Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Loan companies
master_finesse
Tue Aug 02, 2005 11:17 pm
#14
What might work is to get a network of mayors and shop owners who would agree to ban players who don't pay. They get a small cut. You could have people pay you back in monthly installments.
Tyranus-DVR
Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:48 am
#15
There was a armor smith on eclipse that did stock in his company...he collected 400 mill credits and soon never logged on again..glad i didnt give him any 
mattos90
Sat Aug 06, 2005 2:32 am
#16
Interesting idea, just seems like there are too many potential risks for fraud.
bluejanus
Sat Aug 06, 2005 3:28 pm
#17
There needs to be collateral or something, some guaranteer of security.
Eleutherios
Sat Aug 06, 2005 6:13 pm
#18
Collateral doesn't work very well in this game. Let's say I want a million credits, and I have some million-credit item lying around. If I was using it as collateral, I'd need to be doing two things... one, I'd need to be comfortable with not having it, and secondly, I'd need it to not be that important to me (since I'm giving it to someone who could very well just take it forever.) If this was the case, why don't I just sell the item and get the money? That way I don't need to deal with any loan process.
Also, you can be frauded big time, and I'm betting someone will at least try it pretty soon. Taking screenshots never works because CSRs will NOT accept screenshots as evidence (they can be very easily manipulated). Since the fraud is likely to be discovered weeks after the initial agreement (it'll probably be that long before you realize for sure they're not going to pay), you can't just use /report because there's no evidence of a transaction.
I don't think it would go over very well.
Apisto
Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:38 pm
#19
Nice idea it's too bad that people will just take your money. Someone tried something like this with a lightsaber crafting suit the suit now belongs to the guy who stole it.
If you take collateral you may end up laundering stolen stuff. People could bring you a stolen item as collateral and take the cash. As for banning them from merchants and guilds there are alts and other servers to play.
sorry to be negative but this may really ruin your gaming experience.
Bain-
Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:06 pm
#20
One thing I have never understood is why SOE didn't code a loaning system into the game. You could go to the loan department in Coronet, and borrow 1 million credits. They would take interest, and if you did not pay up your credits by a certain time period your account would go into debt. Any credits that you make at any point in time will automatically go to the bank while you are in debt, making it impossible to buy anything or make any transactions.
bluejanus
Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:57 pm
#21
Bain- wrote:
One thing I have never understood is why SOE didn't code a loaning system into the game. You could go to the loan department in Coronet, and borrow 1 million credits. They would take interest, and if you did not pay up your credits by a certain time period your account would go into debt. Any credits that you make at any point in time will automatically go to the bank while you are in debt, making it impossible to buy anything or make any transactions.
Transfer the credits and delete the character. Repeat the same exploit endlessly.
Bain-
Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:38 pm
#22
bluejanus wrote:
Bain- wrote:
One thing I have never understood is why SOE didn't code a loaning system into the game. You could go to the loan department in Coronet, and borrow 1 million credits. They would take interest, and if you did not pay up your credits by a certain time period your account would go into debt. Any credits that you make at any point in time will automatically go to the bank while you are in debt, making it impossible to buy anything or make any transactions.
Transfer the credits and delete the character. Repeat the same exploit endlessly.
Well, they could code it so that the debt is applied to your account, and not just your character. Any character that you create will have a portion of the debt, until you pay it off. Yeah I guess I can see that there are many ways of exploiting it, I just would love to see more "content" added to the game. Or even better, they could code it so that you cannot delete your character until you pay your debt off.
Message Edited by Bain- on 08-08-2005 06:39 PM
bluejanus
Tue Aug 09, 2005 3:08 pm
#23
Bain- wrote:
bluejanus wrote:
Bain- wrote:
One thing I have never understood is why SOE didn't code a loaning system into the game. You could go to the loan department in Coronet, and borrow 1 million credits. They would take interest, and if you did not pay up your credits by a certain time period your account would go into debt. Any credits that you make at any point in time will automatically go to the bank while you are in debt, making it impossible to buy anything or make any transactions.
Transfer the credits and delete the character. Repeat the same exploit endlessly.
Well, they could code it so that the debt is applied to your account, and not just your character. Any character that you create will have a portion of the debt, until you pay it off. Yeah I guess I can see that there are many ways of exploiting it, I just would love to see more "content" added to the game. Or even better, they could code it so that you cannot delete your character until you pay your debt off.Message Edited by Bain- on 08-08-2005 06:39 PM
I doubt a system like that would be worthwhile enough to code. Btw what's the point of an in-game system like that?
bluejanus
Tue Aug 09, 2005 3:09 pm
#24
How does a system like that make the game experience more fun? Does it discourage gameplay or encourage it? Are there sufficient alternatives?
