Valid immigration between States?

[Serifis]

Hello there,

From the first time when I join SA:MP after IV, I have this question,
Why Argonath's States (VC/SA/IV/V) do not have a similar or connected economy?

Back then when I asked few moderators/admins at IV they told me that is hard to change scripts e.t.c.,
so is unable to do it and I can understand that, States was active and this would be a mess at the current time.
If I can recall correctly one of them told me that is able to be done by Community Leaders assist but still was
just his opinion and I never found a solution on this.
But now...if I'm not wrong 3 of 4 States are under re-construction and maybe is a nice timing to make the immigration valid.

Notes :

The most of us, we have accounts on all servers.
Immigration will apply only if you gonna keep the same character to the new server.
Cash money will be able to transfer between the servers, no drugs / properties / vehicles.

Details :

Why a player may need this?
Player X lets say does a year in one of the servers to build his RP life, immigration will help him to move and expand his life without
be force to start from zero...from totally zero point learning new cmds / new jobs / new everything.  With a valid immigration this will
reduce his time to adapt into the new server since he will have already some cash to spend there and slowly learn the new stuff.

Will activity be better after that?
Could be a boost for all servers activity since people will be able to react right away than 'waste' some time to learn how to make money
and remake the same RP life. Plus if your base server is dead, you can jump to the other who is active at that time.

What about "dirty" money?
L.E.O.s from all server will be able to share infos and do their job when need it, the fact that you grow weed at VC and send the money
at IV doesn't mean you made them clean, you will have a lot of chances to get busted from IV police / FBI etc.

Example : VC police has an open case for player X for some amount of growing weed, his "bank" account will be open and if they found
the same amount of money transferred to IV server then, IV police or FBI will be able to get him and the money as well.

Will be abused?
To avoid abuse and even more to make moderators (who ever will deal with this) work easiest, immigration may can have a limited use, maybe 1 per month or so...

How it will work?
Could be via a forum topic, players will fill a form with details about their character, money amount and what ever.
Can be used as evidence if court will request to open someone's "bank" account for L.E.O.s

Perhaps I may missing some specific details between the servers and this idea is unable to be done at all...thats why I explain my thoughts as much as I could
and I would like to hear what is your opinion about it. Maybe we can find a way to work out this idea somehow at the end.
Of course the last words are from Community Leaders and scripters since they are gonna handle that by any mean.

Personally I'm not active at VC/SA due to newbie tag (if I can say it like that), I don't have time to spend in order to re-build something that I have already somewhere else.
Some may say "do not be active then" and I accept that, that's why I'm not but I would love to be without starting all over again.

I will close with a silly comment, how we say United States of Argonath aka U.S.A. while the States are not unite?   

Thanks for your time.

[Badandy]

Is this possible? Probably but I would say it's not practical, especially now.

We have three different servers for three different games. Each game gives different possibilities of what can be done. The other issue is, the servers may be similar to each other but they aren't. Each server has been made with different ideas over the years. To achieve what you suggest is that we would have to have pretty close systems to make it work well. The other issue is balancing. To balance scripted content, it would require alot of communication between the developers on all the servers. This could lead to alot of time wasted since all the servers need to agree and that could be difficult. This also would handicap the more advanced server, VMP to do neat things that may not be possible on the other servers in favor of balancing.

Balancing is the biggest issue in my opinion since if one server isn't balanced, it throws the overall economy out of wack. The other issue is programming it. Each of these mods use a different language and API to create the server. You wouldn't be able to copy and paste code but reimplement the code in the language of the other servers.

It's a neat idea but practically, I can never see happening. To me, each of the servers are independent from each other and are considered their own experience. Though in lore, they are connected. So we can tell the story of the United States of Argonath but in practicality, they are their own entities.

[Serifis]

Is this possible? Probably but I would say it's not practical, especially now....

I can see your points and was the same reasons that I kept the idea for myself but I feel we could find a formula to make this work out.
We are not only you and me, we are community someone will find the balance soon or later.
Maybe we may need someone with economical degree or something to do the calculations, dunno...Personally I know to count up to 10 

About the scripts, I don't see any need for changes. Each server will do what it likes and will on the players where to spent their lifes.
Maybe the prices of the items should may change in order to have the balance but still we may can avoid that too.
That's why I suggest only cash transfer and not items, properties, vehicles.

Ex: I have 1.000ARD from VC and the exchange is 500ARD to SA plus the taxes which why not to be the payments for Governments
and the money that I will withdraw at SA will be 400ARD. at the end. Numbers are just for the example.

Even in real life, Countries have different laws / payments / equality and much more but still we are able to exchange
lets say from Euros to Dollars, even more the open market allows us to have job outside of our motherland.

