Making fishing and mining a less lucrative way of getting money.

[Dashing]

Let's ignore points in this thread because we want to job grind all the time!

[Pascal]

We're discussing how to bring changes to the economy internally at the moment, they've been put on hold for now to as devs need to focus on the conversion bugs. Changes will come in due time, we want to figure out a good way to make money through RP a very viable option, 

 

Concerns about players treating the server as an asset gaining game instead of RPing and just sitting around with sports cars are perfectly valid complaints and are being heard. After joining Player Management I've received many messages about this, our focus is currently on South LS as we've had a lot of new players join that have tanked the standards and disrupting RP in the area, i.e.:

 

 

Once the majority of the situation in South LS is sorted, which takes up a good chunk of the currently reported players, we'll be much more freed up as a team. I'll take these complaints I've been receiving and put them up into a megathread in PLM and we'll try to teach and guide many of these players as a team before the changes come. We're perfectly aware we won't be able to fix the problem entirely before future economy plans are finalised and changes come, however we will focus on extreme cases and try to tone it down a lot, encouraging better and more realistic character portrayal from these players.

 

For now, I highly encourage people to use the RP Quality complaint system, it's there for a reason - report players for poor character portrayal/concepts, not necessarily rulebreaking. You don't even need elaborate reports, even small tipoffs with a quick 1-2 screenshots and an explanation of their character concept will do. If it is something so small you don't consider report worthy and don't want to submit one, I at least encourage you to send me a Discord PM (Charlie#4573) with a quick screenshot of what you saw, and I can forward it on.

 

More on the RP Quality complaints system:

On 6/18/2018 at 3:53 PM, Dominykas. said:

Instances of poor roleplay could be the following:

• Poor English/ Very minimal roleplay/ Basic, incredibly undetailed choices of words.
• Poor Character development/non-existent Character development.
• Unrealistic character choices, (For example- a gangster living in poverty to be driving a high end sports car. An unmarried Police Officer I driving expensive sports cars and to be living in multi million dollar homes.)
• Troll behavior/Poor character choices.
• Poor reasoning behind actions, (Robbing people even though you have a large amount of cash just for fun, etc.)

 

[Topinambour]

2 hours ago, aloegarten said:

I think what OP was getting at is the fact it's a roleplay server - not an MMORPG. People should be earning their money through realistic means in-character, not pressing /cf or AFK'ing on the top of Mount Josiah.

It's sound in theory, but it's more complicated than that in practice, as often. Especially...

2 hours ago, aloegarten said:

Also, people do tend to get enormous wages. The ludicrous amounts I've heard of semi-successful business owners/workers get for around 1-2 hours of RP is pretty wild - and it blows all script jobs out of the water, tbh.

Again this is entirely true, but we have to see which businesses are concerned. Most are shops, bars, garages, things where the customer comes in directly and buys something specific - an item, repairs, ... And not all jobs are like this. In fact, a hell of a lot of jobs aren't like this, and this model wouldn't work for those characters and jobs.

 

For some jobs, occupations or characters, it's just not possible to ask people to "just RP it" and "it will make money", because the RP environment, script and server don't really support it. And again - it makes sense, I'm not saying otherwise. But let's take an example.

Please note: this is *an example* on *one* specific job: similar issues apply to hundreds of other jobs ^^

 

My char's supposed to be a Private Investigator (PI). Now, the easy and simplistic answer everyone will give is "Just get hired IC, DUH! It's a HEAVY RP server!". But instead of settling for something simplistic I'd like to dig a bit more into what it entails ^^

First of all, not everyone will ever need to hire a PI. Most business Private Investigators get come from bigger private companies, for things that aren't relevant to the server. No one on the server would have a background check run on a potential associate or whatever - it may happen once in a while, but only in a 100% RP manner, without having a PI conduct it. For reasons we'll get into later (no databases).

 

The most common contracts PIs get are:

- Locating someone (runaway child, parent, ...)

- Surveillance, infidelity cases, etc.

- Locating birth parents and other adoption cases

- Background checks and pre-employment screening (private companies)

- Investment / Financial checks (private companies)

- Security consultations

- Electronic Surveillance checks

- Cold cases

 

To do all of that stuff, 95% of the time, they don't need to get out, or stay in a van / car for hours. It's *not* like in movies, where you have a dude in a trenchcoat with his Dick Tracy hat, hiding behind a newspaper with holes.

