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This post essentially comes from a misconception of the problem. This becomes evident only two sentences in and continues throughout. The problem is not wealth itself, nor is it players being rich in any form. Players being rich or roleplaying rich roles is not a problem we are attempting to tackle in any form. The problem is portrayal of wealth. Portrayal is a key aspect of being a good roleplayer in a heavy roleplaying environment, and understanding how to portray a character well and performing research on how to portray certain backgrounds is one of the core parts of what makes an excellent roleplayer. During my time here I've noticed many people are aware of concepts like character development and well-written/presented emotes to improve their overall roleplay quality, however, there is a general lack of awareness around the concept of character portrayal. Firstly, we must understand player wealth vs wealth portrayal. Roleplaying servers never have perfect, realistic economies, due to their nature of working off a game script that cannot fully replicate real economical systems. If I were to start a character who lives in the ghetto, I would still gain the $200K starter bonus, yet from a roleplay perspective, my character would be poor. Although this new character technically has the "same wealth" as my other characters, it is my responsibility to roleplay the character in realistic means - by making choices on what my character is to own. I can purchase a low-class vehicle and a home in South Los Santos, and chances are I'll still have a considerable amount of money left. So, to other players on the outside I have a basic car and a low-end apartment, so I appear poor, but on my side I have considerable wealth left over. As such, money is to be understood as a resource that can be used for portraying your character. It will never be a perfect reflective value of the character's wealth - instead, a tool to be used to portray the status of your character. Let's get into the opposite of above's example: portraying riches. If I want to roleplay rich, I can purchase a more high-end house and an expensive vehicle. Once I have acquired these, I now have the means to portray my character, and what I own paints a picture of my character's "overall wealth" to the outside. My actual wealth may be near 0, around 100K, several 100K, or over a million, yet this does not change what vehicle/property choices have been initially made to portray the character from the outside. I could accrue more money over time, yet the overall picture of the character remains the same to the outside (I could of course purchase more properties/vehicles, but at this point the 'picture' of the character has been established). Even though I may become "richer" from a script perspective, the image I paint largely is the same. A large majority of your post hinges on that certain systems are in place to act as "anti-wealth" measures. This is where the misunderstanding comes in: these measures are here to control portrayal, not control wealth. I'll explain each aspect: As I've been rambling on about in my post: this is a portrayal issue, not a wealth one. The issue those staff members had was that it is incredibly poor portrayal of lifestyle and wealth: if there was a group of eight players living in the ghetto with high-class sports cars that looked straight out of a racing game, it would be dreadful portrayal. Is it possible IRL to own sports cars and live in the ghetto - sure! How likely is it, though? Average wealth of residents there is way below means to afford it, and crime would put these vehicles at constant risk. The server does not replicate this 1-for-1, as you could easily roleplay a ghetto character but decide to grind mining for hours straight, and there is no real levels of crime similar to IRL with a low server pop/gang presence. It's bad portrayal - not a wealth issue. Here you refer to pitch auctions, the system I designed, which was specifically designed to address the character portrayal issues traditional auctions presented. With traditional auctions, simply anyone could grind for money and win them, and the winner would be whoever could bid the highest, regardless of if it matches my character background. I could roleplay a hobo character but spend 9 hours mining each day and win supercar auctions, simply because I have the script-wise money to win them, regardless if it fits my character background. Pitch auctions directly address this background mismatch issue by ensuring characters have somewhat of a relevant background to own something. The price barrier for entry is much lower than what a traditional auction would become inflated to - sure. When we had this discussion a few months ago about economical balance, your concern was that players could buy properties for cheap on this system and sell them for a much higher value ("enriching people easily"). However, from as early on as the first auctions we discussed this very issue internally: pitch auctions are intended to distribute assets to characters that match it. As such, a player winning the pitch and redistributing it to someone else would defeat the very purpose of matching the asset to that player as it may place it in the hands of someone who doesn't match the asset. That's why every pitch auction that has taken place lately has had restrictions on resale/transferring: These measures used on vehicles govern portrayal by discouraging players to own these vehicles. Before this system was in place, people were free to drive whatever they desired once they could afford it. This led to many people with a lack of portrayal skills purchasing "cool vehicles" not because it matched their character in any form, but because they could easily purchase them. Do I agree that vehicle taxes are the best solution? No - it's a bandaid solution, and I'd rather see several vehicles removed from the vehicle list. Does it achieve an impact, even if not full-scale? Yes - whilst some players still use the cars, the rate of these cars being seen around has declined significantly. Is this the permanent answer? Definitely not, and I have some ideas as an alternative that can coincide with the design vision of the upcoming script jobs. That's an issue for later. I can run a UCP search on every character on the server right now for bank/wallet cash, and the reality is far from "nobody on the server still has 600k cash". Looking at the data, I fail to see how players cannot afford to buy homes. I personally saw to setting the house inactivity kick timer back to 1-month (used to be 3 months), which has led to a wide availability of properties on https://map.gta.world/. Each new character starts off with $200K, and there is a HUGE body of housing options available for less than 200K. Many mid-range houses in Alta/Hawick only price slightly over 100K, and most areas outside of that have houses way below 100K. Could you name those few people who increasingly hold the wealth? I'm looking at the UCP search right now and not seeing it. There are rich people there, yet it remains fairly the same as it has been for the past few months, with a few new people entering the higher levels of wealth every so often. As it stands this point comes of more of a 'perceived issue', an assumption that the economy is functioning this way, rather than the reality of the economy. It's essentially a claim with no evidence - what leads you to believe this? Do you know people who hold far more money? Are they suddenly reducing in number and it's suddenly becoming harder for them to earn money? We have not made major changes to the way money is earned, simply a small change to how money is used pertaining to vehicles to control the portrayal of them. Let's approach the second issue, outside of portrayal. Playerbase, and number of people filling certain roles. This, I think, is where your main issue lies, and can be seen towards the end of your original post + how you mentioned in Discord there is "no other business to RP with". You frequently referred to needing players to RP with on Discord + in this post. This is where the actual problem is: there's a lack of other players roleplaying what you intend to roleplay. You can't strike business deals without the business partners, and as the playerbase is much lower, there are less business partners to choose from. The market for house buyers is also considerably smaller with less players, and most players already have a basic home where they need due to availability vs playercount - making it hard to resell. You also mentioned on this thread and in Discord that admins have removed ways of earning money and that no one can afford anything, yet what exactly has been removed? Look through the changelogs. What income sources have been removed? These are simply claims, but being here actively for several months, I can't name something significant that has been removed. In summary: several changes have been brought in to control character portrayal. Acquisition of wealth has not changed significantly. When admins are complaining about grinders in Discord, they're often referring to poor portrayalists, who spend time grinding for cash and then execute awfully portrayed characters. All-in-all, nothing has been changed majorly for the actual acquisition of wealth, instead controls have been placed on spending, to attempt to enforce better overall portrayal. Several parts of this post + Discord messages show the misconception that we are trying to prevent players from becoming rich. Instead, we are trying to place measures on what players can portray with the wealth they have. The admin team does not "hate rich players". Many of us dislike players who mindlessly acquire wealth and then use said wealth to misportray their character, so we have measures in place to control how gained wealth is spent. Acquisition has not changed, and is in fact about to be expanded greatly now we can introduce entirely new systems that add paid roleplaying jobs, and new things will be introduced for players to spend on (such as a new system that will allow us to implement multi-interior apartment/hotels similar to how GTA O's apartments work, with one entrance that has a menu that leads to multiple interiors).

