Preventing Future Economy Crashes (or how I learned to stop worrying & love the skins)

[Jeremy Coomeracci]

Okay so it's a Coomeracci post, it's gonna be lengthy. Deal with it. (I'll add pretty colours to keep you engaged )

 

Coming back to the server this time round there seems to be a theme with a lot of complaints i've heard, being that the server has "died". i wouldn't say it's exactly dead, but it is definitely less popular than it used to be. I've heard people suggest economy wipes, some select few have suggested full server resets (even as far as saying remove all staff ). I don't think a full reset is necessary obviously, but the issue presents itself plain as day. It just isn't as fun as it used to be, but why?

 

Nothing lasts forever, sure, but i've been watching this cycle since old Supremacy so i've had a lot of time to think about what changes i'd like to suggest. Now not all of them have to be taken on board, it's just my opinion after all, but I do genuinely love this server and all the degenerate bastards it houses. So I wanna see it continue and (hopefully) ✨">Thrive✨">

 

 

Starting out, I think the issue boils down to money. WE HAVE WAY TOO MUCH OF IT!!! The reason for this is we have way too many sources of pure income (money generating from NPCs) which is causing this hyper-inflation every. single. time. The Roots took the right steps adding cases, more knives & skins to give people something to buy but even that's not cutting the metaphorical mustard here.

 

What we need are more methods to remove money from the economy, and exchange it between players.

 

I'd like to give some examples of things i'd add, change or remove for our future hypothetical economy wipe.

 

Drugs

Yep, ✨">drugs✨">. We love em, we make em, we bake em, we take em. Unfortunately, I don't think enough of us take em, and not nearly as often as we should. Weed & meth are the go-to money making drugs and it makes sense! It's super fun running a mega weed or meth business and making big money, but if all the money comes from NPC's we're just gonna drive ourselves into an economical oak tree at 80KpH (yer economy's dead bruther). I think we should promote player deals rather than NPC by giving drugs stats (specifically for combat but i'd be open to funny effects too, similar to craft(able) beers in Deep Rock Galactic). Things like damage resistance, bonus damage, health regen & melee attack.

 

They would have to have drawbacks too naturally (significantly reduced health on comedown, dmg per use, obscured vision etc.), but this way drugs have a functional use atop their cosmetic "for fun" approach they currently have. I still think NPCs are important and shouldn't be removed, but they should definitely have their sell price reduced (drug dealers around the world are all placing hits on me right now but lads its for the greater good believe me).

 

tl;dr drugs should be sold to people not just in Nightclubs (also they make u do crazy shit)

 

Rent

Wouldn't it be funny if the housing crisis found it's way to DarkRP??? I propose as a means of constant money removal from the economy we move to a rent based door system. As I understand it, the current system is 1% of your current wallet per door. One time purchase and it's yours. What I propose is you pay X amount of money per Y amount of time. The parameters would be entirely up to the Roots of course.

 

This could also be used to encourage/discourage setting up in certain parts of the map. Mainstreet could have incredibly high rent so people actually have to consider if they can make enough money from their business to setup there, rather than have an idle base for 6 hours in the best building and do nothing with it 😑">.

 

IMO any excuse to promote map exploration and usage is a win in my books.

 

This is also a good opportunity for Hotel Owners (particularly the one near mainstreet) to be able to set what they charge for rent per door (I imagine rent on hotel doors would be comparably low compared to the rest of mainstreet so the Hotel Owner can decide if he wants to be a tightass or generous businessman.

 

AdvDupe2

This is never a fun one to bring up, because the response usually exclusively negative, but bear 🐻"> with me here. I think AdvDupe2 should be made available to all players. YES I know the issues it would inevitably cause, which is why I propose a time frame where new players can't use the tool until they've reached that playtime. It would be at the discretion of the ROOTS once again, but I would propose 4-6 hours. Enough that new players genuinely interested in base building, buying or selling don't lose interest.

 

There will 100% be D-bags who abuse it, spam it, do bad shit with it. These are the some shitwads who are propblocking spawn, placing spammy textscreens everywhere and building racist shit (based I know, but against the rules nonetheless). I personally believe the benefit outweigh the risk, and here's why:

 

Everyone having access to AdvDupe2 suddenly opens a huge pool of customers and merchants of base dupes on the dupe market. The dupe market is fundamentally dead at the moment due to lack of engagement. There ARE things on there, but it just isn't populated enough. New players could buy cool bases to use and actually SAVE their bases! For next session.

 

Speaking of, now new players actually have a reason to build a base because it will save across sessions. I guarantee the reason there are so many empty buildings is because players just can't be assed building a base every damn session.

