The Era Problem

[punkrules]

Geneticfrog you have been unbanned at the mercy of the PRA.

Good luck.

[Godzilla]

I don't see why we don't just unban everyone? Forget this non-sense, if they find glitches to abuse that is simply things that we should have prevented to begin with.

On another note; What can players do if they don't PK? Recently I've disengaged myself from PKing and quite honestly have barely logged on but I have gotten my girlfriend interested in playing, the instruments have got her occupied, along with buying hats with the millions of dollars I deposited into her bank account but once that runs out, what else could I interest her in?

I tried to get her to mine on her last account, she got to level 5 mining and almost physically abused me with hatred towards it, so I don't think making money is her primal goal.

Also; with the rise in player-count, I have noticed a lot of players engaging in playing instruments, could we perhaps see another Battle of the Bands?

This time giving trophies (kinda like the halloween trophy Logababy, Rogue and CatMater have), money or even rare hats away?

Also; Could someone make a trophy for Iron Man? and give them to the current and future "Iron Men" I mean, I got an MVP coin, 5 EC coins and an ARG (which I sold) so other than my statue I don't really have anything that I can gloat about, just food for thought.

[bradigger]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

I tried to get her to mine on her last account, she got to level 5 mining and almost physically abused me with hatred towards it

I've seen some close friends of mine react the same way. I really think we need to make mining more comfy. Trash picking is way overpowered compared to the other jobs, even though they were all buffed.

[shrimps]

Yeah, mining is horrible income, it should be buffed more!
It's kind of true, unless you want to invest months of time mining it sucks.

[Tim_Rocks]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

I don't see why we don't just unban everyone? Forget this non-sense, if they find glitches to abuse that is simply things that we should have prevented to begin with.

I agree with you.

[Sinkler]

Originally Posted by Scoper

To be fair, he was a PWA who still has RC access, and past experiences have shown that his concept of opinions is loose indeed. One might call them thinly-veiled commands.

I am flattered.

[geneticfrog]

Originally Posted by punkrules

Geneticfrog you have been unbanned at the mercy of the PRA.

Good luck.

ummm thats a first but im still banned btw

acc:geneticfrog (if its not obvious enough haha)

[Kohola_KinG]

Originally Posted by Tim_Rocks

I agree with you.

Is there a button to unban not just one person but everybody? If so they just do it. We need JKL back.

[Tim_Rocks]

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

Is there a button to unban not just one person but everybody? If so they just do it. We need JKL back.

I would love to bring JKL back. I've got him on Skype to let him know if something happens with this. Sadly its out of my control due to a global ban. I'd need unixmad to be involved to unban him and everyone really. Otherwise it's a one at a time deal.

[xAndrewx]

Just make Era fun. Make it so they can kill players for a level system - the higher the level the better guns they can unlock

[Scoper]

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

Is there a button to unban not just one person but everybody? If so they just do it. We need JKL back.

Last time we talked he didn't want to play again.
I miss him too :<

[Tim_Rocks]

Originally Posted by xAndrewx

Just make Era fun. Make it so they can kill players for a level system - the higher the level the better guns they can unlock

We kind of already do that, but with HP.

[Frankie]

gabriel, you have good intentions here. era does have an issue with a large wealth gap between newer players and players who have been with the game for years. it's unfair and it's probably the biggest reason why the server can't draw new players. however, resetting the server is just a one way ticket to killing any life that it has left.

the only time I would ever want to see the server reset is if there was a complete overhaul done with the game. I'll just quote myself from a previous post I made:

I would even argue that every time you log on you should choose a certain load out of any 3 guns. completely get rid of the entire "gun economy." it won't matter if players have access to every gun because skill will now be the ultimate factor in success. different guns will only be preference of play style.

the only thing that would be changing is how guns are distributed. that's it really. instead of making players grind jobs for money to buy guns, why not put everyone on an even playing field from the very beginning? the core structure of the game will still be the same with a focus on pking, but players will be able to jump right into the action.

in my opinion the economy takes away from the potential of the game to be fun.

there can still be an economy of rare items, collectibles, and maybe introduce novelty weapons that aren't as good as the main group of weapons. this way players can still have a sense of "I have this and you don't." there can even be weapon skins that are limited in availability but the skin doesn't affect the stats of the gun.

I've seen countless managers make proposals and come up with ideas in an attempt to fix or control the economy and they all failed. I personally believe it's just something that can't be done. the server has been reset before with the intention of fixing and controlling the economy, and it inevitably turned to ****.

