Okay, as all of us are looking forward for hearing any news from Bootleggers staff, maybe Mika have some answers for us. So I went straight to the point and Mika was helpful as always.
I started the conversation with some personal questions about Mika, believe it or not beside being funny, tactful and serious; he is a teacher! On 2012-07-15 06:19:50, Prince3 wrote:
So, Mr. Mika! I know that you work in teaching, what do you teach?
On 2012-07-15 06:21:52, Mika wrote:
I teach Dutch language and literature. It is a subject for every high school student in the Netherlands. It's not a job yet, to be honest. Right now I'm still a student, and the teaching I do is part of my Educational Masters program. Once I complete it I will have a Masters degree in Dutch Language and Culture and will be a certified teacher in Dutch Language and Literature (or just in short: Dutch) for high school level.
And of course later on, we started to talk about Bootleggers and I started by asking if he was satisfied with Bootleggers nowadays? He said: "I'm quite happy with the game the way it progressed after the reset. Prior to the reset, the game as at what almost without a doubt was an all-time low. Now, it has improved and is looking healthier. However, I do think there is still room for improvement. I noticed an article about players wanting BSF2000 to communicate more in this week's Buzz, and I must say that I completely agree with it. More communication about what is going on would certainly be an improvement that would do the game well, as well as more personal interaction from BSF2000 with his players would as well.Secondly I feel that the game is suffering from a lot of minor, though still annoying, bugs right now. I understand that BSF2000 has a lot to do, being the only coder and having to verify points as well. Bearing his no doubt busy schedule in mind, I feel that hiring a second administrator/coder could also really help the game improve even more. Right after the reset, we had over 600 people online at any given point in the day (minus the times where it is normally more calm, we'd hit 200/300 then). Right now, we only have half of that online in our rush hours. What that shows, to me, is that Bootleggers has a great and large player base, but that they apparently no longer log in. More activity and interaction from the administrative staff could, I think, provide the required motivation to those players to keep logging in."
Commenting on this I said : "Maybe BSF2000 should really start prioritize the needs of the game first. We need -Crews- and -Kill- and the -WS- fixed real before -Adding friends when we die!- As you have said, Bootleggers have a base of fans, 200 people asked and voted for a change. I remember one day BSF2000 posted in the News page that he promises never to let us down again.", Mika's respond that he still remembers BSF2000's promise and said: "I don't feel the kill feature needs any work, maybe the WS system needs a little tweaking, though. Crews would be a great thing to have altered and there are also several bugs, some of which have been around for quite a while, which would need tending to." But sadly I insisted that there is something wrong about the -Kill- system and asked Mika again: " -Kill- needs to be balanced when it comes to a solo player attacking a crew! If it's fair that one player can eliminate 40-50 accounts in 10 minutes without have any difficulty, we can move to the next question.." He interrupted and said: "I agree that there should be some form of balance, though, and I have some ideas of how to do that. Right now, however, with the kill feature having been updated at the start of this round, I think there are other things that could use an update or overhaul before looking at Kill again."
My last question was if BSF2000 was aware of the SDon and NDons bug and Mika answered with a yes!
So, BSF2000 is a one man doing lots of tasks, including verifying points, fixing bugs and trying to come up with new updates. Let's give him some time and wish that it all will go better than expected. At the end; I would love to thank Mika and you for reading my article.
