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Corpshare Stock Market
A way to have a stock market that doesn't break game

We have toyed with and iterated on the idea of a stock market for a long time. The problem is that we can't just have a real market, because then it could be completely gamed, resulting in someone making infinite money.

However, a stock market is still useful in multiple cases. I'm going to outline the general plan for the Corpshare Stock Market below. This is JUST THE PLAN. We haven't implemented all of this and it is not, at the time of this post, available in character other than stock tickers which will SHOW the price of a stock. There is no way to currently purchase/sell CorpShares.

Goals

The goals of the system are straight forward:

- Create a game within the game that allows corporate players to have a reason to plot and plan together or against each other with a monetary prize at the end

- Make the system resilient to abuse

- Integrate the system with many aspects of corporate culture (stock tickets everywhere, SIC announcements, share price being a reflection of corporate standing)

- Add a new layer to corporate play that opens up new avenues for recurring RP and plots

- Allow the plots that GMs or players run to have a visible effect on the game world and on people in the game (those invested in stock trading).

Share Price Fluctuation

The share price of a corp will fluctuate based on in game systems to a degree. These changes will be similar to real world changes one might see in stock prices. Buying stock may cause it to go up while mass sell offs will cause it to go down. In general, the system will determine the overall trends in a corporation's share price, with inputs from the players and GMs having an additional effect on the share price. This means there will always be SOME fluctuations in share price that are not attributed to player or GM interactions, and are just the system determining NLM should go down a bit while VS should go up a bit, on top of any other IC inputs.

RP Opportunities

Imagine some of these scenarios taking place across the corporate landscape and the ramifications they might have on all aspects of corporate interactions (involving corpsec, affecting share price, creating rp):

- A player hires a mixer to kidnap a high ranking exec for a rival corp then makes sure that information is leaked

- A player hires someone to molotov the office of a corp

- A player leaks a new product launch to someone in another corp for a price

- Players soliciting info on corp dealings from each other

- Share price being a badge of honor/dishonor among corpies

- Players within a corp working together to do things that will raise their share prices

GMs leaking stock tips to players at various corps based on plots, friendliness w/ NPCs, charisma, etc. These tips might be legit, or they might be fake.

- Players leaking stock tips to purposefully manipulate the market 'NLM has a new show coming out soon that is testing really well' even though NLM does not.

- This could even be integrated with the $chatter system so people can purposefully push out fake or legit stock tips to $chatter, similar to what we discussed with the ability to spread rumors through bartenders

- A player/group of players setting up a stock tip network where you can get stock tips from someone who understands the market really well, or who is really well connected.

- Players paying attention to news articles, and goings on around the city as they could have an impact on share prices

- WJF being bribed to fuck with people/corps

- WCS being bribed to fuck with people/corps

Things that might affect share price

- Corporate acquisitions

- Corporate mergers

- New Products / Releases

- Kidnappings

- Terrorist Attacks

- World Events

- Data Leaks

- Espionage

- Theft

- Buying shares

- Selling shares

- Hiring

- Firing

- Good / Bad PR

GM Controls

The GMs (non-SGM) will have mechanisms to affect the stock price of a corporation. This will be similar to how faction rankings work, but more obfuscated. Instead of choosing to raise the share price by a specific amount, they will choose an event that has happened (data leak! kidnapping! terrorist attack! new product release!) which will then have an affect on the share price. This system has the potential to be integrated with $chatter as well as Grid 3.0 news posts, so that auto-generated news articles and chatter entries can be pushed out.

Events

We will create a command that allows GMs to create new events so the system can be expanded dynamically. This may involve general events that apply to all corps and specific events that apply only to a specific corp.

There will be system events which are automatically triggered by the system to simulate real world market activity (good pr, bad pr, new product release, product failure, recalls, etc).

Then there are GM events which can be in response to plots (terrorist attack, bad PR, kidnapping), or player actions (really popular NLM tv show, corporate defection, etc).

Stock Tips

We will implement a system in which $chatter has stock tips available through specific NPCs behind a money or charisma gate of some sort.

We will also provide a system where by GMs can provide stock tips to players through RP. Of course, both these systems will have some 'fake' stuff in them too.

YOU CANT MAKE MONEY OFF THIS DIRECTLY

To solve the problem of making money directly off the market, we aren't building this out as a system you can profit from directly and infinitely. Instead, corporate employees have the potential to get bonuses based on how well they do playing the corpshare market.

