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What is the deal with property trading?


Slamdance

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15 hours ago, maramizo said:
  1. Reduce the starter paychecks. (Disagree, server's already too inflated. New players would suffer. Maybe add the option for players to not get the paychecks, for a permanently increased unemployment check.)

The server's economy is inflating, though fairly slowly, primarily and largely due to new player checks. These introduce, by far, the most new money to the server every day. Other sources do not really compare in size. Reducing new player checks is something that should be considered.

 

At first glance, my idea would be to reduce new player checks from $200.000 to $175.000. This change will not dissuade new characters from playing on the server. You can still afford a car and a residence with this, but the car might have to be a little cheaper, and the apartment a little cheaper as well. Apartments in those price ranges remain available at this time, so overall this should be not be a problematic side effect.

 

$25.000 less, for a single character is not that dramatic, especially when the reduction is spread out over 40 hours.

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13 hours ago, Smilesville said:

While in theory this might work, we need to fiddle with the concept in practice to produce results.

 

Heavy taxation alone will ensure only the people who grind out script cash have access to these things. This already hurts business quality and turns the profit motive against where we ideally want players focused (why would you take a risk if a bar works as well as anything will?) At that rate, the only people left on the server will be the people who grind.

 

The way I see it, the solution is switching from assessing liquid assets to assessing cash flow in determining whether someone can purchase a property or not instead of hard cash (<1% of buyers purchase a house outright with cash in real life, I guarantee you this.) So instead of putting $200,000 up front for the house, it will work like the old rental system did - costing $500 per paycheck. "Selling" that house will earn you nothing but that cash flow back; couple that with more storage units and the like on the server, and you'll see housing get back to normal in short order.

 

Best of all? This is how a mortgage works anyways,

 

In this way, we effectively provide incentives to get rid of housing you're not using in the form of:

 

  • No appreciable return on real estate investment.
  • An alternative, cheaper item storage in the form of storage units.
  • A siphon on passive cash flow.
     

Introduce the storage units, then give people a month of notice before the update goes live. I guarantee the housing market will start moving again.

 

I think you point out the issue well, but your own solution doesn't address it. The people with the best cash flow figures are still the people that grind, and they would still blow everyone else away.

 

44 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

The server's economy is inflating, though fairly slowly, primarily and largely due to new player checks. These introduce, by far, the most new money to the server every day. Other sources do not really compare in size. Reducing new player checks is something that should be considered.

 

At first glance, my idea would be to reduce new player checks from $200.000 to $175.000. This change will not dissuade new characters from playing on the server. You can still afford a car and a residence with this, but the car might have to be a little cheaper, and the apartment a little cheaper as well. Apartments in those price ranges remain available at this time, so overall this should be not be a problematic side effect.

 

$25.000 less, for a single character is not that dramatic, especially when the reduction is spread out over 40 hours.

The question is; what sort of assets should new players be able to buy, and how long should it take them to buy them.

 

We'd need statistical insight here: how long does an average player play per day? How quickly do they hit 40, 80 and 100 hours? Maybe we should spread out the paycheck over 100 hours, dissuading new players from overspending and overinflating, giving them the chance to properly understand the server economy before they make bad decisions.

 

I still think the best approach here is to weigh out the starter paychecks based on initial age; teenagers get an initial 10k with no paychecks. 20 - 30 get 100k. 30 - 40 get 150k, 40+ get 200k.

 

I think, statistically speaking, the vast majority of players are underneath 30. I think I've met 5 people over 30 during my ~2000 hours of gameplay.

 

If we were to assume that 95% of players are underneath 30, then (hypothetically) 95% of new players will receive at least 100k less in paychecks, which, honestly? Makes more sense. 

 

They can still rent out or mortgage an apartment (both services are now readily available to players) and buy or mortgage a car (there's always the starter rental cars, too!).

 

All of these in combination make more sense to me than a simple 25k reduction, and would yield better results. 

 

I think the main priority right now is to reduce inflation as much as possible, so the real value of houses and businesses starts hovering closer to the monetary representation in sales.

 

 

Another thing to keep in mind is also the alternative for players. Want more money? Now you have to work for it. Players will start forming work relationships out of need, or quit. But those that continue will start meeting people, and will rejuvenate businesses, employment should, in theory, boom. More employees looking for jobs. More management positions become available. 