I think we are way passed our time to be playing economics with this game. the primary focus should be making era fun to play, not worrying about how money should be controlled and distributed or what the prices of guns are.

[Crono]

Era players wouldn't quit because it's the only server they know how to play. Resetting is pointless because it's never worked in the past. Maybe make the core gameplay less reliant on economy.

[ooger]

Originally Posted by xAndrewx

Just make Era fun. Make it so they can kill players for a level system - the higher the level the better guns they can unlock

All we have to do is make it so that players can USD legally from eurocenter but make it illegal to usd from each other, then when eurocenter gets enough money they can upgrade the server and make us all happy

or they can piss the money everyone spends on lws onto something useless like a few of the iphone servers.

[Chorchizcool]

i wouldnt mind seeing micro transactions

i also wouldnt mind seeing booger and me made manager of managers so we can spawn and abuse

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Chorchizcool

i wouldnt mind seeing micro transactions

We've been trying to get the gelat shop on Era changed for a little over a year now (xmas bells... gelat coins!!).

[Tim_Rocks]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

We've been trying to get the gelat shop on Era changed for a little over a year now (xmas bells... gelat coins!!).

I've emailed Unixmad now twice about improving it. They've been ignored.

[Godzilla]

Fair question; GK allows USDing from players, right? Why would it be so bad (Not sure if it is a personal thing that the managements of Era have chosen to not allow or if this is a global issue) for Era to be the same?

Also; I like to believe things happen for a reason. I've been reset personally (Banned and Reset) multiple times, started over with nothing and each time within a month I am one of the richest again (Luckily winning money betflipping or dominating players in betspars because they have forgotten who I am over the course of a year or so)

I think the core foundations need to be changed before we even think about a reset.

What happened to the player-boards. (This player posted the most mail this week!) We could bring those back, add a bit of a bonus to them weekly.

"Tim_Rocks picked the most trash this week and was awarded a 30% bonus of the money he recieved" maybe even a statue or something inside of each job.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

Fair question; GK allows USDing from players, right? Why would it be so bad (Not sure if it is a personal thing that the managements of Era have chosen to not allow or if this is a global issue) for Era to be the same?
-----
What happened to the player-boards. (This player posted the most mail this week!) We could bring those back, add a bit of a bonus to them weekly.

"Tim_Rocks picked the most trash this week and was awarded a 30% bonus of the money he recieved" maybe even a statue or something inside of each job.

GK allowed (or mostly 'looked the other way at') USDing because they pretty much couldn't control it. Less than 5-10% of the items on there (at the time) were available to the general populace... the only way to obtain these items was to grind for thousands of hours and overpay or just USD. And the USD market was easy to manipulate cause you could just but super items from the random noob that won the Raffle. Plus they rarely had an active/large enough GP team.

Now a good 30-50% of the items are available since I was last around and we added different chests/boxes/crates. But since they added Nihil coins anyway the USDing just got legalized that way (and they profited off it which was smart).

On Era, more than 90% of items are generally available at all times. Buying with USD was never very prominent (usually just the same dozen lazy dudes who got reset anyway and didn't wanna work the next time around). It's easy for us to monitor so we do so.

-----
More competition; I like this idea.

[Kohola_KinG]

@Rogue.

Who cares if they're lazy and want to USD... They spend real money on items, let them in what way does it effect you? It doesn't so let them get on with it.

USD should be legal in this game. Who are you to say people cant purchase items of another guy with their own money.. Dictatorship much?

[Kohola_KinG]

Originally Posted by Scoper

Last time we talked he didn't want to play again.
I miss him too :<

I don't miss him. I miss his trolling.

[Spikedude]

-----------------------
To Gab's main point
-----------------------
There's only one real way to control a virtual economy forever, and that's to never create money without intentionally pre-defining the exact amounts. If someone is getting money from the game, someone else somewhere should be losing money from the game. If you have an NPC shop that players can stock for money, for example, then the stockers of the store should only be paid based on what revenue the store brings in during that same time period. For anything like flower picking, it would have to be limited (IE the store would say "we're buying x rose boquets this week") and directly offset by taxes, auction revenues, etc. As long as we allow players to endlessly earn a consistent flow of cash by doing some mundane task like mining or picking flowers, the economy is eventually going to spiral out of control. A reset now without massive changes wouldn't help much because we'd be back in this situation in a year or two. Unless there were some sort of "Reset Schedule" I guess (like the ladder seasons in the old blizzard games) - not sure how people would feel about that though.

