Since Sky has been promoted to programmer, he has worked earnestly to make improvements to the game. Although players keep clamoring for larger updates, many of Sky's changes have been smaller in nature, with bug fixes and small tweaks to features. As similar changes are suggested in the forums, many players are arguing that these changes are wastes of his time. They want the big features, such as crew, kill, and casino feature upgrades. While these changes will have a large positive impact on the game, I believe too many people underestimate the impact these small changes can have. It may not seem like a big deal that cars on the store page order by price, that you can filter a player right from that annoying message they sent you, or that you can view your profile immediately after editing it, but it's these kinds of small details that can separate a game from its competitors. If you already play, it is correct that these changes aren't going to make a difference with whether you stay. On the other hand, to a returning player, these changes will jump out. It may only seem like a novelty to them that they can send someone an escrow from their profile, but they will notice it, and they'll probably decide to stick around long enough to see what else has changed. A new player won't know what has changed when, but they will see a game that pays attention to the details, and may be more likely to give it a chance than another that looks like a cookie cutter copy of hundreds of games out there.
Another example of a relatively small change that has had a large impact is the bust party feature. Busting has been a popular part of Bootleggers for a long time, but many players did not host bust parties as often as they otherwise would have because it was time consuming to keep track of busts, and players could cheat by either using points to self-bust or by sending fake messages. The in-forum bust party solved all these issues, and together with shortened bust timers for the "December Doubles" promotion, has resulted in a recent revitalization of busting. Busting in itself is a feature many overlook, but it encourages community interaction, and the community is the biggest reason Bootleggers has been as successful as it has been over the years. Any feature that promotes that should be encouraged.
I'm not claiming that the larger crew, kill, and casino upgrades aren't essential for the game to continue to be successful. However, these features require a significant amount of planning before they can be coded. We should appreciate the small changes while we're waiting, and realize that the size of a feature's impact isn't necessarily proportional to how long it takes to code.
