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This can be more strictly enforced, definitely. However, there is are some core problems that produces these types of excesses.

 

  • The complete lack of competition when it comes to official player run dealerships.

 

There are very few of these, compared to the demand by characters. Property Management has made this problem worse by restricting its leases for dealerships. In my view, they just piled these together with bars and strip clubs and called them too numerous. This completely ignores the problems that have been building ever since the script was introduced halfway in 2020. Perhaps someone from PM can address this issue, @Selena? Because right now, instead of having dealerships you can keep an eye on, you have mobile dealerships that dont go reported and just make it worse for everyone.

 

  • Players are not interested in realistic portrayals at all, when it comes to buying cars, owning cars, and switching cars.

 

The is a small minority of players that roleplay owning cars realistically. 95% or more have no interest in this whatsoever. Honestly, I cant really blame them either. Literally no one cares about this. Staff doesn't care, management doesn't care, friends don't care either, and nearly everyone around you will set a bad standard, so this then becomes the standard. Mobile dealerships cater to this, because they don't care about any of these standards.

 

Players have their characters decide within a few minutes on what car they'll buy or sell, when in reality this would be a very serious decision that will keep someone busy-minded for days.

 

Players have no clue how to negotiate, likely because most of them haven't been through this process in real life, or they realize that there is such an extreme disconnect between the value of used vehicles in game, compared to irl. They will happily let their characters be completely shafted when selling their vehicles. Its gotten slightly better in the last 12 months, but I suspect this is just laziness for most of it. People don't care because they don't have to worry about their character's bank accounts anyway.

 

Players will switch their characters vehicles on a whim, sometimes after owning it for less than 10 minutes, even though realistically this would result in a catastrophic financial loss. 

 

Players see dealerships as glorified NPC shops, in the same trend as they do with garages. This is not what everyone does, but still accounts for about 30-60% of the characters I see coming around. They'll sprint around, quickly reading the price tags, /vstats, and then wanting to get the process done in 2 minutes. 

 

If you run a mobile dealership, you can cater to all of the players wishes for a fast adrenaline rush, and exploit their lack of real life experiences,  carelessness with virtual money and accurate portrayals. Honestly, this problem is inherent and I do not believe it can be fixed. No one is even remotely interested in enforcing standards on this subject, and that will not change. Players will never change in this respect. Individuals? Maybe? As a community, it just won't happen.

 

  • Those running actual dealerships have no incentive to improve roleplay standards whatsoever.

 

Trying to raise roleplay standards as a dealership employee or owner basically means you are being put in charge of a money farm. You can farm as much as you want, because there's no end to the amount of characters coming by and wanting a new ride. Making millions is very easy. This is exactly the same as a mobile dealership, but you have to put in more effort, in terms of maintaining staff, getting a script/location or lease approved, etc.

 

When that's all done? Players will see your attempts at realism as a nuisance, because they just want to get their car and leave. And why would you then not go along with it? They're throwing money at you after all. Why bother?

 

Taxes are extremely easy to avoid. You just do /sv 6, or a little higher if you want to keep admins off your scent, and then the other player will do /banktransfer. No administrator is going to look into this anyway. If you get caught, it was because you're extremely unlucky. Youll still get away with a warning at the very worst. Dealerships could lose their script, but mobile dealerships have nearly zero risk regarding this. Another reason why they flourish.

 

 


 

 

Is it all hopeless? No. So how can this situation be improved?

 

