Maglev Fee Increase
150c from 45c

Over the years we have refactored and rebalanced many a thing. One thing that hasn't changed is the dirt cheap price of the maglev @ 45c. That's... really cheap. You probably realize this. It's so cheap that anyone with any means of income probably doesn't even notice. One problem with it being so cheap is that it makes it difficult to justify taking a taxi, even a cheap player run taxi. We want to make it a liiiitle bit easier for taxi's to justify their prices.

Thus, mag-levs are now 150c.

We will monitor the situation and make sure it's balanced with crate running payments so that you aren't losing money or anything like that.

We welcome feedback here. Also, just for the record, I wanted to make them 300c but compromised at 150c. Actually, I wanted to make it cost more depending on what station you got on-- but we figured that might make RP a bit harder.

So-- yes, this is a change that effects just about everyone, but hopefully it also serves to generate some RP for those of you that operate or hope to operate a business where you drive people around!

I did like your idea of different ticket prices for different stations though.

Oh boy, is that ever the exact backwards question to ask.

More like:

How much will this drive me to up my game, to develop my character so that my capers and rackets will pay off more?

With that in mind, maybe immies while in their 2 week probation period get a pass of some kind to keep the cheap ticket prices? Just to not discourage new players. I remember thinking the lev was super cool when I first started but NO WAY I could have afforded the new pricing haha.

Obviously without adjustment this hurts Mixers in the pocketbook. Not only will running topside crates be less lucrative (or in some cases a net loss), but there are things on Gold that Mixers need to get to on a regular basis: the bank, the Hall to pay SIC fees, Sense/Net to update.

In other words, I think this is a minor change for corpies but a significant change for Mixers. The goal is to get more players to use player-run transportation, but I suspect that many corpies won't care overly much, whereas many Mixers barely have enough to ride the lev daily, let alone hire a cab, unless the cabbie cuts them a huge deal (which is of course possible).

However, consider how the market might shift: more Mixers decide to apply for Chex, because then at least they have free transportation; more Chex drivers means more are available; increased supply leads to lower prices. It's possible that, given a bit of time, the market will self stabilize like that, leaving us with more cabbies with cheaper prices, and then it would be mission accomplished.

I honestly think that anyone that believes they have less opportunity for RP or GM run plots because of a 105 chyen hike on the mag lev might not actually spend much time RPing or participating in GM plots in the first place.

A lot of new players, myself included, have just jumped on a lev and gotten a topside job within an extremely short amount of time, almost as if it's a race. This is a terrible idea, because you just don't have any idea how the game works if you just skip straight past Red. Instead you have a lot of people complaining they have no work to do while sitting on entry-level corporate jobs, instead of flitting about Red interacting with the whole mess down there.

If this is stopping immigrants from racing up topside right away, that's a good thing! They should be learning the world in the much wider, open space of Red Sector alongside learning the game. If I had to guess, this is probably one of the big reasons why new players are forced to start in Red. As someone who skipped that important step and only came back to it much later, I direly regret missing out on what Red has to teach about the world and game at large.

If that's working as designed, fair enough. If not, you might want to set minimum tips on Green to be above the maglev fee.