Jun 25, 2018, 02:53 PM
@"Gungranny"
I totally agree with you in terms of the economic theory. History has proven time and time again in real life that a bad semi-hyperinflating economy cannot be cured by simply printing more money, and there have been examples throughout history to prove this. (Germany in the 1920s, Zimbabwe etc.)
Luckily for us, this is not real life, and the game limits the economy in several ways.
This is why I made the distinction between the player-player economy and the player-market economy, and placed priority on the latter. I will firstly just give a small definition of the two:
Player-Player economy:
The market you are describing to me. I.e. player X creates item Y, and sells it to player Z for a profit.
Player-Market economy:
The market controlled by the server, i.e. the marketplace you find in the F1 menu. Allows you to buy materials at full price, and allows you to sell it back again at a standard 50% loss. Prices don't have to change along with my suggested change, which would achieve its aim of making more RP material available for people.
Your suggestion is that when (more) player would start to gain more, the shopkeepers can start charging more. This would be true, as I stated in my example in the beginning, if it wasn't for the fact that this economy is still constricted by several other points, aside from the fact that the player-market economy does not need adjustment after this change as mentioned before. And though I am all for a laissez-faire system if it would be possible to implement that via plugins, right now I am just looking to do one thing, which is suggesting a system to improve (passive) roleplay without needing a full wipe of the server.
Currently, we have 144 people on the server with a cash-networth (excluding their inventories) of over one million dollars. Among these are those most active on the server, whilst others have average activity levels. These are people like in John Jong, Nemesis, ForceGhost, Nudelsalat im Panzer, Gamerpro2266, Da Cool Cow, etc. etc.
Despite their wealth, their participation in roleplay is not hindered. They still pay, say, $1000 for a car upgrade, or some chinese meals, even if the seller is a fellow mult-millionaire. Why? Because they don't roleplay for the sake of earning money, they roleplay for the sake of roleplay.
Why? Because that is why they joined the server in the first place. However, to improve their roleplay experience, they have had to make enough money in order to pay for the stuff that facilitates their roleplay. I.e. towtrucks, vans, policecars, suits, etc. This is why people go and contrafarm.
They don't do it because they like to stick in a room with a shotgun pointed at the door until the cops bust in, they do it because they need to earn money and there are no effective legitimate routes for the majority of players.
Thus we spiral back into the mingefest we have today in the form of the cops 'n' robbers element. I say limited legitimate routes, because currently the largest player-player economy is weapon sales to facilitate this cops 'n' robbers roleplay situation. Like for instance your Ares Defense Systems. What is there aside from providing security groups and criminals with weapons? Taxi services, like Forceghost's executive transport group. Currently, possibilities to earn good money via passive roleplay is clearly limited. Would the passive market increase, the weapons market for the player-player economy would shrink, making that too not be profitable enough.
It basically goes like such:
Players want to roleplay -> Players need money to improve their roleplay -> Players cannot earn money effectively via the legitimate way without contrafarming or facilitating the cops 'n' robbers situtation -> Players start to contrafarm -> Results in the current mingefest and the lack of good passive RP.
So we already have shown that those with wealth will not destroy the player-player market, but there are two other points that add to this:
One: Rules
There are informal rules in place, which makes people not overcharge in the current already unbalanced economy. If proven necessary however, by me being wrong about that, it can still be put into a real rule, in the same manner how one cannot fine someone else more than $2000 (11.6), or you cannot mug players for over $500 (13.1).
Two: Capitalism
If someone starts overcharging for, say, food, the market has the ability to rebalance itself as that is an excellent reason for competition to rise up. (Say, the fast food place starts charging 20,000 per hamburger, then someone else becomes a chef and starts charging less.)
Will my suggestion limit custom roleplay? Yes, absolutely. But in return, it will open up a lot more passive roleplay, instead of the current system which is 40% criminals, 40% cops and 20% other, resulting in the current mingefest of shootout after shootout, ending in discussions about who broke fearRP first. Furthermore, clear, concise rules regarding these new jobs would allow for better management/punishment by the current administration, as we otherwise end up with vague jobs as "murder", ending in the countless arguements I keep seeing about if something is or is not FailRP.
I totally get your arguement, and am in agreement that the best case scenario would be a smaller server of true RP-enthousiast with a laissez-faire economy. However, something like that would require (at the very least) something like a whitelist for the whole server, and is just something that I see as unrealistic in the short term.
Is my suggestion perfect? No, far from it. But, for me anyway, it is the simplest and most effective way to bring passive RP back within the near future without requiring a server wipe, whitelist, or mass plugins.
TL;DR:
Current economy is titled towards providing a breeding ground for criminal RP, giving people the financial incentive to go to passive RP instead could bring back balance in the RP without having major changes to the server.
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