The World of Layonara
NWN Discussions and Suggestions => NWN Ideas, Suggestions, Requests => Topic started by: Hellblazer on May 30, 2010, 11:04:23 PM
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I know this wont please people, it wont be a popular idea at the start. But from an RP stand point it makes perfect sense, and it might help with the problem of gold persistency with players.
The first is, and yes I know it's a script that will have to be written to work with the database I guess, so no need to point that out please.
Throughout the time that there has been any kind of resemblance of a kingdom/government, there has always been taxes, even in the fantasy writings etc. In game unfortunately we don't see that. So it's something that is missing. Therefor I propose that 100 true out of every 1000 true that are deposited at the bank be automatically deducted every 24 RL days, to represent the taxes taken yearly by the kings, lords, etc.
Additionally, when you buy a house, there is a .08%(?) taxe that is applied to the market value of the house and if I remember right, it says yearly tax in the discussion. So I suggest that this taxe be set in game. Again every 24 RL days.
This way, it's two more ways to see a slight gold drain to appear, beside crafting, buying potions and the boat tickets.
Now I'd like to ask that if you have nothing constructive to say (ie i don't like this. This is a stupid idea.. etc etc etc) don't write it. If you have counter points please do write them, if you have other ideas for finding a solution to the problem of gold persistency, by all mean write them also.
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This is some serious thread necromancy that has a few good points on taxes.
http://forums.layonara.com/nwn-ideas-suggestions-requests/99101-banking-service-charge.html
I for one will keep no gold in the bank if there is a script written to auto deduct. It can be spread out among chests without fear of losing it in one of those mysterious gold disappearances. I work too darn hold to scrape my gold together. I think we have plenty of gold sinks with the temples, GM plots, and donation centers.
If you have auto taxes on property and have people not logging on to pay, or not having enough to pay in their bank account, then we will have the following:
1. Repossessions tying up tons of administrator time and resources.
2. GM's having to sort out grievances and disputes
2. Angry players.
In short, although at face value taxes seem like a good and reliable way of acting as a gold sink, the reality when you look at the cost benefit analysis is that they are actually far more skewed towards causing more of a pain. I would view them more as amputating a limb to cure a headache.
This is just my 2 cents. I'm sure others will disagree. ;)
I remember there was another thread 3 or 4 years ago about property taxes as well, will have to dig it up.
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In short, although at face value taxes seem like a good and reliable way of acting as a gold sink, the reality when you look at the cost benefit analysis is that they are actually far more skewed towards causing more of a pain. I would view them more as amputating a limb to cure a headache.
This is just my 2 cents. I'm sure others will disagree. ;) .
Thanks for the comments. And I love that analogy.
But yeah, there is nothing that will be always liked, somethings has to be done sometime that is not the most pleasing to all, but that serves a purpose. And unfortunately from the number of times I'm hearing that there is too much gold in the banks etc, it seems that what's in place is not sufficient, so I thought of a new way to help that.
Of course if a player doesn't log on in a long period of time, well that's rl and partly players fault, so nothing to blame the team about with. And once you reach 999 true, the system can't take anything away anymore.
Valid point about the house, but it serves an other and better purpose. It puts back houses on the market, something that is not happening often enough in my eyes.
I for one will keep no gold in the bank if there is a script written to auto deduct. It can be spread out among chests without fear of losing it in one of those mysterious gold disappearances. I work too darn hold to scrape my gold together. I think we have plenty of gold sinks with the temples, GM plots, and donation centers.
well two part for this.
1rst in an rp stand point that is really valid, as being called tax evasion :D
but as the second point, It was pointed out by the team that beside for guild business purposes (like placing gold for the contracts guilds hands out etc) this shouldn't be done.
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:) Good points.
I found that additional tax thread too. ;)
http://forums.layonara.com/general-discussion/111054-rent-player-housing-v3.html
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- What does this fix?
- Yes, "there would be less gold," but what does that fix? What, specifically, does that make better?
