Where are the truckers?

[Paenymion]

5 hours ago, Lindsie said:

Nobody should be paying 400 for deliveries, thats just way too much for the ammount of components it brings. Now both truckers and business owners are being punished for lousy system.

A gun store was offering $400 today.  But maybe the profit is easier when a gun sells for 8k while a cup of tea only sells for $150?  I'm not sure how many components are needed per item really.

[Supernova]

It is becoming more of a problem by the day, something has to be done about it!

[Chaozuo]

The market as it is makes sense, if you want your components filled quickly, you pay more, just like real life.

 

The issue lies with 

 

1. People grind, get there money and get out, cant blame them but employee turnover is high af in trucking.

 

2. The garages are taking a lot of crates, you sit and watch a trucking company deliver mindlessly without direction and all you'll see is garage runs. You cant blame garages but to put it into perspective for a garage to do $100,000 dollars of work they will end up needing 250 crates.

 

Out of that 100k if you assume they pay 300 a crate and dont do the mechanic work themselves, the owner (who pays the 50k a month lease) takes 5k if hes paying 20% commision to his workers.

 

Means a garage needs to do $1,000,000 worth of work in a month just for the owner to break even. This means that in order for a garage to break even, they'll end up needing 2500 crates delivered.

 

Seems marginal but thats 125 runs in a pounder per month per garage in order for the garages to stay afloat alone. Let alone profit. 4 pounder runs a day for the whole month just to get one garage to break even.

 

Long story short no matter what you do at the minute theres gonna be a shortage, if you decrease the amount of crates needed for garages then they will up there workload and increase crate demand to its current point just putting  more money into garages meaning more money for mechanics and less truck drivers, If you give truckers too much money then theyll all be fucking off and buying businesses a month in, if you pay a nominal paycheck to a truck driver youll have less drivers as some enjoy the grind aspect and the sense of earning as you go.

 

Fund the top end of the trucking companies more, allow them to make it worthwhile for drivers to stay and not just grind, get the idle companies back up and active and then just global reset crate demand charging businesses to fill them up to the top, and youll see the balance as it rises.

 

Also youll never stop it but having companies that are paying like 42k a week for a few hours work means that although the grind has gone, whos gonna do 20 deliveries in a benson vs 2 hrs of passive /me's.

 

In the meantime, Rp with trucking companies and theyll work with you, if you dont wanna RP with them then your always gonna be stuck in the same loop.

 

[ajacprime]

I'd like to see more people try and solve this one in game (at least in the short term). Simply put, demand is outstripping supply due to a labour shortage. Buyers are pushing prices up to retain a trickle of supply and most truckers are generally choosing the most lucrative path. Basic economics. 

 

This creates opportunity for organisations like the port authority, unions or small business alliances to lobby the state government for action due to the skills shortage.

The government faction could be funnelling people to these jobs via the following means.

- One time, progressive, performance related or time locked grants

- Paid vocational training programs with support from larger trucking companies

- Tax breaks and purchase incentives on commercial vehicles to promote sole trucking RP 

- Funding industry wide recruitment drives

 

I don't think any of these will solve the issue long term, but in the short term it might provide a little relief and some more engaging RP.

 

Long-term, I feel the below would be very helpful to promote more people to take up this type of RP, and hold their interest:

- We do need some kind of script rebalance for components so small goods businesses can survive. Perhaps different component prices for different good types.

 

- Yes free markets should exist in game, however the level of component price gouging and manipulation going on (eg. some business types jacking up component price to erode competition and gain a monopoly) is ridiculous and in the real world would be regulated heavily. Perhaps regulate the industry and set the per crate limit back to 250 flat for anything within 2-3 miles of the pickup point and anything further (eg. blaine county) can have the option to increase. 

 

- Redo how players unlock different trucks. It should be a license system with each delivery attributing points to said license. Eg, my light vehicle license (Van) requires me to get 25 points to apply for my next size vehicle licence. 

- 4,000 RP payment per hour and guaranteed 5 points on their truck license up to 100 deliveries. Then beyond that they get a minimum points per hour plus 4k and crate payments. This means new players don't have to grind as much to rank up, can still get paid to RP and later on get rewarded more if they invest time in the job. But they still have to complete a few deliveries every hour (so you can't just stand around and farm it). 

 

- Add some more trucking vehicles like the custom phantom or custom pounder. It'd be cool to see custom rigs with decals being driven around by solo truckers as opposed to the cookie cutter models we have. It also gives solo players something to aspire to and aim for - their own customized rig at higher license levels.

 

- Trucking UI QOL upgrades

 

 

[Mahitto]

5 minutes ago, ajacprime said:

I'd like to see more people try and solve this one in game (at least in the short term). Simply put, demand is outstripping supply due to a labour shortage. Buyers are pushing prices up to retain a trickle of supply and most truckers are generally choosing the most lucrative path. Basic economics. 

 

This creates opportunity for organisations like the port authority, unions or small business alliances to lobby the state government for action due to the skills shortage.

The government faction could be funnelling people to these jobs via the following means.

- One time, progressive, performance related or time locked grants

- Paid vocational training programs with support from larger trucking companies

- Tax breaks and purchase incentives on commercial vehicles to promote sole trucking RP 

- Funding industry wide recruitment drives

 

I don't think any of these will solve the issue long term, but in the short term it might provide a little relief and some more engaging RP.

