Hi,
been a while but we finally started playing EP (after about a year or so in the planning).
Now on the first game it came up that... anarchists pretty much don't use money and everything is payed for in favors... so you can get anything for favors too... thats when everybody opened the books and started to "buy" anything that fits into type 3 favors (the ones that reset each day) so everyone accumulated implants software and gear like crazy while the GM got unnerved and wanted to get along with the story which basically resulted in roll for yourself don't bother me.
And then someone asked (what all have thought) "why should I use the rez to money rule, to buy something from the hypercorps or the like when I can have it for free from the anarchists?"
And I'd like to pass on the question because we couldn't find a good answer that we could settle on.
I kept reading in the books until I made up my mind with the following:
"Since there are insufficient humans to occupy all the space and own all the resources there basically is enough for everyone and with unlimited producing capacitys for everyone (anyone can get a fabber just add dirt and get everything one needs provided there is enough energy (--> dyson sphere ^^)) there is no actual need for money... getting a friend to produce a something for you is just a favor ... copying his blueprints for you is an even bigger favour... but in the end hes got nothing to loose everyone can have everything there is because all of humanity can live in wealth and there is enough for everybody.
Then there's only the technology haters left... (mainly the Jovians) who restrict technology and by that artificially induce poverty into their society."
what I don't know is ... where do the hypercapitalists fit in? (maybe it's just the greedy big players who have a hard on owning an entire mining fleet producing riches beyond measure which still dosn't give them a fabber that produces better food then you can get with a 5minute favor right about everywhere...)
sadly our gm went for a very drastic approach that is (after everyone changed from pregens to self made chars) switch the place things went down to a place where he just says every gear needs to be bought with money no matter the faction etc.
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Why money if theres @-rep ???
Mon, 2012-04-16 18:28
#1
Sirion
Why money if theres @-rep ???
Mon, 2012-04-16 19:54
#2
nerdnumber1
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Firstly, rep is not supposed to be abused. Society still has limited production capabilities (there are only so many CMs, they take energy, raw materials, and time). Anarchists will give you what you need (and if you have the rep, what you want), but if you become a parasite and start accumulating wealth without giving back in some fashion (potentially by favors or equipment), they will start dropping your rep. The system only works if no one is a dick. If you are just borrowing something and give it back when you're done, that is probably ok.
Furthermore, many inner system areas require credits (your rep may let you borrow something for free or get you a discount or even allow you to trade equipment, but your friend has to make a living too). Free nanofabrication can put dangerous weapons like plasma cannons into the hands of terrorists and criminals. Some people are ok with living with the inequality of capitalism if it means that their neighbors can't blow a hole through the world.
The rep rules are an abstraction that should be subject to modification if someone tries to blatantly abuse it.
Mon, 2012-04-16 19:57
#3
Prophet710
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Autonomist and Brinker habs are generally free reign as favors are considered. There really is no need for money that far out if you've got the rep to back yourself up. However, if you start to move in to the inner system things get a bit more dicey. More regulations or even a strict adherence to the old economy (as in the Republic).
To answer your question, if you're that far out, you really don't need money at all. Just some good rep and a few decent friends and you're ready to go. However, if you're planning on taking a trip into the system itself (and I'm sure you will being a part of Firewall if you're playing a canon game) then you'll need some kind of hard/backed currency to get what you'll want.
Another thing, not everyone is in the same rep network, so for those instances where you are meeting with a socialite or hyperelite and have only I and @ rep, you've got creds.
—
"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."
Tue, 2012-04-17 08:37
#4
Xagroth
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Gearing a newly created a character is something you do with credits, regardless of the economy you start on (an easygoing GM might give you the chance to ask for some favours before the game starts). But remember some stuff: traveling usually means losing all gear...
Blueprints are free on the new economies (at least, freeware versions do exist... but woe the poor bastard who doesn't know what to look at and ends downloading a subpar blueprint that a kid was toying with before uploading to the mesh!), and black market stuff in the old ones.
Old economies/hypercapitalists fit in the setting because there are people that prefer to live in a society with less dinamic/far west style. In rimward habitats, usually all you find are private citizens enforcing basic rules that allow society to exist, militias, etc...: there is no government as we know it in our days, but something closer to a children's school, where sharing is caring, and being a dick can mean being isolated.
