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Entity

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  1. That could work, but that wouldn't be a stock exchange. It would literally just be a betting site.
  2. The answer is no. A proper, realistic and functional stock market could not be implemented, especially not at this point in time. A very basic one? Sure. A random one (but not a "functional" one)? It'd be harder, but possible. I've personally seen companies sell stock to investors, although this is hardly realistic, since these companies were always evaluated based on little to no data, but rather a personal opinion in the lines of "My company is worth $2 million, so here's 20% for $400,000". Most of the time, You'd, first of all, need a building. That's the least of the problems. You would need an organization (faction) to supervise it, a counterpart of the SEC, and a counterpart of the IRS. This would already be almost impossible, since not many people are open to role-playing a financial auditor, spend their 3 hours a day tracing numbers from one account to another and so on. Then you would need large, long-standing companies - this is already a problem, since the vast, vast majority of the legal scene is comprised of nightclubs, bars, grocery stores, gun stores and so on, most of these being set up and sold or closed down within months - none of these would ever qualify to be listed on a real-life stock market. Now let's say that everything is set up - you need people with money to invest in them. There's plenty, which means that the companies will be valued at millions and tens of millions. In time, this will also increase inflation, which is already at a ridiculous level. You would also need brokers, so that companies can sell their stock and people can buy it. Moreover, these companies (the listed ones) would need to have extremely active accountants - having top-notch financial statements is vital, but it's a must if your company is public. In the end, these companies would need to pay dividends. How would that even happen? You'd need a very, very, very complex system in place for people to trade these stocks, to know who owns what at which point in time, who gets a dividend and who doesn't. You would also need a highly-realistic and complex tax system (a "20% tax on all profits" won't work), besides the script support, the coding that would go into this system and in the end, you might end up with either a joke or no companies at all. "Starting" a stock exchange is not really possible. A normal person can't really do it - in theory, yes, but in practice, not really. You need a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of people who work across a lot of different range of careers, and much, much more. Even if you'd be able to start a "random" stock exchange, that wouldn't be a stock exchange, just a betting site. You can definitely sell stock in your own company, but that's pretty much it - finding people to buy it is hard as it is.
  3. It's true that people misuse the word 'auction', 99% of the listing are sales. I've never seen an actual auction on GTA World. I think this is just semantics though. There's a point to using structures like 'starting bid' and 'buyout' and such - people will be more open to negotiating.
  4. I agree with the rest but I can't see the issue highlighted in this snippet. It's perfectly normal for a home owner to want to get the most for their properties. Having people sell a $200,000 property for $100,000 would be, if anything, unrealistic.
  5. TTCF is under the Sheriff's Department and it is pretty active. A different approach to the county jail should be suggested to SD leadership, not the Park Rangers. We also have Fire Marshalls. Their activity is even more niche, but that does not mean they aren't needed. In this case, there are people who enjoy role-playing as rangers and other people who enjoy role-playing as hunters, interacting with each other, providing valuable role-play to each other and to the rest of the server. What's the problem? SAPR are law enforcement officers but they're not driving around, starting pursuits and busting everyone. Law enforcement is not the primary focus of the faction, passive, community-oriented development is.
