Lazy-Fare Economics
by Alphaville Herald on 04/01/04 at 12:01 pm
If you?ll permit me to diverge from the ever-so-interesting topic of the social mal-adjustments and sexual deviancies of fake people I?d like to say a few words bout a topic we should all be considering: The economy.
As many of us know EA/Maxis recently removed the maze object from TSO. Right off the bat this action displays a few of my favorite attributes of system governance.
1. It?s heavy-handed and tyrannical.
2. It pisses off a bunch of people that EA should be working to ingratiate themselves toward.
3. It?s a bit fucking late!
4. It will have little to no impact vis-୶is the desired outcome (i.e. staying uncontrolled inflation)
Immediately I?d have to ask EA: If you hate people making RW money by selling your fake money why are you fixing this problem? If the economy of the Sims bottoms out then the VR cash will be worthless and Money traders will make less and less money. Eventually when the Simolean losses enough value no one will trade it any longer because every one will have too much money. This of course assumes that EA will avoid taking the next logical step in stemming inflation (re: the creation of money sinks and ultra-high priced objects).
But let?s get back on track.
The problem with TSO isn?t the economy or the (as we seem to see it) wide spread perversity, rather it is the inconsistent and patchwork nature of it?s management.
EA/Maxis seems determined to address problems in game in the most shortsighted manner possible. Got people chatting about under-age sex? Toad them. Got bots running maze objects to make money? Kill the object.
TSO is a huge system (even if it is small in comparison to other games) that reacts unpredictably to discrete changes in its environment. Maxis are attempting to cure economic cancer with minute biopsy?s of offending persons/materials. It?s like fighting the drug war by arresting the pipe-makers, I can see the ?logic? but your aim is way, way off.
Maxis should be a bit more concerned with full-body therapies. Think Chemo rather than biopsy. Try adjusting the money objects rather than killing them off. Because, as even the densest of us realizes, there is a long, long list of objects that can be automated and getting rid of them all damages the economy more than these abusers do — as well as eliminating some critical aspects of the game experience.
Let me suggest a solution. Everybody knows that if you idle for long enough a confirmation window to determine if your AK or AFK. Allowing the confirmation timer to run down boots you from the game. In theory this should help avoid the most simplistic of automations. But, of course, you can script a way to click Y every time this appears. OK, many of us have the shareware program WinZip. WinZip offers a free trial but every time you open the program you are presented with three buttons. You can continue the trial, register for the full version or quit. The catch is that every time you open the program the placement of these buttons has been shuffled. The idea now is for Maxis to include a third button in their confirmation window even if the button is visibly blank. Every time the confirmation window pops up the button order is shuffled and automated scripts will only be able to pick the correct button 1/3rd of the time.
Blammo! We?ve just slowed inflation by 2/3rds with out removing content. Players who enjoy these objects rejoice and Black-Snow-esque money sweatshops pull their hair out. (But for my money F them anyway).
I don?t know about many of you but I for one don?t relish the thought of a completely uncontrolled economy. Sure Laizes-Fare economic principles have done pretty well for America and most of the capitalist world, but, for the most part there does not exist global-scale counterfeiting operations, and the counterfeiting operations that do exist have little impact on the economy because we have some pretty good security. Sure it exists and people are eking a profit from their illegal ops, but for the most part it?s not a pressing issue and life goes on. We give a tremendous amount of freedom to the businesses in our world but we maintain a very, very tight control over the money itself.
This is how it should be in TSO. Maxis should focus on controlling the money production and the Simolean-value rather than attempting to shut down money traders (be they legitimate or ?illegitimate? ?- re: people who transfer money between servers as opposed to people who counterfeit cash and sell it wholesale.) One group is providing a necessary service that EA/Maxis would have provided if they possessed a kernel of foresight, and the other is working to destroy the economic foundation of the game. We?ll screw the latter?s, toad their characters, destroy their houses and ban their credit cards, their not playing the game they?re raping it for some short term advantage. But, please don?t kill the former, their value adding to this experience for the rest of us.
Perhaps this has been a bit of a ramble, but I hope ya?ll get the gist of my anger and frustration.
toy
Jan 4th, 2004
toy finds this interesting.. in one aspect……
“This of course assumes that EA will avoid taking the next logical step in stemming inflation (re: the creation of money sinks and ultra-high priced objects). ”
toy feels they have started this already with the introduction of ‘rares’ Something that UO has had for years.
hmmm and this also……..
“The idea now is for Maxis to include a third button in their confirmation window even if the button is visibly blank. Every time the confirmation window pops up the button order is shuffled and automated scripts will only be able to pick the correct button 1/3rd of the time.