The Parish of Saint Mary What is the Parish? The Parish of Saint Mary, otherwise known as the Parish, is a community established by Father Francis Ward in the Strawberry area of Los Santos. The Parish is intended to be a place of safety and spiritual guidance for those who seek it. Whilst the Parish denomination itself is Catholic, it accepts people from all backgrounds and religions. Who is Father Francis Ward? Francis Montgomery Ward, also known as Father Ward, or Frankie to his closer associates, is a British-born Texan who has recently moved to Los Santos. Father Ward has been a preacher for the past three years in Texas and has experience with leading a church. Francis Montgomery Ward's background story: Parish Members As it stands, the Parish is single-handedly run and managed by Father Ward. This includes managing administrative tasks such as planning sermons weddings. Father Ward is actively looking for interested members of the community to help him in running the church. If you're interested, please contact Father Ward on 5661701 or pop by the church during the day and have a chat! Sermons and Parish Functions The Parish, being a Catholic group, runs prayers most days throughout the day and the standard morning Saturday / Sunday prayers at 8:30 am and 10:45 am respectively. The Parish is also available to host functions, such as baptisms, weddings or other events. If you are interested in having an event held at the Parish, please contact Father Ward as detailed above. The following document is a Mass Leaflet. This is intended to give you guidance in what to say and do in Mass. Upcoming Events There are no upcoming events. Noticeboard 20/12/18 - The funds have been sent and construction has officially begun on the interior of the Church. Please check regularly for updates. We are also looking for an Interior Design company to assist with designing the interior - if you are interested please contact Father Ward via email at [email protected] (( forum PM me )). 23/12/18 - The Church has been successfully re-built. We shall be hosting a mass on Christmas Eve for all those who wish to attend at 21:00. 26/12/18 - The church has been redesigned. It is now open to the public and you're more than welcome to stop by for a chat and a drink. 13/01/19 - Thank you to all that attended Mass this morning. A leaflet has been produced on guidance for those who are unfamiliar with the order of Mass. This leaflet can be found digitally here: https://imgur.com/a/BURyK5h Or a copy can provided to you by Father Ward in person at the Church. 15/01/19 - An evening mass will be held at the Church tomorrow Wednesday 16th Jan 2019 at 19:00hrs. All are welcome. Roleplay Introduction Father Ward is new to Los Santos and is looking to establish himself by meeting local businesses and spreading the word. After buying groceries, he drives back to the church and starts to collect his thoughts. Under the auspices of wanting to re-colour his vehicle, Father Ward takes a trip to Glass Heroes. Father Ward starts collecting items needed for his first sermon. Whilst not top of the list, he sees an advertisement for a business offering wine. It's his perfect chance to start meeting potential suppliers.