Personally, I'm eagerly waiting for the Rimward setting book precisely because of this, and I feel there should be some sort of "new economies FAQ" somewhere, because its the part people tend to have more trouble with (the ego/morph is a little easier, if people think of the ego as a pilot and the morph as its giant robot XD).
Tue, 2012-04-17 12:53
#5
Herbo
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Reputation is a two-way thing. Players that look at the rules and rules alone will see an unlimited fountain of candy, gear, stuff and more stuff.
Until the avalanche of return favors come in...which may include the "lending" of some of that tastey gear to someone else that "really" needs it. SO in the anarcho-habs it's always wise to decide if you really need something, and if the juice is going to be worth the squeeze. I've allowed my players to roleplay it if they want, or they can leave it to me to drop a favor request on them at a time of my choosing :).
If players resist return-favors and contributing to their own reputation scores...they get flamed as rep-whores and then their personal stock crashes and they are lucky to be able to get some nutrition tabs from the irradiated levels of the reactor "neighborhoods."
And as mentione before, gear in Eclipse Phase has a funny way of staying at least several light minutes from your current location due to Ego-Casting. So all those implants, black matrix duster jackets, particle beam weapons, and nuclear ordinanace only matter in the hab you left them in. And while you are gone it's a pretty fair bet that someone else snatched it up and repurposed it all. Then you are left with purchasing gear in the transitional economies or flat out buying new stuff in the old economies.
GENERALLY, if the system feels like it is being abused it probably is. Regardless of the fine print of the rules. It's one of the hard parts about playing/GM'ing Eclipse Phase to find that groove between fiat, following the mechanics/rules, and having a good time.
If a scenario is taking place entirely within an anarchist hab, then sure the players can call in wild amounts of favors to achieve their ends. BUT that just means that more and more people are going to be able to spill the beans on what they are up to. Makes it kind of hard to conduct a covert op when everyone in town knows you just hit up Tightarse Larry for a EV suit decked out with weapons. AND...what the players can do...the NPC's can too :-).
As a GM if I had players spending days upon days to get implant surgeries, acquire rediculous armaments and other nonesense for the scenario at hand? Well chances are the antagonists of the scenario would find out about it. The locals would begin to pester the PC's at just the "wrong" freakin' time with urgent favour pings flooding their muse (imparting a penalty to assisted infosec tests, etc). Implant surgeries would have a high likelyhood of being done hastily and thus reducing the listed effects -or- the antagonists would make sure to lace the PC's with a surprise dose of something truly awful. And again...the players are making a big splash in a relatively small pond. Villainous plots may get stepped up in pace, the badguys might flat out escape right then and there, a situation that might have been resolved via diplomacy may now turn bloody, allies that may have been waiting in the wings might clam up to avoid "outing" themselves, tangential enemies that would otherwise have remained uninvolved might suddenly complicate matters, and lacking all that...my NPC villains just stepped up their gear outlay to compensate for the PC's.
Tue, 2012-04-17 17:40
#6
nerdnumber1
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
To expand Herbo's point about keeping expenditures quiet, remember, rep is tied to identity. If you are under cover, you can't use your rep without risking exposure. This becomes worse when you have really high rep, because social networks will start to buzz when new 80+ rep individuals start throwing their weight around in backwater habs.
I think that, if a player actively maintains their social network, by giving away equipment to other members before ego-casting, open-sourcing blueprints for argonauts, etc., then they should be able to avoid too many extra favors. It is more when they just take and take when they really risk losing rep.
Tue, 2012-04-17 18:11
#7
Xagroth
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
I was thinking which games place a similar situation in the hands of the GM. While the d20 version of Conan by Moongoose specifically lets the GM to alter the gear of the players before starting the adventure (and places some nice "mechanics" for making them to spend money), the closest thing that comes to my mind are the Warhammer 40.000 RPGs by Fantasy Flight Games: in Dark Heresy you are small fish with regular resources, yes, but in Rogue Trader and Ascension you can move common stuff (like lasguns) by the thousands (or really exotic gear). Then there is Deathwatch, which is the closest thing to what we have discussed here: you have X "requisition points" to get gear and stuff (that includes orbital support, NPCs, etc...) for that mission, barring some basic equipment (armor, gun, knife, some reloads, a couple grenades...).
