The Bounty Issue

Cylence · 2014-04-14 17:16:06

iceman wrote:

A house is considered "better" as people die in it (the better the robber was, the better the house is considered) and as they fail to brute force it. Robbing a "good" house means a robber is "good" as well, and killing a "good" robber will give you much more money than an untested one.
... I'm just wondering, Cylence, if you could explain exactly why you prefer your solution over this one (I'll do the same when I have time).

I stated that I don't think killing is the only factor that determines a "better" house. It doesn't take into account what was being protected. A house at the lower end might be attractive to cheaper and take down a bunch of 2k divers and then get luckily broken one time. A house on the upper end may not have many visitors kills and have one person with enough tools get to the vault because the tools he brought matched the value he was going to get. The robber skill should be based on stealing something that no one else can steal. The house difficulty should be measured on how much it prevents theft/murder, not on how effective it kills.

Which house do you think is better
One that holds $20k and kills 100 2k divers and 5 "good" robbers?
or
One that holds $20k and kills 0, but have had 20attempts by robbers have spent a total $100k of tools with no results.
or
One that holds $50k and kills 0, but is so scary no one wants to even try.

I think which one is better is based on perspective, but your system is giving no credit to robbers who can break the latter houses.

HardKor · 2014-04-14 17:20:51

The problem I see with these equations is someone could farm their own PB by robbing themselves on an alt and dropping that bounty back into their main house. Would only be able to do it once per day, but still would greatly increase funds depending on how many people died overnight.

Cylence · 2014-04-14 17:51:16

HardKor wrote:

The problem I see with these equations is someone could farm their own PB by robbing themselves on an alt and dropping that bounty back into their main house. Would only be able to do it once per day, but still would greatly increase funds depending on how many people died overnight.

I'm assuming you're referring to iceman's equation since your reference to PB. My proposed solution is based on time, so no matter how many alts you have, you're gonna have to wait for it to grow. The Z tool addition is also not worth spending $N dollars on tools only to bump a bounty $N*Z (which will be a negative profit).

You did make me think of one thing. A user can make about $1100 a day per alt account (taking his alt and buying $2k worth of tools, and suicide) without bounties. If whatever they are making off the new bounty system is the same or lower, then it doesn't matter.

HardKor · 2014-04-14 18:19:14

I agree Cylence. If someones house bounty grows by less then 2k a day (with any formula), it doesn't matter if they alt farm.

GotABigTrap · 2014-04-14 19:24:52

I think the root of the problem was just that you could get 5X the bounty money for the investment of tools. For example, a house has 1 family member to easily club. With that, for a 200$ investment you can produce a 1k bounty. Assuming you could find 10 easy clubbings, that is 10k with just the starting money alone. On the other hand, if for every tool spent it only added the same value of bounty, there would be no point in clubbing to add bounty for a money transfer.

iceman · 2014-04-14 19:25:32

Cylence wrote:

HardKor wrote:
The problem I see with these equations is someone could farm their own PB by robbing themselves on an alt and dropping that bounty back into their main house. Would only be able to do it once per day, but still would greatly increase funds depending on how many people died overnight.
I'm assuming you're referring to iceman's equation since your reference to PB. My proposed solution is based on time, so no matter how many alts you have, you're gonna have to wait for it to grow.

Actually, it would work for either of our methods. You simply rob your main house with your alt, change all of the money you robbed to tools, and suicide in your main's house. Any bounty value your house has accumulated goes to your alt's bounty, which goes back into your main account when it dies. Granted, the profits from doing that with your method would be much more stable than mine, but mine could be either less or more profitable, depending on how active the server is. Repeatedly "farming" your PB would, at most, double your bounties, at a delayed pace (If your PB is $1000, after farming it will be $500, then $250, etc., with a day in between each one).

