Banking Money Machine

[jiuliumuliao]

1) Do you think the game should limit the loan demand? Should it be an optional setting on the New Game Setting menu that players can still go for unlimited loan demand if they wish?

2) When the loans have hit the limit, banks will stop getting new loans. What kind of alert or hints do you think the game should display on the Banking HQ interface so that the player will not get confused about why the bank suddenly seeing its profit starting to decline?

3) Do you think the game need to introduce any kinds of new management options or tools on the Bank HQ interface to help the player manage this in an automated manner, to avoid too much micromangement resulting from this change? If so, what are your suggestions for such options or tools?

The amount of bank loans should be limited. And bank loans should be linked to the macro-economy in the game. Money lent from banks will be used for consumption or investment, which will boost GDP growth. At the same time, residents' income and corporate profits need to be set aside to repay the principal and interest of the loan. The annual repayment of principal and interest to banks should not exceed a certain proportion of the total income of residents and the profits of enterprises, so it is necessary to limit the total amount of loans. And as the proportion of loan stock to GDP increases, that is, the level of social debt increases, the number of loans with high credit rating should decline, while the number of loans with low credit rating should rise. At present, as long as players are willing in the game, banks can lend all loans to "AAA" ratings, which is unreasonable.

[David]

Thanks for all the input. The dev team intend to implement the mechanic for limiting the bank loans based on you guys' input.

We still need your input to the following questions in order to ensure that the user experience resulting from this new limitation on bank loans will be mainly positive, without introducing any unintended confusion to the player.

2) When the loans have hit the limit, banks will stop getting new loans. What kind of alert or hints do you think the game should display on the Banking HQ interface so that the player will not get confused about why the bank suddenly seeing its profit starting to decline?

3) Do you think the game need to introduce any kinds of new management options or tools on the Bank HQ interface to help the player manage this in an automated manner, to avoid too much micromangement resulting from this change? If so, what are your suggestions for such options or tools?

[standardplayer]

In setting the amount of loan and deposit you may want to look at the federal reserve Data for Bank Assets and Liabilities (H8) and divide it by GDP to come up with Percentages of GDP to limit loans and deposit to.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/data.htm

[jiuliumuliao]

Thanks for all the input. The dev team intend to implement the mechanic for limiting the bank loans based on you guys' input.

We still need your input to the following questions in order to ensure that the user experience resulting from this new limitation on bank loans will be mainly positive, without introducing any unintended confusion to the player.

2) When the loans have hit the limit, banks will stop getting new loans. What kind of alert or hints do you think the game should display on the Banking HQ interface so that the player will not get confused about why the bank suddenly seeing its profit starting to decline?

3) Do you think the game need to introduce any kinds of new management options or tools on the Bank HQ interface to help the player manage this in an automated manner, to avoid too much micromangement resulting from this change? If so, what are your suggestions for such options or tools?

My idea is to add a fan chart similar to the retail interface to the interface of the bank headquarters. Use different colors to represent the share of loans from different banks to the total loan demand. White represents unmet loan demand. In this way, players can stop taking deposits or withdraw the money from the bank for other investments when they see the white share is too small. In addition, I also hope to make a fan chart of the proportion of loan demand to total loan demand for five different credit levels. When the proportion of loan demand with low credit rating is increasing, it may mean that the economy is in the doldrums or the level of debt is too high. Players can adjust their lending policies or raise money in advance for possible bad debts according to this fan chart.

[dark3214]

It will also be nice if different cities can set different policies and rules to stimulate higher GDP growth but risk banking instability. Also total loans and total repayments should be shown as a percent of GDP so the player can manage the economy better.Higher repayments should negatively effect the economy(reduced demand) but benefits banks bottom line.

One way to boost GDP growth is to relax subprime lending rules but risk higher defaults or even bankruptcy in a recession.

Also another thing that can be added to the game is that when a bank goes bankrupts its assets can be listed in the bond market as securities.

[David]

2) When the loans have hit the limit, banks will stop getting new loans. What kind of alert or hints do you think the game should display on the Banking HQ interface so that the player will not get confused about why the bank suddenly seeing its profit starting to decline?

