New Mission/Task Type - Gay's Requests

I’d like to propose a new mission/task type for Torn that focuses on turning in miscellaneous items to an NPC for cash and bunker bucks.

Why this would be good for Torn

• Gives purpose to useless items: Many items from crimes or other sources (e.g., Sour Milk, Mayan Statues, Mouthwash) are practically worthless and a disappointment to pull. Missions like this would make them wanted again.

• More interesting Crimes: Less attractive crimes that drop items are instantly more exciting as more drop possibilities have actual value.

• Market stimulation: As players start buying up these items, their values will increase. This creates a healthier market ecosystem where nothing feels like total junk.

• Cash sink via market tax: More items being bought and sold in the item market means more Torn cash gets removed via the 5% market tax, helping combat inflation.

• Developer flexibility: Rewards and item pools can be easily tweaked over time to manipulate circulation and pricing of items as the devs see fit. 

• Replayability: Any number of these types of missions could be generated. They could be fully randomized or semi-randomized, pulling from a pool of items. If balancing the flavor text per mission is too much work, a standard paragraph template could be used while randomizing the actual item list.

Possible Drawbacks

• More mission management and balancing may be required.

• Whales may manipulate the market on specific items that can frustrate players. But this just means a player can capitalize on gathering that inflated item by pickpocketing a junkie etc. and sell it. Instantly that crime becomes good for everyone.

Example Mission

EDIT: This could be a new daily task feature from Gay instead of a new mission giver. I don't care how it gets introduced but the core idea is good. I realize this flavor text is not Gay's but you get the gist.

Heh… don’t look at me like that, kid. I’ve got a client with, let’s just say, particular tastes. You’re gonna help me keep him happy. I need you to scrounge up the following and drop ‘em off, no questions asked: six Bottle of Beer, two Box of Tissues, one DVD Player, an Erotic DVD, a skimpy set of Lingerie, a pair of rusty Handcuffs, a bottle of cheap Lubricant, and one Mouthwash. Yeah, it’s sleazy, but sleazy sells in Torn City. Bring me the goods and I’ll make sure your wallet’s a lot fatter—with cash up front and a cut of Bunker Bucks for the trouble.

Reward: $3,000,000 and 1 Bunker Buck

EDIT: The reward could be unknown until completion which would include Cash/Bunker Bucks/Points. Points could be great if there were sufficient sinks in place to make them more desired.

Perhaps make the bunker buck reward only a chance for 1 or more in rewards so it doesn't affect the cache market too greatly. If everyone can get bunker bucks, it would encourage them to unlock the bunker which would make points slightly more valuble. I considered the bunker buck reward as an incredible incentive to do these missions.

These missions don't have to be limited to junk items only. I like the bunker buck idea but to compensate for their value, they could be possibly only for the more expensive shopping list missions.

I think this would be a great addition to Torn because it:

• Improves the perceived value of crime/item drops.

• Adds another avenue of play and reward variety.

• Creates a new balancing lever for developers to manage the economy.

Additional Input:

Adding flavor to crimes like burgling a dentist office for dentures and a gold tooth would not go away from this new feature. A 125 day old player could do that crime and actually make some cash from their limited nerve in addition to reading the flavor text of how they received those.

If I need 1 Christmas Lights to finish my task list but they are are too expensive on the market because some whale gobbled all of them up, then I'll burgle a tool shed to get them. If the reward has a bunker buck, then I might do the task. If the Christmas lights are inflated, I'll sell them instead. I would have never read the tool shed flavor text before because there was no incentive for me personally but now I have.

Right now, burgling a beach hut for a net, wait for forever to pickpocket a Mobster for a couple of crime related items or burgle a factory for hinted items that will probably be in the next crime Arson are what players like me are doing because nearly all other crimes make pennies for the nerve I spend.

I understand that the game is different for players at different levels of progress, but this suggestion raises the interest in many more parts of the existing crimes than there is currently. My Christmas Lights example has my perspective in mind but if a noob picks up Christmas Lights, they'll either keep them or sell them for a big profit not knowing why it is valuable but that is okay.

Alternative Rewards:

If new items need a bump in circulation, the rewards for this task/mission could be a quantity of said item. This is far more interesting than just flying to Argentina for the new Lighter item.

If points weren't already in abundance, they could be a great reward for this mechanic instead of bunker bucks. Perhaps this would be a better route if there were more point sinks.

