I have a love hate relationship with the game and in particular the slowness of screen refresh / business of icons that need to refresh each screen apart from the number of steps to do each task.
(But you probably already knew that) Last night something else was happening like many minutes for each screen to come up. I would have given up but was trying to get a promised action completed.
Maybe it’s more hidden with the superfast connections available around the world but it relates to this game only and has got worse recently. (It’s semi normal today)
Wasn’t the reset supposed to be happening in January??? Just like to point out that it’s the 27th…
Lastly, before the reset happens… - Has anyone looked into why a player should be able to sell 1000 bonds at 10 million each? Surely bonds should only be able to be issued at their face value and then traded up and down… Surcharge on share issues in the same area. forget restrictions on buy and sell - this is even bigger. Related - Have a look at the cash and equity of Jobsons - it’s a bug because that many quadrillions have never been generated in the game, but it’s also due to lack of field controls
Hey Firesyscorp … we love our game too, but also hate that it is so big and complex that it takes us a long time to implement certain improvements 
I love that you are sticking with us and counting the days to the reset … we have just implemented the final updates on our internal testing server and are now doing our full testing. If everything goes well, there is a chance we may be in a position to do the reset end of next week or early the following week, but we won’t know for sure until we get a bit further along.
There are some speed improvements coming with the reset, and once this reset happens where we have corrected all the big issues, it will free us up to spend more time on speeding up the game.
We did have a modification designed for the stocks and bonds and how they are sold to make sure that the market price was not being manipulated, but I will have to check to see if that update has been done yet or not.
I still have an issue with bonds but don’t wish to clog up the reset announcement with this topic.
It only relates to the issue price of a bond. I understand that a player should be able to set a higher price for a 10% bond than a 2% bond but there will always be other players gullible enough to pay 10,000 for a 1000 face value bond even though there’s no hope of a return apart from the 1000 base.
This does have an effect on player cash and equity on the leader boards even if it doesn’t affect a company’s valuation. A simple rule to only allow a 1000 bond to be issued at 1000 removes the problem. Let the yield be the competitive thing trying to attract buyers, enforce the interest payments like you do tax, and then let the market price that bond how it sees fit…
Thanks for your suggestion. It’s a good observation and discussion for us to have now that we are making changes. I have some questions for you:
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Is it only when a bond is first issued that you think the price should be fixed to 1,000? In other words, when it is on the PRIMARY market. When it is posted for sale by a player on the SECONDARY market, the price should be allowed to be whatever the player wants?
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The idea behind allowing a company to set a price other than 1,000 on the issuing of a bond on the PRIMARY MARKET is primarily to allow the company to offer a discounted price on the bond in order to attract more buyers. For example, offering the 1,000 bond at 950. Do you think this is ok? Is it only pricing above 1,000 that you think is not good? I agree that we should not allow it to be priced over 1,000 at this point, but I think we may still want to allow pricing under 1,000.
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You say that “This does have an effect on player cash and equity on the leader boards even if it doesn’t affect a company’s valuation.” … I’m not sure I understand, how does it affect player cash and equity?
On point 1 - yes only when first offered. Once issued I have no problem with market determination of price, although some protection for the gullible wouldn’t hurt. (Price movements more than 25% and apply the same to shares)
2 Rather than allow a change in price - the pricing mechanism is the yield. Make your bond attractive by setting the yield at 10% rather than 2%. Then the secondary market may choose to price the 2% yield at 920 and the 10% at 1200.
3 If a player can issue 3000 bonds at a million each where they are paying the interest on only the 1000 face value, and someone buys one of them, you would value all 3000 at 1 million giving him 3 billion in equity for nothing.
If heaven forbid he had a second and third account (why bother but people do) and used those accounts to borrow cash and buy the lot, his cash position would be the same. I’m using extremes as an example but early on any advantage from that sort of loophole would show big on the leader board.
Thanks for the clarification …
(1) I agree with you. And, that’s what we will do. We will set the ISSUE Price at g1,000. So all bonds on the PRIMARY MARKET will be g1,000. As you say, players will compete on the Coupon Rate … and the stability and credibility of the player/company.
In the future, we will consider allowing the ISSUE Price to be less than g1,000 in case the issuer wants to add an additional purchase incentive, but for now it’s better to keep it simple for all players.
(2) On the SECONDARY MARKET, bonds can be priced whatever a player wants. However, we will add some type of reasonable maximum price to keep things under control.
(3) I don’t think this thought applies to BONDS because bonds are not EQUITY, they are DEBT. So, selling one bond at g1,000 means your CASH increases by g1,000 but your DEBT also increases by g1,000 so there is no change in EQUITY. I hope that makes sense.
We really appreciate you continuing to push for this bond change, it moved us to think it through more and the result is our game will be better for it. THANK YOU!