Eleutherios
Tue Aug 09, 2005 4:35 pm
#25
This would mess things up for some people if there was an in-game system like that. Let's say you wanna be a crafter and you need a bunch of upfront money. You take out 2 mill. Then your business BOMBS. I'm talking a rock-bottom thing. So you're out of business, you've got no cash, you owe maint on your buildings, vendors and harvesters, PLUS 2 Mill to SOE. You can't delete your account to get out of debt. You can't rebuild your business because you're out of money. And the interest on the loan only increases...
Sneev
Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:32 pm
#26
Being a Pawn Shop is the only way I could see this working. That way the risk is minimized by the fact that you are not buying the item from them, you are loaning them (less than its worth) and applying interest to their loan over time. They can redeem their item by paying back the original loan plus the interest. Obviously this only works for items that they want to keep.
So, I am a crafter and I want to purchase a 12pt crafting suit from someone else in game at a cost of 18.5 million credits (yeah its a bit cheap but its an example, work with me). I have found one for sale but I only have 12 million to my name. So, I go to the pawnshop guy and I pawn my ADK, and my Barc (both of which I want to keep) for the remaining 6.5 million I need to buy the suit. I now owe the pawnshop 6.5 million, at probably 20% interest (which in this case would be 1.3 million per month). If I don't make the payments and eventually pay it all back, I lose both items and the Pawnshop has a new ADK and Barc For sale at probably 8m and 6m respectively. In general you loan out half the value of the item and charge 20% or thereabouts interest. If I am a decent 12pt crafter I can probably make the money back over the next few weeks or months.
The problem is one of trust. You could be ripping them off and they probably don't feel SOE would see it their way if there was a problem. They have no legal recourse, no contract to point to etc that states their rights in the matter and your obligations. In a real pawn shop they have to hold the items for like 3 months before they can sell them, so you have the ability to recover the items. They have interest rates usually set in fixed amounts per amount of loan, not as a percentage. In game it would *feel* like you were selling your items for half their value and that probably kills the idea right then and there.
I think few players would take advantage of such a system really, although if you got a rep as being trustworthy it might work. As long as you had the massive amounts of cash required to run the operation, and made sure you didn't over expose yourself. As well, most items in the game wouldn't be worth pawning really. I would suggest you need enough Tailor to be able to make containers like backpacks so you can name them for the character and include details on amount and date in the name, then put all their pawned items inside that container and store it on a vendor (so you need Artisan 0030 at least) at 999999999999. I would think you would really need Merchant 3000 at the least to do a decent job of promoting yourself.
You could post contract details on a vendor at the same 999999999999 price so that people can read them.
It would all be much more entertaining if BHs could accept contracts on other players who defaulted on their loans of course
So, I am a crafter and I want to purchase a 12pt crafting suit from someone else in game at a cost of 18.5 million credits (yeah its a bit cheap but its an example, work with me). I have found one for sale but I only have 12 million to my name. So, I go to the pawnshop guy and I pawn my ADK, and my Barc (both of which I want to keep) for the remaining 6.5 million I need to buy the suit. I now owe the pawnshop 6.5 million, at probably 20% interest (which in this case would be 1.3 million per month). If I don't make the payments and eventually pay it all back, I lose both items and the Pawnshop has a new ADK and Barc For sale at probably 8m and 6m respectively. In general you loan out half the value of the item and charge 20% or thereabouts interest. If I am a decent 12pt crafter I can probably make the money back over the next few weeks or months.
The problem is one of trust. You could be ripping them off and they probably don't feel SOE would see it their way if there was a problem. They have no legal recourse, no contract to point to etc that states their rights in the matter and your obligations. In a real pawn shop they have to hold the items for like 3 months before they can sell them, so you have the ability to recover the items. They have interest rates usually set in fixed amounts per amount of loan, not as a percentage. In game it would *feel* like you were selling your items for half their value and that probably kills the idea right then and there.
I think few players would take advantage of such a system really, although if you got a rep as being trustworthy it might work. As long as you had the massive amounts of cash required to run the operation, and made sure you didn't over expose yourself. As well, most items in the game wouldn't be worth pawning really. I would suggest you need enough Tailor to be able to make containers like backpacks so you can name them for the character and include details on amount and date in the name, then put all their pawned items inside that container and store it on a vendor (so you need Artisan 0030 at least) at 999999999999. I would think you would really need Merchant 3000 at the least to do a decent job of promoting yourself.
You could post contract details on a vendor at the same 999999999999 price so that people can read them.
It would all be much more entertaining if BHs could accept contracts on other players who defaulted on their loans of course