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how and why are there so many rich people


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6 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

 

You are on the right track, but this goes the other way around as well. Every month, hundreds of millions are magically pulled out of the economy as well, by characters being deleted, and accounts going inactive. The problems are;

 

  1. The (im)balance between these two, which is currently unknown.
  2. Active players taking money from this balance
  3. Not having enough money sinks present to counterbalance number 2

 

 

You're right on the solutions though.

 

Reduce generated money;

$175.000 instead of $200.000

$500 instead of $800 (unemployment)

 

Tax existing money;

Double the existing 0.0001% wealth tax

 

Dw, i got a solution in the works which will provide quite a healthy money sink for people. Hopefully it'll be revealed soon. 

 

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5 minutes ago, Mecovy said:

Dw, i got a solution in the works which will provide quite a healthy money sink for people. Hopefully it'll be revealed soon. 

 

Money sinking alone doesn't do the trick except for the immersion of those who think they have too much money for their characters.

As mj and Alyssa point out correctly there's various sources of money influx that are treated completely separately from each other in the game design (Money as resource to rp rather than as currency justifies any ridiculous detachement from our ingame reality, in question).

 

Needless to point out further, when we want to evaluate economy the question is not how much money people have stacked up in their piggy banks to eventually never use as they got most their character really needs, but how much of the currency goes around, as this then defines potential prices and wages on the "free" market.

Here obviously people's saved up banks do not have as much of an effect (unless they'd spend all their money).

 

Thus, trying to improve the overall economic experience by trying to create artificial money sinks for those people who first hand bother to funnel more money than they need their character's way, sounds incredibly niche (mj, correct me if 50% of characters actually are millionaires by bank but somehow I doubt that), and at best not harmful to the experience of people who did not spend years here saving up money they never needed ic, but have concepts to simulate an (inflation cleaned adequatly high) lifestyle cost where one has to take cuts if the cashflow stops (and unlike in real life free 500 dollar the hour do not let you act rich easily).

 

33 minutes ago, mj2002 said:

Reduce generated money;

$175.000 instead of $200.000

$500 instead of $800 (unemployment)

This however is also not a solution I think as good, for the obvious reasons that while some people might over- or abuse new character funds, this is not the clientel for whom we should tailor our metagame (rather enforce stricter character rules here to not let people repeatedly use free 200k for the same concept and blow it up within a few weeks).

 

As you said yourself on discord the other week, new characters apparently do not just buy script cars and apartments from their cash while waiting for it to pile up, they also use this money to spend it on stuff and get in on the roleplay rather than to just handle base logistics only.

Might just be me but in theory that's a good thing, problematic it only gets when players create new characters in fast succession as this artificially fuels the money creation (when the basic concept is that you should play a few week's time with the starter money, not stay logged in 2 days and then spend it after afking)

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Any attempts at "money-sinks" have to realize the money driving inflation isn't equitably distributed. The goal should be to push more of the server to a "middle class" rather than make new players/characters an OOC ordeal to "set up" with the basics. Non "luxury" apartments and cars shouldn't be difficult to achieve and it benefits the server as a whole to make it so the majority of its players can adequately RP/represent their character. Mass quantities of firearms/drugs, vehicles, multiple properties - or large-scale luxury properties - should be harder to obtain and should have enough upkeep that car/house "collections" are less feasible.

 

Its pretty obvious (to me) that $495 paycheques and a starter 200k over 40 hours aren't the driving issues of the economy. Also RP servers that exclusively cater to those without RL obligations become stagnant with unpleasant communities quite quickly. Obsessing over what new players start with or what someone can eke out via $500 paycheques (a whopping 12k a day if you literally log in for 24hrs) is, to me, a complete waste of time and has a video-gameish grind mentality rather than a roleplay one.

 

Ultimately the excess of wealth is only really an issue around two things

1) Limited resources (ie property). You can fight inflation to fix this, but you can also try and add more of the resource. While the server should do both, you're probably going to have more success by adding in more apartments. At least then the inflation of stand-alone houses mirrors the real world hell of the modern housing market on the West Coast.