”
this is also something UO has had to help prevent scripting with bots. In UO the items in ones backpack are rearranged each time a certain item is picked….. seems perhaps TSO should ask some friends at UO for help
toy
Urizenus
Jan 4th, 2004
Your point (4) seems wrong so far squirrel. The inflation has halted; the cost of a million simoleans has gone from under $10 to the neighborhood of $25 or more. But I agree with you (and Toy) that the smarter fix is is adjusting the money objects so as to screen out bots. If they’ve done this for years in UO, then there is no excuse for not doing it here.
Darksoul
Jan 4th, 2004
I really miss the button in Winzip staying in the same place….for others that miss that as well….http://astalavista.box.sk…..search for whichever version of Winzip Y/you run…….Y/you’re welcome.
Urizenus
Jan 4th, 2004
Oh, Squirrel, one other thing about this line from your post:
“If you’ll permit me to diverge from the ever-so-interesting topic of the social mal-adjustments and sexual deviancies of fake people I’d like to say a few words bout a topic we should all be considering: The economy.”
I find it interesting that you consider the people fake but the simoleans real.
Dyerbrook
Jan 4th, 2004
Sexual deviancies, yes. Thank you. Some proper reporting at last at AVH? Fake people? Already the sirens are cranking up for a violation of the PC code. No, they aren’t fake, more’s the pity they hook up to RL sex clubs in which these violent practices are all-to-real.
Should I care about fake simoleons? No. A number of Sims have just elected to live in the SARP world, which is “sims against ridiculous payouts”. They just live off boarding or gnomes, or providing lots for people in the jobs to green, or provide offbeat lots with conversation, or entertainment lots. People go for days in their Sim lives without ever having to deal with the raw bot riches pumped into the TSO world like sewage, fueling luxurious casinos and castles — no doubt many of those infamous BDSM castles that are so lavishly decorated, and of course, all those private chill spots for the SSG in the residence category. Most people don’t live at those extreme ends of the spectrum or live to such excess. They might venture out now and then and buy a pet or some simoleons on ebay so they can hunt for a pet, but that’s only because of the pet frenzy, which will die down as people run out of money to pay for them. Pizza is making a come-back, as is more concerted effort to get up a group to up the payouts for gnomes or preserves. Sims just work, and wait for something better to come along. They don’t fret about the next bot. In fact, they scorn bots and bot lots laid out like giant barns to make it possible for bots to move around.
Quite a few people live under the radar screen of the top 100, and even stay away from it, because maintaining a lot with a stocked buffet and bar and clean toilets all the time is just a lot of work and takes away from socializing.
I always wondered how people can get so angry about the “economy”. It’s a game, not an economy. When we had the pinyata cheat back in beta, it sure was great for MY economy, whatever the cranks and the prudes said about it, and I got to live in a castle for awhile, but then it was wiped. Most people in the game a year or longer, even without a single cheat, have more than enough simoleons than they know what to do with, even just working on their easels or typewriters. They actually go out and dispense their largesse to philanthropic projects or new Sims.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” As good Marxists, evidently, you think the economy and economics describes everything about our virtual world. It does not. Communities and social interactions are what define this world.
RB
Jan 4th, 2004
EA & Maxis have no clue.
Also i did like squirrels report, but i think half of it was a frustrated rant and only the other half good reading.
- RB
Bob
Jan 5th, 2004
Well considering most people stay AK by putting something heavy on the enter key..the adding a 3rd button is kinda pointless. I will come straight out thats how I stay online.
PT
Jan 5th, 2004
“The idea now is for Maxis to include a third button in their confirmation window even if the button is visibly blank. Every time the confirmation window pops up the button order is shuffled and automated scripts will only be able to pick the correct button 1/3rd of the time.”
You vastly underestimate the ability of these programmers. These bot programs, at least the better ones, not the cheap $20 crap you find on Ebay, would easily detect the difference between buttons. The better prgrams actually read the screen…..such as the example of when a bot would green an item and the item would be broken, the bot would have the sim repair the item and then continue upon the greening process. If the bots that were in play could do this what effect would a 3rd button changing at random do??? not a darn thing! Things aren’t as simple as they seem on the surface, programmers can just about steer around anything. Let’s also not forget that some of the bots also auto logged you in, they literally typed in your ID password, selected your city and sim, did the house search, entered your home and knew right where all the objects were. A randomly changing 3rd button is not going to have any effect whatsoever, if it were that easy it would have been done.
RB
Jan 5th, 2004
Totally Agree with Mr PT there. At the highest end of the spectrum such bots can run TSO 100% automatically and do everything in game without needing a human to help. EA severly underestimates this and thinks simple coding tricks will work. lol. These programmers can get around any poor defence maxis throw up. It’s the objects themselves that are the pain in the arse. Without maze everything is teribbly shockingly slooooooooow.
- RB
Urizenus
Jan 6th, 2004
Interesting! So how much do the high end bots cost to develop? Surely, at some point the cost of running a bot over low payout money objects makes it hardly worth the effort. Unless, of course, the cost of simoleans keeps rising.
