I forget what mission payouts were like on live after 14.1. i was a Ranger at the time, so I only did resource contracts. However, if what I am reading is true then the disparity between established players and new players is going to become insurmountable. New players will never be able to make enough money to compete with older established players on Basilisk.
Yes Basilisk is a test server, and the developers do not care about what happens on it. However, if you are looking to attract new people to the project than this will definitely turn then off from this project.