Cylence wrote:

iceman wrote:
A house is considered "better" as people die in it (the better the robber was, the better the house is considered) and as they fail to brute force it. Robbing a "good" house means a robber is "good" as well, and killing a "good" robber will give you much more money than an untested one.
... I'm just wondering, Cylence, if you could explain exactly why you prefer your solution over this one (I'll do the same when I have time).
I stated that I don't think killing is the only factor that determines a "better" house. It doesn't take into account what was being protected. A house at the lower end might be attractive to cheaper and take down a bunch of 2k divers and then get luckily broken one time. A house on the upper end may not have many visitors kills and have one person with enough tools get to the vault because the tools he brought matched the value he was going to get. The robber skill should be based on stealing something that no one else can steal. The house difficulty should be measured on how much it prevents theft/murder, not on how effective it kills.
Which house do you think is better
One that holds $20k and kills 100 2k divers and 5 "good" robbers?
or
One that holds $20k and kills 0, but have had 20attempts by robbers have spent a total $100k of tools with no results.
or
One that holds $50k and kills 0, but is so scary no one wants to even try.
I think which one is better is based on perspective, but your system is giving no credit to robbers who can break the latter houses.

I keep on falling into the mindset of "increasing the bounty encourages turtle houses instead of tricky houses" mentality, which is really the wrong idea because this isn't going to change how people build houses. The bounty somebody gets from your house doesn't affect you- it affects the next person they die in.

I'd say the first two are definitely good houses, (in different ways), and my system reflects that. In my mind, the first is better- having over 100 attempts by suiciders, and killing 5 people who didn't want to be killed means it's a very tricky house. The second is obviously less tricky, but still fairly strong to brute forcing (although we don't know if that's 20 $5k scouters or 18 divers and 2 $50k scouters- the first isn't too impressive, while the second definitely is). If Jason thinks those two examples should give the same bounty, he can just change the variables.

It's the third one where our two methods would really differ.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we both want a house that is "better" to increase the bounty of a robber more. So that bring us to the question- is a house that nobody dies in or brings tools to better than one that does? My tendency was to say no- that house is untested, and the game has no idea whether that house is hard or not. Maybe it's the best house in CD history, maybe it takes 1 brave robber with a saw to rob- the game can't calculate the robber's skill (which manifests itself through his bounty) unless other people have failed before him.

But: a house that no-one even tries? Doesn't that mean that the house looks impossible/ridiculously expensive to rob? David Michael Scott's house comes to mind- if a house makes you turn around immediately and not come back, doesn't that mean that it's a very good house in that aspect?

I'm really not sure. In a perfect world, I'd say mix our two solutions- have a house's pending bounty based on kills, time, and tools. However, mixing time and kills is the most open to exploitation and farming by people with dual accounts, by turning the houses pending bounty into cash. Time can give them a very stable income (basically a salary), while kills let them double their bounty payoffs. Mixing both means a stable double salary, along with a bonus of whatever double houses happens to drop your way.

So if we can't have both time and kills, which is less open to exploitation, and what could be the results of each? At first sight, someone using dual accounts to farm the time-increasing pending bounty would go for a more turtle-like house, (the same effects as when salary existed for everyone), but most houses wouldn't be affected. Someone using dual accounts to farm the kill-increasing PB would go for a much more tricky/deadly house, to maximize the doubled bounties. If they were able to increase their alt's bounty every day before the bounty transfer, they could double it by quite a bit, but the changes to the bounty system should prevent that from being very effective.

Honestly, though, changes to neighborhood house construction is going to be tiny, so just seeing which is more open to exploitation is the only thing that matters. At this point, I've pretty much convinced myself that neither option is much better than the other option- they'll just have different effects when exploited. Come to think of it, maximizing money from your main house's time-increasing PB would need a high value, but the process of farming it requires you to convert half of your cash to tools, which is almost self-defeating.

I just realized that pretty much my entire post was on farming your own pending bounty, not farming bounty from other houses and dumping it in your house. Honestly, though, I think both solutions do an equally good job of making skill-free bounty increases much, much less effective.

