Bank Changes Discussion Thread

[Nyr]

This mostly hurts the poor nobles who, lol, are really much poorer than they should be.

How rich should they be, then?  Just curious, because there were changes made to this a year and a half ago.

You've got me, there.   Since I've never played a House noble.  I would imagine ...  not as wealthy as high level GMH, but comparatively so?  As their gobs of political currency is, itself, priceless.

Rather than look at who can make the most amount of money in x time, look instead at whose time is more valuable/nets more profit.  Pay is tiered in the game right now based on how much time you probably should/could be spending making money.

If we're talking auto-payment, no one makes more money than nobles and those that work for nobles.  All they have to do is log in and get their paycheck.  This means they can spend more of their time roleplaying and providing benefit elsewhere.  The lowest tier noble houses make a tidy chunk of change each week (edit to add:  a tidy chunk that itself is AT LEAST 4 times greater than the autopayment from the highest-paid GMH employees--and that's comparing the lowest tier to the highest paid role for GMH).  They also have free and relatively safe storage in their estate and don't have to use Nenyuk if they don't want to do so.

GMHs do make more money in sales, but they have to get up to an appropriate level in the House first (if not sponsored) and make the appropriate deals with the right people to make the best sales.  There's effort involved, and that effort gets rewarded.  They may not have free or relatively safe storage in their holdings, but they can certainly absorb costs pretty easily because they could very well have tons of money.

Templars can make money by appropriating it in the form of bribes or fees or taxes.  The reward is proportional to the amount of time invested in the roleplay to get said rewards.  They also can store it safely for free, if these fees are a concern.

Indies can make more money by spending more of their time to make money.  Conversely, they do have many money sinks available for them, and some of those money sinks are mandatory (bank fees), predatory (templar/noble/GMH riding your ass, or even someone stealing your money if it's not in the bank), pre-emptive (bribes), or optional and then mandatory if chosen (MMH progression).  There is nowhere that they can store their sid that it won't be at some kind of risk except for the bank.  The bank has no risk involved but it will charge you to remove money from it.  Up to you if safety is worth it, and given the other concerns above about that money, it might well be worth it for the indie entrepreneur.

[Synthesis]

haha, i never make withdrawals anyway, just infinite deposits of mad loot

suck it nenyuk

[Kismetic]

Yeah, I mean.  I like it, personally.  If you think the noble stipends are balanced appropriately with the bank taxes, even, this is fairly well in hand, assuming there's a maximum tax (20-25%, I guess?).

I guess it's kind of like sales tax, in the end.  If you don't like it, move to Deleware (Red Storm).

Edit to clarify I'm totally joking, there, before I incur the WRATH of the RPI userbase.

[valeria]

The reason it doesn't make sense to me is that it doesn't make sense as a banking institution to charge your best customers, the people on whose existence you depend, essentially the highest rates.  Or seriously inconvenience them, because even if you avoid the bank entirely, you still have to walk to your estate in the middle of nowhere and then walk back with your 15k coins a half giant minion is hopefully online to lift and carry so you can pay for your event, supplies, armor, silk, whatever.  As a noble or templar player, more spam walking would not be on my list of productive ways to spend my time.

[LauraMars]

Charging the richest and most powerful one percenters the most money does seem awfully socialist/progressive for Allanak.

What is this, Canada?

[Clearsighted]

I love the change, and I always thought that Nenyuk was *CRAZY* efficient and effective, given the shithole world that Zalanthas is. There are people living in parts of our real world right now, like Greece, who would commit murder with their bare hands, to get their savings into a bank as safe as Nenyuk.

Given that Zalanthas is a world where people regularly commit murder with their bare hands, having it charge a premium to commoners and grebbers is perfectly fine by me. Hey, don't like it? Hold onto them, or keep them in your apartment, or go bury a sack of coins in the ground with the 'bury' command, and see if you end up losing more than 20%.

[bardlyone]

I don't particularly like it, but I doubt it will have much if any impact on anyone or anything I ever play unless it's impact via other pcs which is fine.

[AdamBlue]

There should be special rates for people in clans.

For example, perhaps the Byn provides escorts for the bank's money transfers, so members of the Byn have less bank tax. Maybe the merchant houses have special deals with the bank, which causes them to compete for their favor. Maybe one could buy a very expensive membership to the Banking Association to have their taxes nullified for a one time fee of a large sum of sid.

Generally, the banking as it currently is is awful.

'We're just gonna take away 10% of your money as a whole'.
That is a bad idea. It should just be a flat banking rate of 25 sid apiece or something small that builds up overtime, with flat increases based on how much money you're withdrawing. Like, withdrawing 1000 sid shouldn't have them take an entire small of it if it is your life savings. Putting money in the bank seems pretty goddamn pointless if you have any secure location to keep money, now, as there is no interest building up due to the bank using your money for investments to make more money, which is what banks actually do to make money in smart investments, or having people take out loans to charge them interest.
Putting money in the bank, now, is literally just having someone take away 10% of your money for no reason.

[Mordiggian]

Putting money in the bank grants you absolute security. There is no other scenario in which your money is 100% secure. There are some other scenarios in which your money is almost 100% secure, but 100% security comes with a price.

The vast majority of PCs are not and will never be subject to the upper end of the spectrum these fees range on. This is a small change implemented on its own so we can gauge the effects. I promise you guys that this is something we have considered the implications of and will be monitoring.

[musashi]

I adore this change, and think 20% is juuuuuuuust right for for a harsh, unfairly, crony capitalist economic system like Zalanthas.

Charging the richest and most powerful one percenters the most money does seem awfully socialist/progressive for Allanak.

What is this, Canada?

