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The problem of money being both IC And OOC


Lurleen

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Meh? I think stripping everybody's assets on character death would be pretty damaging to the server tbh. Whether you like it or not, the RPG element of watching numbers rise and collecting nice things are a big part of what gets a lot of people playing for hours and hours every day, and keeping that money after character death is what keeps it from feeling like a 'game over' because even though yes, your character's gone, you've opened up a lot of new avenues for what your next character can be through the hours you put in.

 

For example, if you wanted to make a character who's a rich trust fund kid living in Vinewood and driving an overpriced supercar their dad bought them, you couldn't do that on your first go around because having no control over how much money you start with means everybody's first character has to be completely self-made if they want to be anything other than some nameless poor person.

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I'm just gonna join the group of people advocating for free business blips, even if it'`s slightly off-topic. I'm going say, that to this day, the thing that probably irks me the most about this servers is the barriers you need to go past to get anything done. Mainly PM's processes, but also LFM's vetoing and the actual IC processes that exist and don't always add anything in value to the concepts. Now on top of this, you got business blips; if you don't pay real cash? Forget about any kind of business concept that serves to the public -shops, dealerships, clubs, garages, events, financial entities, real estate businesses, pretty much everything-.

 

Now, the public isn't an abstract concept; the public is people who is also playing this server and trying to have fun, yet find themselves out of opportunities to RP unless they're involved with some gov faction, got good connections or are living the gang/criminal life. We're limiting the entertainment that this server provides to its community by gatekeeping who can keep their businesses running by paying an absurd amount of money to the server to get a simple green blip on the map through a monthly subscription.

 

I feel the the server is boycotting itself with this policy. Having actual free blips would not only open up a more varied RP scene for absolutely everyone (business owners, employees, customers), allowing for more creative, niche concepts to prosper, but greatly improve the retention rate of players and maybe get a few more donations out of the fact that people may be enjoying themselves more, since people are more prone to donating if the free service they are using is more enjoyable. Obviously, the amount of money that is received by the server will be lower overall in the short-term, but it will only help the server, improving the experience and helping our playerbase to grow or at least be more consistent.  It would also potentially help with the 'cops and robbers' feeling that's been growing amongst many users in the server last few months, enlarging the possibilities of non-gov civilian RP even further.

 

It's not going to be an overnight miracle, but I honestly think it will greatly increase the quality of the server overall. Having your IC business work shouldn't be behind a paywall at all. I understand it's a big reason why a lot people purchase WPs in the first place, and thus it's likely a large portion of the server's income, but there's a limit to people's enjoyment of the server with these limitations in place and we know it's actively hurting the server when at peak time we got just a few blips across a server of over 600-700 people, and 90% of them being nightclubs or casinos, with absolutely zero variety in the supply.

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On 4/7/2022 at 11:35 AM, Lurleen said:

You can even find a OOC channel in the GTA W Properties official discord where people request projects to mappers in exchange of IC money.

 

I specifically want to address this generalization because while there is a channel for players to post their mapping requests, most, if not all of the mappers that I've spoken to, handle the initial conversation about whether or not they're interested in the project, and then move on to handling everything else IC.

 

This is things like RPing viewing the property for the key exchange, doing Work-in-progress walkthroughs, re-hashing what they need done in IC, sending email updates with countertop choices etc. I even have a photographer that my customers can meet who take photos before, during and after construction. When the cost is over what the player character can reasonably pay (because of their character story not their actual wealth) we roleplay out them taking a 'bank loan' to pay for the construction where they pay the full amount upfront and then they can RP it as making loan payments until it's 'paid off'.

 

While I know that not every mapper follows this same standards, this is a bulk of the roleplay that I enjoy and this profession is one of high value in real life, such as it is reflected as such in-game..

 

 

I like the recommendation on making all furniture cost $0, though, that would be awesome and allow more flexibility for lower cost builds that match the lower-cost price tag IC.

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The system right now simply doesn't work in a clear sense. On the one hand, we are expected to take our bank accounts IC, to the extent that we could be legally investigated for our money transactions if it came to it. On the other, if you made a million working as a bartender and those same payments were completely in-character, you're somehow expected to not spend that money that you earned through legitimate RP and is in your IC bank account in say, a high-end sports car and a penthouse.

 

I'd very much rather have no IC mention of things like money and let people police themselves like they always have, and let suspension of disbelief take control when you pay $700 to get into a nightclub but a high-end designer shirt is like $300.

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There just has to be a suspension of disbelief when it comes to handling money, I have a slot with millions of dollars in it but I wouldn't want to RP all of my wealth being on hand. If you're a bartender it obviously doesn't make sense to live in a nice penthouse and drive a sports car, so doing it just because you can, or because the money in the top right of your screen is enough to do it isn't good roleplay.

 

But I'd rather it be this way, the suggestions to make the economy more realistic are always dumb to me because I despise grinding in any capacity, and having to grind for money just to be able to afford something my character would realistically own/have is stupid as hell. People just need to not take everything so literally and figure out what works best for their character they're trying to portray. Less of a mechanics/server problem, more of a player mentality one imo.

