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GTAW's Disdain for Wealth and the Deliberate Erosion of Money


pogoyo

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I am not being rude in saying this but I feel as though many have misinterpreted the root of my argument. Though I care about my business RP, I don't care about it that much. I have RPed many characters of many different levels of wealth or esteem. The reason I brought this up is because playing a character with significant capital has revealed some loopholes in the system of the economy, and the economy affects more than just me or just you. This is not about having aspirations for flashy cars or not being able to make $600k on a sale. This is about the ripple effect through the market that has diminished the frequency of 1. player services on nearly all scales and 2. large transactions.

 

I will assume people didn't read a good deal of my follow-up paragraphs, so I will summarize the entire issue I see in one sentence: the economy was growing rapidly, there was an OOC issue of wealth portrayal, the reactionary system to that OOC problem was an IC rearrangement of the economy by adding taxes thereby affecting real wealth, not merely wealth portrayal, and it reduced the upward momentum of the economy significantly. This slowdown in people's accumulation of wealth, should they have chosen to hold onto their image portrayal, is akin to an overall economic recession. I also never said people cannot make money, and again in a former page on this thread I listed many lucrative sources of income. 

 

My entire point is that at a certain time, there was enough capital in the economy that most people were never limited monetarily from actioning RP. This excess capital resulted in issues of portrayal, but if the issues of portrayal had been addressed directly without involving the economy, then today people would likely still possess the capital necessary to action their plans. Formerly, people did pay for person-to-person services, and quite easily too. It is because there was more than enough money to spare. Perhaps an increase in the disparity in wealth is more "realistic" (even though it is objectively bad in any economy, and it is a problem that literally everyone tries to fix in real life), it is still an inhibitor towards character action. If GTAW no longer has a large enough environment for advanced business RP, then that is OK and I will move onto another endeavor. But I brought this up because I remember not so long ago, there was opportunity for that field to be explored and I was able to explore it with far more people, and it is because the size of the economy was sufficient to elevate many people to that stage.

 

If you read nothing else in this post or thread, please read just this paragraph: an economy has rules, processes and cycles that are verifiable and that you may study. An economy is any system featuring production, distribution, trade, consumption or services, and virtual economies are not excluded. Even if you don't study all of those processes or have never read into the economy, the economy on this server will operate like any other economy and respond to changes by naturally adjusting. There is an equilibrium that emerges in any market naturally by players, and its consistency is important for the sake of ensuring that all players have more opportunity for growth in a player-to-player economy. If in real life, the economy changed so that all journalists could not make enough money in their sector, would you tell everyone to become a doctor and delete all journalism or reallocate the economy to fit all sectors? If in real life, some sectors are considered important just for the sake of what they offer, should the same not be true for a role play server wherein that is the focus? Though I've been complaining about "upper business" rp just because that is my avenue, the real loss to the server from this is the gradual erosion of services (except erp). Lawyers, therapists, doctors: things that do not provide a tangible item but instead provide an experience. Their place in the player market has shrunk in part due to the exodus of much disposable income via scripted economy controls. Certain things were targeted in changes to the economy, like making vehicles more cumbersome to maintain as they rise in price or by adding more open homes to reduce scarcity and deflate the value of homes that had skyrocketed. Changes like this ricochet throughout the rest of the system, and in this case it was a reduction in size of the active economy. If the problem for admins has never been wealth but truly portrayal, then we should work towards reorganizing the system to acknowledge a separation between wealth portrayal and real wealth, officially. Attacking sources of wealth ICly to control OOC wealth portrayal issues has had effects on niche markets that weren't anticipated, because though people are not starving, they have less disposable income they're willing to spend on a player service.

 

P.S. @Vitta (For the record, though I cited a 600k house in my example, it was just anecdotal and there has not actually been a situation where I tried and failed to sell a 600k home. I have had difficulty selling niche properties in that market price range that were not homes, though.) I agree with what you said and you are correct. I learned this a while ago and focus on real estate leases rather than sales for interaction, which has been both profitable and enjoyable on a player-to-player level for me. But what is good for my character is not good always good for everyone else. I know I am profiting: are they? Not everyone wins in an economy, but I feel compelled to speak out about the state of the market when I notice some people with easy, excess wealth and many people subdued from acquiring wealth beyond the first half million, and that this gap (appears as though it) is accelerating. I am not asking for everyone's success stories to counterbalance this, because I know many success stories already. But the people that I see most often in-game are not those people. An economy can't grow forever, certainly, but to intervene directly can cause long-term ripples that may not have happened naturally.