Yeah, if it were up to me, I would make some tweaks to have the code better reflect a corrupt society. Things like:

Commoners are fee'd extremely high.
GMH's and their family members are fee'd lower, but still fee'd.
The nobility aren't fee'd at all.
The templarate are not only not fee'd, their accounts gather interest.

But coding is hard and time consuming so ... till then ... as Nyr pointed out, nobles and and the templarate can just keep their money in their strongholds. If a burglar manages to sneak in there and sneak out again (after having wished up to make sure the staff can animate the world appropriately of course) then they earned whatever it is they took.

[Armaddict]

...then don't keep it at Nenyuk.

Protect your coins from thieves.  They do that for you, as is, but if you don't want to pay for it to be completely safe...you can hire your own security, which will probably take about 20% of your income.  Har har har.

[Mordiggian]

Reiterating that there is no flat 20% fee and very few people are subject to fees that high.

[Molten Heart]

This will have a larger impact on casual players, making the income disparity even larger.

[musashi]

Reiterating that there is no flat 20% fee and very few people are subject to fees that high.

I understand. I think the staff are being too nice by setting up a socialist progressive banking fee system rather than a regressive one.

But any fee is better than the no fee system we had before. So I'll take it!

[AdamBlue]

I really don't see why people wouldn't just invest in their own money security. The banks as a whole are prrrrobably going to see only wealthy people using them now, because they literally have so much money that they can't hold it all, while people who only have a large or two to their name will just keep the money on them, because using the bank is a great way to lose two small.
Banks do not work like this in real life for a reason. Banks make money through investments and very low flat fees (A.K.A NOT PERCENTAGES)

To even the most stupid commoner, they would use the bank, then only receive 90% of their money, then realize that 'hey, that's a tenth of my cash! Well, I like to hold onto all of my money, so I'll just carry it with me or store it somewhere safe.'

If the money WENT somewhere, I could maybe understand, but the banking house is literally just a NPC house. They make no impact on the game world besides just being a cash vacuum now, when before they were a pseudo-vnpc house that existed to deal with the fact that money is cumbersome and heavy due to it being obsidian and that it's a terrible form of currency in the first place when there are dozens of much easier alternatives that people would of used, like wooden tokens with different marks to denote value rather then everyone paying in what is the equal to paying everything in goddamn pennies. Tons of pennies. SACKS of pennies.

In general, money is stupid, and this change is also stupid.

[Eyeball]

Just seems like another disincentive for doing anything. Why bother to earn more than a minimum of coin once you have your suit of gear. Why give a crap if someone offers you money if your pouch already has 150 coins in it. I wish the focus would be on adding new things.

[Old Kank]

I don't have a strong opinion on the change itself, but I'm floored at the reasoning behind it.

Creating a money sink?  Ugh.  Why not implement ways for money to be spent that spurs creation and interest, rather than just skimming money off the top and just disposing of it?  It just feels like a really cheap patch to a bigger, more complicated problem.

[Saellyn]

fuck that im not carryin 1000 coins

nenyuk here you go

[Old Kank]

Just seems like another disincentive for doing anything. Why bother to earn more than a minimum of coin. Why give a crap if someone offers you money if your pouch already has 150 coins in it.

This sums up my thoughts on the change itself.

My characters rarely buy anything after about the ~3 days played mark.  They have gear, and skills to survive off of.  Anything extra is just icing on the cake, in case the need for some future luxury came up.  So now I'll drop an emergency fund in the bank, and not save anything past that.  Woo, now my character will spend his monthly pay on 6 drinks at the Gaj, instead of just 3.  Okay.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

That's right, these monthly stipends need to go way up if people want to buy anything.

[Saellyn]

but what about my diamond encrusted silver-edged steel longsword

now if i deposit the 500,000 to buy it, will only get 400,000 back.

[Eyeball]

Creating a money sink?

It might not even have this effect. People will probably carry more coins around now, which means more that can be looted when they die instead of disappearing in Nenyuk's coffers.

[LauraMars]

I don't think it is the end of the world.

I'm happy if things become a little more difficult for independents, and happy if some money stays in the game instead of disappearing into Nenyuk never to be seen again.  Staff already said that very few people will be charged the full 20%.  And also that they can adjust the cap if necessary.

My main concern is for the sponsored roles and I've already stated it.

[Saellyn]

No, stipends don't need to go up.

If you're a noble and you need money, and you have commoners working for you, get them to DO shit that earns YOU money. Provide funding for THEIR ventures, then take a percentage out that gets YOU income. Be smart about this stuff guys.

If you aren't playing a noble, please don't whine about your stipend. If you are, and you're whining about your stipend, do it to staff in a request. If you don't want to do that, give your commoner workers more shit to do that'll earn you funding. It's not exactly un-IC for Lord Winkydink to have his commoner worker Binkyzink peddling out a dozen rinkytinks that were made with x material, then taking a fee because that commoner works for him.

[Mordiggian]

This will have a larger impact on casual players, making the income disparity even larger.

That would be true if we were using a flat rate, but we aren't, so it isn't.

I don't have a strong opinion on the change itself, but I'm floored at the reasoning behind it.

Creating a money sink?  Ugh.  Why not implement ways for money to be spent that spurs creation and interest, rather than just skimming money off the top and just disposing of it?  It just feels like a really cheap patch to a bigger, more complicated problem.

Creating a money sink was not the sole motivating factor behind this. The title of the IDB discussion thread that lead to this change is "Increasing Harshness". We've talked before about how we recognize that there are things we would like to do to improve the economy, but we've also talked about how it's a massive undertaking. If we sit around waiting for the opportunity to make one large, sweeping change, while holding off on smaller ones, we won't get very much done.

That's right, these monthly stipends need to go way up if people want to buy anything.

Nobles are the best positioned to disregard this change regardless of personal wealth, because mostly secure noble estates are a thing.