Torn City Newsletter - Spring 2018

[Torn Logo] TORN App, Detective Agency, Captcha & CompetitionsVolume 22 | Spring 2018 Edition In this edition --------------------------------------------------------------- [Committee Spotlight](#section1) [Android App](#section2) [New Servers](#section3) [Detective Agency](#section4) [Newspaper](#section5) [April fools](#section6) [Multihunter stats](#section7) [Weekly honor bar](#section8) [Competitions](#section9) [Project status](#section10) [Crimes 2.0](#section11) [Goodbye Captchas](#section12) [Spring Freebie](#section13) In other news --------------------------------------------------------------- Sweeney_Todd proclaims the death of the forums [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Alexstrasza provides the cure for the forums [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Endurvoextur (Proxima) posts the latest Battle Stats update for spring [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- When you realise your co-worker plays Torn! [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Buston gives away $1billion in gifts [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Dexy encourages kindness in Torn [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- A mysterious stranger fell in love with someone he met through Torn (our money is on Evil-Duck, and he's talking about himself) [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with us on --------------------------------------------------------------- [Facebook]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Twitter]( Spring 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------- [Spring time in Torn] Happy spring everyone. It is around this time of year that lambs are born, with their mothers forced to take drastic action throughout the summer to prevent their babies being served up as racks, chops or all minced up in a bun. But at Torn, we've birthed a few babies of our own recently, most notably our first Android app, some fancy new servers, another great new company and our revamped newspaper and multihunter systems. These are our children. Hurt them and we will shank you. We're pretty proud of what we've achieved so far, but before we go into all that, we'd like to throw the spotlight on a group whose existence is integral to all of these new developments: The Committee. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Committee Spotlight For those of you who don't know, the Committee is a group of long-standing players whose insights and expertise are sought during the development of new features and the adjustment of old ones. Membership of this panel is strictly invite only, and should any member be seen to have used their position to help themselves or others make gains, their role will come to a swift and brutal end. Comprised of the likes of Icebluefire, Grif, Z_Junior, Sky and Beerstein, these delightful people act as crucial mediators between the interests of the players and the developers. When a player makes a suggestion that simply cannot be ignored, the committee pipes up to champion it. When the developers go too far and want to implement some crazy new feature that players would hate, the committee states their reasons for their opposition. And if an issue needs to be addressed which nobody else has noticed, the committee members have an elevated platform which guarantees a response from Torn staff. The voice of the committee has always been important to Torn, but as we push ourselves to complete ever more ambitious projects, their informed suggestions have become even more welcome. In recent months we've probed their minds on everything from the android app and bookie 2.0 to the attacking mechanics and new company suggestions. There is not always a general consensus between staff and the committee, or even between the committee themselves, but everyone understands that whatever differences we may have, our collective goal is always to improve the Torn experience for as many players as possible. As we continue to push Torn in new and exciting directions, we do so with the knowledge that all of this would not be possible without the committee's critique and refinement of our ideas. Everyone at Torn would like to extend their sincere thanks for the time and effort the committee puts in to dissecting the ideas placed before them. Every success we have is their success too. And every failure we have...well that was Harley's idea. Blame him. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Android app in public beta It's finally here!!! The official android app for Torn is now available in early access on the Play Store with a full release scheduled for 8th of May. [Android App for Torn]( Our aim was to create an optimal and flawless experience. While this is pretty much impossible, due to different personal preferences and hundreds of different mobile & tablet devices, I really think we've gotten as close as we possibly can to achieving this goal. After persistent testing and dozens of iterations, it's time to open it up to everyone in order to find the last remaining issues. It is essentially an optimised browser specifically for Torn with built-in notification functionality. If you don't find it totally perfect, we want to find a way of making it so! If you have any problems at all, please make a post in the Bugs & Issues forum - or alternatively just click "Submit bug report" on the settings panel within the app. - Instantly login to Torn with a single tap of the app button on your android device. Choose to navigate Torn in your preferred