Limit Pop Tabs to 3,000 and add commodities

[Kashinoda 26]

The Pop Tab system is fantastic and has been a welcome upgrade on using silver, gold and briefcases.

However the limit is either too high or doesn't exist.

Being able to run as a Bambi to the trader and buy a hatchback is fair enough, but there needs to be risk-reward when buying large and expensive items. It adds a great deal to gameplay, it also adds to base raiding and PVP in general. 

For larger purchases you should need to bring something akin to gold bars (or tin bars to fit in the Exile universe), which have a value of 1000. I think this hybrid would work a lot better.

This idea is a slight continuation of this:

Steal-able Currency:
Possibly the most controversial suggestion, but I was genuinely surprised that a players' currency is transferred between spawns, even more surprised after the first time I was killed and found they hadn't stolen my pop tabs!  I was then informed this was personal currency and could only be "transferred" between players. Currency is not something new to the genre and I'm sure we're all familiar with wasteland and Epoch games that allowed gold, coins and money to be stolen from dead players.

While it is nice to not have to worry about dying with my thousands of po tabs, it seems counter productive for a PvP game not to reward those who slay other players by giving them the option at least , of stealing their victims monies!  While I'm sure many players may be opposed to this, I'd urge them to first consider the possibility of having a banker or something similar placed in each trader (or somewhere else on the map if you wanted to really spice things up!) and allowing players to safely deposit their tabs there. That way any pop tabs that are earned, found or stolen outside of the trader zone and are on the player when they leave are fair game for those players that chose to earn their cash though piracy and banditary!  

To me it feels far too safe now and encourages reckless PvP rather than calculated and tense battles - hardly anyone has anything to genuinely lose - having more elements of risk/reward are always going to spice up PvP action in my humble opinion.

 

 

[Boxman80 352]

I see you've used one of the suggestions posted on the thread I put up, thanks for reading it!

I like your thinking, but I don't think you should have a game enforced limit to your wealth as such. With stealable currency people will naturally not want to carry their pop tabs on them as they will usually be stolen or lost when they die. This means they will would have to store their pop tabs somewhere, this is where it is interesting and where your limits would need to be applied. 

 

In the rest of my suggestions I said about either having a bank trader, or as you say, you could then trade them for a more storable commodity, e.g. gold bars (or drug parcels if we wanted to use something original and different in keeping with the game themes!) . The limits would then naturally occur, for example a safe could only hold X amount of  gold/drugs so any excess currency would either have to be carried (unlikely) or transferred into this commodity and then stored again in perhaps a less secure storage facility (vehicle or storage crate/shed in a base) - this then gives players a lot more to think about, adds incentives to raid bases and means large groups have to consider their storage spaces if they wish to get wealthy.

Getting wealthy is then something that costs time, money and spaces - staying rich and powerful means expanding  territory, building bases and buying safes at a steady rate then, or risk losing large quantities of some kind of commodity!

 

Defiantly like where you are coming from with this idea though yea!  

[Stoob 34]

I agree. +1

[Sosad 99]

I like the security of not losing my money and not having to worry about transporting bars.

Just my personal preference though

[theninja35 8]

This would increase trader camping far more than what it is currently, which is still quite a bit. 

I do not like the idea, primarily for this reason. It will promote trader camping to a great extent and will potentially cause a massive population decrease on some servers. It is fun to get into those sorts of gunfights, but when you're extremely excited to get something and all of a sudden you get sniped out of your vehicle, it's no longer fun. Then, the sniper or trader campers are in possession of more many than the one who came with it.

Not only that, but making money would be extremely hard. You'd have to sell it then turn it into gold or metal, which could take decades depending on how much. 

The Mafia is also what the traders are made around. The reason there is a bank that makes sense is because the Mafia are the ones who hold everyone's money, which is your currency in your bank. Think of it as a personal "vault".

