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Economy


Mikee
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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.

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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 by RoryR

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

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.

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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.

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Economy is the most important topic, if LS-RP can get this right, it can change everything. I don't know how you can create a realistic economy without making people grind script jobs and keeping the inflation low but if you can manage this? I'll be really fucking amazed. 

 

Maybe make the illegal roleplay more rewarding economically, but also make it more riskier with forced CK risks which will make you lose your money as well, or life imprisonments and long charges.

 

Maybe we shouldn't value the money too much and with each CK people should start with certain amount of money, instead of using the few millions they had saved up with their previous characters.

 

Or inflation is inevitable, which will ruin the server for the new players, maybe not in a month, not in a year, but it will eventually, in 3-4 years.  

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57 minutes ago, pure north said:

Economy is the most important topic, if LS-RP can get this right, it can change everything. I don't know how you can create a realistic economy without making people grind script jobs and keeping the inflation low but if you can manage this? I'll be really fucking amazed. 

 

Maybe make the illegal roleplay more rewarding economically, but also make it more riskier with forced CK risks which will make you lose your money as well, or life imprisonments and long charges.

 

Maybe we shouldn't value the money too much and with each CK people should start with certain amount of money, instead of using the few millions they had saved up with their previous characters.

 

Or inflation is inevitable, which will ruin the server for the new players, maybe not in a month, not in a year, but it will eventually, in 3-4 years.  

Best way is to add some supporter checks for beginning hours, and not add savings in at all.

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  • 2 weeks later...

"Realistic" economy is important and you'll need it. We did not have one on LS-RP and the server became unplayable for new comers. However, you need  a balance here.  You must face a fact that you can't have a /real/ economy, because it's a game. From my point of view, all you can do is to think on ways to make money leave the server (taxes). However, you'll have to let scripted paychecks exist for everyone ( 500 - 600$ for example), but scripted jobs should not give away  editional scripted wages. Also, you must say a big no to scripted savings and have really low bank interest percent. 

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Yup, this is what I suggested on the original server a few times, never really gathered interest though. Server needs real money sinks, if you're going to own sports cars, jets and mansions you better be paying a shit ton in taxes, insurance, bills, etc. to the point where it's like good luck making enough money to keep up with all of those costs. I don't think anyone wants to see police officers, gang members driving around in lambos anymore, they need a real way they're getting that money. The gang member is going to need to be a famous rapper or something.

Edited by Zachh
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Taxes, taxes and more taxes.

 

You wanna be the boss, you gotta pay the cost.

On GTAW I had under 10 hours played... (Probably 7-8 of those hours being AFK tabbed) and my character had $250k + from newbie paychecks. 

 

Please don't go this route (at least not in under 10 hours ig), you want that half a million dollar car? Pay them half a million dollar taxes, insurance etc.

 

Also if savings are gonna come back, please make it harder and longer (pause) to gain interest, No way should I be able to turn 10k into 150k within a matter of weeks.

On original lsrp server I had multiple characters with elegants/premiers and other high value items.  I get LS is a high end looking city, but. Everyone isn't flying around in expensive cars.

 

Hopefully drugs have a realistic low price as well to kind of help balance things out.

Instead of like SAMP where weed was $100 make it actually 10$ depending on the quantity of course and etc. for other drugs..

Edited by Jit
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  • 3 weeks later...

In practically all fictitious environments, creating an economy is analogous to building a boat: you can put any amount of effort into insuring a system of checks and balances towards some desired result, but ultimately without consistent intervention it will fail the test of time at some point. Pretty much every major MMO publishing game studio has struggled with this exact problem at some point during a game's lifetime. Simply put: as time progresses, the ability to control an in-game economy diminishes. 

 

Asking for a "realistic economy" will require very strict defined parameters and an acceptance that unintended consequences are impossible to avoid. The most obvious example of this that I can think of is house location pricing.  It was very apparent when we were handling auctions on LS:RP that house prices would always be subject to out of character influence which would destroy people's concept of "realism." Houses that in any other environment should be considered low-budget would be priced alongside mansions because of roleplay appeal, and even these discrepancies could be spiked or plateaued based on a faction opening or closure, and likewise who was in said factions. With a limited supply, it simply was not feasible to control it, and the ratio between full houses in "ghetto" areas and mansions between GTA:SA and GTA 5 seems significantly worse. 

 

Houses are a useful anchor point for the value of your dollar, but managing things gets even more difficult when trying to moderate the price of drugs and weapons, particularly when trying to enforce some level of roleplay associated with either. You're essentially juggling an asset with extreme demand and low supply, and an asset with extreme supply and low demand, while trying to maintain some semblance of realism.

 

More or less, what I'm trying to say is don't get your hopes up. Although it'd be easy to criticize, I can assure you that any perceived problems with the economy are largely outside of anybody's control outside of development, and even then after a year or two, the state of the dollar is pretty much a gamble. It can be influenced sure, but whether you'll be sinking or swimming is really up to time.

Edited by Apophis
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