I know will be a headache at the start or until get the correct balanced system to convert our ARD but I believe it's worth the try.

Slowly we gonna be one...

[Lonewolf]

The money exchange can already be done, but through players who play on both servers on which you want to do the transfer. I'm not so sure about it being supported by the server's staff...

[Kowalski.]

I remember initiating a discussion about this a couple of years back. If I remember correctly, VC:MP HQ had no problems with it, however, they wouldn't do any admin-supervised exchanges or whatnot. This stance may have changed, or I may be incorrect, so ask VC:MP HQ anyway.


Economic Sync:

If we're talking synchronizing the economies, then that would likely be quite a ludicrous process. I wouldn't agree to implementation on a script level.

Badandy's reply is spot-on.

Is this possible? Probably but I would say it's not practical, especially now.

We have three different servers for three different games. Each game gives different possibilities of what can be done. The other issue is, the servers may be similar to each other but they aren't. Each server has been made with different ideas over the years. To achieve what you suggest is that we would have to have pretty close systems to make it work well. The other issue is balancing. To balance scripted content, it would require alot of communication between the developers on all the servers. This could lead to alot of time wasted since all the servers need to agree and that could be difficult. This also would handicap the more advanced server, VMP to do neat things that may not be possible on the other servers in favor of balancing.

Balancing is the biggest issue in my opinion since if one server isn't balanced, it throws the overall economy out of wack. The other issue is programming it. Each of these mods use a different language and API to create the server. You wouldn't be able to copy and paste code but reimplement the code in the language of the other servers.

It's a neat idea but practically, I can never see happening. To me, each of the servers are independent from each other and are considered their own experience. Though in lore, they are connected. So we can tell the story of the United States of Argonath but in practicality, they are their own entities.

Sounds like it'd be too much to ask from any of the Argonath dev teams.


Solution:

What would I propose as a solution?

Personally, I see no issue with exchanging currency between Argonath servers, so long as the HQs agree to it.

I would consider certain admin-supervised exchanges to prevent scams, but that's up to HQ. At this point in time, all this can be achieved on a player-to-player (and possibly even roleplay) level. If I remember correctly, Gvardia used to facilitate currency exchange between SA:MP and VC:MP.

Work it out amongst yourselves and ensure HQ are aware of it. If that's done, you should be cool. :P

[Serifis]

The money exchange can already be done, but through players who play on both servers on which you want to do the transfer. I'm not so sure about it being supported by the server's staff...

Yeah true can be done with this way but if we had a based price for each server would be safest to avoid over pricing.

I remember initiating a discussion about this a couple of years back. If I remember correctly, VC:MP HQ had no problems with it, however, they wouldn't do any admin-supervised exchanges or whatnot. This stance may have changed, or I may be incorrect, so ask VC:MP HQ anyway.

Many ideas when they suggested was turned down but after some time they came back and got accepted...why not this one right?
" Past had its own details and present has its own, future has unknown. " (RM 2021  )

Economic Sync:

If we're talking synchronizing the economies, then that would likely be quite a ludicrous process. I wouldn't agree to implementation on a script level.
Sounds like it'd be too much to ask from any of the Argonath dev teams.

Will be for sure and thats why we may look a way away from scripts, from some search on google I found this :
*What makes a country money valuable?
The value of currency is most commonly determined by the demand for it. ... Foreign Exchange Reserves – the amount of currency held by foreign governments.
When a foreign government holds more currency, the lower the supply of that currency. In the U.S., this makes dollars more valuable.*

Don't know if its helps but could be a start point.

Solution:

What would I propose as a solution?

Personally, I see no issue with exchanging currency between Argonath servers, so long as the HQs agree to it.

I would consider certain admin-supervised exchanges to prevent scams, but that's up to HQ. At this point in time, all this can be achieved on a player-to-player (and possibly even roleplay) level. If I remember correctly, Gvardia used to facilitate currency exchange between SA:MP and VC:MP.

Work it out amongst yourselves and ensure HQ are aware of it. If that's done, you should be cool. :P

Like Aky said, yeah player-to-player will work out if both sides agree to a price and such, I had no idea about Gvardia which is cool means people had already this idea on their minds.
Of course we are talking about a reasonable RP action other wise it may be prohibited by the rule of selling items for an other currency. (I cant find the topic but I feel the rule still exist.)
That's why I'm talking about an official prices or a way to do the exchange in order to avoid scams or any other kind of problems.

