Way to fix the economy?

[papajchris]

This is probably a stupid idea, but nonetheless maybe we can get a discussion going and end up with some really cool ideas.

So yesterday as I was trying to fall asleep after drinking to much coffee, it hit me, why not make everything playerran on Era?

The reason the economy is out of control is because tons of money is coming in (through flower picking, mining, etc.) and not enough money is going out.

What if everything became playerran? Then there would be no money going out or in. Now this might make no sense, but anyone who has taken economics knows that the way governments add/remove money from the economy is by selling/buying bonds from people. On Era the staff could buy items from players to put more money in the economy, and sell items to reduce money in the economy. The amount of money in the economy would be fully controlled by staff.

Now to the hard part; how would we make everything player ran? At first, I thought this would be a confusing task and may just make things annoying. But actually it wouldn't change that much stuff on Era. You could still pick up litter, just instead sell it to greenroads cafe so they can make cups or to gun stores to make ammo boxes.

You can still mine, just sell lead to gun businesses, and gold/diamonds to other businesses.

Basically everything would have a purpose. Now someone might say, "How can you give flowerpicking a purpose?" If it's to hard to find a purpose for a job, remove it. Instead of flower picking, we can add fishing and then fishing can be used for anchovies at speedy pizza or possibly fish for a restaurant

The problem of to much money being in the economy would be over.

As I always say when i make a post with ideas, it's just my opinion and i'm no expert.

Edit: Instead of a pawn shop, players could sell items to staff, thus adding more money to economy (again, only if we wanted more money in economy)

[fowlplay4]

I personally wouldn't want to be playing a game and be told "We aren't buying X that took you an hour to get together because we don't have the money to pay it for you." That doesn't sound like fun at all to me.

[papajchris]

Well essentially everything would have a purpose, so if they weren't buying the item, then the producer wouldn't be producing anything. An issue i do see is a surplus of an item, but then staff could purchase the surplus items, or the price would go down and then players would switch to something else until it was back up. if a good isn't be supplied enough, then again staff could sell the items. but i can't see that happening as a business is looking to make money, so they will have to pay more for an item if theres not many of them.

Furthermore, most likely you would work for a business and therefore have to get paid for your work (like how it is now). Now if your on your own and selling lead, yes businesses could say they are full. but then they could hold onto it, or trade it. Right now businesses have miners and still can't keep up with lead demand. I see it quite often where employees/owners are purchasing lead from players because their staff can't meet the demand

[Demisis_P2P]

Closed economies don't work.
Even countries with millions of people need to trade with other countries to get rid of excesses and fill their shortages.
There is no way it would work with such a small community.

[Dnegel]

The small amount of people is the problem yes, but with more people it could actually be done.

[Supaman771]

We should be able to buy land from Era and build farms so we dun gotta buy from businesses.
GG, Farmville.

[KrimsonSky]

old idea is old.

we've all said get rid of NPC stores and shops, but look, they still here.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by KrimsonSky

old idea is old.

we've all said get rid of NPC stores and shops, but look, they still here.

Not sure who all is because most of the server is advocating putting every weapon into automatically-stocked shops.

[KrimsonSky]

Who you mean staff?

I bet everyone would love to be a part of a biz, some sort of biz.

could try something better then mining 247..

[salesman]

People like to be a part of player-run businesses, but they also like to have all weapons available to purchase somewhere (which is what I think Chris was talking about).

[Andre2006]

This can be manipulated.


Also this would not work because I don't think people would go pick up trash all day, if nobody picks up trash all day there will be no cups for the café etc...

[Spikedude]

I think it should be done by supply/demand type curves. If there's a 1000 pizzas stocked at speedy pizza and a player makes one, they should get payed less than if there's 50 pizzas stocked and they do. If that was progressively added to every form of income, it'd make the amount of money at least smaller, and it would encourage players to explore different money making opportunities.

[Sinkler]

Era isn't a real economy. Era is a virtual economy. How do you all plan on implementing a supply/demand curve on a virtual economy? Pushing Era into a realistic-based economic system isn't the best idea in my opinion. It's not even working out 100% in real life, how is it going to work out here?

[Spikedude]

Originally Posted by Sinkler

Era isn't a real economy. Era is a virtual economy. How do you all plan on implementing a supply/demand curve on a virtual economy? Pushing Era into a realistic-based economic system isn't the best idea in my opinion. It's not even working out 100% in real life, how is it going to work out here?

