You could start by removing money for points but you won't because then people have no reason to raid at all. That's how weak our gang system is right now having to rely on money to keep people motivated in raiding.

We could also start by removing a lot of guns from the gun stores. I already explained in a previous post or thread as to why.

Stop by giving people money per kill.

You guys give money out to easily with these we "small" things as people see them as but in-fact they're a huge reason as to why it's gotten so bad.

Auctions was a major sinkhole back in the day for getting rid of money. I rarely see them happen now. Maybe start hosting them but then again you cant because you've basically put every gun in-store so that effects that.

Remove unlimited ammo. It's seems like a cool idea but in reality it's not at all. $3,000 for unlimited ammo for a week, really?

Introduce a plan to start taxing accounts if they don't log in every few months. Let's say somebody doesn't log in for 3-months. Start taking little by little of their money. (Just an idea, you get the drift).

Introduce bank fees, every-time you use the ATM you get taxed.

It's a start.

We already removed unlimited ammo ;] we made it stop stocking, so once they sell out of stores they're all gone.
EDIT: Clarification, we will probably still use it as a prize of some kind.

We can't make it harder to get money before taking money out of the economy; it would chase off all the new players. One of the most common complaints I already get is "how can guns cost 900k when it takes me so long to make any money?" When we have players with 20 mil, nobody will start playing making like $500 per hour.

Some sort of a tax would be a cool idea, but I don't know a fair way to implement it. The people who most need to be taxed (as you said) are the ones who are inactive; the ones with millions of dollars sitting in a bank account. But if we start taxing bank accounts, then everyone who has been playing will start pulling their money out before going inactive, but those who are already inactive wouldn't know about it and would get screwed.

Taxing bank transactions would be an idea for "active" money anyways.

I wish there was a quick-fix for Era's economy but I can't think of one, hopefully someone can brainstorm some ideas that wouldn't be game-ruining.

I suggest just sending your PRs on a witch hunt, go through all the logs of the top 100 richest, I did and found millions that were spawned and duped.

I know a few players who I had to reset and ban several times that duped that I saw on the player-list today, I suggest re-looking into them as a start.

I know several people who got away with the Casino dupe when Zach was in management but that would probably be stretching the logs a bit.

Oh god, I know that TK has like 20,000 unlimited ammo boxes in his house lmao.

I was also thinking just yesterday, maybe restock all of the hat-shops, make some new hat shops, keep cycling in old and new hats into them every week or so. That was the plan a while ago with the South-Ridge hat shop but I didn't get around to making the new hats in the item DB

Sorry i did not notice the unlimited ammo gone. Happy though that you see it as a good move to. A prize sounds fun.

You aren't making it hard to get money. It also isn't that hard to get money. I have a 53 mining level that i earned and worked for. I have dug a lot of shells & did my fair share of other making money techniques. Why can't they? They just want money to be handed to them and you guys are being to soft.

Sometimes you need to make harsh decisions and tough ones that players won't agree or understand. They will understand one day. I don't think it will chase them of.

Also it would be a good idea to improve money making ideas to make it more "fun" not necessarily "easier". I don't think the problem is how much money you get from these systems it's people not being able to last more than 10 mins doing it as they get bored and fed up. Make it fun to earn money.

You could also implement a system that just wipes your money altogether if you don't log in after a 6-7 month period or whatever. Make it that you cannot log with money on you either & if you do it goes straight into your ATM so people cant avoid dodging the taxes.

Also you can tax people on using ATM. If they withdraw 50k, $500 from their account. So they need $50,500 or they cannot withdraw $50,000. Or you could make it $50,000 and if that's all they have their account goes to -$500

A bank fee of some kind needs to be implemented i think

That rate is waaaaaaay too high in my opinion. Although I am reset and have nothing, I don't see why people who have millions should suffer because they are good at monopolizing and earning their money. Don't get me wrong though, I do agree that some sort of tax should be in-order, maybe to those who own houses or something as a rent system, or make it so people can buy houses for less cash than they have but have to pay a % of interest by a certain time or it gets removed from them. If you could some-how set it so anyone in the player db that has cash on them automatically gets it transfered to their bank, there is MILLIONS that are duped and spawned on players, they just won't log on because they know it will flag RC now

Okay, how's this for a brainstorm. Thought if it in about 30 seconds as i thought of those events other servers hosted like iera etc. A big thing in unstick and it had to be grabbed so many times for something to be activated and everybody was spending hours around it grabbing it.

So... This is probably the most stupidest thing i have ever said but i laugh because it's the most stupidest thing that would probably work.

