money money money

largestherb · 2013-07-07 06:04:06

david ernest stanfield appears to be quickly generating great wealth with the express purpose of breaking into my house. they just came in with 35 ladders and a bunch of bombs, and ended up 1 bomb short of reaching my vault. which was quite amusing.

there are a lot of $2000 houses popping up with the vault and partner right next to the doorstep. same configuration every time. i am watching the dollars trickle up on stanfield's as we speak. $800, $6100, $20,000. down to $9400.

rudolph daniel navarrete seems to be doing the same thing. i stole $18,000 from them by breaking their house. their house is now repaired, they have $10,000 and i have two security tapes of them coming in with 20 bombs and 10 ladders, then 20 ladders and 10 bombs.

the $2000 houses with the partner/vault configuration are still popping up. navarrete has $21,000. stanfield is down to $3600. (and as i edited this post, standfield went to $26,000 and made a tool-less visit to my house which now has $1. i intentionally spent all my money to see if he would still come when i had no cash.)

are people really printing their own money just to vandalise people? that seems.. hmm. i can understand doing it to test the limits of home defence, but to go out and vandalise people for no gain (since you can print any money they might have, and already have in order to be able to afford the attack) is a bit much, no?

maybe jason could come and tell us what he thinks of these practices, so we all know whether it is naughty or a vital part of testing with so few houses around!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-07-07 06:09:49)

colorfusion · 2013-07-07 06:19:07

I'd imagine one of them has an alt, then the other one is just refreshing a lot getting to the alt's houses first.

dalleck · 2013-07-07 06:30:30

largestherb wrote:

david ernest stanfield appears to be quickly generating great wealth with the express purpose of breaking into my house. they just came in with 35 ladders and a bunch of bombs, and ended up 1 bomb short of reaching my vault. which was quite amusing.
there are a lot of $2000 houses popping up with the vault and partner right next to the doorstep. same configuration every time. i am watching the dollars trickle up on stanfield's as we speak. $800, $6100, $20,000. down to $9400.
rudolph daniel navarrete seems to be doing the same thing. i stole $18,000 from them by breaking their house. their house is now repaired, they have $10,000 and i have two security tapes of them coming in with 20 bombs and 10 ladders, then 20 ladders and 10 bombs.
the $2000 houses with the partner/vault configuration are still popping up. navarrete has $21,000. stanfield is down to $3600. (and as i edited this post, standfield went to $26,000 and made a tool-less visit to my house which now has $1. i intentionally spent all my money to see if he would still come when i had no cash.)
are people really printing their own money just to vandalise people? that seems.. hmm. i can understand doing it to test the limits of home defence, but to go out and vandalise people for no gain (since you can print any money they might have, and already have in order to be able to afford the attack) is a bit much, no?
maybe jason could come and tell us what he thinks of these practices, so we all know whether it is naughty or a vital part of testing with so few houses around!

These $2000 houses were popping up regularly, and the wife was even positioned at the doorway along with the safe. Some of them said "Rob Black" in lights, which I found quite amusing.

Oh, and that was me that failed robbing your house.

(PICTURE OF ME FAILING TO ROB HERB'S HOUSE)

Always bring a brick fellas.

Last edited by dalleck (2013-07-07 07:37:29)

MrWillsauce · 2013-07-07 06:30:50

I think I am Rudolph Daniel Navarrete. I have been taking advantage of the person (I'm fairly certain it's one person due to the consistent placement of the spouse and vault adjacent to the entrance) who has been generating fresh $2000, trap-less houses. I assure you that I am not this person. I believe that something should be put in place to make it impossible for people to abuse alternate accounts to generate money, the most simple solution being a decrease in starting cash every time you reincarnate. However, I'm not just going to pass up an easy source of money as long as other people are doing it. Also, my intent is not to rack up money in order to vandalize you, I just want take back what you stole from me.

largestherb · 2013-07-07 06:32:17

indeed. i am interested in opinions of the act, though. it seems obvious that it has been going on for a long time, however it has never really been brought up as an issue, despite it being.. well, a super huge mega-issue, really! especially with a competition coming up.

mostly i am trying to bring it to jason's attention, although i imagine he is aware that this happens. i am interested to see what people think is acceptable and what isn't, and then to hear what jason's take on the situation is, taking the player's opinions into account or not.

i will steal my good friend's idiom and call it the elephant in the room.