My suggestion to simplify things is that the GM negociate the starting gear with the players, and also gives them some "basic stuff", at least for that habitat or other parts of the mission, so the character sheet doesn't need to be in a tablet or other easy to rewrite device... Personally, I never had to, since I tend to run one-shots (trying to recruit some guinea pigs... I mean players! XD) and I do the characters before starting myself... but for example letting a player to have the same kind of weapons on all missions (that require weapons!) or a set of implants (at a cost, of course...), etc... might be a good idea for the first games. The player should decide to "switch gears" by himself, after all, when you start throwing him enemies that know all his strategies (since he uses those all the time!).
Best trick on the GM's toolbox: let the players think it was their idea to do the stuff.
Wed, 2012-04-18 03:28
#8
Extrasolar Angel
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Money exists because it is a more stable, less cruel and controllable system of judging worth and prices.
A system based largely on popularity will lead to many excesses and unfair treatment of those with good skills and competences but poor social abilities. On the other hand Berlusconi/Clinton types that may lack competences but have good charisma and people skills, or just know how to put on a show will have advantages. The anarchist locations and social system is pretty dystopian to me(which fits the vision of EP setting as dystopian).
—
[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]
Wed, 2012-04-18 04:00
#9
Xagroth
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
But... if somebody is asked for a favour he cannot provide personally knows somebody who can, and uses that to "transmit" the favour... like the old CP2020 Fixer role. So he would be getting rep because he can put people in contact with the ones they need. To me, that sounds a pretty interesting competence!
Also, you seem to have a misconception here: the rep is not an absolute scale, but a condensation of a lot of factors by the character's muse. So you see, the special program everybody has also makes sure to keep updated the rep system!
Wed, 2012-04-18 08:10
#10
Smokeskin
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
You can of course play it like you want, but EP canon is different. Anarchists and others who've implemented the new economy system are the opposite of dystopian. Pg. 62 about transitional economies:
[i]Regardless of the reason, outsiders from new
economy habitants often see them as somewhat poor
and deprived, while many residents of transitional
economies consider new economy societies both
exceptionally wealthy and somewhat frightening.[/i]
With free access to the means of production, anarchists enjoy great material wealth. They may price charisma highly, even compared to today, but so what? In the new economies, you can't get away with being incompetent where it matters, or betraying people's trust. With sousveillance, accountability is extremely high. You can't just fuck society over and expect no one to know. So much is recorded and going public is trivial. And you can't just expect your money or your power to protect you - there is only your rep, so if you do something that resets your rep, you're hosed.
Of course there is still personal ambition, power struggles and backstabbing and what not, but by and large your work has to genuinely benefit those around you and the society you live in.
Wed, 2012-04-18 09:24
#11
GreyBrother
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Remember, this text is written from an in-game perspective and the person in question did make clear that he caters to the autonomists end of the scale.
Wed, 2012-04-18 14:00
#12
Extrasolar Angel
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
You quote a propaganda piece ;) It's hardly the realistic potrayal of how things look like. And societies where one can engineer freely a virus decimating population and where you value is estimated by your popularity(like jocks and nerds in high-school) is dystopian by its very nature.
You just explained why a reputation based society won't ever have a persona like Socrates or counterculture.
Those who don't conform to values and views of society will be eradicated before they will have a chance to have their say. This blocks inguinity and cultural development quite nicely. A reputation based economy ensures social conformism, obedience to hierarchy, cryonism and nepotism.
All the above make reputation based society very dystopian and very nasty compared to ours. Right now a banking or state official can under false belief of being unknown post anarchic statements on the net, or hint at his disgust with society he helps to continue existing. In EP due to reputation economy and massive surveillance this is made impossible, trapping people in Orwellian existance where they have to live according to their social masks-without hope of escape. I can see this being source of very violent fantasies.
In our world, we still(yet, this is changing fast under artificially created social pressure to join "fun" social networking sites) can live our lives seperately-there is life at work, your role as an employee, there is life outside work, your role as a member of family, social group, hobby group. All more or less seperate. In the future-all your lives are you. Everything is recorded, analyed, and you are judged by it. You can't spit in the net with disgust at those you depend your livelyhood on. Your real you, your real beliefs. They are always hidden in the shell that you present to the world, a doll that is not you, but a constructed image to fulfill expectations of society. And there is no escape, never, nowhere.
