For about the last month and a half I have been working on a new feature for MafiaReturns. This feature is specifically tailored to benefit the roleplayers, specifically the business owners. During the coding process it has become apparant that user's are interested in this idea.

The reasons for this feature are to boost roleplaying, by giving a financial incentive to players that do. It takes into account substantial posts. I use the word substantial, because "quality" is more a term that should be used on a person-by-person basis. It's a personal thing.

There is code in place that examines posts to determine if they are "substantial." This same code will be used to determine whether or not a business thread should be up for sale, and if it is, how many stocks should be available, and for what price?

Now I won't get into a detailed description of all the parts of this feature, VendettaJames should be coming out with a tutorial about it either shortly before, or shortly after, we open it to the public.

I am going to hold off on opening this feature just yet, but I wanted to get some conversation going about it first, and get it known about. I suspect that, if I have covered everything, this feature should be released relatively soon.

Will this be specifically for the Business District?

I get that impression, but just wanted it clarified.

~T~

Wow, Philia had suggested this one .. i posted several suggestions but none of them was approved but her firts suggestion , and only one , just came true , this is not fair :'''(   lol 

joke aside , great change tbh .. \o/

Tallien:

Yes this is specifically tailored for the business district. It won't take into consideration businesses that have rooms in the back alley, or OOC businesses, or businesses in the streets.

Fabrizio_Senzafine:

Make better suggestions! :P

Will the original roleplayed stock exchange as outlined by myself and VJ (99%) serve as a blueprint for this?

Also, if so/if not - what major differences will there be?

xoxoxo

Yes Noah, she actually mailed me the old RP stuff, and I tried to incorporate as much of it as I could into this idea. And she's been my guiding force for each part of this code. It's not so much my feature as it is hers. I'm just the ghost-coder for her.

Some of the major differences are in the specific math used. Stocks cost more, and payout more, but that was mainly to make it worth purchasing them.

Yes, Noah, it served as the major outline, although since it is now run from a game coding standpoint and not a user based business, there have been large changes to the operation, but the central premise is the same.

For those who weren't familiar with this during its three user-run trial tests, the original suggestion for this idea can be found here:

http://mafiareturns.com/comm/thread/30060

Much of the variables have been changed in the math equations, and no we won't be releasing the exact equations, but the central purpose that active, well roleplayed business district businesses will continue to see a rise in their stock price and be a profitable venture for investors.

Businesses that make it on to the MRSE but go stagnant will see a drop in their stock prices, and investors in these stocks will lose money.

Therefore, if you purchase stock in a business, you have a vested interest to make sure that the business stays busy with "substantial" activity.

This sounds like a great idea and should increase willingness of roleplay too.

Although we have too much cash in the game, there has to be some motivation to use the business district.

I think this is a good idea (like changing default city signup for example) and will be interesting to see how it fares in implimentation.

Nice work.

~T~

The only thing that really concerns me is the potential for shareholders to abuse the system and post, for lack of better words, horse shit replies in order to increase the value of their shares. However, I am very much looking forward to this. I can guarantee you I will invest my [i]enormous[/i] personal wealth into a few good businesses (I may even open my own) and I'm also going to assume the street cleaners/admins will be acting more vigilantly in terms of horse shit replies in businesses? I understand it doesn't really happen now, as there's no benefit to a horse shit reply at the moment, I'm just concerned that one-liners and half-assed roleplay will become more prominent where money is involved.

I could have entirely missed talk about this point made already or am just understanding the system wrong, so feel free to correct me if that's the case.

Just like to mention that I understand what Squishy said about substantial posts, but a code can be cheated (and if it can't, well...then it can't). What I said about one-liners was stupid though, thinking back to the substantial post code.

Alfieri, without going into explicit detail of how the code works that evaluates thread/post values (the code that's been in place for a long time now to credit players with well thought out contributions), I can assure you that "horse shit replies in businesses" will not have any affect on the stock market prices.

Its also the reason we chose the word 'substantial' versus 'quality'. Quality being a more subjective term, while substantial implies a more objectively measured and calculable value.

