[TheGeek]

Scorpious, I think you are on to something here with your idea about theft from bank and players losing money. I think it would be very cool to make the game economy run full circle. For instance, in real life, your bank accounts are FDIC insured up to $100,000, anything beyond that is in danger of being potentially lost if the bank goes under or there were ever another stock market crash. So, players doing high AP crimes such as, for an example, holding up a bank, are gaining X dollars based on the crimes payout, however that money isn't "magically" created anymore, it comes out of player accounts who have exceeded the "insured" limit on their accounts, spread across players, this would only be a few dollars as you mentioned, but if there are not enough available funds to meet the minimum dollar amount of the crime, you may still succeed, but not get any financial reward. This could also be combatted by players being able to open multiple accounts, but at a fee and lower interest rate per extra account.

Similarly, holding up stores would increase prices of items bought from the game (CVS, the surplus, gun/armor stores etc) depending on what district the crimes are commited in. Even robbing homes in a certain district would cause property values to drop or increase depending on that areas "crime rate" or lack there of. You could even go so far as to take the winning/losing tracking from the casino and make crimes such as card counting, rob a casino etc then the funds for those crimes would come from the house. So all you casino addicts could just steal some of your losings back. hehe. The examples are as endless and complex as the real world economy.