Why not put an NPC of some sort in the middle of unstick with a name like "Reach the goal of $30,000,000 to unlock a super update,prize or whatever". We have a leaderboard of who donates the most. And as people donate we see it climbing etc".. Everybody who donates get's logged and they all get a prize of having the added feature to profiles, of "I helped" or idk but something cool so they can say to people in a few years to come look i was here all that time ago and i have prove of it" people love that type of thing to boast about.

The most generous people in the top 10 list get's a big prize (non-tradeable prize) for being the most generous.


Obviously i'm not asking for this to happen. As stupid as it sounds, the people of era would be stupid enough to donate their money to unluck this super duper prize...

It could be 100m or whatever, you'd be surprised how much money it brings ut of the economy and how happy people would be helping the cause to see what happens or to see what prize they get lol

Don't believe me? try it. Lol

Which rate are we talking about? the $500? it was just an example.

I'm the type of player who if I saw this and I still had my fortune I would donate all 15million of it in hopes of something amazing like a gun simulator or something and would quickly get owned with a badge that said "I donated the most money to helping fix Era's Economy"

Although it might work, the players would very quickly get upset when they lost their riches to nothing and some would even boycot against the server and management.

They don't lose anything to nothing. Obviously a reasonable reward will be given to them. Also if it was a major success and it did work. Things would be a lot cleaner on era, they'd have no reason to boycot against the management and if they did and worst came to worst. I'm sure they can leave their post happy knowing they fixed a major issue.

The new taxi missions were supposed to be a more fun way of making money. It was just never seen as competitive with mining/shelling, so nobody did it (amount > entertainment). There's just so much disparity now in wealth

Yeah, I suppose so, still not the amazing fix and seems like a lot of headache from players who are unhappy with the result.

I don't see how the economy is that big of a problem though, I mean sure, everyone has 20 mil but thats just a number as if the highest player only had 100k, everything is just worth another value, why not just up the anti for doing jobs? introduce new jobs that pay high rates? e.g hunting in south-ridge, bank robbing, robbing player owned business' etc

Heres how I see it; You have 10mil, I have 10k, almost everyone who plays now is super rich because well lets face it, everyone has been playing for years and for someone new to come along it will be a b*tch to get where you are at. Though if we increase the rate of pay for jobs, what's stopping you who has 10mil to start doing jobs to maintain your riches? nothing. What's stopping me from working to gain riches? nothing.

then again, you could introduce cents into the game and do what they did with guns, slash everyones cash into a different % rate but they are still equally as rich as they were.

So you have 10mil I have 10k, I now have 1k you now have 1mil, you feel?

Just because something was suppose to be more fun doesn't make it more fun.

After thinking about this for a good minute or so, why the hell not?

The only problem I see with the economy is that everything is unrealistically priced. a gun costs millions but in real life that gun would only cost 3-20 grand.

If you cut everyones money % and the price of everything equally to that % you would have a stable looking economy because lets face it, the only problem we have is that everything costs gazillions. If it all costs 10-100k max, jobs pay roughly $300-500 an hour, people would be fine and dandy once they got their feet off the ground.

Era was never really about the economy aspect anyway, although I can respect that people enjoy it solely for that purpose. I don't see their problem if everything was cut down equally, it's not like you lost anything, it all just has different numbers now and that to me is the problem, everything is so unrealistically priced, new numbers, same economy, looks more stable and professional.

Although I'm aware it's not a "fix" for the economy because we will still be in the same position, the numbers would look a lot more realistic and could be a good start to a fix

Zilla and I spent a month on accounts and found so much dirt on them....we did erase a lot of money...they money is back up though.

At max level trash picking you can make 20k an hour easily.

Betflipping actually remoevs money out of the economy and I think has taken much out...Why not raise the cost of the tables since so many people use it...You figure the 300k table i think is 600 dollar fee. So you have 1200 dollars each time someone plays...Say 15 ppl play it a day thats 18,000. Raise it to 800 for each player thats 400 more each play.

When I read this, I thought exactly of this:

I know Shrimps has a bunch too, probably not as many since I always bum them off of him and he spends his extra money running a Potion Trafficking business.

Anyway, yeah that was really stupid and not well thought out at all; now instead of a set price the players with the remaining supply (which is freaking huge I'll tell you now... TK alone had dozens of piles of 100x in his house) can make their own price.. and the mall will be stocked with UA's like it was with Super Str Pots after some idiot removed access the NPC that sold them.

Beyond that, this is a huge Nerf to PT without fixing any problem. It was just one bullet point among those in my list... yet it really doesn't matter with the economy already being at Stephen's Result A. You're just removing a convenience, and one of the like 2 things Zach has ever created. :p

I bet you just removed the Stocker NPC from the backrooms didn't you. Maximum skills dawg.