Anyways, sorry for the brain dump. After writing it out (and being forced to think about everything), I think I might be leaning toward your solution, Cylence (although I'm still very much on the fence). Thematically, I like mine better (get a bigger bounty for robbing where many others have failed), but I think yours is less open to dual account exploits.

Last edited by iceman (2014-04-14 19:33:45)

Pohaku · 2014-04-14 20:37:06

It's 4am and I just got home from a 12hr shift so I can't think maths, but some measurable factors that should go into determining a player's bounty increase when they commit a robbery:

1) Number of deaths in the house they robbed SINCE THE LAST SUCCESSFUL ROBBERY. This neutralises the 'Connel Factor';
2) The amount spent to build the house they robbed. This makes $2000 0/0 'Gimme' houses worthless in term of bounty, and will be a crude measure of how difficult the house was to rob;
3) A ratio of stolen amount:tool cost. Anyone can brute force a $10,000 vault in a house that cost $70,000 to build, if they take $30,000 worth of tools with them.* So take into account how much they spent on tools to take down the vault.

*figures are hypothetical, possibly poor ratios, but my point remains.

Anyway - I'm only a beginner, but that' my tuppence-worth.

Poh

aka Mr. ?????????? ;-)

Keynom · 2014-04-14 21:28:14

Pohaku wrote:

It's 4am and I just got home from a 12hr shift so I can't think maths, but some measurable factors that should go into determining a player's bounty increase when they commit a robbery:
1) Number of deaths in the house they robbed SINCE THE LAST SUCCESSFUL ROBBERY. This neutralises the 'Connel Factor';
2) The amount spent to build the house they robbed. This makes $2000 0/0 'Gimme' houses worthless in term of bounty, and will be a crude measure of how difficult the house was to rob;
3) A ratio of stolen amount:tool cost. Anyone can brute force a $10,000 vault in a house that cost $70,000 to build, if they take $30,000 worth of tools with them.* So take into account how much they spent on tools to take down the vault.
*figures are hypothetical, possibly poor ratios, but my point remains.
Anyway - I'm only a beginner, but that' my tuppence-worth.
Poh
aka Mr. ?????????? ;-)

You know if you want I can let you know who you are ;D
You already know my name.
Keynom

aka Mr. Carpenter

Cylence · 2014-04-14 22:03:06

iceman wrote:

Actually, it would work for either of our methods. You simply rob your main house with your alt, change all of the money you robbed to tools, and suicide in your main's house.

Actually you could just buy tools with the main and throw them in the backpack before robbing with your alt. I see your point in the fact that a user could harvest a bounty from his own house by breaking it himself (he knows the solution) in order to cash in on the bounty. I was only focused on sending his alts to die at his house to pump up the bounty.
I don't think there's any way to avoid this since there's no way to separate someone who knows the tool-less method from someone who didn't, which is why I proposed a max to the bounty so it isn't growing indefinitely.

Robbing yourself would require you to wait for the pending bounty to grow through time to a max in my method.
Robbing yourself would depend on the influx of kills in your method. (which at some extent can be having your alts 2k suicide into your own house).

iceman wrote:

I'd say the first two are definitely good houses, (in different ways), and my system reflects that. In my mind, the first is better- having over 100 attempts by suiciders, and killing 5 people who didn't want to be killed means it's a very tricky house. The second is obviously less tricky, but still fairly strong to brute forcing (although we don't know if that's 20 $5k scouters or 18 divers and 2 $50k scouters- the first isn't too impressive, while the second definitely is). If Jason thinks those two examples should give the same bounty, he can just change the variables.

This is why I subtracted $2000 from the my tooled addition calculation, to rule out divers. I generally like kill houses that generate income as well, and I think they are better for me, but if you don't need or want income, a house that protects is a "better" house.

iceman wrote:

It's the third one where our two methods would really differ.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we both want a house that is "better" to increase the bounty of a robber more. So that bring us to the question- is a house that nobody dies in or brings tools to better than one that does? My tendency was to say no- that house is untested, and the game has no idea whether that house is hard or not. Maybe it's the best house in CD history, maybe it takes 1 brave robber with a saw to rob- the game can't calculate the robber's skill (which manifests itself through his bounty) unless other people have failed before him.
But: a house that no-one even tries? Doesn't that mean that the house looks impossible/ridiculously expensive to rob? David Michael Scott's house comes to mind- if a house makes you turn around immediately and not come back, doesn't that mean that it's a very good house in that aspect?