edit: free $2000 houses definitely pop up a lot, i have made quite a lot of money from them since i started playing. they are usually always around, and i am guilty of leaving some around myself when i go on a quick tool-less scouting / suicide neighbourhood visit!

but the partner/vault configuration seemed almost streamlined for efficient money grabbing. almost. i guess partner right on the doorstep would be quicker. and it is very easy to write a macro-script to automatically churn out these houses, maybe someone wanted to flood the neighbourhood with free money?

i apologise if it sounded like i was accusing anyone of anything, but the behaviour definitely seemed like a good time to poke at the elephant and try to see what people think about it. especially in such a revenge-fuelled game

ps. would you mind removing that picture of my electronics/vault since the house is still active, thanks

Last edited by largestherb (2013-07-07 06:40:30)

Ludicrosity · 2013-07-07 10:43:36

All the money was coming from me. I most definitely do not have multiple accounts and wasn't doing anything fancy and/or nefarious like using a script to repeatedly prop up houses. It was just good old fashioned manual grinding. I think it made for some interesting shenanigans. Anyway, I think a bit of background explanation is in order...

At some point late last night Mitchell William Black arrived at my house with over 30K in tools and proceeded to tunnel through to my vault. This was a little bit weird because he spent all that money, but I only had $5,000 so he ended up losing 26K or so. I also had assumed that if he had wanted to rob someone, he would have robbed Norbert Brewington, who was, at the time, the only other person who had enough money to be a potential threat. After getting to my vault, Mr. Black carefully went back through to thoroughly tear down every bit of my house he could access, laying down ladders over every trap door, tossing bricks through every window, pouring water over all the power supplies... you know, the standard treatment. Ah well, I had just finished the last touches to my house that evening too!

Anyway, I was actually rather amused at it all. Afterwards, I tried to do some repairs, but I had $0 and couldn't afford tools needed to rob even $40 houses. To make things worse, every time I logged off and then came back, I found that some random person had come by and snagged the $70 I earned. This struck me as admittedly, a pretty hilarious situation - I had been torn down to such a degree it was comical.

At this point I killed myself in someone's house and figured I'd start fresh. I don't know if anyone else was playing at this time, but for a while I just couldn't get anywhere. There were a few piddly $40 - $100 houses and then a couple impossible $40,000 houses (Mr. Black and Mr. Brewington). So there was nothing to do. I really wanted to get into Mr. Black's house so I could avenge myself and also get my prized paintings back (as a side note, I'm sure Mr. Black didn't rob me for the paintings because I bought them cheap at auction after a great deal of time during which he never bought them).

So it was around this time that I noticed David Ernest Stanfield and Rudolph Daniel Navarrete were online. I can't remember who was first, but one of them stole $2000 from me while I was scouting a house. I'm all for injecting money into the game's economy, so it occurred to me that if there wasn't any way for me to build up at the moment, then why not pour piles of cash onto these two folks and watch and see what they do. Whatever happens, I figured it'd sure beat sitting around with a few dirt poor, thoroughly pillaged houses, and a couple impossible ones. So I started re-starting, leaving all my money out, and waiting for them to take it.

This turned out to be great fun for some reason. Some sort of vicarious excitement I guess. I then started to get interested in the possibility of trying to communicate with the other two players. There is obviously no built-in means for players to communicate, so wouldn't it be cool if we could figure out a means to do so through the normal mechanics of the game? To some extent, we already were communicating. I was fairly certain they knew I was intentionally letting them "steal" from me over and over. I then decided to see if I could spell out a message. It would be great if one of them could take down Mr. Black... so I spelled "Rob Black" with lights. Fortunately both players entered that house and saw the message.

This continued for some time. I moved the vault and wife closer to the door so there would be no doubt that I was working with them to pump up their savings. To my minor disappointment, it did not appear that either player had attempted to rob Mr. Black (correct me if this is wrong). So I spelled out the message again.

Ironically, it sounds like they were actually going after you, herb! I should note that the goal was never to generate money for vandalism though (not that I think vandalism is necessarily a bad thing; it's part of the game right?). I mostly wanted to mix things up, and was also interested in the prospect of working out some sort of player to player cooperation. That part really intrigued me, because if players developed means of subtly communicating (and team up to take down super-houses), it could entirely change the dynamics of the game. I'm not talking about communication that takes place outside of the game, that's not interesting at all. But for cooperation to emerge naturally within the game itself, that seems more interesting.

