Downtown Cab Co. - Improvements

[Mastro12345]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I have personally been a taxi driver for a few days now, so I would like to talk about some things I noticed and at the same time suggest some stuff. There has been a discussion about this on Discord too, so I am pretty sure a couple of us share the same views.

As most of you know, in the past customers used to be charged automatically right after exiting the cab, this was however changed. Nowadays they have to pay you in hand, means they need to have money in their pocket.

This sounds very realistic and is how most taxi drivers are paid in real world, however I don't believe it is a great idea to treat it the same as real life for many reasons. First of all this is a game, and we don't really think twice before robbing someone, before indulging in illegal activities in general. That leads to people barely carrying cash with them, since they are afraid they will be robbed/killed. So why risk it? I, for example never, literally never have money in my pocket. In addition, most (if not all) job payouts go straight into your bank account (G6, RON etc). You never really get the chance to have any cash on you unless you rob it from someone else. Last but not least, most stores accept 'credit cards', means you don't need to have money on you and can pay through your bank account (with a few of them being an exception, like Plastic Surgeon). So a TLDR is; you don't need it, so why have it?

All those things counter the purpose of players having money in their pockets. So what happens? What I said above basically, that 9 out of 10 customers will either run away once you drive them to their destination (not so common) or just ask you to drop them to the nearest ATM which is also time consuming and a hassle. It's very discouraging for us drivers knowing you are going to pick someone who is going to make your life hard, with the fear of getting scammed literally each time you respond to a call.

Do not forget that most of the callers are new players too (because they don't own a car yet, don't have a friend to pick them up etc), and the majority are broke or don't really care about paying at all, which adds to that.

Describe the feature you'd like From what I was told, the reason this was changed is because customers used to complain that drivers were overcharging (?). There are solutions to this however. First of all we can have a cap. That will still let drivers set the fare themselves, but not go beyond limits. We can also make it a must for drivers to inform customers before getting into the vehicle how much we charge per mile, so they are aware and then either choose to take the ride or ditch it.

One more idea is to be able to in-voice them. This is more realistic as well than how it was before, since let's say you 'scan' their credit card, the same method mechanics use to charge their customers. Sure, people can still run away but less likely.

I am sure we can come up with a lot of things anyway, I just believe the way current system works isn't in our favour, the opposite.

Additional context Those were just my two-cents after being a taxi driver myself for a couple of days. It is really annoying at times and trust me, it happens way too often for us to ignore it and say "Well, this just happened to be a bad rider". I would like to see what others think and perhaps suggest some more ideas aswell.

Apologies for the long text.

[Xerothis]

This is a good suggestion, greatly support it!

[Jarrrk]

Requires rewriting the billing system, noted and will be upcoming so these changes can be implemented.

[Zopfco]

A cashless system would be an improvement but I appreciate being able to start/stop the meter or set different rates.

[dsolesvik]

We now have a new automatic payment system (which has a bug #1680). This issue can be closed now :)