- Since roleplaying sense is a stated virtue of the idea, how do Chaotic characters properly roleplay avoiding the tax, which makes perfect RP sense?
- If it is an automatic script, see, it is forced, which is poor implementation.
- What is to keep people from storing gold in chests rather than the bank, thus avoiding the tax?
- Yes, that is a potential answer for the previous question, but it just turns the whole thing into a tax on the willing, really, which doesn't really fix anything.
- A ten percent tax may be brilliant for characters with millions of True, but there are plenty of poor characters out there who would suffer from that.
- Unexpected example: Jennara has about six thousand True. Losing six hundred of that a month from now would be a pretty serious blow since she might only gather a couple hundred or so over that amount of time. And that's that much less I can donate, which is a great money sink.
- Despite being an advocate for taxes in the past, I can't support it alone. If there were an overhaul of the economy in general, then I could probably get behind taxes. Yes, that opinion has changed over time as the nature of the experience here has changed. Since an economy overhaul isn't going to happen, it's probably most important to point out that...
- Taxes aren't fun. Sad but true.
- Considering the desire to attract new players, putting in what could be seen as unavoidable pickpocketing of large sums seems the wrong way to go.
- In the MMO, with a better economy chugging away, a tax system could be pretty cool. Maybe. Some people would still complain.
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Just about the percentage. yes it turns out to a 10% tax, but once you reach a minimum it should stop, just to make sure a char still has some gold to start off again, if he was gone for an extended period of time.
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yeah... but I play casually. Heck, I disappeared for almost half a year for college... I'd be ticked if I came back and the 15,000 True I spent over 3 months earning with relatively low lvl characters on my free time in an unforgiving PW that is rather spare when it comes to making true magically appear out of a dead corpse.
just sayin'.
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Of course if a player doesn't log on in a long period of time, well that's rl and partly players fault, so nothing to blame the team about with. And once you reach 999 true, the system can't take anything away anymore.
Fault? That's rather harsh, don't you think? There are players, myself included, who simply have little desire and less time to go in search of the Almighty True. Not everyone has hours upon hours to play each week much less every day as some of our players seem to manage. I guarantee that there are players here who don't manage to log in over the course of a month as much as some people do in under a week. That's no one's "fault", its just the reality of life, jobs, kids, obligations and any number of reasonable and more important factors than how much time they spend in game bashing their way to riches. We should not penalize anyone because they have more important things to do than to log in and bash for gold and treasure on a regular basis.
I fully understand the point you're trying to make, but any time-based system is going to hurt the casual player much, much more than it will hurt those who have hundreds of thousands to millions of True in the bank. Any meaningful drain on gold has got to be due to use, not time, or all you'll be left with is a group of greedy power-gamers looking to stay ahead of the system.
A far simpler and more meaningful solution is to limit the influx of gold by reducing gold drops on the top two tiers, which is something I can do while the server is running. This doesn't hurt the casual player, doesn't hurt the new character and slows the accumulation of gold for the upper challenge levels.
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I agree. I guess I should have explained that fault thing to those who put little time by choice. Casual players due to Rl are always impacted in any kind of ways. I don't take the casual players who only play when they feel like it into that bracket.
A far simpler and more meaningful solution is to limit the influx of gold by reducing gold drops on the top two tiers, which is something I can do while the server is running. This doesn't hurt the casual player, doesn't hurt the new character and slows the accumulation of gold for the upper challenge levels.
That is a good solution also.
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you should consider that by not considering the casual player in that bracket, your excluding the fact that it would take lotsa programing/fiddling to exclude the casual player, AND the problems that arise when defining who is casual and dealing with those people who try to avoid that "bracket".
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Why am I even awake? I should be sleeping...
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What I mean to write, if I get it right, is that by their own fault I mean those who decides not to play because they don't feel like it, or they got bored of the game, or what ever other reason that has nothing to do with RL. That's what a casual player is to me. When you are hit by RL.. well that's nothing in your control. You can't blame the team or anyone else but yourself, if you simply decide not to play because you don't feel like it, you know what I mean?
