\ of the big design questions revolves around this, and also how to balance paying players VS the free players that don't generate income directly, but are necessary to give the paying players targets and make sure there is sufficient players on the servers. So far Dave doesn't have the second problem, but he will still need to address power imbalance between big players and small players if he wishes to continue to attract new players.
Actually, there's already a couple mechanisms nobody talks about that keep new players alive. I see plenty of new players who don't get blown away immediately. The placement algorithm (at least the latest one, maybe not so much with the old algorithm from a few months ago...) puts new players were they have plenty of room to maneuver. I also leave players who stop playing in the game instead of removing them, so there's generally easy pickings available to the players who want to expand. And yes, I'm going to do more stuff to counterbalance the larger players.
Oh, and I will never provide in-game advantages to paying players, not my style.