  6. That depends, though. There would definitely be people working one, two, even three extra shifts in order to cover for the tax increase (or addition, rather). However, that's not necessarily the case. It would 100% guaranteed get boring really quickly either way. People used to grind aluminum back in the day too, but most of these people didn't actually enjoy doing it. Most of them were doing it for cash, and lots of them were buying cars that they could drive around in and actually show off. It's not the same with real estate. Opening up the economy won't fix it though. The whole idea of supply and demand is finding an equilibrium, a place where both parties are happy. Unlike in real life, you can't actually build any more houses. The supply itself is highly limited, physically speaking. You literally cannot add more houses to the market. You can't compare the GTA:W economy to a real-life one in the slightest. It's only an economy in a very basic sense. There is a supply and there is a demand. Yes, it is somewhat realistic and it is definitely closer to reality than anyone's ever managed to achieve. It is not an economy though. It is also, unfortunately, something that no role-play game will ever be able to achieve. The reason behind this is very simple - unlike real life, decisions are influenced by meta factors. People are willing to spend fortunes to get into poverty (because of various characters) than to get out of it. A huge chunk of money goes towards creating new characters, the vast majority of them being poor in one way or another (homeless, gangsters, law enforcement, journalists etc.). In real life, people are working to get out of poverty. Someone going homeless or a gangbanger stepping into the street for the first time doesn't throw money into the economy (buying clothes, haircuts, cars, a house, items etc.). The main reason why we will never achieve a real economy is because there is no economic policy, no institutions to supervise any part of the economy whatsoever, there are no banks, no insurance companies, we don't have anyone controlling the inflation rate, no monetary policy, no fiscal policy, the unemployment rate is irrelevant, the money supply is not being controlled whatsoever and so, so, so many more. A realistic economy, especially one that's not based on a 3rd world African country, isn't as simple as "supply and demand". Imagine five gears spinning together, then multiply that times a few tens of thousands. They're extremely complex systems where everyone - people, businesses, institutions - play a role. Lots of real-life cities can't get it right even. More than that, GTAW has money pouring in out of nowhere and flowing out back into the void in an unknown and uncontrolled way. This is much more than any of us can comprehend or control. The only way to fix this would be to: a) Let the economy be. Set out the basic principles and let the money flow around. If houses end up costing millions, deal with that organically, ICly. Control that inflation. It's possible. For that, however, you will have to put a tremendous amount of work in, stabilizing everything, knowing what, how, and why each component of the economy works. Remove all price caps, have a set amount of money. Make it so that everyone contributes to the economy, directly or not. Remove all rules regarding selling and buying properties, businesses, everything. Make the market truly free, let the government decide the actions to take ICly (even if it's through server staff). b) Wipe all of the money and assets. Which will never be done. If you want to achieve a realistic economy, you can't start when some people are broke (new players, for instance) while others have everything and then some. If the caps are removed now, new players will find it absolutely impossible to buy a house. It will be messed up.
  7. Well, exactly. That's a great example of what this suggestion is about. If your character doesn't make a ton of money, and even more, does so every few months, then it's perfectly normal to not be able to afford 2 penthouses AND a studio. That's exactly what happens in real life. If a person makes $100,000 per quarter, can they afford paying mortgages on three large, luxurious properties, as well as fixing anything that might get broken, utilities, insurance premiums, an HOA fee, probably employees for cleaning and cooking and so on? No. That's exactly how it works. If you can't afford it, you can't have it. Your character is an amazing example for this issue - while they can't realistically own these properties but has 2 penthouses, someone else who has the funds has 0 penthouses because there aren't any. The idea is to both reduce unrealistic occurences and portrayal while also giving everyone the chance to get a house without paying millions (by removing the cap) or having to wait for one whole, real-life year just to have a chance of getting one. No one will get drained of money if their character is actually rich and making money - if they are not making money, then they would, just like in real life. I can't see how this solution would ruin the server. Again, the numbers I provided are just examples, the formula and idea is what matters. Back when I played here, my character was making around $49,000 a week, in the Sheriff's Department. He owned a pick-up truck that cost around $2,000 a month and a decent $95,000 apartment, which would've cost $11,058 a week, leaving him with more than $35,000 a week. I think that is pretty decent and realistic. Now, if I were to buy three houses, a business and two apartments, of course I would've ran out of money (or even went in debt). That's because of my own poor choices though, not because of the system.
