Obviously, this should be limited, otherwise I could just short $100b worth of whatever stock I want, buy my augmentations, and reset. Rather than purchasing short positions with cash, as it currently stands, a player should be able to purchase the short positions on margin, and receive cash in exchange. Incidentally, this is the primary way that shorting is used in modern financial markets. This can be fixed pretty easily: by allowing leverage. This will give the player the highest expected return per period. (Hint: you should have.) The takeaway is that in every meaningful situation, it is most profitable, from an expected value perspective, to be a long holder of the stock with a large otlkMag and mv. Additionally, in the case where the stock goes to the price cap, well, the price is now at $1 Billion per share, so if you were a long holder of the stock you could already be done with the run, with no need to short, provided you bought the runaway stock before it hit $1 million per share. Obviously, otlkMag will have a small absolute value when it crosses over zero, so there isn't much to be gained in that situation. Otherwise, the only time b will turn false is when otlkMag crosses below zero. The only time that this can happen is if a stock has hit the price cap. Looking at the code, the opportune time to short a stock would be when b is false and otlkMag is large. The second major problem is that shorting stocks, as implemented, is almost never a good idea, from an expected value perspective. Including a few augmentations to improve stock performance would go a long way to making the BitNode bearable. A few quick suggestions: making the player able to see the stock's chance to increase in price, increasing the chance that stock the player owns goes up by X%, increasing the chance that stocks the player shorts goes down by X%, increase the amount a players stock goes up by X%, etc. Adding augments that can improve the performance of your stock portfolio would be a drastic improvement to the node. (Presumably the player got to a higher net-worth than the base amount before spending it on augments.) This lends to a feel where augments are merely improving numbers on a spreadsheet, rather than increasing your capabilities (You need high enough multipliers that you can satisfy fl1ght.exe, but otherwise they are pointless). In fact, your earning potential is actually diminished, since the only method of making money is via invested capital. Each time you augment, your earning potential is completely unaffected. The starting money is too low, making the node take way too long to complete.Īs it stands, there are no augments that can improve your progression through the node.The new gameplay of shorting stocks has no value, even within the node.There are no augments that help with the core gameplay pattern of the node.I'll list them now and address them individually: I think the concept is interesting, but the execution suffers on a few levels. I'm currently going through the slog that is BitNode 8, and needless to say I think the node is both uninteractive and unenjoyable. I just have a few suggestions to hopefully make it a better game. Also, a quick thank you to chapt3r for developing this great game! It has taught me a ton and been very enjoyable. Long post incoming, apologies in advance.
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