Not enough gaming companies are blaming themselves. I think of it in this example:
If I were to play through a single player offline game, using godmode, I obviously will win the game in the fastest way a first time player can possibly do. Once I beat the game, I get a cheap shallow view of how the game was. Now what if I just used the cheat in a few hard spots, because after hours of frustration I found it to just be annoying and not entertainment anymore.
Do you blame the cheater for cheating, or the gaming company for maybe making a legitimately annoying part in the game?
If the secondary market exists it is because enough people find the game to be lacking and unfun, or they assume they can get some advantage. Whose fault is this? If money was gradually made at a pace that wasn't extreme, the need would be worthless.
Games like Lineage 2, WoW, DAoC, EQ2 use in game money and items as huge timesinks to keep you playing. What if I find one section of the leveling terrible, and need help, the levels 30-40 severely lacking compared to the previous 30, and once you get through the grind the game gets better again.
Do I quit, after being severely bored of the game, or do I give myself a boost to keep me playing?
This little spiel of course is most definately from a individual, personal view, and not from a larger scale, while the secondary market can help me, what it can do to the entire game is terrible.
I feel Brad won the argument by far, and Roger did nothing but skid around the issue basically saying "You can't stop us, try as you might, bring it on" type arguments.
Xersues I think you are right about the reason people buy gold. MMO's can be hard in certain spots or at a certain point and knowing you can buy gold could be too hard to resist. I wish this wasn't true but it is. Finding the sweet spot between making a game fun but not too easy is a developers worst nightmare i'm sure. They still have to run a business though and having too many people constantly at the end of a game would not be good. If they have to let employees go to counter losses the quality of a game would suffer and no one wants that either.
It's good to see that within the last month 3 major games have deleted accounts using 3rd party software or gold farming. I for one was getting tired of seeing my in game mailbox get hit with offers for certain gold sites. More importantly maybe public hot spots will not be occupied by the same characters for months strait. The arguement that gold buying and selling does not hurt an MMO is absurd.
I want to thank FFXI, WoW and EQ2 for at least making a dent in the cheating (yes, it is cheating) and I hope they dont stop.
I think you can code around the secondary market. If you receive a large influx of cash disproportionate to the hours played per your character level theives spawn and steal it from you. Would you pay rl cash for in game money if that happened?
Add in item breakage percentages as well. Would you pay rl money for an item that broke the next play session?
I see nothing wrong with caps on items/gold a character can recieve per hour played taking into account levels.
For example, you are level 10, and have been level 10 for 20 in game hours. The way the game is designed there is no way a level 10 character can earn more than 100 gold pieces in 20 game hours. Therefore the player cannot receive any more than 100 gold pieces during this time period (whether they spend it or save it in the bank) because it's capped.
it might also be helpful to cap the amount of gold /items you can possess per level. For example a 1st level character simply cannot have more than 1 gold piece. It makes perfect sense that a 1st level character is not born rich and has to work up to being wealthy.
You could sit on your butt and do nothing while logged in for 20 hours, then pay rl money for 100 gold pieces. But any other player could have logged in for the same twenty hours and had fun playing the game and made 100 gold pieces, so neither player is better off. In fact, I'd argue that the player that worked in game for the gold pieces got the better value. Both players got 100 gold pieces in the same amount of game time, but one actually got to play the game and the other didn't .
The idea is that there's a lot you COULD do in game to discourage buying items and gold with rl cash if you wanted to.
The other tactic would be to just eliminate the secondary market by undercutting them. Just make characters available for purchase based on the average time in months it takes to level such a character. If the average person takes 12 months to level a toon to max, then that's simply 12 x the monthly subscription rate of 15 bucks, or $180.00 dollars. You can either play the game 12 months at 15 bucks a month for a max level toon, or buy one. Either way it's the same 180 dollars. The choice is yours on how you want to spend it. Seems fair to me, because the price is the same. I don't think farmers could compete with that. Plus, the better value is to level the character in game because you also get 12 months of gameplay, versus 0 months of gameplay for the same toon.
It's the same for the devs/publishers either way, whether you stay subscribed for 12 months or pay it all now for a max toon. In fact it's better for them if you buy the toon for 180 because they didn't have to pay for the bandwidth while you leveled it, and they get all the money, not the secondary market.
