Gym

Why not add extra gyms for when you travel, there is a jail gym which makes perfect sense, can we introduce special gyms for different countries?

Option A - Learn to manage your energy and travel time so that your energy is always charging and your drug/booster cooldown is always active during flight. 

Option B - Add gyms to foreign countries so you don't have to do Option A.

I can manage energy just fine, do you have a problem with expanding the game?

Do I have a problem with expanding the game? Of course not.

We apparently have vastly different views on what "expanding the game" means.  I lean more towards adding game-wide events to boost player interactions and activity. Not to let people do the same thing they are doing now, except at a different location.

 Assuming you've thought far enough ahead on this, it wouldn't make any sense to stop with a gym. Eventually crimes would need to be added to other countries, then a trading hub, casino, etc. Basically the full torn city experience in every destination. This sounds great in theory. However, do we have large enough of a player base to sustain such an expansion? Or would we be trading one bustling city, for seven ghost towns?

If you really did plan to just stop with gyms at other locations, then I wouldnt consider that much of an expansion and hardly worth developer time to implement, when you could just train your energy before the flight. Or after.

If I had a nickel for every time someone suggested adding things to do while flying... I'd be a billionaire.

The devs intended flying to be boring, and to not have much to do while flying.

I guess just... find something that's not torn to do?

To the surprise of no one, Jack and I agree mostly. Expanding the game is a great thing. I'm absolutely loving OC's 2.0 (even though I'm not available as often as I used to be). Adding gyms to other countries, while it makes logical sense from a realism perspective, all it would accomplish is, well, taking away one of the downsides to flying. There's upsides and downsides to everything in Torn. Traveling has its upsides: income, merits, rehab, money storage, etc etc. And there's downsides, most notably that it locks you out of practically everything that's in the actual city of Torn, which is something that people complain about on a daily basis. Let me assure you, it's intentional. Ched has stated himself many times in the past, travel is boring, and it's meant to be that way.

If/when travel gets a content update, I feel like the most attractive updates (from the perspective of someone who can't travel) would be new countries and/or new novel things to do in them. What I mean by that is that if there were something added to another country that doesn't exist in the city of Torn already, I would be more likely to travel (and of course level up in order to do so). But, the more they add to other countries, the more they take away from the very city where the game is located and named after, whether the additions are unique or not.

As far as expanding the game in general, this is where Jack and I will lean different directions. I'd very much like to see new actual gameplay content (or updates to current ones if the devs see fit). As someone who is regularly not available to play the game, events would be hard for me to partake in. But that's a personal problem, not a game problem.

To get back to the point though, adding gyms to other countries would just encourage players to be outside of Torn the city, which is highly counterproductive. Especially to Jack's point that it's a bit of a slippery slope. You just have to accept the potential opportunity cost involved in traveling and losing out on some energy, nerve, etc. Par for the course.

Incredibly educated reply, thank you. 

whilst I understand the absolute need for travel to be boring, aside from the merits it is to some degree utterly pointless for newcomers now F&P were nerfed. I should have expanded further as to not sound like a noob. Maybe new destinations would be refreshing, flying will always be boring no matter what is added, perhaps something to increase racing skill like they have hunting in Africa. I basically only ever fly to Switzerland for rehab making the rest of it redundant really. 

Maybe the new/existing destinations could stock cheap OC2.0 materials or that a new OC2.0 crime could ask of members to be based internationally?

Do you have a problem with things being added for people to do while flying? I mean real world airlines play movies and stuff while flying so it's not unrealistic for there to be something for the players to do while flying.

I don't think there is an absolute need for flying to be boring. I also think something should be added to give people a reason to fly again especially because of F&P being nerfed. I just don't know what that thing is.

Maybe the new/existing destinations could stock cheap OC2.0 materials...

Now that right there, that makes a lot of sense. I can 100% get behind that. I don't think the follow-up of having members being international would be good, but having the countries selling some materials sounds like a good addition.

I'll just refer you to [THIS] post by Ched