On the topic of money and jobs

Questions and suggestions that don't fit anywhere else in this area.

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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Kooky on Fri Nov 17, 2017 1:04 am

A limit for monologging could work. As example, worklogs are due for the end of the month. Why not make it so monologs can only be allowed to count for worklogs after the 20th? This gives everyone 9+ days to monolog, if they haven't already worked with people.

Of course special circumstances can be made for those who are away due to illness or what not.. but 9 days is plenty of time, and that's coming from my experience. That means then that each character/players has the whole 20 days beforehand to find people to play with. People need shops. It shouldn't be that hard.

That's my thought for shop-jobs.

House jobs... I've always seen it as a responsibility of Nobles to give their workers things to do. It can be anything from orders to forcing group commodary or scouting an area. Monologs happen a lot for House jobs, but that's no one's fault. The same goes for temple-jobs for those who don't do sex, but instead tend to the grounds or pay with tribute. The inn is another factor, where an entertainer goes in and plays their own songs, no matter how much they may try to engage the IC audience.. or they feel awkward as if bombarding a scene, so they wait and monolog instead. All of these are situations where monologging tends to get a pass from me. I'll wait until the end of the month to do my House jobs if I have to monolog, because I spend my time asking people if they want to do worklogs with me.

I've found personally that Nobles who allow their workers to do things beyond the Noble house, are much easier to get logs done for and stir up more play. Examples would be a scribe taking paperwork to the inn, a worker picking up a delivery or making deliveries in town (despite no shops open, it's outsourcing!) Having bards and entertainers work not only at the House, but wander the streets singing of their House and representing them.

This is also one reason I was working on House Gladiator Sects, allowing for worklogs to be done in another area, and a setting which actively brings glory and honor to a House, as well as friendly competition between them.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Ellyssa_Flamewing on Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:01 am

For my two cents, as a player with one character who in the past has worked many jobs, I played it as her primary job, the one that held her heart and interest was the SS, but for a variety of reasons both IC and OOC, she worked part time at a number of other jobs. Under the understanding that she would come in and help out as needed. She worked the minimum hours needed monologed if no one asked for the shop to be open when she was available during the month, but otherwise she only opened shops when there was rp to be had and a need to be filled. Using that method, I racked up a lot of money it is true, and possibly adjusting the skill bonuses would moderate that. But I was also able to help a lot of people and help mitigate the "no one around to open the store" problem. I would never have had that many jobs in the first place if I hadn't seen a need. I see monologues as a necessary evil at least when working at some of the more obscure shops that rarely generate business. Personally I don't feel that I have experienced this problem of too much money yet. I had to work for almost two years to get to the place where my character is now, and she hasn't come even close to running through the list of things that she might buy.

So, I don't have much of a head for economics or game mechanics past a certain level, but here is what I see at my level of understanding.

1) Limiting the number of jobs per player would potentially penalize those who have lots of characters. (Perhaps we don't want to go down that road?)

2) Limiting the number of jobs per character would potentially penalize those who only play one or two characters with multiple interests (Perhaps we want to investigate giving one primary job with full skill bonuses and not restrict the number of secondary jobs, just how many skill bonuses if any are applied?)

3) Restricting Monologues entirely would potentially penalize those who aren't always able RP when there is an actual need, and those who enjoy posting the nitty gritty details of pursuing their craft. (Setting a limit on how many monologue hours are paid would potentially penalize the paymaster, so perhaps we don't want to mess with that at all? Or at most, allow monologues to hit the monthly limits?)

4) I've never really understood the monthly allowance, but I have appreciated many of the creative tales for where it comes from. Perhaps cut the monthly allowance by half, or even remove it entirely. That WOULD encourage more people to get jobs, but it might penalize the people who only are able to play once a week, so I'm torn on this one. I don't need the allowance, but I got a job and I had the time and inclination to do so.

