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Used car dealerships


Aellerix

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29 minutes ago, Power said:

Perfect example of what I mean by people being critical with having no knowledge of the system in place. Nothing personal man you aren't the only one in this thread to do this but there is already a system in place for that. I'll eloborate

Anyone can open up an illegal dealership just find some random parking lot and start selling cars but you will shutdown fairly quickly by the Department of Finance and risk being fined up to 50k. To run a Dealership legally you have to be registered as a business on the Gov website. In order to register your business you need to list an address and show proof you own it as a lease which usually in the forum of a screenshot of the lease in your UCP. The Business registration only permits you to do your business on that property if there is physically commerce going on. Only way to obtain property for a dealership is through the lease system, admins won't approve property request for dealership atleast not initially. Either be lucky and apply for one of the leases that pop up in the lease request list or find your own spot make a property request and hope it gets approved. If the cap for dealership set by PM is already met then you are SOL.

If you aren't a registered business and just try to start randomly selling cars you will be shut down. That is why you might see some random dealership pop up and then disappear the next day. All the legal dealership you see now PM approved all their leases including myself and we all had to register our business.
 

And is the office space actually linked to the parking lot they're selling from or is it just at an address that they own, aka a house?
 

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Just now, Jura said:

And is the office space actually linked to the parking lot they're selling from or is it just at an address that they own, aka a house?
 

I can only speak for myself office space is attached to where I am selling car. If you obtain the lease my way the only way to really do it if finding a place where you can put an office space. And I know a few other dealerships who are exactly the same way.

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16 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

Cars are unlimited in availability. Houses most certainly are not.

But that's not an argument. There is no shortage of houses, just like there is no shortage of cars. If you want a house, post an ad and you'll find one. If you want a car, post an ad and you'll again - find one. If you specifically want a maxed out Komoda with a custom paint job, you might or might not find one, just like if you specifically want a trailer in Sandy Shores, you might or might not find one.

 

Cars are not unlimited either. If you go on the UCP, you'll see a number stating how many player-owned cars there are on the server. Yes, you can buy a brand new one and pay more but really, a small percentage of players do that, and only on certain, specific occasions. Cars are just like properties. There's rules for properties (and reselling properties), so there should be rules for vehicles (and reselling vehicles).

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1 hour ago, Aellerix said:

But that's not an argument. There is no shortage of houses, just like there is no shortage of cars. If you want a house, post an ad and you'll find one. If you want a car, post an ad and you'll again - find one. If you specifically want a maxed out Komoda with a custom paint job, you might or might not find one, just like if you specifically want a trailer in Sandy Shores, you might or might not find one.

 

Cars are not unlimited either. If you go on the UCP, you'll see a number stating how many player-owned cars there are on the server. Yes, you can buy a brand new one and pay more but really, a small percentage of players do that, and only on certain, specific occasions. Cars are just like properties. There's rules for properties (and reselling properties), so there should be rules for vehicles (and reselling vehicles).

It is an argument. There is a shortage on houses by definition because they are in limited supply. Cars however, are literally unlimited supply-wise. The availability of new cars at a set price forces second hand car prices below a certain point. No such equivalent exists for houses, unless for each unique house in existence, a copy would be available at a set price. Obviously, this is not the case.

 

Cars are completely unlike property and therefor the rules should be completely different.

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52 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

It is an argument. There is a shortage on houses by definition because they are in limited supply. Cars however, are literally unlimited supply-wise. The availability of new cars at a set price forces second hand car prices below a certain point. No such equivalent exists for houses, unless for each unique house in existence, a copy would be available at a set price. Obviously, this is not the case.

 

Cars are completely unlike property and therefor the rules should be completely different.

The rules should be different but that's the point, there should be rules. A complete lack of rules is not the way to go.

 

Regarding real estate, it's not the same but it is a similar situation. Houses have market values which act as a price cap, just like the brand new prices work for vehicles (again, not exactly the same but similar). Even more, you won't be able to sell a $35,000 Forum Drive apartment for $120,000, even if the supply is limited, nor would the rules allow you to do so.