RMT exponentially increases the likely hood of a game being turned into a botting world where nobody REALLY plays the game anymore and everyone just bots in order to get money to buy anything they want to stay competitive. Later stages of this self destructive behavior causes insane inflation in the game economy that new players are required to either 1.) bot themselves 2.) buy money from 3rd party RMT'ers 3.) stop playing the game. Many of these RMT'ers are probably botters in order to keep up the demand. I've seen first hand how RMT and botting can totally destory a game. A prime example of this is Ragnarok Online. I would say 70% of the player population bots in order to even get competitive with the game. I remember when iRO first came out in 2001 or 1999, the game was fresh and new and you are considered wealthy with just 100K zeny. Now people are hauling around 100 million zeny just to be able to stay "competitive" in the game.
The decisions of the court in Korea might have set a precedent however the outcome might be reversed here in the US court.
This topic has teed me off for many years.Didn';t take but a couple posts before i found RAVEx to show how unintelligent these players are that can't see how this activity destroys the game.The very first arguements i saw by the virtual seller dude again was biased and didn't elude to the fact that ,game developers are the ones who actually built the game and own the rights to the game ,so they have every right whereas the virtual seller who put zero investment into developing the game are making a profit from its items to wich is 100% illegal as they own no rights to any of it.
You cannot make excuses such as oh i havn't got the time or im a casual gamer BS,because that's exactly what it is nothing but BS.So if i havn't got the time to work 2 jobs maybe its alright if i steal from my neighbour who is filthy rich and won't miss a few thousand?I havn't got the time to make night school so it's alright if i run ALL the red lights?I'm a casual gamer so it's perfectly fine if i ruin the game design/economy for legit players,i mean who cares, i paid for an acount right?that makes me have al lthe rights correct?bah ..idiot!
The purpose of playing a game is to PLAY the game! takes an IQ above 25 to comprehend what i just said.TIME/money/job have no bearing whatsoever as to why you play the game.The real and only reason these virtual sellers are in the game is to make money no matter what the risk or cost.They are taking in game items be it gold/gil/platinum whatever to wich they have zero rights and selling it for real life money.This is EXACTLY the same as stealing your neighbour's car and selling it for real life money.BOTH are illegal and both i am sure if you ask any thief,they have a million reasons why it is ok[my baby needs food]/diapers]i need crack /drugs whatevver it all adds up to the same BS.
There is and NEVER will be ANY excuse for stealing copyright materials and profitting from them.Movies are a prime example of being the exact same thing.People have jobs and spend real time any money developing the movie,you can't just come along and reap the rewards of it unless you are givin permisssion by the copyright holder...end of story.excuses are just excuses because the havn't got the intelligence to see past there own nose.Man alive do i get teed off when i read some of the lame ass excuses from people who think it's fine.The same type people work around me and think it's fine to blow cig smoke in my face cus the law says they are allowed to smoke.Plain and simple these people have extremely low IQ's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Ho man what a moron, secondary market just screw up so many games, this guys sucks hard, i really hope some people could just hack yourvirtualseller or something to stop that shit.
Brad is the one who's right, HE's the once who makes game, and he absolutely was right saying the communities suffer from that. The other guy is just a moron who makes money with the work of other people, and he dun even work himself.
I really can't understand blizz, ncsoft, soe and codemasters do not do something, they really should.
Anyway is that shit just pops up when vanguard comes out yourvirtualseller won't stand for long anymore, trust me !
I recently wanted to try Entropia not because i was intrested in the game itself just was very curious how the game looked and would "play" if installed, i made a account but figured after i finished it i did not wanted to make that account on a emial adress i filled in so i wanted to make a new account, this was not possible because it showed i already made a account on my IP adress therefor was not able to creat another/new account.
My question why does a game where you can have real life currency ingame and use it in and out of game have such a nice security system, i think something like their account creation should be done by games that suffer from the secondary market.
