Lease Profit Calculation Issues?

The confounding factor for that being obvious evidence of something being broken was that the character's skills and stats were the same in both those months, so if changes to lease profits were capped based on stats and skills, so that activity wouldn't matter, I would expect to see no variations. So if other players are improving their stats and skills and also seeing no changes, and thinking it may be because their activity isn't different enough, there might be something broken instead.

It's a moot point for me now but considering the old bug only effected some leases and not others, I am still left wondering if there was a problem.

The amount of hours and months I spent just wasting time trying to please a system that didn't work may have left me permanently skeptical of anything ever working, but when I started leasing a business in the game this system didn't exist, it was all manual and the swings in income (downwards) were huge week to week (-20% maybe?), so when the new automation came in 18 months later or whatever it was, I may have wrongly assumed there would be much more noticeable variations and just never saw them because there was too much chyen from other things.

But for posterity if anyone leases very expensive businesses and doesn't see their income move ever, maybe file a bug report before assuming you're just bad at it.

The amount of hours and months I spent just wasting time trying to please a system that didn't work may have left me permanently skeptical of anything ever working, but when I started leasing a business in the game this system didn't exist, it was all manual and the swings in income (downwards) were huge week to week (-20% maybe?), so when the new automation came in 18 months later or whatever it was, I may have wrongly assumed there would be much more noticeable variations and just never saw them because there was too much chyen from other things.

But for posterity if anyone leases very expensive businesses and doesn't see their income move ever, maybe file a bug report before assuming you're just bad at it.

I @bugged this a while back because I was having a similar experience. Slither checked the logs and confirmed it increases. I later confirmed the increase myself. Over time I came to the conclusion that trying to please the system and wasting money was ultimately draining my enthusiasm for working the lease and also costing me more than I was ultimately making after subtracting the loan amount.

It is probably harder to tell with some businesses what you're receiving from ambient income. Maybe it's possible for the deposit to be recorded in the receipts.

I have reason to believe that non-club leases do significantly better due to them not being so dependent on hiring out with consistent pay, and instead being somewhat more of a solo affair with occasional hiring of others on a contractual basis for things like SIC ads.

Overall, I think the consistent burnout among club leaseholders needs to seriously be considered a warning sign of a broken system. I am kicking myself right now for not remembering to bring this up at town hall.

I totally agree clubs are especially brutal for this because they are expected to hire staff, but it seems obvious to me that this is demonstrably worse for everyone because player-employed players shrink the size of the economy (salary comes out of player pockets instead of increasing the money supply for an automated salary) so if you have one player owned business employing three players, you're looking at thousands or tens of thousands less money in circulation compared to four players on non-player owned business salaries. To say nothing of the fact the business owner is making close to zero chyen in thanks for all their job creation.

I'm genuinely angry about this lol. How the fuck are clubs supposed to work even on paper when we're throwing players an extra kay for second-life levels of time investment? I assumed someone was getting compensated at something like sane amounts.

I mean, what the fuck Sindome? This is not acceptable in comparison to the time and effort demands being placed on players for these roles and what is expected to be correct.

From what I can vaguely infer from some log comparisons, a huge lease-promoting plot I ran that took over a hundred hours to organize and execute (and probably closer to 200 hours) may have raised my lease income by ~1000-2000c and I just thought it wasn't working because I didn't notice the small change in the register. So assuming I maintained that activity bump the whole year and didn't die of stress (spoiler alert: I did die of stress), I'd be looking at 50,000-100,000c of eventual annuity compensation for a plot that cost like three hundred thousand chyen… assuming I kept doing them every month lol. That was with zero employees!

If that same standard is applied across all players, how are we expecting to encourage amazing and driven roleplayers to make these enormous extra efforts when players who do nothing are getting practically the same rewards and none of the exhaustion? It's not like it's optional, I'm often being told to do more from every angle, I'm being told to push other players to do more from every angle. We need to make this more sustainable.

