Was taking a look at this week's patch notes and saw a couple interesting things in the Developer Focuses section, that might be some major changes coming soon
Artem: Poker timebank system Sounds like a way to protect poker winnings from being tablemugged. Do you guys think this is a positive change, or should people have to deal with it to play?
Jane: Crimes 2.0 / Sign in with google panel / Big Al's Bunker Well, "Big Al's Bunker" is either a haven of weaponry, or a sex dungeon. Not sure which I'd prefer. (also, sorry for resetting the timer)
Rebecca: New HOF categories What do you think they'll add? It'll be interesting to see recognition on more niche activities, and may give people incentive to push for them more.
I think if we're going the direction of being somewhat realistic, if people are in a casino, then their money at said table should be protected.
I also think some new HOF additions will be cool! I think there should be rewards to encourage those with a very distinct play style (I know a guy for example who never attacks anyone. Lol)
Time bank is a change in how long one gets for their turns. Rather than a flat amount of time each time action passes to a player they instead have a base amount of time (shorter than the current time per action) and a time bank. A player may withdraw time from the time bank in order to think longer about their choices or to slow roll players more effectively.
It has nothing to do with keeping poker money safe likely.
I think the poker change makes a lot of sense. Most updates around money are geared towards the strongest and richest in Torn. While the strongest are mug focused and mugging continues to get easier*, they're also high rollers at poker and potential victims to eachother, so gotta cover that gap. I'd say this idea was 100% not Chedburns, but fed to him.
Big Al's bunker, not sure, maybe experimenting with another unique property? I doubt it. Really hard to tell without more context.
HOF could honestly be anything, there are so many obscure things in Torn.
Am mostly curious on Big Al's since it's the only one that's really obscure.
*with the sole exception of closing the extreme abuse for that short period we all know about where people were unable to protect money because they didn't live close enough to the servers
On closer thought, maybe Big Al's has something to do with RW weapons, considering the timing. Maybe it's a fence for caches and weapons like the pawn shop? Would be surprised if it actually sold weapons, but it'd let the devs control the market a little, which isn't a bad thing
Maybe this is the mechanism to trade in unwanted RW items for new caches? A mechanism to accomplish this has been mentioned and a new “store” would make sense.
Poker timebank system is when you have access to additional time to think. Like for example somebody raises and now its your turn, you have 30 usual seconds to think, if decision is easy you can make it fast. But sometimes you think more and maybe usual 30 seconds cant be enough. Here "timebank" comes. It is additional on-demand 30 seconds that can be used after the standart 30 seconds. So you can think up to 60 seconds. The downside it that compared to usual 30 seconds it doesnt refresh each turn and its for entire tournament or round depending on room. It is made to allow players to think more in key moments and not increasing usual limit.