 

Us full-time base builders suddenly have a new market to appeal to. Any Joe Schmo can build the basic utility base with fading windows etc., but we can sell regular users really nice decorative bases. Even bases with basic functionality (no Wiremod obv bc users can't have it all).

 

Frankly builders these days desperately need some creativity. Perhaps regular users with this tool will be able to demonstrate this key building skill we so sorely miss.

 

 

Convenience Store Owner

Quick one, but I think they should add a convenience store owner job. They could sell shipments of food from the Australian Foods Pack mod or individually like any dealer sells singles

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1367371490&searchtext=australian+food

 

They could also sell cigarettes, for those too poor to buy a vape

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1517464837&searchtext=cigarette

 

More of a for fun job, but still something people can sink money into!

 

Oil Refiner

Nerf. The shit. Out of. The Refiner.

 

Yes, it can be expensive to setup, but there is virtually no risk to the job. I understand IRL oil is FUCKING expensive, but this is a game. Part of balancing should be a Risk/Reward system. Drug jobs take active attention and can risk lost product if defending a raid (thus incentivising hiring guards). Legal jobs like Gun Dealer & Miner have slower, steadier incomes as they don't present as much risk selling shipments or mining legal metals.

 

Oil Refiner has no business making as much money as it does and it's irked me for a while. I'd say it has been a BIG contributor to the economy inflation this cycle round, and so I wanna see it nerfed to the fucking ground. It shouldn't pay nothing, after all it is expensive to setup. But as the risk of the job is minimal to non-existent (Seriously you don't even need a base, people can't steal your valuables and you don't even have to worry about Junkies like do) it should pay slightly more than other legal civilian jobs (nowhere near on par with illegal, high risk jobs).

 

 

Medic

Quickly pertaining back to a previous segment, if Drug changes are made I personally believe it should be a legal default that Medic's may prescribe drugs legally. Mayors may outlaw this Default Law but I think having it the stock standard could lead to some funny, cool and outright corrupt RP.

 

 

Karma

I think it should affect lotteries. There I said it.

 

Karma is the perfect potential money sink already sitting in the game, just waiting to be used. There should be good perks for having 100 karma (reduced jail sentence is nice but not enough to make it worth it since most Police interactions end with American results...). Improved lotto chances, reduced rent (see earlier paragraph 😏">), perhaps even a higher armour cap if such a thing is possible per player rather than class/rank based. The catch would be karma price would be raised CONSIDERABLY (i'm talking enough to make it a core mechanic thus regular money sink).

 

We do a lotta KILLING in DarkRP, so we often find out karma is low-0. If low karma increased rent, auto-hit players, increased jail sentences and provided no buff to lotto results, it's possible players would take it seriously. This is a mechanic that's important enough to show up on our HUD, shouldn't we make it worth taking up that slot?

 

*Quick note I do not think low karma should affect armor negatively (100 should always be base) nor do I think it should REDUCE lotto chances, only good karma should increase upon the base rate.

 

 

In conclusion

I think it's important we take this issue seriously. As I said i've seen this cycle span multiple servers, with multiple owners multiple times. Difference is I actually really like this server. It's full of assholes, the staff are all jerks (especially you Pharam), and overall it's my favourite way to spend an unpleasant afternoon.

 

And perhaps the server will just die. Perhaps no one will care. Perhaps I should just shut up and build another Nightclub. But I feel if we just put a little more focus into the core essence of what makes the game fun (Money and Player Economy), player engagement might start rising up again. As it stands Orbital is kind of a Club Penguin with guns server for mentally-ill loners at the moment, and perhaps everyone's fine with that. Not my server, not my say. But if you do share my sentiment with any of this feedback please feel free to share & discuss.

 

I may have things you disagree with, there may be things you wanna suggest! Let's get a discussion going!

 

 

 

 

 

tl;dr: Just kidding you fucking illiterate primate read the damn post or get outta my sight.

[Easte]

+1

Coomeracci post

That is all.

[duckers1696499407]

pharam isn't staff L bozo

[Walterburg]

[ryl]

Agreed! This is a great post mr coomeracci

 

Inflation of an economy should always be managed but I've never seen a server that does it well.

 

100% agree with the dupe idea, should definitely be available without having to pay for it or apply on these forums for it. It immediately turns away many serious builders from the server. Would definitely recommend to put it behind a 10 hour playtime wall.

 

On top of all of your suggestions, I reckon we add a tiered tax system too similar to irl australia. The richer peeps should get taxed more on ALL of their income including from drugs, etc.

[Garry Newman]

noted.

[garry from]

glitch i hope your taking this in

[Mythic Queers]

jeremy disappears for almost a years and returns wielding his 12 inch cock ong.

someone give this man a megaphone