While MoneyGame is a great, well, game, it has some serious flaws and missing features, namely with balancing. I've spent several days thinking about possible solutions and I would appreciate any feedback, be it positive or negative, and if you are against any of the suggestions, please explain why. These are just suggestions and ideas.
As Iâve written this over the span of a week or so, the numbers may have changed slightly but the sentiment still stands.
This is a discussion open to anyone, but please keep it civil.
-alestor
Table of Contents 1. Major issues & suggestions
1.1 The Big Reset
1.2 Worker Shortage
1.3 Taxes
1.4 Empty Land
1.5 Cheating & Income Disparity
1.5.1 Cheating = Bad
1.5.2 Restriction for Cheaters
2. Medium issues & suggestions
2.1 Government Set Prices
2.2 Inflation
2.3 Small Companies Boost
2.4 New Money Influx
2.5 Renaming & Deleting Companies
2.5.1 Renaming Companies
2.5.2 Deleting Companies
2.6 Trading Commodities Between Companies
2.7 Community Goals
3. Minor issues & suggestions
3.1 Visual Rounding Changes
3.2 Cheater Symbol
3.3 New Player Symbol
3.4 Player Online Symbol
3.5 Date Clarifications
3.6 Daily Worked Jobs Counter
3.7 More Trading Transparency
3.8 Admin & Government Trades Indicator
3.9 « Buy Now » & « Sell Now » Function
1.1 The Big Reset
While I am all for capitalism, especially in games, this is a player-driven community, where imbalances are more noticeable compared to a PvE or single-player game.
$ 87.094.432,93 total in circulation
$ 16 895 228.58 - 1 player (19,4% of total)
$ 25 000 000 + - top 5 (~29% of total)
$ 29 000 000 + - top 10 (~34% of total)
Some players have been active for over 8 years, which deserves its own recognition. If there would be a reset, all players would have a section on their profile for their previously achieved status, with their wealth displayed, and also their cumulative wealth displayed separately. There would be a regular highscore list as it is now, that would see the seasonal (yearly?) characters' wealth. On the other «all-time-high»-list, it would show the wealth they have accumulated over their total career playing the game.
I propose a yearly reset. The players who have reached top 10 have achieved most, or even all, that can reasonably be achieved and possess so much resources and wealth it discourages new players.
What is the point of having one player who owns 100% of land in Germany, 100% of land in Brazil, 100% of land in Finland and over 50% in the United States. Most of this land is empty and unused, and requests to buy any land are ignored. đ
If a player possesses this immense amount of resources and doesn't, or barely, engages with the community, apart from collecting all remaining land and resources, it does nothing but harm the game long-term. It's almost like a dragon sitting on a mountain of virtual wealth.
The initial reset wouldnât happen until all other issues are addressed.
1.2 Worker Shortage
There is an immense shortage of workers. This number of worker bots needs to be increased drastically, or the system needs to be overhauled. Players have to offer very high salaries to attract both human players and worker bots.
I also believe it is one of the main reasons some players are creating large amounts of alt accounts. (Also see 1.5.1 Cheating = Bad)
1.3 Taxes
âą Tax on dividends:
A simple wealth tax, if players have a net worth over a certain threshold, they pay tax on dividends. Higher net worth, higher tax. I'd suggest 5% starting from 100k, up to 10% for over a million.
âą Sales Tax:
On every Retail Store sale, 5% tax gets collected automatically
âą Increased tax for empty land only, up from $50 to $250-500 to motivate development of the land or reselling, and combat the massive hoarding of land that's currently happening. If possible this would be a sliding scale, starting from $50 for the first 7 days of ownership and scaling up weekly to ultimately reaching $500 a day if the land is still empty after multiple weeks.
These taxes are collected into a game-controlled fund, that then again distributes this to buyer bots that buy items from player stores. Stores are randomly assigned and the game checks if a price is reasonable, meaning within a certain percentage of market value of a particular item, before buying
This tax collection is an additional fund, working on top of the already existing buyer bots
1.4 Empty Land
On top of the empty land tax, if a plot of land is empty/unoccupied or no construction has been planned within 60 days of ownership, it automatically gets put up for auction. The player will get a notification in advance if their land has been unoccupied for too long. This will encourage players to actually build on and use the land, not just hoard.
1.5 Cheating & Income Disparity
There is relatively little money to be made if you play fair. At the very least, you are at a disadvantage.
1.5.1 Cheating = Bad Rule 7 has been broken so many times because of alt accounts, itâs no secret, anyone whoâs played MoneyGame for more than 2 weeks can see that. While I do understand some aspects of it, the main one being a lack of workers, it simply is against the rules you agreed to when you signed up.