5)Restricting the number of hours that get paid for would penalize those people who have worked X number of hours in good faith and then had a customer come in at X hours plus one and needed four hours or more of help sifting through lists. That has happened to me on more than one occasion. A worker should be paid for his work. Period. I am fully opposed to that possibility.

6)Restricting the skill bonuses may in fact be the best solution I can see. The people who "milk" the system are benefiting the most from the skill bonuses and I see no reason they should not be paid at least for their time. If they are working in good faith, they will likely keep putting in the time even without the bonuses. Possibly just reducing the bonuses absolute levels as I have seen suggested would be the way to do it. Or possibly requiring that the bonuses only be applied at the designated "primary job"?

Anyway, I probably laid down more words than I needed to, sorry for that. Thank you for reading, anyone who bothered. In short, I think the one change that would do more good than harm would be to adjust the skills somehow. Everything else I see as hurting either players or RP, or shop availability.

Thank you all for discussing this.

Respectfully,
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Tawny on Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:30 am

I have been thinking about this and I had a few ideas come to mind. Looking over the ranked skills list there seems to be some that could easily be rewrote and combined into one set of skills rather than 2 or more sets of different skills. Also I think that some skills are being used in ways that don't match up with the write up for those skills. For example the skill... Scribe. Its used by so many different places its become akin to simply being able to write. That is not what it is or how it was written up. Just because a word can have more than one meaning, doesn't mean it was intended to be used in any way other than how it was written up, and I see where this has happened with some of the skills. So maybe the skills list need to be revisited and rules set in place so that the Skills are used as they were intended to be used, and not changed to fit what others want them to be. Also How about making it so that each person has to have a set number of hours worked in order to claim a set of skills. Like.. if a person is going to claim 4 different sets of skill regardless of levels of the skills then they have to show time logs for four hours of work where ever they are claiming the skills. So it becomes one set of skills for every hour worked. That doesn't have to be all in one day either. That would hopefully get people working more and not be handing people hundreds of mhls for one hour of work.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby DiasEesha on Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:29 am

Ill try to keep this all as clear as possible and hopefully not ramble too much;

1) my biggest sticking point is indeed how many jobs a character can have, yes I know we arent super realistic with time and such in here for rp purposes but when it comes to something like work I feel that it is a bit different then just a standard scene. While yes currently having people take "as many jobs as they can handle" does [at times] seem to improve the chances to get a shop needed. Overall if theres really any benefit it seems minimal at best. Also I just cant personally rationalize how a character could handle the workload for more then 2-3 jobs.

2) Skills are probably long overdue for a reworking, I have to agree with tawny on this one and do so whole heartedly we do have a few that really seem more appropriate to either be modified or drawn up into a singular set, this will have two benefits, one directly effecting the economy and the other streamlining and simplifying peoples abilities to build up a characters skills how they want. I also feel that it would allow the dev community to add in new skills that fill in areas that are [seemingly] neglected to improve rp options where one could make money.

3) Monologuing, honestly Ive been on both sides of this coin, when Dias first started I really didnt have much of a choice with their first job and it was mostly intended to try and start up rp and get more people into the house where Dias was working. It sadly didnt work but ultimately I have to say its boring as all get out and really not beneficial to the game as a whole other then for soaking up cheap and easy cash. Ultimately I cant really rationalize allowing it to stay, if nothing else at least working with another person at the shop though I could. It causes interaction and well helps keep things honest.

4) "per player limit" I see this one as a potential slippery slope while it certainly does make sense to keep any one player from hording up jobs and all I believe that a "per character limit" would be more effective, though I would also not be adverse to an upper cap per player either. Such an idea would have to be fine tuned though since as its been stated there are some players that have a lot of characters. I could see perhaps per player limits though working in that no player may have more then one character in a shop ie they cant play two characters working at the mmr. The total number of jobs though I get kinda iffy on for me persay having a upper cap of 10 wouldnt really do much but to another it may. [granted currently I have only really Dias as my main by far and have 2 jobs there one being the ISA which really isnt a heavy workload since I only play when people need it instead of mono-ing. And the IG which can be feast or famine for worklog events. Ultimately this works for -me- but may not work and probably doesnt work for others. However, of the two the IG is far more friendly imho to doing social worklogs with other guards which I have done. while the ISA is far more on an as needed basis normally.

