Denied [Main Server Suggestion] Warp Rentals

In Game Name:

cainam​

What part of EcoCityCraft is this suggestion for:

Main Server​

Short title for your suggestion:

Warp Rentals​

What are you suggesting:

With the move to 1.18 warps must be rented rather than purchased. I would suggest a 30K application fee for a new warp setup (or reactivation of an expired warp) that includes the first month rent, with a 10K/month rental fee. This will be a drop in the bucket for users that make money off having a warp, and shouldn't be too burdensome for those keeping a warp simply for convenience sake.​

Why is this a good addition for EcoCityCraft?:

Rather than a one time sink of ecodollars for warp access this becomes a constant sink for people that want to maintain warp access. There are a number of warps used for maintaining a business where this would be a minor cut in profit, but still a cut of ecodollars that is constantly being removed from the economy.

This will also be nice to drop off warps that aren't being actively maintained, so the warp list doesn't simply grow indefinitely.​

Other information:

There are a lack of ways to remove money from the economy once introduced compared to the amount of money that gets introduced. This may help the balance a bit, and doing this at the time of a map reset (so there aren't a mix of purchased and rented warps) seems a great time to introduce it.

I do have concerns about problems this may cause, but believe the benefit outweighs those. Those concerns:
Extra work for the staff to deactivate warps that lapse.
New players having a plot in a town with a warp where the mayor decides to leave and the warp lapses, making it harder for the player to get back there (assuming they don't have a home set there).
Push back from the player base that is used to warps being a one time purchase.

Spawn shop rentals have been handled by staff, and I don't see this as adding much additional work, though the work is not none. Rent can be paid with an application prior to expiration for an indefinite amount of time.
New players that get caught in that situation can get help from a player or staff member to get back to their town and set a home or move their stuff. It's probably a minor problem, that will occur once in a great while.
There is always push back from the player base when costs increase, but that is countered by the overall good it can do for the server.

The numbers (initial application price and monthly rent price) are easy to tweak later if these are found to be too high to allow people to maintain warps, or too low to take enough out of the economy.​

Plugin or custom addition:

Custom addition. Really more of a tweak to an already used current warp plugin.​

One suggestion per form:

I Understand.​

 

That's part of what this is supposed to address. How many of those are active, and how many just go to towns where the mayor has been inactive for months/years? Ideally this will keep the number down on the new map so if there is a warp it will at least be active and used by some people.

I agree that maintenance can get overwhelming though, and it may require scripting to disable warps at a given time. Even given 300 warps and 1 month rent at a time that's ~10 warps a day to address. It's why I mentioned it in the concerns. My hope is that the spawn shop disabling code (if there is some) could be reused, but not having looked at the code that may not be the case.

 

I guess the reduction of warps to inactive places is minimal. Granted at a year since reset, being gone 6 months is a stretch for someone who went through to get mayor in the first place. If we expect a main map reset regularly then this won't matter in the least to reduce warps (and at my price point may actually increase them).

That's true, but if we shoot down all the ideas for small money sinks then our only option is to have a few large money sinks that people are free to ignore. It's a game, and everything is a luxury item. We need more sinks that are small potatoes so people can buy them easily and not worry too much about them, or we need larger end game ranks/tools.

The faucets for the game (where money is printed by the server) are mostly small, but put together add up. Why won't the same theory apply to sinks? Granted this is only a piece of what might be needed, but this is an opportune time to add this piece.

At the rates I proposed a 3 month warp costs the same as a current warp. Getting it for a single month is cheaper, which might be an incentive to newer/poorer players. Increasing the costs make getting warps less likely, but then act as a bigger sink. There are knobs to turn to adjust this, minimal rental times, cost of initial application, monthly fee, even potentially larger costs as rank or number of warp applications increase. Those knobs can be adjusted with a bit of notice, but finding a good time to introduce a change like this is difficult.

 

Thanks Cammy. Without an automated system then the overhead likely isn't worth the little bit that it removes. Because of the old spawn shops (50+ shops with weekly rentals) I assumed that there was some automation already in place. Processing new applications to apply rent is much less difficult than having to check all the warps regularly.