Sunday, January 9th, 2011
Issue: 63   Editor: AnotherAldarion


COLUMN: BL Economy AnotherAldarion
Earlier in the week, mysqld created a topic in the game forum in which he made several suggestions to make changes in the Bootleggers economy. It is something I have written about before but considering the current state of the game, the importance and impact of such a change could potentially be huge, in a positive way.

History shows that the total amount of money in the game (relative to the length of the round) has always decreased since the game ever started, back in 2003. Back then, all equipment was relatively cheap and no one ever had a single problem affording it. However, prices of equipment were raised, several years ago. That seemed perfectly fine, especially considering the economic conditions of the game back then, but nowadays, they seem a little outdated, to say the least.

I have always found it a bit odd that a Thompson for an OC is 50 times as cheap as a normal gun, but as I said, considering the game’s state it seemed fairly reasonable at the time. Making money is a lot harder this round and even though affording the weapons is not a big problem for some, it on the other hand is for others. The point of the game is to kill, and to be killed. An interesting statistic on my side is the average money a player has, which is just over 400K. Surely, a lot of inactive accounts are involved in this, but that has always been the case. Many bankers are involved, too. In the end, it is pretty well balanced and it shows the average player cannot afford to buy the best gun or protection, let alone both. My suggestion is to lower the price to make them more available to the players.

My second suggestion is about the crew tax, which to me has never really made any sense at all since the money just disappears when the holder pays the tax. If the crew would get upgrades, for example, paying tax would have served a purpose. But now, it’s only a way to remove money from the game. As with the guns and protection, this worked perfectly fine in the previous round. But as said before, this isn’t the previous round, there is way less money in the game right now, and making money is a lot harder than it was in round five. Lower the crew tax, give it a purpose, or remove it at all.

Then we move to a feature that could play an essential role if it was upgraded: the establishments. I have hammered on this probably tens of time but I still do not understand why it was not upgraded yet. The feature is barely used, a phenomenon round five was familiar with as well. I am currently in Louisiana (not looking to be shot) and there is just one single piece of land that is not for sale. One single piece of land. Even the places on earth with no life on it at all are not as dead as that feature. My suggestion would be to dramatically lower the prices as round five proved that even in a wealthy environment the establishment weren’t very popular. This also shows the problem of this feature may be a lot bigger than we think it is.

My final point is about Bootlegging, a page which claims to change its prices based on market conditions. Truth be told, those are the weirdest conditions I have ever seen in my entire life. In California, for example, demand for beer is very high and there is little supply. In a normal world, prices in California would skyrocket resulting in players selling beer over there, making lots of profit and increasing supply. It is a natural balance, something that could work very well in the current Booze System.

My hope is that these suggestions get through to the Elite Guard. The current system is outdated and prices are aimed the previous round (or even the round before), rounds where making money was a lot easier. I believe that changing this would make a big difference in game play, as msqld rightfully pointed out. The changes I propose are very easy; most of it just involves altering a few numbers. It is time to update the system to the standards of the current round, it is time to restore the balance.