"In a recent survey (N = 1923), 22% of respondents said that they had purchased virtual currency (referred to here in shorthand as RMT - real money transfer). There was a mild correlation with age (r = .11) and no gender differences."
Um...thats pretty consistent with this poll. As of right now this poll is only showing about 70% opposed to RMT for non-trivial items.
The Pro-RMT people talk about how RMT in future games is inevitible. The purpose of my poll was to illustrate that it is not as obvious as they seem to think it is. That there are a lot of people that do not want RMT and are even hostile to the concept of it. Your quoted poll appears to support my conclusion.
Why does this feel unfair to you? Is it that you feel he got a better deal on his 14.95 per month? Or is it something else? If something else, what in the world can it be?
You're absolutely no different than him on the game. You play 8 hours, he plays 8 hours, you both do the same content. Why would you want to play on his schedule instead of yours? Are you upset that he will get to the end game in a faster number of days? If you measure the game in content, you will do the EXACT same content as him to get to the end game. Why the rush?
This.
That was a good response.
Two things with this. First is that I don't really care if the MMO is fair or not.
Well, I am guessing you are in the minority in that opinion. Most people do care.
I make the assumption that you are fully capable of enjoying yourself or you wouldn't be there.
I make the same assumption about you. If you can only enjoy the game by buying your way up the food chain, why are you there?
Kind of a separate but equal ( can't believe I'm saying this since I'm black) setup where you have your RMT games and I have my RMT-free games. That way we can both be happy without messing with each others game
The servers issue might become a problem on single-shard games like Eve. But having RMT only servers and RMT-free servers would be an acceptable solution to me.
The fun in the game is destroyed for many by the RMT. You may not be one of those people, but take a look at the poll at the beginning of this thread if you don't believe me.
So you can't have your cake and eat it too. YOU can still have the grind if you want it (which you don't), but for the player that feels RMT is unfair, the fun of the grind has been destroyed by RMT.
Thats a good point. The "grind" is what gives the reward its value. If you can just buy the reward, there is no longer a sense of accomplishment attached to it...it loses it's value. Even if you dont buy it yourself, the reward is dimished by all the other people who DID buy it.
The fact that it is a shared game world is why RMT is a problem.
Then I assume you don't play any MMOs? RMT is in every game, some legally supported by the developers, some legally/illegally run by the player base.
If it is illegal, it is not really RMT. It is cheating.
He was talking about RMT, not cheating.
It's there regardless of what any of us wants or thinks fair.
You dont discourage rape by making rape legal. You dont discourage theft by making theft legal. You dont discourage murder by making murder legal.
Those analogies hold true in games as well. The fact that "it will happen anyway" really means nothing, and I dont know why pro-RMT people still use this argument. If given a choice, I'd rather see it remain illegal. Thanks.
Should we just make all cheating legal since "it will happen anyway"? Should there be any rules in MMOs at all? How far would you like to go?
Now we can discuss hybrids and whether or not you can make it fair as long as we have a common ground to speak from.
While I would find some hybrid models acceptable, I would probably avoid them out of principle.
I did think of Eve as an innovative way to balance P2P models, and it's not too bad at doing so.
Eve has unique aspects which make it an exception to the rule...namely, the fact that ship losses are permanent and insurance doesnt cover non-standard uber-ships. Also, items require skills to use. Even with the most Uber implants (which are also expensive, cannot be insured, and are lost permanently if you die) it could take months to fly the uber ship you just bought.
For these reasons, you cannot buy the same advantages in Eve that you could in other MMOs if they did the same thing.
Which is why I believe all of this goes back to content. If the content is enjoyable enough, then there is little reason to call it grind.
If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
On my Troll Shaman, the entire time I was leveling from 76 to 80, I was rested, gaining double XP for every kill. This allowed me to skip a lot of content that people who leveled without rested XP had to do in order to reach the cap. All I had to do to gain this "advantage" is park my Shaman in an inn and not log in as much.
Is that fair? If so, why?
Playing | GW2 Wanting | Pantheon Watching | Crowfall Retired | WAR, Cabal, MO, CO, SHK, WoW, FFXIV: ARR
No, you misunderstood my post, and put words in my mouth. We are talking about measuring characters. Characters do nto progress unless they gain xp. I'm the worst when it comes to being an efficient player. I will take the opportunity to stand around and waste time, and chat, or run off to look at something I haven't seen in games at the drop of a hat. I'll go to some zone I can't possibly make xp in just to look at a mob I haven't seen before. Again, this is why P2P game characters are not measured in TIME PLAYED> They are measured in Content Completed. I like to waste time, some spend every moment in game making xp. One hour in game for those two players is hardly equal on any level, and therefore why would you measure the character based on time in the game? I'll log in just to stand around and read the chat window. I'm logging hours, but certainly not xp. But the CONTENT is equal. One mob equals 10 xp for both players.
I understood clearly. You feel an MMO is solely about gaining xp and the time it takes to do so. You feel an MMO is solely about the rate at which one consumes content, and this is evident by your consistent and repeated measuring of an MMO's worth based on the rate at one can consume content, especially when compared to how another player consumes content.
"P2P game characters are measured in Content Completed."
What you stated is your personal preference. Some people just play to have fun. They often have little or no concern what another character has or does. Not everyone measures their character by content completed or even against other characters. Your rate of xpz compared to another person's rate of xpz is important to you. It's not only important but it is what you have repeatedly and consistently said that you use as your one and only factor in gauging the fairness or value of an MMO's design.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Not really, because everyone gets it. You dont have to pay for it.
On my Troll Shaman, the entire time I was leveling from 76 to 80, I was rested, gaining double XP for every kill.
And every other player in the game could do exactly the same thing if they wanted. They have the same option you do, whether they have a lot of money or not.
Thats a good point. The "grind" is what gives the reward its value. If you can just buy the reward, there is no longer a sense of accomplishment attached to it...it loses it's value. Even if you dont buy it yourself, the reward is dimished by all the other people who DID buy it.
This is NOT consistent with all the marketing research associated with luxury goods. The reason why people buy expensive jewelry and luxury handbags is to feel a sense of accomplishment. Namely, I can afford it and you cannot.
Then I assume you don't play any MMOs? RMT is in every game, some legally supported by the developers, some legally/illegally run by the player base.
If it is illegal, it is not really RMT. It is cheating.
He was talking about RMT, not cheating.
Illegal RMT (or cheating) is a kind of RMT. To use YOUR argument, if someone buy an epic item using gold purchased from a Chinese farmer, is that fair? Does that "diminish the sense of accomplishemnet"? If so, the effect of illegal RMT is the SAME as legal RMT. What is the difference, except you want to call it a different name?
Are you telling me that you will NOT play a game with sanctioned RMT, but WILL play a game with cheating? That sounds contradictory to me.
Which is why I believe all of this goes back to content. If the content is enjoyable enough, then there is little reason to call it grind.
If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Because PART of the game is fun? You can say it is unfair to use RMT to get an advantage, but you cannot say it does not make sense. It makes totally sense to bypass the boring part of a game to get to the good part. If a person hate level grinding and think that raiding is extremely fun, it is perfectly in HIS interests (abate unfair to others) to use RMT to bypass leveling and go straight to raiding.
Make character progression not entertaining, if they plan to allow people to skip it purposefully if they pay, is a scam.
In other words, selling any type of "ways of skipping content" is a scam, because the developer made the content such a chore that people are willing to pay to skip it.
Its a way of saying:
"either we are incompetent developers"
"or we are doing it on purpose"
but, whatever the reason may be, the fact is we are getting proffit out of our incompetence or malevolence.
This is NOT consistent with all the marketing research associated with luxury goods. The reason why people buy expensive jewelry and luxury handbags is to feel a sense of accomplishment. Namely, I can afford it and you cannot.
