Typos be gone!
Thank for fixing typos. gayme lookz much niser!
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It feels like it is a bit extreme. Just two PCs in a room with these things can create epic levels of scroll. I personally think it would be nice if this was tuned down a little. It feels excessively spammy to me.
CRITTER-DEX INVESTMENT
It feels to me like it takes a lot more commitment than it should to keep your critter alive and reasonably happy. I think they are a great addition to the game but it feels like the time investment needed is a little excessive. To the point where it seems like keeping them alive and reasonably happy becomes more demanding than your cushy corporate job.
CRITTER SCAN COOLDOWN
I apologize if this one is nothing more than me being ignorant. But ever since this was 'fixed' I have been unable to scan anything without getting the empty package scan again later message. Even things I know 100% I have never scanned before Even after about 8 hours of trying off and on. Maybe I am not getting something or it's specific to me but it seems concerning from my limited point of view.
So, the CorpShare Market released, and I'm slightly surprised there's just a release statement and nothing else, because I expected a few necessary OOC clarifications about two major questions:
1. Sometimes, corporations ICly have major releases (like Critterdexes, for example) that are the work of staff implementing new features, but are ICly fluffed as being corporate achievements. It seems to me that we face a situation where these either need to go unreflected in stock prices whatsoever if stock price is meant to be a player-driven feature, or they are reflected in the prices, making them more reflective of actual IC happenings, but heavily muddled the waters in terms of players competing for rewards from stocks based on what corporation benefitted from their own actions to boost their (invested) corps prices versus the staff's feature release. (and better OOC information about what features are more likely to release next becomes insider trading knowledge)
2. Owning shares, or being invested in a corporation capable of reaping benefits from its share price increasing immediately casts an extremely wide (far wider than before) net of conflict of interest, wherein any staff member with a corporate alt is almost immediately entangled with conflicting interests when participating in any plot that either harms their alt's corps stock or boosts their rivals in the competition, and I am curious if there is any addition or explanation for how this interacts with standing admin rules.
Thank you.
(Edited by Slither at 4:56 pm on 12/6/2020)
)) saying big jumps generally don't happen daily doesn't matter. incremental abuse is still abuse. if it happens.
)) "Individuals do not reap the benefits of their corporations share price." then what's the point? considering how theme ties into how ferociously corp-as-identity exists, there's no interesting conflict to be had to risk your entire career / identity in some weird meta-game to -maybe- make a one-time payoff at the risk of like, execution / firing / whatever for investing in 'the enemy'. none of it makes sense.
)) " These prizes are not tied to your own corporation doing well" -- again, what's the point? none of this makes sense / defeats the original purposes as stated / does anyone here know what 'stocks' are and how they work?
to be clear, i'm 100% understanding slither's explanation that at least 'senior admin' won't have alts eligible to receive any profits. i'm less worried about staff abuse (though it remains, obviously, possible) and more worried that nothing about the system, as now live, makes any sense.
there's a great deal of ambiguous language around 'investing well' or players who 'do well'.
i get that this introduces potentially interesting situations where players in rival corporations 'invest' cross-ways successfully, etc. but there's an insane amount of room for player AND staff abuse / meta for what 'success' of different corproate assets / projects means, things that are difficult to measure, so how the winners/losers are resulted is going to be a minefield.
'50k a quarter isn't worth gaming the system over'
players worth a LOT still run crates. people will game whatever they can, come on.
I actually had many of the same concerns as PCow and Jamerson way back when this was first talked about but have since come to peace with it. As with most any mechanics system, you can put IC scaffolding around it to explain away most anything. In this case, however, it doesn't take all that much in terms of mental gymnastics. Here's some things that might help others:
Players can INFLUENCE stock priced but they are not the main driving force. In most cases these are global megacorps. They have product released and business all over. It's not just Withmore. Even if it WAS just Withmore PCs represent like1% of a corporations workforce at best. Personally, I am glad that PCs can influence prices (sometimes heavily) but that the rest of the world is still considered.
I am not sure what Jameson is referring to when they talk about the original purpose of the stock market. As far as I can tell, what was introduced does in fact meet the purposes staff presented. Perhaps there is a disconnect between what staff want from this system and what Jameson thought was desired from this system?
