There’s been a lot of feedback lately and I’m going to address some specific questions/concerns in an upcoming post as time allows. Until then, here’s an update on the site along with a preview of some upcoming stuff.
Improvements and additions to functionality have been on hold until I can sort out the bugs associated with the changeover. There has been one particularly confounding bug that’s at the root of 80% of the feedback this weekend. Basically whatever it is, it’s caused some thots to allow purchase of shares that don’t exist. This has a ripple effect that causes all sorts of strangeness as things get progressively more and more out of whack. For example, people have been getting incorrect reports of what percentage of a thot they own. That caused some unexpected thot acquisitions, among other problems. What is so annoying about this one is that it’s not occurring consistently. Given the number of transactions now happening, it’s actually quite rare. But nothing can work unless fundamentals like this are solid. My current theory is that it’s not an error in the code (although there were plenty of those earlier), but an after effect of earlier bugs that have since been corrected. As I mentioned earlier, there were a number of problems right after the changeover. I think this pushed things off balance and things have continued to tip further over since. While investigating this, I found widespread inconsistencies in the record, in terms of numbers of shares assigned to thots, public ownership, etc.
Tonight, I’ve manipulated share numbers for the thots a bit to normalize these inconsistencies. No changes were made to the ownership records, so no one should have lost shares in any way. If my theory is correct, things should proceed normally from here on out. If that doesn’t happen, then there must be a problem in the code.
Some of things that are going to be added, once all this is settled include: Improved navigation, event reporting, many different list views (like: biggest gainers/losers, acquisition targets, etc.), user profile pages, more commenting (possibly including a discussion forum), more integration of user lists, email notifications, placing buy and sell orders, and possibly redeeming thollars for items other than shares (both virtual and real).
UPDATE: Things are still screwy. It’s a code thing. Grrrr.
ThotBlog 
40 Comments
Do the taxes stay?
You said the Windfall Tax has gone. Now I would say -$226282094.62 can be considered as a Windfall Tax.
I have an idea if you lose money if you dont log on, why not make a vacation mode so if you go somewhere you dont have aceess to a computer you don’t lose all your stocks
I’ll address taxes once the fundamental problem has been resolved. My goal is to have a system that doesn’t rely on things like taxes to keep order.
Taxes are secondary to consistency,but they make a significant force shaping the economy.
With taxes,there incentive to keep(selling is taxed) and buy(windfall) stocks.Incentive to sell stocks for profit is
not really large(dividends+returns vs one-term potential profits(which are taxed,and you have to reinvest before windfall)).
Expanding options of what we can do with stocks,and making the site more social will bring more visitors.
I still think this site has great potential.
Exempt replying and posting consistences and let me just say that I am happy to see that you are working hard to keep up with what is happening. I am personally hooked to this site, so keep doing a great job! ^^
And to clear any misconceptions about the purpose of the site:Its to make as much fake money/stocks as possible,clear from day one.If its a reward to people investing,more money=more influence and options to invest.
If the people believe the stock is good they should keep their money in it.This way the system tracks which things are popular(except frozen stocks).
Every stock market sim works this way,profit-oriented investing.And to give a hint,most real world corporations
would go bankrupt with taxes such as employed here.
The only state that could of employed such taxes(50% of profits) would be soviet russia after the revolution.
(Most European states do not tax that much and subsidize enough welfare and public services to compensate for taxes).
Such naive schemes as limit on capital,and other ideas from communism(like command economy) aren’t suited for anything productive.People just find a way to bypass it or exploit loopholes to gain themself advantage above the “norm”.It happened in soviet russia,in china,in most war economies and dictatorships.Economies work with money,not goodwill and promises.
“Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
-John Maynard Keynes
Have you also fixed the bug that allows people to post millions of shares at negative figures/share? It is basically a quick way to make several trillion thollars by “buying” a share…
Also:
MidniteNeko give me back my Grim Reaper shares lol
yes midnight.. but putting your money in and investing in a company is completely different then pump in dump or constantly buying and selling the same stock, yes the idea is to make fake money and stock but the intent was to promote good websites.. other wise we would not need a link at all, you do know you can report broken or bad links right? why would that be important if the only thing that matters is money and stock? as much money as you have you are not simply investing long term in any stock.. you could’nt have. most likely you pump and dump like 95% of everyone else.. thats fine but lets not fool our selves into thinking you actually care wtf you’re buying.
That is something that probably was misjudged. Site promotion works partially well; the hindering factors at the moment are the numerous bugs and the number of idiots who put up sites which I could classify simply as “trash”.
Once all of this is fixed, I guess that this whole site will really kick off.