I do not believe that this analogy carries over into MMOs. Someone who pays to win a marathon is not going to feel the same sense of accomplishment as someone who actually runs in it. And it would cheapen the victory of the person actually running if anyone could simply "buy" their way into winning it. The trophy would hold far less value, both for the person who bought it and for the person running in the race.
Illegal RMT (or cheating) is a kind of RMT.
IMO, that definition is unreasonably broad. If it is not sanctioned by the developer, it is a form of cheating.
Using your definition, simply paying a monthly subscription is also a form of RMT.
Are you telling me that you will NOT play a game with sanctioned RMT, but WILL play a game with cheating?
So long as the developer opposes it and punushed cheaters, yeah, I would.
That sounds contradictory to me.
It is only contradictory if I accept your premis that "illegally" buying resources = RMT.
But I dont. So there is no contradiction. There is no such thing as illegal RMT IMO. By definition (at least all the definitions I have seen for it so far), it has to be legal if the developer is allowing it.
Me: If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Because PART of the game is fun?
So if I can only have fun in God-mode, should I be given the option to buy God Mode? Gimme a break.
If a person hate level grinding and think that raiding is extremely fun, it is perfectly in HIS interests (abate unfair to others) to use RMT to bypass leveling and go straight to raiding.
And I dont have a problem with him doing that...I just dont want to play in the same game world as him.
Originally posted by Brain-dead (Note: Since you like the colored quotes approach, I have tried to follow in like kind. For those not following this whole thread, my original quotes are red, your replies are yellow, and my responses are white.)
Two things with this. First is that I don't really care if the MMO is fair or not. Well, I am guessing you are in the minority in that opinion. Most people do care. ...and I have admitted as such. Just because I don't think you "get it" doesn't mean that I haven't, in many cases in this thread, explained why I think this is so. Society conditions you to believe that using money to influence a competition is wrong. As long as you view a MMO as competition as opposed to entertainment, then we will never agree on this point. With the complete absence of balance in any MMO; be they real life things like time/money, or in game things such as class balance and populations, you do not have a field for any sort of fair competition. For me, that's fine. I don't care. Get ahead of me, beat me, whatever. I'm here for the story, unique content, or some kind of fun game mechanic. It doesn't matter to me what you do in the game, as long as I get move along and do my thing at my pace. "You" don't exist to me in the game in terms of competition, so fair isn't something that I care about. I make the assumption that you are fully capable of enjoying yourself or you wouldn't be there. I make the same assumption about you. If you can only enjoy the game by buying your way up the food chain, why are you there? I would only do so if there was something in the game I didn't like, and could avoid it with $$. I used City of Heroes as an example. I played for three years in that game and would have happily paid $$ to start my characters at 20 when they at least have their powers more fleshed out to be interesting. The next 30 levels were fine and I enjoyed that aspect of the game. My time is valuable enough to me that I would be willing to pay money to bypass entertainment which I found distasteful. Those initial levels of CoH were grindy boring and offered no challenge to me other than the time to get through them as fast as possible. Like many players I resorted to twinking, power leveling, and other legal in game exploits to bypass all the content that I hated. Ironically the same people who against RMT have likely used the aforementioned methods to do exactly the same thing.
The fun in the game is destroyed for many by the RMT. You may not be one of those people, but take a look at the poll at the beginning of this thread if you don't believe me. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. YOU can still have the grind if you want it (which you don't), but for the player that feels RMT is unfair, the fun of the grind has been destroyed by RMT. Thats a good point. The "grind" is what gives the reward its value. If you can just buy the reward, there is no longer a sense of accomplishment attached to it...it loses it's value. Even if you dont buy it yourself, the reward is dimished by all the other people who DID buy it. The fact that it is a shared game world is why RMT is a problem. To me the grind that is in most games is no more noteworthy than saying you can stand in a corner for a few hours. Both are easily achieved and mostly boring. Give me content that impacts the world, or has some measurable impact on you, other than your "jealousy" of me skipping what you had to do, and I'll agree it's bad. However, your acomplishment, or sense of, has little bearing to a person that you never met and never knew if they grinded or purchased their way up the chain. Now that's my opinion and obviously you do feel slighted, so be it. However, consider this: I assume you have a job, and I assume you have at times felt proud of the work you did. Do you feel any less sense of acomplishment that someone else made more money for less work? I hope not. That's not behavior that I understand. You shouldn't because you did a good job and were compensated for what you did. Then I assume you don't play any MMOs? RMT is in every game, some legally supported by the developers, some legally/illegally run by the player base. If it is illegal, it is not really RMT. It is cheating. He was talking about RMT, not cheating. I understand that. However, it is not cheating in many games, and regardless he does play games where RMT is in it. Cheating or not. So his statement is false. However in a thread where we have hundreds of responses, you have to allow me a small bit of snark here and there. I certainly have been on the recieving end of it enough even if the discussion has been mostly civil. I am snipping the rape comment. There are some analogies that are so charged with potential for grief that I'll skip them and say while I don't support cheating, I also am realist enough to realize it's there already. My prior comment was admitted snark, and I'll ask that you please stick to less charged analogies in the future. More to the point, since it's in every game you play, I hope that your sense of accomplishment is not ruined since it is there, legally or not. Now we can discuss hybrids and whether or not you can make it fair as long as we have a common ground to speak from. While I would find some hybrid models acceptable, I would probably avoid them out of principle. Which was where I had been heading in the first place. I'll happily agree that some RMT schemes are nothing more than cash grabs. Most of the FTP models aren't really balanced and they would be better off heading to a smaller monthy to help cover costs and then some kind of better balance between game progression with time and game progression with money. In the end, I think you'd have a lot happier customers. Currently, I do believe RMT has the stigma it does because of the societal reasons I've mentioned before, but also the horrid implementations that have been tried. I would imagine, but this is opinion only, that with a decent scheme future polls would become much more accepting of RMT. However, with most current RMT schemes being admittedly bad, the results are what they are. Which is why I believe all of this goes back to content. If the content is enjoyable enough, then there is little reason to call it grind. If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it? Because everyone has different tastes. The PvPer might want to skip the whole level grind to get to the end game realm battles. The Crafter might want items to help them with their markets. Someone with a friend might want to boost their level/power to catch up and play with RL friends. People playing alts might not want to go through the beginning content again and again. I am playing the game because there is something in there that I do enjoy. Obviously something enjoyable enough that I will either waste time or money to get too, both of which I have in limited supply. I'd just rather have the choice of which limited comodity I get to use to experience the entertainment that I do enjoy.
This is NOT consistent with all the marketing research associated with luxury goods. The reason why people buy expensive jewelry and luxury handbags is to feel a sense of accomplishment. Namely, I can afford it and you cannot.
I do not believe that this analogy carries over into MMOs. Someone who pays to win a marathon is not going to feel the same sense of accomplishment as someone who actually runs in it. And it would cheapen the victory of the person actually running if anyone could simply "buy" their way into winning it. The trophy would hold far less value, both for the person who bought it and for the person running in the race.
That is your OPINION. There is no research indicate either way. I will leave it at that.
Illegal RMT (or cheating) is a kind of RMT.
IMO, that definition is unreasonably broad. If it is not sanctioned by the developer, it is a form of cheating.
Sure. You can call it cheating or whatever you want. But the actual actions have the SAME effect on the game.
Are you telling me that you will NOT play a game with sanctioned RMT, but WILL play a game with cheating?
So long as the developer opposes it and punushed cheaters, yeah, I would.
That sounds contradictory to me.
It is only contradictory if I accept your premis that "illegally" buying resources = RMT.
It is just semantic. You don't thinking "cheating" create the same unfairness, and diminishing of rewards in MMOs? If it does, why are you willing to live with it, but not RMT? Cheating is pretty prevalent (at the survey i posted, 22% of the players do it). Would you play a game where 1 in 5 players (likely some in your guild, and on average 5 in each 25 man raid) "buy" their way into some content?