Quarterly Bonuses

Each quarter, before the quarterly reset, a ranked list of the most profitable CorpShare accounts will be created on a per corp basis. Quarterly bonuses will be paid out based on the rankings. These are STATIC bonuses, for example 50k (just an example, amount may change) for the TOP earner at each corp, 25k for the second best, 10k for third, 5k for 4th, etc. We can tweak these numbers so they are appealing to the people playing.

Quarterly Reset

Each quarter the value in each CorpShare account, including any owned shares, is zeroed out. Allowing for a fresh start to the quarter, with everyone on the same page.

Expected Progression / Play Style

There will be many different types of people 'playing' the market, including NPCs, who will automatically make trades with varying degrees of success / skill. The is an OPT IN system. No one working at a corporation will HAVE to take part. There is no penalty for doing nothing. In fact, you could do nothing and still win, if everyone else sucks really bad and simply holding on to your original shares nets the biggest gain.

Aggressive Traders

These traders will take their CorpShares and sell them right away, turning their shares liquid so they can buy shares in other corporations that they hope will rise in value so they can sell those and buy more shares in other corporations. They will make connections at other corporations and trade information back and forth in hopes of climbing the rankings. They may even pay people flash for this info, or, pay folks to take actions that may negatively or positively affect the share price of a specific corporation, so they can profit.

Non-Traders

These people will not interact with the system much if at all. They will just leave their CorpShares untouched. That doesn't mean they can't win or profit though. Some aggressive traders are going to lose their shirts in this system and that means that the non-traders and NPCs will be in the running for winning some bonuses each quarter. Non-Traders can focus on doing things that increase their corporations standing, so their own share prices go up.

Fairness

Because any corp employee can own shares in any corp, it reduces the risk of people claiming unfairness when it comes to GM run plots that affect share prices. Just because NLM stock goes down does not mean every NLM employee is punished. Those in the know at NLM may have sold their shares before the event took place.

Only for Corpies?

This system will only be available to CORPORATE employees. Anyone else looking to get involved will have to get involved as someone who trades tips, or helps make changes in stock prices happen for a profit.

Next Steps

The corpshare market has been created, as have corpshare events, and stock tickers. The market is currently running and share prices will begin to change over time. I won't go into a ton of the details about how the system works. Imagine it works somewhat similar to a real stock market, only the events are 'scripted' to an extent by the system, with additional events added in by the GMs based on plots / players actions.

The next step is to create the corpshare terminals that allow for selling/trading by corporate employees. This will be coming in the next couple of weeks / months as I hash out that part of the system.

Following that will be $chatter integrations.

I welcome feedback/thoughts/questions.

-- S

This seems like a good opportunity to insert some similar features to the current ganger trading system that would impact corporate faction standing and potentially CorpShares.

For Example...

Certain $Tourist NPC's spawn at HQ's or route through HQ's. Maybe they work there and carry McGuffin Paydata...preferably on an E-Note or Docupad. Maybe said McGuffin lives in a limo parked outside Soma but makes a regular Friday night drive to the Red Canary for three hours like clockwork.

I think if E-Note/Docupad McGuffin's can be inserted and ONLY redeemed by Corpie's but generally require a mixer or subversive skillset to get and play into the weekly cap.

* It will incentivize corpie's to utilize mixers to get dirt and collect bonus chyen.

* It will incentivize mixer's to fuck with corpie's and otherwise take risks topside for extra non-capped chyen.

* Create a solid decker revenue stream for cowboys and possibly even convert/expand the current iteration of decker chatter into automated e-note based cracking.

Thoughts?

Missing Info:

Each corp will grant its employees a set of corpshares each quarter. This will be the same across all corps (at least that is the current plan). Meaning everyone will start at the same spot as everyone else.

This will open up a part of gameplay which everyone expects should be operating all the time but only a few people only infrequently ever experience: Corporate intrigue and all the trappings that go with it.

People have needed way more incentive than currently exists to take very many of the possible actions listed in Slither's post, yet that post is practically the answer to "what's possible/expected/themely in the Corpie side of the game". All of it is possible/expected/themely but very little of it ever happens.

Bravo.

Excited to see this, I hope many citizens die for the sake of the shareholders.
*screams*

This is great. ♡

*screams*

This is great. ♡

This will make the game world feel so so much bigger topside. Fucking up will now carry very real consequences and wins will feel much bigger. It'll be a great way to get the admin feedback I know I want in a way that's ic.