  • Unrestrict the dealership leases, and give players more freedom in requesting locations not previously considered. They're not like bars, there's only a handful active right now. We seriously need a whole lot more competition to reduce the effectiveness of these ridiculous money farms. Next to gambling, this is really the easiest way to get super rich, and this is because players are left with very few options to turn to if they don't like the price theyre offered at one dealership. Competition works.
  • Enforce stricter roleplayer standards on existing dealerships. This is pretty easy. You don't have to spectate to look at their every roleplay line, but at least make them promise to stick to a theme to begin with. There are no normal dealerships that sell beat up sedans next to very expensive sports cars when their inventory is only a dozen vehicles. Make people promise that they will stick to a niche, and it'll be very easy to enforce standards. Only sports cars, only commercial vehicles, only cheap cars, only specific brands. All of these are possible and would improve standards, as long as PM just makes them stick to one of these.
  • Increase sales taxes, again. I was against the 5% sales taxes at first, because I thought they were too high, and that they'd be passed onto the customer anyway. However, I've come to see that this is actually a good thing. Make customers pay for it, perhaps they'll think twice about switching cars on a whim. The financial hit on the dealership itself is non existent. They make so much money, they can afford to pay a lot of in taxes.
  • Restrict sales per character. This was already proposed within the staff team and discussed. It was either forgotten about, or rejected. I wasn't around for that, but it was a thing. This is a solution that immediately undermines the viability of mobile dealerships. You can choose how to implement this. For example, a hard restriction of x vehicles sold per month for all characters that are not employed at dealerships. This is harsh and will lead to problems. Alternatives are placing no limits on vehicles sold to player dealerships, which hits mobile dealerships hard, but average players a lot less. Another alternative is to impose additional tax burdens on sales beyond a certain threshold, unless the sold vehicle is part of a dealership script. This hits all others equally. You can mix and match, there are options.
  • Doding taxes remains a problem. Depending on the solutions, you can limit taxes paid only by dealerships, which makes it far easier to enforce. Otherwise, I don't have a solid solution for this. We can't expect players to file their taxes.
  • Enforce standards as they are set today. This is the easiest solution. Mobile dealerships are technically already against the rules, and Property Management has stated that theyre not allowed. However, there is no enforcement. Starting here is easiest, but keep in mind that this ignores the core problems. You'll be fighting symptoms and not solving the problems that cause these issues to occur. It doesn't mean this can't be part of a comprehensive solution though.

 

 

 

Edited by mj2002
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There is a lot of cellphone vehicle sales in real life, they’re called trades men. Literally where I’m from there are a lot of main dealerships, private dealerships & a lot of people who basically buy vehicles, fix them up and sell them on or either sell from their house where they’d have five vehicles or more. Although there is laws you may abide by some, if you’re activity selling vehicles in a estate or a place with little parking room. It falls under a clean neighbourhood and environment. I’m pretty sure there is something else if you’re not qualified within the trade.
 

This should really be a IC matter with government, it would be a licensing issue. They should really have a licensing department to bring them down, rather than OOC restrictions. Someone operating a business without a business property or a registered business, most likely avoiding paying the tax as well because I know most of them are looking a direct bank transfer. 😂 
 

Honestly? I don’t think it’s a problem. If anything it’s the dealerships who are fucking the market where the prices exceed the amount and you have to pay extra than the script allows. 

 

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5 hours ago, Kings said:

There is a lot of cellphone vehicle sales in real life, they’re called trades men. Literally where I’m from there are a lot of main dealerships, private dealerships & a lot of people who basically buy vehicles, fix them up and sell them on or either sell from their house where they’d have five vehicles or more. Although there is laws you may abide by some, if you’re activity selling vehicles in a estate or a place with little parking room. It falls under a clean neighbourhood and environment. I’m pretty sure there is something else if you’re not qualified within the trade.
 

This should really be a IC matter with government, it would be a licensing issue. They should really have a licensing department to bring them down, rather than OOC restrictions. Someone operating a business without a business property or a registered business, most likely avoiding paying the tax as well because I know most of them are looking a direct bank transfer. 😂 
 

Honestly? I don’t think it’s a problem. If anything it’s the dealerships who are fucking the market where the prices exceed the amount and you have to pay extra than the script allows. 

This would be okay but the advertisement system is set up for legal advertisements. What these mobile sales dealers are doing is illegal (no business license, no physical lot to store cars in legally) and shouldn’t be allowed to use the ad system for selling cars illegally (as it’s against the rules). You don’t see drug dealers using the ad system do you? If they want to do it by word of mouth and under the radar? That’s their prerogative.
 

Most states have a hard limit on the amount of cars you can sell per year before a license is required, regardless. Most of these cell phone dealerships go past that on a daily to weekly basis. There is no governing authority to stop these people from advertising as the ad system is basically regulated on an OOC basis, therefore this can’t be strictly an IC issue. 
 

