Limit or reduce new player checks per character slot

[Triple Seven]

Absolutely no support. It forces a grind that's prevented by the starter checks which also offer you some time and leeway in character customization and help you to just start playing and getting your character around. The real problem (inflation) is hard to counter, and yes the starter paychecks generate more money that goes into the economy, but I doubt it's as (for example) much as faction paychecks from PD, SD and even FD on a daily basis (maybe even the 4k/hr business scripts contribute more, but people need to be able to make money). While those are limited to 20 hours per week times whatever paycheck rank they have, put together it must be a whole lot of money. Besides, as it stands it will just put new characters on the back foot, the money isn't going to drain out of the economy anytime soon. It's basically a measure to force players, that have been around for a while (usually I hope a long while, considering the suggestion of multiple slots etc.) to no longer create a new character when their development is mostly done, but they don't want to abandon the character fully per se. A new character is then forced to be homeless, transportless and whatever else, which makes little sense.

 

A collective lowering of income across the board, factions, business scripts, etc. might be worth it, but it will only result in a (probably minor) effect over a long time because of the money already present.

[mj2002]

39 minutes ago, Triple Seven said:

Absolutely no support. It forces a grind that's prevented by the starter checks which also offer you some time and leeway in character customization and help you to just start playing and getting your character around. The real problem (inflation) is hard to counter, and yes the starter paychecks generate more money that goes into the economy, but I doubt it's as (for example) much as faction paychecks from PD, SD and even FD on a daily basis (maybe even the 4k/hr business scripts contribute more, but people need to be able to make money). While those are limited to 20 hours per week times whatever paycheck rank they have, put together it must be a whole lot of money. Besides, as it stands it will just put new characters on the back foot, the money isn't going to drain out of the economy anytime soon. It's basically a measure to force players, that have been around for a while (usually I hope a long while, considering the suggestion of multiple slots etc.) to no longer create a new character when their development is mostly done, but they don't want to abandon the character fully per se. A new character is then forced to be homeless, transportless and whatever else, which makes little sense.

 

A collective lowering of income across the board, factions, business scripts, etc. might be worth it, but it will only result in a (probably minor) effect over a long time because of the money already present.

 

The prospect of the grind is what may incentivize people to not throw away their characters as easily. It will not put new characters on the back foot at all, unless that character is the 7th new character after 6 deletions.

 

As I stated multiple times before, faction/government pay checks represent a far smaller amount of money being generated than new player pay checks do.

 

As for money being drained from the economy, this happens every day, with millions at a time. Properties purchased from the server, cars bought new, players going inactive, crates bought from suppliers, money being charitied, insurance, sales tax, character customization, etc.

 

Ignore the title of the graph, the data is from May 2021.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by mj2002

[Triple Seven]

1 hour ago, mj2002 said:

 

The prospect of the grind is what may incentivize people to not throw away their characters as easily. It will not put new characters on the back foot at all, unless that character is the 7th new character after 6 deletions.

 

As I stated multiple times before, faction/government pay checks represent a far smaller amount of money being generated than new player pay checks do.

 

As for money being drained from the economy, this happens every day, with millions at a time. Properties purchased from the server, cars bought new, players going inactive, crates bought from suppliers, money being charitied, insurance, sales tax, character customization, etc.

 

Ignore the title of the graph, the data is from May 2021.

 

 

 

Okay, that's surprising to me. It shows the problem is either turn-over in number of players (how do we retain them if this is the case?) or people indeed not properly developing their characters (and may I just point to the ridiculous amount of CKs happening every day?). If we're talking throwaway characters, is there any source within what part of the community they reside in (is there data available for this?) In my experience, a lot of players with a civilian character, play their character for a year or more. I know for legal faction members this is also the case. I have no data to back this up. You're a retired staff member, do you still have data or can you get new data to look into this?

[verrevert]

It's definitely an issue with throwaway characters. If that data is correct, and if you assume the minimum (that of the $235,006,641 paid out, it went to characters that collected the entire $200,000) you get 1175 new characters minimum in the month of May 2021 which is crazy. It is more probable that it went to more characters as well.