Could we possibly get the Ticker object as furniture?!
As furniture?... ;)

Explain your idea to me. I am trying to imagine it.

Similar to HoloCals, whiteboards, or something of the like?

Having a scrolling Stock Ticker (like at the bank) at home or in your office would be such an amazingly corpie piece of furniture.

As buyable furniture in stores, I should note.
This is great and has so much potential to enrich the game world.

I think it would be cool if there were incentives for preventing some of the events. For example, kidnapping. If a Corp attempts a kidnapping and fails, the "defending" Corp could gain a benefit. Also, the failing Corp should suffer negative consequences.

There are probably a few others that could leverage a similar dynamic, like stealing R&D.

For that mechanic to work, there has to be some way to notify CorpSec that those assets are vulnerable. Message via encrypted SIC, Gridmail, etc.

Along that line of thought, there should be a time limit. Maybe a week.

Also, see my previous Idea about the "protect" verb.

I really like this! Also, HolyChrome's idea of a ticker that we can have in a pad would be great, and Hek's idea about being able to prevent certain of the events would be great. Having Corporate characters acting as investment bankers or financial advisers on the side brings a whole new racket for people to exploit and RP. Really pleased with the addition, and am excited to see how it evolves.
The tickers are already effectively furniture style objects just lacking the ability to install them. Maybe I will update that entire class of objects to support being installed.
No, no home tickers.

Make people move to the stock exchange location, so that they get out of their cubes.

Need a runner to go to the bank and check the tickers for me. 500c payout.
I'd love for all the tickers to stay on Gold, yeah.
I see no reason to not have home tickers. All this info will be available in real time on the grid as well. But the actual tickers that are out in the world and not player owned will be on Gold. I think that makes sense.
This is a fantastic idea that could go a long ways to making topside life more appealing.
It makes sense to have it available freely, but I was just thinking it'd be nice to get people out on Gold. Selfishly want Gold to be much busier :P
Will the trade skill factor into how a player can interact with this system at all?
@Mong

From my understanding of all this, no -- no one interacts with the market itself, except for staff, via manual adjustments based on IC events, and what sound like some automated scripted events that will happen as well.

The value / money people can make are the corporate employees of the corps who receive corpshares as bonuses, their incentive is to take part in things that drive up their corp's corpshare values, while also driving down rival corps' corpshare values.

Maybe we can get an NPC or two in the bank and other financially places who give chatter based on Trading levels compared to simply Charisma? Not just clues and hints on the "general" chatter network?
Awesome idea Mong, would love to see some trading-based stock "brokers", maybe they can use their skills to get some vague predictions about how the stocks may fluctuate, and some way to manage portfolios?
Do the tickers really have to read out to 15 or more significant digits of precision?

I think three places to the right of the decimal point would be plenty.

It remains to be seen how many points of precision will be needed. I don't want to round, because when we start trading those digits may be significant when selling or buying 10000 shares of something.
Suggestion: round to 2 digits when displaying, but always keep track of the full float in terms of the actual share price numbers you store / do math on.
Is this fully implemented yet? I see the tickers but don't know if they're being altered by IC events.
@Rhicora I think that might result in people getting different results than they calculated on their end and submitting bugs. We already get a regular bug submission or xhelp about the scientific notation used for very small numbers when you have like 0.000000001UE remaining.

@villa No, it is not fully implemented yet. It's a WIP for the time being as I've had to shift focus to other areas of the game that needed my attention. I'll shift back when time allows.

@Slither Avoiding unnecessary @bugs is exactly why I think it's a good suggestion for experience points too.

Whenever displaying it, floor it to whatever number of places players might reasonably work with (an actual 1.05000000001 UE shows as "1.05 UE"), so as not to confuse players. But keep track of the real number as a long float behind the scenes to make sure you are calculating things right. If that makes sense!

The corpshare market is open for business, find out more ICly.
After three quarters of the corpshare market, I've got feedback and a pretty bold idea:

I think it should undergo significant changes.

Right now the major contributing factor to using and enjoying the corpshare market isn't roleplay, isn't in-depth decisions, isn't in-game events: it's time. Whoever has the most time to play the game benefits the most. Because the quarter is three months long, it feels like it's incredibly difficult for people coming in past the first few weeks (and this may be generous) to ever have the chance to catch up or have a real shot at winning any of the prizes. So a three month period can be demoralizing and feels like it doesn't incentivize new corporate characters who come in mid-quarter to do anything but learn the system and try the next quarter.

