An economic extension to "Fixing Resistance RP for Good"

[Robert]

For those who have read the Fixing Resistance RP for Good found within the suggestions, maybe you came across my post within it, which not only supported the idea but offered a more broad range of changes which can be done to improve the current state of Willard. Some of you who have been around for a year or even just a few months or longer will most likely be aware that the Economy can be quite a heated topic of conversation.

Unlike most "Hot" topics, the Economy is probably the one you will find the least information and arguments about since most people try to avoid such a discussion around it... or feel their opinion may be outright ignored.

Taking a bit of a copycat style of M!NT, let's look at some graphs to identify the current workings of the Economy.

Problem Statement:
Economy is split causing no viable loop to form. Money comes in and out of an infinite void of funding with no means to an end.

Cause #1: Split Economy



Do you notice anything wrong with the above graph?

If you did good job if you didn't do well let me point it out. Both sides of the Economy both Rebels and literally everyone else is split. Rebels are left with 1 clear cut avenue to gain money which involves fuck tons of grinding while citizens have nothing to spend their money on other than stores they potentially end up not even using (Which once again, will be a different suggestion for stores to majorly rework them among other things like work cycles and rations.)

There is 2 individual economics operating without any feedback into one another. They effectively sit around ignoring each other. While you could fix this by say... making BMDs convert your credits or chips to one or the other, this would barely solve much of an issue at all.

But hold up you might say, why is this an issue? Well first let us ask ourselves how Economics work and the general basis of a good working economy, especially ones in video games. Now first of all, while games are meant to escape real-life values, there's one thing you cannot ignore... natural rules.

In the current setup of Willard, you got something like this:

1. Money exits the infinite void of money called 'The Server' into a players character whether it be getting your rations or selling items to a smuggler
2. This money then sits in your account, you may choose to spend it or save up.
3. As you buy items or save up, you are giving and taking from the infinite void of the server on repetition.
4. This money from your character may fall into another character's hand where they either spend it at the smuggler or Admin BMD where the Chips return to the void
   1. Same thing with Credits, you spend your credits on the shopkeep who then has those taken off of him by the infinite void of funding via the rental system.

And I will just stop myself there before entering a convoluted loop but there is a key problem with this list... money ALWAYS comes from a void to then return to the void or just stay in the hands of someone who just does nothing but save because there is no LOOP. Money does not hop from a cities funds, to characters to go back to city funds to spend on other things like the real world, instead it just goes in and out of an invisible void on repeat with no sustenance nor value to it. Generating more and more richer folks until EVERYONE is rich.. or they die and all that money goes back into the Void once again.

Money in Willard holds no value and no meaning and because of the cut of the 2 economies, Rebels only have 1 path to get money. Citizens have more but are still locked off. No bribing, no paying off mercs to do your dirty work, etc. 2 different eco's simply make it harder to do anything interesting.

Cause #2: No loop

Below I will present another graph to you. One which shows the potential of what a loop can do and what having no loop ends up doing.
First, the no-loop graph:



You may look at this and go "HEY! This IS a loop". Sure a loop if you fail to consider that the loop stops the moment you sit around and save all day with the only way it goes back is if you spend or die. Thus meaning there is 2 breaking points here... well how on earth do we fix this? Well before I tell you that, what if I told you there is actually 3 breaking points, not 2. If you immediately saw the fact there is 2 places this loop can break, then good but you may of defiently failed to see the third... guess what it is?

If you answer is seemingly towards the middle of the graph then you are pretty much staring right at it, the infinite void of funding is our 3rd breaking point.

In real life, the physical money you may hold could be new, but more than likely 1000s of people have held that exact same note you hold in your hands right now, passed down from customer, to shopkeep, to bank, to a company, to another person. At no point does the money "Magically" disappear into a void and then reappear. This is a loop in real life where money goes from person to person consistently.

Now what about the above graph, it is still looping round right? Well that third breaking point is the one which always ends up being triggered 100% of the time without fail because anytime it "loops" round, that money is effectively gone... reduced to atoms. And when you go get your ration or sell to the smuggler, you just made some new cash pop out of thin air that no one has ever held before you. Its entirely new money with the old constantly being wiped from reality never be seen again.

Now lets look at a proper loop of Economy.


There we are, a complete loop where one way or another, money alreadys ends up back into the hands of the Cities budget and never back into the money making and money eating void. Once that money is in, it will stay rotating around the server in a consistent loop. Sure, you may save and "hold that money up" in the loop but it will never truly break it as even savings don't sit around doing nothing forever unlike current setup where it indeed can.

That I shall explore in another suggestion, one that some may not love nor like, but one which ensures the Economy never becomes stale and is always on rotation. Something which gives you something to spend your funding on other than just rent/tax mind you.

But anyway, essentially what we got here is once the money goes out of that "void" we mention many times already before, it never goes back in to magically fade... unless lets say the people managing the City Budget pay some event/admin character for a bonus or something to the City to which yes... it will fade into a void but I guess that just means that the budget of the City won't just keep growing til the end of time with some stopper in the way.

This also allows for proper inflation markup and markdown as well as give the CCA the option to go real-life politics mode and enjoy the fullest of economics... within certain boundaries as to not piss off the entire playerbase into deprevation.