Still bugs when creating a Thot. I created a Thot with 1 billion shares, of which 100 million were private. After the Thot is created, it says 900 million public owned, ZERO available. No one bought 900 million milliseconds after it was created.
MidniteNeko, Please, can you stop just buying up thots and never adding any stock to them.
I made 700 billion. I then make a stock with 4 trillionish shares, keeping half for myself.
There are 2 trillionish shares available… but I have only 2 billion. (and can’t actually buy more, I wasted 600 million trying…)
if when a thot is created, an automated ping is sent out to the listed site- response either negative or positve- positive, thot is listed- negative, thot is never listed- this may ‘purify’ the exchange from false site listings. feasable?
Well, HardCode, that’s how I lost control of one stock to MidniteNeko…
*Hostile takeover*
Btw,steve you could remove daily interest rate,its really pointless with taxes and without them its only a minor boost(which shouldn’t be there with dividends/returns).
Add some kind of system to prevent duplicate thots
Add more FILTER options for christ sake, this is very easy to add and would help a lot!
For instance the option to only show shares with a trade value in a certain interval like 1-5$, the option to hide shares where trading is frozen etc.
Remove windfall tax
I think the search is bugged, when I scroll the lists and find a share I want to invest in I usually do a search first to see that there are no duplicates, but sometimes the search doesn’t find anything even though I can see that the share is in the list.
How many people in numbers/percentages of total players have windfall taxes applied to them since the start of the site? All this talk about equalizing makes me wonder,how many are penalized for their profits.
Kind of a MMORPG which lowers levels of most hardcore players and makes them pay a 100% tax on everything they buy(of course no such game exists).
“but putting your money in and investing in a company is completely different then pump in dump or constantly buying and selling the same stock,”
This way market never stabilizes.There should of course be a limit on how fast stocks fall/rise,but the novelty is to have new stocks on front page each hour.Original new stocks getting some recognition instead of old stocks dominating the market.Investment shouldn’t be permanent,thats why i argue against restrictive measures such as taxes.Keeping the market liquid and dynamic requires low inhibitions to market operations.
Nah..it was not a hostile takeover, but a bug abuse since you could buy infinite amount of shares 😛
actually you can only buy 2147483647 shares.
With the current system, removing both the windfall and gains-tax will make it far too easy to aquire huge amounts of money in no time. Everyone having the means to easily aquire indefinite amounts of money will make the point of actually having money obsolete, and the site will lose its unique flavor.
What you envision as dynamism and liquidity, i would call utter chaos and the exact opposite of stability – the frontpage changing every hour would imply that each user has great amounts of influence over the market, drastically changing its course at whim, making the whole deal with stocks/money unnecessary and just another form of decoration. In fact, such a scenario would reduce the whole site into something similiar to a forum based on advertisement, where users just bump threads containing advertisement they support.
I agree that investment does not necessarily have to be permanent, but power over the market should not be focused in the hands of each and every individual (chaos), nor in the hands of just a few clever people with too much time (monopoly); rather, power should be primarily located in the collective, having the sheer numbers of -people- as a whole direct the market, making the primary factor of what constitutes a front-page thot its -popularity- based on interest of its content in the community as a whole.
I am not for complete equality, but the extend of influence one single individual can possibly achieve should by all means be limited, and taxes/windfall does that job fairly well so far.
Ooops, forgot to quote marx:
“For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.”
MidnightNeko- if it’s so flawed, and rendered unplayable by your standards, maybe you should wait to participate. You should give the dev time to sort out the site- and the concept.
lemur i’m waiting for the changes.I meanwhile have to play what is currently available.I don’t ask for a perfect game.I just point out the flaws.
but power over the market should not be focused in the hands of each and every individual (chaos), nor in the hands of just a few clever people with too much time (monopoly); rather, power should be primarily located in the collective,
the point is crap.I have control over 100+ stocks and have 4 trillion$.Other people can’t reinvest money that fast or don’t have time to watch their capital gone over 1Billion.They are are the ones suffering from taxes.
I have plenty enough revenue to take over any stock,anytime.My suggestion would allow the people to accumulate enough capital to be influental enough.
Everyones rich(middle class at least),instead of everyone poor(communism and collective ownership).
if i choose.
MidnightNeko- if it’s so flawed, and rendered unplayable by your standards, maybe you should wait to participate. You should give the dev time to sort out the site- and the concept.
I i had the motivation,time and resources i would create a better site.Much more user friendly.However i don’t
like to waste time on this since its niche already occupied by reddit/digg and realistic stock market games.
