Recent changes to paychecks/wages

[Sutsraw]

Describe the current reason for this balance request This is the second post I've had to make about this in the past week. Genuinely do not understand the purpose of these recent updates to wages. Having to work 2 hours just to get a measly 20k that I'm going to end up losing to car repairs, or having to buy back my guns after getting robbed for the 24th time is absolutely unbearable. I'm undoubtedly speaking for everyone when I say the wages should be brought back to where they were.

The main argument I've seen with this is "it results in less RP". This statement is bullshit and we all know it. Too many people work their asses off on public jobs, far more than there would be working if the paychecks were higher. If we were to have higher paychecks, this would result in more people satisfied with their pay, which then results in less people needing to work due to the fact that they earned an amount that was actually sustainable. I, and many other people have struggled extremely hard with money, and in my case it's been for the past 6 months. Today was some of the most enjoyable and entertaining time I've ever had on the server, mostly in part with the fact that I could actually afford most things ingame for once.

Something else I'm a bit confused about, is how we were told the poor pay was due to a bug, a bug that somehow existed within the server for the past 6 months? With no one noticing? It makes no sense. And if it was a bug, why was it dropped back to the amount it was at when that bug was a problem?

Describe the solution you'd like For paychecks to be raised back to where they were, or at the very least raised to an amount near it. I think everyone wants this to happen.

Additional context N/A

[PopSmoke]

Job payouts yesterday were far more then intended, the numbers have been altered again and are being monitored.

[ZyloXan]

I believe that the pay that is claimed as to high wasn't far off from what it should be, at least for high ranks within companies. With a job like RON and RS trucking pay is dependent on distance traveled for the deliveries if I'm not mistaken so they pay varies quite a bit. But working in excess of 30 minutes on some deliveries and making a measly $4,000 dollars is a spit in the face when you look at the price of cars and other things in the city. It gets worse when a person that is a rank 2 is making a grand less then someone who is a rank 5 and has put in the time to progress with the company. The salary pay could also be changed based upon the rank you are in the company to help differ the ranks from each other. It was also nice seeing people actually working the public jobs instead of robbing and stealing all over the place, I felt like I wasn't seeing or hearing cops speeding everywhere all the time which I assumed had them out being involved in less crime centric calls. In conclusion I believe that the pay should be adjusted closer to the way it was the last 24 hours with an emphasis on the rank structure that is already present within the companies, I also think looking into the adjusted salary pay would be a nifty idea to implement into the public job sector. I appreciate all that the devs do for this server and really do enjoy playing on it and being able to support the server, the devs just seem to have adjusted the pay to severely multiple times and is hurting the majority of the community.

[hcbenji]

I understand that people are frustrated with pay as it currently stands. To put it in perspective, it is much more balanced with whitelist jobs now. I am a supervisor in the LSPD and make 7800 per real life hour. Lower ranks in whitelist positions make much less money than the public jobs do at base rank. The purpose of the server is not to be able to buy a supercar in a week. It should take a long time as you probably wouldn't ever be able to buy one IRL delivering packages or pizzas. There are plenty of ways to make good money in the city without turning your experience here into a grind simulator. Please understand that all the numbers are being watched for how they affect the economy by the balancing team and it isn't a "one and done" solution. This has been my TedTalk. Thank you for your time.

[ZyloXan]

And I do understand that but money is a fairly important thing within a roleplay environment, but there is a fine balance because you don't want everyone driving around in mclarens all the time but you also don't want people seeing how a bunch of people have all this money and then going to grind for the next 5 hours or so to try to make money just to see a minimal reward. I personally find it relaxing to do RS and enjoying driving semis, and if a situation arises that can develop rp then hell yeah I'm down to rp my way through it. I just believe there needs to be balance and in my eyes its more towards the higher end of pay vs what it is at now, heck if rank 5's would make anywhere from $8000-$10000 depending on the distances of the deliveries. I also believe adjusting the salary pay would be a welcomed addition to the public job sector. Personally I like my TedTalk more but yours was still good.

