Economy

[Xanakin]

Like mentioned above the economy is a big key point and something we as a staff team are heavily looking into, making sure everyone's experience is top-tier and enjoyable at the same time - where economy plays a huge role in.

[philadelphia shooter]

Please don't make our mobster characters to truck all day long for the next 4 months. 

[Cofii]

It is thing that need to be perfectly balanced. So you don't need to grind some job 12 hours for 100k, or to just stay AFK and earn a lot of money. Also, it depends on which way you decide to get money. I would like to see some realism in the economy system.

[rls]

Don't give too much passive money that comes out of nowhere. I understand that for those that aren't well-versed into roleplaying as much as others, or don't have any good friends that they can do business with it'll be harder to earn money but the incredibly unrealistic economy on SAMP existed because money was basically infinite.

 

With that said, it shouldn't be too hard either. You should have an X amount of money in the hands of the ''state'', to pay the unemployed (or scripted jobs) that is filled back up on a monthly basis (through money injections from the federal reserve or whatever). This could be 2 million, 5 million, 20 million or more whatever works with the amount of players we have. Either way, once it reaches zero all the unemployed can't receive any more money untill it's filled back up. Like this you're still gaining money from an ''infinite'' resource, but the economy will be more dependent on money and transactions made from player-to-player.

 

For the illegal side, there should be more ways to work the economy. For example the possibility to launder money, and if too much money is spend without proof of existence (Profit obtained from illegal activities and then spent without laundering) the authorities will be alerted. In real life this is the SEC I think (?, not sure if it's actually the SEC since I don't live in the USA). If there is not enough PB for an actual SEC faction, IC this could just be PD's investigation force (Detectives, whatever)

 

Also making ''fake'' money would be cool as long as you can't make 4 million in a weeks time, this should also obviously only be for the bigger (official) illegal factions. This fake money would undeniably need to be able to be caught someway or another, in real life this is done through a scanner you can often find at supermarkets, banks and restaurants. This could be implemented too.

 

You could add a way to make the fake money more convincing or not for the scanners, otherwise every shop can just spam the scanner and deny any fake money making it useless. Making the fake money more or less convincing could be done through a percentage. The more time and money spent making the fake money, the more convincing it is. For example, if you want a 92% (random high percentage) you only gain 0.1 of the money spent to make the fake money. So if you spend 10 dollars, you'll have 11 fake dollars once it's done with a 92% match with real money. 

 

But if you want to roll the dice and make it match for only 45% you gain 0.7 so 10 dollars are now 17. But why do we need to spend money to make fake money? Printers, workers, paper, whatever excuse you want to make. For me it's mostly to make it balanced would something like this actually be implemented.

Edited October 5, 2021 by rls
Further explanation.

[King]

Most definitely a realistic economy. I don't think there's even a need for a discussion, the economy on SA-MP just got ridiculous and unfair. Especially as back in the day it was so much easier to gain money via paychecks, especially being apart of GOV (LSPD/SASD/EMS). 

 

If anything this server is a blessing for an economy reset that LS-RP so desperately needed. Keep it simple and don't charge $500-$1000 for entry in a building and we should be alright.

[philadelphia shooter]

do the same thing you did on samp, it'll be ok the first couple of years kek.

[KnownAlmighty]

It's a challenging thing with the economy anyways. It'll be nice to see jobs roleplayed and actually getting money off it! I support reducing mechanic money from the server, this way it's equal. With official factions being unable to fetch this job was unequal for example. 

[dimes]

Grinding shouldn't be a thing. 

[Zion_]

My player bought doge IC im rich already

[2JZGTE]

Let's also not forget that we are more or less responsible for the economy. We players was the ones who charged 1000-2000$ to enter a club, 20,000 for VIP and sold Desert eagle for 80-100k, which was not really realistic.

There should be some kind of rule to keep pricing of certain items within the limit to keep it realistic and avoid monopoly.

 

 

[witness]

In my opinion, we need expenses. Most of these communities (that I'm aware of) don't put enough emphasis on money going out from your character's pocket/bank, aside from buying character customization, vehicles, buying properties, and drugs/weapons. There need to be more day-to-day expenses, like medical bills and ambulance fees, utility bills, insurance, mortgages, leases, loans, and rent, etc. 

 

I get that people don't want to get home from work and hop in-game just to start grinding so they don't lose their virtual house, which is why finding the right balance between expenses and income is essential. Personally, I want to see a realistic economy that mirrors real-life prices, but at the same time, I don't want to have to spend hours almost every day working in-game so that my character can afford necessities for my roleplay. 