The idea that the creators of MMOs can not own intellecutal property is just ignorant. They do OWN it and trust me at some point these companies will unleash their lawyers to prove the fact. This is no different than if you had a patent on something and someone came along copied your hard work and sold it for profit without your consent. Might make you a little upset huh? Same thing goes for the developers. Just look at the music and film industry today, they are fighting a very similar battle. In the end its STEALING plain and simple. But than again those of you who pirate movies and audio files probably wont be bothered much by that idea. Remember these third party sites exsist BECAUSE of these games, not the other way around. Their livelyhood depends on the MMO, without them these sites wouldnt even exist.
Just what determines the value of an item in game anyway? Is it how useful it is? How much it costs to create the item? How rare the item drops? A combination of all these? In the end the only TRUE value of an item is based on the user. Player one may find item one to be very useful but player two might have no use for it at all. So whats valuable to one may not be to the other. However when you bring in the concept of being able to sell/buy items to third parties, players suddenly and sometimes unknowningly, inflate the value of items based on third party values. In the end the game economy suffers greatly and players are forced to pay third party prices because third party members can control the market unfairly. Players who post resonable prices for items are bought out by gold farmers in order to re-post the items at their "determind value". This happens especially with the more rare drops. When not having enough money isnt a factor anymore, an unbalance is created in the game which leads to decline in not only new players, but a sense of accomplishment and ultimately game play-ability.
Many supporters of third parties may be thinking, hey i dont force you to buy anything. Its not my problem you cant play as much as me. You can purchase the items/gold off third party sites just like anyone else. Its not my problem you cant afford anything. And as true as some of these things may be, some are not. You dont force me to buy anything, but everytime you inflate your prices to line your pockets you force me to pay your prices. I may not be able to put in as much play time as you, but i still deserve a fair opportunity to advance my character in all aspects of the game without having to be subjected to your greed or impaitence. And just because anyone can purchase items from third parties online, doesnt mean everyone can afford to or that its right.
I leave you with this thought: If everyone was able to go out on the web, buy a maxed out leveled character and have the exact same uber items, looks and moves, what would be the purpose to playing the game?
I wonder why Brad took the position on player experience, and how it would be degraded when the effort was through dollars and not play. The reason these out of game markets are bad is because in game economies are influenced by them.
The Kid with an allownace cannot compete economically with an adult and his middleclass income.
Also, I did not like Brads position that the games developers have any rights to profits made by secondary markets.
It's like this, if the game allows it then anyone can do it and make money from it, but if the game does not allow it, then no one should (not even the game company). They make their operating costs and profit from box sales and subscripitions. If they desire to use secondary markets to add to their income, then they should not be able to monopolise that area of income, but compete for it with companys that have made it their business.
"they can't have it both ways"
In no way do I support secondary markets, but I also have no sympathy for a game company that would. So they too must compete for dollars that buy and sell their virtual goods.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game What I listen to
In a game such as EVE online, where all the skill training is based on time there is a lot of selling of accounts on ebay. People will train up alts for 6 months for a cost of ~$90 and then turn around and sell it for 2 to 3 hundred without actually killing or mining or doing much of anything in the game, just training skills.
This is the one game where I have a hard time argueing against buying in game characters because as much as you play, as much ISK as you can ever possibly gather, as many items and ships you could possibly forage, you'll never ever ever catch up to a person who started 3 years ago. EVE online was setup almost for online "future value" sales of accounts and characters. WOW and other grindfests don't have this issue, I can catch up to all the highest most uberest wow players or any other grindfests if I really put the time into it.
If a player comes along and sees how cool the game is, then for sure he has the choice of starting from absolute scratch, or he can just buy low level 2-month-4 month-6month- premade characters and work his way from there. That player can legitimately argue that he doesn't want to go through the mind numblingly boring upstart of the game and just get a nice boost. In EvE like someone stated earlier, Farm Corporations will pay (very very well) pvp corps to run guard duty while they mine the richest rocks in the game, and the best dungeons. It in a way is making for a completely "new" dynamic in the game, where the work on virtual guards affects the results of real profit, income. I see a big problem forming when the farmers start having their own paid (in real dollars) characters who will defend their space. This will doom the game.
The only the way the secondary market can be abolished is if all items are no-drop or liquid currency is removed as the method of exchange or the developers get the suits out and start sueing and setting tight policies (for ebay who also makes alot of money from this type of exchange).
