Illegal Pay

[RedGherkin]

I believe Drug dealing, Chop shop, Commercial Break-ins, Store Robberys and Bank Robberies are all unbalanced with regards to Risk/Reward factors. Pardon me if this is worded long, but at the moment, with the way prison works and being charged (I am in the LSPD so have good knowledge of how it works) but for example with Meth. I spend approximately 1 hour gathering materials, waiting to get Lab Equipment, cooking, Buying info or trial and erroring until I get a good recipe. With a double cloudy recipe, an average yield in 1 hour will be about 30 trays. This is providing you invested capital on a van to fill and spent about 15-20k on material. Your risk at this point is moderate as cops get pinged on explosions and suspicious vehicles. While you can roleplay your way out of being caught when you just have material, when cooked, youre looking at a hefty charge (ill get onto this later). After this time you then have to store your trays in either a vehicle or property and proceed to spend (if solo) several hours or days, selling your trays off. Previously, youd get 20 bags per tray instead of 14 bags. So now youve lost more than a quarter of your pay already. Each bag sells for 300 ish, so your average money per tray is somewhere between 4000-4500. Worse pay than Ron and youve spent about 2 hours and invested about 20-50k depending on if you bought a van. Now your risk is HIGH as you have to either sell to locals or people via the darknet sim card. However the dark net sim allows for loss on your profit margins to make room for incentive to buy them. So youve spent a ridiculous amount of time already, just to cook and store and set up meth. And your pay is worse than ron. Of course, 1 tray will take you about 10-15 minutes to sell depending on RNG of locals. But Ron takes about 20 minutes and carries no risk at all, no investment and no worry of a fine. Okay okay, so you sell off all your trays and make about 20% more money than ron (time included) and on your last batch/tray, police become aware of your habits and stakeout to catch you. You are then caught and because of how long prison takes and processing, you lose about 40 minutes just being processed. After youre out, you have to repurchase your weapons or youll imminently get robbed, youve already paid your fine with is loss on money and youve lost all your gear, all for a payment that is hardly more than something legal. I just dont see how the risk is rewarding at all when its a ballache driving up and down the city from LS to sandy, buying equipment and lockpicks to steal the campers and risking being caught the entire time. And out of 30 trays to sell to locals, youre almost certainly going to get caught at least once per yield, no matter how smart you play it. Especially when on some weekends, more than 20 cops clock in simultaneously. The issue with how youve nerfed Meth as an example, is it only punishes small groups of people doing illegal stuff. Big gangs can use their numbers to increase the yield so high that their profit margins are so high they won't care about the nerf of pay changes or time spent. But a small group of 2 or 3 mates wanting to do meth is awfully punished as they cant afford to invest so much or spend so much time for such a small margin. So your nerf unfortunately makes small groups suffer more. People can say "well if its so wank then don't do it" but the only alternative is point to point driving which is boring after a while. Illegal stuff can be fun if the pay is worthy. Another example is with commercial, when you get "nothing" for the risk of being caught is moderate, it effects small groups. Large groups can use their numbers, rob more crates at a time and almost guarantee they get something good everytime. While small groups have to wait another 45 mins for a reset to try another hand at commercial with moderate risk, just to get nothing again. I know coke is coming to the city and uet again its only available to big groups as small groups simply cant compete in the market or they risk being killed constantly or being caught or cant afford the capital investment.

Not so much coke but for bank, make it worth your while rather than a small group splitting 10k each. Sure its fun but 10k each is hardly rewarding considering the risk you take. Balance meth so its either much better pay than legal stuff so that its worth the time for small groups. Either Trays go back to 20 bags or even 25-30 bags so its worth our time. That way it's beneficial to have to invest 10k in just trays alone that you can fill. Alternatively, lower the risk of doing them. Either by decreasing fines if caught, and time caught, or less frequent pings from attempted drug sales etc etc.

Additional context Sorry it took so long to explain but im passionate about the city and a lot of people feel that illegal stuff and legal stuff is completely out of balance.

[JayeFazo]

I agree with the increase in bags. That is the only thing that made meth not worth to me, I also like the idea of less pings. I think pings should differ between areas, but so should selling prices. For example, grove should ping less but the sell of meth is less.

[alfarrak]

It's been said multiple times by Jarrk and Raymond that meth is a middle tier criminal enterprise, that is currently being balanced aginst risk/reward as well as how well players RP. The most recent change hurt alot because players were stupidly selling the best recipes at legion and VU garage for quick cash, this is an example of criminals shooting themselves in the foot and then complaining that it is the servers issue.

With the introduction of other criminal enterprises, the amount of players involving themselves in meth will decrease meaning that the recipes will become more advanced and harder to figure out and smart players will hold these valuable recipes close to thier chest.

Smart criminals make the most money.

[RedGherkin]

Its more than just meth though mate. I agree completely with how stupid people are to sell meth recipes. But a lot of illegal systems arent worth the risk unfortunately. At least imo.

[Jarrrk]

meth is a middle tier criminal enterprise

This is true.

Smart criminals make the most money.

Also true.

