how and why are there so many rich people

[Mahitto]

14 hours ago, Amellis said:

To be honest, the problem isn't the economy... It's the player's mindset.

While I have two characters with enough money to (realistically) live comfortably for the rest of their lives, I don't RP as such, simply because I get the money wheter I want it or not. They're just average, there are times where I don't care about losing a bit of money or taking a bad deal thanks to this, but for the vast majority of expenses, I take them as any middle-class person would.

Giving us more expenses will do nothing but encourage grinding and force people to do boring script jobs they might not want to make, and for the illegal side, it's likely to bring back the slowly declining petty crime with sub-par RP where only the thieves abusing the rules have fun.

 

If you want to roleplay a bartender who barely covers the bills... I'm sorry to say, you'll have to force that to happen because you'll be making way more money than such a character would... The same goes for a store clerk. Script jobs are the lowest of the low, yet one of the fastest ways to earn cash (if we put aside home / vehicle flipping).

 

 

...it's not hard to make at all. Please do it, it's fun to RP with average Joe(s) 🙂

 

I'd actually say it's both. The mindset of such players is 100% at fault - if someone wants to only play and grind for money, cars and stuff, they will. The economy is also at fault and should be thoroughly looked into, though - we can have a gentle shift towards a closed economy, which would mean controlled inflation and, in time, achieving more realistic prices which, in turn, will calibrate the salaries of bartenders and store clerks in regards to all sorts of goods. 

 

7 hours ago, pateuvasiliu said:

A 70,000$ car is pretty low range on GTAW though. Our car prices are out of control. Those 70,000$ aren't real life dollars. In real life you don't pay 60$ for a soda.

 

We can't really compare the real-life economy to our own little universe, though, as much as we're trying to. The truth is that if we're aiming for realistic prices for most goods, you'll need much lower salaries that are paid at way longer intervals. The reason why you can buy a phone for $800 and a soda for $2 in real life is, among others, because you're working 30 days for $3,000. If you were to make that much money in an hour, inflation would go cray-cray and the prices would be much, much higher, until the economy would crash.

 

It's a trade-off we have to make on GTA World. More money in shorter time means less grinding, easier to buy houses, cars and businesses, but also unrealistic prices for everything else. Realistic prices for most stuff means you'd have to make little money in a lot of time and you'd end up working eight hours a day for five years in order to afford to buy a house, like in real life.

 

In real life, you're working 8 hours a day, five days a week, all year round. In GTA World, you're maybe working 1-2 hours a day, whenever you want to. You can't really find a way to have a realistic economy.

[Amellis]

1 hour ago, Mahitto said:

 

I'd actually say it's both. The mindset of such players is 100% at fault - if someone wants to only play and grind for money, cars and stuff, they will. The economy is also at fault and should be thoroughly looked into, though - we can have a gentle shift towards a closed economy, which would mean controlled inflation and, in time, achieving more realistic prices which, in turn, will calibrate the salaries of bartenders and store clerks in regards to all sorts of goods. 

 

If we go full closed economy, there would be Sooo many players unable to RP what they want simply because of that bunch who want to be extremely rich and hoard millions only for the sake of seeing a big number on screen. It's the problem that exists IRL and thankfully we can easily avoid it here. Greed will always exist, nobody can prevent that.

[pateuvasiliu]

3 hours ago, Mahitto said:

In real life, you're working 8 hours a day, five days a week, all year round. In GTA World, you're maybe working 1-2 hours a day, whenever you want to. You can't really find a way to have a realistic economy.

I am working 8 hours a day on GTAW too. I'm just not doing that actively/onscreen. No one wants to RP a crappy job for 8 hours. But the character still does the work and gets that money.

 

And with that being said, 70,000$ for some cars we have is ridiculous.

Edited October 25, 2021 by pateuvasiliu

[Mahitto]

9 minutes ago, pateuvasiliu said:

I am working 8 hours a day on GTAW too. I'm just not doing that actively/onscreen. No one wants to RP a crappy job for 8 hours. But the character still does the work and gets that money.

 

And with that being said, 70,000$ for some cars we have is ridiculous.

 

For sure, but we're never going to be able to have a 1:1 ratio when it comes to prices. Even if your character is indeed working 8 hours a day, that is not the issue when it comes to wealth distribution and item pricing - they don't get paid $2,000 - $3,000 a month, they get paid more than that for every hour of role-playing. The only way we'll be able to have realistic prices for most items is if we're fine with handing out small, monthly salaries and having people be fine with working for (real) years in order to purchase vehicles and homes.

 

I'd go as far as saying that we should simply stop using the dollar as the in-game currency, as it only confuses everyone. We shouldn't compare our prices with their real-life counterparts since we'll never be able to imitate that aspect of the economy.