I don't mean a functioning economy, you twit. I mean a script that progressively takes away from your income as more of an item is stocked. IE: less money per lead when you mine as the mining shop gets overstocked, less money per pepperoni pizza when speedy pizza is already stocked, if fishing gets implemented it could be less money per fish if speedy pizza already has enough. I just explained it that way.

[TheJames]

If they would release new guns weekly or even monthly it would fix the economy.. People would be paying money a NPC-Shop, meaning it wouldn't refluxuate in the economy, thus meaning it would be depleted. New guns would give the player a reason to spend thier money. Money being worked for, put in the economy then spent where no one would reap the benefits and a NPC Shop receiving the money would essentially fix it. Think about it.

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by TheJames

If they would release new guns weekly or even monthly it would fix the economy.. People would be paying money a NPC-Shop, meaning it wouldn't refluxuate in the economy, thus meaning it would be depleted. New guns would give the player a reason to spend thier money. Money being worked for, put in the economy then spent where no one would reap the benefits and a NPC Shop receiving the money would essentially fix it. Think about it.

I smell a exploit somewhere but too tired to find it.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by TheJames

If they would release new guns weekly or even monthly it would fix the economy.. People would be paying money a NPC-Shop, meaning it wouldn't refluxuate in the economy, thus meaning it would be depleted. New guns would give the player a reason to spend thier money. Money being worked for, put in the economy then spent where no one would reap the benefits and a NPC Shop receiving the money would essentially fix it. Think about it.

Yeah no ****, thats what happens when the money is destroyed by an NPC Shop and yet this economy "problem" still seems to be around.

Taking bigger cuts from player-run shops and reducing the amount of money would do a lot more than a few gun purchases that would only shift the problem from cash to guns. Offering incentives to have guns destroyed would help too but w/e.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by TheJames

If they would release new guns weekly or even monthly it would fix the economy.. People would be paying money a NPC-Shop, meaning it wouldn't refluxuate in the economy, thus meaning it would be depleted. New guns would give the player a reason to spend thier money. Money being worked for, put in the economy then spent where no one would reap the benefits and a NPC Shop receiving the money would essentially fix it. Think about it.

Nope.
Once a player gets a better gun selling their old gun becomes a case of minimising loss, rather than trying to turn a profit or even break even.
For this reason players selling guns will always be able to undercut the prices those guns sell for in businesses.
When I added new guns for public sale in the melee store (Mini SMG and Daewoo) I stocked 300 of them, in the first night 30 of each sold. And then over the next week another 10 or so sold. I think in total only about 60 of each have sold to date (over a year and a half).
That is because the saturation point for guns is so low, and because players can turn around and stand to lose 10k on a resale almost immediately.
Adding a pawn shop that buys back guns for 75% of their store price was meant to put a price floor on the player traded gun market, but then there will still always exist a player traded gun market at that 75% price level and NPC gun shops still won't do much to reduce the amount of money floating around.

Adding guns in NPC stores on a regular basis will only serve to accelerate the rate at which guns reach the gamebreaking 0.05 freeze, 0.05 reload state that they're in at the moment.

What really needs to happen is that we need to get rid of all these million dollar guns. How many people are going to bother making millions of dollars when the best gun they can get is only 100k? And even if some people still do bother, then it doesn't matter because it just means they're going to have that much more money sitting in their bank account doing nothing.

If everything is reasonably obtainable for every player, then people won't need unreasonable amounts of money.

[Andre2006]

We don't want a functioning economy, we want to have fun thats why we come here. Make everything not so hard to get, because we don't want to spend hour after hour trying to get something just so we CAN have fun.

What "I" want is a large variety of fun but not based on economy.

[FrozenLies0]

Here's an idea, use GANG GUNs in events and only gang guns. Aren't they there for a reason other then giving a gang member a decent weapon because they don't have one ? Hey, at least you won't get MP5's passed around every Gang War.

[Crono]

it was at first a unique idea on g2k1 and has now became (forced?) a server standard. a lot of servers are adapting economy systems and many of them have problems

has it ever occured to people that maybe playerworlds werent intended to have in depth economies? that maybe a broken economy like era's will never be fixed and a reset will only temporarily fix it?

dat is my 9am train of thought~

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by FrozenLies0

Here's an idea, use GANG GUNs in events and only gang guns. Aren't they there for a reason other then giving a gang member a decent weapon because they don't have one ? Hey, at least you won't get MP5's passed around every Gang War.

This is a good idea but it has a few problems.

The biggest problem with this is that gang guns aren't all equal.
Certain gang guns might give gangs an advantage in some events.