This is also not an IC issue because people aren’t doing it for the IC angle. They are OOC abusing the legal advertisement system to skirt around the rules and bypass any element of owning a legal business through PM. Most of these “dealers” aren’t storing their vehicles in an IC manner that would make sense, they are /vparking them until they need to spawn one to sell. This is simply abuse. It would be different if these cell phone sales groups spawned there cars in a lot illegally or in front of their house while they were active to allow some element of risk while transacting these deals, but let’s be real. They don’t. It’s 100% abuse of the system in its current form and shouldn’t be allowed. This is far from an IC issue. 

Edited by Cypher99
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As someone who has both ran actual car dealerships on the server and just been flipping through /ads etc. I feel I have a good perspective on both sides. I do feel buying and selling vehicles very much needs a improvement in roleplay.

 

Car dealing on this server playerwise are money printing machines, profits vary but over a 3 month period of constant activity I remember averging 1 million in profit when I ran a dealership (before the script was even a thing, so even less standards was expected). I feel stricter rules need to be placed on players roleplaying selling vehicles etc. My current character dabbles in buying and selling cars which I feel is fair enough (him being a mechanic afterall, this is something that I regularly see in real life) however their are limits on it. If you want to sell vehicles without the dealership script the amount of vehicles your allowed to sell should be limited. When I see /ads with more then 5 cars for sale I think that should clearly be a real dealership on the server, not some player. When I see a few I feel it's fair enough.

Edited by Hawken/Moscropp
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Sigh.
 

So I rarely respond to threads and I already hate that I will spend an hour+ of my free time on a Sunday evening responding to this but some of the things I read here are so concerning that I have to give a bit of a voice of reason before someone that actually has a say on the server gets a motivation by some of the "solutions" presented here. 


So let's all take a breather and think for a second, please. 
 

I will almost exclusively respond to @mj2002 reply. Truth be told, I'm perhaps a bit disappointed by your reply as you are usually a voice of reason yourself, you also proposed some really important rules/rule changes that affect the server to this day but the solutions and ideas that you have written up in regards to this topic here will literally cause the complete opposite of what you're trying to fix, and even amplify it down the line. 
 

It's a bit similar to the discussion we had in regards to properties where;

  • You proposed a 20-hour weekly play requirement to keep a house (Idea: People should stop hoarding houses that they don't use. Reality: Would have taken houses from absolutely anyone that has a real-life, studies or works. Even at 5 hours a week. What we have now, is fair.) 
  • You proposed running costs for properties (Idea: People will stop hoarding properties. Reality: Renting costs would skyrocket, cheap rents would be abolished due to the cost to just own properties and rich characters will hoard properties unscathed and rent it out to equally rich(er) characters with the now increased rent.)
     

Now you might ask why I'm making such bold statements and making such a fuzz about it? Because if @mj2002's solutions would be implemented one-to-one, it would have really serious consequences to the player-owned dealership scene and not in a good way. These are short-term solutions with a lot of long-term backlashes.
 

I mean your main stance was to ease up dealership leases and to make them more accessible but also to increase dealership RP standards? Do you not see the problem here?


Let alone the fact that the topic at hand is private car flipping and you're trying to put some new rules on dealerships.  
 

Regardless, allow to FINALLY respond to a few points instead of throwing big words around. 
 

9 hours ago, mj2002 said:
  • The complete lack of competition when it comes to official player run dealerships.

 

There are very few of these, compared to the demand by characters. Property Management has made this problem worse by restricting its leases for dealerships. In my view, they just piled these together with bars and strip clubs and called them too numerous. This completely ignores the problems that have been building ever since the script was introduced halfway in 2020. Perhaps someone from PM can address this issue, @Selena? Because right now, instead of having dealerships you can keep an eye on, you have mobile dealerships that dont go reported and just make it worse for everyone.


Okay, so the problem here is that my opinion can be seen as biased and to some degree it is. I run a dealership myself, so of course less dealerships would benefit me to some degree however if you give me the benefit of the doubt, allow me to explain why this is a bad idea. 

