See the real problem is changing peoples mentality about the economy, I've had 0 issues with money since the wipe. But if I start getting low on money I don't run out and get the mk18, full 180k load out. I'll rock the p dub or something for a little bit and get myself back up there. Burban leaving had nothing to do with the economy, it had to do with many other issues. I mean stealth used to roll around with a titan as his basic load out. Asylum that you guys are talking about I find to be way harder to make money then on here but the difference is you don't see everyone walking around in full mk 18 load outs and seeing helicopters flying around is MUCH more rare. So I have a hard time believing its the economy keeping people away.
One thing I will agree with is, I hate the new map, it feels very off for some reason. Think the old map with a few changes like the cartels would be good. Another thing would be to spread out the cartels to different corners of the map. The cartels are to easy to defend being that close where peoples have given up fighting for them, and other gangs really only capping them when the other gang who owns it isn't around. So the war zone ends up being a very boring capping simulator with very little "war" in the zone.
I've stated before, I believe one of the issues is the aggressive bans. I believe that is one thing that needs to be addressed. Lowering the days to 1, 3 , 7, 14, perm (and make it kinda case by case) and it resets every few months, Obviously exploiting and major stuff is auto perm. I think when someone does one small mistake and gets 7 days for it is crazy. 7 days in the gaming world is huuugggeee. So the reason why I've seen most big groups leaving lately has nothing to do with the economy, it has to do with friends getting banned, said friends go play with there banned friends for a few days somewhere else, get established over there (or bribed) and never come back.
Now when big groups leave it lowers the amount of players on the server, which in turn puts you down on the server list, which in turn makes people not see the server as well. I know I found olympus from when I wanted to try altis life I had to spam for 45 minutes to get into asylum said screw this and joined the 2nd most popular server.
Unfortunately whatever it is, it has a snowball effect. The lower the population the harder it gets to log on. Which in turn keeps the population getting lower. I play this game pretty much 100%for the RP, I know the other day I logged on Sassy and I drove back and fourth from pygros to athira looking for someone to interact (which we didn't feel like trolling in kavala) with for about 30 minutes, found one person the whole time which was a cop and just ended up having to go play GTA because there was no one to interact with.
I wish I had an easy solution for the issues but I honestly do no believe the economy is it. I personally know I was very bored before the wipe because I had more money then I knew what to do with and I only had 17 mil couldn't imagine how boring it was for the actual rich people. I do know right now you have the player base basically split between 2 different servers, You have GTA V out, you have people who have finals and stuff to study for. So i'm praying we see a resurge of players in the summer. I love this server and community very much and it pains me to see it going through this down time.