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I agree. I guess I should have explained that fault thing to those who put little time by choice. Casual players due to Rl are always impacted in any kind of ways. I don't take the casual players who only play when they feel like it into that bracket.
Problem is, any automatic script will hit them and without consideration. Who's do say how much is the "minimum" for casual players before they don't get taxed? I had the same 20K (OK, a little less) in my main character's account for longer than some players have been here, and no, that's not an exaggeration. There was some flux up and down, but not much. Even if I had time to play frequently, I strongly doubt I'd be going out collecting gold off of corpses with any regularity. That's my play style and my choice, and I shouldn't be "taxed" because of it. I know there's lots of other people here who agree with this sentiment.
This hurts GMs as well, who sacrifice their play time to run quests for the enjoyment of others.
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Does anyone know what taxes and/or smaller high-end drops would fix? What would be made better? I'm truly clueless and very curious, which is why it was my first question above.
Feel free to ignore my curiosity. It just seems an important point somehow. *shrug*
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Quit once you've won. That'll fix it. Problem is probably figuring out too late that you've won. And that you're depleting the world like an oversized youtube cat latched onto matrix-esque energy source.
Doesn't matter. The trees will take over soon. And when they do, what can you do that supplies real sustenance?
Yeah... put that in your multiple variants of living pipe and smoke it.
The world needs more druids.
I live near yellowstone and I watched the happening. I know.
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Riiiight..... the point in your post being?
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Quit once you've won. That'll fix it. Problem is probably figuring out too late that you've won. And that you're depleting the world like an oversized youtube cat latched onto matrix-esque energy source.
Doesn't matter. The trees will take over soon. And when they do, what can you do that supplies real sustenance?
Yeah... put that in your multiple variants of living pipe and smoke it.
The world needs more druids.
I live near yellowstone and I watched the happening. I know.
this made me LOL.
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Does anyone know what taxes and/or smaller high-end drops would fix? What would be made better? I'm truly clueless and very curious, which is why it was my first question above.
Feel free to ignore my curiosity. It just seems an important point somehow. *shrug*
well, it would fix the jealousy that the poorer characters have because their puny 45 true isn't affect by the taxes while so-and-so's - *enter Dr.Evil voice* one MILLION DOLLARS! er, TRUE! - is affected.
:D other then that, I'm guessing the idea is to add to realism
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What I mean to write, if I get it right, is that by their own fault I mean those who decides not to play because they don't feel like it, or they got bored of the game, or what ever other reason that has nothing to do with RL. That's what a casual player is to me. When you are hit by RL.. well that's nothing in your control. You can't blame the team or anyone else but yourself, if you simply decide not to play because you don't feel like it, you know what I mean?
So if someone decides to quit playing for a while because of something significant and impacting in their life, they should only "blame" themselves for the loss of their virtual assets?
Or if someone's PC dies (hard drive failure, power supply failure, motherboard failure, lightning strike, etc), then they're somehow to blame?
Sometimes not playing is not a choice; it's a necessity or a consequence of life. Sometimes people can give warning, sometimes they can't. I would hope that if real tragedy struck any member of this community that the amount of play time they need to have in order to keep what they have would be the absolute last thing on their minds.
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LOL... Nice. :)
I live near yellowstone and I watched the happening. I know.
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So if someone decides to quit playing for a while because of something significant and impacting in their life, they should only "blame" themselves for the loss of their virtual assets?
Or if someone's PC dies (hard drive failure, power supply failure, motherboard failure, lightning strike, etc), then they're somehow to blame?
Sometimes not playing is not a choice; it's a necessity or a consequence of life. Sometimes people can give warning, sometimes they can't. I would hope that if real tragedy struck any member of this community that the amount of play time they need to have in order to keep what they have would be the absolute last thing on their minds.
I thought this had covered it
guess I should have bold it.
or what ever other reason that has nothing to do with RL.