There was a time a few months back when there were roughly 3 active dealerships, private car flipping was to a minimum, I heard very little noise and complaints about the car scene and all was well. Then at some point we had a surge of dealerships and like 4-5 new ones popped up all at basically the same time. Here's the catch; None of them were much good. I'm not scared to hurt feelings, I already know I will upset a lot of people but I'm simply saying how it simply is/was. They did not add anything to the server apart from being as you already have mentioned glorified "NPC shops", zero standards were enforced and to quote you, "money farms". This was actually so bad I almost got my entire house request denied because (direct quote from my request) "Property Management does not approve of businesses that provide a passive means of income". I was like.. "what"? I was very insulted by this statement back then in regards to what I try to achieve with my dealership and at the time? I did not understand what they meant by that altogether. Now that some time has passed and I seen some other dealerships, especially the newer ones? I do understand it. 

 To just summarize it a bit. 

  • There is two dealerships that are still around that shall remain unnamed that currently have $10.000-$20.000 rust buckets (literally, ratbikes, surfers, you name it) next to $300.000-$400.000 supercars and luxury vehicles. I have enough fuel, screenshots and logs to start a PM investigation if I wanted to, still debating if it's worth my time and all the stress.
  • There's a dealership in a run-down ghetto area (only 1 so can't really keep it anonymous) that sells budget vehicles but also a $300.000 wooden built speedboat?? Yes, it is quite happily portrayed on their thread under the "for sale" section, got the screenshots for that as well. They also have the occasional 300K V-STR (also on their thread) and similar, technically would be the third dealership if referring to my previous point.
  • There is a dealership, whose owner seemingly cannot separate IC and OOC. Everyone's favorite word "mallrat" by every stretch of the imagination. Actually surprisingly quite known around the server and NONE had anything remotely good things to say. An entire RPQM case but their RP is just acceptable enough RP so that even with an RPQM and or PM report, they will be let go with a warning or nothing will happen altogether most likely. 
  • There is a dealership that ticks every of the above mentioned boxes plus horrendous portrayal standards. Nobody I talked to even understands how they have a dealership lol. Not even "wow they are bad" or "I really just avoid them", actually "how is their dealership not taken away yet?" reactions.  
  • There is a dealership that tried the Showroom routine like me, I think they bothered like twice (exaggeration) and now decided to just fill up a parking lot with their supercars. (At least they stick to a somewhat realistic concept? Only higher-end? The smallest trouble-maker in that sense). But they still have a public parking lot filled with supercars for sale, this is really reckless if you think about this from a real life perspective, what insurance company would even offer them a contract? Supercars open on display publicly that can be easily damaged and vandalized. 

These are my "colleagues". Can I now understand why PM is this hostile against dealerships? I do. Is it fair that I get thrown in the same bracket as the ones above? No, but what can you do?  

There is also one car flipper currently that dominates the entire vehicle sales section, without a dealership (amazed how PM hasn't jumped on it yet. Did no one complain or does PM just never check forums at ALL? Click on the vehicles section right now and you see 5+ ads from the same person on the first page, go on their forum acc and you see like 20 cars in the last few weeks). I actually tried to fight against this problem and tried to induct them into my dealership as an employee perhaps. I guess some sort of OOC vigilante attempt, would have gotten rid of a car flipper and perhaps teach them some ways as well.... what turned out in reality? I told them on OOC basis after the IC interview that they should not write up an IC application (and waste their time) to me because their English and RP skills were rather concerning or would at least have a bad look on my dealership. 

Now that I have pissed everyone off; if stricter standards on dealerships were to be enforced, depending how strict they are, I have enough fuel to wipe 5 dealerships (plus all the car flippers who I have been discovering) or at least have PM give them a really serious slap on the wrists. 

So please again, do not loosen up the availability of dealership ownership to people, even most of the current ones barely deserve to keep theirs. 

This is not an attack on you by the way @mj2002, you'd be one of three dealerships that I currently have no issues with. 

 

10 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Players are not interested in realistic portrayals at all, when it comes to buying cars, owning cars, and switching cars.


The entire section below, I agree with. That's just how things are unfortunately. I very rarely actually get people that are willing to roleplay a car purchase properly. I'm so fortunate to have my own little fortress in a sense because I can chose who I want to interact with. God, am I not jealous whatsoever of bars or other much more populated businesses. Perhaps in a sense it's actually a lot sweeter when I find that 1 out of a 100 person that actually can roleplay back and shows some genuine interest? 