You can have a business with 300 replies. Only 25 of which may be 'substantial' according to the system.

So for instance, replies of:

Yeah, nice place. Gimme a bourbon, please.

are not going to be able to be used to skew market value. The point of this addition is to reward users for their hard work. This will not be a 'click, click, click, cash' feature. All profits gained from the stock market venture will be a direct result of the work and effort put in by those individuals who keep our business districts alive and active with great businesses and continued 'substantial' patronage to the city forums.

Thanks for clearing that up, VendettaJames. Don't get me wrong, I'm really looking forward to this feature.

Not a problem at all. Any feature that has the potential to put more money into the game, we definitely want to make sure we have all issues hashed out. Of course, its one thing to reassure the userbase without posting actual explanations of code (which most people understand the reasoning behind), but the more concern that we can address prior to the launch of such a large feature the better.

Besides, there may be issues that arise that we just haven't thought of from a coding point of view, or that didn't come up during our beta testing. The first week of launch is when most of them will be identified, for sure. :)

I would like to say though, that while this does have the potential to be a lucrative venture, it also does have the possibility to lose money for the user too. No one is going to become obscenely rich off of this addition, but it will provide a nice cushy incentive for activity in our bar forums, something that we probably should have added a while ago, given the forum based origins and roleplay nature of the game.

There will probably be gripes down the road (Ugh, how is THAT bar considered 'worthy'?) but applying the evaluation code we felt was the fairest way to keep opinions and bias out of this rewards system. The possibility for cheating the code is very limited (I can't and won't say that its impossible - because that's a pretty bold claim), and for those who aren't interested in the roleplay aspect, the effort required to 'cheat' the system won't be worth it in the end for the benefits if they manage to successful.

I'm not sure how things are coded, so please disregard me if these are already implemented.

Will the "evaluation code" be setup to gauge things off the number of different users coming into the bar or will it strictly be on post length and quality? I would easily be able to collude with others and skew the market if it was setup to only judge posts by length/quality by paying a single associate of mine to come up with ten to twenty long paragraph replies to each and every post. I obviously do not know the current state of the code, the limits of the code, or what can or cannot be put in place, but I think setting up a "safeguard" to protect from this specific sort of collusion would be extremely effective.

Would more weight be provided to the quality of the USER who posts in these places? I believe that having a Godfather or Godmother visit a business and deliver a quality reply to something would surely carry more weight than an average Goomba who posted the exact same post, word for word. Additionally, would someone like Tallien who is extremely vocal in all avenues of the game be given more consideration than someone of equal rank who has yet to find the Streets? Again, it would logically make sense that a Tallien reply would carry more weight than an average user of the same rank.

Where do I sign up for these user-tests anyway?

As of right now, the business district gives no weight to rank with regards to posting, and we've made no alteration to the existing code used to measure what qualifies a 'substantial' post. This features works off of the existing evaluation to provide incentive for roleplay.

In the specific example you cited Rourke, you very well could pay an associate to go through and post lengthy replies in the hopes that it may trigger a market increase. However, the financial gain you'd reap as a benefit probably wouldn't recoup your losses for what you'd have to pay someone to put in all that work. We're testing a lot of things and currently working on other business district features to ensure a level of 'fair play' to this feature and to business district posting (no one likes to see their thread go to shit because of the tendencies of others) but for the most part, if you're putting THAT much effort and money into trying to skew the system... its really not going to pay off for you in the end.

As far as the user tests go, it was a user-based business my player characters have run over the past two years, with the assistance of several other volunteers and co-conspirators, which were publicly announced in the streets and shopped around by business owners at the time. The mechanics were completely separate as it was financed entirely by me, and not a game code, but the essence was the same.

Right now, there are no user-tests, only beta testing on the admin level as we try to find significant loopholes in the code.

I appreciate the quick response, you have fully answered my questions. Thanks!

I love you.

Ahhhh *lightbulb comes on*, nice work, a great addition.

_{On first glance I thought this thread was about some deadly superbug picked up in hospitals...}