That's why reputation society and transparancy of your life makes EP so dystopic. Far more than TITANS do.
—
[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]
Wed, 2012-04-18 14:46
#13
Arenamontanus
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
I don't think reputation systems are necessarily dystopian, just as monetary systems are not necessarily dystopian. However, they do have faults and quirks:
Reputation systems favour pro-social behaviour - as interpreted by other members of the society. This means that if they are racist, you better be racist too.
Monetary systems tend to be zero-sum: if I give you a credit, I have one less. This makes them better able to track finite resources. Critics would say that in a post-scarcity economy this matters little, but that ignores the fact that there are plenty of things that are: rare elements, living space, social status, attention.
Reputation systems couple your financial situation to your social sphere. Again, this is something the intellectual descendants of Marxism think is great, since the decoupling is said to cause alienation. But this also means that every transaction has social consequences: giving something to an ill-favoured person will lower your rep, while doing favours for certain people will benefit you. Monetarists would point out that credits are neutral: money systems do not care who you are and treat ill-favoured people similar to favoured people.
A key question is how good the price mechanism is. If something really needs doing it should carry a high reward: without it, there will be no plumbers. Money has a fairly simple system based on single numbers. Rep makes it a more complex deal of social nuance: this requires much more processing and probably introduces friction in the process of matching sellers and buyers. I suspect this would lead to an under-supply of jobs done.
Reputation scores decay over time. Who remembers the small things you did last year? Essentially they have a strong built in inflation. This means that it is better to use your current rep now than to try to save it for later.
Some people have more persistent reps than others since they did great or terrible things. This means they might be permanently riding a good reputation or suffering for something they did, while more middle-of-the-road people have to work hard to maintain their reputations. This might be unfair.
It might also make people more likely to take risks to do a really memorable good deed, but also very unwilling to risk any bad reputation. Think of Amazon sellers who are desperate not to get bad reviews.
—
Wed, 2012-04-18 15:51
#14
Extrasolar Angel
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
One interesting thing I have seen once being proposed was education. As children are limited, and represent high potential value(future society), their education and shaping of their world view could be seen as very precious commodity. Hence perhaps those with high reputation would have higher share of votes deciding education programms, their contents and way they will be conducted. Its a bit shaky IMHO, but on the other thing interesting take on the issue of scarce commodities in supposedly post-scarce society.
What has changed in our society already is the fact that past criminals can no longer erase their acts(due to internet). There were and are laws in certain countries that demand that after, say 10 years after sentence the record of crime is erased. In the past this allowed certain people who changed to start a new life, sometimes becoming normal members of society(former teen murderer turned kitchen cook after 30 etc). Today this is becoming impossible.
—
[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]
Wed, 2012-04-18 16:34
#15
Jaberwo
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
I don't think anything past the interview is written from an ingame perspective, at least I can't find where it says so.
In my game rep is a lot more like money if you look closely, in particular there is nothing like 'downrating' someone. There are more or less just favours you give and favours you receive.
I thought it through for the Titanian Commonwealth, but it should also work (if it works at all that is) in the other autonomist societies which have some kind of central government.
It should be noted that I make a very big distinction between Autonomists and Anarchists, and haven't played with the latter, so I'm not sure whether it would work there.
So if you do something for someone they will note in their public profile that you have done them a favour of a certain value (more precise than in the rules but less precise than money), and you do the same on your end.
If you give more favours than you call in, everyone can see in your profile. There are many rep-apps managed by the muse who can give you a score, a comparison to typical archetypes, or just a summary of the persons life, even approximate income and wealth in credits, as well as cross checking some favours to see if everything is legit.
If people interact with bigger entities like microcorps, little changes, except that "favour-surplus" is quantified as the Titanian Kroner which can be used to trade with other microcorps. If you don't spend it, the government will get it back if the microcorp needs more favours than people get from it.
I don't know if that makes any sense but it was the result of me trying to understand how the rep-system really works especially on the technical side.