5) per character limit. As addressed above Im actually in full support of this for a variety of reasons. Part of it is the partial reality we have within the game, certain things like events and our calander and the turning of days, holidays etc do operate on a linear schedual while others [in the case of scenes and such] are flexible to allow people to continue to play without locking down a character. When it comes to work I feel that working and work logs fall into the first category because they are tracked for linear time and recorded. Therefore I can easily rationalize that any one character simply has a limit for how much they can do work wise. In my opinion this cap is as before mentioned 2-3 jobs possibly 4 at the absolute max.

6) Noble houses, Im only addressing this in this because it has been brought up during discussion in this thread. While Im not attached to any house directly I can say that I have seen a lot more activity coming from then and feel like this area will correct itself without much if any interference. the other points made before this one also take care of any cross/oversights so im not concerned about it and noble house jobs are already rather efficiently restricted anyways.

7)The monthly allowance. Honestly No, I would not ever remove it period. 20 mhl a month really isnt anything compared to the pool of cash made by the other issues around. Frankly I actually think that for those that do not want to work rp or cant it should be slightly higher. But conversely I do not think that those that are working active jobs particularly needs it. However I do realize that trying to code in something that would handle the difference between non-workers and workers is likely far more of a pain then its worth so ultimately it should probably be left alone.

8 ) Restricting pay hours: this too is a slippery slope and Im addressing it because its come up before this post. I do not think that theres any real way to put a cap on how many hours someone decides to rp a job as long as it is "valid rp" [see monologing] yes I know this isnt exactly a crystal clear thing but Ill use the IG as an example. During one quest [with approval to use the ig tag] we ran for 15+ hours straight. Its simply how long it took and theres nothing that could be done about it. In others due to meetings and war theres many where it was 3-4 hours like 5-6 times once again simply because of the nature of the job.

9) Restricting Skill pay: Dear lord yes, simply put its rediculous how much even I make based on skill bonuses, there needs to be a cap. Either per job or per character regardless of what it is there is only so much bonus any job is gonna be willing to give to someone even the best of the best run into a cap. The way it is now though that cap is only so far as however many skills are applicable to the job sans limit if theyre above a certain number [reading through appearently its 5? Anyways lets say its 5x5x20 500 mhl..more then Id make as an ig in 15 hours just cause Im good? yeah sorry that just doesnt add up time in should always be more valuable then skills. frankly I think there should be a base rate based on your best skill for that job it recognises the rank and skill of the character without getting crazily stacked. [with my previous limit a character at what I think is a reasonable max of 3 would be at most able to get 300 mhl from bonus which is 200 less then what one can get at one job as it is if those numbers are right. Its a decrease of 40% in bonus pay and requires 3x the jobs so...maybe that can be a start point.]

10) Looking through the posts before I wanted to try and highlight some ideas I like as well which yes this is rather difficult to do with how busy this thread is Ive tried my best not to miss things that I havnt covered myself or that I dont have too much useful to add.

Akatons skill payout idea is certainly interesting and could be an alternative solution and one I certainly could support.

Tawny: the number one and two points yeah honestly I agree whole heartedly.

Kooky: Ive toyed with the gladiator idea before as well, though I havnt posted anything I do think that expanding the scope of the arena would be a good idea.

For now thats all I have. And I know its a lot. Appologies for any rambling.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Infernis on Fri Nov 17, 2017 8:01 pm

Back when I was in Dev, back in the Jurassic era, we had a simple approach to jobs. Why? Because KISS.

One full-time job at a set amount based on any relevant skills, but usually seeing 160-200 a month, with managers getting about 250-300 a month.