 

10 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Honestly, this problem is inherent and I do not believe it can be fixed.


You wrote this in regards to car flippers and trust me, that can be really quickly solved. If you went the order 66 route and made it so that car flipping is by ajail-punishable offense, since it is a rule break after all? I'm sure this will scatter all the car flippers about or make them scared to be as bold as they were before, perhaps they would resort to selling 3 cars at a time or something which at that point? Who cares, not even a problem anymore.

BUT! This is a short-term solution, the very thing I'm critiquing you for now. This would have 1 drawback down the line; They won't be able to have leases anymore if they have an ajail-entry for breaking PM rules. This could in turn motivate them to continue since they have nothing to lose anymore. No one will get a permaban from car-flipping so if they get caught? Nothing to lose anymore, they'll continue. 

The good thing? People will get a bit more respect for PM rules. Because if you car-flip with shit RP? An ajil for you, goodbye any future lease for you, any request, chance to get an admin position, you name it. 

It's a coin with two sides, you have to decide if the drawbacks are worth the reward.

But if you referring to the people not caring that much about quality vehicle roleplay? You're correct. Nothing can be done about that. 
 

10 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Those running actual dealerships have no incentive to improve roleplay standards whatsoever.


I know you probably mean well, I know you probably don't refer to me but please do not make bold statements like that, especially when your word gets taken seriously (compared to others) on this platform. 

Now that I have upset some people and called out others, I do want to make a statement here.

There's a company called Vetrov Automotive, a dealership that has been actively around for ~1.5 OOC years. The only dealership with a Showroom on the server. A company that is harder to join with a stronger vetting process than some legal factions (in their defense if you take something like the LSPD, it's of course easier for me to keep an eye out over 5 people compared to PD command looking over 100+). We have an active forum thread, a website, a discord, people that do accounting and income summaries, business cards for our employees, dress codes, an entire book of regulations and policies, you name it. Only drawback perhaps? You have bit of an asshole owner (me). Matter or perspective after all. 

I spend easily half an hour on average per sale, someone lasting even up to 1-2 hours depending on the willingness of the other person to roleplay. I try my absolute best to try and set an example. An example that I can now confidently say in hindsight nobody was willing to follow. And why would they?

Because even the worst offenders of bad dealerships? They get the same benefits, are seen in the same eyes by PM and make even more money than me : )  Let me just tell you:
-A dealership owner that I extorted and have a current manhunt for? The same person that had a report (that was accepted) on his name for a play to win mentality, the same person that also went the OOC route via admins (and failed) when I tried to extort him? He got a house on the same street as me. 
-A dealership owner that in the past ran one of the worst dealerships on the server with a bunch of rulebreaks and questionable RP? He got a house on the same street as me and PM also allowed him to run a dealership again.
-A dealership owner that I currently extort (Nothing bad to say in regards to his RP though)? Has a house on the same street as me. 

So literally if all this time I just had a parking lot and had borderline acceptable RP on my premises? I still would have gotten the same house I have now, would have made even much more money and nothing would have been different. 1.5 Years of trying to go beyond what's expected of me? For nothing, really.
 

11 hours ago, mj2002 said:

There are very few of these, compared to the demand by characters.


Now, I did try to address the demand issue that you brought up as well. I requested to move to a larger location, still in Rockford Hills. I wrote a really long essay requesting that Showroom building where "High End Autos" is currently located at the side of. I thought (at the time) of me showing my best when it comes to dealership RP would have accounted to something. I gotten like a 2 sentence reply to my request. "We denied other dealerships that location in the past"... Well. And I'm "other" dealerships? What sort of argument is that? All the ones that requested it were probably completely fresh in the car-scene characters that didn't had a dealership before or ones that did have but with questionable RP standards. But here we are, being put in the same bracket again.

By the way, there's literally no real reason why I couldn't get that building, that NPC dealership didn't even really intervene with the building and could have been easily moved with a simple coordinates change. I even offered putting it where my dealership not a street block away was. Hell, even leave my interior just to add that little bit of immersion (but to have the NPC dealership on the street still of course). PM said no. 