[yusef1098]

I really don't understand why they would raise pay then lower it so quickly, in order to roleplay and be able to afford things in roleplay U NEED MONEY ! When they added money I was able to experience many things that I was not able to experience before. Such as buying new clothes, buying my new car, etc. Those things help provide lots for role play. Its very disappointing that the only way to make good money ( is working a white listed ). I AM NOT ABLE TO BECAUSE I AM TOO YOUNG ! That makes it extremely unfair, and that's also why i think they should raise pay among people in the city.

[ExecuteExtinction]

Figured I might as well put in my thoughts. While I agree the pay may have been way higher than intended, I can’t agree with the current payout of jobs. I understand not wanting people to buy high end vehicles, or homes within 2 hours of playing, but as many people stated, nobody wants to spend months on end just to make one purchase. Especially when taking about people that work full time jobs. Grinding out jobs with minimal pay can potentially burn people out really fast. I also understand the other side of the spectrum where people can be burned out after buying everything they wanted, however, at least they can go out an RP, as intended. It’s really difficult to do that when you have so many purchases you want to make, but struggle just to get one of them. Time is money, and when you have no money, you have no time to RP. I can’t give out numbers that I feel is fair, but I know that what we got now, isn’t. I’d continue, but I guess I’ll end it here, and wait for conversation/debate.

[RayMond-1]

I will first off start with the mention of a bug. Yes we had a bug, actually more of a miscalculation on a certain integer. This has since been resolved. Now the issue was the entire pay system was calculated on this by fixing this it caused all jobs to essentially double, not our intentions.

Over the next day or so we will be collecting new data and ensuring we return back or near the values the entire economy is based on.

Economy balance is no easy feat and we have had our troubles at times. Its a never ending process and we are constantly looking and monitoring issues.

I can ensure you the values will not be returned to what they was 12 hours ago, sorry but the economy is not capable of supporting that nor is it inline with our the teams vision here at HighLife.

[ShmishDD]

Alright this post is entirely meant to be informational for all parties involved.

I'm basing this off of two jobs: GoPostal and RON.

As shown here, Austin Powers ensures us that the goal of this server is that legal jobs shouldn't reward people with super cars after little time spent doing said legal jobs: https://i.ibb.co/FsfMGwD/asdwwwww.png

Here Austin defines a super car: https://i.ibb.co/17rmt52/asdwwwwww.png

And lastly, here is the price of the car he refers to as a super car for reference: https://i.imgur.com/Yv1e5Hx.png

Alright, now that we have some context, let's get to doing some math! Let's start with GoPostal.

On average it takes 15-20 minutes to finish one GoPostal shift using a Pony and 20 deliveries. At the wages post-fix, each GoPostal run can range from 1800-2800 dollars per shift.

15 minutes of work = $2500 on average

Let's see a rough estimate of how long it would take a legal worker to earn 100,000 dollars.

At 40 GoPostal shifts taking 15 minutes per shift (that is being very generous on the time taken), you would have to work a total of 10 hours to earn 100k. No pooping, no potty breaks, no eating. 15 minute runs, don't fuck up.

To earn a super car, it would require you to complete 260 GoPostal runs, and if you had a perfect driving record while also speeding, and completed each shift in 15 minutes, you would have worked 65 hours doing the same drive to spot A and press E job over and over.

Now let's mirror the same kind of information but with RON.

Each RON delivery takes on average 20-30 minutes, so let's stick to the low side again because we're all pro drivers here, right? At the wages post-fix, each RON run can range from 5500-7500 (this is honestly a super rough estimate because these post-fix changes are still fairly recent, so I'll be generous again), so let's say the average earned would be 6500 dollars per shift.

20 minutes of work = $6500 on average

Let's see how much work RON would take to earn 100,000 dollars.

At 16 runs of RON taking 20 minutes per shift (aka you didn't fuck up once), you would have worked roughly 5 hours of RON deliveries to earn 100k.

To earn a super car, it would take 100 RON deliveries without a single mistake, costing you 33 hours of time spent running RON deliveries without a mistake made.

Now let's to a quick run down of how long it would take to earn a super car if you didn't grind for more than 3 hours per day.

GoPostal earning a super would be 65 hours total time spent actively doing a super great job = 21 days of grinding 3 hours per day.