David Michael Scott's front was definitely deterring.
Basically, a "better" house should be one that can protect something that other people want for a long amount of time, this includes editing, since the best house is an ever changing one. Killing is not required. Killing is good for income of course. If it defends by reputation or an awesome fearful front, I still think that should count. Of course it could be a sham, but the longer it fools people, it should have some value.

iceman wrote:

In a perfect world, I'd say mix our two solutions- have a house's pending bounty based on kills, time, and tools. However, mixing time and kills is the most open to exploitation and farming by people with dual accounts, by turning the houses pending bounty into cash. Time can give them a very stable income (basically a salary), while kills let them double their bounty payoffs. Mixing both means a stable double salary, along with a bonus of whatever double houses happens to drop your way.

I think basing it on kills, makes it based on accounts. i.e. The more accounts, the more attempts. Time is independent of accounts. Tools is dependent on accounts, but the return is negative so it shouldn't matter. No matter what we base the bounty system on, the ability to farm it is built in. Adjusting our variables should mitigate that (in yours and my method).

iceman wrote:

Honestly, though, I think both solutions do an equally good job of making skill-free bounty increases much, much less effective.

Totally!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Hopefully Jason will weigh in and come up with a better solution drawing inspiration from all our discussion.

Cylence · 2014-04-14 22:08:40

Pohaku wrote:

... some measurable factors that should go into determining a player's bounty increase when they commit a robbery:
1) Number of deaths in the house they robbed SINCE THE LAST SUCCESSFUL ROBBERY. This neutralises the 'Connel Factor';
2) The amount spent to build the house they robbed. This makes $2000 0/0 'Gimme' houses worthless in term of bounty, and will be a crude measure of how difficult the house was to rob;
3) A ratio of stolen amount:tool cost. Anyone can brute force a $10,000 vault in a house that cost $70,000 to build, if they take $30,000 worth of tools with them.* So take into account how much they spent on tools to take down the vault.

2), just because a house is "expensive" doesn't mean it's better. Imagine a house full of powered trapdoors with the vault right in front. It's the most expensive house you could build, but really really easy to rob.

3) I do like the idea of measuring how many tools it took a robber to rob a house. However, since you can make multiple trips, how do you account for someone using $100k in tools to figure out the no tool solution, and then coming back with no tools?

Pohaku · 2014-04-15 02:20:23

Cylence wrote:

Pohaku wrote:
... some measurable factors that should go into determining a player's bounty increase when they commit a robbery:
1) Number of deaths in the house they robbed SINCE THE LAST SUCCESSFUL ROBBERY. This neutralises the 'Connel Factor';
2) The amount spent to build the house they robbed. This makes $2000 0/0 'Gimme' houses worthless in term of bounty, and will be a crude measure of how difficult the house was to rob;
3) A ratio of stolen amount:tool cost. Anyone can brute force a $10,000 vault in a house that cost $70,000 to build, if they take $30,000 worth of tools with them.* So take into account how much they spent on tools to take down the vault.
2), just because a house is "expensive" doesn't mean it's better. Imagine a house full of powered trapdoors with the vault right in front. It's the most expensive house you could build, but really really easy to rob.
3) I do like the idea of measuring how many tools it took a robber to rob a house. However, since you can make multiple trips, how do you account for someone using $100k in tools to figure out the no tool solution, and then coming back with no tools?

2) It is only a crude measure - but it is a measure of sorts. There are possible exceptions of course, but generally speaking if a house has had $20k put into it building traps, it will generally be more difficult to crack than a $2-3k startup. If this was just one of the variables that was used to calculate bounty, it would help out with the $2,000 0/0 Gimmes, because the multiplier for those would be 0 (ie. not a single dollar has been spent on defences) and the bounty would therefore be 0.