Now attempt #2. I wanted to see if I could perhaps have a second dealership that would specify in lower-end vehicles exclusively (as the Vetrov Automotive Showroom exclusively focuses on higher-end vehicles). No, can't have 2 leased businesses at once. PM said no. 

So tell me, do you not think there's perhaps other issues at hand here? Perhaps not look at the current problems but at the root of them? If even me (high ego; I know) gets silenced by PM, what sort of hope do you think there is to get any sort of good dealership RP?
 

 

11 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Trying to raise roleplay standards as a dealership employee or owner basically means you are being put in charge of a money farm.


Perhaps this applies to parking lot dealerships, I see a LOT of traffic there for the above mentioned reasons, a lot of people don't want to enter an interior or let alone roleplay (imagine having to roleplay on a roleplay server?) a car purchase, just quickly check the /carsign and leave with a new car within 5 minutes. And trust me, there's enough dealerships out there that are willing to provide people just that, you know that yourself.

Let me do something that I have never done before, share some numbers with you. 

Income Vetrov = $333.550
Income Vetrov = $146.270
Income Vetrov = $123.250
Income Vetrov = $143.375
Income Vetrov = $106.900
Income Vetrov = $50.800
Income Vetrov = $189.800
Income Vetrov = $210.870

These are my weekly income numbers for the past few weeks (in order, most recent ones first). Note that I'm active, the place sees a few hours a week for sure. This is after my even harsher campaign to exclusively focus on high-end vehicles. 

Seeing how a club receives $48.0000 per opening if people come, plus all the $700 entrance fees, you might have to pinpoint me the part where it's an easy money farm compared to other businesses. 

Do you want to see my numbers from a few months back when I was a bit looser and had mid/lower-range vehicles too?

Total Income: $1,368,382 ------------ Income Vetrov = $656.637 (Sales, Shares - Property Cost, Commissions)
Total Income: $958,235 ------------ Income Vetrov = $360.957 (Sales, Shares - Property Cost, Commissions)

This is per week, by the way.

So my standards raised, my income drastically dropped but no one really cares, PM surely does not as seen with my examples above. So why should I bother? Why should I bother keeping the RP standard and the bar at my place this high? Why don't I just drop my standards, start selling crappy cars again and get my numbers to ludicrous amounts back up?

So to read this sort of suggestion; 

 

11 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Increase sales taxes, again. I was against the 5% sales taxes at first, because I thought they were too high, and that they'd be passed onto the customer anyway. However, I've come to see that this is actually a good thing. Make customers pay for it, perhaps they'll think twice about switching cars on a whim. The financial hit on the dealership itself is non existent. They make so much money, they can afford to pay a lot of in taxes.


Allow me to rephrase that one for you: The financial hit on parking lot dealerships itself is non existent. 

If I sell a V-STR for $320.000, I pay $16.000 tax, I make about $15-20.000 profit. You want to increase that? To what, 10%? That I pay $32.000 tax? People already complain that I have high-prices, what do you want me to do? You either A.) Bully me out of the car industry because it's literally not going to be worth it anymore or B.) You'll force me to drop my standards by a lot, reduce my time I RP with people and start dealing in cheaper vehicles to get my sales figures up. 
 

 

11 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Unrestrict the dealership leases, and give players more freedom in requesting locations not previously considered.


I colored what part of your point made I agree with and what part I disagree with. of course I'm all up for increasing standards within dealerships but giving out dealerships to people a lot more freely is just simply not the way to go. It's not an opinion, it's a fact. It's been shown over the last 1-2 years. I have witnessed it myself and I'm sure you did too. In an utopia of course you would want a lot more dealerships with great roleplayers as owners but I'm afraid it just doesn't work like that. If it was the case? Sure, I would be for it but you will just (100%) introduce more bad dealerships and it's just not going to do any good. 

With the sales tax, again; Reconsider who you would be really punishing here and what sort of behavior would be more beneficial to adapt to the higher sales tax. 