[NemesisX00 1]

One danger this poses is more of a meta-game issue. In long-lived servers, there will inevitably be groups of players who have effectively infinite wealth either by actually having too many pop tabs to spend or by having the bases/vehicles/equipment necessary to easily overrun most or all of the other players on the server. Making currency lootable would further increase the security of these established groups of players and decrease the ability of new players on a server from gaining a foothold at all.

At the very least, this kind of mechanic would need to be configurable at the server admin level.

[Boxman80 352]

One danger this poses is more of a meta-game issue. In long-lived servers, there will inevitably be groups of players who have effectively infinite wealth either by actually having too many pop tabs to spend or by having the bases/vehicles/equipment necessary to easily overrun most or all of the other players on the server. Making currency lootable would further increase the security of these established groups of players and decrease the ability of new players on a server from gaining a foothold at all.

At the very least, this kind of mechanic would need to be configurable at the server admin level.

That's a good point well made but  I'd still say that's a server  issue, not a mod issue. I'd say that's more the responsibility of  server owners to ensure their servers remain competitive and can individually tackle cases of server domination as and when they arise.  

From the perspective of the mod, a clan's power base on a particular server is likely based on their activity on that server and their ability to play within the mechanics of the game. Essentially they are being rewarded by playing the game correctly and basically completing the objective of the mod - becoming the top of that particular server. The mod shouldn't then undermine that by enforcing systems that ultimately punish this or make it impossible to achieve. It could and should though make this hard to maintain, so that it's entirely plausible for power struggles and the tides of a servers power to shift because of various factors.  

I agree the game needs to try and challenge these groups by making it much harder for them to maintain their dominance of servers, but I don't think it should punish them by making it an impossible task to at least achieve (even if it is only temporary) or challenge. If anything, these dominances should be almost impossible to maintain for sustained periods of time. The mod needs to tackle the reasons why clans get to have nothing to spend those pop tabs on - there should always be something to escalate to or a requirement for pop tabs to be earned! The bigger you become , the more you need to earn. Things off the top of my head to tackle this would be to put more of an emphasis on escalating protection costs, escalating clan respect costs, the requirement for more physical storage and thus more base capacity, introducing storage fees for virtual garages (meaning things like powerful vehicles can be securely stored at a cost - or alternatively stored and exposed risking expensive losses  etc.)

I believe all of these suggestions are only then enhanced by having a physical currency or commodity, particularly the need to keep expanding physical base sizes and storage areas the more powerful you become. That also means that this power is ultimately transferable too as you risk losing larger amounts of your currency either from theft, challenges or even just the inability to keep up the work to maintain it!

[MrWhite 1001]

We rethink the complete money system guys. Stay tuned we got some cool stuff in hold.
Cant say more...

[Boxman80 352]

I think many of us are thinking along the same lines here anyway. There is clearly a need for some kind of escalation of what is obtainable at the traders, which obviously will be easier to achieve once there is more content in the game. This can also be then be assisted by the further development of the respect (and a similar communal/clan respect system) possibly acting in a  similar way to "humanity" did on Epoch with dedicated traders unlocking access to more specialist  bits of kit. That works nicely, but could be improved and would suit Exile very well. 

 

The actual topic of the thread though could be argued either way (leave it as it is or introduce a physical currency and/or commodities). I've read good arguments for keeping pop tabs (ease of access, more convenient, speeds up game play etc) as they are and I obviously have my own thoughts on it, as posted above, and to be fair it's only one element of the bigger picture of escalation and long-term gaming. Either way it can be made to work well with the mod and will completely fit the scenario.

 

Personally I agree with the OP that a physical money and some kind of larger denomination degradable commodity would enhance the mod by amplifying some risk/reward elements and adding a greater depth to the mod.    

 

[GET IN THE LOVELY SEA 7]

I like this. Some quality of life features Exile introduced are actually pretty detrimental to game-play. 

It was such an epic feeling killing someone and finding a briefcase on them. Makes killing a little less mindless and also transporting money that much more intense.

In a similar vein I also miss vehicle keys, for all their annoyances, being able to take someone elses car in open combat and own it yourself after was a great feeling.