Economical Issues

[DarkRider]

Alright so to start off, there's this quote from the FAQ, posted August 2017: "

Economy

I don't like X or Y with economy.. - This is an ongoing process as building an economy from scratch can be a huge undertaking. You will see some more adjustments to pricing of vehicles, items, jobs over the next few weeks."

Note that it says "next few weeks", and not "a year later". I get that it's a generalization, but I'm curious whether your playerbase has been rather concurrent or if its just randoms coming in and out daily. This concern stems from the fact that your economical system is, to put it frankly, repulsive. I've got around ~3100 hours into solely ArmA-series RP servers, and very few of them have ever had economical issues, the ones that did were very new servers that fixed prices and income within a few weeks. 

The most blatantly obvious thing I noticed was the payout for illegal activities. Absolute garbage. A few players that were online at the time even agreed stating that usually "High-risk equals high reward, but this server seems like its High risk and Little reward". In a weed run, which averages between 20-40 minutes depending on how many joints are produced (I filled my inventory and my car's with buds), I gained about 5k-9k after selling everything.

So for 20-40 minutes of paranoia and entirely illegal activities, you got the same payout as a Trucker would get in 10 minutes from doing legal trucking missions. What's even the point of having illegal activities if there's no INCENTIVE to actually doing them?

After this, I resort to delivery missions. In a couple hours' time, I made about 15k. A whole whopping 15k. That can buy a Sultan and a basic pistol. The Sultan costs 9k and takes pretty heavy damage if you hit ANYTHING over 20 MPH. 

Lets go over to robbing stores now. Robbing takes ~8 minutes. Average cop response time is 1-3 minutes depending on location of the store and location of the officers. According to some players, the payout of robbing a store is around 500-1000, I couldn't get a straightforward answer and never managed to successfully rob a store myself. To top this off, one guy (me), robbing a store with a pistol, was faced with several (4+) officers armed with pistols and shotguns. Unless your aim is godlike, there's NO WAY you're getting out of that by shooting. And if you cant shoot your way out, you sure as shit aren't talking your way out, considering it's a robbery.

So this ties back into INCENTIVE. There's no INCENTIVE to robbing stores either. Civilians cant access any firearms above pistols, the cops usually always outnumber the civs in a robbery, they always outgun them or have the ability to outgun them, the payout is utter shit, the time it takes is too long, and the RP is so biased that the situation will ALWAYS result in the player getting arrested/killed. 

So why bother even being able to rob stores or do illegal drugs if there's no INCENTIVE to actually doing it? You can't claim its for "RP purposes", because if it was, you'd realize you'd get MORE RP if you gave them a reason to do it, which FORCES more encounters between players and police because more people will be doing it, giving the police more reason to patrol the related areas and routes.

 

 

Based on what some people have told me, income is low because you (owners/developers) want the server to be more RP focused. But what you don't realize, is that unless you give an INCENTIVE to the players to actually PLAY on the server, you're not going to have more RP. In ArmA 3 Life servers, you could do a run of Cocaine and net 200k-700k depending on the vehicle you used for it. But the drug harvesting, refinery, and selling points were in a triangle-like setup at relatively far distances away from each other. The payout was great, but the risk was also incredibly high, you'd be lucky if you could make a run and sell everything. BUT, the payout was an INCENTIVE and made it WORTH IT to risk your time and effort to go for that money. Same thing with banks, the payout was half a million, but you'd be lucky if you could get out of there, but the INCENTIVE of such a high payout made it worth the risk.

 

In summary: Fix your economy, give the players an incentive to do illegal activities. THEN you might see that RP you so vehemently desire.

Edited June 10, 2018 by DarkRider

[r3v0Lt55]

Agreed.

 

[DudeBroMate]

I agree with him. 

1. Robbing stores has no point, cops get to it so fast and their isn't even a point to doing it. I get you don't want everyone robbing stores but you have no point of robbing a store of the super high risk and low reward. I've had many times where cops would just come into the store and just kill me and my friend and just wait until EMS get here and take us to jail. I also see no point of why cops can use such weapons like shotguns when the suspects are using PISTOLS. Most PISTOLS hold 7 rounds and they are PISTOLS. A PISTOL would kill an officer with a full mag shooting at the chest, but a shotgun would kill them in 1 or 2. Not just that they don't RP well. They always have to win. I get realistically the police usually win but they always say "Oh yea all my officers left" when you can clearly see them out the window hiding beside the door.

 

2. Weed and meth have no point to them as well. Weed you have to plant it for ever takes you a long time to sell some and a full car and inventory of joins gets you what? A little less then 10k. Meth on the other hand is even worse. You get a little extra money having to wait 30mins to cook it and have a huge smoke cloud so cops can find you for what? A couple thousand dollars.