There's no way of fixing the economy since we have players smarter than other players. There will always be the rich and the poor, check out my item list:

Offers:
Mp5 Navy
MP5 SD
Angel x2
P2K x2
Snow Cannon
Bamboo Rod
KSG
Ove Glove
S6
Souizen
Desert Raven x2
FN SCAR-L
Morano Thompson
K180 x4
Browning Automatic Rifle
XM25
PBP Shotgun
HK416
Bow
Ice Bow
Pl-9 Logistic Laser
Flame Thrower x2
X12 Stun Gun
Witch's Wand
Glock18
RPG
Gatling Gun
Daewoo
PPSH41
M1 Carbine
Neo Rifle
Desert Eagle x3
Beretta
Colt M1911 x2
MP40 x4
Artilery Cannon
MK23 x3
BulldogCX x4
Combat Shotgun
The Taurus
Gold Uzi x6
Scythe
Fireman Axe x2
Ice Dagger x2
Broom
Umbrella
Syringe
Halloween Boomerang
Valentines' Boomerang x2
1st Sewer House
Furniture and Rare Furniture
Flute x2
Ferrari x2
Black Ferrari
X-Mas Guitar
X-Mas Bell
Cattle Prod x2
Cookie x1393
Ice Trap x4200
ET Sewer Elixer x142
Super Elixir x635
Peppermint Cocoa Latté x713

Spending 14.5mil

(R=Rare H=Hat):
R Chelsie Blue H
Black Half Wing H
R Winged White
R Blackwing Helmet
R PKing H
Blue Dragon Helm
Nuada's ****in' H
R Black Mafia Tachi H
R Saints H
R Aviatorzx2
R Monkey H
R Samurai Helmet
R Skully H
R Fidel H
R Ninja-Band Mask
R v2 Wingedx2
Evil Gate Mask
R Spartan Helmet
Fro w/ Mask
R Scarecrow H
Green Hood H
Jack of Blades H
Unboss H
Pink Crown
R Lion H
R Red Panda Hx2
Coco Bunny Doll Hx2
Camo Hunter H
Rare Western H
Sanaba H
Hobo H
Kuraiittou Top H
Kuraiittou Purple Top H
Red Devil Mask
Blue Devil Mask
R Blue Juggernaut
R Chopper H
Purple Electric Plant H
Batman Maskx2
R Pants H
R Monster H
R Green H
Jamaican Beats
Yellow Beats
R Christmas Fluffy Beanie
R Red-Orange Electric Winged H
Gas Maskx3
R Heart Capx3
Big Santa Hx2
R Spaceman Helmetx2
Jazz H
R Shop Hats
All Gang Hats
All Halloween Hats
Police Cap
Nightvision Goggles
Electro Capx2

That's quite an exageration... I have 200-250 boxes.

This is exactly wwhat i mean about being smart: I knew that the unlimited ammos wouldn't last forever so I bought a shitload.

how much for 1

I think I'll use them rather than sell them

does PT sell heavy armor? I am curious to see how this will affect the ammo businesses.

Haha yeah I thought the same thing, use the unlimited boxes rather than sell.
PS. Rogue, sorry I don't have that many. :(

pps. You can still buy Super Str.
http://i.imgur.com/AzVhusA.png

People more or less agreed that the new taxi missions were more entertaining than standing in one spot in a mine or browsing the gmap day after day for trash. It just didn't pay out well enough. Shrimps did it for like 2-3 hours one day and made less than 10k, so after that everyone said it was stupid and wouldn't do it. The original hope was to make more similar systems with lower payout where players would choose to make slightly less money but have some form of actual entertaining challenge doing it (rather than just going out and making all the current methods suck).

As for there being unlimited ammo already out - I don't really think that's a problem. The problem now is that everyone uses unlimited ammo. It means nobody is buying ammo, and that PKing is incredibly lame (because everyone can just spam bullets without thinking about it). There's no real better way to get rid of them than to not let more into the game. We can't delete the stocks that the stores already have; they had to pay employees to stock them. And we'd just be creating new money if we paid them a "refund" or something. And there's no way we can take them away from all the players without offering some kind of refund. Plus that would only hit online players if we did - someone could wait offline until we stopped taking them away and made it into a prize item, then he'd log on with 200 of them.

I'd also assume most of the people who saved up boxes will be using them and not selling them. I don't really have a problem with a few of them being sold for outrageous prices; that's just supply and demand working things out. We aren't putting any new ones into circulation for a while.

I know I yelled at someone to add that awhile ago after I couldn't access the Bum on the subway.

The taxi missions actually require more work and attention than those other jobs, save for maybe trash since you have to precision click. But if the overall goal is to 'grind for money' I'm going to take the best long-term approach (at the time this was mining, being the only leveled job.. now flowers might be on-par to a further extent, I think max bouquet matches level like 60-70 mining).

