Hi everyone, I think that it’d be a great idea to introduce debt contracts, allowing one player/corporation/alliance to issue a loan to another player/corporation and structure it however they want.
Maximum amounts
The maximum amount that a player can borrow should be limited by the amount of skillpoints that they have in order to prevent over-indebtedness. Once someone borrows ISK, they can’t extract skillpoints anymore until their debts are repaid.
I think that the maximum amount that a corporation can borrow should be determined by the amount of structures that they own. I think a good maximum amount would be 25% of the value of their structures in high sec and 10% in low sec.
Defaults
What happens when a player defaults?
The lender should have the option to sell the debt to a 3rd party, either to other players/corporations/alliances or to faction police or concord. The latter should have the ability to set the player’s wallet in the negative and pay the lender 50% (or some other percentage) of the capital owed.
Should a corporation fail to pay their debt, the lender should have the option to sell the debt to a 3rd party or to faction police or concord. The latter would transfer ownership of the structures in high sec that were put up for collateral for a fee. Should a corporation fall under the 25% (or other percentage) debt/equity ratio then they’d be in default automatically.
It should be possible to sell ongoing debt contracts to other players/corporations/alliances.
Why?
So why do I think it’d be a great idea? Isn’t EVE perfect as it is?
To be honest I don’t know if it would have a positive or negative impact on the average player. I think it could go either way. If players use debt in a conservative way, then it could have a positive impact by allowing more economic opportunities and faster wealth building. If players are careless and over-leverage, then it could lead to a short term inflation as more and more liquidity goes into the economy, increasing the prices of everything and ultimately forcing players to go into debt to aquire anything, then as players try to pay debts back it would be followed by deflation, reduced or negative profit margins, debt slavery, economic meltdown and the destruction of eve online.
What’s wrong with the current system of “get collateral or loan at your own risk?”
Also, skill goo farms don’t care if they have neg wallets. Get character to 5m skillpoints, take out a loan from your main, transfer all ISK back to main outside of the contract, skill goo char defaults, sell loan to concord, collect 50% of the loaned amount. You now have 1.5x the loaned amount and a skill goo char ready for extraction.
Short answer is no. It would be a net negative for the game in general.
The concept of official “debt” gameplay in an MMO such as EVE is a bad idea to begin with. First off there are plenty of ways to make isk. Forcing players to “save up” for items in the game is a good thing. Trying to have an official loan system will easily be gamed. Anything that puts CCP on the hook for this in game “debt” will hurt the game in multiple ways.
It even muddies the waters further when you consider that via plex there is this real world $$$ to in game $$$$ link.
I’m under the impression that the debt is gone once you sell it to CONCORD and get negwalleted, not sitting there forever and effectively bricking your character. it seems way too risky to borrow in that case.
Every reply you make illustrates more and more how this is a bad idea.
As I already stated, MMO’s in general do not need, nor is it healthy to have some official “loan” mechanic. It should seem obvious that allowing a player to bury themselves in debt isn’t a great idea.
But more importantly, every reply where you are trying to come up with a patch to a potential loophole, illustrates how difficult it would be for CCP to come up with a system that is not exploitable.
That difficulty in conjunction with the lack of need pretty much IMO makes the idea moot.
Wow, that’s a lot of bad idea in one post.
This is either going to be an experiment in bricking your character or printing ISK from nothing.
Also, EvE is like the worst place to drive policy from unless you’re an extremely radical libertarian.