[Obay]

Development are working hard to finalize some updates for us and a small part from which is being implemented is SMOKE GRENADES:

As of now they are only usable by SWAT however I need all of Limelight's opinion on how you would like to be crafted? for extended job use.

[Faustie]

We're trying to steer away from players needing to raid cars, also, so we'd rather not put them in police or SWAT vehicles to be stolen.

One idea in trying to make crafting resources more common is to have 'bulk shipments', where scrap metal etc. can be imported in bulk at a high price with a little variation in how much you actually receive, to keep it interesting. Thoughts on this? Once the stock market is ready then we can shift crafting resources to there, but in the meantime it'd be best simply to stop government vehicles being harassed so frequently.

[Soviethooves]

I love the idea, but can we keep this to the SWAT only? To be honest the SWAT is just a glorified cop with an AR-15 and a concussion grenade. Players can already out gun the SWAT in situations. The last thing we need, I believe, is criminals getting yet another advantage over SWAT. However, the bulk shipments idea is a great suggestion. No longer do I have to turn my back every five seconds to see if my cruiser is being stolen from for scrap.

[Blazing]

We're trying to steer away from players needing to raid cars, also, so we'd rather not put them in police or SWAT vehicles to be stolen.

One idea in trying to make crafting resources more common is to have 'bulk shipments', where scrap metal etc. can be imported in bulk at a high price with a little variation in how much you actually receive, to keep it interesting. Thoughts on this? Once the stock market is ready then we can shift crafting resources to there, but in the meantime it'd be best simply to stop government vehicles being harassed so frequently.

Smoke grenades should be a benefit which is exclusive to SWAT; they should always have more advanced technology than criminals to keep things balanced.

I heavily agree that stealing from government vehicles should be looked away from; you should only be able to actually get something of significant value such as a Kevlar Vest, AR-15 or stolen uniform out of a very rare chance. Perhaps once you make another system to get scrap metal, you should significantly lower the chances of getting scrap metal and give no scrap metal for breaking your lockpick, to deter theft from government vehicles and make it a bigger risk.

However, I'd be careful about the introduction of making scrap metal more accessible, especially when some players already have quite a significant amount of scrap metal in their inventory.

*cough* Definitely not 100 scrap... *cough*

I would say that to balance the meth system out [preventing it from overpaying], we should try to maintain the price of scrap whilst allowing users to purchase it from the market for a slightly higher price than common market value. Scrap metal should always stay at around $8k per piece in my opinion. Perhaps allow users to buy the scrap pieces such the scrap metal, spare mechanical parts etc. for a premium price on the market; let's say around $10k-11k per piece of scrap metal? $2k-3k really isn't a lot when you could be making up to $36k from meth, and this would keep the flow of money going; giving players a chance to buy and sell scrap metal from one another so that the money stays within the hands of the player [a good thing for a thriving economy; not necessarily a strong economy] whilst giving players an opportunity to purchase things when there are no sellers available without harming the player-to-player trading process.

Another consideration should be to make certain ingredients have more purpose such as the broken tasers, broken taser cells etc.

[Faustie]

Those ingredients will definitely have more purpose soon; first I just wanted to ensure that the resources market was a little more fair and balanced.

Given the amount of people who've said that they want to see smoke grenades remain SWAT-only, both here and on steam, I'll be keeping them as SWAT-only. SWAT will also get some additional upgrades soon down the line, as they are still in need of some tactical upgrades.

How about a 'bulk shipment' item in the market where you pay 50k and receive a certain amount of scrap? I'm not sure how much this should be, however. If we put scrap to be worth $8k each then your sum of scrap metal alone is worth $800k, and we really want to make it a cheaper commodity. Other, more advanced and refined crafting resources are to follow, but that's not really feasible if the base resource is still so expensive. We can pump up the amount that's required for meth and lower the meth payout a little, but make scrap much easier to attain.

[Blazing]

Those ingredients will definitely have more purpose soon; first I just wanted to ensure that the resources market was a little more fair and balanced.

Given the amount of people who've said that they want to see smoke grenades remain SWAT-only, both here and on steam, I'll be keeping them as SWAT-only. SWAT will also get some additional upgrades soon down the line, as they are still in need of some tactical upgrades.

How about a 'bulk shipment' item in the market where you pay 50k and receive a certain amount of scrap? I'm not sure how much this should be, however. If we put scrap to be worth $8k each then your sum of scrap metal alone is worth $800k, and we really want to make it a cheaper commodity. Other, more advanced and refined crafting resources are to follow, but that's not really feasible if the base resource is still so expensive. We can pump up the amount that's required for meth and lower the meth payout a little, but make scrap much easier to attain.

I don't know. It is true that $8,000 is a lot, but wasn't meth meant to be a high-risk, high-reward system anyway? Scrap is already getting easier to obtain by the minute, certainly much easier than it was before as there's now more sellers and less buyers.

However, if you really did want to lower the cost of scrap, I'd perhaps give it some time for the community input; to change the value of scrap and rewards from meth from high to low would be a big change. I agree that if you do want to make scrap cheaper and more accessible, you will also have to make meth less rewarding and require more scrap for it. Perhaps meth is actually overpowered already as a way to make money, which may be the root cause of this problem. I remember that not long ago, the recipe list was very low and people ended up making millions of profit as a result. Right now, the rich are getting far richer and the poor are getting poorer in relation to these people.

The bulk shipment from the market should always be higher in price than it would be to purchase from other players. I maintain that this helps both the buyers and sellers, and the flow of cash also increases as a result of money, which encourages trading with other players, hence building up the community. If you wanted something different from the norm, perhaps you could charge $50k for a box of scrap metal which would origin from a dodgy dealer, hence the buyer wouldn't know how much scrap they are getting exactly in the box [randomized]. Then, the player would be able to either lose money by doing this or save money by doing this; maybe they could get a range of possibilities such as getting 4 scrap to 6 scrap. That way, meth would still be high-risk and high-reward to an extent unless the buyer were to buy from other players...?

Another way that you could encourage the trading of scrap metal between players is increasing the size of scrap metal. This would mean that players would not be able to keep such a large amount of scrap metal to farm, and would mean that they would end up using it or selling it to other players until they ran out of their remaining scrap, in which they would buy it from another seller or from the market, causing a cycle of trade.