Leases are not for profit.

With exception of few leases that provide something mechanically unique, you are buying them for whatever IC status benefit they bring you. Topside ones come with a bit of social elevation, but that profit is majority RP fluff, not as many tangible benefits.

More so trying to lease like a business is an absolutely doomed venture. It just flat out doesn't work. Even if you pay people bottom wages, there is virtually no way you will break even on them with anything lease-related, more so not over more than a week or two once novelty of new employee wears off.

Leases as a business just do not work, and I do not think they can be made to work without making mixers they hire copies but with mix access. And that's fine.

What leases can be is a catalyst, it's a beacon to draw RP to you, and then utilize those contacts to actually make flash - not from the business but from the side hustles, hopefully profitable ones. There are of course mechanical benefits, to every lease, extra reasonably safe space so let's not diminish those, but by far it's what you make this RP vessel to be.

Is that enough for how much eyewatering chy you have to front for one, and especially keeping in mind how it's a big liability and a public weakness? I likely won't renew mine unless a lot of IC circumstances change a lot, but at least my lease has a chance to make it worthwile with the right IC setup, most leases just flat do not.

Let's say I collect from my register at the end of the week. Using the command to view the sales logs, I can take the total from that and subtract it from the amount I actually withdrew to find the ambient income. I find it to be pretty reasonable and if I made no deviations from the activity I do now the ambient amount which has been roughly the same week to week, is actually enough to cover the lease and then some. Are we talking about something else? If so I'm curious to understand what that addition factor is. Thanks for any insight on the topic, I thought it was working fine.

I thought the core of the issue was that ambient income wasn't working or working as intended or that it wasn't enough, but I can see how employees can mess up all of that up. Since I do not employ anyone by the nature of my lease I will bow out and go back to watching the discussion!

By Aida

Leases are not for profit.

With exception of few leases that provide something mechanically unique, you are buying them for whatever IC status benefit they bring you. Topside ones come with a bit of social elevation, but that profit is majority RP fluff, not as many tangible benefits.

The problem with this perspective is that with some exceptions, taking up a lease assumes the position of any other employment. You cannot, for example, work as a senior corpsec agent at a corporation and hold a lease (I don't think, anyway… pretty sure you can't). So any income you would have otherwise generated through such means is lost. You can do things like run crates, but by your own words, you're acknowledging that being a leaseholder comes with elevated social status. Shouldn't it be frowned upon or even prohibited for a leaseholder to be relying on those means of income?

Money needs to come from somewhere. I don't know what my ratio between automated systems vs player sourced income is, exactly, but at a guess I would say it leans heavily in the player sourced realm, and always has. And I will tell you that you cannot singularly rely on other players for your income long term. Those means dry up; they have their own priorities or dry spells, and there are too many systems that slurp up money from player hands (sic bills, lev fees, phone bills, clone updates, cyberware, etc.) The fact that you lease a business at all takes an enormous amount of money out of player hands, actually.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the expectation that, as a leaseholder, you should have enough income to fulfill the responsibilities of that role (paying employees, holding events, etc) and have more left over to support your character for the time you're investing in doing those things. The argument that other players are posing here is not "we think having a lease should make us rich", it is that the current system discourages people from fulfilling the expectations of their role. Holding a lease without another, reliable means of income, and also pouring money into events, hiring others, etc would ultimately not only drive you into a corner financially, but take up an enormous amount of your personal time to do so.

It strikes me as a short-term cheap way for staff to generate activity in the game at the cost of burning the players out who are getting ground out by this system, and when they quit it will blame them for not rising to the challenge.

I do not necessarily agree with that entirely, I had some extra help from the staff that offered to compensate some of the efforts, but it would be nice if that was more codified.

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(Edited by Slither at 1:18 pm on 3/20/2025)

I'm going to chat with the other staff about increasing weekly profits overall for clubs/bars, but no promises on that front.