The prizes on initial look feel generous and appropriate. However, you factor in the three month quarters and I feel it doesn't encourage people to spend chyen to sabotage other corpshare holders or corporations, because they aren't going to see the reward for it and refill their pockets of the chyen they spent until long after the fact. And because of how the system currently runs, their attempts to impact the corpshare with plot can generally be easily negated by people who have the most time to play.

I feel the corpshare market has the chance to be dynamic and impactful to corporate roleplay, a secondary background story to every day life and intracorporate public relation wars and market fighting. But for that to happen I feel a few solid pillars need to always remain:

1. Characters (players) need to feel like they have a chance, even if they start late.

2. The reward should be worth the effort to continually actively try to sabotage competing corporation.

3. The playing field needs to be evened in terms of time able to play shouldn't be the biggest contributing factor to having a real shot at winning.

So here are my suggestions for change to try to promote a more engaging corpshare experience with opportunities for everyone:

1. Cut the quarters down from three months to six weeks.

2. Keep the prize amount equivalent the same for six weeks as it was for three months, which encourages people to sink in chyen to run campaigns against competing corporations, even if they aren't backed by their corporation for their actions.

And my biggest change:

3. Put a lockout system on choosing corpshares. You either have one (1) 24-hour period per week to make your corpshare choices or two (2) 12 hour periods per week. Reset every Friday like other systems in the game. You can choose what day or periods, but once they are chosen you can't back out and you can't make any choices again once that time period is up until the week resets.

For me this is a system the fosters competition between everyone, not just those (like me) who can play heavy hours every day. A system that promotes knowing plots going on and what corporations might be hit. A system that will see more corporate vs corporate attempts to sabotage because characters can plan ahead of time to buy 100 of Big Bob's Bibs stock because in two days time Big Bob's Bibs is going to have a great PR campaign or to screw over Mighty Mae's Mowers' shareholders because in three days there's going to be an explosion in the shop.

And if you've already locked in your choices for the week, you can't just go right as it is happening and change out your stocks to avoid the fallout.

I had planned for this to be more comprehensive in the months leading up to my review, but I'm still not at my best so this is what I've got.

I honestly believe this would promote more corpshare play and planning between corporate players rather than dominating because of having more time to play than others.

Thanks.

CorpShare isn't meant to be a way to make money. It's a way to create RP. It's a reason to dislike other corps or plot against them. The money is just a carrot in a capitalistic themed world to add a bit of additional serotonin if you win.

The markets move slow. Changes happen over days, not hours. You don't need to be around all the time to get info and play the markets. And again, that isn't the point of the system. It's here to provide a backdrop for RP. Bragging rights to the corp with the highest stock. And it resets every three months so that the playing field is level. There is no requirement to get in and play if you don't want to.

The admin review player generated events/actions on a weekly basis and use them to generate market events that have positive and negative effects.

I'm interested to hear more about if people think:

1. We should reduce the cycle time to 6 weeks (and why)

2. If we should make it possible to only buy/sell a couple of times a week.

Interesting points have been raised about people monitoring and basically doing microtransactions to profit. Really, the profit should come from getting insider info or knowing that something big is going down because you've done some sabotage or you know insider info about your own corp (IE: new drug coming out or new juicy vee showing premiering)

Fully agree that this should be designed around the winners being the people with paydata. I suspect trading windows will be bad for encouraging event-based / insider trading, because timing might matter substantially there.

I'm a well-connected agent at NLM, and I'm running a plot to retrieve some competitor tech. My contact the mixer was able to take possession of the SK McGuffin through violence. Everybody at work thinks they're going to give it to me and SK's going to scream with rage. I spread this rumor relentlessly, that we're about to learn the secrets of this breakthrough artistry chrome. My coworkers are all loading up on NLM corpshares.

At the last second, I instruct my contact to sell it on the side to Saedor instead. I blame the filthy treacherous mixers, but secretly I knew this was going to happen. I bought SK as soon as the item was secured. I laugh maniacally and light a cigar.

This player should be rewarded for manipulating things, probably a lot more than somebody boringly trading momentum every day. But a couple things are needed for that to happen:

- The timing of the corpshare price change should coincide with the moment SK makes it public that they have recovered their item. Ideally that's immediate, and GMs with plots should be empowered to set things in motion at the time of the event.