RON earning a super would be 33 hours total time spent without a single mistake = 11 days of grinding 3 hours per day.

Now discuss what you think it should be!

[jordanburrell123]

After being able to see the specific numbers, the one thing i will say here is that it seems like these public jobs are actually making pretty decent money. You give the two numbers of $2500/15 mins for GoPostal and $6500/20 mins for RON. As an Officer 4 in LSPD i make $6000/60 mins, which took me ~6 months to achieve the rank that i currently am at. Honestly, 33 hours, even 65 hours does not seem that bad for a super car, and if you would like to compare it to whitelist jobs such as PD, for me it would take 108 hours clocked in to earn the same car. If your goal is to work for a super car, then it should take you a long time. How many FedEx drivers or Pizza Hut drivers do you know that go home to a Lamborghini? Super cars are an extreme luxury and should be treated as a long term goal and not something to quickly acquire. If you want that car with a high price tag, it's going to come with work as any job will, and if you choose to go a clean cut route, then yes it may take longer time wise, but you also are not running the risk of being fined or arrested as a criminal would. The criminal side and the clean side both come with their ups and downs, whichever one you find suits you best, in terms of time, "grind", and most of all, roleplay, is what you should pursue. After all, this is a roleplay server. Lastly, it also comes with just balancing the economy and city, as it would be a bit ridiculous to drive down the road and see Lamborghinis, Ferraris, etc. galore.

[ShmishDD]

After being able to see the specific numbers, the one thing i will say here is that it seems like these public jobs are actually making pretty decent money. You give the two numbers of $2500/15 mins for GoPostal and $6500/20 mins for RON. As an Officer 4 in LSPD i make $6000/60 mins, which took me ~6 months to achieve the rank that i currently am at. Honestly, 33 hours, even 65 hours does not seem that bad for a super car, and if you would like to compare it to whitelist jobs such as PD, for me it would take 108 hours clocked in to earn the same car. If your goal is to work for a super car, then it should take you a long time. How many FedEx drivers or Pizza Hut drivers do you know that go home to a Lamborghini? Super cars are an extreme luxury and should be treated as a long term goal and not something to quickly acquire. If you want that car with a high price tag, it's going to come with work as any job will, and if you choose to go a clean cut route, then yes it may take longer time wise, but you also are not running the risk of being fined or arrested as a criminal would. The criminal side and the clean side both come with their ups and downs, whichever one you find suits you best, in terms of time, "grind", and most of all, roleplay, is what you should pursue. After all, this is a roleplay server. Lastly, it also comes with just balancing the economy and city, as it would be a bit ridiculous to drive down the road and see Lamborghinis, Ferraris, etc. galore.

You do have to keep in mind the difference between being in the LSPD and working legal jobs is endless RP and driving to a spot and honking your horn.

Also keep in mind I'm being insanely so incredibly generous with the numbers here. I'm not figuring in needing to use the restroom, getting into vehicle accidents cutting shifts short, head pops, etc etc which could in theory add a lot of more time to those numbers.

Not trying to say yesterday's numbers were the way they should be, but I also think today's numbers are terrible.

There's a lot of things that could be done to remedy this issue. Making the jobs involve RP, and pay by time just like LSPD/EMS/white list jobs work. It's a lot of coding, sure, but the wages even before Sunday is terrible for what you're actually spending your time doing. Maybe it's worth to revamp the "fun" factor of public non whitelisted jobs in a public server to keep the public part of the public server happy. I agree, I don't want lambos on the street every where I go either. Though I also don't think many people would even get that far doing the same mindless thing for 60+ hours.

I think there can be a compromise.

[spyromate]

Maybe it's worth to revamp the "fun" factor of public non whitelisted jobs in a public server to keep the public part of the public server happy.

Keep an eye out for the upcoming Player Experience poll. We will be touching upon this.

[Scottehhh]

This is going a little bit far now I feel like. If anything your little maths session has highlighted how much money you earn, and with no disrespect and through your own indirect admission, whilst you do nothing in a roleplay server.

There are Whitelist jobs who spend all day interacting with people and creating situations, not just going from Point A to Point B, pressing E and moving on - as you say.