If you want me to make a statement to this, of course I vouch towards being stricter on dealerships, car flippers and that PM rules in general are more enforced. I also do agree with the points made by @Cypher99 and @Hawken/Moscropp

However please do think about what sort of consequences some of the suggestions could have here, it would literally affect anyone and in my humble opinion; Not for the better. 
 

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49 minutes ago, Cross125 said:

However please do think about what sort of consequences some of the suggestions could have here, it would literally affect anyone and in my humble opinion; Not for the better. 

 

Honestly I think you misinterpreted what I said, because I don't see anything I disagree with or what clashes really with what I wrote.

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One of the problems is that cars are one of the few items in the economy that have a more or less stable price, and that realistically only become better after you've bought them. Anyone can go to any dealership right now and buy a car, upgrade it and flip it, and there's an infinite amount of cars because they're script goods with a set price.

 

In real life, any car you bring out of the dealership has their price instantly slashed in half the moment you've acquired ownership, just due to the fact that they are not new anymore. Cars in real life also suffer permanent damage, and their parts begin to fail and generally their market value depreciates. This is not the case in GTAW because very few people RP having mechanical troubles, and 99% of people don't RP getting their car repaired when they suffer an accident.

 

Buying a new car really is just objectively worse than buying an upgraded car, the majority of the time, for no real reason. Unless you have a particularly unwanted vehicle, you'll never really lose your initial money, other than the registration cost in some cases.

 

The fact that you're allowed to sell a car for equal or more than the price of the same car but new with 0 miles on it is ludicrous from an RP perspective, to be quite honest, and I'd only understand it if particular cars only had a certain monthly stock in script dealerships (particularly high-end ones). Putting this into effect though would only create another market of rich flippers buying all the stock of one car and controlling the supply anyway, so it's not even something that might help things.

 

At this point I do think that there needs to be some ruling on the pricing of cars, things like mileage really play no part and right now cars are one of the only investments that will stay consistent because they're backed up by server prices.

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15 hours ago, Koko said:

One of the problems is that cars are one of the few items in the economy that have a more or less stable price, and that realistically only become better after you've bought them. Anyone can go to any dealership right now and buy a car, upgrade it and flip it, and there's an infinite amount of cars because they're script goods with a set price.

 

In real life, any car you bring out of the dealership has their price instantly slashed in half the moment you've acquired ownership, just due to the fact that they are not new anymore. Cars in real life also suffer permanent damage, and their parts begin to fail and generally their market value depreciates. This is not the case in GTAW because very few people RP having mechanical troubles, and 99% of people don't RP getting their car repaired when they suffer an accident.

 

Buying a new car really is just objectively worse than buying an upgraded car, the majority of the time, for no real reason. Unless you have a particularly unwanted vehicle, you'll never really lose your initial money, other than the registration cost in some cases.

 

The fact that you're allowed to sell a car for equal or more than the price of the same car but new with 0 miles on it is ludicrous from an RP perspective, to be quite honest, and I'd only understand it if particular cars only had a certain monthly stock in script dealerships (particularly high-end ones). Putting this into effect though would only create another market of rich flippers buying all the stock of one car and controlling the supply anyway, so it's not even something that might help things.

 

At this point I do think that there needs to be some ruling on the pricing of cars, things like mileage really play no part and right now cars are one of the only investments that will stay consistent because they're backed up by server prices.

 

I don't think that's the case at all. It's actually quite similar on GTA World - if you buy a car for, say, $100k, it greatly loses value. No one will buy it from you if you ask too much. If you fully upgrade it, put every single feature on it etc., then you can probably get around the price of a brand new one, but that's after you've spent $100k more on it. It's realistic, in our own way. There are factors that matter when buying a vehicle and they're very different in-game from a real life transaction, but that's completely fine - it's realistic within our own little bubble.

 

However, I would like to see dealerships having a stock that's either OOC or that depends on delieveries done to them. 

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I just wanna say that I don't really have the desire to sit here and spend a hour replying, but that post from @Cross125has some things that I know for a fact are directed at me and said out of pure ignorance. Never once have I spoken to you IC or OOCLY so any information you have about me or my character is through 3rd parties. I detest some of the things said and wish people would have all the facts priors to bringing in other people. Anonymous or not. It's not appreciated.

Edited by Devastante
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