[GrimGriz]

Dear I don't play to work people,

You might not. I don't play to not make a difference. I may spend my days flipping burgers and serving other people, but in Jumpgate I have a chance to be someone important. I don't want you to take that away from me any more than you want to spend your play-time working. There is always a balance that can be found between both of our reasons for playing.

Love,
Dave

[Custardx]

Dear Dave,

This is a game, if you do not like you RL job, get a new one. I'm ending this now before I get rude...

Love
Joe

[Jump]

Do I have to get out the wet trouts?

[QrazyKermi]

Woah, hey there!!!! There's no need to take this conversation into the gutter, Jump

[Wild_Bill]

GG, you know my ideas on the current situation, because you've posted on the same threads. I see no reason to repeat it here in any detail. I agree with you on so many things, but in this case I'd just like to take it further.

Let the dev(s) make it where the miners/producers/haulers can DO more! It's obvious that the "econ teams/players" are not sufficient to the current situation. I count myself one of them, even if only in a very small way.
I hope the GM's do a general equipment/commods dump and do it soon. I don't care how often they repeat it until Istvan or whoever can gear up the mods / features to the point where people who want to work on the supply side can deliver all that people on the demand side want. Right now, "No equipment" = "No fun". No one should have a RP forced on them whether it's PvP, pirate/mugger or econ worker.

The ball is most certainly in the GM's court. I just don't see how the producers can do significantly more than what they are doing right now, nor do I see any near future increase in the number of people willing to work on the production side.

[Lordopic]

Would the last one out please turn the lights off.

[Jonboy]

What has changed that makes it so you feel like Jumpgate is hard work?

I pretty much left before the mining changes started to bite, so be patient with me.

The US server typically used to be a lot less work than the EU server... it probably just takes getting used to. Is there not enough equipment to go round? Are you sure this is not a temporary dip, as the EUers suck up some old slack?

Istvan has repeatedly said that he would be happiest if noone was FORCED to mine. Do you think you cannot get by without? Is it not worth it to pay someone for mats?

Can you not make money now? (I don't want to be specific to only lordopic, but killing c15s+ used to be a real cash earner, has this changed?)

JB

[GrimGriz]

I don't feel like it's work, but I get that from people that don't like to mine and get the feeling that they have to in order to make gear. Does anyone need to make money anymore?

[Wild_Bill]

I'd certainly like to make big honkin' piles of credits. Tens of millions of credits per run. This piddlin' 35k or even 135k runs suck rocks. I've watched my NW drop from a high of 700k a year ago to around 500k now. There are few ways to make big chunks of money currently. I don't care if it's cargo runs, profit runs, farms or exploits like the Flail CP, I just want to see ways to make big money come back to Jumpgate.

[SingleShot]

Originally Posted by Jonboy

What has changed that makes it so you feel like Jumpgate is hard work?

I pretty much left before the mining changes started to bite, so be patient with me.

The US server typically used to be a lot less work than the EU server... it probably just takes getting used to. Is there not enough equipment to go round? Are you sure this is not a temporary dip, as the EUers suck up some old slack?

Istvan has repeatedly said that he would be happiest if noone was FORCED to mine. Do you think you cannot get by without? Is it not worth it to pay someone for mats?

Can you not make money now? (I don't want to be specific to only lordopic, but killing c15s+ used to be a real cash earner, has this changed?)

JB

The server merge accelerated the changes caused by the mining stuff. In effect, once the economy was put under load, the real effects of the mining economy were realized, as all the slack was gone.

Fluxing is probably still pretty good. I still don't like the exp nerf of awhile ago, but with the new flux AI, and the new ammo flux versions, fluxing is super easy now anyway.

[Jonboy]

Istvan is a simulationist. He likes the idea of moving the economy to be more "realistic" - the materials for the economy should come from somewhere... ideally mining. However, he does want the game to be still fun.

I'm tempted to believe that the addition of 100+ equipment-free pilots stripped the economy, and that this is just an anomoly. However, being an anomoly doesn't stop the fact that people won't play if it's not fun.

I like the idea of a simulationist economy, if an enjoyable level of mining is enough to keep the economy ticking over.

However, it could put a stop to a lot of farming cash by hauling material round in circles. A lot of people (like wild bill) found this fun, despite it being essentially pointless, except for a few commods. This part of the game appears to have been seriously impeded by the switch to mining, and a large chunk of the player-base are thus at a loss wrt to finding things to do, as they like hauling, but there's nothing good to haul.

Is that a correct assessment?

[GrimGriz]

I think the biggest problem wrt to hauling is that at best I can make 300 units every half hour, and freighter pilots can move 700 units every 15 minutes. If freighters had 300 cargo, there would be enough to move maybe. I think mined commods need to produce a disproportionately large amount of second tier commods. Like 50 phospho produce 2000 chems

[SingleShot]

Originally Posted by Jonboy

I'm tempted to believe that the addition of 100+ equipment-free pilots stripped the economy, and that this is just an anomoly. However, being an anomoly doesn't stop the fact that people won't play if it's not fun.

There is alot of truth to this. No doubt, the arrival of leveled up EU pilots with no gear and no POSes precipitated the sudden vanishing of everything.

But I think their arrival just further unbalanced an unsustainable level of consumption. I suspect we would have originally run into this problem, even without the EU guys showing up, it just would have taken much longer with US' very low numbers vs. large reserve ratio (of commods and equip on TRI and in POS storage. I know a certain someone that's just playing out of an old ISU station ) Vastly increasing the consumption while having half the playerbase want to stock up newly created POSes, cranked up the fall of the economy alot.

My main concern is that once alot of EU pilots run out of the free trial time they will go "wow, this is dumb", and not bother renewing. Shifting servers is stressful enough with a soft landing pad at the other end...with the current welcome mat of "Hi, get mining", and "no, there are no FFs, sorry", I think too many EU guys will not bother. This is a chance to prolong Jumpgate's life that I don't really want to see slip away.