One last thing I wanted to point out here is that if there were a really large volume of players online, then there would constantly be "freebie" houses from all the new players and people who recently died. I think the fact that such easy targets are scarce now is really just an artifact of the smallish population.

Last edited by Ludicrosity (2013-07-07 14:33:48)

dalleck · 2013-07-07 15:19:23

Nice one Ludi!

Yeah I TRIED to hit Black, but for some reason his house kept disappearing completely from the list. I did hit him once to take down his dogs, taking 35 crowbars.. not enough. Then I took 60 crowbars.. still not enough. When I had my wealth and was going to finally take him down his house disappeared again. I only assume he logged on and saw he was in danger and just stayed in his house.

Now he has destroyed my house. This is a call out: ROB BLACK. That is the new motto of the game. Take 100 crowbars and rob the sucker. That is all.

Last edited by dalleck (2013-07-07 15:19:53)

Ludicrosity · 2013-07-07 16:37:03

Wow... 60 crowbars ... not enough? He must have dogs wrapped all around his entire house?

Mitchell W. Black's house is pretty interesting. I've been trying to break it off and on over the course of the day. After the the money generating antics of this morning, I gave Mr. Black's house one last old fashioned attempt from my meager $2000 starting funds as well as a few hundred I grabbed from some previously solved house. I spent it almost entirely on a few ladders to chase down the cat that's present when you first walk in... To my astonishment, I actually had enough tools to see what I needed to get past his first trap doors, which I did on a subsequent visit (start fresh with $2000 in new tools).

So I then ended up exploring the inside of his house for a really long time. I *really* wanted to break it and get my paintings/money back, but had almost no tools. I wanted to be absolutely sure I got everything out of my break-in that I could, so I painstakingly recreated his house on a piece of paper and then copied it over to Castle Fortify. Because of this, I was probably in his house for an hour or so. (If Mr. Black is out there reading this, I do apologize for keeping you out of your house so long! I genuinely felt bad about that, but I didn't want to miss anything.)

In the end, I accidentally stepped on a sleeping pit bull (as usual)... While I was locked out, Mr. Black went in and modified his house. I died trying to get in with the old version of his magic dance. However, after waiting through my second lock-out I figured out the change he made and got back in. This time I simply failed to figure out what I needed to do and locked myself in while trying. I have a pretty decent map based on my most recent visit. He may have changed some stuff since then, but it's probably a pretty decent approximation to what his house is currently like. Here's the Castle Fortify link:

http://castlefortify.com/c/e325db3

Empty spaces mean I couldn't see what was there. I've got most of his house, but am missing the far right side (and a little blob inside walls near the front door). I am assuming you used up all your crowbars fighting dogs that lined the perimeter of his house dalleck?

I can't seem to figure out how to open the trap doors that wrap around the top part...

Ludicrosity · 2013-07-07 16:52:32

Update: It's been a really long time since Mr. Black's house has been listed. Since his paintings have not shown up in the auctions, I think this must mean he's been working on re-configuring his house.

jasonrohrer · 2013-07-07 19:50:06

The money-dumping into a second account is obviously a potential issue.

Still, it's no sure-thing (because other people can grab it too). With a small player base, it is more of a sure-thing, of course. But I'm more thinking about how this scales to a larger group of players (that's the whole point of the anonymous names---that only works in a larger group of players).

There's a related issue of "free money" sitting in a house where the player has started a new life and goes out scouting. There's a disincentive against this, though, because if your scouting pays off, you may return home to no money and a dead wife. So, I think it pretty much handles itself.

I go back and forth about this issue of "free money" at the start of each life, with nothing to lose by blowing it one way or another. On the one hand, it is healthy for the game to have a steady flow of players with nothing to lose. On the other hand, it's open to all kinds of abuse and exploitation.

Ludi, your story about communicating with the other players is really cool!

liq3 · 2013-07-07 21:55:30

jasonrohrer wrote:

There's a related issue of "free money" sitting in a house where the player has started a new life and goes out scouting. There's a disincentive against this, though, because if your scouting pays off, you may return home to no money and a dead wife. So, I think it pretty much handles itself.

The player can just suicide in their home, (avoiding chills) get another free $2000 and then make a proper home, making sure they get the proper tools to rob the house (if they need any at all).

