Wealth Revamp

[Kinaed]

Wealth is about to be re-vamped based on the discussion here. It will work as follows:

- On login, a player's bank account will be looked at. If they have over <value> silver (example, 25,000), then they will be flagged wealthy.
- If they have less than <lesser value> (ex 10,000 silver), but are wealthy, they will lose the wealthy flag.

To support characters coming out of chargen with a 'wealthy' status, we will allow players to purchase advantages such as a discounted lump sum of 25000 silver for 50k xp, as we currently do now.

In this vein, can we ask how much money does a player have to have before they're 'vastly' wealthy? Opinions please!

This is important because the wealthy flag will go towards calculating how many influence points players will have to spend in areas of influence.

Thank you!
-Kinky

[Discontent]

I think 'wealth' is something that makes any purchase a trivial matter.

In the words of Chris Rock...

Shaquille O'Neil is Rich. The guy who write's his paycheck...is Wealthy.

A really nice horse is 2500 silver. If youre wealthy buying a stable with half a dozen horses shouldnt be something youd have to hesitate over to buy.

[Another]

I agree. My Freeman Hillman 13-year-old had no problem accumulating gold when I wanted him to have it. As the current system stands, I'd actually have to insist that closer to 100 gold or more would be 'wealthy'.

[Geras]

I actually like the current system - though maybe instead of just a lump sum some of the silver could come in the form of a monthly income?

[Empheba]

Due to inflation, I'd suggest the future-safe way to do this would be to do a continuous census of active player wealth and set "wealth" to mean that you have more money than X % of the character population (percentage also allows direct control over how many wealthy class one wants available for game balance reasons). The update could be done every RL quarter, for example and use a smoothed time average to avoid spikes.
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Empheba

[Geras]

Oo I like that idea Empheba. What percentage though? Top 10%? Top 20%?

[Geras]

Though not to rain on peoples' parades here or anything, but doesn't this just discourage people from spending their gold? When really, we want to be doing the opposite?

[Kinaed]

I'm not sure either way.

I like Empheba's suggestion, but I think it will create an 'arms race' and exacerbate what Geras is saying about people not spending.

I do think that this may have that effect, but only if the wealth limit is utterly unattainable.

Perhaps we should set the breakpoint to something based off statistics though. *ponder*

I think people need more worthwhile things to spend money on ICly, flat out. I get shouted down with some of my ideas though. *cough*

[Empheba]

Geras has a good point with this potentially having people spend less money rather than more. The originally suggested hard limit might have this repercussion too though, I'm not sure using a dynamically calculated limit is really any worse (or for that matter, better) in this regard.

There definitely needs to be more sinks. I haven't seen much suggestions for more money sinks, is there a thread I've missed or forgotten?
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Empheba

[Rabek]

It would be a pain to code, I'm sure, and really probably terribly impractical with spending ability as it is, but perhaps wealth is measured by how much you -spend- instead of how much you -save-.

Alternatively, remove 'wealth' altogether, and use the 'perks' system we're talking about for gentry solely. Buy a 'business' perk to grant you some extra income. Buy the perk enough times to get a high enough income, and suddenly your small business is a merchant empire, and you're gentry. Having it be tied to income rather than money in the bank prevents people from being gentry just because they've been living in squalor for a few years, saving every silver.

Just my two cents (see what I did there?).