PIs have access to a wide variety of databases: https://www.quora.com/What-databases-do-private-investigators-have-access-to-that-members-of-the-public-dont 

 

Those *DO NOT* exist in the game (and neither should they, to be honest). But without those, an overwhelming majority of the aforementionned cases would be nigh-unsolvable... Locating someone without having access to any of their records, while being unable to access CCTV, traffic records, ...? You just have to run around the server randomly and hope to come across them. Locating birth parents? That's *IF* the birth parents are played by another player on the server. Let's not even talk about background checks, I asked about this on those very forums some time ago and was told only LSPD would be able to access criminal records - even though in most US states, they are actually public.

 

This means, realistically, my char would not be able to do her job "in RP / IC", even if she had customers. And then again, the customers? Well... Most established PIs will have a few cases at a time (sometimes more if they're part of a firm), not enough to be rich and powerful but it will definitely be well above minimum wage. Problem...? There aren't enough players on the server for my char to have enough customers. Or enough varied businesses.

 

Who on the server would hire a PI to run the financials of a company, before a lawsuit? No one, because there are no such things happening (and no proper justice system, let's be honest). Who would ask a PI to check an investment fund to make sure it's a sound investment? No one, there is no stock/investment system. As for the background checks? Those are the bread & butter of PIs who work closely to big companies and law firms, but there are no suchs things on GTAW.

 

That means... Even if we had 1.000 players it would still be limited. And now, ok, let's imagine I have a realistic amount of customers regardless and I have to "play it IC"... It would take me 10 hours a day, thus turning it into a full-time job. I'm not a big fan of having to RP a job after my RL job, to be honest. I come to GTA to RP something else :p

 

The solution? Fish a bit here and there to be able to afford some basic RP stuff (I got a car+an apartment, I don't think I'll try to get more tbh) that fit your char, and pretend he's working his day job while you're offline. Because yeah, if I play 2 hours a day, it doesn't mean my char would realistically sleep 22 hours a day :p 

 

Now, again please don't come up with "as a PI you could do this and that and that", I've already heard it all and more. It's just to illustrate the difficulties around the "you just have to RP to get money": you can, but your character has to have a VERY SPECIFIC type of job, for that to work. If he's a marketing guy? Too bad for you. A salesman for a tech security company? There is no hacking of databases on the server (and no big companies to offer his services to), he's screwed. Assistant to the regional manager in a paper company? Well, eh, looks like it's gonna be $500 paychecks for you fam'. A toilet cleaning dude? Not many people would hire one (and /me'ing cleaning toilets 8 hours a day is probably not much more fun than actually cleaning toilets). And the list goes on, and on, and on. 

 

Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to have more money-through-RP mechanisms, far from it. Just that we should be very careful of simple/simplistic reasonings such as "DUH IF YOU RP YOU GET MONEY ITS EZ - FARMERS HATE IT FIND OUT THE SECRET BY CLICKING HERE!", because a game's economy is quite complex, especially in an RP environment. I remember a few players from a previous server who farmed a fucking lot, but it was because they were RP'ing rich characters.

One of them in particular was playing a spoiled brat, the player interpreted is AWESOMELY WELL and it was among the most interesting RP I've ever had: he really nailed the "out of touch" aspect of people born very rich, the involuntary disdain, the values, the importance of patrimony, ..... It was some really good RP. But that character wouldn't have been credible without having the corresponding assets, and those were only obtainable through fishing, sadly.

 

Removing scripted jobs may remove scripting, but it would also mean removing a lot of different RP types from the server, making them financially 0% viable =/ 

 

(annnnd time for the "just RP guh everything is simple its ez" answers x_x)

Edited June 27, 2018 by Topinambour

[Brenko]

Honestly I think either the jobs need re-doing and criminal jobs should be implemented or money should stop being an OOC factor at all and instead be entirely RP based. Basically allowing players to choose how much cash they have at the start or something depending on their character background. If you want to RP a millionaire business person, you start with $1,000,000 and that's fine, you get to RP how you want. Want to be a gang banger? You start with a measly sum and have to work for more IC. You started disadvantaged. But the element of choice allows for much more flexibility.

 

If that would make things too unbalanced, then even removing cash as an OOC concept entirely and just Rping it could work. Otherwise I have yet to see an economy on an RP server that functioned properly outside of Star Wars Galaxies lol.

[Topinambour]

1 hour ago, Brenko said:

Honestly I think either the jobs need re-doing and criminal jobs should be implemented or money should stop being an OOC factor at all and instead be entirely RP based. Basically allowing players to choose how much cash they have at the start or something depending on their character background. If you want to RP a millionaire business person, you start with $1,000,000 and that's fine, you get to RP how you want. Want to be a gang banger? You start with a measly sum and have to work for more IC. You started disadvantaged. But the element of choice allows for much more flexibility.

