This is a column where every week I’ll jot down a few thoughts on things going on in the world of BL, as well as talk to people around the game to get their insights.
1. The salmon revolution has gained steam well beyond what anybody could've expected. What started as an inside joke within EH has spread to the point where bosses of other crews and even mods are getting in on it, and there was even briefly a crew this week, Salmon Uprising (which, I must say, looked spanking). As one person I asked said, "we like giving people (Mason) who don't like it a hard time."
2. Is there any value in changing crew affiliation, or perceived affiliation, to try and extend the life of an account? Certainly some crews always have a target on their back, but at a time when crewless players are shot because they could be future shooters and just about every stats crew is suspected of harboring shooters, odds are there’s no real safe place, and the real value is in expecting to be dead the next morning.
3. The Buzz caught a lot of flak for not being able to get certain articles done for last weeks issue. There’s some very committed people within the buzz, but that doesn’t mean they can do it on their own. A perspective check is needed when you start criticizing people for their lack of dedication to something like that. An additional hobby/job(being a buzz writer) within a hobby(BL) can hardly be considered top priority compared to any sort of real life events.
4. At the same time, writers need to be realistic about what they can get done. If they claim an article and don’t finish it, that reflects badly on everyone involved.
5. At the time of publishing, the max interest that can be earned daily is roughly $750,000. That’s down from well over a million a day at its peak before the shootings, yet the gold price has stayed where it was, even gone up by a couple thousand. There hasn’t been a less fruitful time this reset to be banking your money. I have to think that the gold price will come back down at some point, and yet there still seems to be more buyers than sellers. If this does turn out to be the new state of the economy, people trying to get rich from banking will have to rethink their strategy.
6. Are deusies actually as expensive as they seem right now? If you’re paying 100k, it’s about 5 gold. I remember a number of resets ago points were 300kpp, and yet I don't remember deusies being more than 100k, which would translate to a third of a point. Maybe someone with a better memory could confirm that, but if that is the case it could be a symptom of a chain reaction started with the round playing out differently than we've seen before. A relatively smaller player base steals less cars, plus there are less shootings, and so there is a higher percentage of players pushing for high don ranks. That means they reset more and use more deusies in OC's, at the same time as there's fewer being stolen.
7. The effects of the new booze run OC’s on cash flow within the game cannot be understated. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s a big part of why the gold price bubble(if it is a bubble) hasn’t popped yet.
8. Is the scale fairly balanced between stats crews, ug crews and individuals, or has it tipped too far toward stats crews? Answer seemed obvious a few weeks ago, but the wipes of DV and TSE show that a determined, smart group can still knock over a titan.
9. Would some sort of group shooting feature that offered benefits to organized groups of shooters, regardless of crew, be valuable? Or would that make stats crews too vulnerable once again? Regardless of the answer, that would be a massive undertaking for the tiny coding team BL has, especially on a game as fragile as this one has been the last few years.
10. It’s unfortunate that the captcha has had so many server troubles this reset, but it doesn’t sound like the current issue could be blamed on the company. I think everyone would agree that matching pictures is far better than trying to decipher words or numbers on reCaptcha. Anybody getting frustrated should think back to when you frequently had to refresh the captcha 3 or 4 times to get one you could read. Server problems or not, I’d take the captcha we have any day.
11. And one extra note in the first edition of this column, if you have any thoughts or insights on the game feel free to send them to me, and I may decide to include them in next weeks article. Whether you wish to remain anonymous or not, I’d love to hear some takes on things going on in the game!