And then there is personal preference. Some people like using slower guns that do more damage, and they might not be accustomed to the gang gun. Or they might prefer to use a gun with a larger clip so that they don't need to reload as often, etc.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by Crono

has it ever occured to people that maybe playerworlds werent intended to have in depth economies? that maybe a broken economy like era's will never be fixed and a reset will only temporarily fix it?

this is p.much what i said above.
take away the advantage for having so much money. make everything obtainable at a reasonable price, and then it won't matter if people still make tons of money.

if you focus on making the server fun, maybe people won't want to spend 1000 hours in the mines.

[Crono]

i really dont understand when gamers around the world considered working to be "fun" and "part of the gameplay"

working is not playing

are games not intended to be played? tis a problem everywhere. i guess everyone just loves the "i have this and u dont LOL" factor. e-peen ftl

[FrozenLies0]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

This is a good idea but it has a few problems.

The biggest problem with this is that gang guns aren't all equal.
Certain gang guns might give gangs an advantage in some events.

And then there is personal preference. Some people like using slower guns that do more damage, and they might not be accustomed to the gang gun. Or they might prefer to use a gun with a larger clip so that they don't need to reload as often, etc.

This is true, but it's a start to fixing "fairness." Every gang has to have an unique gun. Whether it has 2 bullets, 1 bullet, 3834983 bullets, shot at once. If a gang was able to design their own gang gun based on their preferences, they would be happy.
Another possible fix would be in events, instead of having regular whatever you have weapons, why not just bring out the ordinary choose from Ak, uzi, hg, shotgun. How can you complain then ?

[jkldogg]

If all guns aren't in stores the economy can't every be stable for long. The reset fixes the economy, sure, but for how long? Like a few months?

The economy is inevitably going to spin out of Whack. Why?
Take this scenario:

Reset happens.
A bunch of new and old people start to play. The only guns avalible are the guns in the NPC stores. (Unstick store, pawn shop, fort knox, etc.) So everyone is shoveling and doing various other jobs to get money. Over the next few days/weeks staff release new guns in stores and whatnot. So more time goes by and players buy all the guns in the stores and the stores are deleted. More time passes and after all the "rare" guns are released the stores are deleted once more. Now all guns are on the streets. There will always be a person (or people) that decide to spend all their time making money and then they buy all of one gun and hoarde them. For instance, Bob, Bill, and Tom are all friends. Since the day after the reset have all been mining. It's been about three months since the reset and they all have a nice amount of money. For this scenario we will say they made 100k per month (If not more...). So now between the three of them they have 900k. As you see, the three new players have a great amount of money. They can pretty much target one group of guns and just buy them all. Like if they bought all the SMGPK's and hoarded them, they could change whatever they wanted for them. Most people just break some of them so they become "Rare".

In closing, this always happens and will always happen. Things inevitably spin out of control.

[FrozenLies0]

Agreed, resetting is NOT the way to go.
It's just going to piss off a ton of players.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by Crono

i really dont understand when gamers around the world considered working to be "fun" and "part of the gameplay"

Yeah but what other gameplay does Era have?

You work for a bit, buy your first gun.
Now you have two choices, you can go and try and kill people.
Or you can keep working and try to get a better gun.

So your first gun is an uzi, you're going to be hard pressed to get one kill every 30 minutes with it. People are either just going to run at low health or they're going to kill you with their superior guns.

So you keep working, and you buy a more expensive gun, something in the 50k price range.
You can go and try to PK now or you can keep working and try to get an even better gun.

You take your 50k gun and you go to PK. Now you can get one kill every 10 minutes or so, but it's still really easy for people for run at low health and there are still a lot of people with much better guns that just floor you. Even one kill every 10 minutes is very slow gameplay.

So you keep working. You buy a gun in 120k price range.
You can PK again, or keep working.

You're probably allowed to join a gang now that you have a decent enough gun. Your gang raids and defends for maybe 2 hour a day. It's fun for a while and you get more kills while being in a gang, but the gameplay is still slow and you still don't have much to do for the rest of the day when your gang isn't raiding.

---

The problems as I see them:

Too much of a difference between guns. Entry level guns need to be competitive (pref. brought up to par instead of nerfing everything else; because of reason 2).

It's still way too easy to run. No matter what gun you have, if you're trying to kill people on the GMAP you're going to get 8 or 9 people to one or two hits from death and have them run away before you finally manage to kill one person. You shouldn't need to work for weeks and weeks just to buy a gun that you can still barely PK competitively with.

And finally, gangs still don't have enough activity because they still lack any sort of real incentive to actively and continuously kill and hunt down other gang members, or to defend their own base. Gang points are a platform to provide this incentive, but the incentive just isn't there at the moment.