3) I'm not sure this is a problem. If someone uses a lot of tools to figure out the no-tool solution, then comes back and cracks it toolless, then I would say that makes them a very good player and deserving of the bigger bounty. Brute-forcing your way to a vault is a long stride from brute-forcing your way to it AND figuring out the no-tool solution in order to come back naked. So I stick with this one - calculate size of loot/cost of tools to get another number that can be used in the bounty calculation.

I also just noticed I made my reply without realising there were another 2 pages of (very good) responses to this, so apologies if I seemed to disregard what had been said before me etc. Told you it was 4am and I was tired! Not to mention I got home from work to a broken house and had to carry out repairs and amendments, then do the self-test while struggling to keep my eyes open!

Poh.

P.S. Mr Carpenter, you'll know my name when I come for you, this time! ;-)

Keynom · 2014-04-15 02:25:42

I could use the cash increase. I cannot wait for you to die in my house... Mr Flowers.

~ Love
Mr Carpenter

jasonrohrer · 2014-04-16 09:56:14

Jeez! You folks found the major hole in the general idea of a "big pending bounty building up on a house."

Yeah, you could harvest this pending bounty with an alt account (so the alt robber has a huge bounty on his head) and then kill the alt robber in the main house to give that bounty to the main. I can imagine this being really tempting for owners of top houses (why let this built-up money end up in someone else's house?), especially as time passes and a breach starts to seem inevitable soon.

The super-simple solution of reducing the murder bounty to at or below the cost of murder ($200) is interesting... Might as well just buy tools with the alt and dump them in your main account (for $1000 in value) instead of trying to build up a bounty. Already, vault-reach in a dead house to build up a bounty isn't worth it, because it requires at least one tool-dumping death in the dead house first to make the vault reachable again, which is $2000 wasted, and you only get $500 bounty for hitting a vault.

So, I'll do that for now and see what happens. Best to keep it as simple as possible.

I like some of the formulas that you folks came up with here!

Following Cullman's already-scored thread-hijacking, the ability to use abandoned houses as chill-avoiding wealth-transfer points... this is an issue. If X such dead houses are available, that would mean $X thousand in free money per day from a single alt account. Cullman, your solution would work, but I'd rather have something simpler in place...

TheRealCheese · 2014-04-16 10:03:02

Jason while you are making these non-update changes, could you make a sticky post or something that always has the current bounty values and other variables in it?

jasonrohrer · 2014-04-16 10:36:10

TheRealCheese wrote:

Jason while you are making these non-update changes, could you make a sticky post or something that always has the current bounty values and other variables in it?

Done:

http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … ?pid=16631

Lord0fHam · 2014-04-16 10:41:32

Jason do you think we might be able to reinstitute salaries because there are a lot less players and it is much harder to get money, especially with the lower bounties and new tme outs. it would also make people try harder to defend their wife.

Cylence · 2014-04-16 11:49:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

The super-simple solution of reducing the murder bounty to at or below the cost of murder ($200) is interesting... Might as well just buy tools with the alt and dump them in your main account (for $1000 in value) instead of trying to build up a bounty. Already, vault-reach in a dead house to build up a bounty isn't worth it, because it requires at least one tool-dumping death in the dead house first to make the vault reachable again, which is $2000 wasted, and you only get $500 bounty for hitting a vault.

I like this change because it makes it harder to farm easy family kills, however, the profit margin is still. It's not just 2k accounts that build up bounty, it's also regular accounts. Don't forget that harvested clubs are $100. This means that someone can double that money (way less than before but still profit). If you brought it down to $100 it would be zero profit. I also think an upper limit on the bounties would be helpful in making things harder (require more time).

jasonroher wrote:

Following Cullman's already-scored thread-hijacking, the ability to use abandoned houses as chill-avoiding wealth-transfer points... this is an issue. If X such dead houses are available, that would mean $X thousand in free money per day from a single alt account. Cullman, your solution would work, but I'd rather have something simpler in place...

