Here's a message that, as a consequence of my email troubles, never successfully sent. Although the immediate context is no longer applicable, the general principles still are, so I thought I'd resend it now that my email is working a bit better than it was.
-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Alex Smith <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Clearing up the game state Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:15:43 +0100 > On Thu, 2017-09-07 at 07:52 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > It doesn't take 30 days due to a bug. > > > > To use the bug, deregister, and re-register without using the words > > "I register" or "I become a player", or other action verbs rather, > > re-register by passive language indicating "reasonably clearly and > > reasonably unambiguously that e intends to become a player at that > > time." > > > > I'd think about doing so as a protest; the difficulty towards casual > > player economic participation has been pointed out and so far inh > > conversations, the designers of the system either aren't seeing the > > great urgency to fix it, or think it's a feature. > > One of the big problems with a fledgling economy like this is that it's > really disruptable by scams. > > We always used to have something of a separation between scam-based and > economic gameplay. At some points in time, if a player needed to > impinge on the legitimate economy in order to pull off a scam, we put > the economy back later via proposal or via action of the scamsters > directly. At other points, we even enshrined ways of doing this into > the rules; for a while we had a "skunk" rule (in which if a scam gained > a win via damaging the economic gamestate, a "skunk" could be declared, > which reverse the effects of the scam other than the win itself), and > I'm a proponent of "scam release valves" which are rules that make it > possible to convert scams into wins without damaging the gamestate. (We > have one at the moment - Win by Apathy - and it actually did its job > recently.) > > In turn, this means that scamming an economic system before it's fully > started up is just a mean and arbitrary thing to do. You don't actually > get an advantage, because the assets that you scammed only have value > insofar as people recognise the system as functioning; if you damage > the economy to the point it doesn't work, it's just going to be fixed > by proposal (or outright replacement of the economy), so you don't get > a long-term advantage. This is why when I see scams in a new economic > system, I typically hold onto them until I can use them for an > immediate win (and in that case, the win typically doesn't hurt any > player's economic standings other than typically my own). > > Note that this post is mostly talking about scams in Agora's rules or > the like. If someone makes a poorly-thought-out contract or agreement > dealing with the economy and I take advantage of it, I consider that to > be economic behaviour rather than a scam. (The notable difference here > is that it hurts only the person who made the mistake, rather than > everyone.) > > Anyway, the best course of action is probably to run the economy as a > "trial run" with no real rules effect, until we get it working. That's > pretty much what AP does at the moment; it allows you to ignore the > economy if you don't like it or if it isn't working. The problem is, it > also allows you to participate in the economy and also participate in > the game without spending Shinies, which is a problem. > > Incidentally, if we want to keep our Shiny cap, I'd be in favour of a > regular tax on Shiny holdings (to get them out of the hands of inactive > players and, if it's a percentage tax, to help equalize the situation > if a player becomes richer than others). We could use the extra income > to give a basic income to players with lower Shiny holdings. -- ais523