- On the other hand, if GMs meet and trigger events weekly, then they should make sure SK only announces their grand victory (and NLM bosses their "how did this happen") after the event is triggered.

- The amount of the price spike has to deliver more for the manipulator and their chums in that single moment than they would've made on a "watch trends" strategy.

1. I believe reducing the cycle to six weeks, or in this general area, promotes opportunity to catch up to leaders, allows investment on sabotage of other corporations to be more quickly realized and the chyen spent partially recouped potentially, and lessens the chance for runaway leaders. By the latter I mean is once we get past the two or so month phase, the leader has acquired so much value in the portfolio that they can by significantly more of the top-earning stock than someone who has just started, which only separates the gap farther and continues to grow. This way the gains don't become too painfully overwhelming over new people entering the market and opens up that room to have a chance to catchup by making the right plots, the right investments, the right sabotages.

2. I do think we should make trading stocks limited to once or twice a week. But I don't think this should be a time determined by staff/the game. I think it should be in the player's hand. They have a 24 or 2x 12 hour periods to choose to trade each week. They can change it every week. It's fluid and dynamic for the choice of when it happens, but once you make the choice it's locked in and you cannot buy or sell until the next week.

Rhicora writes that they think trading windows would be bad for encouraging event-based/insidet trading, but I wholly disagree if the choice of when to trade is in the player's hands. This would make it so these are important factors:

A) Knowing events that are upcoming, whether good promotion or sabotage. It makes it so the player has to be talking to be and gathering data about plots in the works so they can benefit the most from big gains or avoiding big losses (or making sure their competitors get big losses by selling them bad data).

B) It means major events can't be negated by someone who is on all the time quickly running to corpshare and selling off stocks if they've already used up their trading this week, so that means consequences for not being in the loop/not making stuff happen. This makes microtransactions/watching microgrowth far, far less valuable compared to the people creating plots.

C) It opens up the playing field for players/characters who can't be in game as much, creating a wider field of participants who feel involved and engaged in plots and trying to win, which makes for more competition and more fun. More people who feel they have a chance, feel they can make an impact, regardless of having less time, is exceptionally good for the game's health, IMOM.

I played CorpShare pretty heavily the last quarter, and I have a couple observations:

1. I think at the current state of the corpshare meta, it is extremely difficult to catch up if you are not one of the leaders. This creates a strong disincentive to play if you either come in late or make the wrong decision and fall off. You are essentially waiting for one of the leaders to make a mistake.

2. Success in CorpShare is pretty disconnected from your company's success. If your rival corp is doing well, what matters is that you recognize the trend. Also, more often than not it is an NPC company which is the best performer at any given moment.

Now, in terms of improvements -- several have already been suggested, and I have an idea or two of my own:

DECREASE CYCLE TIME

Like has been said elsewhere, decreasing the cycle time would make the 'reset' come faster and allow more people to participate. This seems like a no brainer

TRADING WINDOWS

Several people have proposed allowing a limited number of trades per week. There are some implementation issues a little bit to this; setting up a portfolio requires multiple trades, so it probably does make sense to call it a 'window'; during that 1-hour window, you can make as many trades as you want, but you only get somewhere between 1 and 3 windows a week.

To be honest, I'm not confident that trading windows would have the effect people think they would, though. I think the always-watching data driven players would have the same basic edge they have today -- they'd be waiting for the right moment to switch stocks and then would trade. Success in CorpShare doesn't come that much from moving your stocks around multiple times a week; instead, it comes from moving stocks the moment the trends seem to shift, and that isn't going to be addressed by trading windows.

NEW IDEA: GRADUATED REWARDS

I think it would be a strong incentive for more people to participate if -everyone-, not just the leaders, saw a profit incentive from playing. Right now, all corporate citizens get a portfolio worth 10000 cred at the start of a cycle. I think giving prizes to the leaders is still a good idea, but what I would propose is this:

1. Decrease the amount of the 'leader' prizes by some percentage -- perhaps 20 percent for the leader and a little more for #2 and #3, so that they become 80k/45k/25k or something like that, though there are arguments for other numbers.

2. Award anyone who plays corpshare a bonus based on how much they improve their stock over the course of the cycle. If prizes are reduced by roughly 20 percent, I would make this as a percentage of 20k.