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I also have a character that has over $600,000 in the bank account and a total of $1,000,000 in assets - due to the idiocy of namechanging, but also the blessing of it. I think money should be taken with a grain of salt, I dunno how else to say it. The problem here is the mentality, like stated above, because certain people have an issue with looking at it differently than "lol ur right top corner many money fucking mallrat", but... this is also a problem connected to a lack of jobs.

Have we had more businesses open, ones that provided services, corporations, background check companies - there are thousands of different ideas - we'd have over all more jobs. You'd actually have people IC saying "Yeah I'm an HR Director at FuckMeSideways, we are a company specializing in the development of sex toys." or someone saying "Yeah I slave off at this corporation but at least they pay well, my boss is a dickhead though".

Imagine, for a moment, everyone, listen up to me, right? IMAGINE HOW REFRESHING IT WOULD BE. TO FINALLY HEAR THAT SOMEONE ISN'T A FUCKING BARTENDER PART TIME AT THREE DIFFERENT BARS. Or a supervisor.

For now, having a roleplay job relies on the owner of the business being active, mainly. There might be more head staff, like directors, managers or whatever but they will probably not be allowed to open by themselves for like weeks straight due to the owner being away on an IRL vacation or some stuff. This does not apply to faction owned businesses because I know from experience that they kind of run themselves, but hear me out, right? Not everyone wants to be part of a faction. You can be part of a faction as a legal character, there is usually no reason to not be, but it should not be a necessity to have an active group to play with. Businesses should attract clientele by themselves, there shouldn't be a prerequisite in the form of knowing people who you work with, interact with and who you know will always come to support it.

This is once again the result of blips being gatekept by Management due to the completely idiotic reason of "there would be too many of them", who cares? I don't care, I want to see that map riddled with blips if I'm gonna roleplay in a developed modern American city. Maybe if we had more blips and over all open businesses, there would be no need to create all of those micromanagement type of rules around crimes? Because you know, the streets would actually be littered with people, due to businesses booming? I don't know.

Wake the fuck up, Management, you have a city to put out of a fire. Think about how many opportunities this would finally open up. Think about how many more roleplay jobs, roles, and reasons to take wealth more seriously rather than "ah yeah the number on top of the screen is just... yeah you know I namechanged twenty times on this character lol" it would create. Having an actual high position at a job due to development, one that isn't "Manager" or "Supervisor" but perhaps "Software engineer" or "x Lead" would sound so much better in the context of possessed wealth would be so cool. Instead talking about money is awkward because it is so stupid to hear that everyone has to work three jobs as a bartender due to two of their workplaces barely being open. It is almost immersion breaking. Sure, some people need to work two jobs to maintain a living, especially in cities like Los Angeles and most other major cities with a ridiculously fucked up property market but this is just ridiculous.

 

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On 4/8/2022 at 9:22 AM, Snoof said:

Meh? I think stripping everybody's assets on character death would be pretty damaging to the server tbh. Whether you like it or not, the RPG element of watching numbers rise and collecting nice things are a big part of what gets a lot of people playing for hours and hours every day, and keeping that money after character death is what keeps it from feeling like a 'game over' because even though yes, your character's gone, you've opened up a lot of new avenues for what your next character can be through the hours you put in.

 

For example, if you wanted to make a character who's a rich trust fund kid living in Vinewood and driving an overpriced supercar their dad bought them, you couldn't do that on your first go around because having no control over how much money you start with means everybody's first character has to be completely self-made if they want to be anything other than some nameless poor person.

It's a good point, and there could be a middle ground, for example if you are active enough you could unlock different starts for a character, poor, middle class and wealthy. At the same time, having a lot of money being despawned with character deaths and properties going back to the market, it'd make things cheaper and easy to get again.

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1 hour ago, Lurleen said:

It's a good point, and there could be a middle ground, for example if you are active enough you could unlock different starts for a character, poor, middle class and wealthy. At the same time, having a lot of money being despawned with character deaths and properties going back to the market, it'd make things cheaper and easy to get again.

This would be nice addition. People keep arguing, that this is more like rpg-ish approach, but honestly what isn't? People always seem to mistake development for roleplaying. Leveling up your character through ups and downs, getting better financially and all that, that's not roleplaying, that's not your story. That's development, this could be skipped for roleplaying purposes if you wanna start as someone who's already have all of that. Cause we don't start our stories at level 0. We all start somewhere along the path to tell a story about our character, now about how they rise up from airport spawn location to owning 3 cars and a house.

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20 hours ago, Lurleen said:

It's a good point, and there could be a middle ground, for example if you are active enough you could unlock different starts for a character, poor, middle class and wealthy. At the same time, having a lot of money being despawned with character deaths and properties going back to the market, it'd make things cheaper and easy to get again.

Love that idea. Doubt it's got much of a chance at becoming a thing though; People hate change and the way things work right now has been tried and tested for like a decade now. If you look at it from the administration's perspective, it probably just doesn't make sense to make such huge sweeping changes to a working formula while the server's doing as well as it is.

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