Balancing/Revamping the taxi driver job.

[Commander_Cj]

Taxi is already a wonderful job, with many roleplay-ish opportunities and a great way to relax while driving and while having a conversation with a civilian.. Or most of the time as I remember, talking with someone trying to kidnap you. It is pure fun!

Anyways,  jokes aside. There is one flaw which is in my opinion, also considered the greatest reason why people doesn't like to get in taxi(s) is the very unrealistic price. I didn't quite test it to see how much money you pay per meter/time, but it is way too much.

For example, I remember driving a guy from MGS to airport and then from the airport back to MGS the way back, it almost costed him a hole grand, or probably 800$.. Considering the distance which is not pretty far. And the economy was not good back then and players would not get in even if you offered a discount.
 

Alright, after you have understood where is the problem, lets jump into the solution.

So, this job in our server is purely about having fun driving people and mainly helping them because they probably can't afford a car or don't have a passport/driving license yet or lost somewhere with no state/owned vehicles. Also getting paid in the same time.

Newcomers spawn with around 1500$ in their bank account. Yes it is not much, but at least 1500$ should be enough for them to order a taxi like 3-6 times and have at least 3 trips across all three islands. Yes it is still unrealistic but hey this is heavily related to the economy of our server.

And here my suggestion comes around, we make the cost of a taxi is 200$ (negotiable) regardless of the distance. And once the customer arrives to his location. The system automatically rewards the player with a 1000$ (the amount is negotiable but something around 1000$ or less). But to make it realistic, he needs to go to the nearest taxi station to take the rewards of his efforts, for example if he had driven 5 people, he would get 5000$ salary/reward whatever and an additional 200$ per customer which makes the total 6000$.

Yes, the reward is pretty high because the driver is 1st helping players which is good and 2nd look around you, who doesn't own a hypercar nowadays with enough gas to drive around the hole map 3 times.


Conclusion: There will be more customers, and the taxi job will be great again.

So the chances for a taxi driver to pickup a customer are low, but the reward is high. And here comes the skill of the taxi driver in advertising his service. It is a business after all!

Please keep in mind, that this idea has (probably) never been suggested before. Keep taxi missions suggestion aside this idea is purely different and not associated with that suggestion at all.

[badboy.dhia]

I didn't quite test it to see how much money you pay per meter/time, but it is way too much.
I remember driving a guy from MGS to airport and then from the airport back to MGS the way back, it almost costed him a hole grand, or probably 800$.. Considering the distance which is not pretty far. And the economy was not good back then and players would not get in even if you offered a discount.

Small clarification ! the taxi fare is not based on the KM driven or the time ! its based on the distance between the /acceptfare position and the passager exist taxi position !
so if u pickup someone from mgs and u drive all over the map and come back to mgs u will earn 1$ up to 5$ max
totally Unsupported and we dont need discuss it cuz u just suggested a new way of script abuse to cheat money haha xD
and there is no way admins/managers can handle it.
i"ll explain here Why/How for thoes who are interested.

Spoiler for Hiden:

2 players can do a simple RP and harvest the money
here is an exemple
player : /call taxi
driver : /call player
player : /pickup /l hi sir i need taxi at dpd /hangup
player : /l hi sir please take me to restaurant in mgs and wait outside
driver take the player to mgs (boom he earn 1000$) for driving from dpd to mgs
player /me steps out /buy pizza /me steps in /l now take me to electronic store at at mgs
driver take him  (and boom he earn another 1000$)
now take me to clothes store
and they do a Tour all around the map and end up with 10000000$ haha

so admins are going to check each RP has been done and rate it ?
also didnt u said that this will helps new players ? (they are perfect roleplayers yes  )

[Commander_Cj]

I can't reply to each section of your quote because it is a freaking mess. Anyways, my reply is down here.

I don't care about the reward people earn for driving, what I do care about is more customers which equals more fun for me and the people who like this job and consider it to be a legendary way to chat and have fun with people without someone getting suspected.

My idea is to lower the price for ordering a taxi and instead the government issues salaries to drivers, even if we invent a meter system just like how gas consumption/KM-Driven works it wouldn't be accurate enough, unless we make it so every 1meter equals about 0.20$ or less which works out as well.

As I have said, numbers are always negotiable (meaning changeable). After the economy update this new revamped job is considered little against how much the fireman/medic missions rewards.

fireman/medic mission already pays good i dont see any reason why u increase their payment.
instead of this
how about u find a solution for the DEAD JOBS ??

trucking/fishing/newspaper delivery/hooker/taxi
all this 5 jobs are TOTALY DEAD and no one even work them
why? cuz the LOW PAYMENT

Nothing personal. But for god sake, try to cooperate more and help if you are the guy trying to "find a solution for the DEAD JOBS".

[Joe_George]

Spoiler for Hiden:

how about we get rid of state cars except trucks, helis and boats. just saying

and yea. payment based on customer count is exploitable. idc how low it pays exploits are exploits 
i guess it should be occasionally like: driver receive <$> amount of payment at any taxi station every X minutes IF they had customer within the given time. regardless the amount of customers
or we construct a delivering system like trucking or newspaper job at taxi stations: "go to X location to pick up (fake) passengers and take them to Y location for <$> payment" (can only take 1 job at a time).
nonetheles, i think we need to increase ppl needs for taxi and honkers these jobs require interactions between players otherwise changing the jobs won't do much or we'll just end up making the jobs similar to fireman/medic or trucking, fishing, newspaper. 

Spoiler for Hiden:

how about we add a desire meter. if it reaches100% u have a chance to be denied when applying for jobs except honkers coz of ur horny expression. having s0x will reset the meter. 
and we reduce amount of state cars or even tax ppl for driving state cars to make them need taxi (ofc state car tax should be higher than a taxi trip cost  )

[Commander_Cj]

It is not an exploit, it just feels impractical. Meaning if people like to abuse it, then it wouldn't work out. I just realized that.

Although a meter system would perfectly fit, but it needs adjustments. For example, we need to make the price something similar to 0.20$ per meter. So if the trip is a Kilometer away, the cost is 200$. Which is a far distance.

But we can't insert such values into the script, can we?

Another way of doing it, which is good in my opinion, is that the taxi driver could negotiate with the customer about the price before entering the taxi. That could be done with a couple of CMDs similar to the ones in the trading system already. It is a business after all, right? Skillful driver would have very competitive prices to attract customers all over the city. This way has no exploits, and very easy to implement.

I guess I'll have to update the topic, soon.

[James Conway]

But we can't insert such values into the script, can we?

we can

Another way of doing it, which is good in my opinion, is that the taxi driver could negotiate with the customer about the price before entering the taxi. That could be done with a couple of CMDs similar to the ones in the trading system already. It is a business after all, right? Skillful driver would have very competitive prices to attract customers all over the city. This way has no exploits, and very easy to implement.

we used to have /setprice for this.

[Commander_Cj]

Then it is sorted out, we can choose between these two ways. Both methods feel pretty good, but the 0.20$/meter one feels like it is not rewarding enough. And the /setprice needs limits, like people can /setprice more than 700$, then it would be an "exploit".