 

Let's compare this to what players do when they have money: simple purchases. The vast majority of players can't, let alone won't, invest into businesses and become entrepreneurs, so they don't create RP with the money they have. Instead? They often either end up (a) scammed out of their money, (b) overspending and causing meaningless inflation and (c) kicking up the money to some higher up in the faction, siphoning out their starter paychecks.

Edited by maramizo
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45 minutes ago, maramizo said:

I think you point out the issue well, but your own solution doesn't address it. The people with the best cash flow figures are still the people that grind, and they would still blow everyone else away.

So long as GTAW has so many RPG elements, they always will. Rather than fight that, we can manipulate passive cash flow and reduce the impact of liquid dollars on the ability to buy a property.

 

In other words, they can grind all they like, but it won't help them "buy" a property. Just like there's no benefit to house flipping since you're not receiving cash in return.

 

So long as properties have a price tag that can be paid in liquid assets, grinders will have the advantage. There's nowhere to go inside that framework.

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27 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

So long as GTAW has so many RPG elements, they always will. Rather than fight that, we can manipulate passive cash flow and reduce the impact of liquid dollars on the ability to buy a property.

 

In other words, they can grind all they like, but it won't help them "buy" a property. Just like there's no benefit to house flipping since you're not receiving cash in return.

 

So long as properties have a price tag that can be paid in liquid assets, grinders will have the advantage. There's nowhere to go inside that framework.

You're merely substituting liquid cash with cash flow, which grinders in turn will adapt to and hunt. The issue is the disconnection between the actual usage of the properties, and the capacity to get them. People can get properties without using them.  That's the problem.

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2 hours ago, mj2002 said:

The server's economy is inflating, though fairly slowly, primarily and largely due to new player checks. These introduce, by far, the most new money to the server every day. Other sources do not really compare in size. Reducing new player checks is something that should be considered.

 

At first glance, my idea would be to reduce new player checks from $200.000 to $175.000. This change will not dissuade new characters from playing on the server. You can still afford a car and a residence with this, but the car might have to be a little cheaper, and the apartment a little cheaper as well. Apartments in those price ranges remain available at this time, so overall this should be not be a problematic side effect.

 

$25.000 less, for a single character is not that dramatic, especially when the reduction is spread out over 40 hours.

I agree, I'd reduce it even more for new characters who aren't new players, let's say $150.000 or even $100.000 Experienced players know more RP ways to get money, and they even know other players they can start RPing with, without necesarily having an own residence.

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2 hours ago, maramizo said:

We'd need statistical insight here: how long does an average player play per day?

 

How quickly do they hit 40, 80 and 100 hours?

 

Characters created since the first of April that reached 40 hours (before the 1st of June) in 10 days on average, which is an average of 4 hours per day.

 

If you take all characters active since April, then the average character played for 48 hours, which is 0,8 hours per day on average. But this includes times before the character might have been created, or after it has been deleted, or characters never going past 40 hours in 2 months for any other reason. Leave out anything under 40 hours of play time in this period, and you end up with an average play time of 133 hours, which is about 2,2 hours per day on average.

 

 

Edited by mj2002
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47 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

 

Characters created since the first of April that reached 40 hours (before the 1st of June) in 10 days on average, which is an average of 4 hours per day.

 

If you take all characters active since April, then the average character played for 48 hours, which is 0,8 hours per day on average. But this includes times before the character might have been created, or after it has been deleted, or characters never going past 40 hours in 2 months for any other reason. Leave out anything under 40 hours of play time in this period, and you end up with an average play time of 133 hours, which is about 2,2 hours per day on average.

 

 

 

That being said, stretching out the hours would be a disaster. I already was concerned that some players are only incentivized by the paychecks. I think the best alternative would be the following, based on this information:

  1. Players are warned beforehand with a small cute text next to age selection that their paychecks will depend on their age, and are told how much they will be paid in total. This way, players know that the alternative is there. They can always make a new character if they want to get that money and roleplaying that freedom, while players that roleplay with specific factions (especially gangs!) do not add to the existing inflation erratically. The aim here is to discourage players that will play anyway from adding onto an inflation using money they shouldn't have, while keeping actual new players interested.
  2. Money should be spread out on the 40 hours, rather than cut down into a smaller amount. Given players tend to reduce their activity when their paychecks drop, keeping the hours spread out, with a reduced amount, should be the middle ground to keep the largest amount of players interested.