Wed, 2012-04-18 16:48
#16
Smokeskin
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
@Extrasolar Angel:
In the inner system, you have to work hard to get even basic fabber access, and anything advanced you have to buy. There's no social security net, and nothing for free. In the autonomist areas, it is just a few hours of communal work per week, or do something people like, and you can get even advanced stuff made. Not having to work much, freedom to pursue your interests, while getting everything you need and much of what you want, isn't that wealth?
I also don't really buy the whole conformity society idea. Our good friends, we know their flaws and it doesn't worry us unduly. In an open society, where the flaws of strangers are equally known, why should anyone be much concerned with it? Everyone has flaws, quirks, strange ideas, but today, we rarely see those in strangers because they hide them, and that's why there's a reaction when they're revealed.
The high school popularity analogy also seem flawed. People grow more nuanced in their dealings with others as they mature, and teen rep is likely worth very little. If they don't have skills, raw materials and fabber access, they can't do much more than adore you. You want favors from skilled people, from collectives that have robot fleets gathering raw materials and own fabbers.
Wed, 2012-04-18 17:10
#17
Extrasolar Angel
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
The same happens in reputation system only the work concerns social activity.
Depends on where, there is some social support IIRC. And the inner system organisations like Jovian Republic protects you from neo-chimps armed with nerve gas and ex-humans with anti-matter bombs for free.
Like guns to shoot people who force you to do community work ? ;)
What if my interests involve hostile mind engineering, creating nasty viruses or bombing habitats?
I live in society, not among friends. Those who do not share my views, or whose behaviour is not liked by me do not become my friends. But they are still part of society. And people constantly try to influence others. Now, either you want to create small entities in reputation society made out of 10-20 people who are friends or you will artificially create a system that will pressure larger groups into confrimity. Hmmm, a lot of like starting an evolving hive mind. Stephen Baxter wrote an interesting piece on how due to social changes, humans could become hive-mind groups.
I see no reason why not. Nothing changes besides being able to detect those in need of correction easier.
No, the reason is that these ideas are not tolerated, or thought to be positive, not that they are unknown. I don't see how it would change. If people believing in certain social views will simply have easier time discovering their opponents, that doesn't mean they will accept different ideas.
Having worked in numerous corporations and organisations with people in their 30s, 40s an 50s and with elderly scholars I can only say that I disagree with your opinion.
Except being skilled doesn't give you reputation. Being popular does. So a skilled, but unpopular person, can be easly abused by intolerant society or even blackmailed. Heck, I can even see high-rep groups engaging in organised mobbing and slavery towards skilled members of the habitat.
—
[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]
Wed, 2012-04-18 17:12
#18
Extrasolar Angel
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
double post
—
[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]
Thu, 2012-04-19 03:54
#19
Smokeskin
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Extrasolar, you seem to equate popularity with rep. I believe there's only a limited correlation.
If we look at the description in EP pg. 125:
[i]Your reputation score
represents your social capital—how esteemed you
are to your peers. Rep can be increased by positively
influencing, contributing to, or helping individuals or
groups, and it can be decreased through antisocial
behavior.[/i]
If you look at the rep gains/losses on pg. 385, you find the same story - you can't really build rep just by being popular or lose it by being unpopular (though making others miserable can both lose you rep and make you unpopular of course). For simple popularity to give significant rep, I guess you'd need to be at levels of fame which would also let you make tons of money in the inner system.
Rep is based around contribution, reciprocity, barter - in quite a lot of ways it is very much like money. In others, it is not - helping the poor isn't just pro bono work, it "pays" as well as helping the powerful does. You can't screw people over safe in the knowledge they have no way to sue you for damages, as you often can in capitalist societies. But nothing indicates that it reduces society to a high school popularity contest.
Tue, 2012-05-15 04:13
#20
iconoplast
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
I have to disagree with this statement, just because if it's true, then the powerful aren't. At least, they aren't more powerful than anyone else. After all, if being poor wasn't awful, they'd call it being rich.
You're right if you mean that you get the same (or less) @-rep for helping someone with not a lot of credits as for helping someone rich. But if having more rep isn't better (in the sense of it's easier to get people to do what you want) than having less rep, then I don't think it makes sense.
I think that the same favor, done for a whuffie-king celebrity, or done for a low-rep nobody, will get you very different rep rewards.