Meth shouldn't be the end-game enterprise for 'high tier' money making. To note while we're at it, Coke really needs to be balanced properly but it's difficult when we keep altering meth everytime a group of people gang up in feedback as if this should be the most profitable money making method, I've heard some people grouping up making a considerable profit with how they're going about it, which is nice to see people working together.

There are more methods incoming but we need to stop messing around by a few bags every time.

[TheSlyFawkes]

Selling meth recipes is hardly the issue; I understand in the real world drug makers wouldn't want their recipe getting out, but even if 70% of the people had the recipes it doesn't negate the risks you're taking, nor does it negate all the time and travel you have to do for materials and setup. Lowering the cost of meth, lowering the amount of bags you get per tray while still keeping the materials the same price still hurts the bottom line that there are plenty of legal jobs that have almost 0 risk while making more based on time spent to cash made ratio.

[alfarrak]

If you have the recipe to make the best quality at a high amount, you don't have to sell to locals because you sell it to the lower level criminal players.

Realistically the cooks should not be moving the product around and also selling it.

The drug systems on hl are designed for groups to interact not players to go solo.

[TheSlyFawkes]

I've been making 2x cloudy trays for the past 2 days since discovering it, today I hop on with my one other buddy and come to find out that now the exact same recipe only makes 2x white trays (in a city with around 20 cops on), then another slap to the face is that the tray only gives me an average of 13 bags now, so like the OP said these changes are only hurting small groups not the large. What is the point of RPing when 95% of my encounters trying to RP ends up being me getting robbed? Then the reaction to this is I'm going to avoid every hoodlum that is dressed in a hoodie with a bandanna on their face (majority of the population) and just go do some legal jobs like RON or G6 that has almost 0% risk with more reward while stifling RP even more because every legal non whitelist job has no RP elements to it. So you get people GTA Online driving in their jobs vehicle because it's just mindless go from point A-B rinse and repeat. There's nothing encouraging actual RP when most people are just being their troll selves in the sever just to get a laugh with their buddies when they rob every person they see on foot or even sometimes trying to rob you while in your vehicle.

As for your comment that

Realistically the cooks should not be moving the product around and also selling it.

If someone wants to make max profit off of their product why wouldn't they make and sell it themselves? So that the "Middle Man" doesn't have to take a cut of your profit? (Already none existent as is)

The most RP (And most enjoyable RP) I've had has come from making and selling my own product with my few crew members but because we're not a large enterprise of hoodlums, the nerfs even screw that up and make it not enjoyable; all risk and no reward.

[RedGherkin]

My opinion exactly. I agree with Jark. Its a middle tier drug enterprise and wont be paid as dearly as coke. But in what world would a meth cook and dealer ever make similar money to a truck driver? Thats my point. Its not rewarding to say youre risking a hefty fine, large investment required and jail time. It doesnt make sense to do meth unless youre in a large gang which operates on numbers. But then it becomes a gang server where people outside of a gang have no chance. Destroys the fun of being outside of a gang. I like what jark is doing here with the smarter you are the more rewarding. Its just it caters to the big gangs and dismisses the little guys in groups of 3 or 4. It should definitely be more profitable than Ron. By a large margin. And coke can be even more profitable than that. That would make sense to me anyways :D

[Psyanine]

First of all I agree that its an issue how many "crims" rely on robbing people as their main crim activity / when they are bored. Especially when it's in bait spots in the city but thats an argument for another day.

The middle man aspect of it perhaps isn't quite as possible / encouraged due to the fact that the feature can be full processed by one person, I think this can be an issue depending on what exactly it is you wish to get out of this line of roleplay. But remember as has been mentioned before, meth isn't meant to be a very high level activity and when done properly you can make a lot of profit and have good roleplay involved, middle manning / cook role gives you a bit of both. It can minimise risk from police interaction because you aren't selling copious amounts of bags and once you find the good recipes you are able to churn out quite a large quantity of trays. This is where you would then sell to smaller dealers or have your own street guys. Doing this would add a lot of quality roleplay of arranging meets, maybe using the darknet to contact buyers, checking if the buyers seem legit, the thrill of the risk of them ratting you out to the feds or maybe you loan them a few trays worth and chase the repayments. Think of clever ways to disguise the cook and storage, make a front for the gang etc. There is a lot more that can be done with meth roleplay than just acting out the process as efficiently as possible.

The issue mainly arises based on a factors that also affect the balancing of the feature. First of all being when people just sweat / grind the feature with little to no intent to roleplay. Players that are like this will make a much higher than average return because of the work rate. Might be alright seeing the $$$ come in but what kind of roleplay is that? It's just a money grind simulator so balancing must take into account what the top rate of monetary gain is.

Next is the position in the "drug ladder" that meth has. It isn't intended to be the end game / top drug, it is a reasonably easy to access gateway into more organised roleplay, i.e it encourages more interaction from the player and if people want to then between users aswell (cook etc). In part these changes might seem extra bad because perhaps you might be looking at it as though it's always going to be the top product (as previously said new crim features are coming).