Imagine the leader ends the cycle with an account balance 15000 credits. She takes home 20k from 'earnings', plus her prize. The second place person ends, perhaps, with 14500 credits -- 96% of the leader, so the second place takes home 19.2k + their prize, The third place person has 14000 credit -- around 93% -- so takes home 18.6k+their prize.

The #4 person, however, with 13500, has earned 90% of what the leader did, and so they take home 18k -- now a strong incentive for them to compete, even if they don't get the full payoff of an MVP prize, and so on down the line.

This system would leave the leaders with roughly the same prize payouts (#1 would get 100k, #2 would get around 60k, and #3 would get around 40k), but it would mean that suddenly even if you are out of the MVP prizes you have a reason to play the market -- and also, if you are hired mid-cycle, you still have a reason to play the market.

I think this would strongly encourage participation, which in turn might start to make some of the other things (paydata, etc) flow more rather than it being just the top three people crunching numbers.

We had some good discussion in OOC-Chat so I won't ramble here, but basically, +1000 everything Pavane said.

My personal gripe with the system is that it is designed to be a background thing to encourage roleplay, and there was some disagreement on why exactly it doesn't do that. I personally think it's because whilst you -can- affect the stocks, there is a very small benefit in doing so. Others argued the problem lay in not being recognized for the effect you have on the stocks, and that there should be more transparency, which I think would be nice, but it's not why people don't really seem to care much about this system, despite the nice rewards it gives.

Currently, if I do something big to affect the stocks, I can't even buy or sell in advance because I have no way of knowing exactly when the system will actually pick up on it and the stocks shift. So even with that knowledge, someone who checks the terminal more often than me will still be ahead, despite doing absolutely nothing for it.

And just to refute Pavane's point on the suggested trading limits: If you could only do one trade a week, you would ultimately have to make a choice. And as early as possible. If I buy NLM stock straight away on Monday because it's going up, and an NLM exec has a scandal on Tuesday which causes it to crash, I screwed up that week.

If I wait for the perfect time on Wednesday when that ZMI stock is going up, I missed out on potential gains from Monday and Tuesday. If you always buy as soon as possible and just watch trends, you'll miss the big dips and rises, low risk low reward.

It becomes a lot more strategic, and even makes me care about what stock other people have, because now, if I fuck with their stock, they can't just sell as soon as it starts dipping. People would have to commit and actually influence the stocks if they want to win. What about the week after? What if that dip happened right before a big event you know is about to happen? Do you stay with the dip and risk it, or do you sell for that week and are locked out? A looooot of decisions and thought suddenly goes into this.

I think this trade limit, coupled with the gradual prizes Pavane suggested (so you're encouraged to participate even if you started a week late or whatever), would basically perfect the system and I'd bet good chyen you'd see a lot more corp BS happening, which is what the system wants to encourage.

And also I'd prefer the duration of each trade period be shorter, like in half, like Pavane said again, to encourage people not to give up if they're behind.

Last bit, dunno if this happens already, but those shame prizes Slither added (amazing stuff by the way lmao) should be announced within their corp in some way so people can shame those employees for being bad and they can't just hide it. It's also good paydata that can further affect stocks if it leaks, ("Wow, that fuckup from Neo got last place? How hasn't he hit the skywalk yet?") which is even more juicy drama.

I'm sorry to say this, but I've lost interest in CorpShare because it's boring. There are more fun ways to earn chyen instead of checking the bacon button to see if it's time to dispense different bacon.

I'm not sure what would encourage me to come back to playing in CorpShare. I'm not even interested in the gossip of who's in the lead.

I think the problem, in my eyes, isn't the time invested or anything like that, but rather, the inability to plot from it. It's more of a funnel for plots to go into and pile up until they pay out to some people. Maybe that's fun to some people, but I'd rather spend my time on more character-driven pursuits.

The trade limit per week has been established. Let's see how this plays out and circle back around on the rest of the feedback, coupled with the gossip system, and see how that changes how people are playing it. Hopefully it moves away from a grind and more towards an info gathering/plotting/background RP style thing, which is what I think most of us want it to be.
AI is starting to get good at predicting price fluctuations in the stock market.

Presumably, as automated trading continues its upward trend, the real-life stock market will eventually be as profit-stagnant as the bond market already is. This is also because of automated trading, but the math is easier, thus it has already narrowed to the point it has.