Me: If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Because PART of the game is fun?
So if I can only have fun in God-mode, should I be given the option to buy God Mode? Gimme a break.
Sure why not? Plenty of players use cheat to get GOD MODE in single player games. That makes perfect sense. Don't tell me you don't know that. Plus, don't tell me that it does not make sense for you that some will want to bypass grinding (which is quite different than god mode).
If a person hate level grinding and think that raiding is extremely fun, it is perfectly in HIS interests (abate unfair to others) to use RMT to bypass leveling and go straight to raiding.
And I dont have a problem with him doing that...I just dont want to play in the same game world as him.
Then why do you want to play a game where he can cheat and do just that (u said u will play games with illegal gold selling)? You can buy a high level char in most popular MMOs. BTW, which game do YOU play? We can make this discussion more specific.
Make character progression not entertaining, if they plan to allow people to skip it purposefully if they pay, is a scam.
In other words, selling any type of "ways of skipping content" is a scam, because the developer made the content such a chore that people are willing to pay to skip it. Its a way of saying: "either we are incompetent developers" "or we are doing it on purpose"
but, whatever the reason may be, the fact is we are getting proffit out of our incompetence or malevolence.
You place an absurd accusation on the shoulders of the developers.
It's in the interest of the F2P developer to create content that retains free players if for no other reason than those F2P players are content for the paying players. F2P MMOs aren't designed to get everyone to pay. The developers know they can't squeeze blood from a stone, so the majority of the effort is is spent creating desirable and attractive purchasable content for the buying crowd.
You are working off the assumption that F2P/ItemMall business model is to make the content boring or tedious so that people spend money to bypass it. That simply doesn't make sense from a developer or a consumer standpoint. You are also working off the assumption that there is no incentive to provide fun and engaging content for the free players. That is, again, logically false as the free players are the ones that most of the content is made for. The double xp weekends, dev events, seasonal/holiday events, etc.
There's more cool events there in five days than most P2P MMOs get in five months, and it's available to the players who are playing for free.
Hopefully that explains a bit more about the F2P business model for you. Developers of F2P games have a vested interest in making the game fun and entertaining for the free players. The free players are actually an integral part of the game's success.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I do not believe that this analogy carries over into MMOs. Someone who pays to win a marathon is not going to feel the same sense of accomplishment as someone who actually runs in it. And it would cheapen the victory of the person actually running if anyone could simply "buy" their way into winning it. The trophy would hold far less value, both for the person who bought it and for the person running in the race.
I wanted to talk on this quote real quick even though I have responded to much of the other points.
A marathon is competition. It is fair. All participants start at the same time and are measured in terms of how long it takes them to get to the end. People do get really upset when cheating happens in a fair/competitive environment. If a runner takes steroids, people are mad. If they take a shortcut, people are mad. Why? Because the competition meant nothing.
Now before you say, "see see, this is what I was telling you!"
My point: MMOs aren't fair, at all, ever. So to apply concepts reserved for competitions is ludicrous. You are there to have fun. If you compete with people in the MMO you do so knowing that one of you has an advantage. It really shouldn't matter if that advantage is money, time, skill, luck, whatever. The basis for competition is so skewed that they are like allowing different age groups to play in kids sports. The older kids usually win.
That is my perspective on RMT. I realize that it's the minority and can accept that. I don't believe that being in the minority makes it any less true, but so be it.
Me: Well, I am guessing you are in the minority in that opinion. Most people do care.
...and I have admitted as such.
Ok. The entire purpose of this thread was to illustrate to Pro-RMT people that RMT is not as inevitable as they would like to believe. In admitting you are in the minority, you seem to agree with that conclusion.
My time is valuable enough to me that I would be willing to pay money to bypass entertainment which I found distasteful.
I dont have a problem with that. I just dont want to play in the same game world as you if you do that. And I think most MMO players would agree with me. If you have the option of jumping ahead of me by paying money, it makes the game less fun for me.
Like many players I resorted to twinking, power leveling, and other legal in game exploits to bypass all the content that I hated.
And while I dont like any of that stuff either (and for the same reason), I could still live with it under certain circumstances (except for exploits of course). But all that stuff is stuff I could do too without paying a dime, which is why I dont consider it analogous to RMT.
Ironically the same people who against RMT have likely used the aforementioned methods to do exactly the same thing.
Why is it Ironic? The playing field is still level if other players can do all the same things. Nothing really changes in that regard.
I am snipping the rape comment.
I use extreme examples because they are unambiguous and are more useful in illustrating my point.
I'll ask that you please stick to less charged analogies in the future.
Request denied.
More to the point, since it's in every game you play, I hope that your sense of accomplishment is not ruined since it is there
RMT for trivial items is acceptable to me. I oppose RMT for anything that changes game balance. CoH's version of RMT is acceptable to me.
There is no such thing as illegal RMT. Illegal RMT is merely cheating. I oppose all cheating. Even if that is the only way you can enjoy the game.
No, you misunderstood my post, and put words in my mouth. We are talking about measuring characters. Characters do nto progress unless they gain xp. I'm the worst when it comes to being an efficient player. I will take the opportunity to stand around and waste time, and chat, or run off to look at something I haven't seen in games at the drop of a hat. I'll go to some zone I can't possibly make xp in just to look at a mob I haven't seen before. Again, this is why P2P game characters are not measured in TIME PLAYED> They are measured in Content Completed. I like to waste time, some spend every moment in game making xp. One hour in game for those two players is hardly equal on any level, and therefore why would you measure the character based on time in the game? I'll log in just to stand around and read the chat window. I'm logging hours, but certainly not xp. But the CONTENT is equal. One mob equals 10 xp for both players.
It is wrong to say that characters do not progress unless they gain XP.
Most of my gaming time is spent farming, crafting and trading.
One of my biggest ever successes in a game was in SWG where I negotiated a deal to get raw materials for my crafting. This is not completing content, this is character to character trading in a virtual world.
I generally buy and sell on the AH to make money. I like farming and harvesting too. No XP here.
Make character progression not entertaining, if they plan to allow people to skip it purposefully if they pay, is a scam.
In other words, selling any type of "ways of skipping content" is a scam, because the developer made the content such a chore that people are willing to pay to skip it. Its a way of saying: "either we are incompetent developers" "or we are doing it on purpose"
but, whatever the reason may be, the fact is we are getting proffit out of our incompetence or malevolence.
You place an absurd accusation on the shoulders of the developers.
It's in the interest of the F2P developer to create content that retains free players if for no other reason than those F2P players are content for the paying players. F2P MMOs aren't designed to get everyone to pay. The developers know they can't squeeze blood from a stone, so the majority of the effort is is spent creating desirable and attractive purchasable content for the buying crowd.
You are working off the assumption that F2P/ItemMall business model is to make the content boring or tedious so that people spend money to bypass it. That simply doesn't make sense from a developer or a consumer standpoint. You are also working off the assumption that there is no incentive to provide fun and engaging content for the free players. That is, again, logically false as the free players are the ones that most of the content is made for. The double xp weekends, dev events, seasonal/holiday events, etc.
There's more cool events there in five days than most P2P MMOs get in five months, and it's available to the players who are playing for free.
Hopefully that explains a bit more about the F2P business model for you. Developers of F2P games have a vested interest in making the game fun and entertaining for the free players. The free players are actually an integral part of the game's success.
I was talking specifically about "experience pills" or "experience tomes" or whatever items designed to make player character evolve faster.
When such items are indeed available, I blame developers for their inability to provide content entertaining enough that noone would feel the need to use those.
If they have those items, and people buy them, developers failed. If they dont have those items, then you cant (un)prove about my claim of "skippable content".