Accessibility to the feature, this is also important to note, obviously one person can do the whole process but alone this can be an arduous task where they are also at risk because they have no protection etc. This method isn't really the goal of the system, as it doesn't encourage player to player interaction and thus this shouldn't be used as a baseline for the feature.

Ideally as farrak has said, you should want to organise a group of people to make the process as efficient and risk free as possible, you're not at the bottom of the ladder being a street dealer, you're the cook. Experiment, find the best recipes, keep them to yourself and those who don't have the time or patience to do what you can might be more persuaded to buy trays from you instead. The more you distance yourself from the risk of police attention on the streets the easier it is to keep the empire alive and cookin'.

Once the newer features are released which will likely sit above meth in the ladder then likely this will be more lucrative if this is your main motive. But bare in mind the higher you go the more coordination is encouraged and good roleplay should be expected. Once this happens then you will likely find the types of drugs people are farming have the player base more spread out and meth can be rebalanced / looked at but until then you will find that whatever features get released usually get nerfed etc as a result of people not adding any roleplay into the process thus making it look like it's a little too lucrative for the time being.

Think about the chain of supply and things like that, you aren't a guy with a small grow op in his attic selling a ten bag to their friend, you're higher up the ladder, find a more interesting way to enjoy the feature and create more roleplay with even less risk and I think your view will change. Just please remember balancing is an on going process and there are more variables/reasons behind it than simply "people making too much money".

Thanks for coming to my ted talk

[Jarrrk]

Contrary to popular belief, in the most recent restart we've pushed a buff for meth, please try it out and feedback here (:

[RedGherkin]

Love u

[TheSlyFawkes]

Is that a sick joke? I get the same average price per bag but now I only get 10 bags of product while removing 15 resealable bags. how is that a buff for meth?

[Jarrrk]

What a well thought through comment.

Pay is dictated by the amount of officers online to avoid people NITRP selling on a quiet city, as it's always been.

[TheSlyFawkes]

Sorry for that, but you can imagine spending weeks on something you find enjoyable and then have it constantly get nerfed into the ground to the point where it's not even worth the time and effort put into it, at the time I wrote that there were plenty of cops on so it wasn't because there was a lack of LSPD on.

I just don't think lowering the amount of product retrieved from each tray is a viable way to balance the system; especially if you're trying to encourage a Cook > Middleman trade off, when the middleman suffers the most from these nerfs as a whole; at times they may not even get the cost of the tray back if they get a bad roll and only get the low end of bags from the tray they paid for, making it even less attractive for people to want to buy them. a better solution in my eyes would be to revert the amount back to 20 with some possibilities that you get slightly less down to a minimum of 15 bags on the lowest end guaranteeing that they can make some profit from them. The people selling the trays are more than likely the people in the large groups who have the manpower and resources to keep blowing tens of thousands on materials to get the good recipes, while the little guys are stifled and slowed down to a snail crawl because they don't, only furthering the gap between the two. So far the people I've seen buying trays are Dannys' who don't know better or haven't experienced the glory days of meth to know just how ripped off they are getting. Honestly back a week prior to the mass of nerfs it was pretty balanced for small groups in the meth business but it was the large enterprises that ruined it for us and caused these nerfs to take place as seen in the quoted comment:

The issue mainly arises based on a factors that also affect the balancing of the feature. First of all being when people just sweat / grind the feature with little to no intent to roleplay. Players that are like this will make a much higher than average return because of the work rate. Might be alright seeing the $$$ come in but what kind of roleplay is that? It's just a money grind simulator so balancing must take into account what the top rate of monetary gain is.

I don't know if there is any way to directly nerf the "Sweat/grind" people who aren't really roleplaying without hurting everyone below them, because it just exacerbates the underlying problem with being a crim, and that is: if you aren't in a very large group nothing can be done profitable because the former sets the baseline that the nerfs cause which effects the ladder.

It's really disheartening to find something you truly enjoy because you initially get meaningful and fun RP when doing it in a small group setting, only to have that destroyed by large groups who only want to make fast money and could care less about the RP aspect. I honestly don't have much will or want to play, nor do I have as much direction anymore because everything I find joy in as a crim inevitably gets nerfed into non existence because of the sweaty grinders.

At this point I've pretty much given up on being a criminal until all intended crim activities get released hoping that it will cause the criminal organizations to be spread out a bit and not cause a mass nerf in something previously enjoyable. I doubt a mass crim exodus is what you and the other administration wants for the server seeing as that lowers the test samples to pull data from to set the baseline for balancing but at the same time you can't blame the majority of smaller groups as our only options are: A) Deal with it and waste your time with something that isn't worth the time>profit>risk ratio, B) Stop being criminals and do other things with more meaningful RP (whitelist jobs), C) No life non whitelist jobs to earn a living which just encourages no RP but gets you profit gains. D) Quit until things get balanced and the city becomes enjoyable again

For me honestly C isn't really an option because I came to the server for the RP but I keep getting shot in the foot every time I find fun crim RP. and B in a way stops a lot of potential RP because you have to RP a certain way when you're "On the job"