One part-time job getting about half that.

Tips were encouraged.

This got people a base amount every month, but they were still encouraged to go IC more to get more customers for more tips.

it might not be a bad idea to go back to a simpler approach.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Serena on Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:00 am

I would just like to point out that a char can be in numerous scenes, all at various points in time and locations. I look at it could be the same with jobs and is my reply to how many jobs can a char actually hold. while i don't necessarily have any problems with scaling back the number of positions that my char holds or separating them between my alts, the number of jobs that one person can hold can be viewed as how many places can that char be at any given time working..only one at a time. As for the amount of mhl that seems to be brought up as a problem, the majority of those of us who've been logging hours to earn it for our char's aren't the ones with large amounts of it, otherwise, I wouldn't need it/have plans for it and wouldn't have my char with so many of them. I could see scaling back the skills that could be claimed as I've never claimed cooking while working at the Inn, even though my char could by the current rules. She only serves and such so therefore, only claims the service etiquette. As for monologuing, I monologued what what would reasonably be considered the type and amount of work that it would take for the time claimed on the job. I've only fairly recently started working at the nb, gs, reb and isa and have never monologued there. any claimed time for pay was strictly working actual time.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Adonai on Wed Nov 29, 2017 4:15 am

Honestly, there is so much money is in the 'system' a lot of people have been known to just hand it out like candy at Halloween, or to just buy tons of armor and enchants for other people.

Monologing really shouldn't be punished, yes some people use it for a boost, I mean I did once for a home. But it really isn't evil, if you take the monologing away or limit it I can honestly see some people not opening up until the month or the 'allotted time'.

The way I see it really, is:

Problems:
Skills and Jobs:
Tooooo many jobs per character. And as Tawny's example, if someone decides to min-max(ugh) they could use the skill's to only use ranked skills, up to Mastered in every job, or the ones that are shared in multiple, i.e. tending and etiquette.
I.e. skills 20 mhl per rank. Say, have 6 jobs, all that use just TnE, that's 600 more a month. And that is counting ONLY that 1 Mastered Skill. With 2, that's 1200 alone. So, working what, 6 hours a month can get about 1320 mhl.
And that is just with 2 mastered skills which you can have before level 10.

Those are the two biggest problems that can really be solved without hurting to much, at least in my opinion that is. I mean, I can see three jobs, but 6 is kind of insane especially if you min max.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Tehya on Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:18 pm

I always lean towards more rp.

I like Infernis idea since we are both dinosaurs in the game and remember how it used to be. Let's go back to persuading people to tip more, and limit the plus for multiple skills.

You all know my thoughts on monologuing unless the person opens up a store and tells them in ooc they are playing opening it to encourage them to join.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Farvel on Sat Dec 02, 2017 2:48 am

Well, glad to see this sparked a discussion. I had a few things to say in response to several players here, but it's now moot since the change has been implemented already.

And since I'm one of those that gives the impression of always seeming to be whining here about everything I think is wrong with the game (sorry! :oops: ), allow me to say I love the new changes! Well done! =D>

A few comments on them, though:

1) Should the bonus really only be paid for master skills? I think it's fairer to pay proportionally 10 mhl per skill level, up to 50 mhl for a master, while keeping the 3 skills limit as a maximum. Otherwise it favours people who metagame (develop one skill to the max, then move to the next), rather than those who try to level-up skills more realistically (picking up the basics of different skills, while holding off on mastering them until much later with a lot of practice).

2) As was pointed out by Azara, what about freelance jobs? These don't have the money hoarding problem, so I'd say let people who get jobs for the RP alone be allowed to freelance if they wish, it might help keep the shops open more often.
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Re: On the topic of money and jobs

Postby Farvel on Sat Dec 02, 2017 4:30 am

As for 2), sorry I was mixing up freelance with volunteer workers. In my view, people should be allowed to volunteer at jobs for no pay if they so wish, regardless of any job limits.
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