You know some people simply decides to share their gaming time between games, or go outside for a walk, read books.. etc etc. That's not RL imposing on them. It's a choice of how they spend their leisure time, and that's what I mean. Of course there are those who decides to share their gaming time as doing things for us, like run quest, script, work on lore.. and that I don't consider the same :)
Anyways, I can't be clearer on what I meant than this so lets get back to other things about how we could work out the gold persistency issue?
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Riiiight..... the point in your post being?
You do know that quadruple i's make the trees angry right?
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You know some people simply decides to share their gaming time between games, or go outside for a walk, read books.. etc etc. That's not RL imposing on them. It's a choice of how they spend their leisure time, and that's what I mean. Of course there are those who decides to share their gaming time as doing things for us, like run quest, script, work on lore.. and that I don't consider the same :)
Anyways, I can't be clearer on what I meant than this so lets get back to other things about how we could work out the gold persistency issue?
Yeah, but you're missing the point. How would we differentiate between the person who can't play much, decides not to play much, has to leave for personal reasons or follow any number of other pursuits, by choice or necessity? We can't, it's just that simple. So anything that automatically takes from people is going to hurt people who shouldn't be hurt.
Beyond that, the real problem with an auto-tax like this (or in any other form) is that it is attacking the wrong problem. Cutting down the influx of gold would help too, but really, it's just treating a symptom. It's also kind of a bad model to have for a game, and especially when there's no IC benefit to the taxation. Excepting greedy kingdoms, taxes aren't generally collected with nothing in return. They tend to pay for public works projects, military and law enforcement, and so on.
Our NWN economy isn't really designed. It's perched atop the economics of the single-player game, which best summed up as: "Kill stuff, buy stuff". The major difference is that the "stuff" that's killed keeps coming back with a fresh supply of gold every time, and the "stuff" you buy tends to come from crafters. Thus, gold is effectively manufactured by monsters (and also through Demon Cards) and funnels (for the most part) into the hands of established crafters, who might spend some on things like a house, a remodel of a house, donations or something similar. Those are all voluntary, though. There's no real design or system in place for the gold in/gold out equation. Every first-level character starts out with more riches than the average peasant will see in years, perhaps even a lifetime. Because we only have one currency type (gold piece/True) that is mechanically represented, prices are automatically skewed from the start.
A more robust economy design would factor in all parts of this, from getting gold from drops, to the value of items, to the pay rate of pawn shops, to the prices on merchants to the cost of crafting, and probably several other things I'm not thinking of at the moment. That's not to say someone won't/can't get "rich" in such an economy, but there are at least meaningful sinks built into the system. There would also be smaller and larger denominations of money, so that a loaf of bread does not cost the combined monthly salaries of several commoners, and the same commoners do not spend their life's savings on a mug of ale in the tavern after a hard day's work....which is what NWN's prices now suggest.
Honestly, if we were to redesign the economy in NWN to make it more of a robust and meaningful thing, we'd have to do a complete bank wipe (and don't be fooled...we can wipe storage chests of their gold as well ;) ) and have everyone start over from Square One.
I guarantee, nobody wants that.
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We've lived thru a partial wipe before. The world never stopped spinning... when we went from what was that V1 to V2? when EVERY item you could not equip was sold / or in the case of items you couldnt sell, they were deleted.
I understand the idea of taxing but I fear it would just make the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" even worse. Those who can afford it wont feel it and those who can't aford it... it will hurt them all that much more.
I do agree however that houses should have some kind of continual drain. And upfront knowledge to the playerbase that if the tax upkeep cant be kept up the house will put itself back onto the market. (OMG too many scripts to do that im sure but that would be ideal so no favoritism etc)
I realise I am treding on thin ice with this issue having a toon with a house and being absent at one point for a couple years, and his house not being put back onto the market.... so perhaps I have no say on that issue.
