Torn City

[Barry Admin]

Crimes 1 was just basically spamming arsons or hacking over and over again for CE or money, respectively.

Crimes 2.0 is a towering achievement for Ched. He's an incredible perfectionist and kept the community waiting sooooo long for this, but yeah, isn't it great?

[oustropique]

Returning to this, your latest post reminds me that their is perhaps some kind of natural progression through the crimes. But again, I don't think it's strictly necessary to follow it.

You might be right, I did end up shoplifting for a bit without catastrophic failure but then a faction member recomended just going through them in order, so I started doing that. From what they were saying, it sounds like there's the general invisible crime experience measure on top of each individual crime modifying success now, which sounds plausible enough.

And yeah, I love 2.0, makes it feel like a game with some planning and attention required, as opposed to a clicker, and the rewards are better.

[Barry Admin]

It explains why Ched staggered the release of the new crimes.  So you get stuff you need for later ones.  The community would just be like "right where's the new arsons and hacking" and then just spam the fuck out of them and try to exploit the whole system without really enjoying it. This is the nature of Torn, lol.

As soon as cracking was released, a friend came up with a script to guess the passwords, and scripters on the forums came up with actual dictionary-using scripts to crack the passwords.

[oustropique]

Some ongoing tea in my Torn life:

A bully coming after new players (including me) has been bountied by my faction after I raised the alarm. I've been assured assured that they're in for 'a world of pain'. Said bully seems to be so mad at tasting their own medicine that they've blocked me. Does seem to have made them back off, though.

The nice job I had got upended when the (genuinely nice, keen, literate) boss sold up and I got sacked by new management without a word. I had a nice conversation with my ex-boss about it and they're going to let me join up with them when they get set up again.

In the meantime, I'm a free agent, getting messages about jobs from people who are answering my detailed, enthusiastic questions about their company with monosyllables.

People make Torn.

[Rev+]

I played this for a year or so, but sacked it off around last Christmas because bloody hell it starts to insist on your time in a way that really isn't apparent when you start.  In the beginning you're playing for about 5 minutes a day because there's not much to do, then:  boom.

Similar to @oustropique I was an employee of a business that took quite a while to take off in terms of returns, but the boss gave us a decent roadmap and it all panned out for a bit.  Then he had to quit and sold it to an absolute fuckwit who thought that buying the business was a one-off cost, rather than stock and wages being a factor after the fact.  Ended up having to talk him through some sort of breakdown.

Was a member of some shite factions, the last one being the best bunch of people, but they just got absolutely addicted to war.  Always kicking off, to the point where unless you're on it 24/7 you've got to travel, and then the next time you log in you have to travel back and wait, and then they've kicked off again.

People make Torn, is the problem.

[oustropique]

Always kicking off, to the point where unless you're on it 24/7 you've got to travel, and then the next time you log in you have to travel back and wait, and then they've kicked off again.

This is an interesting perspective to read on the game, so thanks for posting it.

I'm not looking forward to the travel stuff and the waits imposed on that because, yeah, this will never become a huge time sink for me, just 'little and often', and that's going alright while I'm in the single-digit levels bit of the game. I don't want to let it consume my life. I seem to have lucked, though, into a faction that largely keeps itself to itself and just wants to do right by its members. Hopefully that stays the case.

I'm in a new company now but not getting paid, purely a stats / job perks setup. I haven't been trained yet and the owner is aloof. The playerbase in general is incredibly frustrating, even if some good eggs are out there and I've found some of them. Halfway thinking I should just get the army starter job mentioned upthread.

an absolute fuckwit who thought that buying the business was a one-off cost, rather than stock and wages being a factor after the fact.  Ended up having to talk him through some sort of breakdown.

Yes, very few people in this game seem to understand the concept of a business yet a lot of them insist on bothering anyway because they think it's a licence to print money.

[Hobo]

I got offered a job in a beauty salon. Pays me 50,000 a day, which to a lowly level 7 like me is amazing.

Hit me up if you want your nails doing.

I joined the army before being offered the above job and it boosted my strength stats into the hundreds though the pay is terrible.

[Barry Admin]

In reference to the above, there are still peaceful facs and crime-only facs. You can search around and try different communities til you find one that suits you.

I'm trying to think what my next move will be, as cache prices are still shitting the bed. I could flip the fac shell now for 10b before prices really slump again, but I've decided to keep it for now as I'm having so much fun. Getting harder to strike deals in Plat ranked wars though, and it's tougher to make good money and pay people well, and I don't like to rip off noobs.