Do keep in mind that PCs NEVER actually own stock. Those saying they do are just simplifying things. Like the renter of a bar saying they own it. What these corpies have is the ability to use their corps money to buy shares their corps will then own. When the sell those shares the profits (or losses) belong to the Corp. All that slick trading you did to earn the company millions? Yeah. That's why you got that 50k reward. Can you feel the love?
Why would a corp invest in other Corps? Diversification. Why wouldn't Saedor Krupp want to get a piece of the pie when ViriiSoma does some awesome new thing that boosts their value? Why wouldn't NeoTrans want to have a revenue stream like this to help them through troubled months? If NLM has a really bad week but their employees managed to help mitigate that by playing the marked in a clever way, then things might not be as bad as they could have been.
How does this help to drive Corp vs Corp play? By pushing the PCs in corps to try and be invested in their own Corp's activities and enhance them. To encourage PC to understand better what is going on in other Corps. And yes, they could always take risky actions to influence themselves or other corps.
I do feel that a lot of players still fail to realize that, over the course of the last few years, getting fired and falling has become far less likely than it was in the past. NPC bosses expect mistakes to be made and are far more pragmatic and consider the layers more. Your Corpie gets caught having a private meeting with a mixer? Looks bad. If it becomes a trend you will fall. But if you can justify it reasonably well and course correct, you'll be fine. This is the same across the board. Staff seems to be more interested in Corpie PCs making moves and eating the failures that come with them then they are in casting out the PCs who are at least TRYING to drive story over little things.
It is also my impression that Corp vs Corp RP has been intentionally moving from insular us versus them hate mongering to a more fuzzy borders with levels and nuances PvP environment. Corpies are kind of expected to mix and get involved in each others business a little more than in the past. The CorpShare system isn't lowering the walls between Corps. That was already done long before CorpShare was introduced.
CORPSHARE SUGGESTION
All that being said, I would love it if there was some tiny factor introduced that give slight encouragement to employees to more reason care more about their corps stock prices than the prices of other corps. I am not sure how should look but my first thought is to give make shares in your own corp provide just a tiny bit more value to your portfolio than shares in any other corp. Not enough to discourage investment in other stocks but enough to make investing in your own corp preferable if all else was equal. Maybe just a tiny bonus on earnings made when selling stocks from your own corp?
I understand that may be to allow players that don't have a ton of playtime to participate on relatively equal footing, but I feel like there could be a compromise between the excitement of riding rapid fluctuations and accessibility.
Keep the prize for the best investor. That's good. You're making funds for your corp, congrats.
But why not have something where employees who's company stock did the best, get a bonus if they were also working in the CorpShare system. It would be a way for players to get a small bonus if their corp did the best over a quarter. Make it a % of pay, nothing too major, but something to at least give a reason for the company to work together to increase their overall market share.
So that way there is an award for the best investor, but more important, a smaller reward for the members of a company who manage to have the best quarter.
I think bragging rights is more than enough of a reward.
I'm terms of how fast this moves, it is intentionally a long haul. This is for long term plotting and planning. It isn't intended to provide hour by hour entertainment but rather to be a long term backdrop to ongoing roleplay.
In terms of the system presented here versus what was announced, I see no difference. None of my plans changed. I implemented the system exactly as I stated originally with the same intentions. We aren't all the way there. This is just phase 2. We still have a third phase which includes chatter integrations and some additional prizes, like maybe most profitable trade, or something.
As always these systems take time to implement and tweak. So be aware changes will probably happen.
In terms of admin alts using this system, I think I have addressed these issues. Folx need to trust the staff of the game aren't cheating and that if someone does cheat it will be identified and that person removed. No one on staff wants to 'win'. We aren't donating our time to run the game to get an advantage for our alts. I kinda feel like it's beating a dead horse to continue to point this out.
Thanks for all the feedback. Keep it coming.
I have no feedback to add on the current market implementation at present.
However, much love to Slither, Johnny, and Mirage for all the recent changes.
(Edited by Slither at 12:22 pm on 12/10/2020)
(Edited by Johnny at 11:13 pm on 12/10/2020)
The bugs causing characters riding the metro and recycled puppets to be reflected as being 'somewhere' on the @who population footer have been resolved.[/i]
Once again, the staff working hard to crush any hope, happiness or joy out of Withmore.
Thanks a lot Johnny. Obviously there will never be a "...over the rainbow" in Withmore. Not even for metro riding characters and recycled puppets. ;)