Edited by Spenser
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21 minutes ago, Spenser said:

Snip.

Your major complaint is the issue of OOC character wealth portrayal influencing the economy by introducing taxes and having less capital to spend for P2P business interactions or actions. However, the server must sustain the economy with a cap/limit so, you wouldn't end up having multiple unemployed millionaires appearing out of nowhere and abuse the economy like the savings system of LS:RP.

 

The distinction between the former system and taxes is that, it appropriately identifies the players who can manage their wealth. Which is why it wasn't a problem for unemployed or newcomers of the PD/FD employee to have $200-250K vehicle earlier, but once the output (taxes) surpassed or equaled the input (wage/on-hand) money, players had the strive for urgent cash as their income became stagnant and inclined to save more to minimize their elastic (luxury) purchases. That contributed to an environment to play realistic wealth, but resulted having less spare money on hand to use it for less/cautious P2P role-play cases and caused the depreciation cost which is the part I agree with.

 

1 hour ago, Spenser said:

P.S. @Vitta I agree with what you said and you are correct. I learned this a while ago and focus on real estate leases rather than sales for interaction, which has been both profitable and enjoyable on a player-to-player level for me. But what is good for me and my character is not good always good for everyone else. I know I am profiting: are they?

 

Hence, I've given the example of specific interest rates. 10% of $90K would make the actual price $99K, which is affordable to a new player thanks to the unemployment wage. Also, 2% of $1M mansion would make the total price $1.02M and surely, the difference of $20K would be negligible for a millionaire. It would be a worthy trade-off for both parties so far you provide the quality role-play.

 

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55 minutes ago, Vitta said:

Your major complaint is the issue of OOC character wealth portrayal influencing the economy by introducing taxes and having less capital to spend for P2P business interactions or actions. However, the server must sustain the economy with a cap/limit so, you wouldn't end up having multiple unemployed millionaires appearing out of nowhere and abuse the economy like the savings system of LS:RP.

 

The distinction between the former system and taxes is that, it appropriately identifies the players who can manage their wealth. Which is why it wasn't a problem for unemployed or newcomers of the PD/FD employee to have $200-250K vehicle earlier, but once the output (taxes) surpassed or equaled the input (wage/on-hand) money, players had the strive for urgent cash as their income became stagnant and inclined to save more to minimize their elastic (luxury) purchases. That contributed to an environment to play realistic wealth, but resulted having less spare money on hand to use it for less/cautious P2P role-play cases and caused the depreciation cost which is the part I agree with.

 

 

Hence, I've given the example of specific interest rates. 10% of $90K would make the actual price $99K, which is affordable to a new player thanks to the unemployment wage. Also, 2% of $1M mansion would make the total price $1.02M and surely, the difference of $20K would be negligible for a millionaire. It would be a worthy trade-off for both parties so far you provide the quality role-play.

 

That was an excellent summary of the point I have been trying to hammer: loss of spare money that is put into P2P role play, caused in part by recent changes to the economy designed to combat portrayal, which instead spilled over into the diminishing of general wealth for a sizable body of players. I also agree with you as pertains what you said about it separating those who can manage wealth from those who cannot, which is why I mentioned earlier that although this "recession" may be largely caused by poor portrayalists trying to hold onto their misrepresentative assets, to write that off as "their fault, shouldn't have done that" doesn't fix the economic undercurrent that has emerged in its wake.

 

As pertains what you said about maintaining the economy with a cap or limit, I agree that an economy cannot grow infinitely and that unchecked growth invites its own problems. But as @AVRO DANKASTER mentioned earlier, there is a way to regulate an economy, and it is not best done through reactionary measures that failed to factor long-term effects on trade and economy size into account. 

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I'm experiencing the same difficulties with my character. It seems like business roleplay is dead and nobody wants to spend money other than saving money for expensive cars and road taxes.