F2P that sell these specific items have slow and boring progression.
For every F2P game with those types of items you name that isnt one or the other (developers "incompetence" or "malevolence" from my previous post), I will name 5 that have slow and boring progression whose ultimate effect is make people buy such items. Those are pay to win schemes, whose I concluded as scams.
All of the discussion is irrelevant. What you people don't seem to realize is that you have no choice in the matter. RMT will be shoved in your face until you accept it. Companies will not relent, the smell of money in this market is like blood to a shark. You might want to just get used to it, eventually all games will have RMT, and if some indie publisher comes out with something popular that doesn't, it will simply get bought out and injected with RMT features.
I would like to believe that people would choose not to accept RMT and participate in it, but the majority (the part that matters) are too easily sold on ideas like these when companies really campaign them.
This particular semantic is relevant in the context of this thread IMO.
You don't thinking "cheating" create the same unfairness, and diminishing of rewards in MMOs?
Of course it does. If the cheating gets bad enough and I dont think the developers are putting enough effort into stopping it, I will leave the game.
Would you play a game where 1 in 5 players (likely some in your guild, and on average 5 in each 25 man raid) "buy" their way into some content?
If I believed the developers were not putting sufficient effort into stopping them, then no. I'd leave the game.
Me: So if I can only have fun in God-mode, should I be given the option to buy God Mode? Gimme a break.
Sure why not? Plenty of players use cheat to get GOD MODE in single player games.
I dont play in those single player games. I dont share the same game world in those single player games.
That makes perfect sense. Don't tell me you don't know that. Plus, don't tell me that it does not make sense for you that some will want to bypass grinding (which is quite different than god mode).
It makes sense in the same way that wanting God Mode makes sense. But we dont allow players God Mode in MMOs because it ruins the fun of other players.
Then why do you want to play a game where he can cheat and do just that (u said u will play games with illegal gold selling)?
All of the discussion is irrelevant. What you people don't seem to realize is that you have no choice in the matter. RMT will be shoved in your face until you accept it. Companies will not relent, the smell of money in this market is like blood to a shark.
Which is exactly why it will not happen. No company will trade a reliable proven revenue stream for one that is more erratic and unreliable. Look at the poll...if it is any inditaction, developers would be committing financial suicide. And that doesnt make good business sense.
All of the discussion is irrelevant. What you people don't seem to realize is that you have no choice in the matter. RMT will be shoved in your face until you accept it. Companies will not relent, the smell of money in this market is like blood to a shark. Which is exactly why it will not happen. No company will trade a reliable proven revenue stream for one that is more erratic and unreliable. Look at the poll...if it is any inditaction, developers would be committing financial suicide. And that doesnt make good business sense.
But it is not an indication. Look at the market and try some reality. If you really want numbers, go look them up, I'm too lazy to do it for you.
But it is still a FACT that more people play f2p games than play p2p. A poll from a site of outcasts who hate WoW is hardly an indication of the market as a whole. Developers are making a fortune on f2p. Will they all go that way? Not likely, but that is the trend, and it will continue.
I was talking specifically about "experience pills" or "experience tomes" or whatever items designed to make player character evolve faster. When such items are indeed available, I blame developers for their inability to provide content entertaining enough that noone would feel the need to use those. If they have those items, and people buy them, developers failed. If they dont have those items, then you cant (un)prove about my claim of "skippable content".
Actually, the answer to that is very simple.
We'll start first with statistics. About 1 in 7 ( ~15% or so ) players monetize the F2P MMOs. That being the case, 6 out of every 7 players do not find a desire or need to accelerate the speed at which they progress or go through the content. Now, of that 1 in 7, not all of them are buying "experience pills" as many spend their money solely on purely cosmetic or 'bragging rights' items. This further reduces the actual number of people who are accelerating the rate at which they progress.
The numbers aside, let's now look at player behavior. Players will engage in activities that return rewards at the level they feel is, well... rewarding! In your standard MMO, that often means 'farming greens' as in most level-based MMOs it is faster to kill thousands of low xp mobs than to fight higher xp mobs. This actually retards the players growth through the game content and, in some case, negates some of the feeling of progress that the player is seeking. In F2P MMOs, and in many P2P MMOs, players use these accelerators to allow them to move forward in the game world content while advancing their character. The most classic example of this is Rest XP, a feature made popular by WOW which has since been added to many P2P MMOs in one manner or another. It is a tool that players can use to accelerate their gains without having to step backwards and 'farm greens'.
These items sell, not because the game content is bad or boring, but because the people that are playing an MMO solely to advance their character see value in items that will let them do it faster. This behavior was made very evident in Ultima Online when they introduced 'power hours,' where certain players would actually stop whatever they were doing the minute they got their accelerated gain alert in order to make maximum use of the time. Since UO is not about leveling, this detracted from the gameplay for many and the system has since been removed.The average MMO gamer today plays to level which is why Rest XP, something that wouldn't have been too favorable ten years ago, is wildly popular with players today.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
...and I have admitted as such. Ok. The entire purpose of this thread was to illustrate to Pro-RMT people that RMT is not as inevitable as they would like to believe. In admitting you are in the minority, you seem to agree with that conclusion. Well the topic on the thread is "How do you feel about RMT". I am pointing out how I feel about RMT and why I think the majority is wearing societal blinders. It may not make anyone change their mind, if you feel it's wrong you'll still feel it's wrong no matter what we say to each other. However, perhaps you or others might come to some consensus on the blinders you wear (and the ones I do). My time is valuable enough to me that I would be willing to pay money to bypass entertainment which I found distasteful. I dont have a problem with that. I just dont want to play in the same game world as you if you do that. And I think most MMO players would agree with me. If you have the option of jumping ahead of me by paying money, it makes the game less fun for me. That's fine. You admit jealousy/fairness as the reason you don't want RMT in a game. I can accept that as a reason. However, realize that you are just choosing your method of bias, not removing it. Like many players I resorted to twinking, power leveling, and other legal in game exploits to bypass all the content that I hated. And while I dont like any of that stuff either (and for the same reason), I could still live with it under certain circumstances (except for exploits of course). But all that stuff is stuff I could do too without paying a dime, which is why I dont consider it analogous to RMT. ...and would have the same opportunity if they allowed RMT into the game. Your dollar would go just as far. If you don't like the skipping content part, then twinking and PLing should be equally aborhent to you. Does it matter if I get my wonder sword by having someone twink me, or having someone sell it to me, or having a dev sell it to me. As long as the game didn't change for you, I got ahead without doing any work for it. Your gameplay was impacted by all of the aforementioned methods of content skipping. You don't object to the rampant "legal" cheating in the game nearly as much becuase you stick to the societal norm that says buying your way out of a competition is about as low as you can get while tacitly accepting the same end result which invalidated your acomplishments just the same. Ironically the same people who against RMT have likely used the aforementioned methods to do exactly the same thing. Why is it Ironic? The playing field is still level if other players can do all the same things. Nothing really changes in that regard. It's ironic because you explained to me, or perhaps Imothep did, that the reason P2P is fair was because the content you did measured your acomplishments. If it's fair, then why to so many players resort to underhanded methods of skipping content. The same players who are likely complaining about RMT because it invalidates their game. I am snipping the rape comment. I use extreme examples because they are unambiguous and are more useful in illustrating my point. I'll ask that you please stick to less charged analogies in the future. Request denied. Certainly your perogative. However do so again, and I will finish my discussion with you. If you can't be civil, then I have no real use to continue the discussion. If you are viewing this as a compettion as well, perhaps that's what you wish to resort to win. It's ok, I'll politely bow out and continue to discuss with more reasonable minds. More to the point, since it's in every game you play, I hope that your sense of accomplishment is not ruined since it is there RMT for trivial items is acceptable to me. I oppose RMT for anything that changes game balance. CoH's version of RMT is acceptable to me. There is no such thing as illegal RMT. Illegal RMT is merely cheating. I oppose all cheating. Even if that is the only way you can enjoy the game. Fine, but does your sense of accomplishment get ruined in any of the following? (1) P2P games where the devs have taken no stand on player to player RMT
(2) Games where people twink themselves up to max level
(3) Games where guilds PL people to max levels
(4) People who abuse certain mobs/dungeons over and over to PL themselves skipping the typical path people take If your sense of accomplishment is based on you doing the task and the RMTer not doing the task, then all of the prior should make you feel just as miserable in a game. They are invalidating the work you have done by skipping it and getting benefits they did not earn, nor deserve. I would find it hard to believe that your sense of accomplishment can handle all of the above but would have to quit the game when RMT was dev sanctioned.
