Bank Changes Discussion Thread

[Nyr]

Ok.  Well there is no 'two sides to the iron curtain.'

We're all in the gulag together, comrade.

[wizturbo]

LOL.  I wouldn't call staff not having a full time PR guy the equivalent to an iron curtain.    Although, it might not hurt to bring on a staff member whose job is communications.





*Wizturbo begins daydreaming*.......






[Edit] Vladanyr Putin says, "Tell the players all their fucking sid belongs to Nenyuk.  Those indie merchants are screwed, we're calling their number!   They're going to cry bitter tears.  In fact, make sure our tears collectors are operating at 100% efficiency...I don't want a repeat of the spillage incident of 2012.  And I don't care if the nobles don't like it!  If they want to complain, they can pound sand or move to Red Storm where there is no bank!    

.....



"Fellow players!  Wonderful news!  We've listened to your feedback and decided to begin a campaign to revise the Zalanthian economy to better reflect the harsh setting!   Rejoice!   The first step of this ambitious plan is ready to go, and it involves banking.  Code has been created to allow us to add fees for using House Nenyuk's service!  It's going live today!  We've tuned things based on internal debate, but we'll keep an eye on the effects of these changes and make tweaks if necessary.  Please keep in mind this is just one step of many, so don't be surprised if some of the rough edges on this get smoothed out as we continue to iterate.   Vladanyr Putin loves you, and Commodore Nessalin will be signing autographs in Red's Retreat later this week."

.......





"Vladanyr Putin is the best!  Commodore Nessalin lets make babies!"


......

[Delirium]

Symptomatic, I said. Not this lone issue. Maybe I should add "reading comprehension" to that list.

Whatever, guys. Yuk it up.

[Synthesis]

Man, wizturbo, that's gotta be at least in the top 25 "most amusing posts" on the GDB, ever.

But seriously, it doesn't matter.  There are plenty of games out there with full-time "community support" or "PR" or whatever, and the min-maxers -always- make enough noise to drown out the bullshit doubletalk.

[lostinspace]

My first character didn't know about the bank. He carried his life savings (about 3000 sid) with him at all times, in two backpacks. When he rode out he would just strap them to his inix and be fine. It really wasn't an inconvenience, but if he lost his mount, he'd have lost everything.

[wizturbo]

Symptomatic, I said. Not this lone issue. Maybe I should add "reading comprehension" to that list.

Whatever, guys. Yuk it up.

Using the words "iron curtain" is what triggered that.  If you'd said "sometimes the fence feels higher than it should" I think you'd have gotten a different response.  Text communications suck, no tone of voice or subtle inflections to hint at whether a comment is good-natured, ill-spirited, or what have you...so instead people latch on to words like "iron curtain" and assume the rest of the paragraph was said with a ill-spirited tone, even if it wasn't.

Delirium, you're basically my favorite player in Armageddon...so please don't hate me, I just couldn't resist making Nyr-Putin come to life

[wizturbo]

But seriously, it doesn't matter.  There are plenty of games out there with full-time "community support" or "PR" or whatever, and the min-maxers -always- make enough noise to drown out the bullshit doubletalk.

I work in the games industry, and I've seen the effects of investment in a community team and top notch PR...it's profound.   It's more about capturing that extra percentage of sentiment.  If a fact-based announcement would receive a 75% positive sentiment, and an expertly wordsmithed announcement would get 85%, that's a pretty substantial difference...40% reduction in negative posts.  The wordsmithed announcement might take a PR/Community person a couple hours to craft, but it saves a lot more time in the long run for the team when it comes to follow up posts, not to mention the positive effects on morale of having 40% less hate.

Just something to think about...

[Beethoven]

Delirium DID just say that she didn't want to have to spend tons of time agonizing over how to oh so carefully phrase things, right?

It should have been VladaNyr Putin, though.

[Kismetic]

I like to participate in the back and forth until I find myself personally satisfied with an issue.  That makes it easy to skip the next ten rage pages of who-knows-what-or-cares.  But damn if that wasn't hilarious, wizturbo. 

[KankWhisperer]

No one's going to give up on the bank for long.

[Voular]

Wouldn't it be more effective to just limit the amount of coin you can deposit? Commoners can max store 5k, nobles 100k, templars 200k. Etc. Or whatever?

This seems like a lot of effort.

[Nyr]

Symptomatic, I said. Not this lone issue. Maybe I should add "reading comprehension" to that list.

Whatever, guys. Yuk it up.

If you have issues with staff doing things and you think it is systemic or symptomatic of a larger issue (i.e., you bring it up often, despite any reassurances or responses--joking or otherwise--from staff), bring up your issue(s) into a constructive thread appropriate for the board.  (It won't get addressed if it is continually a derail for the threads it is in, after all, and that doesn't help if there is an issue you want to bring up.)