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How would one try to tax an adventurer who travels and call no place home? Or a Druid/ranger who lives in the wilderness ? If anyone should be taxed look towards the crafter guilds. Why? Well they hold more of the monopoly of crafted goods and well they are a buisness in a sence.. May even balance out the crafter guild vs solo crafter crisis :)
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Taxes don't have to be like all the modern paperwork. Roaming adventurers and traveling merchants and the like could be taxed at the gates of cities, and in various ways - per pack/riding animal, per wagon/cart, per weapon, maybe not at all if they offer something extra (traveling merchants may bring products the locals don't make so they wouldn't be taxed in such a case). Politicians have endless imagination when it comes to reasons and ways to tax people. It's also possible to take the current, nonsensical prices of ale (or whatever) as a "stranger tax," if you want to. That's just a justification to help smooth over the broken nature of the NWN version of things, though, and is totally unofficial.
A better question than "how do you tax druids and rangers living in the wilderness?" is "why do druids and rangers living in the wilderness need gold?" Yeah, the mechanics of what we've got right now require it, but IC, gold is useless to someone who hunts and gathers his own food (deer over a campfire + wild apples), builds his own shelter from the materials he gathers himself (deerskin tent), and shapes his own armor and weapons from natural materials he gathered himself (animal hides and a wooden bow). Only "civilized," city-dwelling people use gold. So why's the druid going to town? And why does she want to buy things there and support their unnatural ways?
This is all just "maybe the MMO will have a better background experience all around," basically. Just thinking ahead. Business taxes/licenses and property taxes/upkeep costs are fine ideas for a better in-game economy, though, yeah.
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Gulnyr is right, yes there were some tax collector who kept records even in the time of Salomon, and Herod. So it's not far stretch to think that it would be done also. But mostly a lot of the taxes were taken when some one came into a city or through check points on roads.
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Solomon and Herod? You're thinking too recently (and possibly fictionally, in the first case).
The earliest surviving papyrus document (http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/papyrus.html) is a tax record out of Egypt, from around 2500 BCE.
Before even that, there is evidence (http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v48/n28/AncientTaxes.html) that the 1st Dynasty of the Old Kingdom was among the first to formally codify a tax system - more than six thousand years ago.
Anyway, I'm in favour of taxation systems if they can be worked out fairly, but discussions have gone down this road before, and the objections (both mechanical and otherwise) are valid.
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Solomon and Herod? You're thinking too recently (and possibly fictionally, in the first case).
Err opps no. Salomon is French for Solomon. Son of King David, which is in records of many Nations that dates of those times, so not really fictional.
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I won't get into a biblical history debate here, but Solomon's existence (as described in scripture) is called into question (http://tripatlas.com/Solomon#Historical%20figure) by many prominent historians. He appears in a number of scriptural accounts (biblical or otherwise), but is believed to have been credited with the accomplishments of other rulers therein.
Moreover, the region he supposedly ruled over was largely unpopulated during the time period he was supposed to have ruled it. Odds are, a ruler existed upon whom the story of Solomon was based - in the same fashion as there was likely a bandit who provided the inspiration for la Jeu de Robin et Marion.
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Imagine a tax collector showing up at Rhizome's tree, that's some prime real estate and should be properly taxed.
Money isn't necessarily that persistent though, I imagine. It's just that most players almost resemble dragons in the way they like to hoard gold and items.
If you want a good money drain though, I'd suggest selling potions of invisibility at a good price at the NPC vendors. I think they're only selling scrolls of them now, not useable to the non-casters.
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I won't get into a biblical history debate here, but Solomon's existence (as described in scripture) is called into question (http://tripatlas.com/Solomon#Historical%20figure) by many prominent historians. He appears in a number of scriptural accounts (biblical or otherwise), but is believed to have been credited with the accomplishments of other rulers therein.
Moreover, the region he supposedly ruled over was largely unpopulated during the time period he was supposed to have ruled it. Odds are, a ruler existed upon whom the story of Solomon was based - in the same fashion as there was likely a bandit who provided the inspiration for la Jeu de Robin et Marion.
You're right let's not have a debate of religion on the forum. Although it's a great start of a debate you wrote :)
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do we get a tax rebate???? :P