In the case of mining, or even shells/bouquet making if you buy raw flowers... you can just turn on that second monitor and watch a movie. Even before I had dual-monitors I remember minimizing Graal and watching entire trilogies (Matrix, LoTR, Godfather) everyday while nonstop mining to the point where I could mine the old 33 rock rooms with my eyes closed.

http://i.imgur.com/cyckjQh.jpg

Why would I spend all these hours having 'fun' with a taxi and making just a percentage of the money, without any incremental rewards (like levels). When I could zombie my screen and watch movies all day while gaining levels and extra money.

Imo the jobs should mostly be changed to be like mini-games, something that's really fun but requires you to actually play it. Think along the lines of that Mining game that was posted on the Coding forums; it ended up being used on a recent Maloria for some time. That **** was fun.
-----

Lol... wouldn't the first approach be to add a player login mechanic that removed/replaced them (after making them untradable)? Not sure if serious with this. :p

Yeah, I know that's the only way I got through with mining so much, just have some movies or something playing on one screen and mining with out really paying attention on the other. That's one reason I never liked the other jobs, requires too much attention to even make me want to do i them for hours and hours and days and days and months and months on end.

didn't u get banned for macroing?

People also miss the point to. Who said you have to be rich playing era? Who said you have to have the best guns?

Just because somebody else has an MP5 Navy & $2M in the bank doesn't mean you have a right to have that to. He probably earned it..

People miss the point. They come out "that's not fair, he has this and he has that".

Yes making money is boring but flip me... that's life... i'm sure most will agree it's boring as **** to make money in real life to. THAT'S LIFE.

If people have navys & money then they probably earned it and that means you should to. Nobody said everyone has to have an MP5 Navy.. This is why we have guns like G36K etc go use them if you wont put the work into earning your money and working for it.

I mean it's not even that hard to make money at all if you put the work in.

Reset actually, while I was watching Robin Hood and stocking **** at GP.

They restored me eventually, 'cause no I wasn't macroing.

Oh, which Robin Hood were you watching? There's quite a few now.

The new Russel Crowe one, it had just premiered that weekend and I was streaming it while pressing A. Zeus ended up resetting me.

Oh man, I should download it, I've yet to see that one. Was it any good?

Unlimited ammo was always a bad idea.

One of the problems with the economy is the scale.
$2,000,000 for a gun just looks like too big of a number and puts people off before they even start. $20,000 for a gun seems a lot more reasonable, even if you make every job pay 100 times less so that it's the exact same amount of work.

A tax on bank accounts or withdrawals/deposits would never work.
The best place to make a tax would be in the trade window, similar to the tax on GK. If the pawn shop was slightly better you could use the pawn price to get a moving average value of every item to base the tax off.

I like the idea of scaling down, but it wouldn't work by just /10ing everything. You can't have .# of a dollar, and most base items/job payouts are like $2, 3, 5, 6, 11, someone would have to re-balance all the jobs. I'd do it cause it actually sounds like fun, but I'm not a staffer.

Add small fees to the systems players already use; a $100 fee to accept a lend or trade. Put the mall stand costs back (they were lowered for a 'special weekend' and never changed back). Raise gas prices (lol.. mostly for helis, no one uses cars). Hell, people used to be charged $50 for an atm card when they wanted to use the bank.

Add more vs. NPC options for money, like betflipping. I remember making a sweet ass horse racing track on GG, and there was a similar Pinecone race on Era at one point. I'm not saying it all has to be gambling either, what happened to the gun range.. someone could update that to be more relevant/fun (make it like a duck-hunting mini-game). Make an arcade... I remember seeing the locked building on the boardwalk for like 7 years and no one ever made it. Give the idlers at OSL something to do, put those chess/checker boards on the tables and make them actually work (even simple things like Tic-Tac-Toe/Connect 4.. I remember playing/betting on that stuff with friends all the time). Finish the SR Casino; Moon had some really great looking outlines for BlackJack and Hold'em games that never got finished. Make the boxing in the Gym work, and let players rent gloves/the ring to use; let other people even bet on it.

All these fun things for people to do, and they could all have little fees associated with them. Take it further than just @title and guessing on a coinflip. It doesn't always have to be killing people that makes players stay online (as seen by the huge success of bet-flipping release).

Yeah, scaling down wouldn't fix the economy but would make it a lot more pleasant to look at. Might be a bit of a hassle though if you do the conversion wrong, since like you said, you can't get a fraction of a dollar, you would need to add cents or do a different conversion rate.

They did?

No, just placed a bounty seems to be working.

This paragraph is gold, Rogue. Thanks a bunch. (I know this probably sounds sarcastic, but isn't at all, these are awesome ideas).