“I have plenty enough revenue to take over any stock,anytime”
lol well money is great.. im happy for you but if someone owns 50% it’s impossible for you to take over failing an exploit, even if the controller does not have 50% you still have to have the stock on the market to actually buy *rolls eyes*
are you the richest person in the game? i dunno probably.
does that make you the all seeing all knowing god? yes, but only in your dreams.
‘My suggestion would allow the people to accumulate enough capital to be influental enough.’
The difference between your and my suggestion is that your suggestion will inevitably lead to a handful of people owning 95% of the whole market, with the majority ending up at the lower end of the power-spectrum unable to exert anysort of influence at all.
My suggestion would limit the power-spectrum to such an extent that the aforementioned scenario would be an impossibility; a single individual -will- have the means to aquire far more power over the market than a newly registered one, but the influence of just one person over the market will and should not result in domination in any form, since front-page domination should require -people- instead of someone sticking around the site 24/7 (which btw would remind me of badly designed browser-mmorpgs where unemployed or anti-social people would get a far greater advantage over anyone else… talk about irony).
well,i’ll can play very well in either case.
maybe 1000$ for beginners isn’t enough?
I would like to have it raised to 100K/1M thollars.
That way people could invest in expensive stocks from the start.Just like rich players.
Buying 1 shares of 960$ stock isn’t investing.
Its more like gambling.
people should have many options to create stocks and to buy them.e.g. buy 100-200 shares for medium price/ expensive stock and have enough to create their own.
Can there also be more social features like gifts(stocks/thollars) and Private messages?
User stats would be just stats,and these would allow players to interact more.Right now the only option is talking under stock ticker and that limited to one message per hour,this is nowhere near chatting.
“Everyones rich(middle class at least),instead of everyone poor(communism and collective ownership).”
wealth is relative, and money does not make wealth. If everyone has a million thollars, then a million becomes the norm, you and I (and probably quite a few others) are trillionaires- because of this, thots offering a billion shares at a thollar are not only affordable to take over, but is common for us to do so. Look at Brazil in the late 80’s, Germany in its post WWI economy, or any other high inflationary economy in history- that’s what thollars are becoming- restrictions are not an enemy, but a help. Keeping thollars relative value is actually an important part of this economy, without regulations, or offering too many thollars for a new account devalues the thollar. Taxes are a deflationary tool, and probably not used enough.
I agree with everything that lemurlemur said – restrictions only help keep the value of the throllar.
What about a forum(message board)? I think this would be useful for thotmarket
I agree with refuge. As long as it’s phpBB3, vBulletin, or IP.Board. The others all suck!
Also: Neko is right about the market cap. I want to invest more stocks into TWNF, but can’t because the cap is one billion (and I easily make about 4/5 of that per hour) and I have to reinvest fast to avoid my funds being destroyed. Like right now I only have $24 cause I’m reinvesting every time someone buys, but I’m still worth nearly $300 billion. The market cap is a failure, it’s only inhibiting the ability of major stocks to grow more. What about when they’re $10,000 per share (in theory) and you can only buy 100k to put back into it? I mean, at the current price of over $130/share I can only invest 5 million per billion, whereas before it was much higher, say around 500 million per hundred million dollars. You’re destroying us all, especially those with high gains every hour (Neko probably makes $50 billion at least). You’re trying to make it a better system, but this won’t work as well as free market.
Note: I have 1.5 billion dollars right now but am not reinvesting it into TWNF. Why? It’s simple: I thought I could reinvest and keep a ton of money flowing into TWNF, but that’s not the case. I invested on every payment to avoid getting to a billion (or more — thus having it destroyed by windfall) and there was a drop of about thirty bucks per share. That’s not fair to anyone.
You’re making me make the decision to reinvest and thus make the prices of stocks fall, or decide to keep the money and lose it in mass amounts. That’s not fair, put simply. I’ve thrown away about $20 billion today just because I wasn’t around and windfall got me. So not only do I lose money that OTHER PEOPLE have invested in my thot, but I lose money that I gain from said thot’s success. And there’s nothing I could do about it except invest in other thots, which makes them hit high and takes away my values. It’s not fair at all. If I want to, I should be able to keep all my money — or invest it when the time is right!
As I was typing it went up to 3.79 billion dollars. This is messed — I’m losing a fortune of OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY just because of a damn windfall!
Keeping thollars relative value is actually an important part of this economy, without regulations.
Thollars have no real value(its just a number in SQL database).I just advocate to equalize opportunities,not to restrict them.
What do 1000$ to 1Million$ start funds change?
People just would buy more stocks and create more.
If they only have 1K they would be much less active.
And they probably would create a new account if their investment fails.
Most stock market sims give 100k as start funds.