Freight licenses in comparison could be as much as three hundred times greater an income boost for much less additional player effort to earn it. It's a serious feast to famine.

It's good to know what the real numbers are across many different players so everyone can calibrate their efforts accordingly but I definitely thought it was much more potentially rewarding.

The sheer number of players who burned out running leases seems to suggest to me that there is something wrong with the motivation and encouragement that the game is presenting to players. It's not sustainable to just expect players to do things that disadvantage themselves and cost their time and money for the sake of it.

Players are volunteers too. I don't think it's unreasonable when everything in the game is so expensive to have reasonable compensation to players who make the additional effort to make the world come alive, especially when they sometimes are not given the option of running leases how they want at the activity level they're comfortable with.

If players could rename and redecorate these leases they'd very probably be way more interested in roleplaying their operation as a labour of love regardless of cost. That might be something to consider, because it makes all the difference in the world in my own experience.

However, I very much disagree with the argument of how clubs don't make enough profit to cover the cost of hosting events. Except for a very select few jobs, there are -no- jobs in game that actually make you profit for hosting a social event. The whole point of that event is meant to generate roleplay, not chyen. An idea there is to as a bar owner have other people pay to rent your bar to host their events. But I don't see how it's unfair that bar owners can't make chy to cover the cost of running events, because 90% of the game pays out of pocket for it as well.

Leases, and especially clubs, are status symbols. You ARE the party. They can be used by PCs to spread influence, mentor newbies, and gather immense amounts of data and IC support like no other. Rather than seeing them as a tool for chyen profit, it should be considered how much of a 'RP profit' a good bar owner can bring. If you aren't leasing a bar for those reasons and simply want to run it like a pawn shop or other leases that have more direct ways of generating chyen income, then you won't really be happy with it.

Wouldn't be a fan if it were something that was done regularly (like available every week) or covered too much (10-15K maybe?) but maybe it'd help with lease owners being a little more comfortable when it comes to organizing regular events and generating RP.

I don't know how exactly the system calculates it, but you could even make it a reward or have the reimbursement go higher or lower depending on the activity of the club itself if 'running an event' was no longer a consideration for profits increasing or decreasing.

(Edited by Slither at 7:18 pm on 3/20/2025)

It is a chy and time investment, yes, but bearing in mind most leases tend to be paid by oldbies who should be worrying less about how much profit they're about to make from a RP event and more about just enjoying hosting an event. If you want to host an event, you can certainly do it at one of the many non-leasable social centers. If you want to roleplay being a club owner and have your character be one, then you can pay for the lease and not stress about the economics or whether it's going to make you profit or not.

(Edited by Slither at 7:19 pm on 3/20/2025)

Bars come with a lot of RP profit that one can turn into chyen profit. There are plenty of other ways to hustle too, automated or not. I've seen characters make approximately 1/6 of their lease cost purely by hosting an event for another character in one day. There are characters who regularly sponsor events, and there are oldbie characters who loan chyen to others so they can have their leases.

And that's just the economics part of it. I really think that at the end of the day people shouldn't really choose to lease a club if they want it to be more of a mechanically supported lease like the others and they aren't too interested in the RP aspect of it.

I've seen Slither mention here how every single lease in the game will make you break even from the automated income alone. While running events is costly, I don't think one should be solely existing on the automated income alone anyway.

Sure, but why would breaking even be something to aspire towards unless there are considerable other benefits, especially when the profit margin over break even is about one character salary. So if you hire one character you are likely breaking even, before holding events, before running advertisements, before doing anything.

Compared an NPC-run club where a player manager might be making five times more (or even ten times more) than a player-run business would pay, plus the money isn't being lost by the players you're trying to benefit in the bargain. Plus they have job perks. It's not like player-owned clubs are the only ones available, they're competing against places that have far better value and support. I can say that with confidence because I did that personally and it was amazingly well supported.

No, I already agree that PC-lease employees should get perks too. And I certainly agree that adjustments can be made to help pay for employees and that it shouldn't all rest on just one default ambient income.