OR

We stop pretending anyone on Era has ever cared about the economy, or that we have any control over it whatsoever in the current state, and just continue to release higher and higher priced items as people get more and more wealthy. As long as there's still things that a noob can purchase for 25,000 dollars, what do they care if Seth gets some 250 million dollar gold plated metal storm with .001 less freeze than the normal version? (This is also what almost every video game ever does when they start to realize their currency is being devalued by gold farmers). As long as someone is around to make new content, we wouldn't have a real problem.


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To the current conversation
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Also - totally agree that the Gelat shop would fix a lot of our problems. A
legal outlet for USDing real useful items would also be a good reason to unban a lot of the old players who were in trouble for USDing (since it would be awfully tough for them to find customers then). It would be sweet if someone could get traction on that. I know I tried at one point, and Zao tried before that, and I'm pretty sure Ice tried before that, and Tim and Exolia are definitely trying now. Hopefully something gets changed there.

[punkrules]

I just banned and unbanned you geneticfrog, just to be sure it wasn't a glitch or something.

I also unbanned Mog, if someone would like to tell him that would be great.

[Kohola_KinG]

Originally Posted by punkrules

I just banned and unbanned you geneticfrog, just to be sure it wasn't a glitch or something.

I also unbanned Mog, if someone would like to tell him that would be great.

Mog lol

[bradigger]

Originally Posted by punkrules

I just banned and unbanned you geneticfrog, just to be sure it wasn't a glitch or something.

I also unbanned Mog, if someone would like to tell him that would be great.

Wow! It's been ages since I've seen Mog. I was convinced all the oldbies just quit. It sounds like a lot of them have just been banned for years.

If people like Mog are the ones banned, I definitely support unbanning people.

[shrimps]

I remember Calani doing an unban for everyone on Era like I don't know I want to say maybe 7 years ago or so, I forgot exactly. But yeah it happened.

[geneticfrog]

hah once again sry cuz it sais my computer is banned (also my trial)

also about mass unbanning as far as i remember its just a notepad style list in RC folder with everyones acc thats banned.

[Sinkler]

Originally Posted by shrimps

I remember Calani doing an unban for everyone on Era like I don't know I want to say maybe 7 years ago or so, I forgot exactly. But yeah it happened.

Calani re-banned half of them after the PWA got angry (if I recall correctly)

[shrimps]

Hahaha, that's funny though.

[xAndrewx]

Originally Posted by Crono

Era players wouldn't quit because it's the only server they know how to play. Resetting is pointless because it's never worked in the past. Maybe make the core gameplay less reliant on economy.

this.

Disable trading of guns, that will solve your issues.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by xAndrewx

this.

this.

[Spikedude]

Originally Posted by xAndrewx

this.

Disable trading of guns, that will solve your issues.

Trading of guns is just such a huge part of what is Era though - even if it wouldn't drive people to quit, I feel disabling it would make the server in general that much more pointless. Maybe I'm just close-minded because I've played for so long and can't picture an Era without itemtrading.

I think the better solution is just to let the economy go wild. Think Runescape, Diablo, even WoW at times; people get more and more wealthy, and the developers release more and more content to spend that wealth on. They all have the same problems as we do, they just don't care about having a balanced economy, so long as the long time players are happy (new content) and the noobs are happy (affordable content).

[Godzilla]

I think if we're going to blow the economy to ****, let's add interest to bank accounts.

[Fiberwyre_P2P]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

I think if we're going to blow the economy to ****, let's add interest to bank accounts.

And property tax, income tax, and sales tax.

[Lime_O_Matic]

Originally Posted by geneticfrog

hah once again sry cuz it sais my computer is banned (also my trial)

also about mass unbanning as far as i remember its just a notepad style list in RC folder with everyones acc thats banned.

Sorry geneticfrog, I unbanned you weeks ago when someone approached me about it. I was unaware that you were computer banned, but I was able to unban that as well.

Go ahead and try to log on .

[shrimps]

Originally Posted by Fiberwyre_P2P

And property tax, income tax, and sales tax.

Add Welfare too.

[swift]

Originally Posted by shrimps

Add Welfare too.

don't forget health insurance!

[shrimps]

Didn't something like that exist once? Or was that something I saw on iEra?

[Chorchizcool]

nah there was like health insurance on era where youd heal in the hospital faster