This is actually a system I've seen implemented on 2 servers (not GTA though) and on most RP forums, and it's been the most successful. HOWEVER... I'm not sure it would work that well on GTAW. To make it simple, the standards of RP on the forums I'm mentioning are considerably higher (if GTAW is 'heavy RP', then those forums are 'Neutron star-weight RP' basically). That means applications have to be more detailed, the ideas and concepts of the character must be laid out, and moderators then decide whether the resources requested are justified or not. However, a single moderation can take 2-6 hours per case, and given how many applications we get here, I'm not sure it would be reasonable to ask our testers to do that :( 

 

The current solution is far from perfect, but it "somewhat works" for most cases. I'm 100% fine with it being changed, but that's as long as it doesn't prevent (or make it unnecessarily difficult) for many types of characters to be viable. Removing all scripted jobs or nerfing them considerably would cause a lot of unforeseen issues (and a lot of foreseen ones too :p). 

[Brenko]

14 minutes ago, Topinambour said:

This is actually a system I've seen implemented on 2 servers (not GTA though) and on most RP forums, and it's been the most successful. HOWEVER... I'm not sure it would work that well on GTAW. To make it simple, the standards of RP on the forums I'm mentioning are considerably higher (if GTAW is 'heavy RP', then those forums are 'Neutron star-weight RP' basically). That means applications have to be more detailed, the ideas and concepts of the character must be laid out, and moderators then decide whether the resources requested are justified or not. However, a single moderation can take 2-6 hours per case, and given how many applications we get here, I'm not sure it would be reasonable to ask our testers to do that :( 

 

The current solution is far from perfect, but it "somewhat works" for most cases. I'm 100% fine with it being changed, but that's as long as it doesn't prevent (or make it unnecessarily difficult) for many types of characters to be viable. Removing all scripted jobs or nerfing them considerably would cause a lot of unforeseen issues (and a lot of foreseen ones too :p). 

Yeah, I used to play a MU* that had the resource allocation and it worked well. I think it'd be a good way to do things, honestly.

[Yabbu]

Agreed!

 

I usually /vscrap my cars without any feelings because making money is WAY too easy. Recently scrapped a 300k worth of cars.

 

But in all fairness, Im just happy there is no bank savings script here like in SAMP's LSRP.

[Aquila]

On 27/06/2018 at 4:56 PM, Brenko said:

Honestly I think either the jobs need re-doing and criminal jobs should be implemented or money should stop being an OOC factor at all and instead be entirely RP based. Basically allowing players to choose how much cash they have at the start or something depending on their character background. If you want to RP a millionaire business person, you start with $1,000,000 and that's fine, you get to RP how you want. Want to be a gang banger? You start with a measly sum and have to work for more IC. You started disadvantaged. But the element of choice allows for much more flexibility.

 

If that would make things too unbalanced, then even removing cash as an OOC concept entirely and just Rping it could work. Otherwise I have yet to see an economy on an RP server that functioned properly outside of Star Wars Galaxies lol.

This post made me think about something. 

 

Jobs should be based around functionality over money. For example, constantly fishing just to sell it has no RP value. Garbage job makes no sense because homeowners don't do anything to create trash. Mining is literally just an economy game.

 

While I like the idea of ore acting like stock in a market, it isn't that interesting anymore. Jobs need functionality - we need a food system, because then fishing and hunting can be a source of providing meat to convenience stores. Through this, players can create recipes for food. At that point, players create garbage, and thus the garbage job is utilised. Money should come as a reward for doing these menial tasks, but these menial tasks need to play a role in the server's environment instead of just being there for a player to make money. We already get $5k+ per hour, and $800 per hour after we reach 40 hours. That's already enough, anything more is just greed or desperation.

[Franelli]

I've come across many great suggestions in this topic from several users, however as also stated in one of the earliest comments - whilst not bringing much roleplay to the table, the scripted jobs are needed for new players to make their first pile of cash to spend on whatever their roleplay story requires. Until more roleplay-based jobs are introduced to the gamemode - these need to stay.

With that said, I doubt experienced players keep themselves busy with fishing jobs just for the sake of money, so this is simply one of several methods for new players to start a bit more easily on this server.

Edited October 11, 2018 by Franelli

[AVRO DANKASTER]

11 minutes ago, Franelli said:

I've come across many great suggestions in this topic from several users, however as also stated in one of the earliest comments - whilst not bringing much roleplay to the table, the scripted jobs are needed for new players to make their first pile of cash to spend on whatever their roleplay story requires. Until more roleplay-based jobs are introduced to the gamemode - these need to stay.

With that said, I doubt experienced players keep themselves busy with fishing jobs just for the sake of money, so this is simply one of several methods for new players to start a bit more easily on this server.

1

New players receive $200,000 in basic income to "start their roleplay story", rendering this point moot.