I personally would like to see the suits come out - not sueing players but the large websites and ebay if need be. This will cause another problem of a tertiary underground market (black market) for sales of in game goods, but thats another problem. Its an economic/programming/social issue. Very interesting indeed.
Comments
If I were to play through a single player offline game, using godmode, I obviously will win the game in the fastest way a first time player can possibly do. Once I beat the game, I get a cheap shallow view of how the game was. Now what if I just used the cheat in a few hard spots, because after hours of frustration I found it to just be annoying and not entertainment anymore.
Do you blame the cheater for cheating, or the gaming company for maybe making a legitimately annoying part in the game?
If the secondary market exists it is because enough people find the game to be lacking and unfun, or they assume they can get some advantage. Whose fault is this? If money was gradually made at a pace that wasn't extreme, the need would be worthless.
Games like Lineage 2, WoW, DAoC, EQ2 use in game money and items as huge timesinks to keep you playing. What if I find one section of the leveling terrible, and need help, the levels 30-40 severely lacking compared to the previous 30, and once you get through the grind the game gets better again.
Do I quit, after being severely bored of the game, or do I give myself a boost to keep me playing?
This little spiel of course is most definately from a individual, personal view, and not from a larger scale, while the secondary market can help me, what it can do to the entire game is terrible.
I feel Brad won the argument by far, and Roger did nothing but skid around the issue basically saying "You can't stop us, try as you might, bring it on" type arguments.
Just not worth my time anymore.
I think you can code around the secondary market. If you receive a large influx of cash disproportionate to the hours played per your character level theives spawn and steal it from you. Would you pay rl cash for in game money if that happened?
Add in item breakage percentages as well. Would you pay rl money for an item that broke the next play session?
I see nothing wrong with caps on items/gold a character can recieve per hour played taking into account levels.
For example, you are level 10, and have been level 10 for 20 in game hours. The way the game is designed there is no way a level 10 character can earn more than 100 gold pieces in 20 game hours. Therefore the player cannot receive any more than 100 gold pieces during this time period (whether they spend it or save it in the bank) because it's capped.
it might also be helpful to cap the amount of gold /items you can possess per level. For example a 1st level character simply cannot have more than 1 gold piece. It makes perfect sense that a 1st level character is not born rich and has to work up to being wealthy.
You could sit on your butt and do nothing while logged in for 20 hours, then pay rl money for 100 gold pieces. But any other player could have logged in for the same twenty hours and had fun playing the game and made 100 gold pieces, so neither player is better off. In fact, I'd argue that the player that worked in game for the gold pieces got the better value. Both players got 100 gold pieces in the same amount of game time, but one actually got to play the game and the other didn't .
The idea is that there's a lot you COULD do in game to discourage buying items and gold with rl cash if you wanted to.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
The other tactic would be to just eliminate the secondary market by undercutting them. Just make characters available for purchase based on the average time in months it takes to level such a character. If the average person takes 12 months to level a toon to max, then that's simply 12 x the monthly subscription rate of 15 bucks, or $180.00 dollars. You can either play the game 12 months at 15 bucks a month for a max level toon, or buy one. Either way it's the same 180 dollars. The choice is yours on how you want to spend it. Seems fair to me, because the price is the same. I don't think farmers could compete with that. Plus, the better value is to level the character in game because you also get 12 months of gameplay, versus 0 months of gameplay for the same toon.
It's the same for the devs/publishers either way, whether you stay subscribed for 12 months or pay it all now for a max toon. In fact it's better for them if you buy the toon for 180 because they didn't have to pay for the bandwidth while you leveled it, and they get all the money, not the secondary market.
RMT exponentially increases the likely hood of a game being turned into a botting world where nobody REALLY plays the game anymore and everyone just bots in order to get money to buy anything they want to stay competitive. Later stages of this self destructive behavior causes insane inflation in the game economy that new players are required to either 1.) bot themselves 2.) buy money from 3rd party RMT'ers 3.) stop playing the game. Many of these RMT'ers are probably botters in order to keep up the demand. I've seen first hand how RMT and botting can totally destory a game. A prime example of this is Ragnarok Online. I would say 70% of the player population bots in order to even get competitive with the game. I remember when iRO first came out in 2001 or 1999, the game was fresh and new and you are considered wealthy with just 100K zeny. Now people are hauling around 100 million zeny just to be able to stay "competitive" in the game.