â
An average player with 10 jobs, that pays $65 each, will make $650 in a day.
Now, a player who has on top of their own account, for example 10 alts, could potentially make $6500 a day from just the alts. Alternatively, they hire them for extremely low or free wages in their own factories. Cheap labour results in cheaper goods, which then causes the honest players to have no chance of having any fair competition. If you're an honest player and wonder how water, grain, electricity.. can get sold for less than it costs to produce, now you know.
Let's look at Electricity. Yesterday, Electricity got sold for less than $0.3 per kWh. If you pay your employees a modest salary of $60, and an employee produces (no weather effect) 200 kWh a day, this would result in: $60 / 200 kWh = $0.3/kWh
The cost of electricity is $0.3, every penny under this price leaves no room for profit and is only possible because of cheating-funded bankrolls. To be clear, this is bad for a game, but especially bad for one with a small community and player base as this one.
1.5.2 Restriction for Cheaters
Cheaters will be investigated on a case-by-case basis and will get severe restrictions, economic sanctions if you will.
These cheaters will not be able to trade on The Exchange and all their open sell and buy offers will be cancelled.
They will be fired from all their Director positions. Canât turn out dividends.
Canât transfer money out of companies. Canât bid on auctions.
Canât delete companies. Canât trade shares or land.
Hit them where it hurts. đ°đž
The cheaters can still work and their companies can still receive money and pay employees.
The length of the restrictions would depend on how long the player has been cheating and how big of an impact it had on their account and community.
The starting length for the restrictions will be 30 days, going up to infinity for the worst or repeat offenders. Cheating destroys the game, and honestly the fun, and should be strongly punished. Additionally, they will receive a permanent cheater symbol and/or warning message on their profile and next to their name in the high scores list.
Examples need to be made. Stop while you still can because I have mounting evidence against the large cheaters. Donât become the example.
Their cheating absence from the market will give honest players a chance to trade and play without their market manipulation.
2. Medium issues & suggestions 2.1 Government Set Minimum Prices
To combat unreasonably low commodity prices, the Government has to step in.
On The Exchange, the Government will have purchase offers for all commodities with the price tied to the base government salary. The government pays 20% under the value. The Government subsidy keeps prices in check and provides a better safety net against price gouging, while also introducing new money into the game.
For example: Electricity
If the price/kWh to produce is $0.25 ($50 government salary/200 kWh), the Government would have an offer to buy any Electricity at $0.20/kWh.
2.2 Inflation
Government companiesâ salary would go up 1% a week. The salary for government jobs starts with $50/day, year/season ends with ~$85/day
It will keep the economy healthy by increasing the income of existing players and players who join later in the game donât have to start all the way from the bottom.
The inflation rate will be displayed on the dashboard and on the main page.
If there would be no âBig Resetâ, the inflation would be capped at something more reasonable like 10% yearly.
2.3 Small Companies Boost
Make players able to work multiple times per day in their own companies, only if they personally own 100% of the shares, and cannot be in a holding company. This gives smaller and newer players a higher chance of selling their products for a competitive price. 10 jobs a day limit still applies. This could be another solution to the alt accounts issue mentioned earlier.
â
2.4 New Money Influx
There is an insufficient amount of new money coming into the game. Most money in the game gets recirculated by the players. While this sounds like a beautiful soviet society, it holds back growth and turns the game stale.
There are a few sources of new money entering the game, and that could use some tweaking:
âą Working for a government company should have one or more of these benefits to motivate players to work for a government company:
- You can't get sick and if youâre homeless you don't lose health (works like a 24-hour vaccine)
- Requires less or no energy to work at
- Free to work at once per day, without needing a boost drink
- Every country and city should have a Government company providing jobs
âą Increased amount of bots buying items from stores (Also see 1.2 Worker Shortage)
âą Selling commodities to the Government on The Exchange
The Governmentsâ buy prices are too low. Government purchase prices on the exchange should be tied to government salary and inflation (also see 2.1 Government Set Prices and 2.2 Inflation)
âą Gambling (generally bad since it's purely luck based and basically a money sink)
âą New players account creation tasks (negligible unless youâre cheating)
Reward active new players over time for being engaged with the game, worked 7 days in a row, get a small reward
Please let me know if I forgot any important sources of new money
â 2.5 Renaming & Deleting Companies 2.5.1 Renaming Companies
Give players the ability to rename companies.
Tie a company to an internal id and allow the change of the company name. It will permanently show on the company page what the previous names were.
The cost would be $100-$500, depending on the company creation cost, and can only be done once every 30 days.
If the company has multiple shareholders, the majority 51+% have to agree with the name change by voting.