...and I have admitted as such. Ok. The entire purpose of this thread was to illustrate to Pro-RMT people that RMT is not as inevitable as they would like to believe. In admitting you are in the minority, you seem to agree with that conclusion. Well the topic on the thread is "How do you feel about RMT". I am pointing out how I feel about RMT and why I think the majority is wearing societal blinders. It may not make anyone change their mind, if you feel it's wrong you'll still feel it's wrong no matter what we say to each other. However, perhaps you or others might come to some consensus on the blinders you wear (and the ones I do). My time is valuable enough to me that I would be willing to pay money to bypass entertainment which I found distasteful. I dont have a problem with that. I just dont want to play in the same game world as you if you do that. And I think most MMO players would agree with me. If you have the option of jumping ahead of me by paying money, it makes the game less fun for me. That's fine. You admit jealousy/fairness as the reason you don't want RMT in a game. I can accept that as a reason. However, realize that you are just choosing your method of bias, not removing it. Like many players I resorted to twinking, power leveling, and other legal in game exploits to bypass all the content that I hated. And while I dont like any of that stuff either (and for the same reason), I could still live with it under certain circumstances (except for exploits of course). But all that stuff is stuff I could do too without paying a dime, which is why I dont consider it analogous to RMT. ...and would have the same opportunity if they allowed RMT into the game. Your dollar would go just as far. If you don't like the skipping content part, then twinking and PLing should be equally aborhent to you. Does it matter if I get my wonder sword by having someone twink me, or having someone sell it to me, or having a dev sell it to me. As long as the game didn't change for you, I got ahead without doing any work for it. Your gameplay was impacted by all of the aforementioned methods of content skipping. You don't object to the rampant "legal" cheating in the game nearly as much becuase you stick to the societal norm that says buying your way out of a competition is about as low as you can get while tacitly accepting the same end result which invalidated your acomplishments just the same. Ironically the same people who against RMT have likely used the aforementioned methods to do exactly the same thing. Why is it Ironic? The playing field is still level if other players can do all the same things. Nothing really changes in that regard. It's ironic because you explained to me, or perhaps Imothep did, that the reason P2P is fair was because the content you did measured your acomplishments. If it's fair, then why to so many players resort to underhanded methods of skipping content. The same players who are likely complaining about RMT because it invalidates their game. I am snipping the rape comment. I use extreme examples because they are unambiguous and are more useful in illustrating my point. I'll ask that you please stick to less charged analogies in the future. Request denied. Certainly your perogative. However do so again, and I will finish my discussion with you. If you can't be civil, then I have no real use to continue the discussion. If you are viewing this as a compettion as well, perhaps that's what you wish to resort to win. It's ok, I'll politely bow out and continue to discuss with more reasonable minds. More to the point, since it's in every game you play, I hope that your sense of accomplishment is not ruined since it is there RMT for trivial items is acceptable to me. I oppose RMT for anything that changes game balance. CoH's version of RMT is acceptable to me. There is no such thing as illegal RMT. Illegal RMT is merely cheating. I oppose all cheating. Even if that is the only way you can enjoy the game. Fine, but does your sense of accomplishment get ruined in any of the following? (1) P2P games where the devs have taken no stand on player to player RMT
(2) Games where people twink themselves up to max level
(3) Games where guilds PL people to max levels
(4) People who abuse certain mobs/dungeons over and over to PL themselves skipping the typical path people take If your sense of accomplishment is based on you doing the task and the RMTer not doing the task, then all of the prior should make you feel just as miserable in a game. They are invalidating the work you have done by skipping it and getting benefits they did not earn, nor deserve. I would find it hard to believe that your sense of accomplishment can handle all of the above but would have to quit the game when RMT was dev sanctioned.
Where are the protests during marathons against those who buy more expensive shoes? Don't they have an advantage over poor people with crappy shoes? What an outrage!
Oh wait... 99.9% of people do not enter a marathon in order to "win" or even compete with others. Hmmm... That's kind of like how I play an MMO, where I'm doing it for my OWN enjoyment, and not competing with others...
If you can afford nice shoes, your feet might not hurt as much at the end of the marathon, much like if you can afford a couple bucks for a weapon and avoid grinding your head won't hurt as much and you can actually enjoy yourself.
The fact that B exist doesnt make RMT (affecting balance = pay to win) acceptable for A.
B doesnt get incentivated to buy stuff to compete. If depending only on B, F2P goes bankrupt.
A is guy who feel not only incentivated, but forced to buy stuff, because he likes to compete, and if he cant compete he doesnt get satisfied. A is the guy who voted against RMT (79% of those who voted).
B is the guy who has no idea why player A gets so pissed off with RMT.
Two types of people. A = likes to compete B = doesnt like to compete
The fact that B exist doesnt make RMT (affecting balance = pay to win) acceptable for A.
If B isn't competing with you and more than likely doesn't even know you exist, why are you trying to compete with him? And what are you competing against him at? The race to max level?
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Where are the protests during marathons against those who buy more expensive shoes?
Apparently most people consider those to be a trivial item that does not affect the outcome of the race significantly.
Sort of like costume parts or healing potions in MMOs.
Don't they have an advantage over poor people with crappy shoes?
Not a significant advantage, no.
Oh wait... 99.9% of people do not enter a marathon in order to "win" or even compete with others.
How did you determine the motives of 99.9% of Marathon runners?
If most of them dont care about winning, why are there rules to the race at all?
That's kind of like how I play an MMO, where I'm doing it for my OWN enjoyment, and not competing with others...
Competition and enjoyment are not mutually exclusive. An unfair game impacts my enjoyment of the game.
Fine, but does your sense of accomplishment get ruined in any of the following?
It can be, yes. I would avoid games where it does.
Certainly your perogative. However do so again, and I will finish my discussion with you.
You can "finish" it be simply refusing to reply to me. No one is holding a gun to your head. It will not stop me from quoting your posts, but you dont have to reply if you dont want to. I am ok with that.
If you can't be civil
How have I not been civil? Did I insult you?
If you don't like the skipping content part, then twinking and PLing should be equally aborhent to you.
I disagree...I do not consider them analogous because everyone can do them without having to pay extra.
Does it matter if I get my wonder sword by having someone twink me, or having someone sell it to me
It does to me. But I would not consider it RMT if everyone could do it.
Your gameplay was impacted by all of the aforementioned methods of content skipping.
So what? How does that change what I said before even if that is true?
That's fine. You admit jealousy/fairness as the reason you don't want RMT in a game.
If you want to label it jealousy, thats fine. Either way, it impacts my enjoyment of the game. I like a level playing field.
Comments
"In a recent survey (N = 1923), 22% of respondents said that they had purchased virtual currency (referred to here in shorthand as RMT - real money transfer). There was a mild correlation with age (r = .11) and no gender differences."
Um...thats pretty consistent with this poll. As of right now this poll is only showing about 70% opposed to RMT for non-trivial items.
