I think there should be a "legal meter." As in how you choose to do a mission, so if a mission requires you to have someone wacked, you can hire people to do the job for you. But the price of the hit would be very high so that you can't always have someone do the mission for you and also the success rate is not always 100% so if they fail and you have to do the mission yourself, it would be alot harder e.g more protection etc etc. There would for most of the time be a legal alternative to most missions. Also roughly 2/3 of the missions would require you to do the job yourself. Depending on how your legal meter is, other's would react differently to you, so if you are considered bad, as in doing a lot of illegal things, the police would be more likely to be in your area, so you'll be watched more constantly. Of course this "legal meter" is just how you appear to NPC's in the game, and not what you really are. The Mafia for example, has a very legal front, but behind closed doors they into extortion, prostitution etc etc. As a result if you are seen as a good person, you can make better deals and make more money that way. Alternatively you can be aggressive and use fear as your way of making better deals and money.
At the end of the game, there is not point of having to steal cars of the street because by the end of the game, you should be successful enough to buy your own cars and stuff, that is the point of the game right? In the end you could be a a Kingpin of major criminal activity, or you can be more legit with legit business', So you can be big in the cocaine business or be big by being an entrepeneur(sp?)
Another idea i had was more exclusive vehicles, as in more cars/planes/bikes that you have to buy to drive. And only a handful of residence in the game has this car and they are the only owners of it, so if there were only 3 of a certain type of car, and you stole the car from the owner, you wont see the same car respawn on their driveway anytime soon. Exclusivity would also be a factor in how people see you, and this would go back to the point i had with the making money by making better deals.
That's about all i have now