  8. I quit the server around a month ago so I am not sure what the situation is right now, although I suppose it is similar. I have a solution though. 20% would be way too much. Lots of decent properties cost around $100,000-$200,000, which would translate to a $20,000-$40,000 weekly payment. They're not huge mansions either. The best (and only) way to regulate this would be to introduce a regressive tax system. Otherwise some people will end up paying WAY too much for just wanting to play, while people holding onto cheap properties would not pay much at all. Introduce tax brackets for housing. It's not that big of a deal. This is my solution. 12% as a default value for all properties valued at $35,000 or less, which would yield a result of a maximum $4,200 a week in tax. A decrease of 0.03 percentage points for each 5,000 (or 0.000006% per dollar). This would mean the following, as examples: A $95,000 MP property will have a $11,058 weekly tax, at 11.64%. A $105,000 MP property will have a $12,159 weekly tax, at 11.58%. A $200,000 MP property will have a $22,020 weekly tax, at 11.01%. A whopping $400,000 MP property will have a $39,240 weekly tax, at 9.81%. This would, obviously, only take into consideration the MP of the property and not the price of the furniture, or else people with nice homes will be taxed for no reason. Decrease the percentage by 2.5% - 5% if the player is inactive - add it as a donator perk - a decrease, not a complete removal of the tax. The taxes could be looked at as various in-character upfront, occasional and continued expenses (ref), although this is an entirely OOC problem. More on this below. I will attach a simple Excel file that I used to generate these numbers in order for other people to play with them and come up with better numbers. This is just an example (which I believe is pretty good, honestly). Either way, there has to be a tax and it has to be regressive. @effion you guys might be interested in this. Increasing the number of houses won't fix anything. Say you add 5,000 more houses, huge number (of applications, especially). It will be fine for a month (besides the tremendous work from Property Management) until everyone who wanted a house will have one, and then, when there are none left (considering there are 100,000 users and thousands more registering every month, number that was increasing last time I checked), you'll be back here, at square one. Removing the price cap will also do nothing. GTA World will just be LSRP v2, houses will definitely be on sale, but for millions upon millions of dollars. As I said before, this is in no way an in-character problem and it can't (and shouldn't) be referenced as such. It is not a realistic issue. In real life, if you have the money, you can buy a house, or at least an apartment. If there are none available (which is unlikely), you can build one from scratch. People are also not "hoarding" houses (in this way, for these reasons). There are two problems in-game: there is a highly limited supply of housing that physically cannot be increased - even scripting all of the houses on the map will just delay this same issue - and the fact that buying decisions are for the most part, influenced by the OOC decisions of players (and not characters) of buying a certain property in a specific area, thus making some purely worthless areas (the real-life counterparts) extremely sought-after for no realistic reason - think of $300,000 for a run-down trailer twice the size of a prison cell, looking worse than one, in the middle of nowhere, or having to wait for months in order to buy a small apartment in Forum Drive - these are not realistic decisions and should not be referenced as such. They are, however, perfectly fine on an out-of-character level. Either way, something has to be done and I believe that implemeting taxes on housing is a must. If someone is truly using a property to role-play, that means that the character should afford it. Living in a $35,000 Forum Drive apartment as a gang-banger and paying $5,000 a week is not a big deal. Living in a $400,000 ultra-mansion and portraying a mob boss and paying $40,000 or so a week is also not a huge deal. This will weed out the people who don't actually do anything but rather hoard properties - if someone only keeps a really cool house (that someone else wants to RP in) for possible future profits, they'll be paying $20,000 a week on it and all of those profits will be gone in weeks. They will either sell it or run out of money and sell it. Hoarded properties will become a money sink. taxes.xlsx
  9. This suggestion is simply about clarifying what an active loan is, not about the quality of the role-play (which in most cases it is subpar) or OOC motivations. That's true, I agree, but that's a different issue. As it currently stands, loaning money is done with zero risk. Even if you take 0 action or don't care at all, if the other person decides to name change after a year, you are entitled to your money because the loan was still active and they did name change. As it currently stands, loaning can have two outcomes: get your money back or wait a bit and get your money back. No risk. Regarding people avoiding to log in for those two weeks, a solution is mentioned in the original topic - only being able to name change after two active weeks.
  10. All of our factions have a purpose on an in-character level. An "office" faction would not. A company needs to have a field of activity. It has to do something, otherwise what is the point of having a company? However, we already have office jobs. There's plenty of them around already. I can give you a personal example - one of my character currently works as an assistant branch manager for a logistics company. The office culture exists, there is a hierarchy, there are meetings, there is a finance department, a human resources department, a management ladder that you can climb up and down. There's tons of possibilities and it's not even a concept. On a larger scale, there are lots of companies and factions offering similar opportunities. If you can't find something that you like, you can always create your own! Having such faction would be detrimental and make no sense on an in-character level though.