 

2) Poor portrayal of wealth; You can make it really hard to be rich, and hard to stay rich, and you're still going to have someone do a bad job of roleplaying rich. Script limitations in of themselves aren't going to make people RP better. Rather than trying to create byzantine solutions via the economy to this, you should just live and let live unless someones portayal is so bad it undermines RP; in which case that's what the administration is there for, to regulate shit RP. You can't fix an OOC problem (bad roleplaying) via script means.

 

 

Ultimately you won't ever create a realistic economy because the differences between a game-economy and RL one are vast. The economy doesn't matter that much unless people can't get things they should justifiably be able to get (basic houses, cars, the ability to buy modest amounts of whatever facilitates their roleplay).

 

 

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55 minutes ago, verrevert said:

There needs to be a cost for hoarding money - that's the main issue. Plus, there should be less trying to emulate real world fiscal policy, and implement "gaming" solutions (e.g. legal/illegal auction houses that take % cut, state lottery, scaling taxes etc.)

 

 

 

There's absolutely no need to create an artificial cost for "hoarding money". Hoarding money is not even a problem, imagine having a lot of money right? What in the world are you supposed to spend it on? If you purchase fancy cars you'll be seen as a mallrat and possibly be reported to RPQM. Purchasing businesses isn't for everyone, and even if it is they're not that expensive and it's an investment you'll likely make back considering how much some businesses make. So the actual fancy number in the top right of your screen is not a problem.

 

The problem is bad portrayal, the problem is people roleplaying rich but actually not roleplaying any kind of personality. They think their rich perfect character is enough because they don't use  said character for the purpose of creating a story driven experience for themselves and the people they interact with. They use the server as some kind of social hub, escaping reality and being everything they wish they were in real life by driving fancy cars, owning fancy houses, and having girlfriends who are photo models, security guards and club managers at the same time.

 

Roleplaying rich is completely okay, but you rarely see a "rich character" feel awkward or uncomfortable having that much money. Refusing to tell others how much they have to avoid making them feel bad. Purposely owning a mid-range car so they don't look like rich snobs when they go to places. Perhaps even characters who refuse to show off their wealth to avoid gold diggers. 

 

Creating taxes because people have money is basically just extremely silly because there are plenty of people who have a lot of it, but don't roleplay having it because they wish to roleplay homeless for instance. They're not going to /charity all their money away. It's going to sit in their banks and they won't touch it until they switch to a character that could potentially use it. Indirectly punishing those that do this is not the way to go. I think the server is already on the right track with the way they combat the rich portrayal issue. For instance, by denying people house requests for unrealistic assets or denying them other fancy things due to their poorly portrayed wealth or character. 

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Maybe for criminals who earn a ton of money cause it's fairly easy to do so, when they're aressted take a chunk of wealth in their assets can't be proven with legally made money like irl. Put items on 'hold' such as vehicles until things can be investigated further. (Not sure if this is in place.) Fines and bills to pay from the process to.

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46 minutes ago, Shaun said:

Maybe for criminals who earn a ton of money cause it's fairly easy to do so, when they're aressted take a chunk of wealth in their assets can't be proven with legally made money like irl. Put items on 'hold' such as vehicles until things can be investigated further. (Not sure if this is in place.) Fines and bills to pay from the process to.

Most criminals don't earn a lot of money. Most crimes are for RP purposes rather than for easy income. In the process, the high-risk crimes are not "easy to do" as it can easily lead to imprisonment, which then escalates to life imprisonment if one exceeds 30 points. Business owners are the ones earning a lot of money.

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6 hours ago, orangejuice said:

crime pays

For lawyers mostly, if we take a closer look at most economic factors.

Pushing dope at the corner isn't quite as profitable as legally selling beer.

Safe to assume most people involved in it deal solely for the roleplay and not because of the peanuts they can skim aside in this system.

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Add in a hunger and thirst system. (2 times every 12 hours. Don't eat? Enjoy getting randomly ragdolled. Money sink.)
Add in a wealth tax, which is then used to pay government wages. (Money sink)
Add in proper medical bills, that are extremely high. (Money sink)
Increase vehicle costs to reflect the current state of the economy. (Money sink)

Many things can be added / changed to balance out the economy.
 

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