As pointed out above, there are people who are you could say of ‘medium’ rank within the LSPD for example who get paid worse than yourself.

My opinion is you shouldn’t be looking for public jobs to be your long term money maker. Use public jobs to get into the server, learn the community before moving onto something more RP intensive for lack of a better phrase, i.e LSPD, EMS, D8, Drugs, Other Crime etc.

I think I’d also have more sympathy for the situation if I didn’t see Ron, G6, GoPostal, whatever drivers just GTA Driving across the hills, through fences, smashing into local and player vehicles whilst they blast around the map doing essentially what they see as money simulator. Stop treating things as a straight money grinder, you might find you enjoy yourself more.

[Novau101]

One thing that's collectively being forgotten is the enjoyment factor.

Pd and other whitelisted jobs may pay less, but people play them for the experiences they provide and the interactions they can be involved in. This is the opposite for the delivery jobs, infact id say that delivery jobs are currently anti roleplay.

Jaark I believe has said he wants to take a look at jobs in the future, however untill that happens I honestly think jobs are okay right now. They shouldn't pay so low as to need grinding to get cash and they shouldn't pay so high as to reward people who exclusively do them.

Ideally, jobs would have dynamic payouts and have interactivity between other roles. Imagine if during your RS shift, you had to deliver a case of beers to vanilla unicorn and liase with someone on duty there? You could even have bonuses for these, encouraging roleplay. But this is a pipedream.

Ultimately, those roles pay a lot in comparison to roles that require a high quality of roleplay and thus because they aren't enjoyable I feel this is a reasonable balance, albeit not ideal.

[ShmishDD]

I'd say my admission was pretty direct, and followed by the idea of innovating something new for said jobs. Roleplay is fun, and I'd argue that money even creates roleplay. The whitelisted jobs create roleplay because they have a purpose/directive, and a pot of money to pay people to roleplay that purpose/directive (why do you need money when you have a job that provides endless roleplay already defined for you by a faction and rules?).

Whitelisted jobs = Endless roleplay Non-whitelisted jobs = Nothing special to it, no roleplay, but having a decent amount of cash after mindlessly doing a boring job for hours upon hours can go a long way when getting into roleplay other than whitelisted jobs. Possibly even creating roleplay for themselves and others.

Also, your legal workers blasting through the streets disregarding public safety is a LSPD issue, not a heavenly one. Commercial licenses exist to be revoked. This also creates roleplay for the LSPD & also the workers even if it IS getting pulled over or going to jail.

[manlydawgs]

Put this in discussion last night but adding it here:

The economy encourages what I'm dubbing the "robbing meta" no matter what RP, people want something interesting to do. People think "why should I RP if my character is reduced to a RON driver?" Then you have 2 lines to follow after that...whitelisted job, or criminal. Babies first crime is robbery. Robbery meta.

Let me give you a example of what happened last night when my group of friends all saw the wages...WE ACTUALLY WENT WORK! We realized if we wanted to start a large cocaine business which takes a shit ton of money (as it should) if we all put our nose to the grindstone we can make this happen. Then the restart happened and we were like okay back to selling drugs and dealing with people who rob.

I get the admins don't want people driving super cars and going crazy and having to work for it. But...

1.) Balance the wages then 2) you have to make the content engaging as soon as possible, not in october ex. Ron driving get out the tanker and fill up gas pumps. (Ex. G6 trucks can get robbed but has better payouts) 3.) Again People dont RP to have there character reduced to a Ron driver. That is actually breaking RP lol and encouraging me to ask myself why tf is my character doing this, while I listen to a podcast. 4.) This sounds weird but this is most important in game indie game development. ADD verbs to your games. RON = a action. G6 = a action. Thats why people like cooking meth or selling drugs because it results in a verb taking place. Engagement.

The essence of GTA is money and making money. Its what people have known. Its the bones of the mechanics.

Also another point I see people mention is "dont want you buying x car in a week" then why tf can I play as my "cousin" who just so happens to have my shared bank account and then go but a supercar in less then 10 minutes? C'mon guys...

Lastly, plenty servers have engaging jobs (burgershot for example, trucking jobs) I believe these jobs can be engaging too :)

Remember devs people are critical of what they love most!