 

Long-term, I feel the below would be very helpful to promote more people to take up this type of RP, and hold their interest:

- We do need some kind of script rebalance for components so small goods businesses can survive. Perhaps different component prices for different good types.

 

- Yes free markets should exist in game, however the level of component price gouging and manipulation going on (eg. some business types jacking up component price to erode competition and gain a monopoly) is ridiculous and in the real world would be regulated heavily. Perhaps regulate the industry and set the per crate limit back to 250 flat for anything within 2-3 miles of the pickup point and anything further (eg. blaine county) can have the option to increase. 

 

- Redo how players unlock different trucks. It should be a license system with each delivery attributing points to said license. Eg, my light vehicle license (Van) requires me to get 25 points to apply for my next size vehicle licence. 

- 4,000 RP payment per hour and guaranteed 5 points on their truck license up to 100 deliveries. Then beyond that they get a minimum points per hour plus 4k and crate payments. This means new players don't have to grind as much to rank up, can still get paid to RP and later on get rewarded more if they invest time in the job. But they still have to complete a few deliveries every hour (so you can't just stand around and farm it). 

 

- Add some more trucking vehicles like the custom phantom or custom pounder. It'd be cool to see custom rigs with decals being driven around by solo truckers as opposed to the cookie cutter models we have. It also gives solo players something to aspire to and aim for - their own customized rig at higher license levels.

 

- Trucking UI QOL upgrades

 

Except it's not basic economics. Unfortunately. There's a lot to say here, but pretty much... our in-character problems are 100%, completely, due to out-of-character problems. That's not something realistic, nor can it be changed through organic (fully IC) means.

 

We have a labor shortage. Why? Because people don't like to grind and because those who do make millions pretty fast and then quit. None of these can be taken ICly as they're not fixable. Companies have money to fund recruitment drives, they sometimes do, that's not the problem. We can't give people tax breaks because we don't have taxes. Grants are the last thing needed, even more money into grinding. Nor do they need trainings. But I do understand your point of view. The problem here is that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who portray truckers? 8 in, say, 10? They're not doing it for character development. They don't portray realistic truckers. The only reason they're into trucking is because they can grind it, and then they leave. There's no way to fix this.

 

We can't talk about supply and demand when the issue stems from an OOC place. All of our products have fixed prices, set by an overworldy authority, aka the script - they can't be adjusted based on their need for components. Businesses that are mostly funded through money that comes from nowhere, for no reason, the $1,000/person and $4,000/hour bonuses. And you can't lobby it in-game because the government, senate and such have no actual powers. We like to discuss as if we're playing in a very organically realistic world, where everything is the consequence of some action, but we're not. In fact, we're playing in a very big, out-of-character, vicious circle, that literally can't ever be broken unless a very drastic, pretty much complete change happens.

 

The problem is very obvious, though. It's pointless to even bring up these issues when quite literally nobody gives them any importance. The system is highly problematic, and the problems are extremely obvious and well-known to everyone. Devs, the staff team, management, they all know exactly what the problems are, and have known ever since the system came out. Yet absolutely nothing is being done about it. More than that, the problems are not even being acknowledged. Look at the dozens of topics and hundreds if not thousands of replies on this very subject over the last (real life, OOC) years. Not even one official stance. It's people complaining and coming up with hundreds of solutions, being ignored, it fizzling out and then rinse and repeat, over and over again. Unfortunately. 

[Topinambour]

4 hours ago, Mahitto said:

Except it's not basic economics.

And to be fair, basic economics might say that "the market balances itself", but not-third-grade economics (aka advanced economics) have repeatedly proven that there is no invisible hand, only a state of constant imbalance. Joseph Stiglitz even got a Nobel Prize in economics for proving that. And that's in actual real life.

 

So if on top of that you add all the OOC elements you mentioned... clearly, hoping it will solve itself IC is optimistic :x

[doble_brown]

Because the server simply offers 200k.

So the newbs never will work because they already have what they want a expensive car or a house.

 

Newbs with money are worst than newbs that wanna grind for that cars.

 

Forcing new plays to work IG to their metas, even if blank ones like just getting one car, force them to interact around. 

[Mahitto]

9 minutes ago, doble_brown said:

force them to interact around. 

 

Nah, that's not great either. We've all seen what forced interactions look like. They're not pleasant for anyone.

[Topinambour]

One thing that is very unique of this server though, is the idea that in order to be worthy of RP'ing, you have to go through an ultra painful gameplay aspect. The whole "FORCE THEM TO GRIND!!!" sounds oddly masochistic, a bit like "If you want to RP a middle class char, you must be WORTHY by burning every hair on your butt with a lighter" or whatever. It's kinda weird, and maybe a little unhealthy :x

 

Especially when years of SAMP and GTA V servers have repeatedly shown that those who grind (and are thus "worthy") are rarely the best RP'ers. Sometimes. But not always, far from it :x Which incidentally means that a "don't give them nothin', make them grind!" approach is more likely to churn out the good RP'ers and keep the not-that-best ones lol

(ah the memories of 2017 GTAW and its people using fishing bots to get rich ^^')

[Chaishi]

Being a trashman is more sensible than being a trucker. More fun.