[Paenymion]

How about just making it timer-based instead of a hard limit of characters?  Something like: per account, you only get the new player money once in a three month period.  It would perhaps turn off the money tap for people abusing it, but still allow the natural and legitimate deletion/creation of characters for people who don't want to pay for a NC and don't mind losing their assets when a character becomes boring  or didn't work out how they expected.  Once every three months seems like a respectable amount of time between characters to me (you can still make them quicker if you want, but you won't get starter money).

[knppel]

1 hour ago, Triple Seven said:

(and may I just point to the ridiculous amount of CKs happening every day?)

As hinted at before already, some people just go the easy way: quite frequently kill characters once they ran through the 200k (as it's enough for more than just a car and gun).

That's why namechanging a character with assets, or transferring them, is no such issue (effectively no new wealth is generated with activity on such a new character, left aside the unemployment or eventual faction paychecks).

 

3 hours ago, mj2002 said:

As I stated multiple times before, faction/government pay checks represent a far smaller amount of money being generated than new player pay checks do.

Just came to my mind:

It also makes way less for the contribution relative to other generated money, as every character, factionized or not, will constantly generate money (500/800 minus taxes) even when not pursuing any job.

 

This means faction paychecks' contribution has to be seen relative to standard contribution, and here the average Deputy or Firefighter gets that little bit more for their on duty hours, but ultimately the difference is much smaller (let's say 1250 per hour compared to the 800 most people take, that's 50% on top to what anyone gets and a few more).

 

In comparison to that stock fresh characters that are "efficiently" played will generate a whopping 5,800 dollar per hour of activity which is suddenly seven times as much!

 

Now while I cannot tell how many people actually make new characters repeatedly, the incentive definitely is there- while in certain jobs it will be possible in character to eventually raise to a higher income scale for anyone fairly easy, in others it simply isn't (for example dealing drugs, one of the most popular occupations in LS).

This isn't just due to the monetary value and prices of course, it also has to do with no one shooting you for being a clumsy bartender or taking your customers at a 24/7.

 

But unironically, making a new character allows to reflect a successfull whatever for a time (which leads back to the "Why are there so many rich people" topic: As I said there already, there aren't, many pretend to be richer than they are- and some do so using starter paychecks as that's easily accessible if one is willing to compromise and toss characters, and it's not rocket science to spot out that with 5,000/hour I will have an easier time pretending than with 800!).

Edited September 29, 2021 by knppel

[mj2002]

1 hour ago, Triple Seven said:

and may I just point to the ridiculous amount of CKs happening every day?

Keep in mind that this is relative to 200.000 - 300.000 hours of play time, in a month.

[liq]

This doesn't make much sense because character deletion instills deleting everything on the slot, thus relinquishing assets. I doubt someone is going to go through the hassle of making fake characters to transfer a little bit of cash through asset transfer requests all the time. The starting money is necessary to avoid RPG-esque grinding and ensure every single character can afford a car and (sometimes) a place and/or rent for a place. The proposed suggestion will only lead to people treating their assets more Out of Character than they treat them now.

[Triple Seven]

1 hour ago, mj2002 said:

Keep in mind that this is relative to 200.000 - 300.000 hours of play time, in a month.

 

Of course, but we don't even see it if people delete a character. CK's often lead to NC's I'd think.

 

Edit: It'd be interesting in what type of roleplay corners are cut by deleting and remaking, and more importantly, why that is done, then development can focus on fixing that.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Triple Seven

[Lucky Luciano]

8 hours ago, Triple Seven said:

Absolutely no support. It forces a grind that's prevented by the starter checks which also offer you some time and leeway in character customization and help you to just start playing and getting your character around. The real problem (inflation) is hard to counter, and yes the starter paychecks generate more money that goes into the economy, but I doubt it's as (for example) much as faction paychecks from PD, SD and even FD on a daily basis (maybe even the 4k/hr business scripts contribute more, but people need to be able to make money). While those are limited to 20 hours per week times whatever paycheck rank they have, put together it must be a whole lot of money. Besides, as it stands it will just put new characters on the back foot, the money isn't going to drain out of the economy anytime soon. It's basically a measure to force players, that have been around for a while (usually I hope a long while, considering the suggestion of multiple slots etc.) to no longer create a new character when their development is mostly done, but they don't want to abandon the character fully per se. A new character is then forced to be homeless, transportless and whatever else, which makes little sense.

 

A collective lowering of income across the board, factions, business scripts, etc. might be worth it, but it will only result in a (probably minor) effect over a long time because of the money already present.