Before the wipe beginner and experienced players could make money quite easily. Even though experienced players were much richer than the beginner players, the beginners could still stand a chance against the big boys. From what I've discussed with other players new and experienced and from what can be seen in this thread and all over the forums, it seems like the population problems lie with the lack of money that players have. Casual players aren't interested in farming for hours just to have some fun later, I completely understand what you're saying when you say that you want the players to work for the good stuff.
Unfortunately the server's population has slowly been decreasing since the wipe. As I write this at roughly 7:00PM PST, there are 28 players on server 1 and 21 players on server 2. This number is made up of 39 civilians, 0 medics and 10 cops. Within 2 hours this number both server will drop to around 10 players each, as they do every week day. Yes there will be more players during the weekend, but even then the server population will only reach a maximum of 60-65 players between both servers. Let's say that during this time there's a server event taking place, that could possibly push the number of players between both servers up to a maximum of 75-80 if we're lucky.
I know that a lot of work has been put into the servers in an attempt to bring the community back to what they used to be, but unfortunately it just hasn't been working. Our population problem is not because of the lack of content, we have plenty of unique features that everyone in this community truly appreciates. Dedicated members of the community want to stay here no matter what, it's the new players that would rather move onto another server then stay here and grind instead of having fun. Without a steady stream of new players joining and staying on the server, there's no one to make up the population. Yes our most dedicated members will stay till the bitter end like myself, but that will only go so far. If dedicated members do decide to leave there will be no one to fill their shoes.
Numerous well thought out attempts at recovering the community have unfortunately failed, no one blames you or anyone else for that. The community tried something new, and unfortunately it didn't quite work out. What I'm trying to say here Hades is that something needs to be done about our server's economy before it's too late. I've personally been around for just under 8 months, and like many other members of the community I don't want to see this community die just because we branched out and tried something new. It's time to reflect back on what has worked and what hasn't, that is where the key to success lies. I'm hoping that you and the other staff will put a tremendous amount of thought into what has been said in this thread, just as you have with everything else. That way hopefully something can be changed, that way our issues can be solved.