If we are discussing this here, I might as well throw down my input.

For transfer, dead houses weren't a limitation. Live houses will do the same. And you could do it on your own live house. As long as you can get to the vault of a house, you can drop off the bounty with a death and pick it up with another Acct.

You can also transfer tools using an alt scout (although painting will be stolen as well and are a hassle to pass back).
Acct1 has all tools, and throws as much into a backpack that he wants to keep, Acct 2 robs him to get his needed scouting tools. Acct1 returns.

I like the idea behind cullman's proposal that people only see a random list of houses. This would definitely deter trying to pass (although would be trivial with someone with A LOT of accounts). However, I do see some issues in the experience as a robber is that you can't case specific houses anymore since what you can see is random and may change.

Racked my brain for ideas, but this game is about wealth transfer (robbing) and it's hard not to take away from it and not alter the robber experience. The only thing I can think of is, if you can't take away an action, then change it's results. Mind you, this is a radical change:
For large transfers, i.e. robbing a vault, or dying in a house with a large bounty.
EVERYONE gets a piece of it somehow. There would be less outcry if everyone is profiting. This of course could snowball. But then again, I don't think this game has a problem with lots of money going into the game, the money will be relieved when people start having enough money to attack each other or update their house, and all the self test deaths and used tools would pull money out of the game. Paintings are also a source of money going out of the game.

The only problem I see with it is, the easier it is to obtain money, the less paranoid and hurt you'll be when you lose everything, since starting again isn't that much of a sting.

Ah well, there's my two cents. hopefully you guys can come up with something better than my insane idea.

Edit: grammar police

Last edited by Cylence (2014-04-16 11:52:33)

TheRealCheese · 2014-04-16 12:14:29

I think 200 is fine, anyone using their from-home clubs to kill family members are likely to be gathering a bounty that will be randomly deposited and not used to inflate a second account. And even if it isn't it cuts the potential profit from the behavior to a fifth of what it was before.

MMaster · 2014-04-16 12:45:20

Cylence wrote:

jasonroher wrote:
Following Cullman's already-scored thread-hijacking, the ability to use abandoned houses as chill-avoiding wealth-transfer points... this is an issue. If X such dead houses are available, that would mean $X thousand in free money per day from a single alt account. Cullman, your solution would work, but I'd rather have something simpler in place...
I like the idea behind cullman's proposal that people only see a random list of houses. This would definitely deter trying to pass (although would be trivial with someone with A LOT of accounts). However, I do see some issues in the experience as a robber is that you can't case specific houses anymore since what you can see is random and may change.

Showing random list of houses is something that I would rather not see. I like to have clear view of my neighborhood.
I understand it would solve the issue, but there are valid cases in game where this can happen. I already did rob house that suddenly got large bounty money along with tools and it was not built for that much money. I robbed it because I was first to notice it thanks to monitoring my neighborhood at that time. Those houses appear, but they are very rare (good robbers don't die that often). The point is that if you don't see that house on the list soon enough someone else will surely rob it before you.

There has to be another solution.

pagedMov · 2014-04-16 13:21:02

jasonrohrer wrote:

Jeez! You folks found the major hole in the general idea of a "big pending bounty building up on a house."
Yeah, you could harvest this pending bounty with an alt account (so the alt robber has a huge bounty on his head) and then kill the alt robber in the main house to give that bounty to the main. I can imagine this being really tempting for owners of top houses (why let this built-up money end up in someone else's house?), especially as time passes and a breach starts to seem inevitable soon.

