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How do you RP the economy?


Busch

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11 hours ago, Red Reika said:

But I have another suggestion to this big dilema of money being OOC but at the same time IC: Why not simply reduce the general income, paychecks and the starting money down to a more generally realistic amount, and at the same time, consider the money and assets everyone have completely IC from that point on?

The problem I see is that people earn far too much money for low end jobs, and that creates a situation where a grocery store clerk will have the bank account equal the owner of the said store. On one hand, the person roleplaying the clerk legitimately earned that money, and it should be considered IC for them to have it and spend on the assets they want. On the other hand, it makes almost no sense for the same said clerk to realistically have that much money in the end of the day.


Because that completely screw over anyone who doesn't want to play a low class citizen.

This isn't an RPG, you don't start as a level 1 trucker and level your way to lvl 50 lawyer. If my character concept is a middle class guy it makes no sense for him to work gas stations and drive a 500$ BMX for months. It's just an OOC barrier because of the economy not allowing me to play what I want.


If we are all in agreement that money is an OOC tool to set your RP up, then it's nonsensical not to give players A LOT MORE than we currently do.

Edited by arandomgamer
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The amount of illegal roleplayers that depend on the starter 200k paychecks, because the drug and firearm market is in shambles, is insane.  I've always seen this money as a way to REDUCE grind and let people make new characters and get straight into role playing without having to worry about grinding enough money for a shitty car. I'm not forced to go fishing or trucking just so I can somewhat comfortably roleplay a character that has nothing to do with fishing or trucking. People that grind jobs will grind jobs with or without the starter paycheck. I fail to see how that has any link to people riding in cars worth 300k yet they work as a cashier.

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6 hours ago, Mahiko said:

The new banking system is going to force people to register themselves as companies if they flip properties, and that could potentially open to legislation and taxing of it. There is everything wrong with flipping properties as 90% Of people do it with 0 Effort and thats wrong.

Additional taxes have never resulted in a price decrease.

 

Never mind we've been in a similar situation before - I know the entire subforum disappeared after it failed, but let's not forget what happened when we introduced the idea of a middleman gatekeeping the construction of new businesses. It was a matter of a few weeks before the execrable Bango Banks was able to buy a high end garage to house his twelve Pariahs in exchange for a bunch of guys AFKing around a business for 30 minutes.

 

Gatekeeping every property sale behind a realty company is going to be so much worse than that.

 

The people flipping the houses aren't really the problem - it's the hyperinflated economy and relative lack of housing that's the problem.

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4 hours ago, Smilesville said:

Additional taxes have never resulted in a price decrease.

 

Never mind we've been in a similar situation before - I know the entire subforum disappeared after it failed, but let's not forget what happened when we introduced the idea of a middleman gatekeeping the construction of new businesses. It was a matter of a few weeks before the execrable Bango Banks was able to buy a high end garage to house his twelve Pariahs in exchange for a bunch of guys AFKing around a business for 30 minutes.

 

Gatekeeping every property sale behind a realty company is going to be so much worse than that.

 

The people flipping the houses aren't really the problem - it's the hyperinflated economy and relative lack of housing that's the problem.

I'm far from suggesting gate keeping, I'm suggesting that people who constantly flip houses without having any realistic reason to should be booked for tax evasion, and that I personally hate gate keeping, and already see it plenty in illegal RP with the various 'serial jobs' and 'Electronics importer'. One of our main issues in the economy is that people without much realism or thought behind it can buy stuff and flip it a week after for a huge profit without being penalized for it, and if they hide it well enough from PM it doesn't get them in trouble either.

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Without having read previous replies, cause who has time to read through 11 pages of replies.

 

I just RP the money/economy in a way that makes sense for my character even though I have several hundred grand in the bank, doesn't mean that I would realistically have it and only use it when it would make sense for my characters to own something.

As being an legal roleplayer for majority of my time on the server, I'm not gonna have a million in my bank or w/e. If you're active enough, you get more money than you know what to do with, not that it's bad as it can help to actually get your character with proper assets that make sense.