What I'm against though is a bar lease being on the same level mechanically and supported on the same level as say, a pawn shop, or that it should be as profitable as them (or at least as easy to profit from). I think it's okay for them to be a RP lease more than anything else and yes, sometimes a chyen sink in exchange for the IC influence it affords. It's like comparing apples and oranges to me because the more mechanical/skill-based leases exist for entirely different reasons IMO compared to bars and clubs.

They get their base income and then the rest is shelf sales (and previously freight income).

Like surely it should be the opposite? Like speaking to Quotients point here, take Club Manager at an NPC-owned business. More profit, more support, more fun, none of the headaches of ownership. You don't get freight licenses but that doesn't matter anymore anyway.

I didn't remain managing a topside club because I, frankly, felt really negative about the theme and especially description of the place (some of which has since been changed thankfully), but from a roleplaying support perspective it was far and away the best experience I ever had playing Sindome and pretty much felt like what the game preaches about roleplaying effort being rewarded with more roleplaying support. The support I could give my staff was incomparable to anywhere else I played in the game, and the support I had for plots felt limitless once I got out of my shell since that was before I had really learned how to roleplay at scale.

It just made me sad to see so many players then struggle year after year to run player-owned clubs/bars with a fraction of the support available to them because they had to just pay for everything. Players wanted to do it, some of the best players the game has had, with many many roleplaying awards between them, were trying to, but it's very tough and it honestly seemed to me the most successful and sustainable instances were the ones making the least effort.

Players who do these roles well should be the best compensated and supported players in the game, not relegated to dregs and expected to be amazing out of the goodness of their hearts.

But we are holding leaseholders, who have invested chyen, to a different standard?

If I had to summarize doing club/bar leases, I'd say it's like being an immy greeter that pays to greet immies instead of being paid to do so, with a fancy place to do it at, and an expectation to entertain everyone else in the game when they are all feeling bored.

Club owners are under the same or even more pressure and expectations. How many topside club owners were getting killed by their landlords for not meeting their expectations, because I bet it was less than club owners lol.

I don't really feel like you're speaking from any kind of personal experience Cowbell, because it sounds like you're talking about these things in idealized terms of someone who heard about them but never did them. Run a lease for a year and then talk to me about how there's nobody to lock you into the role and can do whatever you want. Players get the hell micromanaged out of them.

If you believe a topside content producer job, or a topside club manager has the same amount of freedom as someone leasing Red's Finest when it comes to losing your job, then I'll have to simply say my own experience of the game is vastly different from yours. I think you're mistaking side hustles there with what the freedom of a lease actually entails.

If we're going to have property owners ICly start firing people and getting rid of their leases because they got involved in things they shouldn't have (for example, terrorism) like how it'd work for a topside club manager or content creator job, great.

I don't think it's right to push forward the idea that a bar owner in the Mix should get the same compensation and support to run events as someone topside whose main responsibility and mandatory work is running events with, as you said, a lot more risk involved if you were to be caught doing something that doesn't fit your IC role.

What does matter is whether we want to encourage players to fill roles that are available in the game and create opportunities, whether they are in Red or Gold, or Green.

Presently, the consensus appears to be that the experience, in Red, at least, is negative.

I don't think it's fair to call these obscene salaries. Some of them, are underpaid for hour of effort spent

I was honestly referring to megacorp, creative positions. It's not a direct comparison, but there's a definite consideration that exists there that doesn't seem to exist for other positions that are expected to create experiences for other players.

I just think players who are incredible in these roles should have better support options available to them beyond a 4% incremented increase in their passive revenue. Everyone would benefit from them being supported better.

It would mean that after a year or two years of running these businesses they would be becoming somewhat easier rather than ever more draining, and more fairly potentially compensate what is an undervalued and underpaid role in my opinion. They would then eventually be able to hire and staff somewhat comparably to NPC-owned clubs.