Over the last few months, there has been a deliberate effort to reduce the amount of wealth circulating in the economy. I remember in the summer there was somewhat a fever going around among the staff team about how non-RP it was for a character RPing in the hood to drive a sports car. I remember many ideas were tossed around: doing auctions on very large properties based on the qualifications of someone's character rather than their wealth, in an effort to keep the IC environment cohesive and consistent, was one that I remember debating against for the imbalance it would put in the economy by enriching people easily. Since then, only more measures have come to stifle the accumulation of wealth. Vehicle taxes were added to expensive cars, lucrative do-it-yourself scripted sources of wealth have been removed and while I was staff, I was party to some chatter about furthering this erosion of wealth even more (like by stifling lease income from property, or by reducing the payout of a property's market value to prevent people from trying to game the economy). I have always been one to RP in a business sphere and capital is a large part of that. Some had disdain for gangsters in sports cars, but I personally disdain those who portray an empty role: the "Fortune 500 CEO" who leases an executive office at low price, wears suits all day, buys a luxury sedan ranging from 100-150k in price and proceeds to hold empty meetings about business plans that will never be actioned. For a time, I was running a real estate company before I realized that this entire market was deliberately eroded: how can you sell a $600,000 property to flesh out the story of your character and engage in business RP that is not just empty talk if nobody on the server still has 600k in cash? I'll jump into the meat of what I have to say now. Overall, these measures have allowed rich people to stay rich and poor people to stay poor. They needlessly restrict new players from acquiring sufficient capital for person-to-person interaction and they allow that cashflow to head directly to those who were fortunate enough to put themselves in good economic standing EARLY ON. I believe the outset of these changes was to move people away from interacting with the script and towards interacting with one another. An essential component of players RPing with one another in any business or service sense is the exchange of capital. If you want a lawyer, you need to pay them, and pay them decently. If you want a therapist, you need to pay them. That is the primary IC motivator for most things, and those who deny that by saying interaction is purely for the "good of RP" will be disappointed to find that the majority of players on any game with an economy seek upward mobility. The vehicle taxes were designed as a disincentive towards buying flashy cars, and that goal was achieved. Taxes were added to increase the base price of these vehicles and raise their value in the market, thereby making them harder to acquire. This worked, but as a byproduct of something else and not in the way I believe it had originally been intended. These sports cars did not become more expensive with the taxes: in actuality, they became cheaper on the market. With the addition of vehicle taxes, maintenance was such a disincentive towards buying expensive cars of any sort that demand shrunk. I saw a Raiden being sold for $250,000 recently, but when bought new from a dealership it will run you close to $430,000 to register and fully modify. To some, that still sounds fine, so long as the end goal of "fewer flashy cars" is achieved, but this is a psychological barrier that only affects people with less money. Police on this server are understanding of how exorbitant the vehicle taxes get, and though I have been pulled over, I have never actually been punished beyond being told "go pay your tax." IC issue? Maybe, but it has a deep effect on disparity of wealth. I have a car with a vehicle tax exceeding $20,000 and I do not pay it because that amount of money per week is not worth the feeling of safety. But someone with a cheaper car that has a tax of $6,000 might be more willing to part with their funds for the feeling of security. 4 weeks later, the result is that they have a cheaper car than I do and $24,000 less in liquid money, whereas I have not lost anything. Those who were fortunate or savvy enough to amass wealth prior to these changes are in a great position, because that wealth is essentially locked in by time. It is far more difficult to acquire capital, property and wealth and this system will perpetuate itself. For example, the market for homes has nearly entirely diminished. People cannot afford to buy homes outright any longer, and those who would have done so for profit are discouraged because the housing market has eroded. But people still need places to live: so instead, they are leasing, and all of that money is accumulated by the owner of the property rather than having wealth spread out healthily in the economy via multiple well-off homeowners. It is very difficult to outright remove money from an economy, which is why in large part that money is simply reallocated rather than removed. Changes in the economy have indeed made some hood characters unable to buy a sports car, but it has resulted in extreme concentration of wealth. Far more money is being held by increasingly few people than before. I have money, why does this matter to me? Because in order to properly engage in business RP that is full and satisfying, there need to be people with sufficient capital to participate in the "upper echelon" of the economy. Nobody will pay $20,000 for a lawyer because $20,000, for some players, may as well be sacrificing a kidney. Nobody will build a new business, because the reduction in overall server wealth has entirely eroded the profitability of "services" (aka, player-to-player business). The capital behind this has always come from server jobs initially, because wealth does not just spontaneously come to be. It is created somewhere. People would spend $20,000 on a lawyer if they knew that they can make that $20,000 back easily, but not everyone is confident or entrepreneurial enough to make money in the player economy. Server-sided income bridged this gap. And to that end, the fact that they participated in the player-to-player economy at all is the goal. People are participating in fewer unique player-to-player transactions because they no longer consider those experiences worth the price that comes attached, or vice versa, those experiences are no longer offered to the players because those who would manage them no longer see the benefit via upward mobility. I have a company that deals in real estate sales, had plans to enter mining with a warehouse (and pay miners out-of-pocket, which would give them player-to-player interaction) and has been developing a law firm to flesh out the sphere of legal RP on the server. Every one of those things has been dismantled by the rate the market has shrunk, and the result is a removal of an upper echelon of economic RP, infinitely approaching a server where there are 5-10 magnates and then 100 cops and robbers. My rant is over now. Does anyone else have opinions?