I'm not gonna RP that a basic Mustang GT (Dominator GTX) that is one of the more common sport car you will find on the streets of an populous American city, as that just doesn't make sense. Same thing for many other things, like simple houses costing more than half a million to a million or trailers costing several hundred grand.

It's just the unfortunate effect that the server population is higher than housing is in the game itself and so that's where I will use the money if it seems to make sense for the character.

 

Just because I have the physical money to buy an Carbonizzare, doesn't mean it makes sense for my character to own nor even be able to maintain it. Some people may not know this, but cars irl require regular maintenance and things can regularly break for a car and the more expensive / exotic car you have, the higher that cost goes. Just a shame it isn't represented IG properly.

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19 hours ago, Mahiko said:

I'm far from suggesting gate keeping, I'm suggesting that people who constantly flip houses without having any realistic reason to should be booked for tax evasion, and that I personally hate gate keeping, and already see it plenty in illegal RP with the various 'serial jobs' and 'Electronics importer'. One of our main issues in the economy is that people without much realism or thought behind it can buy stuff and flip it a week after for a huge profit without being penalized for it, and if they hide it well enough from PM it doesn't get them in trouble either.

Gatekeeping is the only possible end result of bringing in realty companies - and like construction work, the incentive is there to charge massive markups for permitting people to do what they're used to doing on their own. Nobody endorses gatekeeping, but we have to consider the broadest possible implications of these various systems typically implemented in piecemeal fashion. That's what got us into this mess to begin with.

 

I know what you're going for with the tax angle, but the fact of the matter is that a tax on a sale doesn't make a seller say "gee, guess I'll just take the hit to my projected profits." Especially for something with as high a demand as housing in GTAW - the taxes are invariably passed down to the buyer, which only worsens the problem. For every buyer who's not willing to pay the X% tax hike on a property, there's ten more waiting in the wings who'll just grind a little more to make up the difference.

 

But the economic problem runs far deeper than just the people who grind out cash. Like I mentioned earlier, you can structure the server in such a way that even if an individual's decision making is unrealistically oriented towards grinding, you still get a net benefit for immersion (like trucking.)

 

The problem is that individuals who focus entirely on mechanics have an outsized advantage. As I mentioned elsewhere, you can work on creating a detailed and immersive business concept and run that through the staff wringer, or you can just buy the building. You can craft a compelling and realistic gang narrative, or you can chain rob guns and make sure you have more players than the other guys. You can roleplay the cycle of gambling addiction and the loss that comes along with it, or you can bring $500k to a low stakes poker game and clean everyone out by sheer betting power.

 

We can't fix this without using roleplay as a quasi-currency all its own, radically reshaping how the economy works, or both.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh. Two years ago we were voicing our concerns that too much money was being generated by the script without properly circulating back into the wider economy and that the power of wealth was being eroded.

 

Much of what I said back then still remains true: the economy is stagnant and the lack of market forces to encourage circulation will continue to negatively impact the value of a dollar. That much is basic economics.

 

On to the topic of how you roleplay the economy, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it ultimately doesn't matter. As long as the purchasing power of the dollar is consistent across all markets then the rest is down to suspension of disbelief - something you actively do every time you log on and play the role of a character distinct from your real-life persona. What matters is the relative scale of values between products

 

There's also talk of taxation / financial auditing being put in place to autonomously rectify the kind of weird economic fluctuations you can expect from serial (see: poorly roleplayed) house-flippers and OOCly greedy price gougers... but the actually effectiveness of it will take some time to be determined.

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I just RP Los Santos as being a hyper socialist dystopia where the government owns most property and leases it out/forces individual citizens to apply for the right to "own" said property and the primary means of income for everyone on the island is stimulus checks provided by said government. Essentially, Los Santos is a complete welfare state. Even being paid at businesses isn't technically being paid by the managers money, as that money comes directly from the government through business stimulus. This would explain the horrific inflation and also explain some of the crime, as criminals are literally given free money with no incentive to actually work (one of the main drawbacks of welfare check abuse worldwide).

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