The Pro-RMT people talk about how RMT in future games is inevitible. The purpose of my poll was to illustrate that it is not as obvious as they seem to think it is. That there are a lot of people that do not want RMT and are even hostile to the concept of it. Your quoted poll appears to support my conclusion.
Why does this feel unfair to you? Is it that you feel he got a better deal on his 14.95 per month? Or is it something else? If something else, what in the world can it be?
You're absolutely no different than him on the game. You play 8 hours, he plays 8 hours, you both do the same content. Why would you want to play on his schedule instead of yours? Are you upset that he will get to the end game in a faster number of days? If you measure the game in content, you will do the EXACT same content as him to get to the end game. Why the rush?
This.
That was a good response.
Two things with this. First is that I don't really care if the MMO is fair or not.
Well, I am guessing you are in the minority in that opinion. Most people do care.
I make the assumption that you are fully capable of enjoying yourself or you wouldn't be there.
I make the same assumption about you. If you can only enjoy the game by buying your way up the food chain, why are you there?
Kind of a separate but equal ( can't believe I'm saying this since I'm black) setup where you have your RMT games and I have my RMT-free games. That way we can both be happy without messing with each others game
The servers issue might become a problem on single-shard games like Eve. But having RMT only servers and RMT-free servers would be an acceptable solution to me.
The fun in the game is destroyed for many by the RMT. You may not be one of those people, but take a look at the poll at the beginning of this thread if you don't believe me.
So you can't have your cake and eat it too. YOU can still have the grind if you want it (which you don't), but for the player that feels RMT is unfair, the fun of the grind has been destroyed by RMT.
Thats a good point. The "grind" is what gives the reward its value. If you can just buy the reward, there is no longer a sense of accomplishment attached to it...it loses it's value. Even if you dont buy it yourself, the reward is dimished by all the other people who DID buy it.
The fact that it is a shared game world is why RMT is a problem.
Then I assume you don't play any MMOs? RMT is in every game, some legally supported by the developers, some legally/illegally run by the player base.
If it is illegal, it is not really RMT. It is cheating.
He was talking about RMT, not cheating.
It's there regardless of what any of us wants or thinks fair.
You dont discourage rape by making rape legal. You dont discourage theft by making theft legal. You dont discourage murder by making murder legal.
Those analogies hold true in games as well. The fact that "it will happen anyway" really means nothing, and I dont know why pro-RMT people still use this argument. If given a choice, I'd rather see it remain illegal. Thanks.
Should we just make all cheating legal since "it will happen anyway"? Should there be any rules in MMOs at all? How far would you like to go?
Now we can discuss hybrids and whether or not you can make it fair as long as we have a common ground to speak from.
While I would find some hybrid models acceptable, I would probably avoid them out of principle.
I did think of Eve as an innovative way to balance P2P models, and it's not too bad at doing so.
Eve has unique aspects which make it an exception to the rule...namely, the fact that ship losses are permanent and insurance doesnt cover non-standard uber-ships. Also, items require skills to use. Even with the most Uber implants (which are also expensive, cannot be insured, and are lost permanently if you die) it could take months to fly the uber ship you just bought.
For these reasons, you cannot buy the same advantages in Eve that you could in other MMOs if they did the same thing.
Which is why I believe all of this goes back to content. If the content is enjoyable enough, then there is little reason to call it grind.
If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Is rested XP bonus unfair?
On my Troll Shaman, the entire time I was leveling from 76 to 80, I was rested, gaining double XP for every kill. This allowed me to skip a lot of content that people who leveled without rested XP had to do in order to reach the cap. All I had to do to gain this "advantage" is park my Shaman in an inn and not log in as much.
Is that fair? If so, why?
Playing | GW2
Wanting | Pantheon
Watching | Crowfall
Retired | WAR, Cabal, MO, CO, SHK, WoW, FFXIV: ARR
I understood clearly. You feel an MMO is solely about gaining xp and the time it takes to do so. You feel an MMO is solely about the rate at which one consumes content, and this is evident by your consistent and repeated measuring of an MMO's worth based on the rate at one can consume content, especially when compared to how another player consumes content.
"P2P game characters are measured in Content Completed."
What you stated is your personal preference. Some people just play to have fun. They often have little or no concern what another character has or does. Not everyone measures their character by content completed or even against other characters. Your rate of xpz compared to another person's rate of xpz is important to you. It's not only important but it is what you have repeatedly and consistently said that you use as your one and only factor in gauging the fairness or value of an MMO's design.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Is rested XP bonus unfair?
Not really, because everyone gets it. You dont have to pay for it.
On my Troll Shaman, the entire time I was leveling from 76 to 80, I was rested, gaining double XP for every kill.
And every other player in the game could do exactly the same thing if they wanted. They have the same option you do, whether they have a lot of money or not.
79.2% so far are against RMT, under all circustances, even if it offer just cosmetical changes and those who are against any changes to balance.
79.2% are against pay to win, lighter or any RMT at all.
Thats a good point. The "grind" is what gives the reward its value. If you can just buy the reward, there is no longer a sense of accomplishment attached to it...it loses it's value. Even if you dont buy it yourself, the reward is dimished by all the other people who DID buy it.
This is NOT consistent with all the marketing research associated with luxury goods. The reason why people buy expensive jewelry and luxury handbags is to feel a sense of accomplishment. Namely, I can afford it and you cannot.
Then I assume you don't play any MMOs? RMT is in every game, some legally supported by the developers, some legally/illegally run by the player base.
If it is illegal, it is not really RMT. It is cheating.
He was talking about RMT, not cheating.
Illegal RMT (or cheating) is a kind of RMT. To use YOUR argument, if someone buy an epic item using gold purchased from a Chinese farmer, is that fair? Does that "diminish the sense of accomplishemnet"? If so, the effect of illegal RMT is the SAME as legal RMT. What is the difference, except you want to call it a different name?
Are you telling me that you will NOT play a game with sanctioned RMT, but WILL play a game with cheating? That sounds contradictory to me.
Which is why I believe all of this goes back to content. If the content is enjoyable enough, then there is little reason to call it grind.
If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Because PART of the game is fun? You can say it is unfair to use RMT to get an advantage, but you cannot say it does not make sense. It makes totally sense to bypass the boring part of a game to get to the good part. If a person hate level grinding and think that raiding is extremely fun, it is perfectly in HIS interests (abate unfair to others) to use RMT to bypass leveling and go straight to raiding.
Make character progression not entertaining, if they plan to allow people to skip it purposefully if they pay, is a scam.
In other words, selling any type of "ways of skipping content" is a scam, because the developer made the content such a chore that people are willing to pay to skip it.
Its a way of saying:
"either we are incompetent developers"
"or we are doing it on purpose"
but, whatever the reason may be, the fact is we are getting proffit out of our incompetence or malevolence.
This is NOT consistent with all the marketing research associated with luxury goods. The reason why people buy expensive jewelry and luxury handbags is to feel a sense of accomplishment. Namely, I can afford it and you cannot.
I do not believe that this analogy carries over into MMOs. Someone who pays to win a marathon is not going to feel the same sense of accomplishment as someone who actually runs in it. And it would cheapen the victory of the person actually running if anyone could simply "buy" their way into winning it. The trophy would hold far less value, both for the person who bought it and for the person running in the race.
Illegal RMT (or cheating) is a kind of RMT.
IMO, that definition is unreasonably broad. If it is not sanctioned by the developer, it is a form of cheating.
Using your definition, simply paying a monthly subscription is also a form of RMT.
Are you telling me that you will NOT play a game with sanctioned RMT, but WILL play a game with cheating?
So long as the developer opposes it and punushed cheaters, yeah, I would.
That sounds contradictory to me.
It is only contradictory if I accept your premis that "illegally" buying resources = RMT.
