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You, Me, and The Money Cap


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An Introduction

Hi all,

Great to be playing with many of you again. When I was still playing Asylum back in 2017 there four servers with a fifth for Tanoa that always had mixed numbers and was shutdown. As time has gone on people have sought out new games, as they do. Today, retaining Asylum's player base is obviously important to keep a roleplay server going. The issues the server faces are multifaceted so I would like to look at just one today that has reaching impacts.

What Once Was

When I began playing in December of 2015, the server was at an all time high for player count and forum engagement even after the databases, backups included, were maliciously wiped. Jump on a server at any time of day and people were sitting in drug fields, mining, excavating, fighting cartels/turfs, and robbing banks. One of my first experiences was getting hot dropped on by FSA while I was mining salt in a flat bed to sell vermins. While that may bring up concerns about new player retention, we'll save that for another day. Today let's focus on

The Money Cap

One million dollars. Yep, that's all we could have and damn it kept us busy. Earning rates were about the same but there were far less options at the time. Meth and cocaine were frequently ran, mostly by the larger gangs. If you were solo or in a small group you might turn to heroin or weed to make money. Those already busy or getting robbed there? Take your shot at legal jobs which had comparable payouts to heroin or weed. With everyone moving around constantly there were many more interactions to be had. With a money cap there was never a reason to disengage with a large portion of the content available. A large issue I see right now is how much more rewarding gang related money making methods are when compared to non-gang related methods. For a healthy balance, the best gang should break even. Rebel activities should be the reward, the finish line. And just as soon as you reach that, you can just as easily be thrust back into the trenches.

Rewarding Our Loyal Players

The prestige system was present long ago. Under this system money that was earned beyond the money cap was converted into prestige points. This came with it's own rewards but was quite lackluster for a long period of time. This eventually changed to allow for a no money cap situations. Collect enough prestige and the money cap would rise. I wouldn't bring back this increasing money cap though. Instead, with a money cap and prestige system in place, I would look to giving our players various rewards to enjoy across the island. This used to manifest as titles like Tycoon (which is in a weird place right now if you fall below the requirements for the title it gets removed) and access to buy the civilian jet. These were just status symbols though. I think more permanent, impactful benefits could be had. One example of this might be a flat increase of 50 storage space on all vehicles pulled for those who meet the prestige requirement. Other examples might be various discounts. Taking millions away from our long term players, myself included, is going to hurt but I hope some of the potential benefits to server health and longevity are clear.

Wrapping Up

A money cap will keep players engaged in the economy which our server revolves around. New players will enjoy a more even playing field as older players would be subject to economic risk once again. Loosing a 20k+ loadout would be 2% of any players maximum bank account. Old players will likely be split on this kind of change. For some, it will only be seen at progress lost. I would encourage them to see it as an opportunity to reengage with the server as a whole instead of the secluded stance many now take.

Last Scattered Thoughts

Housing market will be effected but this is really a topic to be addressed on it's own. House hoarding and 5 maximum houses leave few options for new and returning players.

Players should be more than welcome to store money through assets like vehicles and stored geared.

|Cam| likes this
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The money cap was hated by pretty much everyone.  What is hurting the server is the fact that it is boring if you're not someone doing cartels or spamming federal events.

 

I would also argue that the money cap only solves problems on paper.  Once a player has all five houses, a garage full of ifrits, .50s, and orcas, then being capped at 1M to then exclusively buy loadouts is a joke.  Maybe there is some argument to be made about money per hour, but I would also hate for Asylum to run into the same pitfall of 'only meth is profitable' meta that we had for years and was incredibly fucking boring.

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Making money and getting rich on the server is something people strive for, it keeps people busy and it keeps the server active. If we did implement a money cap we might lose those players. And I feel the only reason people would be grinding with a money cap is to fund fights or roleplay, but if there are no fights people will get bored. There's not much to do if there's no fights and nothing to grind for, people will leave and the server pop goes down. So I don't think this would solve anything. Times were different back then and now there are far too many options, and 1million isn't what it used to be. We would need a decently huge money cap for me to +1 this.  

 

To spice things up a bit in the server maybe we could 1/10th everyone's money and keep all of the prices the same with a few balances to low and high end money making methods. +making house slots past 2 or 3 cost money. Maybe 2 house slots are free but then you have to pay a small fortune for the rest. Just a suggestion idea to ponder, things have gotten very stale and I wouldn't mind something like this.

 

oh and making sui vests cheaper with this change would be nice too, make the trolls happy yknow?/

 

 

Edited by Farmer Steve
Tyrone Darnell likes this
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/1/2021 at 8:01 PM, Sheriff Rick said:

The money cap was hated by pretty much everyone.  What is hurting the server is the fact that it is boring if you're not someone doing cartels or spamming federal events.

 

I would also argue that the money cap only solves problems on paper.  Once a player has all five houses, a garage full of ifrits, .50s, and orcas, then being capped at 1M to then exclusively buy loadouts is a joke.  Maybe there is some argument to be made about money per hour, but I would also hate for Asylum to run into the same pitfall of 'only meth is profitable' meta that we had for years and was incredibly fucking boring.

^^

I'm pretty sure money cap had a flame post made about it every week on the forums for months and months after it was implemented. It sucked really fucking bad. After awhile, they ended up implementing a pseudo money cap in the form of prestige which everyone hated as well.

There is just no reason to limit the amount of money people can hoard; however, limiting the amount of money in assets/property people can hoard is a topic I feel a lot more people would be open to.

Server pop is down bad anyways, none of this really matters. If this shit recovers it'd be a miracle. I'm sure the winter break/steam winter sales will help for a bit, but the server is dying otherwise.

FudgeR likes this
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