators Sugged by PelliCAN, with additional input from various players.
Work on the Witness Search feature to increase the odds of finding an accurate statement. Current player feedback suggests that the feature is largely unsuccessful despite several attempts.
* Casino Marketplace Suggested by CAPSLOCK
Add a Marketplace feature where players can sell Casinos.
* Re-Introduce and Refine the Establishments feature Suggested and input provided by both GPEnergy and Traxio
Re-introduce the Establishments feature with a wider variety of in-game benefits and features. Suggestions ranged from a personal bullet-factory, to new Safehouses, to equipment that would allow bullets to be generated from scrapped vehicles. A suggestion was also made to tie gang/crew influence and upgrades to the amount of Establishments owned by a Crew.
As we can see from the list above, the in-game community has a wide range of ideas and suggestions up their sleeve that we believe can be a benefit to Bootleggers as a game. These ideas will hopefully be passed on to staff, with feedback and a response to be published in a later issue.
Thank you to all who had ideas and suggestions in mind, and to those who contributed to the discussion. We at the Buzz will continue to report on any developments on this as and when they arise.