The decisions of the court in Korea might have set a precedent however the outcome might be reversed here in the US court.
This topic has teed me off for many years.Didn';t take but a couple posts before i found RAVEx to show how unintelligent these players are that can't see how this activity destroys the game.The very first arguements i saw by the virtual seller dude again was biased and didn't elude to the fact that ,game developers are the ones who actually built the game and own the rights to the game ,so they have every right whereas the virtual seller who put zero investment into developing the game are making a profit from its items to wich is 100% illegal as they own no rights to any of it.
You cannot make excuses such as oh i havn't got the time or im a casual gamer BS,because that's exactly what it is nothing but BS.So if i havn't got the time to work 2 jobs maybe its alright if i steal from my neighbour who is filthy rich and won't miss a few thousand?I havn't got the time to make night school so it's alright if i run ALL the red lights?I'm a casual gamer so it's perfectly fine if i ruin the game design/economy for legit players,i mean who cares, i paid for an acount right?that makes me have al lthe rights correct?bah ..idiot!
The purpose of playing a game is to PLAY the game! takes an IQ above 25 to comprehend what i just said.TIME/money/job have no bearing whatsoever as to why you play the game.The real and only reason these virtual sellers are in the game is to make money no matter what the risk or cost.They are taking in game items be it gold/gil/platinum whatever to wich they have zero rights and selling it for real life money.This is EXACTLY the same as stealing your neighbour's car and selling it for real life money.BOTH are illegal and both i am sure if you ask any thief,they have a million reasons why it is ok[my baby needs food]/diapers]i need crack /drugs whatevver it all adds up to the same BS.
There is and NEVER will be ANY excuse for stealing copyright materials and profitting from them.Movies are a prime example of being the exact same thing.People have jobs and spend real time any money developing the movie,you can't just come along and reap the rewards of it unless you are givin permisssion by the copyright holder...end of story.excuses are just excuses because the havn't got the intelligence to see past there own nose.Man alive do i get teed off when i read some of the lame ass excuses from people who think it's fine.The same type people work around me and think it's fine to blow cig smoke in my face cus the law says they are allowed to smoke.Plain and simple these people have extremely low IQ's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
If the actions of gold farmers effects my gameplay then I have an issue with them and since I'm paying for a
pleasant experience I'd expect something to be done about it.
The problem that occurs in MANY mmo's is the same. Farmers don't want competition. They run out legitmate
players from zones. If a player has a quest in such a zone to get an X number of drops from a particular mob,
the same mob the farmers are whacking as soon as they spawn, the player can never complete their quest.
My time with a game is to enjoy it, not spend every day sending alerts to the game masters about some bot or
farmer.
So, no, I don't support the secondary market and if someone would blow up their corporate headquarters killing every
one of them, I'd not shed one damn tear.
Brad is the one who's right, HE's the once who makes game, and he absolutely was right saying the communities suffer from that. The other guy is just a moron who makes money with the work of other people, and he dun even work himself.
I really can't understand blizz, ncsoft, soe and codemasters do not do something, they really should.
Anyway is that shit just pops up when vanguard comes out yourvirtualseller won't stand for long anymore, trust me !
STOP THE SHIT LMAO !
I recently wanted to try Entropia not because i was intrested in the game itself just was very curious how the game looked and would "play" if installed, i made a account but figured after i finished it i did not wanted to make that account on a emial adress i filled in so i wanted to make a new account, this was not possible because it showed i already made a account on my IP adress therefor was not able to creat another/new account.
My question why does a game where you can have real life currency ingame and use it in and out of game have such a nice security system, i think something like their account creation should be done by games that suffer from the secondary market.
The idea that the creators of MMOs can not own intellecutal property is just ignorant. They do OWN it and trust me at some point these companies will unleash their lawyers to prove the fact. This is no different than if you had a patent on something and someone came along copied your hard work and sold it for profit without your consent. Might make you a little upset huh? Same thing goes for the developers. Just look at the music and film industry today, they are fighting a very similar battle. In the end its STEALING plain and simple. But than again those of you who pirate movies and audio files probably wont be bothered much by that idea. Remember these third party sites exsist BECAUSE of these games, not the other way around. Their livelyhood depends on the MMO, without them these sites wouldnt even exist.
