Player ran businesses, yes?, no?, WTFISTHIS!?.
 

In my opinion player ran businesses are the reason Era has had to reset time and time again. Maybe not the singular reason, but I think it is damn close.

Seven years and that hasnt even changed just to try it.

What do you guys think?

Player ran businesses aren't the problem in themselves, the problem is in the way they are handled. They make a certain percentage of the population rich very fast, and everyone else has to slave away mining and picking flowers, which is much slower.

Being owner of a business can make you get some cash real fast I tell ya.

I agree, I think it would be pretty awesome to bring those businesses back. I remember trying to save up for one, but i ended up buying a bunch of guns instead..

If there was a way to make it so everything was balanced out i bet it could work out, but players still didn't handle the biz in the best way. :(

Player Biz's need to be brought back give everyone a chance

Liberty Ace Ammo ftw.

Thats why I think there should be some sort of player ran goverment.

I can see it now..

The day Era sold Democracy.

Would be sweet to control Era as a player or something like that. :D

Marxism

ya

Interesting idea, but there's no way this player ran government would be able to enforce anything.. :(

Era News should be reopened IMO ;).

And while we're at it we should bring back prohibition, because that was probably just as popular and also has a record of failure.

I agree with you nat

Having a way of letting players independantly own and run a business would be nice, if it was available to everyone. This would get pretty complicated.
Things I'm thinking of are materials, weapons, ammo, food, even vehicles. Obtaining minerals or a mining company could be a form of business, obtaining base materials for food industry could be a business. The possibilities could get pretty big, but who knows if that much work would even remotely be worth it.

The good thing is, that would expand the job market on era (lol recession), give ample forms of income, not just npc based forms of income but a more player ran economy.

One idea I had was to eliminate owners from a business, and have them "owned" by an npc. Staff or another form of administration could select a "manager" who would handle hiring,firing, and making sure production or that profits were met. If this manager didn't do his job, they would remove him obviously. The hardest worker would have the best chance at running things. Finding a decent manager for a business would be something the business admin could do. This manager would obviously get a higher pay rate, but not too much.

But like I said, that can get complicated and I'm sure it would, I also don't think or know if that would have a positive effect on the economy that is era. It's simple now, theres businesses, ways to make money, the most complicated thing on era is getting weapons parts, iron, lead and putting that together to stock a gun. Adding that idea would make the whole process of manufacturing a lot more complicated than "Mine 100 lead, watch episodes of this and hit a the whole time". And who wants to deal with that.

But making it so everyone could do it, instead of saying there are only 6 businesses, AND 4 gangs would have an interesting effect on Era. Being able to "Buy" the property for a business, and then work from there, could be pretty cool. Ideas are easy, but scripting them and putting them into play are completely different.

Kinda like player bizes except more advanced? Buy property build on the property..buy gun liscenses or w.e. pay for upgrades to your property...Sounds like it would add a simulation efffect, I honestly like it except you run into the problem of people buying a bunch of property just to be jerks.

I would like to see player businesses run in a capitalistic way, basing their success off competition. Owners would have to make good decisions to keep their businesses open and making money. There are a few problems with this:
- There are only so many businesses on Era, so staff have to intervene and remove business owners not making money.
- There are very few ways to compete. Price can be controlled, but businesses selling the same things will pretty much have to match eachothers' prices since they can't compete on quality. The only real thing to compete on is location (close to unstick?)
- Price fixing can be a problem, depending on how NPC shops work. If NPC shops are set to automatically change their price based on how much is purchased there (using laws of supply & demand), if all the business owners start selling ammo for 2x what it was before, the NPC price will eventually rise to that as people start buying ammo there. This might require staff intervention at capping prices.

Money also has to flow in a way that most of it goes to the workers and the owner gets paid only after all the other expenses. If we let owners get rich while everyone else is poor, we create the problems we have now.

Well, the main problem as expressed initially is inflation. Rich getting richer, and poor, in comparision to the rich, getting poorer. There's a simple way to cut that, the current business system (last I checked) is quite frankly pathetic. Owners have utter control over expenses, who's paid and who's not. They fill their businesses with novelty tags, and so on and so fort.

If you're to prevent the rich from getting richer, and etc. I think every member having a fixed salary based upon amount of work completed, would suffice. Of course putting a cap on this, meaning the higher your rank, the larger your capacity, or allowance to work. Ex. A new miner is allowed to mine 500 minerals per day, if he does this, his payment is for example 1500 a week. If he doesn't, well I'm sure looking at the percentage done, a payment can be figured.