Tue, 2012-05-15 04:41
#21
Smokeskin
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
From a mechanical point of view, higher rep increases your chances of getting favors, while there is no greater incentive for an individual to actually help high-rep individuals (except maybe for the less risk of him turning out to be a douchebag that you'd lose rep for helping). So it could be that high rep simply lets you get the attention of more people, increasing the chances that you can find someone willing and able to help. And it should be noted that the mechanics of rep are specifically noted as requiring roleplaying, planning etc. in many cases.
From a common sense view, I agree with you, and my statement was too bombastic.
So while a rep-economy would give you rep for helping the low-rep (which means the low-rep are better off than the poor in old economies), helping the high-rep would give you more. Of course there would be benefits to getting associated with someone well-connected and well-respected in a reputation economy. I also believe that interactions in the rep economy are like other social interactions - sometimes you just want the game to move on and roll Deception dice, other times you play out the conversation. In a rep economy, getting some favors in a large habitat might be handled by a Network roll, but other times you'd play out the reality - that in an anarcho-communist hab you need a collective's commitee to give you the stuff you need.
Tue, 2012-05-15 06:43
#22
crizh
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Sorry to pick up on this so long after it was posted.
I'm not sure I understand or agree with the above.
Economic transactions mediated with money are anything but zero sum. Excluding forgery and electronic crime they are obviously zero sum with regards the number of Credits in circulation but surely that goes without saying?
Or are you illustrating that in Reputation systems no quantity is exchanged? I get a favour from you and the total of our reputations either remains constant or possibly even creeps upward slightly.
I presume you are not suggesting that the amount of 'reputation' in circulation isn't fixed. While that is partially true, there is an upper bound of 100x 'number of participating egos' in any particular network.
I'm not trying to be argumentative or critical, usually I'm completely in agreement with everything that you say that I comprehend (you've successfully made me feel very inadequate in the time I've been reading this forum...), it's just that whole sentence seemed to be uncharacteristically nonsensical.
—
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Tue, 2012-05-15 07:38
#23
Decivre
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
The reputation mechanics from the core book are [i]extremely oversimplified[/i]; and while they work great for making a broad and simple system for utilizing these networks, they make for a shoddy simulation of functional reputation networks. It works when you first start the game, but I would recommend heavily modifying it to suit your tastes and better logic as time goes on and you get a chance to really see them in action.
For one thing, I would definitely recommend limiting the scope of individual reputation networks, and what sort of favors they can give you. It doesn't make sense to use the EcoWave reputation network to purchase a slave, and it also doesn't make sense to use the CivicNet reputation network to get open source blueprints. However, it does make sense to use Fame for the purpose of scoring an invite to a major gala, or getting free clothes from a big-name designer. It does make sense to use RNA to get access to research papers on cutting-edge quantum technologies. Each network should be usable within a limited constraint of favors... a concept that the initial write-up didn't really cover.
Second, a good reputation network should gain a degree of rigidity over time. Someone who has spent a decade improving their reputation score should have a score that is more durable than someone who got a high reputation score from a few initial good deeds. Early on, a reputation score should be pliable and malleable, and easily shift up or down based on your actions. Down the line, your score should be largely permanent and based on a lifetime of deeds, with future deeds doing very little to shift it in either direction (still shifting it, but in a way that might be largely unmeasurable). Again, this is something that is poorly simulated with the current mechanics. I tend to tack on a history score to reputation scores to represent how long a person has been a part of a network... the higher your history, the slower your reputation change is.
I'm hoping that eventually we'll see a book that makes a more concise attempt at modeling a reputation network. To be fair, it might require a book all its own to do.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Wed, 2012-05-16 03:27
#24
Pyrite
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
An interesting factor in rep economies to think about:
In a currency economy, there's a natural tendency toward having money making it easier to earn more money, and below a certain point, it becomes very difficult to not slip continually deeper into poverty. The rich can afford better education and training, can afford to recover from medical issues, and gain access to exclusive venues where connections can be made. To a degree, this is mitigated by the existence of social safety nets like charity organizations and welfare programs, but the tendency is still there, just like a hot air balloon still experiences gravity. In Eclipse Phase, this is rendered even more extreme by the stratifying cost of high end morphs and personal space. If the average indenture contract is 10 years, and the average cost of a splicer is 5000 credits, then the average indenture earns less than 2 credits a day.
