Hi Pete,

I think any time you have a monopoly you bring out the worst of any company. When I worked at Microsoft, it was pretty obvious that when we didn't have competition, we were a terrible company. When we had competition, we did great things.

I don't deal with Telstra as an entity as much as Bigpond, and the guys I'm working with are energetic, open to suggestions, and really interested in making Bigpond the best gaming ISP. I understand that a lot of what you're saying is justified, but I think it's worth keeping your eyes open and watching how this transpires.

That's a really well thought out post, Wintersdark, and it may hit near the heart to the matter.

Beltpouch, do you have any input on this?

One thing to note, and I'm fairly sure this is the problem rooymans is having, a capture deed won't work. Missions require a deed is an exact match for the item it tells you that you need to turn in. If it doesn't say (Captured) then it won't take a captured ship. I'll log a suggestion that we make that clearer.

It's funny how people who are concerned about some aspect of the game always see bad numbers, and people who like it think the numbers are healthy. If we relied upon the guesses of our users, I think we'd be schizo by now.

Actually, it's not his issue. He wants PvP to be up at the levels that we promised. Jack is quite effective at PvP'ing, and earns more money than he ever spends. That's an issue that I think it going to be shaken out quite quickly, which is why I'm not concerned about him leaving. He'll see more PvP, and he'll be happy.

The other issue here is the one that's harder to get a grip on. You guys aren't very effective at PvP, which is why you have to spend a lot of time grinding to earn back the money that you lose. There are a couple of possible reasons why this is true:

1) You're using ships that are too expensive to use - You can't run around in your best ship for every battle, because you're going to lose it. You need to learn how to be effective in cheaper ships and focus more on your player skill. This is true of just about every game that has consequence/loss PvP.

2) Our reward structure is out of whack - That, I think, is the primary argument being put forth here, and it may be true. Though Jack seems to do just fine with it.

3) You're not very good at ship combat, and you keep getting your *** handed to you - we have a lot of players who do just fine with the reward structure of PvP. Of course, if it's only the elite 1%, than argument #2 comes into play. But if it's 60%, then there's nothing we can do other than to throw away loss based PvP to make everyone a winner.

It's hard to determine which of the above is the case, which is why we're watching this and trying to pour through the data to see what's going on.

I still can't help but think that the player skirmish is a lot of what you want, except with the ability to earn/lose points through it. If it had that ability, and focused on a different transactional unit rather than ships, would that be more desirable?

Yeah the tailor room is a little clunky, but that will have to be addressed by a programmer.

We could make it relatively quickly. And when it turns out to suck majorly for you because of unexpected consequence X, Y, and Z, then you'd all say "why didn't you think this through?"

Trust me, I have no religious arguments on this for either side.

Here's the thing: Doing a rollout like this takes a lot of money and commitment. And, from my point of view, having a path that's unmetered. That's what Bigpond is providing, and they're one of the few companies in Australia that's got the vision and resources to make this happen.

Well, I've run out of pain killers, and being a tourist, no doctor here will prescribe a narcotic to me. So I'm going to try and go home early on Friday, so that leaves Thursday. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the pics.
I want the navy gaiters added to the boot selection too.