Right. Here's the skinny.
Firstly, I have to say I'm a little disappointed with some of the reactions here, but I can understand them. Wilco and I have strived many, many hours yesterday, trying to bring about changes that (we thought) the community had been asking for, in terms of spinning the economy around and mixing things up again. The result is that some of you are depressed about those changes and confused because you don't know where everything is, or what it's worth anymore. Personally, I'm more confused about what it is that people want...because the messages we're receiving are conflicted. You want change, but you want everything to be the same salt-coke-run-grind, because you don't want to try new things to work out where the money-streams are now. Help meh! I'm at a loss now...
However, you should know something that we haven't (until now) made public. It's no secret, but we're not shouting it from the rooftops. At first, yesterday morning, I thought we'd been hacked. All the money in the database was reset to zero (apart from about 20 players that were still live on the server). Everyone's cash was GONE. The lot. Worse than that, every person who was a cop was reset to civilian (i.e. their whitelisting and rank was gone), and every donator's tier level was reset to zero as well. Even the AL admin levels had been zapped too. I could've cried. I had my suspicions who it might have been, but it turned out not to be. It was a database management tool (which I shall not name to save embarrassment to its author, who is not a part of this community - he is understandably horror-stricken, but that doesn't really help us much).
Luckily, we hadn't lost player-gear (mostly) and we still had all player-vehicles linked to the players that owned them, so it was not a total loss... but of course, money appears to be everything to some folks, so we knew we would be up the creek whatever happened.
Sadly, because we have recently moved server, the most-recent available rollback was many days ago, so we decided it would be better to just deal with this by resetting everyone's cash in bank to £300,000, and explaining it (in RP) as a Treasury bust. It would be impossible (not to mention take forever and be open to abuse) to find out what everybody thought they had in terms of cash.
At the same time, we discussed that this might be an opportune 'Year Zero' moment to 'mix things up a bit' in terms of the economy, simply because so many of you had been asking for that variety. So, in as quick a time as possible, we researched some car prices, chopper prices, boat and truck prices, and took some 'executive decisions' on relative earnings power from things like coke, heroin, and other commodities, based upon a 3 hours = 1 year type economy footing. (you get paid every 15mins, which effectively 1 months wages).
At the same time we began the absolutely massive task of resetting all the donator-tiers correctly for each player (a massive task that took much of the day for Wilco, working from lists, etc) and fixing the cops back into the DB so that they had whitelist access, giving everyone 300k, and so on. Not a pretty task. We we both locked into this task until about 3am, having started in the previous mid-morning. The first cut was completed sufficiently enough during the 2.5 hour downtime that the server had yesterday lunchtime, to go 'live' again, with partial updates every four hours as we resolved more of the economy and donator issues... can you imagine the stress that was going on behind the scenes?
So here we are. We at least have a working server again, and we have a new economy. Nobody is going to say it is perfect... but just like real life, economy-shit happens! We will survive, if we want to. We just have to bear the grim times and keep tweaking. Offset all this against a barrage of hacks and general RDMing twats requiring bans, plus all the other 'usual admin' tasks, and it makes for a very busy day for the two people currently bearing *all* the load. We're doing our best, and this isn't our job... it's our hobby (some would say obsessive curse, but that's an opinion, lol).
If you have suggestions about the economy, and they aren't just whines, please, let us know and we'll try to tweak them. We will probably do a poll to see what people would prefer - the old 'dreamland' prices (we can still rip them from the stock Altis Life core) or something along the lines we have now, but improved (continually, I expect). What do you WANT to play? What is most FUN for you? Tell us. But at the same time, please be prepared to try new things (I hear turtles are among the most lucrative commodity at the moment, for example... when was the last time you and a crew went boating?). Don't just assume everything is broken (some of it isn't - storage prices, for example are way, way lower and a lot more understandable per vehicle type now)... and do understand that we changed things like the salt/coke-run grind, PRECISELY because people had said they were bored with it.
This is life. It changes. You can influence that change, and we really don't want you to leave because you're unhappy... but if you care that much about life here, you can make a difference. Tell us - constructively, preferably - what it is you want, and what the *real* problems are with the economics, and we will endeavour to fix them as quickly as we can. Patience on your part may be required, but we do want you to be happy.
Otherwise why else would Wilco and I be pulling 14 hours days sweating this stuff, day-in, day-out? It sure as shit ain't for the good of our health or our wallets! LOL. Hope this finds a reasonable ear or two out there...