If it is not appropriate for the board or you cannot find a way to make that the case, you can put in a staff complaint (if serious enough) or a question request if you want to talk with us.  In the same way, not bringing it up will just let it fester.  At least you can get it off of your chest!

[Asanadas]

From a developer's standpoint, this solution of "Nobles and Templars can keep their wealth in their compounds" sounds to me as a cop-out from addressing a genuine facet of the economy.

There is no historical or economic root to a bank acting in such a way that it would drive off the nobility and truly wealthy to hoard their currency themselves, aside from a bank being genuinely incompetent. Right now, considering the ballooning penalty, Nenyuk could be considered incompetent for not respecting the social classes defined in-universe.

If I were the prog-bit behind this change, I would go ahead and plan discrepancies based on the player's "social status," in an attempt to respect game documentation and real-world economic evidence. This would also soothe some of the complaints in this thread; instead of this change being arbitrarily harsh, it is now harsh in respect to the game world -- a change that would be cheered.

[Ender]

I have no issue with this change other than the timing of it and the worry about other changes that are vague and obscure.

My major issue with this may be better served with a loose analogy.

Let's say I like to play baseball, I take it pretty seriously, and I want to be good at it.  I know the rules of baseball so I know if I want to succeed I need to learn how to swing a bat.  What if one day I showed up and the umpires just announce "now you will be swinging a racquet, here's your racquet, go.  Also there are going to be other rules changes that will happen, we'll tell you about them as they happen."  Suddenly I'm stuck in this place where I'm swinging a racquet awkardly because I have not practiced it at all and I don't know how to continue to prepare for playing baseball because I have no idea what rules will be changing.

Lately there's been a lot of big changes to the game that kinda makes me feel like I don't know how to prepare for playing the game I love to play.  A city has been closed, a class has been removed, and now a big bank change has occurred with the promise of more to come.  These changes aren't BAD, but they do affect the internal consistency of the game in a way that can make playing very awkward and need to be smoothly transitioned.

[wizturbo]

I'd go a step further, and have a coded "social status" value on the character sheet itself, that the game's coders could utilize to make the world respond accordingly.

Different echos could trigger depending on social class, different crim-code results, different prices...  all kinds of amazing things could be done with it!  It'd be cool if someone gets a promotion that elevates their social status, and they see the virtual world behave differently as a result, just like the PC world responds.  We see a lot of things moving in this direction now, with housing for specific social groups, certain echos when you pass by a gate, etc.

[Delirium]

Yeah... I don't think you guys are understanding that it's not the specific change, it's how it was handled. Ender explained it better than I did.

If it is not appropriate for the board or you cannot find a way to make that the case, you can put in a staff complaint (if serious enough) or a question request if you want to talk with us.  In the same way, not bringing it up will just let it fester.  At least you can get it off of your chest!

It's not appropriate for the board, and I can't pretend I'm hopeful, but I'm all for clearing the air. It'll take me some time to compose.

[WithSprinkles]

I have a question! In the DEPOSIT helpfile, I'd like a little clarification. It seems pretty straightforward, but I just want to be sure:

Deposit
(Banks)

This command will put money into your bank account. The command can only be used at the House Nenyuk Banks. Money in accounts can be taxed, but in event of a character's death, the money is lost to House Nenyuk. When Templars observe unusual activity, they may levy taxes against House Nenyuk--at which time Nenyuk may choose to pass on those taxes to its depositors.

So.. if a templar sees you makin' it rain and poppin' bottles and such, they can roll up on Nenyuk and walk away with coin? And then Nenyuk will say, "Well, hrm.." And then take the coin from your account to make up for it?

Is that an old policy or new? And it says depositors plural, so will just the offender be fined or will some other system be implemented that bops lots of folk at once? If this happens, do you get a notification? Does the banker mention it? Or is this a GM handled and role played thing?

[Asanadas]

A single (Blue robe) Templar can't tax Nenyuk. That's a wink-wink statement saying staff can mess with your bank deposit.

A Blue Robe can't mess with your account short of dragging you to the bank and forcing you to withdraw money, and even then you can possibly get away with gimping him, because he doesn't know how much you really have as a coded value.

[KankWhisperer]

[Armaddict]

From a developer's standpoint, this solution of "Nobles and Templars can keep their wealth in their compounds" sounds to me as a cop-out from addressing a genuine facet of the economy.

There is no historical or economic root to a bank acting in such a way that it would drive off the nobility and truly wealthy to hoard their currency themselves, aside from a bank being genuinely incompetent. Right now, considering the ballooning penalty, Nenyuk could be considered incompetent for not respecting the social classes defined in-universe.