Immediate plans are to give the guys some more experience with territory warfare tomorrow. The map is generally a huge stalemate as mega alliances own it all, so me and a friend are gonna take advantage of my shell currently being allowed to sit in WestWorld terts. We've defended territory before but never assaulted, so it should be fun regardless of what happens.  Have a little bit of strategy cooked up now, hoping for a fast end to it when we move.

[Rev+]

In reference to the above, there are still peaceful facs and crime-only facs. You can search around and try different communities til you find one that suits you.

Oh yeah, there are.  I'd been in a few different factions and nicely settled in to one, but once they got the fighting bug they were never off it.  Everyone's experience will be different, I just had a sour few months and ended up resenting logging in. 

[oustropique]

Got absolutely pasted in a faction war that was mostly a fundraiser for some wider group it's in. We weren't doing stuff like hiring in outside mercs and they were. We got matched with some outsider faction that ended up much more powerful, so I guess we were just unlucky.

But everyone seems impressed with my involvement.

I'm enjoying the game a little more now.

[Barry Admin]

Got a really really bad offer for a "deal" in last weeks war - a small amount of money if we didn't fight back. This was their top end:



This was ours:



Then I've got a 55m player who followed me from the HOF (although I asked people not to), and the rest of them are like 1m and under.  They've been playing for around 200 days or less and I recruited them on their first few days and started to train them up, but it's a long road in Torn, and it takes people a while to get the intricacies.

Anyway, they looked at us and were just like "we can smash you."  I've got some plans coming up, and we hadn't had a real non-deal war in some months, so...

I did some last minute strategising using tactics I'd done before and got very good at, and I hired mercs again, and I went full send. 

We were extremely outstatted, but showed again that activity and strategy can win.  And money, too - I threw fake money at this war, and knew we could still make a killer profit as an underdog.  But it was never about money, and I didn't let costs inhibit me at all, I just spent like a drunken sailor and did all the crazy shit I learned when leading diamond wars in a much bigger fac. 

So it was out 26 players against their 38, and we turtled like fuck.  Loads of them left their revives on, so I got a reviver to sit on them and do hostile revives while I farmed them, until their revive chances were burned.  We were chaining all around the world, then dropping the bonuses back in the city.  I was going absolutely HAM using needles and kicking ass. 

In the end they conceded and called it with 303 score vs 3084!   

It was very very tough, and expensive, but the best thing I've ever done in the game.  My guys also really surprised me and have developed soooo much!  I was so proud of them! This was the first time I asked them to set alarms to manage their self hosping, and they did great. More than that though, they started to do hit and run attacks, managing to self hosp themselves again before they got caught and punished with a retal.  They started spontaneously doing small chains too, when they knew the coast was clear.

It took a lot of patience and coordination, and there were some unbelievably tense moments, but yeah, we did it :-) This is where they conceded and agreed to a ceasefire. From here we let it time out and went back to training.




The mercs did a brilliant job.  I'm not used to doing offensive merc work - usually people do defensive stuff instead, as offensive work is a little controversial. But at one point they tried to bribe one of my guys to come out and eat a bonus for 5m.  After that, all bets were off.  So I got a couple of mercs to help me break their chain at one point, that was an INSANE rush, I was shaking for an hour or two afterwards lol.

Yeah anyway, what a game.  This was utterly exhausting and a battle of will, but god damn, we did it again.  Cleared 3b in loot cause of the underdog bonus. 

[Hobo]

I'm in a war and the other clan just gave one person attacking killing us all while the others all hide. It's a little frustrating.

If you could hospitalise twisty_clown for me...

[Hobo]

Managed to level up to 15 (I'd been holding back) release some funds from the bookies (seems a good place to keep money safe - betting on man City to win) and get to the travel agents... before Twisty_Clown could hospitalise me.

Didn't know where to go so picked a random location. So now on my way to Switzerland

[Barry Admin]

I finally achieved my goal to contribute to the newspaper, wanted to do that for four years as I love it!

After I got out of hospital a couple of weeks ago I went a bit mad from lack of sleep and worry. Then I had a bong and did something dumb AF. But I knew I'd get a good story out of it one way or the other.

It goes up tomorrow, hope it's a good read. sugarvalves was really helpful with regards giving it more narrative structure and polishing it up.

I never do achievement threads and like to keep my head down really, so it was great to do this and play against type.