Mistress Maria LaVeaux
Jan 6th, 2004
There is one other possibility out there to Drain off some of this exess Lucre floating around, and Maxis has proposed it some time ago.
~BILLS~
The Biggest problem in TSO seems to be that we only have two thirds of an economic structure. Making Money, and buying Things. If Maxis was to add the weekly, or monthly expenses of lighting, water, taxes, even paying for that Damned Newspaper i didn’t order that just ends up cluttering up my lawn.
I know bills are an unpopular idea, as the posts in other message boards has shown, but it certainly will stablize the economy.
(I understand steps have already been taken to stemm the flood of simolians for sale on ebay, this can only help as well)
Maria LaVeaux.
Cocoanut
Jan 7th, 2004
Bills. I figure they will only harm honest Sims, while taking only a drop out of the bucket of cheating Sims.
In other words, say I work my Sim butt off for 3 months to make a size 8 lot. Then I sit there and host it. Now comes along bills. Me, the only Sim living there (for all practical purposes) has to foot the entire bill myself through legitimate means.
Cheating Sim: Gets a bill based on the lot size. Easily has bots just work a little more, if even that would be necessary. Non-cheating Sim with lots of roomies: Annoying, but together, they manage. Me, honest Sim, doing ok on my own. I have the same size lot as the Cheating Sim and the Roomied Sim, and my bill is the same as theirs. But there is only me to pay it.
Result: The cheating rich get a proportionately tiny bit less rich; the poor don’t have any lots to worry about anyway; and the struggling, hard-working honest middle class Sims get the shaft.
Bots: The biggest problem in the Sim “economy”. And it’s extremely irritating to know that the designer gets $129 real life money for selling them. Also irritating to know that the buyer then gets rl money for selling Simoleons made with them. And then irritating to see Sims buying Simoleons to buy visibility and success. Might as well play There and buy everything straight from the company.
None of this would be so irritating if these bots hadn’t destroyed so much of the regular fun on the game, making it difficult for the honest Sim to compete, and giving newbies weird ideas of what to expect.
coco
toy
Jan 7th, 2004
toy would point out using a very easy program like EZ Macros anyone could set up a bot to run 24/7…… and it wouldnt have to be involved at all with touching any part of the TSO software…. one way UO got past this is by having what is called……. ummmmm toy cant remember what they were but, basically people in game who worked for UO and if someone was spotted say skilling something for a long time they would speak to them in game and if they got no reply in 5-10 minutes they were condsidered running a macro and booted.. it was refered to as ‘unattended macroing’ and was against UO ToS
so there are many ways of stopping the bots its just realizing that it is a problem and Maxis to DO something about it
toy
PT
Jan 7th, 2004
TSO also has the same unattended macroing rule…and it also sends messages from EA Reps doing the same as UO did….once that started becoming heavily a concern, the program was updated to:
1. Make a VERY annoying loud smoke detector type noise to notify you of the EA Rep message and it would reply to it for you, or you could opt to stop the program and answer yourself. So again this is only more of a minor nuisance than anything else. One other feature, which I mentioned before which would help prevent these EA Rep messages, was the ability to log you out of the game and back in again after each session. You could also select to move to a new city when you next logged in if you so chose.
Maria LaVeaux
Jan 9th, 2004
From my previous post,,
“There is one other possibility out there to Drain off some of this exess Lucre floating around, and Maxis has proposed it some time ago.~BILLS~”
Note i said to Drain off exess funds, NOT to stem the tide of incoming funds.
Unfortunatly, as with the off line game, it seems all to easy for people to generate cheat programs for this sotware. Detection and countermeasures will involve much programming work on the part of maxis at some additional costs to them, and will at best only be a temporary measure. A sure method of stopping Bots? I don’t think there is one, i am sure UO’s solution works to an extent, but even it cannot be perfect because it relies on spot checks, and a Human checkers perception of what a player is or is not doing.House owners would have a better idea of who is using a Bot on their property, and could Boot and ban, BUT, people spending large ammounts of time in a home help with bonuses, and placement on the top 100 list. It is not really in the interests of the individual property owner to police the use of bots.
I think the one sure way, and i will get flamed for even suggesting it, is a Cap. A Maximum allowable hard currency level. Each sim would only be able to carry $XXXX.XX ammount of simoleans at a given time. but of course you can see the devastating effect it would have on large segments of the TSO population, Money and skill houses would suffer, stores would be forced to keep their assets in ever depreciating stock, Lack of free flowing currency would damage stores, entertainment sites, gambling houses.
Unfortunatly, Sure cures tend not to be the best ones, So,, we are left with Imperfect controls, Like the removal of popular game objects, lower payouts and possibly, the addition of bills. Again, Maxis has left us with a “Live with it” situation. Is it me, or is this game getting more like life, where Cheaters prosper and the Honest foot the bill?
Maria.