 

The economy is a hard to get right. We need it to be fair and not punish those who can't spend dozens of hours a week in-game, but at the same time it's clear that inflation will start happening and ruin the economy a year or so down the line unless approrpiate measures are put in place.

[RoryR]

As others have said finding the balance of an economy in a game which is meant to be fun to play is really hard. I'd say just for the sake of realism and continuity of the server, I'd lean to a more realistic / restrictive economy. No one will ever be able to make a truly realistic economy, but I think as long as the staff are willing to step in and make changes if things start getting out of hand things will be fine. I'm not too sure about an actual economic model or anything, but I have a couple ideas of how the script and economy could interact.

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on these suggestions and if you see any holes in them, especially the IRS organisation one. The economy will be a crucial part of the server and I think these changes would add quite a lot of realism to it. These additions would require a fair bit of effort from both the players (IRS members, receipt generation, etc.), as well as staff and developers for further planning something like this out and actually developing it, but overall I think it the realistic money laundering and tax evasion elements alone are worth it.

 

 

Taxes

 

Suggested types of taxes:

• Income tax (paid on any income earned personally, handled automatically but at least displayed/recorded for script based jobs)
• Sales tax (paid when selling and/or buying a goods or services, again handled automatically for script based things)
• Property tax (paid when selling and/or buying property, heavier taxes should be applied for those buying/selling more than one property)
• Wealth tax (paid based on a character's net worth when receiving a paycheck)
• High end vehicle tax (paid when buying high end vehicles to further restrict high end cars, could be extended to a tax each paycheck)

 

For income, sales, etc. where tax isn't automatically deducted receipts would need to be generated. I'd suggest these being an in game item anyone is capable of creating which would be configurable to state X good or service was provided for Y amount on Z date. To stay on top of your taxes which aren't automatically handled, you would need to work out and pay the appropriate taxes each month. Would probably require some sort of IC web portal to be developed. I'm not too sure how receipts would be stored in game, as having an item for each receipt definitely wouldn't be the move. Perhaps they could initially be an item when first generated, but then you store them in a book / computer / something which stores it along with all other receipts which have been stored within it.

You could argue that this is a lot of effort just to pay taxes, but it's realistic and adds more to the process of being a business owner / service provider. Would only really be necessary if the following suggestion was implemented in some form.

 

IRS Organisation

 

This organisation would primarily investigate large deposits of cash into banks, large transfers of money between bank accounts, and the finances of businesses. The organisation's members would have some sort of system which would display these deposits and transfers with some details for them to invesigate. The banks would of course have a character's basic details such as name, age, address and contact information. If businesses and business bank accounts are to be a thing, this would also include them and they'd have basic business information such as the industry, location(s), book keeper(s), etc.

 

All of this would remain almost entirely IC and the investigators would need determine whether or not such deposits, transactions and sales are legal and/or legitimate. Purchases and expenses would need to be recorded as much as possible. From some of the videos released it seems like this is at least somewhat considered. The point I'm trying to make is there needs to be enough logging of transactions for there to be a reasonable and provable trail which someone could plead to the IRS. This is where the receipts for things where tax is not automatically handled would come into play.

In theory you could operate a business / service without paying tax or keeping records. But if you were to ever get investigated by the IRS, you'd basically be screwed as you'd have no proof of your income, expenses, or wealth.  This would also open up the possibility for underground versions of businesses such as casinos / gambling parlours. Cash heavy businesses would also be able to launder money by generating fake receipts. It may seem like you could just generate receipts to paint a picture of your business, which is true, but it would have to be realistic and believable. For example, a car wash's sales may typically be in the $20 - $100 range, so it would be strange to have multiple $500 receipts. Or over the course of a year 90% of your sales were in a 2 month period, something doesn't add up. 

For example, let's take the same car wash and say on average it makes $20,000 per month with an average sale of $20 (1000 sales). For a car wash to launder a sum of $10,000, they could generate some fake receipts and bump sales by 10%, totalling an extra 100 sales ($2,000 per month). They'd do this over 5 months and would've laundered $10,000 in a believable and realistic way which they could plead to the IRS if they were to ever investigate them. This is much more realistic and means that any illegally obtained money being laundered is tied up for some time, rather than simply doing '/me launders the money' in the back room of a business and calling it a day, and of course not all of that $10,000 would remain after paying some tax on it, but without the cost of actually making the sale.