After a name change passes, all shareholders get a notification or message about the name change.
2.5.2 Deleting Companies
Make it easier to delete companies. When closing a company, there can be no items in inventory, which is understandable. But I noticed most issues with players arise when attempting to end up with exactly $0.00 in assets is often hard. When deleting a company, the remainer of the cash will be sent to the player's bank account.
2.6 Trading Commodities Between Companies I changed my stance on this suggestion and it no longer applies. Below between brackets the original suggestion.
[Trading items between companies should be possible, if they are part of the same group or owner. Only possible for companies located in the same country.
Why wouldnât it be possible to send water from your Water Factory to your Drinks Factory?
A delivery fee will be charged, similar to if you buy from a Retail Store in a different city than where you live.]
2.7 Community Goals
Encourage players to interact with each other. Seasonal tournaments or community activities, that would benefit all players, would be a good idea for MoneyGame.
If players work together towards a certain goal and achieve it, they could be rewarded with temporary increased amounts of (bot) workers, that produce 10-20% more than their regular bot colleagues, but this would only last for a few weeks and has a cooldown of a few weeks or months to balance it out.
3. Minor issues & suggestions 3.1 Visual Rounding Changes
Newspaper ratings on the new papers' company page are rounded to 12 digits, it would look neater with just 2 or even 1 rounding digit.
Visually, market trades are rounded down to 2 digits, which is confusing if you placed an offer for 5.9999 and it gets rounded to 6.00.
To avoid confusion, the rounding should be 4 digits (f.e. «My Offers»-tab in The Exchange)
3.2 Cheater Symbol
A red exclamation mark, shown on the profile so other players can beware of their deeds. (Also see 1.5.2 Restrictions for Cheaters)
3.3 New Player Symbol
For the first 2 weeks players have a symbol that indicates them being new, it will more easily show when a player doesn't have much experience in the game yet.
3.4 Player Online Symbol
A simple green circle next to their name, to quickly see if a player is online
3.6 Daily Worked Jobs Counter
More clearly show how many jobs have been worked for the current day. Sometimes a company has no resources or money to pay salaries and it messes up the thinking process of how many jobs have been done that day.
A small counter on the dashboard would help, maybe under the vaccinated text View Image At Own Risk (https://file.garden/aG0uEOyoAi7Hijj7/mg_r2.png)
3.7 More Trading Transparency
List the company name with each trade on The Exchange.
It would be better if, just like how you can see who exactly works for your companies, everyone would be able to see which company is trading which items on The Exchange. It will make keeping track of who manipulates the market, and which companies are honest providers. Similar to when you buy Food Packages or Boost Drinks from a store, or bid on an auction, you should be able to see who you are buying your resources from.
Private player trades will remain anonymous or can opt-in to show their name.
3.8 Admin & Government Trades Indicator
Additionally to the suggestion above, Admin & Government trades should be clearly labelled as such.
For example USD/EUR and USD/BRL 1.8 bid and 2.2 sell
3.9 « Buy Now » & « Sell Now » Function
A simply button next to the lowest purchase and sell price. Once clicked, the player will be sent to the « Create Offer » page, with the information already filled in to simplify trading.
of course! I'd love to hear other people's suggestions, it's a discussion topic to see what changes we can all agree to and hopefully make an impact to MoneyGame's future!
What about more different companies like
Transportation
Robots (Workerdroids)
Maybe (weapons)
Vehicles(need to go to store if not then you have to pay delivery fee)
Accessories (each house has the option to buy accessories to place and will be represented 2D e.g bath tub couch)
Governments (the government and its policies are one of the biggest impacts on the economy and this also lets players work together into a certain goal it also creates demand for weapons which could be used to defend against pve they can also take land as reward(very small chance)which has to be bid between members or be sold or kept and makes admins job of adding land easy)
Houses (buying and renting)
Food (different types (for simplicity cuisines) that can be sold in restaurants or ingredients that can be cooked with a kitchen sold in grocery shops )
Electronic devices (calculates the cost of production, access to messages and forum and business transactions and is sold in tech stores)
Construction (one ai contract per week)
Managers (ai mangers that give bonuses can be bid)
Mine (gives raw materials(needs land))
Farms(more crops)
These suggestions aim to improve the game and create demand and a evolving economy
The demand is created by using commodities very useful to players
If you as Admin can add 3 of these per month the game will flourish and inactives will stop
Also for 1.5 there is a simple way where it effectively locks you into a specific account based off of cookies to both speed up the process for honest players and to effectively browser lock a device
I think there is also a way to lock entire devices from games but I think that would require items outside of the browser