I'm happy to announce the release of GTA World's very own social network, Facebrowser! This thread will serve as both a features list / Changelog and a place for OOC requests and suggestions or bug reports. Faction thread: HERE Link for IC Usage (A Redirect): www.fbrowser.ml (Mainly for IC Advertising) Alternative OOC Link (Fastest): face.gta.world Features List (Live): Core Membership system with Friendships and Followers. Groups. Business Pages (All features as a normal member minus friendships). Poke feature. Emojis. Private Messaging & Instant Messaging (Chat). Activity Reactions (Like,Wow,Love...etc). Browser notifications (Toggle-able). Moderation System (Report Posts/Users). Verified Profiles. Embedly framework to embed any links into the feed (i.e. gifs, youtube videos ...etc). Photo albums. Birthday Widget. (01/10/2017) [ADDED] Sponsored Profiles. (01/10/2017) [ADDED] Ability to set custom post privacy. ( 01/10/2017) [ADDED] reCAPTCHA for signup form. (02/10/2017) [ADDED] Quick access to edit profile in chat bar. (03/10/2017) [ADDED] Sponsored Posts. (05/10/2017) [ADDED] Avatar Hover info. (05/10/2017) [CHANGED] Activity Reactions for comments (05/10/2017) [ADDED] Ability to change usernames. (06/10/2017) [ADDED] Edit Post. (12/10/2017) [ADDED] New IM System (18/10/2017) [CHANGED] Force Profile Completion (19/10/2017) [ADDED] Introducing #hashtags! (20/10/2017) [ADDED] Share Posts (06/11/2017) [ADDED] Notification Sounds (13/11/2017) [ADDED] Facebrowser FM Widget (23/11/2017) [ADDED] Experimental Features (Disabled for now): Events. Page Admins. Prevent members from converting a personal profile into a commercial page (02/10/2017) [ready feature - awaiting a poll] Replace add friend in hover card with follow to support pages. Sponsored Groups (05/10/2017) [BETA] Known Bugs: None! Please report. Feel free to post feedback or suggestions to this thread, another topic in the faction forum will be created for IC perspective of this, including recruiting staff to moderate the community or advertising for your business using the network.