  11. Short description: Replacing mask ID's with actual names. Detailed description: Seeing Mask over someone's head inadvertently leads to metagaming, whether we like it or not. Seeing two masked people on a bike or four masked people in a car almost always means that something is up. Thus, there is no element of surprise - we will always know that something is about to go down on an out-of-character level. On the other hand, seeing Ben and Jerry riding a bike will not raise as much suspicion on an out-of-character level. In the same spirit, seeing Earl Johnson tell you their name is Alex will also inadvertently raise an out-of-character suspicion. We must obviously play along ICly, but that doesn't mean that an out-of-character immersive feature would not be welcomed. That OOC suspicion should not exist at all. The whole purpose of the mask system is to give people a way to carry out scenarios without their real identity being disclosed. A way to set an alias would, however, be a simple change that would help a lot in this regard. The alias would be set separately from wearing the mask item. This means that you would be able to use /mask in order to enable the visible item or /maskname (after doing /setmaskname) in order to only enable the name. The feature would only change the character's name over their head, it would not return anything in the MDC and their actual name would still show up in /sdl. The restriction would be you cannot set your alias to be someone else's name. Forum reports would not be an issue as said alias would only be tied to a character, so reporting Alex Johnson, the actual name, will be the same as reporting Andres Contreras, the alias. Commands to add: /setmaskname + change the functionality of /maskname (and allow it to be used without doing /mask). Items to add: None. How would your suggestion improve the server? More immersion for everyone who wants to role-play posing as a different person, while taking away the OOC advantage and suspicions. Additional information: This stems from a different suggestion by @Procaine - because the suggestion is different, I decided to post a new topic.
  12. I have recently noticed that our rules prohibiting name changing during an active loan generates an unfair loophole that should be addressed. I believe that a small addition to the rule should be considered, defining what an active loan is and the circumstances (or time period after which) a name change is allowed. In its current state, loaning someone money freezes said character indefinitely, unless the money is paid back. This means that after giving a loan, whether a week passes or a year passes, the loan is still considered to be active. If the money is never returned (common practice in scams), said person can never change their characters' name. As a side note, this incentives people to completely abandon said characters which, in turn, makes any interaction with them impossible. Although I am not involved in such role-play, I do believe that it is unfair for characters running properly planned out and carried out scams. A simple addition to the rule would fix this issue. A time limit should be added, just like we have in the case of active court cases. If a deadline is set for the loan, the person can name change 2 weeks after the deadline. If no deadline is set, the person can name change two weeks after the money is transferred. The character can be name changed only after two active weeks, thus preventing people from avoiding to log in. If they cannot log in at all, two weeks will be considered from the moment when they return. Activity can be defined as having 0.5 ABAS (30 minutes a day, 3.5 hours a week, 7 hours per two weeks). If someone wishes to take it to court, the rules surrounding name changing during active court cases will be applied. If they want to handle it on their own, two weeks is more than enough time to do so. If a CK app is submitted, we should be looking at two weeks after its conclusion (so two weeks in order to carry out the CK or, if denied, two weeks to confront the person ICly). More clarification is always welcomed.
  13. This should be approached on a case by case basis as not all incidents are the same. I totally agree with it though, players namechanging during an active loan for malicious reasons (being caught, getting a new character to do it again etc.) should not only have to pay the money back but also face administrative punishment. I am not talking about people who are CKed by others or have actual circumstances leading up to their characters' deaths. The risk should be equal for both parties involved though. The scammer should not have an easy way out while the scammed party should face a risk. Even if there are certain mechanisms in place to prevent such incidents, we do not have that in-game and NPCing a complex banking system and financial institutions would be a very play-to-win solution to this problem. If someone believes that the random person at the bar can actually double their money and give them a million dollars on the spot, they should realize there's a huge risk they are not getting that money back. Otherwise investments, a complex and risky area in real life, would become the safest way to make money - either invest in a valid scheme and get a profit or get scammed and receive your money back because getting scammed wouldn't be possible in real life.
  14. I have never used it so I don't know much about it but enabling the Rockstar Editor might be a much better idea, if it is at all possible.
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