 

The questions to answer this problem would be:

  1. As a new player, would you be more likely to quit if you get 5,000 an hour then suddenly stop getting them, or if you get 2,500 an hour? 
  2. As a new player, are you less likely to play because you get 2,500 now instead of 5,000? What would you want to have, that would have kept you going?

The first, my answer would be 5,000, for sure. The drop in paychecks is scary for some, and that alone could do more harm than good and deincentivize people.

 

The second, my answer would be slightly less likely, given that the more money I have as a new player, the more powerful and secure I feel in investing effort into my character, but, given the current complexity and services available in the market, I think new players should still be able to get whatever properties they want, and that the money difference should not discourage new players.

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Most of the people that have over 1 million are not getting any other sort of income than the paychecks because their roleplay does not bring them income unless it is owning a business that's profitable or, or, or. In addition to that they don't get 600-800$ per paycheck but some even go in -56$ as an example and now add the taxes onto it, 20-30k/week just to hold onto that one house you have will just drain you until you have nothing which makes little sense. This only benefits the ones that are doing script jobs or "meta" jobs(Mapping gets you easy 100k in about 2 hours work) what about the others?

 

When taxes for car sales were introduced I stopped using the dealership and eventually put another person who would represent what you have asked for and guess what? The 200k Drafter you were buying went to 290k+ like many other cars, even I don't like that change but it's what you chose, there is no "We can work this out" but there is "Tax is cutting 20k from the price and owner is cutting 25% of my profit so.. no.". I also know that the cars for new players were introduced that cost $500, well at least 20% of the profits that car dealers were getting back in the day were from cheap cars (Price range: $15,000-$30,000). Completely ruined the RP aspect and profit ratio further. I don't say that car dealers nowadays don't make a ton of profit because they do but it's less(A LOT LESS) humane than it was before.

 

Wanna hear a story? It's probably a bit off topic but.

The other day I went to this dealership and wanted to trade in my Seminole Frontier for a Gallivanter Baller LE LWB, my car had performance upgrades and the Baller was fully upgraded with security. Baller MP price: $112,500 Seminole MP price:$65,000 and you know what the dealer said? He said give me the Seminole and $90,000. $90,000!!! I mean I know this guy and he knows me, he knows where my character is coming from and still went with it. This trade would've been 30-40k cheaper than it is now one year ago and it shows how bad it developed.

 

The real solution here is to release more houses so people have more variety to choose from. A reduction in how many properties you can own is just bad because if you want to change between properties you cannot, you cannot do that even now or you will have to first sell your property and live on the streets and then get into another which is bad enough.

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5 hours ago, verrevert said:

 

Price control does work because it prevents property from becoming ridiculously expensive considering the lack of purchasable goods. The lack of supply isn't because of prince control, but because of a hard-scripted limit on houses in terms of the GTA V map which is why you need to create a negative demand for owning a house (plus the restrictions on houses within certain areas which should be made unrestricted). The stagnation of the property market (which can be attributed to the price control) is why you introduce varying taxes on houses (I think property taxes should only apply to houses, not apartments - and on a hourly basis, people shouldn't be punished because they can only play a few hours a week), to create the negative demand to sell houses e.g. I cannot afford to pay the taxes on this house anymore, but I could in another area so I will sell.

 

And there is no inflation on this server. Does money transfer from the server pool to player pool everytime someone makes a new character? Yes, which should in theory cause monetary inflation and then price inflation, but we are in a closed economy within a scripted environment with no idea of how much money is going from the player pool to the server pool (i.e. 5 new players means a 25k increase per hour, but 500 players paying $100 tax would be 50k out). The only good which could be affected by inflation, like property, is correctly under price control.

Price controls don't work anyone with a basic understand of history and economics know this. Like that isn't a debate if you can't understand that I see no reason in trying to respond to the rest of your points. Like what happens if Nervous gave a million dollar to everyone on the server? Same thing that would happen IRL massive price inflation, shortages. There are economic laws you can't escape from even in a videogame economy.

Edited by Power
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3 hours ago, maramizo said:

You're merely substituting liquid cash with cash flow, which grinders in turn will adapt to and hunt. The issue is the disconnection between the actual usage of the properties, and the capacity to get them. People can get properties without using them.  That's the problem.

This. 100%.
 

Either more properties/apartments need to be added in order to reduce the  overall prices of properties, or restrictions need to be put in place which means players can only own one place of residency (excluding business ownership) on the server so that there’s enough houses available for everyone.

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