But I dont. So there is no contradiction. There is no such thing as illegal RMT IMO. By definition (at least all the definitions I have seen for it so far), it has to be legal if the developer is allowing it.
Me: If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Because PART of the game is fun?
So if I can only have fun in God-mode, should I be given the option to buy God Mode? Gimme a break.
If a person hate level grinding and think that raiding is extremely fun, it is perfectly in HIS interests (abate unfair to others) to use RMT to bypass leveling and go straight to raiding.
And I dont have a problem with him doing that...I just dont want to play in the same game world as him.
This is NOT consistent with all the marketing research associated with luxury goods. The reason why people buy expensive jewelry and luxury handbags is to feel a sense of accomplishment. Namely, I can afford it and you cannot.
I do not believe that this analogy carries over into MMOs. Someone who pays to win a marathon is not going to feel the same sense of accomplishment as someone who actually runs in it. And it would cheapen the victory of the person actually running if anyone could simply "buy" their way into winning it. The trophy would hold far less value, both for the person who bought it and for the person running in the race.
That is your OPINION. There is no research indicate either way. I will leave it at that.
Illegal RMT (or cheating) is a kind of RMT.
IMO, that definition is unreasonably broad. If it is not sanctioned by the developer, it is a form of cheating.
Sure. You can call it cheating or whatever you want. But the actual actions have the SAME effect on the game.
Are you telling me that you will NOT play a game with sanctioned RMT, but WILL play a game with cheating?
So long as the developer opposes it and punushed cheaters, yeah, I would.
That sounds contradictory to me.
It is only contradictory if I accept your premis that "illegally" buying resources = RMT.
It is just semantic. You don't thinking "cheating" create the same unfairness, and diminishing of rewards in MMOs? If it does, why are you willing to live with it, but not RMT? Cheating is pretty prevalent (at the survey i posted, 22% of the players do it). Would you play a game where 1 in 5 players (likely some in your guild, and on average 5 in each 25 man raid) "buy" their way into some content?
Me: If the game is so boring that you have to pay to skip parts of it, why are you playing it?
Because PART of the game is fun?
So if I can only have fun in God-mode, should I be given the option to buy God Mode? Gimme a break.
Sure why not? Plenty of players use cheat to get GOD MODE in single player games. That makes perfect sense. Don't tell me you don't know that. Plus, don't tell me that it does not make sense for you that some will want to bypass grinding (which is quite different than god mode).
If a person hate level grinding and think that raiding is extremely fun, it is perfectly in HIS interests (abate unfair to others) to use RMT to bypass leveling and go straight to raiding.
And I dont have a problem with him doing that...I just dont want to play in the same game world as him.
Then why do you want to play a game where he can cheat and do just that (u said u will play games with illegal gold selling)? You can buy a high level char in most popular MMOs. BTW, which game do YOU play? We can make this discussion more specific.
You place an absurd accusation on the shoulders of the developers.
It's in the interest of the F2P developer to create content that retains free players if for no other reason than those F2P players are content for the paying players. F2P MMOs aren't designed to get everyone to pay. The developers know they can't squeeze blood from a stone, so the majority of the effort is is spent creating desirable and attractive purchasable content for the buying crowd.
You are working off the assumption that F2P/ItemMall business model is to make the content boring or tedious so that people spend money to bypass it. That simply doesn't make sense from a developer or a consumer standpoint. You are also working off the assumption that there is no incentive to provide fun and engaging content for the free players. That is, again, logically false as the free players are the ones that most of the content is made for. The double xp weekends, dev events, seasonal/holiday events, etc.
Here's this week at ToP:
/2009-06-17 / Summer Holiday: DS &Lv85 Supreme Ring!!
/2009-06-16 / Pirates necklace owner event
/2009-06-15 / Multiple Exp Carnival Everyday
/2009-06-15 / Auction Center Report No.79
/2009-06-12 / Event III:Anniversary celebration: Auction
There's more cool events there in five days than most P2P MMOs get in five months, and it's available to the players who are playing for free.
Hopefully that explains a bit more about the F2P business model for you. Developers of F2P games have a vested interest in making the game fun and entertaining for the free players. The free players are actually an integral part of the game's success.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I wanted to talk on this quote real quick even though I have responded to much of the other points.
A marathon is competition. It is fair. All participants start at the same time and are measured in terms of how long it takes them to get to the end. People do get really upset when cheating happens in a fair/competitive environment. If a runner takes steroids, people are mad. If they take a shortcut, people are mad. Why? Because the competition meant nothing.
Now before you say, "see see, this is what I was telling you!"
My point: MMOs aren't fair, at all, ever. So to apply concepts reserved for competitions is ludicrous. You are there to have fun. If you compete with people in the MMO you do so knowing that one of you has an advantage. It really shouldn't matter if that advantage is money, time, skill, luck, whatever. The basis for competition is so skewed that they are like allowing different age groups to play in kids sports. The older kids usually win.
That is my perspective on RMT. I realize that it's the minority and can accept that. I don't believe that being in the minority makes it any less true, but so be it.
Me: Well, I am guessing you are in the minority in that opinion. Most people do care.
...and I have admitted as such.
Ok. The entire purpose of this thread was to illustrate to Pro-RMT people that RMT is not as inevitable as they would like to believe. In admitting you are in the minority, you seem to agree with that conclusion.
My time is valuable enough to me that I would be willing to pay money to bypass entertainment which I found distasteful.
I dont have a problem with that. I just dont want to play in the same game world as you if you do that. And I think most MMO players would agree with me. If you have the option of jumping ahead of me by paying money, it makes the game less fun for me.
Like many players I resorted to twinking, power leveling, and other legal in game exploits to bypass all the content that I hated.
And while I dont like any of that stuff either (and for the same reason), I could still live with it under certain circumstances (except for exploits of course). But all that stuff is stuff I could do too without paying a dime, which is why I dont consider it analogous to RMT.
Ironically the same people who against RMT have likely used the aforementioned methods to do exactly the same thing.
Why is it Ironic? The playing field is still level if other players can do all the same things. Nothing really changes in that regard.
I am snipping the rape comment.
I use extreme examples because they are unambiguous and are more useful in illustrating my point.
I'll ask that you please stick to less charged analogies in the future.
Request denied.
More to the point, since it's in every game you play, I hope that your sense of accomplishment is not ruined since it is there
RMT for trivial items is acceptable to me. I oppose RMT for anything that changes game balance. CoH's version of RMT is acceptable to me.
There is no such thing as illegal RMT. Illegal RMT is merely cheating. I oppose all cheating. Even if that is the only way you can enjoy the game.
It is wrong to say that characters do not progress unless they gain XP.
Most of my gaming time is spent farming, crafting and trading.
One of my biggest ever successes in a game was in SWG where I negotiated a deal to get raw materials for my crafting. This is not completing content, this is character to character trading in a virtual world.
I generally buy and sell on the AH to make money. I like farming and harvesting too. No XP here.
You place an absurd accusation on the shoulders of the developers.
It's in the interest of the F2P developer to create content that retains free players if for no other reason than those F2P players are content for the paying players. F2P MMOs aren't designed to get everyone to pay. The developers know they can't squeeze blood from a stone, so the majority of the effort is is spent creating desirable and attractive purchasable content for the buying crowd.
You are working off the assumption that F2P/ItemMall business model is to make the content boring or tedious so that people spend money to bypass it. That simply doesn't make sense from a developer or a consumer standpoint. You are also working off the assumption that there is no incentive to provide fun and engaging content for the free players. That is, again, logically false as the free players are the ones that most of the content is made for. The double xp weekends, dev events, seasonal/holiday events, etc.
Here's this week at ToP:
/2009-06-17 / Summer Holiday: DS &Lv85 Supreme Ring!!