Just what determines the value of an item in game anyway? Is it how useful it is? How much it costs to create the item? How rare the item drops? A combination of all these? In the end the only TRUE value of an item is based on the user. Player one may find item one to be very useful but player two might have no use for it at all. So whats valuable to one may not be to the other. However when you bring in the concept of being able to sell/buy items to third parties, players suddenly and sometimes unknowningly, inflate the value of items based on third party values. In the end the game economy suffers greatly and players are forced to pay third party prices because third party members can control the market unfairly. Players who post resonable prices for items are bought out by gold farmers in order to re-post the items at their "determind value". This happens especially with the more rare drops. When not having enough money isnt a factor anymore, an unbalance is created in the game which leads to decline in not only new players, but a sense of accomplishment and ultimately game play-ability.
Many supporters of third parties may be thinking, hey i dont force you to buy anything. Its not my problem you cant play as much as me. You can purchase the items/gold off third party sites just like anyone else. Its not my problem you cant afford anything. And as true as some of these things may be, some are not. You dont force me to buy anything, but everytime you inflate your prices to line your pockets you force me to pay your prices. I may not be able to put in as much play time as you, but i still deserve a fair opportunity to advance my character in all aspects of the game without having to be subjected to your greed or impaitence. And just because anyone can purchase items from third parties online, doesnt mean everyone can afford to or that its right.
I leave you with this thought: If everyone was able to go out on the web, buy a maxed out leveled character and have the exact same uber items, looks and moves, what would be the purpose to playing the game?
Yup it's the economy stupid!
I wonder why Brad took the position on player experience, and how it would be degraded when the effort was through dollars and not play. The reason these out of game markets are bad is because in game economies are influenced by them.
The Kid with an allownace cannot compete economically with an adult and his middleclass income.
Also, I did not like Brads position that the games developers have any rights to profits made by secondary markets.
It's like this, if the game allows it then anyone can do it and make money from it, but if the game does not allow it, then no one should (not even the game company). They make their operating costs and profit from box sales and subscripitions. If they desire to use secondary markets to add to their income, then they should not be able to monopolise that area of income, but compete for it with companys that have made it their business.
"they can't have it both ways"
In no way do I support secondary markets, but I also have no sympathy for a game company that would. So they too must compete for dollars that buy and sell their virtual goods.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to
In a game such as EVE online, where all the skill training is based on time there is a lot of selling of accounts on ebay. People will train up alts for 6 months for a cost of ~$90 and then turn around and sell it for 2 to 3 hundred without actually killing or mining or doing much of anything in the game, just training skills.
This is the one game where I have a hard time argueing against buying in game characters because as much as you play, as much ISK as you can ever possibly gather, as many items and ships you could possibly forage, you'll never ever ever catch up to a person who started 3 years ago. EVE online was setup almost for online "future value" sales of accounts and characters. WOW and other grindfests don't have this issue, I can catch up to all the highest most uberest wow players or any other grindfests if I really put the time into it.
If a player comes along and sees how cool the game is, then for sure he has the choice of starting from absolute scratch, or he can just buy low level 2-month-4 month-6month- premade characters and work his way from there. That player can legitimately argue that he doesn't want to go through the mind numblingly boring upstart of the game and just get a nice boost. In EvE like someone stated earlier, Farm Corporations will pay (very very well) pvp corps to run guard duty while they mine the richest rocks in the game, and the best dungeons. It in a way is making for a completely "new" dynamic in the game, where the work on virtual guards affects the results of real profit, income. I see a big problem forming when the farmers start having their own paid (in real dollars) characters who will defend their space. This will doom the game.
The only the way the secondary market can be abolished is if all items are no-drop or liquid currency is removed as the method of exchange or the developers get the suits out and start sueing and setting tight policies (for ebay who also makes alot of money from this type of exchange).
I personally would like to see the suits come out - not sueing players but the large websites and ebay if need be. This will cause another problem of a tertiary underground market (black market) for sales of in game goods, but thats another problem. Its an economic/programming/social issue. Very interesting indeed.
Connen
You Scratch my back, And I'll scratch yours.