Era is based around economy. PKing is part of the economy.

Why do you play Era? To shoot people with guns, or to become rich and powerful to be able to kill people easily, have control and be better than everyone else? Regardless, I'm going with the latter.

Instruments are a nice addition to Era's expanding economy. Yes, the economy that most likely keeps you interested in playing Era.

oh yes, how could I have forgotten? I only play Era for it's intriguing economy :)

I personally spent about five-six hours working on it, not a month. I don't know about anyone else, though. Certainly not a month (though it was planned a month beforehand perhaps)

The main problem I see is the overall uselessness of being employed (or working random jobs that Era offers). Back when I was a young player, I would spend the majority of my time working jobs to save up for more expensive guns. After about a week, I had earned enough money to shop around my items (and money) and "play the market." Currently, the prices of weapons are far from symmetrical with the current cash that is circulating throughout Era's economy.

That's something that's been a death-mark on the current Era, in my opinon.

It's like an item-based game instead of skill based now. It's not so much "are you good at PKing?", it's now "I just need to get a better gun."

All of the guns have ridiculous stats these days. Who needs skill when you can just hold D and wall the **** out of everyone? My god, even the dual MKs would have been considered lame back in the old days of era.

Yea, I was going to say the same thing. I spent no more than 30 minutes making the on-screen keyboard, and no more than a couple of hours with the other stuff. The majority of the work (graphics/ganis/sounds), believe it or not, was done by players, not the staff team. It may seem like we're wasting our time on things such as the instruments, but we're really not...

I guess that just shows how resourceful we are...we can spend very little time on a project and have it turn out so awesome that every thinks we spent months doing it. ^^

Everyone thinks you spent months doing it because nothing else has been done in months for the main server. (Other then quick fixes)

you're saying the instruments took no more than a few hours, yet it's the only thing that has been released in the past month and a half? lol..

if it's so easy, why aren't there more updates a lot more often?

I was the one who started the instrument project. I had an idea and I went through it. As the current staff was preoccupied I got most of the work from my friends who weren't developers on the server. I got Omni (spydrct02) to do the sounds, Noto to do the graphics, and Hector did the majority of the GANIs. Noto was the only staff member, but he is a GP, so I don't think it's the same really. To make the first 21 instruments it only took LESS than a week and then we were done. The only help we got with the creation of the instruments was the scripting which were done by Sales and Chris, but as you can see from their response, it wasn't too much. Also, I decided to make it an EC Shop because people were complaining that their was nothing to spend their ECs on, even if the person themselves didn't want the instrument they could have easily sold it and made huge profits. With the little time spent on the instruments I think it came as a huge success even though some may dislike them. Also, the events that were hosted because of them were also huge successes and increased our playercount drastically even if it was a short amount of time.

I know I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I've been busy with school/finals, and usually spent what time I had working on the EventBot. The bot itself is pretty much done and has been running for a week or so. I'm not sure how this isn't something that was released in the last month and a half, but whatever (it just needs the occassional bug fix and more events will be added over time).

You also need to remember that we just lost a Dev Admin, a LAT admin, and a few other developers not too long ago. The team is finally getting put back together...

I finished school today too, so expect more updates from me personally in the future.

I don't really see the point you're trying to make here. maybe you quoted the wrong post? you're just further proving my point.

I was just restating what we did. You as well as others almost seemed surprised about how little time it took to actually create these items.

However, I do have a question for you. What would you like to see on the current server? What kind of updates are you looking, or do you believe would have the best outcome and can generally be used by a large portion of the server?

I have yet to see any effort being put into a new gang system, which I would really like to see on Era. sure, the idea of a new one has been talked about for a while, but it's about time development on one actually started.

specifically, gangs need more of a purpose. there needs to be benefits from raiding a gang instead of just "haha we took your base."

gang events should be hosted weekly again, and there should be at least 4 or 5 different events. 1 event a week. rotate the events this way an event doesn't get old. having a koth every week would make gangs get bored of it. having a koth, then 4 other events over 4 weeks, then koth again, it won't be as boring!

have different bases around the server that gangs can capture for advantages. maybe one base will allow them an extra +10 HP, and another base might allow them +5 damage on their guns. these benefits would make gangs want to have these bases, and there will be huge conflicts for the territory. it would be neat. these benefits will only be useful if you're on gang tag, so this will encourage a lot more people to join a gang and be on tag.

what else???? idk!!! so much!

make pking a bit more rewarding. maybe killing people can give you points and you can spend it on little stuff such as increased clip size or shorter bleed times. a lot can be done here.

just a few ideas. most of the stuff revolves around gangs.

The least that could be added back are the phones so people can prank call each other.

It has. Just hammering out the details with Chris and I will start on it soon.

There will be much more of a purpose to gangs, and I think you'll like what we have in mind. There will be several options when it comes to leading a gang, and leaders will be able to choose them based on their priorities.

Gang events are fun ocassionally, but they're really just a sad attempt at trying to give current gangs meaning.

We have something similar in mind, but it's a little more thought out than this...same concept.


I've also thought of some things that will help with this, mainly in the area of sparring and have started discussing them with Chris. Hopefully we'll be able to see some updates in this area as well.