Inputs needed: the design direction

[lillud321]

Hi ,

I would like to be able to chose how important the Bank and Insurance Company are in the games i Start. I thing the best solution for that is Creating sliders. I would really be disappointed if i could not try to just have a Company that focuses purely on insurance and Banking. You guys have put a lot of effort into the DLC so if you only let us play with it to the same level as a Telecom Company it would be a waste. Up to now, i have always felt that the Subsidiary DLC was the best because it gaved us a lot of liberty .

I think you could do the same as the Subsidiary DLC by adding different spiders to let the player decide how important the Banks are going to be in each game. You guys did it in the Last update with the appartements and it was great.

[David]

Thanks for your input. I will forward it to the dev team.

If you have more concrete ideas about what those customization sliders should be, please let us know.

[lagrelax]

I didn't vote cuz I still like the current design but can see more potential if extend it. My own suspicion about the reasons why there wouldn't much fun to play purely banks/insurance companies are because they lack the interaction with the funding mechanism of the base game.

The critical importance status of banks in the modern economy is that they control the flow of the funding in the system, deposit/loan is just they way to implement that. I am not sure how much the banking dlc will reflect this in the gameplay.

My recent game was configured to have a very high start-up capital for all the companies. And interestingly I found each time a M&A occurred, a AI company is created with a huge amount of cash and lots of them flows into the market. This is literally a 'money from helicopter' and it for sure will damp any fun to play a bank as there is no urgent demand of money at all.

This is just one example and I fell ultimately to have a well-functioning banking system, developers have to think more about how the money are created and have a thorough control over it. Given we already have a 'central bank' feature in the game, I think we should improve that first

[David]

You have brought up some very good points.

My recent game was configured to have a very high start-up capital for all the companies. And interestingly I found each time a M&A occurred, a AI company is created with a huge amount of cash and lots of them flows into the market.

If I remember correctly, this mechanic has been in the game since Capitalism 2. It is for a new AI company to have a real chance of competing with established companies. Imagine the situation where new AI companies start with lower amounts of capital, they will not be able to compete after the game has run for years or tens of years, with all established companies having strong foothold on the market shares. They will inevitably go bankrupt soon after they are founded.

So if we remove this mechanic, while it may look more realistic, it will actually undermine the gameplay balance.

Do you have any suggested solution to this dilemma?

[de1irium]

I think the banking domain should be as profitable as any other market. It is actually possible for who wants it to run a company solely relying on media firms or real estate, even though the game is much passive ; it is different and also fun. I think that the player should be given the option to consider a "banking focused" game and be able to reach the top rankings with it as with any other business.

[lillud321]

Thanks for your input. I will forward it to the dev team.

If you have more concrete ideas about what those customization sliders should be, please let us know.

Here are a few ideas for sliders :

1- adjusting the number of banks there are in a game excluding yours. ( not every on wants to play a game where every competitor has a Bank )
2- Bank revenue index
3- Insurance revenue index
4-limit the debt ratio of a bank. example: They can only lend 80% of what she has in déposit. (the amount could also be 200%). This would have an impact on the bankruptcy risk of the banks.
5- A slider to choose the maximum amount of money a player can deposit in a Bank per year . ( like 100 millions or 100 billions)


I might also have a solution for this :

You have brought up some very good points.

My recent game was configured to have a very high start-up capital for all the companies. And interestingly I found each time a M&A occurred, a AI company is created with a huge amount of cash and lots of them flows into the market.

If I remember correctly, this mechanic has been in the game since Capitalism 2. It is for a new AI company to have a real chance of competing with established companies. Imagine the situation where new AI companies start with lower amounts of capital, they will not be able to compete after the game has run for years or tens of years, with all established companies having strong foothold on the market shares. They will inevitably go bankrupt soon after they are founded.

So if we remove this mechanic, while it may look more realistic, it will actually undermine the gameplay balance.

Do you have any suggested solution to this dilemma?

Normaly, the Bank in the games will put a certain amount of money available to lend. New companies could automatically borrow money from banks who still have money at there disposal. this loin would be a class AAA loan to give the new company a chance . The rest of the sum would be new money. So normaly , there would not be to much new money created other then the money the customers used.

Hope that helps !

[standardplayer]

Thanks for your input. I will forward it to the dev team.

If you have more concrete ideas about what those customization sliders should be, please let us know.

Here are a few ideas for sliders :

1- adjusting the number of banks there are in a game excluding yours. ( not every on wants to play a game where every competitor has a Bank )
2- Bank revenue index
3- Insurance revenue index
4-limit the debt ratio of a bank. example: They can only lend 80% of what she has in déposit. (the amount could also be 200%). This would have an impact on the bankruptcy risk of the banks.
5- A slider to choose the maximum amount of money a player can deposit in a Bank per year . ( like 100 millions or 100 billions)

For the Deposits I suggested this in another forum thread. Maybe the slider for player deposits would just set the limit for an individual person or corporation deposit to a percentage of banks current population based deposits:

How do you plan to deal with large/excessive deposit amounts? Will there be deposit caps or something else so that no individual or corporation deposits will exceed say 1%-10% of Banks Total Deposits?

It would be unrealistic for a single character or company to say deposit $2.5-$50 Billion into a bank that only has $5 Billion in deposits. The amount of loans that banks compete for should also be limited by the economy for regular loans and corporations borrowing needs.

Thanks for bring this up. I will forward it to the dev team and recommend them to add a cap to the deposit amount if they haven't implemented it yet.

Also Maybe there could be a slider for the size of the market for deposit in dollars or a percentage. I don't know how they plan on setting up how much deposits but, say that the normal deposit would be $3,000 x Population you could be able to set that at something like 0.5 or 1.5 times the normal deposit rate or a specific average deposit number per population or maybe deposits would be a percentage of GDP per capita.

I don't know how a bank revenue index would work exactly maybe it should be more specific like a interest rate range and credit spread range?:

-Interest Rate Range:
Investment Grade Bonds (Low 3%-7%, Median 5%) (Average 5%-9%, Median 7%) (High 7%-11%, Median 9%)
Investment Grade Government Bonds would carry a discount 0.6-0.75 times investment grade bonds
Junk Bonds would carry a premium of say 1.5-2 times investment grade bonds

Banks Loan Premium 1.05-1.25 x Bond Rate

-Bank Credit Spread (Small 1%-1.5%) (Average 1.5%-2.5%) (Large 2.5%-3%)

[David]

I think the banking domain should be as profitable as any other market. It is actually possible for who wants it to run a company solely relying on media firms or real estate, even though the game is much passive ; it is different and also fun. I think that the player should be given the option to consider a "banking focused" game and be able to reach the top rankings with it as with any other business.

This is a good point of view. I will forward your comments to the dev team.

[David]

Thanks for all the latest inputs on this. The dev team told me that they will add sliders to the banking DLC, including a slider for setting the saving rate of citizens (low, medium or high).

[kapital]

How about fintech? Since virtual banking license have been granted in many financial hubs.