Reduce Legal Paychecks

[Pogis]

@Triple Seven @Smilesville I never claimed I joined PD for the paycheck, did I? All I’m saying is that people still can earn ridiculous amounts of cash even if they are not in a legal faction. Ask around how much business owners/leasers make if they’re active. 

[Triple Seven]

Just now, Pogis said:

@Triple Seven @Smilesville I never claimed I joined PD for the paycheck, did I? All I’m saying is that people still can earn ridiculous amounts of cash even if they are not in a legal faction. Ask around how much business owners/leasers make if they’re active. 

Riddle me this then: Is it fair that someone not on duty for their faction, receives a paycheck? Do you get paid for doing nothing in real life? You know mining is no fun, why direct people to mining as a substitute for a ridiculous paycheck? Suggest mining pay out to be lowered instead? Because you seem to agree apart from that? Same goes for business owners and leasers to be honest. Do those business owners make money while their business is closed?

 

Think that point is made clear, there should be no pay out from your faction when not performing faction duties. (I know for Weazel News this would pose another issue, but that just has to be looked at separately)

 

The gov faction paycheck values are clearly ridiculous if they are to be compensated by civilians by going mining. (And since when do you need to make or have the most money as a police officer? Most of them make middle-class wages in real life, maybe a little over when they get a higher rank)

[Keane]

The paychecks are earned off duty and there are several PD and FD members that spend the majority of their time off duty. They get between 2 and 4k an hour for just being online. Restricting the paychecks to on duty time only would be a step to prevent this. While off duty roleplay is encouraged, they should not earn the same amount of money as those that are on duty. 

The second issue is that those in legal factions typically don't have the same amount of expenses as a regular player. So not only do they make more money, they don't have anything to spend that money on. There are many PD and FD members that play for hours and hours a day. Even if their paychecks were 2k, they easily make up to 50k a week. Give it a few months and they have enough for a house in the Vespucci Canals. Is it realistic for a police officer or firefighter to live in the most expensive houses on the server? No. But the paychecks in their current state allow it.
 

My own solution is to reduce them until the script can be adjusted. There's two adjustments I'd like to suggest:

The first is handling the paychecks IC. Give a weekly paychecks to those that meet the faction's minimum hours on duty requirement. Those that don't meet the requirement should get a reduced weekly paycheck. That way the faction members that don't have time to play as much don't get penalized like they do with the current system. Having more free time to play the game should not mean more money available IC as long as the person meets the minimum requirements of their faction position. 

The second is to cap the amount of paychecks someone in these factions can get per day when on duty. Off duty they get the standard $500 that every player gets per hour. 2.5k an hour isn't too bad when you can only get a maximum of two or three paychecks per day. There is some incentive to be on duty longer but it prevents people who play for 10 hours a day making 25k. Or in some cases, members of PD and FD can make up to 40-50k a day. 

The reason I'm strongly against this is that the money earned by those in legal factions is used to enable poor wealth portrayal. A police officer or firefighter with 800k saved up can buy themselves a Pariah and live comfortably, even if they pay the road tax each week. Most people in PD and FD have multiple sports cars. If we really do want to become a server with high standards, we need to stop giving people the tools to portray their characters poorly.

There are also several cases of people that joined PD or FD just to get their paychecks. They saved the money up and then left to do whatever they wanted to do. Thankfully one of them was banned but there are still people in there because they know it's easy money for just going through a recruitment process and occasionally going on duty.

Members of PD and FD do deserve to get money like anyone else but the paychecks in their current state are economy breaking. This along with mining are why we have the weaker roleplayers with lots of money to have cars and properties their characters wouldn't be able to realistically afford.

 

 

[Pogis]

I misunderstood then, and I don’t mind if the paychecks off duty are reduced.

[Westen]

Just now, Keane said:

The second is to cap the amount of paychecks someone in these factions can get per day when on duty. Off duty they get the standard $500 that every player gets per hour. 2.5k an hour isn't too bad when you can only get a maximum of two or three paychecks per day. There is some incentive to be on duty longer but it prevents people who play for 10 hours a day making 25k. Or in some cases, members of PD and FD can make up to 40-50k a day. 
 

 

Personally I don't agree with this point. If I'm spending the time to be on duty as opposed to doing something else to earn money (a faction is a job after all) then I should be fairly compensated.

 

In my opinion, you should only receive money for an on-duty paycheck as a percentage of your time on duty.

So, at the end of each hour:

 

As a P3+1 I get $2,500/hr I believe. So if I spend 30 minutes on duty that hour I would get $1,250.

[Franelli]

19 minutes ago, Westen said:

As a P3+1 I get $2,500/hr I believe. So if I spend 30 minutes on duty that hour I would get $1,250.

This would be the first proper step towards fixing the economic issue we're facing. However I believe that a payment of $1,250 for 30 minutes of playtime is still way too much. Compared to the economic state of the game police officers would be the richest characters on the server in no time (if not already).

[JonnyJamesD]

2 minutes ago, Westen said:

Personally I don't agree with this point. If I'm spending the time to be on duty as opposed to doing something else to earn money (a faction is a job after all) then I should be fairly compensated.

 

In my opinion, you should only receive money for an on-duty paycheck as a percentage of your time on duty.

So, at the end of each hour:

 

As a P3+1 I get $2,500/hr I believe. So if I spend 30 minutes on duty that hour I would get $1,250.

I agree there should be fair payment, taking account of the notion that on duty emergency services personnel are accountable to work at all time while they are on duty. Characters who are employed by businesses or have other jobs are not "on call" and do not owe the same duty to their work as emergency personnel do, meaning they have a lot more freedom to choose when and how they operate their work.

 

On the other hand, staff should not be overcompensated for their work. From the example you have provided of your character's own salary, I believe this would be acceptable where, as you have suggested, time spent off duty is subtracted from the base/normative salary. 

 

I imagine this could be implemented with the use of a player-specific timer clocking time spent on duty and comparing this with the timer that deals with issuing the paycheck.

[Westen]

3 minutes ago, Franelli said:

This would be the first proper step towards fixing the economic issue we're facing. However I believe that a payment of $1,250 for 30 minutes of playtime is still way too much. Compared to the economic state of the game police officers would be the richest characters on the server in no time (if not already).

 

For reference, my ABAS (average time spent on duty per day) is:

0.76 Duty Hours (99% On Duty)

 

Which means I spend approximately 0.76 hours in-game every day. Let's round that up to 1 for simplicity's sake (it fluctuates every now and again depending on my work rota).

 

For reference, I have approximately $500,000 total wealth plus $150,000 in assets (2 properties: 1 in Rancho, 1 in Alta + a cheapish car) with a significant number of hours played (600+? I can't check right now)

 

[Mecovy]

When I get around to releasing my great economic book, it highlights issues with paydays and a way to fix them. But it's not a one key fits all problem..  

[SpawnMatrix]

I wouldn't mind a decrease in my paycheck while in PD, it just feels like money stacks up for myself, so this is most likely happening for others and could feed into poor character portrayal for Police officer ones and other lower ranks within the PD as they make a good amount for their rank.