3) Do you think the game need to introduce any kinds of new management options or tools on the Bank HQ interface to help the player manage this in an automated manner, to avoid too much micromangement resulting from this change? If so, what are your suggestions for such options or tools?

A bit more details about the potential increase in micromangement that we are concerned about:

When the loan demand is limited and the bank is getting significantly more deposits from customers (including individual customers and corporate customers that deposit money into the bank) than the loans, the cash will be idle and not generating any income for the bank. This will lead to reduced profit or even loss. Currently the only option is for the player to manually click the "Stop Accepting Customer Deposits" icon.

After a while, when the ratio of the deposits to loans return to a more acceptable level, the player will have to cancel the "Stop Accepting Customer Deposits" setting by clicking on the icon again.

Any suggestions to reduce the type of micromanagement are welcomed.

[standardplayer]

2) When the loans have hit the limit, banks will stop getting new loans. What kind of alert or hints do you think the game should display on the Banking HQ interface so that the player will not get confused about why the bank suddenly seeing its profit starting to decline?

3) Do you think the game need to introduce any kinds of new management options or tools on the Bank HQ interface to help the player manage this in an automated manner, to avoid too much micromangement resulting from this change? If so, what are your suggestions for such options or tools?

A bit more details about the potential increase in micromangement that we are concerned about:

When the loan demand is limited and the bank is getting significantly more deposits from customers (including individual customers and corporate customers that deposit money into the bank) than the loans, the cash will be idle and not generating any income for the bank. This will lead to reduced profit or even loss. Currently the only option is for the player to manually click the "Stop Accepting Customer Deposits" icon.

After a while, when the ratio of the deposits to loans return to a more acceptable level, the player will have to cancel the "Stop Accepting Customer Deposits" setting by clicking on the icon again.

Any suggestions to reduce the type of micromanagement are welcomed.

You could create a bank management setting that allows you to cap loan and/or deposit growth rates to a specific percentage that the user or AI would determine by looking at GDP growth, the loan and deposit markets, and the banks current position in them.

[David]

You could create a bank management setting that allows you to cap loan and/or deposit growth rates to a specific percentage that the user or AI would determine by looking at GDP growth, the loan and deposit markets, and the banks current position in them.

How exactly this would work? Could you please give an example?

[jiuliumuliao]

2) When the loans have hit the limit, banks will stop getting new loans. What kind of alert or hints do you think the game should display on the Banking HQ interface so that the player will not get confused about why the bank suddenly seeing its profit starting to decline?

3) Do you think the game need to introduce any kinds of new management options or tools on the Bank HQ interface to help the player manage this in an automated manner, to avoid too much micromangement resulting from this change? If so, what are your suggestions for such options or tools?

A bit more details about the potential increase in micromangement that we are concerned about:

When the loan demand is limited and the bank is getting significantly more deposits from customers (including individual customers and corporate customers that deposit money into the bank) than the loans, the cash will be idle and not generating any income for the bank. This will lead to reduced profit or even loss. Currently the only option is for the player to manually click the "Stop Accepting Customer Deposits" icon.

After a while, when the ratio of the deposits to loans return to a more acceptable level, the player will have to cancel the "Stop Accepting Customer Deposits" setting by clicking on the icon again.

Any suggestions to reduce the type of micromanagement are welcomed.

In order to reduce the micromanagement of players, I think we can set two buttons on the interface of the bank headquarters. One is to allow banks to automatically lower deposit rates when loans reach the limit. The second is to allow banks to invest part of the money that cannot be lent into the bond market and the stock market, just like insurance companies.

[David]

I've added a poll this discussion thread.

Poll: Add this on the Deposit screen: [ ] Stop accepting new deposits when Cash as % of Total Assets > 5% [+][-]

When the bank has stopped giving out loans, the cash will increase. With this function, the bank will stop accepting new deposits, thus stopping the growth in cash on the balance sheet.

Please vote if you like this idea. If you have other suggestions, please post the exact interface description and function. If it is feasible, I will add it to the poll.