MrWillsauce · 2013-07-07 23:36:45

I did read the "rob Black" note, and it did encourage me to poke around his house a bit, but I never found anything of use. The Castle Fortify map definitely will help my future efforts to rob Black's house (assuming he hasn't changed too much), and I will be adding to it anything I find in my scouting runs. First, I will be aggregating enough money to try and fight through all of his dogs and kill his wife, who I'm pretty sure is still alive, although the tunnel of dogs could just be a ruse.

Ludicrosity · 2013-07-08 06:17:05

liq3 wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
There's a related issue of "free money" sitting in a house where the player has started a new life and goes out scouting. There's a disincentive against this, though, because if your scouting pays off, you may return home to no money and a dead wife. So, I think it pretty much handles itself.
The player can just suicide in their home, (avoiding chills) get another free $2000 and then make a proper home, making sure they get the proper tools to rob the house (if they need any at all).

Yeah, whenever I die and have to restart, the first thing I do is go scout around other houses. I never bother bringing any tools with me for these preliminary scouting trips because I don't know what sort of tools I'll need (and I'd lose them anyhow when I ditch my backpack after scouting around). Once I find a promising house I just commit suicide at home and bring the kind of tools my preliminary scouting suggested I may need in the next run. Even this trip is just scouting too though. If I can get to the vault on this trip, I'll again leave without robbing them, commit suicide at home again, and restart once more for the "real" robbery. This time, since I know exactly what I face, I can bring exactly what I need and nothing more. I try to hit them up quickly so that I can get home before anyone else robs my remaining cash since my house is defenseless at this point.

This practice often generates a lot of "free money" houses for others to grab at as an unintentional side effect. However, I see this as a positive. I don't see how extra injections into the economy could be a bad thing, even if my "opponents" are getting the money. The worst thing for the game, in my opinion, is when you have almost no houses, and almost all of them are dirt poor and uninteresting. In that case it seems like more money is what all the players need to start building more interesting things.

Edit/Update:

MrWillsauce wrote:

I did read the "rob Black" note, and it did encourage me to poke around his house a bit, but I never found anything of use. The Castle Fortify map definitely will help my future efforts to rob Black's house (assuming he hasn't changed too much), and I will be adding to it anything I find in my scouting runs. First, I will be aggregating enough money to try and fight through all of his dogs and kill his wife, who I'm pretty sure is still alive, although the tunnel of dogs could just be a ruse.

I just noticed this morning that 1) Mr. Black is still not on the list, and 2) his paintings are back up for auction. Sadly, I think he must have died. I guess we'll never get the chance to rob him now.

Last edited by Ludicrosity (2013-07-08 06:19:02)

dalleck · 2013-07-08 06:27:37

Ludicrosity wrote:

I just noticed this morning that 1) Mr. Black is still not on the list, and 2) his paintings are back up for auction. Sadly, I think he must have died. I guess we'll never get the chance to rob him now.

Yeah I think he's dead. Or doing a good job of hiding.

My next target is our dear friend Brewington.

ukuko · 2013-07-08 06:45:36

I regret to inform you all that Mr Black sadly passed away last night at around 01.15 GMT after an unfortunate incident with a rotary switch.

dalleck · 2013-07-08 07:19:28

ukuko wrote:

I regret to inform you all that Mr Black sadly passed away last night at around 01.15 GMT after an unfortunate incident with a rotary switch.

He and his squillion dogs will be sadly missed.

Last edited by dalleck (2013-07-08 07:19:44)

jasonrohrer · 2013-07-08 08:33:04

Ha!

Ludicrosity · 2013-07-08 12:11:57

Good one ukuko!

And if Mr. Black is reading this, I would love to see your full house and hear how to properly get to its vault.

ukuko · 2013-07-08 12:22:38

Ahem. Well. This is awkward.

I'll hold off on posting the house as I never quite finished it anyway and I'd like to recreate it. I had built myself into a corner somewhat, and was struggling to convert some of the pre v12 logic over to the new system.

Ludicrosity · 2013-07-08 16:00:50

Oh wow, I completely misinterpreted your post ukuko. You were Mr. Black! Awesome!

I'm really excited about seeing the house design. Exploring your house was definitely the most fun I've had while playing this game so far. I especially liked the lights-on-the-floor room, which had a creepy atmosphere to it in an amusement park thrill-house sort of way. I am also wondering if the room with trap door flooring had some intended functionality or whether it was just for show.

Last edited by Ludicrosity (2013-07-08 16:02:04)

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