Suggestion Title: Reworking the drug dealer
Suggestion Description:
Inspired by the discussions in the meth post earlier today, I think the dealer is very boring right now. Most people will wait for Boardwalk, NEON, or City Motel since they are all close to storage, and simply mass sell thousands of drugs at once with very little, if any, risk.
My suggestion is to massively rework the dealer, with the goal of reintroducing the risk of selling drugs, adding more variety to what drugs players choose to produce, and making the system more interactive overall.
Drug Balance
First of all, to baseline balance the value of drugs, I think the following changes would make sense:
I would like to see the feature reimplemented where you are required to put your gun away in order to speak to the dealer NPC. Right now there is essentially zero risk to selling drugs, leading to no interactions between players.
Supply and Demand
The dealer should have a very basic supply-demand system. The more of a specific drug you sell to the dealer at a given location, the less value it has for only you selling there. The price doesn't need to plummet drastically, but there should be a meaningful trade off between selling mass amounts quickly at easy access locations for slightly less money or selling less often at multiple different locations.
Dealer Events
I also think the drug dealer should have some rare, low-chance dynamic events that make the system more interactive, these could either be texted through the phone by the dealer, or remain completely hidden and unknown, making the player discover which are active. Some examples:
Seed Quality System
Similar to how Ephedrine is handled by the dealer. When the dealer swaps locations, he should have a limited supply of high quality seeds for certain drugs. Additionally players could make their own seed tiers based on the plant's growth stage:
Drug Drop-Off Missions
Lastly, I'd like to see a system similar to car theft missions added. Once per day, the drug dealer gives you a drop-off task:
Why should this be added?:
What negatives could this have?:
What problem would this suggestion solve?:
Suggestion Description:
Inspired by the discussions in the meth post earlier today, I think the dealer is very boring right now. Most people will wait for Boardwalk, NEON, or City Motel since they are all close to storage, and simply mass sell thousands of drugs at once with very little, if any, risk.
My suggestion is to massively rework the dealer, with the goal of reintroducing the risk of selling drugs, adding more variety to what drugs players choose to produce, and making the system more interactive overall.
Drug Balance
First of all, to baseline balance the value of drugs, I think the following changes would make sense:
- Coke nerfed from $150 as it is too good.
- Shrooms buffed from $200 to a higher values that actually reflects the increased risk of growing them, since they can easily be stolen and currently nobody bothers to grow shrooms. A new shroom item could be introduced to prevent money duping issues pre-update.
I would like to see the feature reimplemented where you are required to put your gun away in order to speak to the dealer NPC. Right now there is essentially zero risk to selling drugs, leading to no interactions between players.
Supply and Demand
The dealer should have a very basic supply-demand system. The more of a specific drug you sell to the dealer at a given location, the less value it has for only you selling there. The price doesn't need to plummet drastically, but there should be a meaningful trade off between selling mass amounts quickly at easy access locations for slightly less money or selling less often at multiple different locations.
Dealer Events
I also think the drug dealer should have some rare, low-chance dynamic events that make the system more interactive, these could either be texted through the phone by the dealer, or remain completely hidden and unknown, making the player discover which are active. Some examples:
- A specific drug sells for a bonus % for the first X sales.
- A specific drug sells for a bonus % for the next Y minutes.
- Certain drug seeds are cheaper until X sales are made.
- If a player hasn't sold drugs in several hours, their next sale is increased by a %.
- If too much drugs (literally tens of thousands) is sold at one location, it starts with a decreased value at the next location for the first Y minutes.
- The least sold drug server-wide in the last X hours receives an extra % bonus for the first Y minutes at the dealer's next location.
- All sales have a small chance for the next Y minutes to alert police with a 911 about suspicious activity near the location.
Seed Quality System
Similar to how Ephedrine is handled by the dealer. When the dealer swaps locations, he should have a limited supply of high quality seeds for certain drugs. Additionally players could make their own seed tiers based on the plant's growth stage:
- Picking from the Flowering stage gives you high quality seeds.
- Picking from the Seeding stage gives the most seeds, but at normal quality.
- Picking from the Dying stage gives low quality seeds.
Drug Drop-Off Missions
Lastly, I'd like to see a system similar to car theft missions added. Once per day, the drug dealer gives you a drop-off task:
- You go to the dealer, pick up an illegal package
- Five minutes later, you are marked "wanted for questioning" on the police computer, making it risky to drive around in case you get ANPR'd
- You need to deliver the package to an NPC at a high-risk area (similar idea to bank robbery drop offs) or you need to drop the package into a small circle zone in a high risk area (similar to dropping off car thefts)
- Successful delivery can give you money, as well as high quality seeds, illegal items or a temporary price boost at the dealer
- Failing the mission could result in a temporary penalty with the dealer.
Why should this be added?:
- Increases player interaction and decision making around drug sellings, rather than passive mass selling at optimal locations
- Makes underused drugs more viable
- Adds more dynamic content to the criminal side, giving players something to engage with
- Reintroduces the risk and tension to drug selling through gun restriction and police alert mechanics
- Helps distribute criminal activity across the map
What negatives could this have?:
- Some mechanics may be confusing to new players
- Increased risk for solo players
- Balancing everything can require several iterations post-launch
What problem would this suggestion solve?:
- Addresses everyone drying coke 24/7
- Stops drug selling from being passive and centralized
- Helps correct imbalance caused by drug money being vastly more profitable than legal roles with little effort or danger
DD