Best of luck with that one mate!

That's some weeeeird example man Also like... that's not what happened????

I agree with the majority of your post and understand the distinction between the number in the top right corner and portrayal of wealth. I will nitpick a few things I disagree with. 1. I consider business to be part of my character's portrayal. I have a nice car and home and I ran a podcast on FaceBrowser. In that regard, some would consider this my endgame. I portray a high-end character and have acquired the means to portray that character realistically. There are a good number of people involved in business who have reached that point as well. But this is what I call the point of stagnation and empty role play: simply portraying a role rather than having the capability to action the things those roles portray. What is the point of a businessperson with an office if they do not actually provide a service or engage in the economy? I'm not interested in role playing a magnate who sits on the beach with a nice car and whose only remaining motivation is to retire and gloat. Intentional or not, a ceiling has emerged as regards upward mobility and levels of economy beyond the initial half million. This is why I advocated for an alternative system for the vehicles in my posts above: it fixes the portrayal issue without affecting the true distribution of currency in an economy at all. 2. I do not believe that rich people who are recklessly spending are getting poorer, primarily because excess capital is a means of producing capital in itself. I believe that people who were not actually rich, but invested the majority of their wealth in the portrayal of being rich, oftentimes unrealistically, have had a rude awakening and that they comprise the majority of players who were unhappy with new taxes. That is not what I am trying to address. I am trying to address newfound limitations to the upper services economy that is a result of general decrease in average player wealth, in part due to the fault of the player for holding onto an unrealistic portrayal that causes them to hemorrhage capital, but ultimately enabled by the script. It is a byproduct of the solution to the portrayal problem. And even to that end, as I mentioned regarding police enforcement of vehicle taxes (and the leniency that a member of the LSPD kindly expanded on first-hand), I believe it is the mid-range people in the economy who are hemorrhaging most. Nothing is either the fault entirely of players or of the script, but of both simultaneously. An economy moves on its own and human nature does not change. Again, regardless of if it is too cumbersome for implementation, I would refer to the car example I mentioned prior as an example of how portrayal of wealth can be reasonably subdued without subduing the economic forces that are at play independently in a virtual economy. 3. I would not doubt you have found a large number of wealthy people in the UCP and that some continue to gain. I gain as well and so do some of my associates, but not via direct player-to-player services like I used to and would prefer to. Additionally, I would question how many of those enriched players are still active and/or participants in the economy. There is an important distinction to be made between active wealth and inactive wealth. As far as I'm concerned, a player who has 1.5 million but has not logged in for three weeks is not relevant to a discussion about the change in economic dynamic. 4. I did not mean to imply that any direct streams of income have been deliberately removed other than those that have been announced, like the upcoming removal of mining. However, I make a distinction between the server-funded economy and the player-run economy, as I believe most do. I have noticed a shrink in the player-run economy and I feel as though fewer people are making significant money off services, and the primary "service centers" of the server like bars, nightclubs and etc. largely operate today with subsidies or on lease from property management. When I said no one can afford anything, I consider that a byproduct of portrayal changes. Does this mean that too many people are choosing to portray unrealistic characters at the expense of their actual, true-to-number wealth? Possibly, but I believe that chalking it up to being their fault as irresponsible RPers will not reverse a recession in upper markets. Formerly, people could afford to participate in services and own assets at the same time. OOC discontent with portrayal brought about a reactionary system wherein participants had to pick. I believe the staff team wanted people to reallocate and expand in services instead of trying to maintain their image at a loss. I believe that in reality, players picked the latter and it took a few months for the effects on wealth distribution to be evident. If you are genuinely going to add paid role play jobs, wherein a person is guaranteed both to 1. receive sensible income and 2. have interaction with other active players, then that is a solution to the problem of stagnant services in itself, but I can't speak on anything like that until I actually see the remedy implemented. To sum, I believe if the issue was portrayal, then it should be portrayal that is targeted exclusively. I know you say that is already the case, but it is not possible for that to be the case because changes will ripple throughout an economy. The remedy for the OOC issue in portrayal was one centered in reorganizing the economy to ICly INFLUENCE AND DISCOURAGE that unrealistic portrayal without directly restricting people's freedoms, but I believe it would have been better achieved in the long run just by directly attempting to OOC influence portrayal at the expense of that freedom. I believe OOC problems are sometimes best solved via OOC solutions. The intervention in the economy has had consequences that exceed its original intended purpose.