 

I've been roleplaying as a taxi driver since my first day here and never worked in mining/courier jobs.  After a while I got promoted to manage the Los Santos Transit faction. I achieved all of my capital from player-interaction activity  and reinvested it back in Los Santos Transit and an IC Real Estate company which I founded. 

 

Few months ago everything was working pretty good, our faction merged with another taxi company and we grew bigger.  We hired new drivers and had a decent amount of activity, I bought new vehicles for our faction to improve our roleplay and offer Uber services too.

The real estate business was doing pretty good too, I had 3 properties which were rented for long term contract.  I had a lot of fun roleplaying with my tenants, one of my tenants was a club manager and second one was a mechanic. Everyone had a productive job that others were willing to pay for it and the server's economy seemed somehow normal for a while. 

 

It seems like everything changed now and I barely see any businesses/companies roleplay. Instead of spending money on expensive cars and road taxes I spent most of it on business projects and player based interactions rather than mining/fishing jobs or whatever it is.  The situation today is that most of our drivers left the faction because there was not enough work and demand for transportation roleplay. Same thing happened to my real estate business, my tenants became inactive or quit and I've been searching for new tenants for almost two weeks now but nobody wants to spend money for roleplay although the rent price I offer is pretty cheap and affordable. I've been searching for taxi drivers for weeks now but nobody wants to join because there is not enough demand for this service and players prefer grinding instead.  I tried to advertise it in any way I could: in-game, Facebrowser, gov forums, I've been offering drivers to use our faction vehicles for free and keep their profits to themselves but it didn't work either.

 

 This is the gov website, I remember few months ago when it was first introduced there were much more job opportunities for players but now it's empty and nothing left other than my company.

bobo.thumb.png.6c58e8efa3f6cbc57e833d29e90887c5.png

 

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5 hours ago, Spenser said:

the real loss to the server from this is the gradual erosion of services (except erp). Lawyers, therapists, doctors: things that do not provide a tangible item but instead provide an experience.
[...]
because though people are not starving, they have less disposable income they're willing to spend on a player service.

Do middle-class and upper-class characters really not have enough OOC money to pay for lawyers, therapists, doctors, etc? What kinds of fees are they charging? (I am genuinely curious tbh)

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2 minutes ago, Caracosa said:

Do middle-class and upper-class characters really not have enough OOC money to pay for lawyers, therapists, doctors, etc? What kinds of fees are they charging? (I am genuinely curious tbh)

Therapy we did extremely cheap. I believe it was something like 3k for an hour. Lawyers are more expensive, because the tasks they are hired to do are usually long-term assignments and/or clerical work (like writing up a contract between two parties). Lawyers can offer services at many price brackets, but because of the high barrier to entry (bar exam, knowledge, time invested) the cheapest I could see even the simplest of lawyer services being (other than just meeting to chat) is probably around $10-15k.

 

That said, there is an unestablished market for lawyers, so prices are negotiable. However, given the amount of time and work involved in the things they RP, anyone who RPs a lawyer will seek decent compensation.

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58 minutes ago, Spenser said:

Therapy we did extremely cheap. I believe it was something like 3k for an hour
[...]
cheapest I could see even the simplest of lawyer services being (other than just meeting to chat) is probably around $10-15k.


Those prices look super expensive to me. Some comparisons from my lower-class experience:

Stripping: earning 3k-4k/night. (Similar for bartending actually)

1 cocaine: 200-300, which is close to real life coke prices (1 eightball) or 1 hour of therapy. It's not too far from a stripper's nightly earnings IRL.

Bar drinks: 100-200, super expensive compared to real bars.

Bottle of wine: 200 (IRL this wine would not have been 200)

I've been thinking about OOC vs IC money a lot recently. I used to charge higher prices for goods/services but I started lowering them (even before the road tax) because my priority was RP experiences.
 

Quote

However, given the amount of time and work involved in the things they RP, anyone who RPs a lawyer will seek decent compensation.

My perspective: I put "time and work" into my RP to receive more RP. Are there OOC reasons for a lawyer to charge $10K for a single RP session? Is that required to sustain a middle-class/professional lifestyle? I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious because I've only played poorer characters.