If I were the prog-bit behind this change, I would go ahead and plan discrepancies based on the player's "social status," in an attempt to respect game documentation and real-world economic evidence. This would also soothe some of the complaints in this thread; instead of this change being arbitrarily harsh, it is now harsh in respect to the game world -- a change that would be cheered.

Your model of banking makes more sense when commoners can actually ask for loans.  Again,  all actual in-game activity points to them being a security-based bank, not a moneylending bank.  You pay them to keep your shit from being stolen, they don't make their profits off of loans.  They get it from security fees and property management.

[Asanadas]

Your model of banking makes more sense when commoners can actually ask for loans.  Again,  all actual in-game activity points to them being a security-based bank, not a moneylending bank.  You pay them to keep your shit from being stolen, they don't make their profits off of loans.  They get it from security fees and property management.

All actual in-game activity for the last 15 years pointed to Nenyuk being a civil service which stayed afloat by cannibalizing dead men's finances.

You're rejecting the concept of holding a bank to a realistic universe standard, because... they're a PMC that protects your currency? A currency which is a burden to store in high amounts?

I also understand from your reasoning that there are no virtual loans being made to VNPCs? And that, at some point in the past before Nenyuk was made a virtual house, no PC agent ever made a loan? Scrap the loan concept entirely -- simple investments in property (an example of that would be the gentrification of the Merchant's Quarter, which was formerly a section of the 'Rinth) would be massive profit-causing endeavors that can only be accomplished with massive capital in the first place. It's fair to say that the arbitrary tactic causing the wealthy to stuff their money under their mattress would be stifling to these situations that a bank realistically would pursue.

I think if we're going for economic realism, we should start by being realistic. Holding on to this "bank-but-not-quite" excuse you're making as justification for Nenyuk to disregard established social roles acts as a drag to creating a functioning product.

[Kismetic]

The loan issuing powers in Zalanthas, to my knowledge, are Nenyuk, Kassigarh and Valika.  I know for a positive that PCs with the right sociopolitical sway can pursue a loan from the first two.  Not sure on Valika.

Nenyuk does do loans.  At least, to Templars, but I'm fairly sure that's an option for other people with power.

Vladanyr could come out and correct me, dovarich.

[musashi]

From a developer's standpoint, this solution of "Nobles and Templars can keep their wealth in their compounds" sounds to me as a cop-out from addressing a genuine facet of the economy.

There is no historical or economic root to a bank acting in such a way that it would drive off the nobility and truly wealthy to hoard their currency themselves, aside from a bank being genuinely incompetent. Right now, considering the ballooning penalty, Nenyuk could be considered incompetent for not respecting the social classes defined in-universe.

I believe Nyr has already said the "store it in your compound" idea is a short term solution until they add more tweaks to the banking system to make it better take into account the difference in socioeconomic class?

[musashi]

All actual in-game activity for the last 15 years pointed to Nenyuk being a civil service which stayed afloat by cannibalizing dead men's finances.

This is not correct. We often joke on the GDB about Nenyuk making all its money by keeping the spam grebber's ill gotten gains from all those purplish salt crystals they dug up, but the actual bulk of their income comes from property management. The tenets of every single housing development in both cities pay rent to Nenyuk. The only people who get away with not having Nenyuk as their local slumlord are people whose housing is provided to them by their clan/tribe, or people who don't have a house.

Nenyuk being a playable house was before my time but IIRC from what I've heard the primary job of the local Nenyuk agent was ... issuing out apartment keys and collecting rent. And the role closed out soon after apartment code went in. I could be wrong on that though, as I said it was before my time but I believe that was the case.

[Old Kank]

I'd recommend patience, and offering feedback and criticism is encouraged

I'm pretty ambivalent, but I dislike this change because it's not obvious what it's supposed to do, or how it's intended to affect things (I understand this is just step 1):

People who have a lot of money in the bank have a means to make money, so this change just makes everything slightly more expensive, which is just very mildly inconvenient.  Making stuff more expensive just encourages and prolongs fund-raising behavior, which is moving in the wrong direction.

People who don't have a lot of money don't really need a bank, and the bank fees will make using the bank cost-prohibitive, so they won't use it.  Coins will be blown on flavor minutiae that don't contribute a great deal to the game.

Here's a quick and easy fix:
Put NPC shopkeepers at all Nenyuk banks, give them beads to sell and buy.  100 'sid for stone beads, 500 'sid for obsidian beads, 1,000 'sids for jade beads, and 5,000 'sids for crystal beads.  Set up the shopkeeper so they buy the beads back at 97% of their purchase value.  You could even have region-specific beads if you feel so inclined.  Presto, the currency weight problem is fixed overnight, and suddenly carrying your money becomes a viable alternative to Nenyuk and their steep fees.  Raiders and thieves rejoice!  I'll be happy to write up the NPCs and beads if you want.