 

1 hour ago, Amellis said:

 

If we go full closed economy, there would be Sooo many players unable to RP what they want simply because of that bunch who want to be extremely rich and hoard millions only for the sake of seeing a big number on screen. It's the problem that exists IRL and thankfully we can easily avoid it here. Greed will always exist, nobody can prevent that.

 

I'm sure something can be implemented to prevent that from happening. Off the top of my head, a progressive tax system (like the one we have in real life) - this would prevent people from hoarding money unless they invest it or are actively earning. If you have 10 million dollars and pay a 37% monthly tax on it, unless you can somehow keep your wealth, you won't be able to hoard money. Also, a fixed tax that's deducted from everyone's bank accounts, every hour of the day, that would be insignificant for active players but within, say, 3 months, would empty the accounts of people who went inactive. That way there will be no money sink because of inactive accounts. It's definitely possible.

[lunacine]

On 10/24/2021 at 4:41 AM, Topinambour said:

While it doesn't follow an RL curve, it was quite a surprise to see that not everyone (far from it) wanted to play a hyper rich manson bro

 

 

Yeah, like seriously. If you, up front, give players a choice on what they want to make, they will make a whole VARIETY of characters with which to spice up the server, because then the process of making an alt to check out a different sub-community or faction and getting them situated within the world as they would REALISTICALLY exist (not as a fresh-off-the-plane immigrant to the city with no money to their name, which every character currently starts as, and a good amount of players use this sort of "immigrant" introduction in their backstories) would be a lot easier to manage. I don't want to drive around in a 2003 Prius rental for an awkward first 20 hours, I want to drive around in my character's granddad's pickup truck from the 80's (just an example). That's what my character SHOULD be able to own off the bat when I create them. But that's just my take.

Edited October 25, 2021 by lunacine

[Devastante]

13 hours ago, Mahitto said:

And with that being said, 70,000$ for some cars we have is ridiculous.

Don't mean to derail the thread. But this is so true. I guess my example was poor. 

[mj2002]

On 10/24/2021 at 7:04 PM, Amellis said:

To be honest, the problem isn't the economy... It's the player's mindset.

 

It's both, since they are linked. As much as one can have an idealistic approach and assume that everything can be left to players to decide because its all about roleplay, this is naive. At present, there are plenty of limits in the ways in which wealth and property can be obtained. For certain aspects, this works well, in other aspects, it doesn't work so well. It is still present, and therefor we should be open to looking into what is possible to adjust there.

 

There is currently a balance, and it is weird to take the default position that the current balance is in the best place it can be.

[PrinceCane]

I normally see the cash amount on my top right screen as the currency that’ll help shape my roleplay whether im in a gang, OCG, or just a person living in a low income neighborhood.

[latenight]

Some people grind all day long and It's totally fine in my opinion. Everyone has a different mindset, some people really like to open up a bar, have relationships, get married and roleplay stuff like that. I personally  roleplay for more than a damn decade and never bought a super-car or a 3 story house but that's just me. I don't really care If I have a million or 2k in my bank account, I'll still try to portray a realistic character. However, If you have free time and none of your friends are online, I think grinding is absolutely fine.

Some people gonna try to be rich, some people gonna try to rob people. And also It's the rich people who don't give a shit about money, they tip the bartenders, they tip the taxi drivers, they tip YOU when you try to sell them drugs, or It's THEIR car you're trying to break in and chop. 

 

I think everybody should be way richer so they can portray their characters more realistically without stockpiling. Because lacking money and assets make you more vulnerable and hostile in conflicts. People /q because they don't want to lose their one and only glock. People start cussing in /b because they don't want their 100grams of coke stolen. But If they were rich enough, they wouldn't give a shit, they'd just RP and go on with their day.

 

Look at cops. You can shoot them, hit them with your car 150 times, rob them, whatever you want but they STILL keep on rping, because at the end of the day they lose almost nothing. They know it in their hearts so they don't give a shit. You can kidnap a fucking SWAT team leader by yourself with a knife and he still keeps on roleplaying, please try to kidnap a leader of a rival gang with 8 people armed with shotguns and tell me how much time It takes for that homie to answer a single /do.....

 

I think money is a must-have and richer the people get, It gets easier for them to lose in RP situations. Being rich balances the roleplay quality very well, and also we all know that If you pull up to a hood with a bugatti and try to join them, nobody would like you to be around. You don't say that you have 800k in your bank account to your OG or mob boss. It's a really good unspoken rule between the community for years.

[meself]

the abovementioned is a nice read
rich people who can conceal that money and dont use it ic are totally fine

really enjoy TS nickname on that one btw

Edited October 28, 2021 by meself