(10-22-2014, 03:26 PM)Laura C. Wrote: This is RPG game. And every RPG game must find balance between " this make sense" on one side and "this doesn´t harm the gameplay much" on the other side. Unrestricted jump trading made more harm than good to gameplay because in majority of cases it reduced interaction between traders and pirates/unlawfuls because traders instead of going through several systems were jumping to and back between two or three systems (and very often even off the plane to do maximum to avoid any interaction).
Interaction between traders and pirates is one of the key parts of server ingame life cycle so it needs to be protected.
I would REALLY like some one to explain to me how a single stranger demanding, "Gimme (money/cargo) or die!" then flying off is RP while spending time with a group of friends setting up a trading event is not.
"Legitimate traders avoiding pirates is bad for the server, so the pirates need to be given artificial advantages." Is that an accurate paraphrase of the above? Just making sure I understood what you are saying. If so, would you PLEASE explain to me what the benefit of piracy is to the server? The SERVER, ergo the community, not the individual.
Don´t forget that jumptrading exists for limited time. It was not in game all the time, it was added. So in fact it was traders who got "artificial advantage" when jumping was introduced and restricting the jumping now just return server closer to the previous state.
I think that Garrett already explained it. Moving traders are fuel for pirates and unlawfuls in general. And this is then fuel for lawfuls (except wars which are fuel for militaries). Less encounters for unlawfuls means less fun and less people playing. Less unlawfuls means less encounters for lawfuls and this again means less fun and less people playing.
Jumping was interesting idea. There were groups, which were doing it and included lot of RP ingame and even on forums. Unfortunately, another lot of people are doing simple "secretly load, jump and secretly sell, repeat until you are very rich". There was lot of abusing of IDs and lot of actions didn´t make any sense inRP. Too much players started to see jumptrading as easy way for making huge amount of money (especially with barges) without any consideration what their actions means.
Jumping without any restrictions and rules was same like PoBs building without restrictions and rules. It created too much harm over good when some people changed idea made with good intentions into bad use. Some change was needed in my opinion.
(10-23-2014, 09:25 AM)larzac Wrote: Yeah sure, it was killing activity for others (ironic mod activated).
Now everyone is equal, it kills activity for everyone, like this, everyone is happy.
I see you coming saying: bla bla you are part of congress bla bla jump trader bla bla.
you should know that i never jumped except once in rheinland (maybe not the good timezone help) but what i see is that since jump has been remove, look at faction activity. And not only congress activity, ALL factions.
Except [FL-ER], every faction lost activity time since the begining of the test. It could be a coincidence, but i think you arent fool enough to believe that. Everyone can do mistakes, even our dearly admins and devs, and it's normal you are human (even if jens is maybe a reborn tractor...) but the problem isnt to do mistake, the problem is when you dont fix them. Now, look at the result of this test and think to his result. And please, stop to listen to people who moan more than they play (today i am probably part of them, but it's just today i promise ).
Come on, this is way way big generalization. Every faction lost activity? Well, RFP which I know very well didn´t. OSI wich was almost dead went up in last three weeks, same goes for VWA. And very likely there are some others which I didn´t notice. Please stay reasonable and don´t misinterpret facts.
And generally, how can unlawful factions, police factions and even military faction be affected by restriction of jump trading? You are here long enough to know that every September and October activity goes down becase school and later university start so players have less time to play. So no, less activity is not caused only by jump trading restriction. There may be some influence, but I doubt it´s major one, especially for non-trading factions.
I know that .j. (mentioning it as number one of activity list and because you are in it, no attack or flame intented) lost like ten or even fifteen days of activity. I don´t know how much you were using jumping so how much your faction activity was influenced by restriction. But another junkers JM- lost few days too and I´m not aware they were using jump trading so I doubt it´s caused by the restriction trial period. Same goes for GMG or Ageira or IMG (which is the famous one for staying with "old-fashioned" convoys instead of jumptrading, despite they have resources, ships and players to do so). And I can go on.
I simply doubt that jump trading restriction (and it´s even only restriction, not complete remove) can really significantly affect server activity. If there are players who do jump trading majority of their playing time and will leave if they can´t continue because they refuse traditional trading, then I´m not sure what to say about it. Jump trading was never intented to be main activity which should replace "old-fashioned" roaming in the trade lanes.
OSI- 2.09:42:09
RFP 2.03:10:12
VWA 03:11:05
Please, dont insult me. It's nice to see this faction more active, but that's still very low numbers. And when you look in details, it's only 2 or 3 active members. Maybe september and october has an impact, but when the test started, all top five active faction was at +10 days (sorry i didnt take a screen but i remember this quite well), Congress was at 40 days and JM was nearly 15 days. So, as you said, September/october has maybe an impact, but we were already in this period 2 weeks ago... So your argument is a little irrelevant. You say that you doubt that jump trading restriction significantly affect server activity, it does, as numbers show it. I dont shout: look it's kills activity or something of this kind as some people do, i bring elements of proofs. A lot of indies were just playing together to jump. Yes, maybe it doesnt create a lot of interaction with others, but in what it hurts you? This indies wont use trade lanes, so it's just player lost who has probably left the server. I didnt do congress jump who was at 5 am in my timezone, but i know that since the restriction began, this players dont log anymore (as numbers show). And remember that some players had fun to hunt this jumpers, players who hasnt this reason to loganymore (Yes, probably distorted argument but still one ) What i try to do is to spotlight elements that since the restriction began, WE lost a lot of activity, nothing else. After anyway, it will always be admins/dev choice and we cant do something against that.