Edited by Caracosa
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I agree with OP, I worked at a liquor store, Vespucci Liquor- although it was the only thing open at the time and with over fifty players online; nobody was interested in coming over and RPing. We advertised selling six packs of beer, bottles of champagne, a liquor store that really wanted to sell to individuals rather than to bars. Alcohol is relatively cheap to produce, and we were doing our best to sell at a low profit just for the sake of roleplaying with people, people coming by the liquor store. However as stated several times in this thread before: many people (not all) would much rather save their money and spend it on vehicles, vehicle taxes, properties and things of the sort rather than spending their money on misc. items such as liquor, drugs, and experiences: things that do result in an actual loss of money that yields no asset in return.  

 

What was stated about people purchasing cars for high amounts and selling them for lower amounts was also accurate, understandably so as they are "used" for instance:

8896c10cb802ab87c005e087034d1a24.png

 

I do recall there being a showcase of scripted businesses such as clothing stores, convenience stores, etc. getting "scripted" jobs, I planned on referencing it but was unable to find it. I think that (wherever it is) is an amazing planned feature if it still exists. 

 

 

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Sadly that is the problem not just here. People inherently are reluctant when it comes to spending money for roleplay purposes. Not everyone though but nearly all businesses are hit by this stigma. I myself am guilty as charged, for saving up for a car I thought my character would be entitled to, as a mechanic and racing enthusiat spending her days around cars or behind the wheel. But I had my own share when it comes to roleplay experiences mentioned above already. As a real estate agent, my aim was to advertise properties for sale on behalf of other people for a small provision per property sold. At first I was suprised people were actually interested in such, that came to pass literally overnight, when they remembered that selling properties on their own require no provision. Of course not, said provision was a consultation fee, much like for therapists and lawyers, despite the small detail that I was offering actual profits, negotiating prices, setting up budgets for people interested in buying a house or an apartment, perhaps even a garage. Sadly it all begun and ended in my head. Least the planning was fun if nothing else. When it comes to lawyers though, if there was an actual court, with even the slightest chance to influence the impact, I think people would fight over good lawyers. We have many law offenders (not exactly criminals) after all. There is an idea, which will not come to pass anyway, but still...the garage is working nicely, with one difference, if people were only allowed to choose what they want done on said car. Then the mechanic would not be just paid for the roleplaying it out, but also enabling and installing actual mods on the car. But I doubt it's possible, I am not a coder after all so I have no idea. Though this could be applied literally to any business that requires some scripting, providing players with something apart from roleplay for their money.

Edited by Haymaker
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22 hours ago, Caracosa said:


Those prices look super expensive to me. Some comparisons from my lower-class experience:

Stripping: earning 3k-4k/night. (Similar for bartending actually)

1 cocaine: 200-300, which is close to real life coke prices (1 eightball) or 1 hour of therapy. It's not too far from a stripper's nightly earnings IRL.

Bar drinks: 100-200, super expensive compared to real bars.

Bottle of wine: 200 (IRL this wine would not have been 200)

I've been thinking about OOC vs IC money a lot recently. I used to charge higher prices for goods/services but I started lowering them (even before the road tax) because my priority was RP experiences.
 

My perspective: I put "time and work" into my RP to receive more RP. Are there OOC reasons for a lawyer to charge $10K for a single RP session? Is that required to sustain a middle-class/professional lifestyle? I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious because I've only played poorer characters.

The key difference about being a lawyer is that a good portion of law is not role play, but doing, writing and framing things that help to facilitate role play in the future and oftentimes in a medium- to long-term scope. If two parties want a contract or somebody wants to file a case/send something to law enforcement internal affairs, then a client comes to see a lawyer. They meet, have a discussion, work out the priorities and price. That is the interaction for both the lawyer and the player. The rest happens in the hands of the lawyer, typing up the specifics of this contract for record, or filing the complaint with evidence to the LSPD internal affairs. Being a lawyer RPly is one of the few things where I think you really need to "walk the walk," if you're being paid. If someone pays you to help them get out of a pickle involving a felony, they expect the lawyer to actually put in the written time and effort to do that. It is sometimes quite a process, and for the lawyer that process might not involve deep role play, because it is just debating legal minutiae. That's where IC payment comes in: being able to still flesh out a lawyer's character or provide upward mobility while devoting significant lengths of time or effort to a particular case.

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