Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Issue: 15   Editor: Mika


30 Crews, This is Madness! Aldarion
Now, a couple of issues ago I wrote a column about the state of the game and the reason why so many people left the game. I concluded most of it was down to the cut OC pay-outs which as a result made the game harder and less interesting. But I believe there’s more to it. When all of us got back into sound six we found the number of crews to be increased to 30. Even though a lot of people criticized that decision I thought it was better to wait and see what it did to the game. I’ve seen it and now I have changed my mind.

When I spotted my crew tag at the right-hand side of my screen, earlier this week, I realized the value of a crew had gone. Today it’s no more than a hideous expensive extra forum that can only be accessed by a couple of your friends. Thing is, this whole change pretty much messed up demand and supply of crews. To get something a bit interesting one would favor little supply and high demand. But here on Bootleggers, someone seems to believe the opposite is true.

If a crew was about to drop last reset, you’d have to refresh the crew page every twelve nanoseconds to try and get a new spot. Nowadays, if you see a crew will drop anytime soon, you log off, book a holiday, enjoy yourself one some wickedly exotic island and then create a crew once you’ve returned. This shows a crew is no longer a valuable object. These days it’s hard to get a little bit of profit if you try to sell a spot you’ve just picked up. Hence no-one is interested in getting a new spot.

The reasons why I don’t understand this update is because it totally contradicts with any other decision or statement the Elite Guard has made this reset. Even though no comment was made on why this was actually changed we could assume this was done to get more action into the game. I’m going a bit off-topic here, but it crosses my mind every now and then: why can’t we be told the reason of such changes? Now, instead, we have to guess why changes were made.

Anyway, I’m going back to crimes first. As we all know they are now so incredibly hard that no-one, not even a machine, will be able to max-out his/her skill in a zillion years. The reason given for this was the Elite Guard believed this would give the players a real challenge, something that one could not achieve in just a few weeks. It seems they believe the concept of a challenge is something that will never ever happen. Now I’m sorry, but where’s the challenge in crews if getting one is easier than breathing?

The thought that thirty crews will lead to more action is wrong in several ways. First, the recent changes in OC pay-outs made it (relatively) harder to kill someone. I explained this in one of my columns in issue twelve of The Bootleggers Buzz. In short: because the amount of ingame money is relatively lower than last round, due to lower vaults in Organized Crimes, and prices of weapons and protection remaining unchanged it is now harder to get the best gun. Now if the admins would somehow desire more action, I’ve got a pretty simple solution: lower the prices of weapons and protection. How hard can it be?

Second, because of high supply and (relatively) low demand a crewspot has almost no value at all. I’ve seen spots that were sold for less than 200 points. In the beginning of last reset, a clean spot was worth nearly 10K points. A shooting on the other hand would cost just about as much and therefore both were worthy alternatives to each other. No longer, why would you spend 25 times as much as you can when you buy one? It’s not efficient at all and 5-10K points is a high price to pay for a bit of glory. And because there are so many crews no-one is even bothered about one going down.

And that’s the thing, I don’t care about the crews these days. I can’t be bothered to figure which one was replaced this week, or wiped, or insided. I couldn’t care any less. Owning a spot these days is nothing special, you’re not one of the few that could afford to buy a spot. You’re not one of the few risking your account because you just picked up a dropped spot. Almost every single one of us could buy a crew these days, no problem. You’d even manage to survive for a couple of weeks, instead of being killed right away because a single person owns a valuable object. No, none of that is present in this game anymore.

The point of a crew is that you have to work together to achieve something, the crew offers protection, weapons and all of that stuff. But it’s not necessary. Fear of being wiped at any given moment is simply not here. And all of that is down to the changes made in the beginning of the reset. Yes, people complain all the time. If the number of crews was reduced by fifteen to twenty people are going to complain. I’m telling you, the only ones complaining are the ones that no longer can afford a spot. And that’s the point, having a crew shouldn’t be easy.

Fewer crews would mean there’s more of a battle to get a spot. Spots become more expensive which unquestionably makes the alternative of shooting for a spot way more interesting than it is nowadays. It won’t be the solution to all problems this game has to deal with, but it’s at least a start. And it wouldn’t be just a start with solving problems; it would also be a start with listening to the community. From the Game Forum topic where the discussion about this was held, it was pretty obvious the majority doesn’t want thirty crews.

I think the only thing that can (and should) be done in order to make crews interesting again is removing fifteen to twenty spots. This happens to be one of the major reasons why I lost interest in the game. Now I’m pretty sure no-one cares about me, but if more people happen to feel the same, the amount of players is bound to drop, sooner or later. Also, this would be a pretty good opportunity for BSF2000 to show he does appreciate the community, to show that he is involved in the game. Even though claimed otherwise, we haven’t really seen much of that just yet. Sure, the Russian Roulette he organized was jolly exciting, but there’s more to it if he wants to keep the community satisfied.