I was under the impression most of the changes you've mentioned here were heralded as the efforts to undermine the patterns of unrealistic spending. What I'm hinting at is it isn't a planned, rehearsed economy policy but a reactionary effort to the roleplay quality and OOC circumstances, from the lack of a better phrase. Which isn't how economy should be done, of course. How about, "If nobody has $600,000 in cash, why are there $600,000 properties on the market?". It's just another, small issue that compounds on a number of other, small, issues. They are cheaper to buy precisely because the maintenance costs have grown. The $20,000 vs $6,000 vehicle tax argument is an argument of "choice". It's only by coincidence you haven't been punished, and, by extension, haven't suffered the consequences of the said choice. Two weeks later, the result is they have another $12,000 less, but your character is a criminal. Which is precisely why our government is introducing the affordable housing program - which is players living in the government-built houses, with their rent simultaneously going towards their future buyout price for the property. That aside, there are houses available /right now/ for anyone seeking lodging that are well within the $200,000 starter kit. We can't possibly blame people for taking advantage of the poor decisions of others. It is my belief that the server is simply not established enough for it to accommodate what you'd call the "upper echelon" roleplay. There are ways to work around it, but it all boils down to what I bring up in the summary. The market has shrunk because it was artificially pumped up in the first place. ___________________________________________________________ I've made my personal thoughts regarding the economy known in a number of threads. The economy is NOT in the right place. Some of the changes made by the server administrations were right, and some of there were not. While Spencer's post is tackling a very specific area (upper echelon RP), I'd rather cast a wider net. We need a FULLY FLEDGED economic policy that will address precisely towards what system are we headed, and how do we reach that state. One that will actually be set in stone, followed and worked on. That's what I consider the crux of the problem here. Bad change is worse than no change.

I am not complaining that I can't make money, that isn't the problem. I can make money. You are right, some things do still make money, but they offer a niche experience. I can go buy a club and make profit on it. I don't want to make money buying a club. I already know the lucrative means to acquiring wealth and it is why I have wealth. I am not trying to make money, I am trying to have transactions and experiences that are face-to-face and COULD result in making money lol. But this exists only in the lower rung of the economy right now. I am at a point where I want to invest that wealth into personal role play endeavors, at the forefront being a law firm. I have taken loss on some of these endeavors for the sake of the experience, because the market is not developed for them. I can tell you what businesses work. Illegal arms sales are very lucrative, guns are in extreme demand. Leasing is good, people rent all day. Clubs still make money, people like to be hedonists and jump around on the dance floor (sometimes, not always, and nowadays with help from government subsidies in special cases). Garages, though very expensive to own, are also very very lucrative to run. My point is that when the economy grows at such a rate that it did and then suddenly halts, it has repercussions that echo throughout the rest of the economy. This is what people in real life call a recession. In GTAW, it resulted in an exodus of money from the higher end of capital transactions AND in a general slowdown of the player-to-player services economy, because few people are willing to pay someone else to accomplish a task (especially if that task is not tangible, but merely an experience) when money is so tight. Before this stage, people were more willing to spend their IC capital on things that were less ICly consequential, like that of having an interaction at all (we used to do therapy, cheaply, which was fun). There is less money in the hands of the many, more money in the hands of the few and the money that is being circulated is being done so primarily in lower-end assets (cars below 150k) and server-side expenses (taxes, business registration fees, other methods of true monetary removal from circulation). Before, there was too much money and too few players. The reactive measures were so effective that they have caused there to be too little money in the hands of the many, and a whole lot in the hands of those who knew how to sit and play it safe. Those who knew how to sit and play it safe return to find a market much smaller and less open to unique, alternative services-based role play. And as for the cars thing, I still really don't see how it could be that big a workload and I think the amount of people who would request those cars is being vastly, vastly overestimated, but I will settle for calling that one an impasse and will let it go.