All of this is to say, that by 2106, trading stocks for large profits may be on outdated and unrealistic endeavor.

Food for thought.

What if in the future the stock market still existed, perpetuated as a free market economy, but instead of AI predicting the market for gains, the AI is instead used to simulate a market that leverages gambler's fallacy and other logical fallacies in the human brain in order to ensure people participate in the market while ultimately extracting wealth from them..

Ensuring mega corporations get richer off the wages they just paid to their employees, while the ruse goes by undetected.

Food for thought..

Mirage, I think I love you.

Cheek aside, very fair.

So, we're coming to the close of another CorpShare cycle, and I don't think it's working as well as it could. I think the trade-per-week limit ultimately hasn't affected CorpShare dramatically -- it's made 'making a mistake' more costly, which has shifted the leaders some, but it hasn't changed the fundamental truth that CorpShare is about watching trends and doing math, not about responding to RP events. Right now, the three to five people at the top of the CorpShare ladder get determined within the first few days of a cycle and do not significantly change.

Fundamentally, the problem with CorpShare is that stocks do not change (1) often enough or (2) in large enough swings. CorpShare watchers will invest in the company that is growing the fastest -- what I will call the 'leader', and the winners will be the people who have picked the leader most of the time.

Right now, the 'leader' company changes every two or three weeks, if that, which means that a 5/week trade limit doesn't matter much: if you only trade when the lead changes, then you won't be running up against the change.

Also, the percentage changes on a daily basis are relatively small; generally, in a single day, stocks increase or decrease by less than a percent. This means that if you 'guess' right, and are able to anticipate a stock event, the actual impact on your portfolio is relatively small. As best as I can tell from observing, this is also true of IC events -- while things like turning in MacGuffins do impact stock price, the jumps are modest rather than large; someone can't catapult a few places in the 'CorpShare' order by anticipating a stock jump.

So, how could it be improved?

I see two big things that need to happen:

(1) On average, the CorpShare 'leader' should change 3 or more times a week.

Why that number? With 5 trades per week, you can at best keep up with two to three 'changes' in the leader each week, where you sell the current leading stock and buy the new leader -- two trades. If the 'lead' changes 3 or more times per week, you won't be able to keep up with the leader by just watching the CorpShare market, so you'll need to be strategic about when you trade stocks.

(2) The rises and falls should be considerably higher, with stocks gaining and falling between 2 and 10 percent in relatively short periods.

The market should be much more volatile, with the percentage changes of stocks much higher. This means that someone who anticipates an IC event or makes a better decision about trades may be able to rocket up places on the corpshare ladder, and that in general the increased volatility will give more people 'chances' to compete in CorpShare.

Lastly, as I think I've suggested before, it would also be seriously beneficial for corpshare 'rewards' to filter down the corpshare ladder more. I have a comment a few spots back in the thread for one way to structure graduated rewards, but I think there should be an incentive for every corporate player to play the market, even those that are hired mid-cycle. I think everyone should get a bonus of some sort paid out on how well their portfolio did.

I proposed a more complicated solution earlier, but one simple solution would be to pay everyone out the value of their portfolio at the end of the cycle as a 'bonus'. That gives everyone a reason to participate.

Hmm. You raise some good points. I hadn't really thought of volatility all that much. Your post made me start thinking about it in a different way. My original intention had been to mimic what the 'real' stock market looks like, even if behind the scenes it doesn't operate the same way. While some stocks do indeed swing 10% in a day, that isn't all that common. It's usually a couple of percentage points. However, our stocks, limited as they are, shouldn't be the average, they would probably be more like the outlier.

Maybe making the swings small, proportionately makes it boring and makes the predictions less useful. I am going to look at adding a volatility setting to corpshare, something I can adjust. Like 2x would mean any change let's say it was going to raise or lower the price, would be doubled so 1.0 becomes 2.0. 2.0 becomes 4.0, etc. A normal volatility of 1 would mean whatever the change is is just applied directly.

Then we can tool around with the volatility until the numbers are shifting in such a way as to be more visible and fun. That, coupled with Macguffin system, maybe make the system more fun to mess with it for players.

If "baseline" stock value was, say, 1000, I think it would be safe to have larger swings, too. As it is now large swing could potentially drop a stock to 0 in theory.
We're five months removed from our last major conversation on this topic and we're about a month out before any changes to the corpshare system would need to be delayed.

