Happy birthday bro!

AA :p

AA :p

I'm not a fan of the 'add more banks' approach. That would only increase the amount of bankrobs being done by one, maybe two BRs per cooldown cycle, while increasing the amount of confusion when checking which banks are available and which ones aren't. The max BR/day reduction is the least favoured by the community, because people, in their selfishness, don't want to give up that 1 BR. Adding more banks or reducing cooldowns works best for them, because they don't have to give up on anything, while getting something in return.

You have to consider the fact that there's more and more new gangs becoming official, wanting to rob banks of their own to fill the quota for their next level application, while there's also the old and settled gangs that also want to rob banks themselves, If you add more banks or decrease the cooldown, you're effectively increasing the total amount of BRs happening, but you're also turning the entire gameplay into a BR fest. Whether it's good or bad is a personal preference. I for instance, like to do long BR trains with one gang robbing after another. But if the whole gameplay revolves around it, it will soon become boring. And let's not forget about the copside - do you guys really want to try and stop BRs 24/7? And and then on top of that is the issue of cops sometimes staying AFK while using a cop spawn, essentially allowing gangs to rob banks while there's little to no one left to respond.

As for the teamchat part, I wish it was that easy. But let's be real - in a team of, say, 80 people, there is no way to come up with an agreement that everyone will accept. In fact, the whole idea of having bankrob queues is a way to solve the problem via teamchat. but as you can see, it simply doesn't work as well as it should. There will always be gangs arguing whose turn it is now. Gangs secretly regrouping with their allies while another gang is regrouping with teamchat callouts, only to rob a bank independently, sometimes taking the only bank that is available, effectively undercutting the ones that started their regroup publically. And even if you do have an agreement, there will be people trying to break it.

In fact, I might as well use the same argument when discussing how cops usually are unable to communicate and stop a BR from happening. Can't you guys just communicate through teamchat? You know, get like 8 or 10 cops together, regroup, and then raid a BR? No, you can't, because there's always people who disagree or simply couldn't care less. Out of those 80 people in the criminal team I mentioned earlier, usually only 30-40 show up to a BR regroup. I'd imagine a similar percentage of cops would show up to a copside regroup, statistically speaking.

The problem isn't just about some kids disagreeing in teamchat. It's about the fact that there are more and more new gangs, while the amount of banks available stays the same, and banks are being robbed by the same people over and over again, leaving nothing for the others. And when you get a bunch of gangs creating circle jerks and making queues between eachother, often before there are even banks able to rob, no amount of discussion in teamchat is going to help you.

Sorry about the wall of text.
TL;DR
People don't want to communicate via teamchat. You can't get them to come to an agreement. Adding more banks is not the best idea. Decreasing cooldown might not be good either. More new gangs, everyone wants their piece of the cake. Less is more.

So that 1 gang couldn't rob 1 bank after another for a set amount of time? On the one hand, it sounds fair. But on the other, what if no other gang wants to rob after you're done with your first bankrob? The cooldown would have to be long enough to allow 1 or 2 more gangs to rob, but then if there is no one willing to rob, you are essentially keeping your crackers waiting for the cooldown to go down.

And some gangs only rob at certain hours exclusively, perhaps due to their crackers not being available at other times of the day. So that would help those gangs get at least 1 bankrob a day by increasing their chances of getting into the unofficial BR reservation queue, but it would also make it more difficult to pull further bankrobs. We also have to consider gangs like O, which tend to do their BRs at night. This, combined with cops activity being lower during that time, would be a massive nerf towards those guys.

Personally, I think that a simple reduction from 3 to 2 banks a day in the bankrob rules should be enough for a start. So that gangs have less banks to rob, and therefore are less inclined to call their bankrobs months in advance, while also leaving some room for the other gangs. Nobody can possibly know if another gang reserved themselves a bankrob 6 hours before the banks even became available if you'd only just joined the game. Besides, bankrob reservations are merely an agreement between the gangs, which recently started to mean less and less. Now that I think of it, the idea of a gang cooldown sounds quite reasonable, if you combine it with the max BRs a day reduction, since it helps you alleviate that particular problem.

However, I think that changing too many things at once would make it difficult to monitor which change has the most influence over the BR meta. These changes, if they were to be introduced, should be added in slowly and separately, so that the results could easily be spotted and further decisions be made based on that.

Congratulations!

@villain said in Auto-move afk cops to spectator (or wtf it's called) class:

Just make it that they get kicked from the server after like some mins

Being afk is allowed and encouraged with monthly giveaways, so that wouldn't work. But perhaps having an automated system that moves you to a special AFK team if you don't move for a set amount of time would, which is what Spetnazz suggests.

Congratulations guys!

People have been whining all the same when the original LS jail was introduced. They were mostly complaining about the interior making it too difficult to successfully break people out, and that you couldn't just fly a heli into a massive cell on a remote island and grab everyone anymore. And as time went on, the design has gone through a few iterations over the years, and people started to love it.

I think that with enough play time and perhaps a few small balancing changes (which I won't name, because I haven't really participated in a single JB since this new jail was introduced), people will get used to it and learn to appreciate it, just like it was with the previous design. People choose the previous one over this, because that's what they're used to.

On paper, it looks like the new one offers a lot more tactical gameplay and allows more strategic approaches to criminals breaking people out as well as cops trying to stop them. It's like with RvB maps, people only ever wanted to play Motel, Mansion, and GT, because that's what they're used to and the most comfortable with.

But then again, I'm the kind of person who hates sitting in a corner for 2 hours, just aiming the CS or the sniper rifle at a marker and farming kills. Or getting marker killed as a cop, becauce sometimes I like to play the other side as well.

Happy anniversary, slugs!