 

3. Jobs and payment. Why do you need to be LSFD or LSPD to get decent money? Taxi drivers have an extremely dangerous job getting robbed, getting their cars taken, being kidnapped and worse. And they make only 200$ and whatever they get from the passenger. Delivery. You shouldn't have to buy the tacos and water. If it's like a pizza delivery place you don't BUY the pizza you take it from the pizza place and deliver it. Mechanic. What is the point? Having to pay 550$ or something like that so they can just come to repair someones car and leave. It should be like EMS where you get like $750 every single repaired car. Tow Truck. The money I have no clue about because I wasn't told I could impound my own truck, so I got no money for the car I transported. 

 

 

[George Cahill]

On the point of robbing stores, its not made for the cash. its the RP you recieve from it. Drugs and other things etc, admins have said they should be higher and its always a work in progress..

[DudeBroMate]

I know that's why I said "I get you don't want everyone robbing stores but you have no point of robbing a store of the super high risk and low reward."

[DarkRider]

1 hour ago, George Cahill said:

On the point of robbing stores, its not made for the cash. its the RP you recieve from it. Drugs and other things etc, admins have said they should be higher and its always a work in progress..

I already addressed this claim. The problem is that the RP is incredibly predictable. It always ends with either the person being killed or arrested. The stuff in-between the initiation and the result is just fluff. It'd give more incentive for the players to rob stores and initiate RP if the rewards were actually worth the risk and effort.

[Shush]

If done right you can make robbing a store a very fun and enjoyable experience and get out with the cash.

The other day I witnessed a group of guys starting to rob the store and one of them did the emote that pulls out the blow torch. when the cops arrived they explained that he was trying to fix one of the machines in the back and it had set off the alarm. they were able to RP it out with the cops and none of them got arrested. So in their situation they got everything they wanted out of it. A good RP scenario and the cash.

 

[AtomicGinger]

"I get that it's a generalization, but I'm curious whether your playerbase has been rather concurrent or if its just randoms coming in and out daily." If you've played on the server as long as you say you have then you would know that you see A LOT of the same faces around town along with the new folks to the server.

Robbing a store is for RP. Period. I, as a cop on the server, have been to MANY store robbaries where the RP was good enough to warrant free passage. OR people have come up with great stories as to why they are there during a store robbery, finished the robbery, and got off scott free because their RP and stories were that good. The RP is the INCENTIVE, my friend. Not the monetary payout. 

On the topic of drugs. Why let server mechanics decide how much or how fast you make money? Why ONLY sell to the locals? Maybe sell to other players. Sure you may not make as much, but guess what you do get......an RP interaction with another community member. I think the question that needs to be asked by folks who constantly complain about the economy is: Are you here to play a money/job sim or are you here to RP? The fact that people THINK drug selling is more risky now is just hilarious. It's actually VERY easy to sell drugs and not get caught. The old system had you literally standing in one spot selling drugs just waiting for a cop to roll up on you. Now you can move around. You can play cat and mouth with the cops and laugh at them because they "can't catch you." 

Remember that this is a ROLEPLAY server. The INCENTIVE to come on every day and play is to RP with people in the community. Yes, it's nice to make some cash and buy some nice things but those nice things also take time to get.
 

[DudeBroMate]

@Shush it's very rare you get away and for what $500-$1000 when if you get caught you have thousands of dollars of charges and jail time.

[Mr. J]

You don't get an inventory full of meth or weed and expect to make a great profit of of it, if you want any kind of significant profit doing drugs you have to invest in vans and put in hours of work, then when you get to sell your stash, you will see the good side of things. For me that's pretty fair, you don't see a small time drug dealer doing big numbers of of his backpack.

Yet again, the payouts seem to be a work in progress as the cooking time, and the chance of selling seems to change every once in a while.

All the things you mentioned have already been discussed on the forums, many times, I guess there are other things more important to take care of first.. 

[Josh]

as someone who has worked on a number of ARMA communities and "balancing out in game economy" it isnt a simple fix... it takes ages for it to be adjusted. sure there should be an increased for illegal activity, but it shouldn't make you stupid rich like all the ARMAs seem to be. are you here to be rich or to RP?

[Flori]

How long have you been on badlands?

I read this post and even though I agree with a couple of things there, (that have been mentioned and discussed and tweaked and are still in the works....) the whole tone of the post and your way of laying out your criticism was overall, to use your own words: repulsive. It literally didn't make me want to keep reading. 

[George Cahill]

8 hours ago, DarkRider said:

I already addressed this claim. The problem is that the RP is incredibly predictable. It always ends with either the person being killed or arrested. The stuff in-between the initiation and the result is just fluff. It'd give more incentive for the players to rob stores and initiate RP if the rewards were actually worth the risk and effort.

I have never had to shoot anyone on a robbery or arrested it comes down to how you RP it out.

[speed]

3 hours ago, Flori said:

How long have you been on badlands?

I read this post and even though I agree with a couple of things there, (that have been mentioned and discussed and tweaked and are still in the works....) the whole tone of the post and your way of laying out your criticism was overall, to use your own words: repulsive. It literally didn't make me want to keep reading. 

It's the condescending tone. We're aware prices need to be tweaked, but this is not the best way to encourage those changes.

Refer to one of the other economy topics if you want to continue the discussion.