Tax brackets!

[Alistaire]

Ya know what this game needs? Tax brackets for decaying goods. Are you a poor soul due to having bad sentient boosts and/or being on a server where the trade market is just not that great? People struggling to continue playing due to not being able to maintain could use a break on the standard 10% daily.

Want to punish those filthy hoarders who spam the trades for all the goods so they can trade them back for a profit? You could even increase the 10% for those who carry more than x amount of goods!

Start making trades more fair by taxing those players whose only goal is to exploit others!

...oh and yes I'm aware of the wonders that reduce the tax. Still couldn't hurt to allow some kind of minimum tax-free poverty bracket, as well as indirectly improve the trading situation by discouraging hoarding.

 

[Iyapo1]

This made me laugh so hard! A fixed 10% decay already takes more from the hoarders than it does from the destitute.

 

[SoggyShorts]

This made me laugh so hard! A fixed 10% decay already takes more from the hoarders than it does from the destitute.

Nah, just like RL a flat tax hurts poor people more unless there are exemptions for them.
e.g. food+clothing+shelter costs 40 so a 10% tax on those making 50 hurts way more than a 10% tax on those making 1,000
Replace with Spire, techs, upgrades

 

[Alistaire]

This made me laugh so hard! A fixed 10% decay already takes more from the hoarders than it does from the destitute.

Yeah certainly not the most serious suggestion, but you get that's not a valid argument against that kind of idea, right? With a system with a flat rate forever, people are actually encouraged to hoard as much as they can to fight against the decay. You lose more flat amount but not more %, so you try to produce more and worse, profit more and more off others to compensate. But if there was a higher bracket past the point of "reasonable hoarding", you get people to stop at a certain point or at least slow down.

 

[ajqtrz]

It appears you are suggesting a way to minimize two parts of the game you find are not optimum. The idea that some people don't produce enough of the decaying goods to make progress, and the idea that some people are hoarding goods and thus making it harder and more expensive for those who need the goods. If so, on the face of it your idea might work. However, there are some problems too.

First, if I'm hoarding I'm losing some every night. If I post my surplus to make a profit I would need to make more profit each day than I lose at night. Most of the trades I see in my world seem to be such that while it might be possible to make a profit on sentient goods if they are in tremendous demand, it would be pretty tough on most days. I'm seeing a 10% higher price on some things (or a lower 10% on things that are in surplus overall, if you will). Since decay is usually at least 7%, and sometimes as high at 10%, this is a slim, slim margin. Even one day where nobody takes your trades could wipe out a weeks profit.

Second, the point of the game may be said to be learning how to make the goods you need at a rate you need them for your playing style. Making sentient goods at that rate is part of the struggle. By giving me a "break" for being less productive than I need to be, the challenge of raising my production to the needed level, is lessened or removed. I'm not sure that would work in the long run to make the game more interesting, though it might make it easier -- and there's something to be said for that too, under certain circumstances. Keeping the balance between "easy" and "hard" is part of the devs job.

So, overall I'd oppose this idea because I think it doesn't really solve a real problem and/or might might actually weaken the game more than strengthen it.

AJ

 

[Iyapo1]

I have no objection of any kind to this idea. I have not reached sentient goods so I will bow out to those in the know. Delaying decay until a players inventory reaches xx and increasing said decay rate when the inventory reaches xxx point seems pretty straightforward.