I hear this quite often, however it's not exactly true. A few months ago we had lots of people who were simply grinding money (mining, fishing, etc.). They weren't doing anything else, except for maybe going to a club and using dance animation for 20 minutes. They bought super cars, used them to rob stores and other players for money they didn't actually need, they bought expensive houses. When the new taxes were implemented - a good chunk of them got really angry. I can understand why - they had to earn a whole lot more in order to keep their super cars and luxury houses, which they couldn't do. That's why all those sports cars went on sale for low prices - no miners could afford them anymore. Is that a problem? I really don't think so. Those who obtained big amounts of money in a non-realistic way were forced to either sell everything out or stop grinding and start making money by roleplaying.

It's the same old story from every GTA roleplay server economy: stagnation through lack of growth. This happens for two main reasons: Lack of scale — a dollar isn't worth the same when buying a house as when buying a car Lack of basic market forces — mainly depreciation, but the shortage of players acting as lenders and borrowers doesn't help matters These are two inescapable facts. Luckily, there's a simple solution. Unluckily, it's one that's usually met with cries from the wealth hoarders. That solution is loans. Welcome to the lending economy where nobody buys a car or a house outright unless they have the capital to put down and the average man or woman is indebted to the bank up to their eyeballs. Embrace it. Make low-end housing and vehicles more accessible to poorer players but offer it at a premium. That premium is called interest which is a percentage amount above the regular repayment cost to insure the overall cost and combat depreciation over time. You want to sell your shit-box station wagon on after only sinking a couple of grand into it? Great, now some other low-life hoodlum can pick it up for a fraction of the cost as it would cost brand new. Congratulations, you've just provided RP for scores of new players, whether it be through easier access to cars and housing, the incentive to keep up with repayments, or the black market shylock gig and insured the economy for years to come. You're welcome.

Good looking screenshots y’all. Soon home to roleplay with the boys again ?

The radius of both FD labels have been lowered quite a lot now. Will go live on next server update. Locked and archived.

The way I see it is; It's only 1, 2 or 3 weeks out of a whopping 52 weeks. Lets have a reason to bring some interesting and different role-play for the festive period, it'll certainly motivate me and others to get on more this Christmas period! I'm up for a snow-fight!

Same... We should of went with Steam Kaasis ?

A couple years ago I took 5 months off of school and lived out of my car working odd jobs around the USA West. Here's of a pic of my car, a 08 Mitsubishi Lancer ES 5 speed from a cold and rainy evening!

I wholly disagree with your point on "imagination" because that is simply not how an upper economy works. That is how a lower economy works, sure. You can have $400k and pretend to have $20,000 for the sake of your experience. If I enter a business and I say, "I want to open a club" and everyone in the room says "Great, let's do it, I am a man of immense wealth and standing, my company in Germany is worth $5 million" but he has $50k in cash, then he has $50k in cash and that club is not getting made. The upper echelon of business RP has regressed from actioning plans to discussing action, ever awaiting a market to emerge (or grinding in your suit and tie to fund your own business ambitions because the service economy is so underdeveloped, which I have not had to do but I have had to watch people do). When it comes to the upper economy, I am not entertained by empty talk and I don't know who is. In my view, if that sphere of RP is to work properly and have the potential to be fully explored, its participants need to be able to walk the walk. Changes in the server that were designed to prevent hood goons from being immensely and unrealistically wealthy have actually resulted in people who RP characters of high esteem being unrealistically poor for their role. This is the entire reason that the government has a subsidy program in the first place, to offset an imbalance created by this new dynamic.