[Badandy]

I personally would be against any type of currency exchange between servers. To make this work properly would need to know how inflated each currency is in each server. If this is done wrong at any step, it could lead to mass inflation in one server or all the servers depending on how the economies are and who approves a currency exchange. I'm also wondering if there is any demand for this kind of feature. I'm unsure about that but I know I won't be looking at this for the SAMP server or recommend it for any server. I don't believe the servers have to be connected and I don't think they should ever be connected.

[Fuzzie]

I personally would be against any type of currency exchange between servers. To make this work properly would need to know how inflated each currency is in each server. If this is done wrong at any step, it could lead to mass inflation in one server or all the servers depending on how the economies are and who approves a currency exchange. I'm also wondering if there is any demand for this kind of feature. I'm unsure about that but I know I won't be looking at this for the SAMP server or recommend it for any server. I don't believe the servers have to be connected and I don't think they should ever be connected.

As a developer for the VC:MP division, I'm also against this for these same reasons. I'd rather have our division have creative freedom over how we want our economy and balance to be instead of having to discuss with three other divisions before being able to go ahead with a decision. And likewise, since I mostly play on VC:MP and have only on a few occasion visited SA:MP, I wouldn't want to have to be involved in the other division's development decisions when I don't know what's going on there. Their developers would be the ones who would (and should) know what's best for their server, not me. It's also going to be a nightmare of a task to figure out how to synchronise four different GTA games from four different eras with four different technical capabilities and four different multiplayer mods.

tl;dr, no.

[Sawyer]

As far as I know, trading goods or cash exchange within Argonath servers is not against any server rule.

If it cant be scripted, just spread the word around on a said server and it's only going to be a matter of time until someone has an extra dollar to trade on the other platform you are looking for.

[Kostas]

The biggest problem is that each server has different value for things. For example if you can make like 100k per hour on SAMP with drugs, you could make only 10k per hour on VMP with drugs. Meaning 100k on SAMP has actually less value than on VMP... This is a bad and made up example, but you get the point.

Plus imagine if people played certain game only to grow money and spend on another game... it would all get fucked up...

[Sawyer]

The biggest problem is that each server has different value for things. For example if you can make like 100k per hour on SAMP with drugs, you could make only 10k per hour on VMP with drugs. Meaning 100k on SAMP has actually less value than on VMP... This is a bad and made up example, but you get the point.

True, spot on. It has to come down to player-to-player agreement on addressing the value of the respected economies.

This whole subject was discussed in the past multiple times and while I do support the idea, scripters always considered this to be needless trouble, since after all players can discuss the terms about an exchange on their own; the server rules do not restrict them from doing so.

[Kessu]

Players are free to figure out exchange ratios of currency between Argonath servers.

HQ in VC:MP atleast will not interfere and if you get scammed, tough luck. We will not take any action about it. We will also not help you figure out a ratio with what you should exchange currencies.


As for idea itself, it's simply going to be a no.

This idea has been discussed in the past and it was considered, but ultimately it was decided against for the reasons already stated by the developers of two different servers.

Each server has it's own style, goals and economy and they can not be made to work 1:1 with each others. Also making a shared database for such things would be a hassle I'm not willing to go through.

[Serifis]

Wonderful, I read your replies and thanks for spending some time to explain further "why not". I do respect them and I will not continue the subject from that point.
The conclusion seems to be * Players are free to figure out exchange ratios of currency between Argonath servers. *

Before lock this topic may I ask :

HQ in VC:MP atleast will not interfere and if you get scammed, tough luck. We will not take any action about it.

As long both sides figure out the ratios and the transaction would be completed, we are not talking about scam. It's up to each one to take the deal or not.
But if the transaction would never be completed you gonna still stay away or as long we are talking about a RP contract it can be solved via sue him at the Court?

Ex. I make a deal with PlayerX to give him 10k in IV and he would return me 5k in VC. He takes the money and never returns them on the other server.

[Kessu]

Ex. I make a deal with PlayerX to give him 10k in IV and he would return me 5k in VC. He takes the money and never returns them on the other server.

Administratively VC:MP does not prohibit scamming in any way (with exception of misleading a truly new player with falsefied information). You can try courts in the game you got scammed in.

So for example if you do give SA:MP money to receive VC:MP money, but the other party does not fulfill their end of the deal - you may have a case depending on how SA:MP laws dictate it.

If the deal was done in VC:MP, you can use VC:MP courts if the constitution covers it.

But administratively, and I emphasize this, we (VC:MP) will not take any action regarding cross-server currency exchange. We consider that a RP matter.

[Serifis]

Administratively VC:MP does ...
...We consider that a RP matter.

Fair enough for me as long it can not be done with an other way, is the next best thing.

P.S. To Moderators :
Please you can lock this topic.