| Tom Willard | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 03:44 pm 
Loans and negative cash in countries are a problem for many new players and are also unhelpful for others.
One of the main reasons for new players to leave Simcountry is the problem of loans and negative cash.
Many new players are unaware of their spending and they are surprised to log in and find out that they have a loan.
we receive many mails from new players who are asking us why they have a loan while they never asked for one and how come we are lending them money automatically.
We are now making a major change in the way this works:
1. Everyone who started playing Aug. 1 or later will not receive any loans.
Existing loans will not be touched but they will be paid back eventually and no new loans will be given.
2. When the cash of the country becomes limited, there are many limitations that are imposed on the account and purchasing becomes difficult. This is the current situation and it remains unchanged. More limitations might be imposed if the country remain with negative cash.
The score of the country and the game level will be reduced.
3. When a new player logs in, there will be an alert screen that shows the negative cash of a country and offers either to transfer cash from the player's account to the country, or to exchange several gold coins directly and have the money transferred directly to the country.
If no gold coins are available, it will offer a direct, small purchase of 20 gold coins.
Also, when making a large purchase in the game for which there is no money in the country, the same alert screen will appear.
The player can ignore this screen and continue with negative cash.
Longer playing players remain unaffected by this but, we are convinced that playing with negative cash should not occur and urge everyone to prevent such situation, exchange gold coins for cash and resolve the cash situation.
In the coming weeks, we will gradually move to make it more difficult to get into a negative cash situation and keep such a condition for a long time. |
| Unappreciated_Customer (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 03:58 pm
Quote:3. When a new player logs in, there will be an alert screen that shows the negative cash of a country and offers either to transfer cash from the player's account to the country, or to exchange several gold coins directly and have the money transferred directly to the country.
If no gold coins are available, it will offer a direct, small purchase of 20 gold coins.
I sure wish there was an alert like this setup when accessing the cash market to exchange cash for coins.
A feature offering to directly pay off the debt from the cash in the direct account, thus allowing us to avoid the painstaking journey of finding and repaying loans one by one. |
| Tom Willard | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 05:22 pm
The new feature will alert you to the negative cash of the country you log into. It will not exchange coins and move cash into all countries where cash is negative.
repaying all negative cash at once is a good idea and can be implemented but, many do not want it but rather move cash out from countries where they have a lot of cash and then move cash into cash negative countries.
I already added the idea to our list. |
| Tabula Rasa (White Giant) | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 06:21 pm
When you say "no new loans will be given", does this refer to all loans, or just automatic loans? Will these players still be able to request loans if they show enough understanding of the game to do so?
Also, how, if at all, will this affect enterprises with loans? |
| Unappreciated_Customer (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 06:41 pm
Thanks for considering that idea Tom. |
| Green Paws (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 07:19 pm
Good progress |
| SuperSoldierRCP (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 07:27 pm
Agreed this would go a long way to building a player base.
My only question is how do we get rid of people who don't play. What if they start and finish right away. These features ensure they will hang around with a + balance even though they don't play.
Tommi
Can something be added to where if a free nations doesn't log in within 1month then its considered abandoned? After 1month of inactivity its clear that they have stopped playing. |
| Unappreciated_Customer (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 07:49 pm
We get rid of free players by letting w3c decide how to deal with it. Not sure what the motivation is to 'get rid' of anyone. |
| Tom Willard | Monday, August 29, 2011 - 09:34 pm
Manual loan requests will remain unchanged for now.
the loan limit will be reduced from 8T to 7T.
unused, abandoned accounts are being closed and the countries are recycled into C3 countries.
this is taking place all the time or otherwise there would be no countries free for new players.
we should not go into a discussion about the number of days without activity before a reset is triggered.
we have enough free countries now and we also wait long enough. we never had any complains from anyone who came back to find out that the country is gone.
The feature will be installed tomorrow, Aug. 30. |
| Quetzalcoatl (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 05:14 am
Tom loans should not be limited to 7T or any other minimum or max, instead they should me based on 250% of the total income and expense of a country. For one of my countries it has income of 3.5 T a year and expense of 2.5 T. Thus my loan limit should be 15T. Bigger econs should get higher loan limits and smaller econs should get smaller loan limits just like in real world econs. Why should panama be able to borrow 7T with its economys size and the US only be able to borrow 7T. If you base it on a percentage of 250-350% of total income and expenses minus loan cost it would make it more realistic. |
| Gothamloki (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 05:16 am
That makes a lot of sense, Q. |
| Quetzalcoatl (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 05:18 am
Also for those who have reached game level 4 or higher and take out large loans, the country should not have automatic functions kick in, debt is not a bad thing, having a national debt is a great thing if you know how to use it. |
| Quetzalcoatl (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 05:20 am
Thanks Goth, having a BA in finance and Poly sci does help. |
| ZentrinoRisen (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 06:20 am
I agree with Q. There are many reasons one may run a debt at some points and it should realistically be based on that country's ability to handle that debt load. |
| jadehippo (Kebir Blue) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 10:24 pm
This is another reason for "Cost of financial services" to be removed from the game. As this will make it harder to give out loan, players will have a difficult time keeping below the cash level needed to avoid the cost. Since players need large amounts of net cash to achieve high game levels, if they cannot give out loans, players are forced to waste cash to this expense. |
| NiAi (Fearless Blue) | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 10:41 pm
I concur with jadehippo's statement. |
| Tom Willard | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 11:04 pm
Cost of financial services was already reduced and will be reduced further and disappear. |
| ZentrinoRisen (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 04:07 am
Tom: Any comments regarding Q's proposal? As an example, my main makes 200-250B per game month. That is 2-3T per year. It has production of close to 1.3T per game month or 15T per year.
Right now, I have about 2.5T in debt because I have been ramping up purchases in some areas. I am not able to trade products from my main to other countries though because of my debt! That debt is so small compared to my country's production and profits that it should not stop me form doing anything.
Thoughts? |
| Tom Willard (Kebir Blue) | Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 08:57 am
Loans are not about to disappear.
We used to have a limit of 50T or more and there were always players who needed more.
Now, 1T is much more than it used to be and the loan limit should be lower.
We see players who spend to the limit and then they seem to be able to live without growing loans.
We will decrease the max loans but will not eliminate them for premium players.
7T in loans can be paid back with 40 GCs. This is fact already too much. 15T would be far too high. |