This seems like a good idea but some junk items will need balancing since let's say you get asked to give lint and the reward is only a couple million and a BB it's not really worth it . And this doesn't have to be only for lint there are many expensive junk items that can't be implemented unless the reward is great. Like your example a pack of Trojans cost 25m. No one would buy three of them just to get 3m and BB. So this will only raise the value of cheap stuff very slightly since even though it creates demand there is just too much supply. 

Great idea overall but needs some balancing 

I agree I'll edit my example to only include junk items for clarity. I did no math on the rewards given. There can be a weight to each item in the draw pool based on which items they want to make rarer. I've also considered making items they want to add more into circulation for an upcoming new crime included in the reward as surprises or something instead of adding them to bits n bobs for pennies.

As far as not changing the price of items much, I believe that this would stirr up the market quite a bit if implemented by speculative buyers at first. If they build the system correctly to be dynamic to adjust rewards to a ratio of the market value of the items requested, they can incentivize the player base as much as they want by increasing the rewards. I know I'd love to chase the missions if there was a possibility of bunker buck drop to save up for caches to gamble or sell with.

Bump

boop

Beep

Hmmm...

The idea behind missions is that you complete them with your own hard work, you always get a net positive, and they are pretty much always worth it. This would tie the junk items prices to the mission rewards, so it would give effectively nothing, kind of like trading flushies for points when it isn't museum day.

You would need to either: make buying off item market/bazaars unprofitable/impossible in the mission (which will make most missions either impossible or easy based on what is in your inventory) or

Make sure the market price isn't brought up by these missions somehow (which will effectively make it a free income stream)

The most reasonable solution is to give mission credits instead of bunker bucks + cash, because the value of mission credits is ambiguous, so whether it's worth it changes depending on who you are. 

However, I don't think Chedburn will go for this. He will probably say something like: "Junk items exist to add flavour to crimes. If I gave everything value, I would have to vastly increase the failure rate to ensure it stays balanced. Finding a few junk items is way more interesting then getting a failure. Plus, missions are meant to be challenging. This is just a question of figuring out if completing the mission is worth the reward. If it is, just buy the items off the item market. If no, ignore it." 

First of all who's multi are you? At your age you should be asking if Def or Dex is better or how do I stop someone from buymugging.

I agree that Ched probably won't want to bother with this at all. Also, this could instead be a feature added to Gay's shop as a daily available "task". I don't really care how exactly it is implemented but the idea creates more variables in the game to shake up the monotony of the market.

A fraction of the thousands of items on the market are bought or sold in the market that 95% of people care about. If there is an actual incentive for different items, that creates more tax revenue and opens the faucet of deleting more money from the game which has been the intent by the devs for the past year+ already.

Giving mission credits is cool but I doubt people would be interested enough in this new feature to make much of a difference in the economy in my opinion. I suggest bunker bucks which enable average players to save up for a cache to scratch that gambling addiction itch. I'm open to adjusting the rewards to whatever but if I see a bunker buck and I already have all the items from the countless crimes I've done, there's no need to calculate the cash reward for me.  

Adding flavor to crimes like burgling a dentist office for dentures and a gold tooth would not go away from this new feature. A 125 day old player like yourself could do that crime and actually make some cash from your limited nerve in addition to reading the flavor text of how you received those.

If I need 1 Christmas Lights to finish my task list but they are are too expensive on the market because some whale gobbled all of them up, then I'll burgle a tool shed to get them. If the reward has a bunker buck, then I might do the task. If the Christmas lights are inflated, I'll sell them instead. I would have never read the tool shed flavor text before because there was no incentive for me personally but now I have.

Right now, burgling a beach hut for a net, wait for forever to pickpocket a Mobster for a couple of crime related items or burgle a factory for hinted items that will probably be in the next crime Arson are what players like me are doing because nearly all other crimes make pennies for the nerve I spend.

I understand that the game is different for players at different levels of progress, but this suggestion raises the interest in many more parts of the existing crimes than there is currently. My Christmas Lights example has my perspective in mind but if a noob picks up Chrismas Lights, they'll either keep them or sell them for a big profit not knowing why it is valuable but that is okay.

TLDR: Nerve can be spent on a limited number of crimes because people want money, this will widen the profitability of more crimes. If items get too expensive to do the tasks then great, sell the items instead and make more money. If you happen to have all the items for the task and want a bunker buck, then turn them in. If anything, MORE flavor text is observed and people branch out to new crime habits.

I am a restart, in case that wasn't obvious.

I feel like you didn't properly answer my issues, though it's possible we have different priorities.

b

bop

b

b

b

b

B

b

b

b

b