browser or Torn's optimised browser - Enable, mute or disable notifications for Messages, Events, Maximum energy, Maximum Nerve, Drug cooldowns, Booster cooldowns, Travel arrivals, Education completions and Chain break warnings. - Temporarily silence notifications for a duration, or set a window of time to silence daily. - Notifications will arrive within 60 seconds, but could be delayed or cancelled depending on your device's connectivity at the time. - Customise the app by selecting sounds, vibration, portrait / landscape views and whether or not you receive notifications while online. We really hope you're happy with it and find it useful. We've never worked on an app before so this was quite a learning experience for us, please have patience while we continue to update it and fix any issues you might run into. We expect to release new updates every week to fix issues reported and add user-requested features. For those with iOS devices, don't worry - we're already working on this and should have an update in the near future. --------------------------------------------------------------- []New servers OTW! We've just placed an order for two brand new database servers, we're looking at migrating over to them in early April. These machines are beasts optimized at every level for TORN's unique database challenges (the database is really the core of the site, and is the limiting factor for much of the performance you see). In October, we replaced our front-end webservers and saw a drastic improvement in pageload time, going from highs of 0.8 seconds straight down to 0.2 seconds. [webservers - a drastic improvement] Torn is currently faster than it's ever been before, and with these new database servers demolishing the next bottleneck, we're very excited to see the results. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Detective Agency details In late March the long-awaited Detective Agency was finally released, and with it came the ability to arrest, delay and spy on your fellow citizens. At present, no agencies have managed to make it beyond one star, which means their employees can only spy on a player's faction and company history - [as Champion found out just recently](. The first arrests will be made when these companies reach three stars, as Detectives will be granted the ability to apprehend players who have successfully committed a certain number of crimes. A reward and custodial sentence will be provided to the Detective and criminal respectively, with their value and duration dependent on the number and severity of the crimes committed. The remaining specials on offer at the Detective Agency include being able to see who has added you as a friend or enemy, the chance to lengthen someone's flight time, and an arrest-boosting special which allows you to find out who the most profitable criminals in the city are. Further details of the Detective Agency can be found [via this newspaper article]( and with its startup price being just $12million, this company and its profitable specials are available to even the most broke-a** citizens in Torn City. The next company will be the Logistics Firm, valued at approximately 'lots of billions'. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Newspaper The new-look [Torn City Times]( is now available (or it should be by the time this newsletter goes out). Our revamped format allows us to publish shorter, more regular content than ever before without previous articles being bumped from the main page. This will allow us to respond to recent events around the city in double-quick time, while also providing cryptic hints and tips as to what we're up to and which new items and companies are coming soon. For example, only Torn City Times readers will have known that Duke's April Fool's investment opportunity was not a secret loan scam, despite his claims to the contrary. And in future, we'll plant information in the TCT so that its readers will always have the edge when it comes to the latest developments in Torn City. The new format also means we can accept shorter submissions from you, the unwashed general public, with essay-length pieces no longer a requirement for publication. Our aim is to build a team of dedicated reporters, so if you'd like to write for the Times on a regular basis, you can start by sending some short article ideas to our Tell Your Story section. And even if you're not interested in being a reporter, this page can also be used to supply the Times with gossip, rumours and suggestions for articles you can't be bothered to write yourself. We're open to other ideas for content too, including advice columns, horoscopes and erotic recipes. And in the meantime, why not check out [ArttiIsGod's crossword]( for the chance to win some fabulous* prizes! *Note, prizes may only be as fabulous as defined by the low standards of our staff. --------------------------------------------------------------- []April fools On the 1st of April we plastered Torn in hideous banner advertisements. I've always been curious what Torn would look like if we 'sold out', and after seeing it, I'm very happy Torn is and always will be a totally ad-free zone. It's also great for our players to have seen what Torn could have been like if we didn't have our generous donators. Our eyes owe a debt to them all. [April Fools] --------------------------------------------------------------- []Multihunter stats & weekly operation Our automated multiple-account tracker is now complete and running on a weekly basis - scanning all users who've made any form of player to player transaction, looking for oddities, compiling evidence, banning accounts that meet the criteria and recovering the value. Each case is then double checked and confirmed by our most experienced officers. Even if an account escapes a weekly run, a profile is built on the suspected group and acted upon once thresholds are met. We have very high confidence that anyone using any account other than their own to gain an unfair advantage over others, will be found. Since December, Multihunter has found and punished 1,212 users controlling a total of 6,400 multiple accounts, recovering $1,072,581,904,046 of illicitly gained funds. We've observed a steady decline in accounts weekly as such players slowly learn that no transaction of any form can be hidden by any means, and will be acted upon if illegitimate. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Weekly honor bar releases for a year I'm sure many will be happy to hear: we plan on releasing a new honor bar (or batch of honor bars) pretty much every week for at least a year. We have 88 currently planned but that number is expected to increase over time. The details of new honors will be added to the weekly patch notes as they are released. The diverse requirements for such honor bars cover the full spectrum of Torn, from faction chaining, eating candy and importing items, to NPC attacks, contract completions and stat training. [Spring Honours] --------------------------------------------------------------- []Competitions Are you wearing your Egg gathering mittens? Good, because the annual Easter Egg Hunt is only days away. We love a good competition in Torn, and lately we've been running even more seasonal events to give you poor schmucks a chance of winning prizes and ribbons. Following the success of the Valentine's Day, Pancake Day and St Patrick's Day events, we've added some Easter and April Fool's themed contests to keep the spirit of competition alive throughout the year. All of our current competitions can be found via the community events link in the forums, as well as the little blue tab in the area sidebar on the left of the main page. We'll also try to promote these events via Facebook and the forums, so make sure you keep an eye out, because we know how much stupid **** you lot are willing to do in exchange for digital trinkets. We've got a taste for it now. We cannot be stopped. Here are a few of the winners from some of our most recent contests. St Relentless Day Artwork - LaPetiteMort [Comp Winners] Couples Who Torn Together, Spawn Together - Heresy23 / PrettyPetyThief [Comp Winners] Torn Valentine's Card - Estelle [Comp Winners] Leslie's Pancake Competition - TxGemini [Comp Winners] --------------------------------------------------------------- []Project Status Here's our main project list for the first quarter of 2018. We've done well reducing the amount of projects we're working on to improve our focus on important & overdue updates. [Project status] Of course, there's also a huge amount of other minor projects being worked on at the same time. To keep track of all of the updates / changes we make, please check out the [Bulletin Board]( for our weekly patch lists. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Crimes 2.0 There's a couple more projects to finish up first, but then full-speed development will continue on the future Crimes system. The team involved with it needs to clear a backlog of other priorities, this is essential to ensure full focus and dedication on this one system - it deserves nothing less. Once full-time development of Crimes 2.0 is restarted, we don't want to be interrupted by anything else for a very long time, until all thirty planned crimes with all of their unique mechanics, stories & rewards are complete. We expect things to move very quickly once everything is in place. This is the goal, and the reason for the delays. Everything is planned out and ready to go, we're just clearing the path and creating optimal environment. We still aim to release the first ten crimes this year, then each successive crime one by one after this. I know many of you have been looking forward to this, and it's by far Torn's biggest ever project. Thank you for your continued patience. --------------------------------------------------------------- []Say your goodbyes to the captcha Annoying users with captchas every few hours to prove they're human is not something we've ever wanted to do, but a necessity to ensure fair gameplay. Such captchas (even the strongest types on the web) are also quickly becoming insufficient as software, especially artificial intelligence, quickly improves over time. [Captcha] It's time to remove captchas entirely, in favour of a detection tool we're developing in-house called 'Bothunter'. This is a new system that quietly monitors players for inhuman / automated actions, it can detect changes in a player's behaviour and even differentiate between exploiting and the software our blind players use. So, at some point in the near future, you may answer a captcha question on Torn for the final time, and then never see one again. [Text Captcha] --------------------------------------------------------------- []Spring Freebie As with all our quarterly newsletters, we like to give you all a little treat for being part of the best online RPG community in the world. To redeem your one-time-use +250 energy boost logout of Torn then simply [login via this link](. Enjoy... Use it wisely! You're receiving this newsletter because you registered at [www.Torn.com](. Not interested anymore? [Unsubscribe here](.