 

When it comes to money laundering, determining the legitimacy of a receipt is something that could be handled in a number of ways. The first method that comes to mind would be to have the seller be stated on the receipt, and optionally the buyer could sign it as well and provide their details. This would only make sense on large purchases such as a car or house, as you wouldn't offer your details and a signature for a $2 drink at a gas station. So maybe purchases over X amount are legally required to have a signature from both the seller and buyer for taxation reasons. I think the dates on receipts should be configurable when creating them, as if the current date/time was used that would pretty much completely nerf any possibility to launder money.


Gambling Chips

Gambling chips would be an item you would receive in exchange for real money. All legit and licensed casinos / gambling parlours would legally be required to have chips in play. I think the best way to do this would have a setting for gambling tables/lobbies to use cash or chips. This would mean players would be require to cash money in for chips when wanting to play, and exchange their chips for cash when wanting to cash out, receipts given for both.  This would mean any winnings and losses could be kept track of and more importantly taxed. This alone would give enough reason for people to setup and play underground games.

How the actual taxation of gambling winnings would be enforced is something I'm not set on. I think the best method would be to leave it down to the player using a public web portal of some kind once per month. This would mean that over the course of a month you could work out your overall winnings/losses from your cash in and cash out receipts and determine how much tax you should pay. IRS officers could also target casinos as a source of their duties and investigate frequent gamblers about their finances.

 

You could make gambling tax automatic when cashing the chips in but I think that would be bad for a number of reasons:

• You only pay tax on how much you profit overall. For eaxmple say the tax on gambling winnings is 10% , one night you win $1,000 and pay $100 tax, then the next night you lose $500 and pay no tax, now you've paid too much tax.
• Keeping track of a gambling 'session' would be too difficult. People could time out, or cash in on Monday, keep everything in chips and then cash out on a Wednesday (after being given/giving away chips, server restarts/crashes, etc.)
• Relying on players to pay their own tax is more realistic, and introduces the opportunity for tax evasion which offers more RP for everyone involved.

 

I had a thought that each casino could have its own unique chip item, but that might be a little too much and require more development than necessary. Some underground games may opt to use chips as well which is why I think there should just be a generic gambling chip item. You could also split it up into $1, $5, $10, etc. chips, but again may be more detail than needed.

 

 

Crypto currencies

 

This wouldn't be for investments, but rather alternative methods of transferring money. There would be an IC site (exchange) where you could buy various different crypto currencies for X amount, where X would always remain the same. These would be stored in an online wallet which can be unlocked by entering a username/account number (public key) and password (private key). You'd send money via usernames / account numbers and that would pretty much be it, just a way of sending money which wouldn't be able to be tracked by the IRS.

 

I mentioned a choice of various different crypto currencies, but that's only for realism, they'd all behave the same and have no advantages over each other. Technically there could be a single, generic crypto currency. I don't think the value of these crypto currencies should ever change, that isn't really the purpose of this suggestion. At that point you're basically developing a fake stock market which sounds like it would just be a mess, so purely alternative transfer of funds - that's it.

Edited October 16, 2021 by RoryR

[Luckyone]

On 10/3/2021 at 8:42 PM, philadelphia shooter said:

Please don't make our mobster characters to truck all day long for the next 4 months. 

God I hate doing that

[Biskit]

I really don't think there is much to discuss here. I think it is quite obvious that we as players of this server want a realistic economy and I can without hair on my tongue say that I'm a 100% sure that the staff team shares that wish with us. The only problem is getting there and having a functional system but that task entirely depends on the developers. I believe that they will work towards the goal of achieving a realistic AND functional economy and try to get a result that is identical if not the same as the real life economy that we have now across the globe. However with that being said the real life economy in itself has flaws and is messed up so creating something that is faulty in itself is messy.

I think that the developers are definitely more than capable and that they deserve a thank you for time after time providing LS-RP with great updates and improvements. I also think that the old LS-RP was created years and years ago when people weren't as capable and experienced as they are now and the times were also different so the old LS-RP economy before the game server was shut down was definitely messed up as you all know, people had 100 million & more, every other person had a ton of money in some sort of way which didn't make much sense but people for the most part didn't abuse it (e.g. roleplaying poverty inspired characters while making use of their account's enormous funds).

Needless to say if there is something to be done about it, they will do it.

[RamiTR]

A realistic economy would work best, but there needs to be multiple ways of generating income. The problem with the SAMP LSRP server in my opinion was that your only options for generating money were joining an official faction (which was difficult for new players), trucking & fishing (which was irrelevant for some characters, i.e; a mobster fishing at the pier) & savings. These streams of income definitely have a place in the server, but there has to be either more options or an improvement to these methods (or both).

 

Most importantly there should be more current streams of income, things such as; investing in crypto, stocks, real estate properties, etc.