[jkldogg]

Staff claim they must reset to "Implement new Systems". Which makes no sense. Why don't you just add the systems without a reset? Sounds like some old bs to me. Zodiac does new stuff without resetting...we can too.

EDIT: I don't really like gangs, they like parties with more people....and more lag. I'd just join for a cool gang gun, but now they are all nerfed so there's no point .

[Andre2006]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

Gang points are a platform to provide this incentive, but the incentive just isn't there at the moment.

Points cause people to run. Points is bad idea.

[FrozenLies0]

It's sad to say that part of the problem is the attitude players have nowadays.
Especially with the point system, how really "lame" it can get.
The point system gives out prizes now, but now more people run.

Back on topic though. Fixing the economy.
There is no way to FIX the economy. You can only make it better, and not by resetting or any other BS ideas staff have. You have to really think of ways that can benefit the players ENJOYMENT of the server, not benefit their cash moniez.

[Andre2006]

Originally Posted by FrozenLies0

You have to really think of ways that can benefit the players ENJOYMENT of the server, not benefit their cash moniez.

Yes, people don't pay for accounts just so they have to work on here, they have work in real life already. They come here for fun =)

[FrozenLies0]

Fix the players' enjoyment of the server, you fix the economy.
GG

Sad thing is, who wants to bet me staff will reset Era anyways thinking they'll do good ?

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by Andre2006

Points cause people to run. Points is bad idea.

Points aren't bad on their own.
If the prospect of losing while somebody else gains is that much of a turnoff then why do people go to casinos in real life?
Because the chance of winning $10 is worth is the risk of losing $10, right? It's balanced.

On Era dying gets you a death, but then you also then have to wait to respawn and heal at the hospital. But if you're on low health and you keep fighting then the most you stand to gain even if you win is one kill stat. They're not equal and most people determine that it's not worth the risk.

The reward for killing needs to be increased and made more immediate (eg. instant monetary reward for killing) and/or the punishment for dying needs to be made less severe.

PKing doesn't feel like such a chore on Graal Classic because even if you die all you need to do is press a direction key and you respawn on the spot with your health back. Obviously this wouldn't work for Era, but the same principal applies.

[Dnegel]

The problem is that there are many people in the world who like to work and become the richest on online games.

[jkldogg]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

Points aren't bad on their own.
If the prospect of losing while somebody else gains is that much of a turnoff then why do people go to casinos in real life?
Because the chance of winning $10 is worth is the risk of losing $10, right? It's balanced.

On Era dying gets you a death, but then you also then have to wait to respawn and heal at the hospital. But if you're on low health and you keep fighting then the most you stand to gain even if you win is one kill stat. They're not equal and most people determine that it's not worth the risk.

The reward for killing needs to be increased and made more immediate (eg. instant monetary reward for killing) and/or the punishment for dying needs to be made less severe.

PKing doesn't feel like such a chore on Graal Classic because even if you die all you need to do is press a direction key and you respawn on the spot with your health back. Obviously this wouldn't work for Era, but the same principal applies.

Yah, this is right on point of the problems / issues....Why don't you play Era? You know so much, you should me manager or at least staff. You know of all the problems and whatnot.

[Andre2006]

Originally Posted by Dnegel

The problem is that there are many people in the world who like to work and become the richest on online games.

Really now, I don't see why people actually pay only so they have to work hours, after hours to get stuff ONLY so they CAN have fun with their money. I think work in general is frustrating enough.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by Andre2006

Really now, I don't see why people actually pay only so they have to work hours, after hours to get stuff ONLY so they CAN have fun with their money. I think work in general is frustrating enough.

The sense of accomplishment you get after putting in many hours of some task to reach your goal you wanted to achieve comes to mind.

[Venom_Fish]

People will always run, the economy will always be ruined at some point.
A reset isn't a permanent solution, its I believe the only temporary one.
kinetaro is attempting to do what every failed predecessor did, focus all his attention on a "Era After This" rather than the "now". Seeing as history seems to repeat itself, the end result won't be a surprise.

But who knows, every now and then there are outliers. Seldom happens, but thats a possibility. But like my signature says, chance happeneth to those who prepare themselves for it. So I'd bet my money on the "probable" rather than the possible.

[Andre2006]

Originally Posted by fowlplay4

The sense of accomplishment you get after putting in many hours of some task to reach your goal you wanted to achieve comes to mind.

I don't get any satisfaction at all from working hours to finally be able to have fun, when I can finally have the fun I'm already too tired to have any.