Version 2020.1 Release Notes

NPC World

The largest change in 2020.1 is the introduction of the new NPC world, which includes streets, buildings, gangs, law enforcement officers, politicians, government officials and civilians.

In total there are 80 streets, 25 NPC gangs, more than 21,000 buildings, and nearly 5,100 non player characters in the game. Each with their own personalities and lives, and with their own relationship with you, based on how you behave with them.

In every city there are a number of 24/7 entertainment venues, with customers and they are always staffed. Every location has police precincts and officers, with some officers on duty. You will find gang members hanging out in entertainment venues throughout their territories. Every street is the territory of a gang, and some gangs are more prevalent than others.

New Solo Play Missions

With the introduction of our NPC world, we now have 3 new soloplay missions. These missions can be picked up in the missions menu and are outlined below. Proceed with caution, when taking jobs from dangerous gangland bosses, should those jobs go wrong there can be severe repercussions.

Intimidation

Scaring people witless has never been more fun, but don't go too far. Locate your target and make sure they know to do as they are told.

Criminal Damage

Sometimes you have to make someone listen, by smashing up their shit. You'll be given a target, you'll tool up, head on down and have some fun. Everything in the building can be smashed up and can cause a different amount of financial damage to the business.

Enforcer

In enforcer missions you are required to inflict the prescribed amount of damage to a person who has upset your boss. You will be given a target and told where you may be able to find them. It is then your job to locate your target, and cause them pain.

New Items & Armoury

We now have a new armoury, including a whole bunch of new items and weapons available to players of the game.

13 new melee weapons, from stanley knives to sledgehammers, and all melee weapons are categorised as blunt or bladed, so you can use them more effectively in missions.

We now have a dozen different guns, which are now categorised as handguns, machine pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and heavy guns. The usages for these guns and their categories will become evident in future releases.

Chemicals, explosives, and hardware are now all available for purchase, and again the uses for these will become evident in the near future. Everything from bleach to hydrochloric acid, duct tape to trip sensors, C4 to shape charges, for all your nefarious needs.

Ranks & Murder

There are now 50 ranks in game, and the murder functionality has been completely rewritten, it takes more factors into account, is more expensive, and works with the new ranks and weapons.

Your current rank has been adjusted to reflect your standing in the new ranking system, and the murder functionality rewrite allows for far improved performance.

Casinos

To encourage their play, casinos have been taken out of public ownership and brought into administrator ownership. The owners of the casinos have been reimbursed.

There are now better odds of winning at all existing casino games. Additionally, there is a new game, the lottery, in which players can purchase tickets in the hopes of winning 9 figure suns.

User Interface

There have been some tweaks to the user interface which allows for a better experience on desktop, and several pages have been rebuilt to offer a smoother experience. This is an ongoing process but currently jail bust, fighting, petty crime, GTA, fraud, and bodyguarding have been rebuilt.

Additionally, a further navigation bar at the top of the page has been added on desktop, hiding the community menu. The leaderboards have been rebuilt to be more accurate and perform better, and the game feed has also been given a facelift.

Business Improvements

For a long while the business user interface has been lack lustre and frustrating to navigation, this has now been rebuilt to allow a much better user experience when managing your businesses. Please be aware, however, that the business functionality will be removed from the game at some point in the not too distant future, and replaced with functionality which interacts more closely with our world.

Community Improvements

There were some painful aspects of some of our community features, which I have now begun tackling. The forum has a new centralised homepage, there has been some improvements with the way that syndicate walls, user walls, and news article comments are displayed.

I have also implemented improvements to the syndicate profile pages to align with some of these improvements, and fix some disgusting display bugs.

General Improvements

There have also been a number of general improvements, in the codebase, technology, and in some bug fixes, all these are detailed in the full release notes below. Whilst this is of no consequence to any players of the game, this has included some new admin features, which allow me to better serve our players and community.

New Features

1. Every location now has a number of streets
2. Every location now has a number of gangs
3. Every street is the territory of a local gang
4. Every gang has a hierarchy of members
5. Gang members hangout in entertainment venues within their own territories
6. Every street has a number of buildings
7. Every building has a number of employees, fulfilling a number of job roles
8. Every NPC has a relationship with every player once discovered
9. Every NPC has their own set of skills and personality traits, which align with their occupation
10. Every city has law enforcement officers (some of whom are always on duty) and detectives
11. Every city has its own local government, and councillors fulfilling various roles
12. Every NPC has a place of residence, a place of work, and a place where they spend their free time
13. NPC locations are rotated randomly
14. NPCs can be bribed
15. NPCs have a fear rating for every character
16. Whenever a player is arrested, there is an arresting officer
17. Players can visit NPC buildings, and interact with the people within those buildings
18. NPCs and buildings are regenerated as required, without exceeding the predefined populations
19. NPCs have an age, and based on that age have a chance of naturally dying
20. New guns have been added
21. All guns now have categories
22. Character inventory has been completely rebuilt, to allow future customisation
23. Chemicals, explosives, and hardware are now available for purchase in the armoury
24. New forum homepage
25. New casino game: Lottery
26. New soloplay mission, enforcer
27. New soloplay mission, intimidation
28. New soloplay mission, criminal damage
29. New NPC Newspaper, with news from the NPC world
30. New item in the character avatar, to display currently active missions

Improvements and Changes

1. 25 new ranks
2. Murder algorithm rewritten
3. Murder functionality performance improvements
4. Armoury user interface has been rebuilt and improved
5. The community menu has been removed from the main navigation on desktop, and added to a banner bar - this remains unchanged on mobile
6. The navigation has been slightly redesigned to be more visually appealing
7. Some items have been removed from the main navigation in order to reduce user overwhelm
8. Casinos are no longer owned by players
9. Better odds of winning at races and slots
10. Petty Crime UI rebuild
11. GTA UI rebuild
12. Fight UI rebuild
13. Jail Bust UI rebuilt
14. Bodyguard UI has been rebuilt
15. Fraud UI has been rebuilt
16. Leaderboards now perform better, UI has been improved, and leaderboards are more accurate
17. Game Feed has been rebuilt
18. Round-based functionality has been removed
19. Commenting functionality has been improved, including user walls, syndicate walls, and news article comments have been fixed and improved
20. Syndicate profile has been reworked to improve the wall and officer listing
21. User homepage has had some performance improvements implemented to make it load faster
22. Business management user interface has been completely rebuilt to offer a better experience
23. Fixed bug with statistic tracking, which was causing some issues with certain achievements