/2009-06-16 / Pirates necklace owner event
/2009-06-15 / Multiple Exp Carnival Everyday
/2009-06-15 / Auction Center Report No.79
/2009-06-12 / Event III:Anniversary celebration: Auction
There's more cool events there in five days than most P2P MMOs get in five months, and it's available to the players who are playing for free.
Hopefully that explains a bit more about the F2P business model for you. Developers of F2P games have a vested interest in making the game fun and entertaining for the free players. The free players are actually an integral part of the game's success.
I was talking specifically about "experience pills" or "experience tomes" or whatever items designed to make player character evolve faster.
When such items are indeed available, I blame developers for their inability to provide content entertaining enough that noone would feel the need to use those.
If they have those items, and people buy them, developers failed. If they dont have those items, then you cant (un)prove about my claim of "skippable content".
F2P that sell these specific items have slow and boring progression.
For every F2P game with those types of items you name that isnt one or the other (developers "incompetence" or "malevolence" from my previous post), I will name 5 that have slow and boring progression whose ultimate effect is make people buy such items. Those are pay to win schemes, whose I concluded as scams.
All of the discussion is irrelevant. What you people don't seem to realize is that you have no choice in the matter. RMT will be shoved in your face until you accept it. Companies will not relent, the smell of money in this market is like blood to a shark. You might want to just get used to it, eventually all games will have RMT, and if some indie publisher comes out with something popular that doesn't, it will simply get bought out and injected with RMT features.
I would like to believe that people would choose not to accept RMT and participate in it, but the majority (the part that matters) are too easily sold on ideas like these when companies really campaign them.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
It is just semantic.
This particular semantic is relevant in the context of this thread IMO.
You don't thinking "cheating" create the same unfairness, and diminishing of rewards in MMOs?
Of course it does. If the cheating gets bad enough and I dont think the developers are putting enough effort into stopping it, I will leave the game.
Would you play a game where 1 in 5 players (likely some in your guild, and on average 5 in each 25 man raid) "buy" their way into some content?
If I believed the developers were not putting sufficient effort into stopping them, then no. I'd leave the game.
Me: So if I can only have fun in God-mode, should I be given the option to buy God Mode? Gimme a break.
Sure why not? Plenty of players use cheat to get GOD MODE in single player games.
I dont play in those single player games. I dont share the same game world in those single player games.
That makes perfect sense. Don't tell me you don't know that. Plus, don't tell me that it does not make sense for you that some will want to bypass grinding (which is quite different than god mode).
It makes sense in the same way that wanting God Mode makes sense. But we dont allow players God Mode in MMOs because it ruins the fun of other players.
Then why do you want to play a game where he can cheat and do just that (u said u will play games with illegal gold selling)?
Conditionally...see above
All of the discussion is irrelevant. What you people don't seem to realize is that you have no choice in the matter. RMT will be shoved in your face until you accept it. Companies will not relent, the smell of money in this market is like blood to a shark.
Which is exactly why it will not happen. No company will trade a reliable proven revenue stream for one that is more erratic and unreliable. Look at the poll...if it is any inditaction, developers would be committing financial suicide. And that doesnt make good business sense.
But it is not an indication. Look at the market and try some reality. If you really want numbers, go look them up, I'm too lazy to do it for you.
But it is still a FACT that more people play f2p games than play p2p. A poll from a site of outcasts who hate WoW is hardly an indication of the market as a whole. Developers are making a fortune on f2p. Will they all go that way? Not likely, but that is the trend, and it will continue.
Actually, the answer to that is very simple.
We'll start first with statistics. About 1 in 7 ( ~15% or so ) players monetize the F2P MMOs. That being the case, 6 out of every 7 players do not find a desire or need to accelerate the speed at which they progress or go through the content. Now, of that 1 in 7, not all of them are buying "experience pills" as many spend their money solely on purely cosmetic or 'bragging rights' items. This further reduces the actual number of people who are accelerating the rate at which they progress.
The numbers aside, let's now look at player behavior. Players will engage in activities that return rewards at the level they feel is, well... rewarding! In your standard MMO, that often means 'farming greens' as in most level-based MMOs it is faster to kill thousands of low xp mobs than to fight higher xp mobs. This actually retards the players growth through the game content and, in some case, negates some of the feeling of progress that the player is seeking. In F2P MMOs, and in many P2P MMOs, players use these accelerators to allow them to move forward in the game world content while advancing their character. The most classic example of this is Rest XP, a feature made popular by WOW which has since been added to many P2P MMOs in one manner or another. It is a tool that players can use to accelerate their gains without having to step backwards and 'farm greens'.
These items sell, not because the game content is bad or boring, but because the people that are playing an MMO solely to advance their character see value in items that will let them do it faster. This behavior was made very evident in Ultima Online when they introduced 'power hours,' where certain players would actually stop whatever they were doing the minute they got their accelerated gain alert in order to make maximum use of the time. Since UO is not about leveling, this detracted from the gameplay for many and the system has since been removed.The average MMO gamer today plays to level which is why Rest XP, something that wouldn't have been too favorable ten years ago, is wildly popular with players today.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Where are the protests during marathons against those who buy more expensive shoes? Don't they have an advantage over poor people with crappy shoes? What an outrage!
Oh wait... 99.9% of people do not enter a marathon in order to "win" or even compete with others. Hmmm... That's kind of like how I play an MMO, where I'm doing it for my OWN enjoyment, and not competing with others...
If you can afford nice shoes, your feet might not hurt as much at the end of the marathon, much like if you can afford a couple bucks for a weapon and avoid grinding your head won't hurt as much and you can actually enjoy yourself.
Two types of people.
A = likes to compete
B = doesnt like to compete
The fact that B exist doesnt make RMT (affecting balance = pay to win) acceptable for A.
B doesnt get incentivated to buy stuff to compete. If depending only on B, F2P goes bankrupt.
A is guy who feel not only incentivated, but forced to buy stuff, because he likes to compete, and if he cant compete he doesnt get satisfied. A is the guy who voted against RMT (79% of those who voted).
B is the guy who has no idea why player A gets so pissed off with RMT.
If B isn't competing with you and more than likely doesn't even know you exist, why are you trying to compete with him? And what are you competing against him at? The race to max level?
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Where are the protests during marathons against those who buy more expensive shoes?
Apparently most people consider those to be a trivial item that does not affect the outcome of the race significantly.
Sort of like costume parts or healing potions in MMOs.
Don't they have an advantage over poor people with crappy shoes?
Not a significant advantage, no.
Oh wait... 99.9% of people do not enter a marathon in order to "win" or even compete with others.
How did you determine the motives of 99.9% of Marathon runners?
If most of them dont care about winning, why are there rules to the race at all?
That's kind of like how I play an MMO, where I'm doing it for my OWN enjoyment, and not competing with others...
Competition and enjoyment are not mutually exclusive. An unfair game impacts my enjoyment of the game.
Fine, but does your sense of accomplishment get ruined in any of the following?
It can be, yes. I would avoid games where it does.
Certainly your perogative. However do so again, and I will finish my discussion with you.
You can "finish" it be simply refusing to reply to me. No one is holding a gun to your head. It will not stop me from quoting your posts, but you dont have to reply if you dont want to. I am ok with that.
If you can't be civil
How have I not been civil? Did I insult you?
If you don't like the skipping content part, then twinking and PLing should be equally aborhent to you.
I disagree...I do not consider them analogous because everyone can do them without having to pay extra.
Does it matter if I get my wonder sword by having someone twink me, or having someone sell it to me
It does to me. But I would not consider it RMT if everyone could do it.
Your gameplay was impacted by all of the aforementioned methods of content skipping.
So what? How does that change what I said before even if that is true?
That's fine. You admit jealousy/fairness as the reason you don't want RMT in a game.
If you want to label it jealousy, thats fine. Either way, it impacts my enjoyment of the game. I like a level playing field.