This way the payments are directly deducted from the safe, and the owner doesn't have complete control over it, if it isn't in there, its deducted from his bank account. As well as the business admin is informed, and/or a GP. As well as increasing the taxes, dependent upon the price / demand of the item. Give the business admin control of this.

Egh, chalk it. The main reason businesses have failed is because they've been poorly monitored, same with gangs. Its practically as simple as that, thats main cause. There are underlying reasons, but it all falls under that.

An automated business system that doesn't need to be monitored and so on and so forth would be really difficult, but I'm sure can be thought of. Other games have done it, why not Era? Just need to know is this what you're aiming for, Chris?

I belive "President Eden" says this on the Enclave Radio on Fallout 3, lol.

But I agree with you Venom_Fish. :)

This woman is right! I loved to read the news! I still do.

Those player ran business was awesome, bring them back. Its suppose to be so that those who own a business are richer then those who doesen't thats how it is in real life, those who work make money. The owner of a business always makes much more then her/his workers thats how it is.

Maybe if there were more mines and some that were better, instead of having the business to business mines make some mines a PK zone and have them be more advanced. (Higher chance of gold,iron, lead, diamond, etc. And not necessarily all at once, maybe one mine could be a higher chance of one and the other could be a higher chance of the other one)
By that I meant:
Mine A is PK and has a higher chance of iron.
Mine B is PK and has a higher chance of gold.
Mine C is PK and has a higher chance of lead.


These business workers would need protection, and they could either hire PPA or the business owner could have other employees protect the entrances. Another option for that would be if a gang member owned a business and had fellow gang members assist in the protection.

It is even possible that creating a materials based market would be nice, making it so that players could sell materials or advanced materials (say gunpowder for ammo) would expand the economy more, past event items, guns and food.

so basically you're saying those who are rich and have nice guns + friends will have an easier time getting richer with a circle of friends? Z_Z

That logic is flawed! How can you get rich if your already rich! It's not possible!

Then just make a business to where nobody owns it but everyone would have to work for it if they want to earn some money. Basicly you work for a business thats not owned by anyone.

Thats the easiest way to do it. But if you're making a "New" Era which has been taking for god knows how long now, I'd imagine you guys not cutting corners and actually doing whats best, rather than whats easiest.

Wow

I see some debates really never end

No they don't you sexy mother****er.

I strongly think that we should bring back Core Electronics. I have no idea why Maverick removed Zero and Hit from running it. I personaly think that all player owned business's should have compition between each other. Ammo Mart has Gun Point. Dippin Donuts has Dairy Hut (Use to have Speedy Pizza), Core Electronics had Pyro Tech. PPA use to have EFBI... So on and so forth. What era staff should do is move some business's close to OSL (Unstick Me) so that way it's easier to get ammo, food, explosives, guns, ect.
Thank's for reading

-Death Zephlyn

Wanna see something cool? (One-Two months old screenie.) ^^
http://i769.photobucket.com/albums/x...JAX/Era_31.png

In my case, I have been somewhat involved with Dippin Donuts for over 4 years now. IN the past, businesses were of larger significance than they are now. Businesses were very profitable and owning a business was a very prestigious position. After acquisition of ownership of Dippin Donuts, and after several resets, profits per week were down to almost 3k per week. Businesses made barely as much money as a regular miner.

The fact of the matter is that businesses are an integral part of Era's makeup. There is an excitement in working the job as well as owning a business. In my belief, any choice to turn businesses into bot-ran businesses would be foolish.

Yet again, that's just my opinion.

This^

yes, i agree

These kids can't run no bidness, ya dig?

I say leave it to NPCs to run the businesses. People who own it will get rich, then somehow they will find a glitch and then somehow they will spawn monies and then we are going to have another "reset" again.

This only happened once or twice and occured because of the stupidity of staff members. I highly doubt it will happen again.

This, I was involved in DD and to be honest, Workers want to get paid more then you make per donut, and if you set a payscale by stock they will stock the easiest to make donut because even though we would only make 2 off of each donut they get paid the same as if the buisness made 6 per donut

Not to be the pessimist, but Money will always somehow be spawned, and glitches discovered and exploited. Whether businesses are NPC-Ran (Which I'd find easier to glitch-abuse, more scripts; more glitches), or Player-Ran.

Although I agree with Venom_Fish's idea and that the points he has made are good, I think introducing systems which make controlling the economy more complex wouldn't do much good. I mean, is the economy perfectly fine without player-ran businesses? If not, I think that's where you need to focus some time for repair.