Underground economy

[Animosity]

My omni char says:

I love med suits. I love being my omni character and getting a tell from some whiney clanner asking for med suits, overcharging him and laughing in his face.

I would love to see more items that clanners would ask me for

--------------------------------------
My neut char says:

underground economy finally a place for neuts to have a real advantage, please give us access to clothing shops, as we could earn some real cash with med suits, without having to talk to omni people

I would love to run a number of more products to the other sides

---------------------------------------
My clanner says:

I have no idea what you are talking about Omni med suits being smuggled. I may have a contact if the price is right.

If there was an underground economy, i wouldn't participate in it, except if it hurt omni or favored clanners.



----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
I would be interested to know what other ideas people have about improving the underground economy, for rp purposes, and for making cash for the more chatty among us.

[__________Wraith God]

I think the idea is an excellent one. The problem is, of course, that there are currently very few items that could be sold on a black market. Almost everything side-specific is explicitly restricted to members of that side.

One way to do this would be to rebalance items so that each faction has significantly superior items of one type or a much broader selection. This way you could create demand. For example, say, Omni has better Doc nanos and a broader quality selection, Clan had superior and a broader selection of soldier nanos, while Neutrals specialized in MA nanos, etc. Weapons and armor would follow a similar pattern.

This would certainly promote the player economy. One issue though, is that its not really an underground economy, rather is an extension of the normal economy. To make it an underground economy, you need to make it illicit; that is, it would be illegal to sell the special items of your faction, and doing so and getting caught results in sanctions.

Now the problem gets harder because 'getting caught' would take a fairly sophisticated AI, and there is currently nothing capable of it in the game. One way around this problem would be for players to sign up for police duty. They would get a temporary identity and get paid and xp for catching illicit sale of items beloning to their faction. The mechanisms for proving an illicit sale would have to be incorporated to avoid griefing and harassment (.e.g. interaction transcript with item transaction log, etc.). The person who was caught would, say, get a hefty fine, etc.

It could be a lot of fun and some non-combat lifesytles could result. Especially if you got xp as well as the cash for every successful illicit sale

[____________Edvieira]

bump

great idea wraith. I think there really has to be a larger focus in enabling non-combat professions. That way, with sufficient interaction, professions like the engineer, trader, and fixer can level without having to do 603,465 BS missions (not counting the extra wait engys have to go through to FIND a team that will take them).

MORE XP TO TRADESKILLS

[CrJabes]

I like the idea of getting more XP for tradeskills!!

-Read mt Rhinoman post pls!!

-J

[Grupert]

Originally posted by Wraith God
One way to do this would be to rebalance items so that each faction has significantly superior items of one type or a much broader selection. This way you could create demand. For example, say, Omni has better Doc nanos and a broader quality selection, Clan had superior and a broader selection of soldier nanos, while Neutrals specialized in MA nanos, etc. Weapons and armor would follow a similar pattern.

Great idea, but won't work as long as people can have alts.
If people could only have charactor per account then it would work. Maybe.

[Rugger807]

How bout just being able to hack weapons and items to remove the Omni/clan serial numbers

[___________SlyHunter]

I thought whatever side you picked all your alts were restricted to that side.

[_______________Stakd]

Presently you can play Clan, Neut, or Omni on the server you pick. You can be both. I do feel though, that eventually, they should not allow you to play all three on one server. Like DAoC, you should only be allowed to be Clan on one server, Neut on another etc. But being able to play all three would require three servers. (One that isn't strictly German that is).