Overall, this is 1 currency where EVERYONE can draw from and because you all share the same currency, paying off rebels as a civ or even CCA to kill someone is possible. Playing corrupt CP and being bribed with an actual useful currency to you is now more widely accessible. More than 1 avenue opens up for not only rebels, but citizens to when it comes to collecting funds. Even the CCA, CMU and CWU all have funding to play with as the Economy becomes player reliant just like traditional CW servers. A huge emphasis on RP to focus on here ontop of the rebel changes and soon there is more suggestions to combe affecting everyone on the wider scale.

If I was to post my whole list of rebel changes, that would probably take at least 10 essays worth of your time. So I am cutting this down into individual threads...

But with that said. There are some actual solutions I would like to propose

Short Term solutions:
Jumping straight to short term, there is not much we can do as there is a lot of work to be done to make this work properly. Its a shame but maybe you have some ideas.

Long Term Solution:
To be plain, reworking the whole economy and its subsequent systems to ensure that everything runs off of a budget rather than a infinite void of funding. There is more than just this change to be made to make this work, but with a combined effort of merging the 2 economies into 1, changing the way BMDs work, changing how smuggling, trash and other such system work, reworking stores, rent and even tax will create a far more fair and balanced economical system.

And yes, while it may feel like I am aiming for Real-Life... I am actually trying to create a more fun system which encourages more and more RP and player to player interaction, as well as factions having to rely on each other and their fellow CCA. Interconnecting everything with the use of money.

See you soon on my next... 5 or so threads.

CREDIT:
@M!NT for the format and style... also for the idea of graphs for representation

 

[FungletheBungle]

The main takeaway I always have is that unlike real life you can just keep on saving, whereas in real life you NEED to pay for food and rent etc etc....

But people will complain if you put that need on them in game so whatever, just means that money looses most value, that being the value of staying alive which is too easy in hl2rp

 

[Rat King]

even though rebels using occupation currency/vice versa doesnt make sense lore wise, its a genius way to fix the economy imo, im fully in support of it if only to reduce/eliminate the godawful trash bag loop

 

[Robert]

But people will complain if you put that need on them in game so whatever, just means that money looses most value, that being the value of staying alive which is too easy in hl2rp

Well yes, this is true, and I actually mentioned it a bit in my above post as something I wanted to explain in another suggestion. Of course, no suggestion can fix those who infinitely save their funds without forcing them down in a path of nothing but complaints. However I got a few ideas.

For my store rework post, which is the second next thing on my list, I will go into how Stores will be changed to not only be far better than they are now and more manageable but also operate with a looping economy in mind. Some have already seen the idea of course and do like it, just need to refine it a tiny bit more before I post it. As for why I bring it up in terms of saving is well, something I would rather get into on the post itself but the long and short of it is tax and goods heading down a more "planned economy" route.

Before that post, I wanted to post my Ration and RDT reworks which reinvents the wheel in the sense of hl2rp and changes one of the core foundations of gameplay to make it more impactful which will once again impact savings but also how much one can earn. I do even have more extensions to mention on Economies thanks to suggestions I received from DeNuke to create a more variable and entertaining economy for players to play around with to their heart's content.

Then after that, I got a whole loyalism rework which I am writing to work on how to become a loyalist, what benefits they get and how they are treated, but also to in a way give them more of a challenge as well. As some know, loyalism is currently a far too easy path to tread down sometimes and given more people are pushed towards loyalism because the rebel grind is not really appealing on top of the aggressive rebels who you can't blame for their actions of killing each other for thy daily bread. But without going too much into it, I am basically loyalism a blessing and a bit more of a curse at the same time which will have a huge impact on savings... which I will not reveal yet.

Of course, I do have a few other reworks in the pipeline but I think mentioning them all would bring others to question how on Earth I am holding my sanity together in tackling problems which have been ongoing for so long and have been mentioned many times before without avail. And to be frank, I simply do not know how but here I am.

 

[alessiodoomboy]

I think another part of this that gets forgotten is that there are more forms of currency than just credits and chips. CPs have sterilisation credits and OSF have... something, I believe, can't quite remember what, but they have something. To me, this is just another splitting of the playerbase.

Untangling the economy without simply wiping what everyone already has is a tall order, and even if you were comfortable completely wiping scripts, chips, credits, etc. It's a very complicated system that would take a very long time to get in order. One wrong bit of maths would completely throw everything off and form an overpowered meta or a system where nothing can be gained.

Part of the reason its so messy is that the relative value of each currency to what they can provide and, more importantly, how much of there that there are is vast. You can just keep getting credits from rations and chips from trash, so those forms of currency simply become a value of time spent in game, which, of course, means that applying them to something important like what a CP buys with sterilisation credits is absurd and unbalanced.

The main point is that, whilst this is possible, it's extremely tricky. I'm in full support of shifting to a single currency and have been suggesting it for a while, but you'd have to be extremely careful with it's implementation. Still, any change is a good change with the system we have now.

 

[John Rico]

I keep a bunch of reward coupons on my main char since I figured out they could work as a hard quasi-currency should I want to buy something shady with an untraceable transaction (at least I think that would have made make the transaction untraceable). Alas, that never really happened and instead I have a dozen coupons ready to be exchanged should I need more credits to buy some boring stuff.

If you think about it, though, replacing chips with reward coupons would make way more sense, and you'd be merging both currencies in a way that's more interesting and without a retcon that would kinda break immersion in a lame way.