So I wanted to bring up some ideas because I still don't think the corpshare system is much more than a numbers crunching game. And I think a way to revitalize it would come in a two fold system with major key points.

1. Cut the system into two parts.

a). significant bonuses for all employees of the 'winning' corporation, regardless if they participate in the terminal function of the corpshare market. A winning corporation is the corporation whose stock market makes the most gain and impact in consumerism/public relations. Put the majority of chyen bonuses into this rather than the 'winners' of the terminal portion of the corpshare exchange.

b) keep the corprshare exchange, significantly reduce monetary winnings to maybe 20-25% of current winnings or offer other types of winnings like temporary perks/benefits, special treatment packages from corporations, etc.

2. We've got PRI as an option for employment but not in the traditional standard corporate citizen mold. But, I think by allowing PRI employees to get bonuses in the same sense of the above mentioned point 1.A, it would include Red sector more in a revitalized corpshare market. Should the bonuses for these employees be as much as standard corporate citizens? From a theme standpoint, no, the topside PRI employees (the ambient population) would take the chunk of the winnings, but the mixside employees could still get a bonus large enough to be of some impact.

3. Cut down the corpshare from quarters to two months, going from four periods per year to six periods per year.

4. Don't include the WJF in any bonuses in terms of in-house bonuses for 'winners' from a corporate perspective, but allow WJF characters to continue to participate in a significantly decreased terminal reward system. Leave it to the four major corporations currently employing people in NT, NLM, VS & PRI. Players from those corporations plus the WJF PCs can decide whether or not to assist people from corporations or get assistance from the WJF and monetary compensation on this end could be worked out non-codedly.

As I wrote to start, the corpshare system is genuinely for the most hard a number's crunching simulation. I think people don't participate in it heavily and I don't think corporate employees or anyone in the game has any real investment in the prices of stock share prices except for the occasional social comment on it.

The macguffin system was introduced, to my understanding, in part to help create opportunities for conflict, theft and sabotaging other corporations and trying to involve people in doing tasks with some risk. And I think in the same vein changing how corpshare works would complement and enhance the macguffin system and the theme of the game: encouraging players to compete against each other and sabotage competition and a tangible reward system where everyone feels the benefits, instead of just the top three in the current terminal system, within a corporation would see an increase in involvement and participation by everyone. Because it'd no longer be number crunching for buy and sell, it wouldn't be doing small or big RP to hope it influences a stock and you buy or sell the stock at just the right time.

It's adding a layer to corporate pride, adding a layer to want to see your competitors crash and burn, it makes it so you can go to PR and say 'hey, we're about to do this terrible thing to embarrass our competitors, get a statement prepped to make it even worse for them' and both parties in that workplace know they're increasing their chances of getting a bonus. Rather than just who plays the market at the terminal exactly right at the right time.

And I don't think this detracts from inner political turmoil and backstabbing within a corporation themselves, rather it just adds an additional nuance to the competition against other corporations. And it includes Red sector players to an even bigger degree, because not only now would they be hired to help corporations fight against each other, but we'd also have Mixers who could earn a bit of a bonus for themselves by -wanting- to actively themselves sabotage other corporations rather than just wait on a call from a corporate citizen offering them a job. Which sometimes doesn't always get a person to want to take the risk.

Mostly, I just think something needs to change. And I'd like to think people who benefit from the system as it exists now would also agree. It's basically the same thing for the most part every month, and that's not inclusive or really creating a lot of RP.

My impression of CorpShare from my little bits of interaction with it was that it was more or less a lottery system that shit out massive amounts of chyen to corpcits quarterly.

I can't say I'm really a fan of the current implementation. On the other hand, when it was possible to do daytrading style stuff with it, it was worse because it only benefitted nolifers camping the market.

If the intent was to just hand out money to corpies for presumably driving plots, I guess that's okay, but there isn't really any guidance or restrictions on doing so. So I would assume a good chunk of the money is getting spent on luxury good and services. Not a bad thing, suit jacketed flex is good.

I like @crashdown's idea of lowering payouts in favor of lucrative and/or posh perks and benes. Or tangible benefits like oh hey, you did a kickass job handling that corpsec job, I've ordered you a better weapon from the Armory, or great turnout for that PR event, lots of positive media and hype about it, here's a freesky vacation package, etc. Even less tangible benefits like a 2 week all-access pass to euphoria, or a 1mo. lease package on a super-expensive car would be cryo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbp3ozjl-qM