The super-simple solution of reducing the murder bounty to at or below the cost of murder ($200) is interesting... Might as well just buy tools with the alt and dump them in your main account (for $1000 in value) instead of trying to build up a bounty. Already, vault-reach in a dead house to build up a bounty isn't worth it, because it requires at least one tool-dumping death in the dead house first to make the vault reachable again, which is $2000 wasted, and you only get $500 bounty for hitting a vault.
So, I'll do that for now and see what happens. Best to keep it as simple as possible.
I like some of the formulas that you folks came up with here!
Following Cullman's already-scored thread-hijacking, the ability to use abandoned houses as chill-avoiding wealth-transfer points... this is an issue. If X such dead houses are available, that would mean $X thousand in free money per day from a single alt account. Cullman, your solution would work, but I'd rather have something simpler in place...

Speaking of dead houses, I'm actually going on a mission to throw all dead houses out of play. I've already taken all the money from Mr. Smith. Connel's next on the list, then Grant. Semple will come last. I think that this horrible investment will be worth it in the long-run.

Last edited by pagedMov (2014-04-16 13:25:21)

Cylence · 2014-04-16 19:06:28

Anybody else have any other thoughts on the economy? I'll try to share mine and hopefully you guys have better ideas since my only idea is to give away free money.

-------------------------------------------
What I think know about the economy
Money and Tools are the resources and control house values.
Paintings and furniture can be purchased but only serve as an outlet for money.
Purchasing Tools is an outlet as well but can be converted back to money at a 50% rate.

Money enters the game through players starting a new life ($2k) or dying to a neighbors house and having the bounty paid out ($variable), or the reselling of tools (more of a conversion).
Money exits the game through players purchasing house items, tools, paintings, and self test death.
Money is transferred in this game through theft/murder

Tools enter the game through players purchasing them with money (and since they resell at half price)
Tools exit the game through use, abandonment (w/out death), self test death, reselling.
Tools are transferred in this game through theft.

So, the economy inflates by the amount of players re-spawning and the amount of bounties rewarded.
And the economy deflates with the purchase of paintings, furniture, tools (50%), and self test deaths.

-------------------------------------------
Theories and Conclusion Jumping
The economy relies heavily upon players starting a new life and dying to neighbors. If the player base is mostly defending houses and not dying of and starting new lives, then the economy stops growing. Houses no longer have much income. However, robbing is a gamble at best and also moves money out of the game. It also causes houses to spend money to change their layouts which pulls money out of the game again. So it deflates at a very fast rate.

High, pumped up bounties have injected more money into the economy but it really only passed around among the rich and those with the means to steal from them, however it eventually leaves the game through self test death, house upgrades, and tool usage. None of the high bounty payouts really get passed around to the middle or low class unless they get a lucky robbery. Without a healthy stream of re-spawns, new money eventually slows to a trickle.

-------------------------------------------
Another Source
My idea was there should be a source of money not based on life or death, but based on transfer. That way, as long as people are moving money around, money will be injected into the game, which will cause more money to move around unless it's drained. And I'm sure people wouldn't be worried about farmers since everybody is benefiting from their work. I don't think the game will suffer from a super inflated economy because any excess money should leave the game easily through the many outlets the game provides. People stealing from other houses will boost the economy. I like the idea of someone making a $5000 theft or receiving a $5000 bounty, and everyone getting $50 (1%) when it happens. Thematically, we can call it the "Alan Greenspan Effect" or "The Reaganomics Bonus" and everyone enjoying their stock market profit. (or maybe real estate profits).

My idea is still reliant on the user base keeping the engine running by moving money around, as soon as it stops, the economy dies and needs to be jump-started again with a host of re-spawns. Hmm.. if there hasn't been a big transfer of money in X amount of days, everyone gets a safety awareness bonus of $2000, or instead of money, everyone gets a free set of tools (1 each) to encourage money transfer.

Maybe it would be better to introduce a source of money not reliant on the player base such as salaries. Although, I like the motivation of transfer based economy, instead of having people sit in there houses and wait to make money.

Anyway hope you guys come up with better ideas using my information.

Blip · 2014-04-16 19:22:17

Cylence wrote:

Anybody else have any other thoughts on the economy? I'll try to share mine and hopefully you guys have better ideas since my only idea is to give away free money.

