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| Sunday, December 12th, 2010 |
| Issue: 59 |
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Editor: McAldarion |
| Recent Developments and Game State |
McAldarion |
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Recent Developments and Game State.
As we all know, the game has gone through a decline in recent months. Player numbers continued dropping in the latter half of 2010, until last week, where it stopped declining and stagnated. Whats more, the average number of players this weekend was around 20% higher than last week.
Kicking off with the observation that the game does not seem to be very balanced at this moment. The number of crews is way below the maximum. Bullet factories had tons of bullets left with only just a few interested in buying them, and as a result of that prices dropped massively. In fact, the Illinois bullet factory, currently selling at $15 a bullet, lowered its price at a factor of 40, compared to some bullet factories twee or three weeks ago. Above all that, we saw the current points price drop by 40% over the last two weeks.
The best thing about some of these things is that they recover themselves. Bullet prices dropped massively as a result of almost no-one buying at the prices they were sold for. It is likely that the points price will recover as well, although it may take quite some time before its fully recovered to the value it had before the ingame money dropped massively from roughly $38,000,000,000 to $14,000,000,000. However, the crew system is not designed in such a way that it can recover itself and as a result, a large supply has to cover a smaller demand meaning that spots are left open.
It is expected that the number of crews will be reduced within the next few weeks, as that also happened halfway through the round. However, more can be done to make owning a crew attractive. Recently, there was a discussion about the possibility of removing or lowering crew taxes to make owning a spot more attractive. It is a solution that would be welcomed by the majority of the players. Others solutions include giving the tax a meaningful purpose, because right now, the money simply evaporates when paid.
Moving on to the number of players that play the game, which I think shows a perfect link between administrator activity and player activity. Until the update player numbers kept declining but they stagnated, if not rose again, after the introduction of Winter Bonus Weekends and revamped crimes. It is a promising development, but one that was rather necessary considering the lack of balance pointed out earlier on. If the number of players would start to rise again some of that balance may be restored even completely without administrator intervention.
My hope is that current developments will continue, and if so, things may be looking very promising. BSFs activity in game development and on the forums is something that is very positive. It is something the game needs to survive hard times like these. And that, I guess, is something we would all like to happen.
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