 

And no, vehicles are not unlimited. There's a specific numbers of vehicles available on the market at a given time. Yes, you can argue that you are able to buy a new one at any point - which is, most likely, what you mean by unlimited supply - but that's just theoretical. In practice, few people choose to buy specific vehicles as brand new and tune them, because the vast majority of players would much rather spend their time and money to look for one, thus having a cheaper outcome. The supply is artificially limited by the lack of interest in purchasing new vehicles - which will never change.

 

Which brings us to the topic at hand, used vehicle dealerships are clearly taking advantage of this - and no, there's nothing wrong with that; it's a business, it has to profit. The issue is that exact profit, from an OOC perspective, and how this market is generating totally unrealistic numbers. RP quality management will approach a small store owner who's driving a Pariah, because even if he can afford it script-wisely, it wouldn't be realistic for them to do so from an IC perspective. In the same way, a person running a used vehicle dealership, no matter how developed it is (with few exceptions) shouldn't be able to afford a $500,000 vehicle either. The issue is that... they do. And with the current standing, it's totally realistic, as they make enormous amounts of money from literally sitting in the middle of a parking lot all day - again, no matter how much the RP lacks or is developed.

 

Yes, there's dealerships which choose to not go for crazy profits for realistic reasons and there's dealerships which don't know how to deal, thus either losing money, not making money or making very little. Those are not the issue. The issue are the few which do make money, and make a ton of it. The issue is that there's no rules surrounding vehicles, vehicle trades and player-owned vehicle dealerships.

 

Limiting the amount of dealerships will only fix half of the problem. You won't have a ton of unrealistic characters with enormous bank accounts, you'll only have a handful of them. That's not much better. If your house is on fire, restricting the fire to the kitchen is not really a solution. 

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7 hours ago, Aellerix said:

The rules should be different but that's the point, there should be rules. A complete lack of rules is not the way to go.

 

Regarding real estate, it's not the same but it is a similar situation. Houses have market values which act as a price cap, just like the brand new prices work for vehicles (again, not exactly the same but similar). Even more, you won't be able to sell a $35,000 Forum Drive apartment for $120,000, even if the supply is limited, nor would the rules allow you to do so.

 

And no, vehicles are not unlimited. There's a specific numbers of vehicles available on the market at a given time. Yes, you can argue that you are able to buy a new one at any point - which is, most likely, what you mean by unlimited supply - but that's just theoretical. In practice, few people choose to buy specific vehicles as brand new and tune them, because the vast majority of players would much rather spend their time and money to look for one, thus having a cheaper outcome. The supply is artificially limited by the lack of interest in purchasing new vehicles - which will never change.

 

Which brings us to the topic at hand, used vehicle dealerships are clearly taking advantage of this - and no, there's nothing wrong with that; it's a business, it has to profit. The issue is that exact profit, from an OOC perspective, and how this market is generating totally unrealistic numbers. RP quality management will approach a small store owner who's driving a Pariah, because even if he can afford it script-wisely, it wouldn't be realistic for them to do so from an IC perspective. In the same way, a person running a used vehicle dealership, no matter how developed it is (with few exceptions) shouldn't be able to afford a $500,000 vehicle either. The issue is that... they do. And with the current standing, it's totally realistic, as they make enormous amounts of money from literally sitting in the middle of a parking lot all day - again, no matter how much the RP lacks or is developed.

 

Yes, there's dealerships which choose to not go for crazy profits for realistic reasons and there's dealerships which don't know how to deal, thus either losing money, not making money or making very little. Those are not the issue. The issue are the few which do make money, and make a ton of it. The issue is that there's no rules surrounding vehicles, vehicle trades and player-owned vehicle dealerships.

 

Limiting the amount of dealerships will only fix half of the problem. You won't have a ton of unrealistic characters with enormous bank accounts, you'll only have a handful of them. That's not much better. If your house is on fire, restricting the fire to the kitchen is not really a solution. 

Whilst I think we're mostly on the same page. I think there's a few things to correct here.