The only point I'd like to make is that I singlehandedly destroyed over $400k this weekend; I robbed every house with over $50k but Mitchell, and used up all of the money on tools, deaths, or intentional suicides. So I think that a problem is the amount of money that can leave the economy is far, far greater than the amount that can enter it.

Cylence · 2014-04-16 19:48:14

Blip wrote:

The only point I'd like to make is that I singlehandedly destroyed over $400k this weekend; I robbed every house with over $50k but Mitchell, and used up all of the money on tools, deaths, or intentional suicides. So I think that a problem is the amount of money that can leave the economy is far, far greater than the amount that can enter it.

Yeah we discussed that in the other thread. I've also read threads of people making great heists, then spending it all on upgrades and then dying to self test.

I didn't think it much of an issue of money exiting, but more of an issue of money not entering or reentering. I don't think we can ever match the rate of how it exits since a self test death/suicide can wipe out any amount of money. And also I'm sure all the people re-buying paintings pulled money out of the game too.

Hmm, imagine if everyone got $4000 for all the money that moved around in the game.

How would you suggest preventing the money from leaving the game. Should the money repossessed from the state, be put back into circulation somehow? How bout the money that was put into house building? Some guy nabs 100k to build a house. That $100k doesn't circulate, and it also increases tool usage (money going out).

There have been ideas tossed around like a Tool Market, and reselling paintings for profit. This would allow money to stay in circulation. But what about used tools and self test deaths?

cullman · 2014-04-16 21:08:20

MMaster wrote:

Cylence wrote:
jasonroher wrote:
Following Cullman's already-scored thread-hijacking, the ability to use abandoned houses as chill-avoiding wealth-transfer points... this is an issue. If X such dead houses are available, that would mean $X thousand in free money per day from a single alt account. Cullman, your solution would work, but I'd rather have something simpler in place...
I like the idea behind cullman's proposal that people only see a random list of houses. This would definitely deter trying to pass (although would be trivial with someone with A LOT of accounts). However, I do see some issues in the experience as a robber is that you can't case specific houses anymore since what you can see is random and may change.
Showing random list of houses is something that I would rather not see. I like to have clear view of my neighborhood.
I understand it would solve the issue, but there are valid cases in game where this can happen. I already did rob house that suddenly got large bounty money along with tools and it was not built for that much money. I robbed it because I was first to notice it thanks to monitoring my neighborhood at that time. Those houses appear, but they are very rare (good robbers don't die that often). The point is that if you don't see that house on the list soon enough someone else will surely rob it before you.
There has to be another solution.

To be clear I was not suggesting random houses showing up, I was suggesting houses come online in random order making it harder for people to coordinate their alts coming right in. In my proposal within an hour anyone would see a house that went from broken vault to vault with money in it, it just would be unlikely that someone that is trying to move between alts would be able to catch it first.

Cylence · 2014-04-16 22:18:28

cullman wrote:

To be clear I was not suggesting random houses showing up, I was suggesting houses come online in random order making it harder for people to coordinate their alts coming right in. In my proposal within an hour anyone would see a house that went from broken vault to vault with money in it, it just would be unlikely that someone that is trying to move between alts would be able to catch it first.

Thank you for clearing that up cullman.
My issue is still somewhat there. If I were casing a house that got a bounty drop, there could be a chance that I would not be able to reenter for an hour. It's not that bad, although it will mess with my 5 minute window if I'm on a chain robbery. Let say, I've planned out 3 robberies that a new life could use to step up. After a week of scouting I finally go on my run, and part 2 of my chain disappears. It's a risk you normally have to take, so I don't feel it's too bad. Maybe it it's only limited to large bounties and a smaller window 10 - 15 minutes? Could it achieve the same results?
I don't think it affects someone who has his own drop-off house though. It would mean he could only make N big transfers for however many N extra accounts he has, but 1 or two should be enough.

It is mitigation and if the house lists stays somewhat constant, I'd be fine with it.

Edit: would want smallest window gone possible, not an hour.

Last edited by Cylence (2014-04-16 22:20:00)

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