In a rep economy, the reverse occurs: high rep individuals already have all the friends they care to keep track of, and most of their needs seen to, so it's difficult for most people to actually find a way to be of use to them. Low rep individuals, on the other hand, can have their quality of life improved greatly by small favors, and by definition are short on friends, so networking with them is easy, and as they pay back the small favors through whatever means they have, they slowly build their rep in the community. This of course is mitigated by the degree to which rep tanks by association, as people will be careful about associating with unknowns if it could put their own rep in danger.
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'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien
Wed, 2012-05-16 04:04
#25
Smokeskin
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
To be fair, that's what he can pay on the morph loan, and assuming an interest rate below 8%. At 15% interest rate, he'd be paying 2.7 credits per day today towards the morph loan, and that's after he's paid for housing, power, food, goods, insurance, entertainment, etc.
They're earning a good deal more than 2 credits per day.
Wed, 2012-05-16 05:05
#26
Pyrite
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Considering that his housing is most likely either a closet or a server, his food is electricity, and his entertainment is a digital feed, that probably doesn't amount to a lot. And he's lucky if his insurance policy doesn't screw him if anything actually does go wrong. Hell, if you take some of Sunward's fluff story at face value, he's lucky if he even has a backup on file, or if being restored doesn't blank-slate him on the loan.
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'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien
Wed, 2012-05-16 06:37
#27
Arenamontanus
Re: Why money if theres @-rep ???
Generally, money is additive if you have little, and multiplicative if you have a lot. When you just have a few credits each addition and subtraction matters. When you have more you can use money to improve your flows (for example by getting better education, more long-lasting products etc.), and beyond a certain point interest and investments start to be useful - now your money produces money for you.
This seems to be true for real world reputations too (as opposed to the rep system in EP): the Matthew effect. The reputations of celebrities and major politicians are enormous, and since they are so famous they get mentioned a lot and this further helps extend their reputations (many are after all famous just for being famous). The same thing is true for webpages, artists, twitter following or scientific citations: the big names attract attention, and attention is what gives you rep.
My problem with the rep system of EP is that it doesn't explain how this is handled. One take would be to say that it is actually capped and Liselotte Moller (the Titanian superstar orbit-punk rocker) doesn't have enormously more rep points than Mrs Janet Brown (a respected if slightly boring fall evacuee running the transit system in New Aalborg). If they both want something they have nearly the same chance of getting it - Liselotte has a bit of an advantage, but it is not overwhelming. Very democratic and probably in the spirit of what many autonomists would like.
However, this seems odd given that there are probably tens of thousands of fans of Liselotte who would love to help their star out, while Mrs Brown is just known by some friends and co-workers. So the other possibility is that the rep system isn't strongly capped. This means that celebrities and other elite people probably get *very* preferential treatment over the nondescript masses. If Liselotte wants the same thing as Mrs Brown, she will get it. And to make things even worse, in habitats with collective ownership this means that the popular people will be able to get the majority of access to all goodies.
No doubt the first case seems much nicer to real or EP autonomists, but it also has some nasty sides. In science about 50% of papers are never cited by anybody - and rightly so, because they are crap. The distribution of quality and importance is extremely skew: for every "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" there are tens of thousands of less important papers. The same is true for the impact of scientists. If this skewness is flattened by a rep system that disfavours the superstars and helps the small guys, it also makes it much harder to find the truly important results. They get lost amid the low-quality noise, and progress stops.
Of course, this take might actually work in EP if you want to play with the dystopian aspects or make the economic situation more tricky: the new economy is *really bad* at innovation. It stifles competition and rewarding of innovators. Meanwhile it is a nice place to live if you are not elite, and mediocre but social people thrive. To get new stuff it needs to continually pirate from the more creative economies of the solar system. If you are a genius in the outer system you will want to move inwards - if Liselotte had not been so ideological she would have been on Extropia right now.
An interesting spin on this take is that this is what makes the argonauts different from the autonomists, and why they have a separate rep network. They do recognize the extreme elitism of what they are doing (note that elitism doesn't mean you can not be open - they are all for open source meritocracy) and allows it to flourish. Sure, it means that Professor Schellnhuber can get nearly anything he wants, but heck, he wrote *the* Iktomi Paper! If he wants a grad student or ten for the night, there will be a queue.
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