 

Cars are indeed in unlimited supply. This cannot be artificially limited as you suggest, because new cars have no purchasing limit. What you're suggesting is a limit in demand for new cars, caused by the availability of second hand cars with relatively low additional costs. No issues with that otherwise. There's an unlimited demand for cars priced near $0, and there's a near-zero demand for cars priced above the retail price of cars. This is a distinct difference from properties. Properties have a near unlimited demand for prices near $0, but there is a significant demand for properties prices above the market price (MP) and also a significant demand for properties priced above the allowed forum limit (3x MP + furniture + scripts). This is why the rules for properties are there to begin with, and the same or similar rules do not exist for second hand cars. There's simply no need, because of the availability of an unlimited supply of new cars. Like I said, I think we are pretty much on the same page here.

 

For dealing with these high profit margins, because I agree there are issues with this. Limiting dealerships, I personally believe this actually increases the problem. There's a set amount of cars being sold on average every day, with a set maximum of profit to be made. This comes in the shape of the maximum price buyers are willing to pay for their 'new' second hand car, and the minimum price they might be willing to sell their own second hand cars for. This daily average potential profit is currently split between the available x amount dealerships (plus lost opportunities, when people can't get what they're after).

 

If you are in fact suggesting that we limit dealerships, I would say that this makes the problem worse. However, this depends on what you consider the most important problem to be. If main your problem is the amount of dealership owners that drive expensive cars, then sure, limiting the amount of dealerships will definitely solve that issue. However, I think this is inherently unfair, because such limited availability of dealership slots will always lead to players with more OOC means and connections to benefit more than those who are OOCly poorer, newer, and don't have the same friends that established players (not characters) have. If your problem is with characters being overcharged when buying second hand cars, and lowballed when trying to sell their second hand cars, then I would suggest that limiting second hand car dealerships will have the opposite effect, purely caused by lack of competition.

 

Instead, the amount of allowed dealerships should be relaxed. This splits the that large pie of daily average potential profit up between more people, which means less profits per dealership. More competition in this situation will always (on average) result in a better deal for the customer. If characters want to sell their car, they'll just drive to two or three different dealerships that could be open at any time, and see who offers the most for their trade in. Limiting dealerships will immediately restrict these options, and result in a poor deal for the customer. Additionally, because the profits per dealership will go down, they won't all be able to buy Pariah's any more either, so you kill two birds with one stone. There's more birds killed as well, since people who want to roleplay a dealership, will have a better chance to do so when more are allowed. Those only roleplaying for the money will be less incentivized, because the profits are not as large.

 

Does an increased amount of dealerships come with the risk of increased amounts of low quality dealership RP? Yes, this is possible. There's a responsibility here for everyone involved to combat this. I see a lot of people here mentioning low quality dealership roleplay, but where are all the reports of low quality roleplay? Have you seen them? I haven't. This is not only the responsibility of the staff, but also the responsibility of anyone involved to bring the staff's attention to this problem. 

 

To address another point that you made, that profits in this field of roleplay are unreasonably large compared to other businesses. Part of this will be inevitable. You can never fully combat this unless you implement truly draconian price regulations, which I don't think will please a lot of players. Cars are by far the most useful asset in GTAW, there's no doubt about it. They are a means to get you from point A to point B, from roleplay to roleplay, from friend to friend, from beginning to destination, etcetera. Not only that, they are cool in the sense that it allows you to show off, more easily and more effectively than any other assets (clothes come close, properties a little further down the line), not in the least because there's such a wide variety of choice and customization. They're also a very important generator of roleplay themselves, see anything involving emergency services. Nothing is going to come close to this, so the fact that you are able to make the most profit with these assets is just inevitable.

 

How to address that? It won't be easy, but I would suggest that making other businesses more interesting as a start. Cars are in a great spot, everyone loves them. As long as other fields of business are limited to text items in the console in a decorated property, they will have a tough time to compete. The focus should be on improving those other fields too.

Edited by mj2002
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Just now, Hustle said:

In my opinion used car dealerships bring immersion to the server. 

 

You walk around looking at different cars with decent prices to them, the locations are always at realistic lots too. I like it.

It doesn't bring immersion when you ask for specifications and all you get is a fully modded, maxed out and in OOC brackets 4/4. Not to mention the crazy inflated prices which make no sense, but that's non of my concerns.

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