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Negatives of the gem system
AIMonster
Member UncommonPosts: 2,059
I see there are plenty of threads on the positives of the gem system, but I wanted to provide the counter agruments of the positives and add negatives of the system. I don't really know how the gem system will be in the long run until we start seeing items, prices, and it's effects on the economy firsthand. I'm not saying the system is necessarily bad either, as there are plenty of positive aspects of the system, but there are problems with the system that are worth discussing here as the bias seems to be overwhelmingly positive right now:
1. It doesn't remove illegal RMT trading and botting, just reduces it.
While it will greatly reduce gold seller spam, it doesn't completely get rid of illegal RMT trading. People are still likely going to buy powerleveled accounts. Account sellers are still going to bot said accounts not only to powerlevel them for experience but to farm the in game currencies. Account sellers are still going to want to get as much gold as possible for those accounts so they can buy gems on the account, which will make the accounts more valuable. Hacked accounts with lots of progression and currency are going to be just as valuable if not more so than they were before.
2. It supports unfair items on the cash shop since you can always use the agrument that anyone can earn it in game.
Ever play Allods Online? The game is a perfect example of this. You could earn much of the cash shop items in game; however the cash shop was horribly pay to win and that's a good reason the F2P lost a lot of it's popularity once information on the cash shop and the reality of it sunk in. Just because you can earn the items in game, whether through quests, the cash shop items being BoE, or currency trading doesn't mean it's fair. Non-paying players may have to farm for obscene amounts of time to earn enough to earn an item, meaningwhile the paying player simply bought said item and doesn't have to worry about farming. The paying player basically wins in this case. Other examples are facebook apps like Mafia Wars, where the paying players have a huge advantage over the non-paying players, even though most of the paid items are tradable with others and there are methods to earn them in the game.
3. Paying players (the whales in particular) have greater control of the economy.
Let's throw out some theoretical numbers here. Let's say there are 10,000 active players daily. 5% of those players used the cash shop that day. Out of those 5%, 10% used the cash shop to buy gems which they are trying to auction off for gold. That means 0.5% of the active players, or 50 players that day placed gems for gold on the auction house.
Player A, a whale spends an extraordinary number of money on gems. He sells the gems regularly and is now has the equivalent of the top 3 richest people in the world of in game currency.
Player A now decides that he doesn't like the conversion rate of gems to gold. Player A buys out all the gems of the 50 players selling gems that day with his amassed fortune. He now places the gems up for the new rate of his choosing. The player continually monitors the auction house in order to control this rate, by buying out any other gem to gold transactions that attempt to undercut him. Player A now controls all the supply of gems to gold.
The demand of gems doesn't halt. Many players that wanted to buy gems before simply can't afford it now. Other players are forced to buy gems at the newly set price. Eventually if Player A continues this, this becomes the norm. The demand doesn't go down, and now that Player A controls the entire supply and it's more difficult to obtain said gems the demand actually INCREASES as long as Player A doesn't set a completely absurd price, because less people are now able to obtain the gems yet the amount supplied remains the same.
Now, Player A is making an even bigger profit and has even more wealth. Now say there are valuable consumables for sale on the auction house / trading post. What's to stop Player A for controlling the economy on those too? Where does it end? Eventually valuable items will be so overpriced that only paying players will be able to afford them.
I'm not saying this will happen. This is a nightmare scenario. It's just that it simply COULD happen.
4. It causes developers to build around the cash shop more, causing more inconvenience.
Now that everyone can buy gems how do you make the gems more valuable? Valuable enough that people will want to purchase them and not simply farm gold. You need to increase demand that's how! How do you do that? Make gold less valuable and gems more valuable. The best way to do that is to make it inconvenient to farm large amounts of gold while making it very convenient to use gems. There are plenty of ways to do this as we've seen in lots of cash shop games, even ones with "fair" cash shops. Limit inventory and bank space so people will want to increase it. Make gold difficult to farm and used in everything so people will want to trade those gems in for gold. Make travel a pain or harsh penalties so consumers will want items that remove said penalities and make things more convenient for them.
Now we have a few counter agruments you might be able to understand why some people might be upset about this. I don't expect Anet to go the route where they'll intentionally inconvenience players (we already know they are doing a lot to make the game enjoyable), I'm simply just offering up counter agruments here. Don't take it the wrong way and flame me or call me a troll for it. A lot of these are theoretical worst case scenarios that probably won't happen.
Comments
I think you REALLY need to read the many many posts in the what 5? current threads on this that counter every single point you have made.
I was about to stick up for you in your other thread but apparently I shouldn't since you want to make wild assumptions about me... and seeing as how I have been the only post here after the OP... I read it.. I have read the same things in many posts over the last 24 hrs. I myself have posted responses to many of these same claims.
Actually a few of these are counter agruement to these points. Explain how any one point is countered by another point in the positives thread. I did read the many many other posts, that's why I made this post. I felt they were extremely biased and easily countered.
If you want I can bring up more concrete examples of #3 if you want too. I can explain how in a single week I managed to raise the average price by 25% of one of the most popular (at the time) items on World of Warcraft market and made out with the largest profit I've ever made in a single week in that game. Now you can just imagine how bad that is when a paying player can acquire large amount of gold to do so without working for it and it's negative impact on the economy as a result.
I understand that you're trying to provide balance to the discussions, but some of your points feel... forced.
Reducing third-party RMT isn't much of a negative.
Allods went overboard with this, and look where it got them. I don't think ArenaNet will make such a mistake. This point isn't as much a negative of the system revealed as it is a possibility that's been here all along.
This is somewhat true, but I don't view it as a huge negative. Noticeable manipulation will take a huge amount of money, and the effects of one player will likely return to equilibrium very quickly. I've seen this system at work in Spiral Knights. I saved up a lot of energy and managed to manipulate prices to make a pretty nice profit (which I unfortunately lost due to a serious bug), but the energy prices returned to their normal values in a pretty short (about an hour or two) amount of time. The effects can last longer on fresh servers, but as the marketplace will be shared across all servers, servers will only be fresh at launch.
Also worth noting is that I could only manipulate the system in Spiral Knights before its Steam launch, when the population was still very low. It would cost too much to do it now. I think it's safe to say that GW2 will have a significantly higher population than Spiral Knights.
This is pretty much the same as your second point, but the value of gems will change based on the amount of gold in the system. People will want to buy them instead of farming gold because if everyone farms a lot of gold, a single gem will end up costing a very high amount of gold. People unwilling to farm even longer to buy gems will be more likely to pay real money to get them. ArenaNet won't have to create addition incentives to buy gems because it will happen naturally.
Also, mechanisms are already in place designed to make gold-farming inefficient. (This is a good thing.)
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
@#3: The Auction House is linked over all servers. So the theoretically whale have to buy all gems from over 1 million players or 5% of that amount. So really should get a lot of money.. and everyone can spend at any time cash for gems. So i dont see this.
But there are reasonable concers about that cash shop.. but however, we dont know enough about a lot of stuff relevant to this.. i really hope ANet publish soon a more detailed explanation about the cash shop, the ingame items, the cash shop items, and everything relevant about all this. But finally we have wait to see how all comes down.
OP reads like: Wah wah wah, those with time investments won't have complete control over the economy any more. I won;t be able to snort at people from atop my level 3,000 epic space donkey mount. The playing field is equal... but it cannot be! I am superior! Thus, I must quickly portray this as evil to time investors so that we can maintain our control.
Seriously, not falling for it. To me, it clearly creates a level playing field between time and money investors, and it doesn't allow either to outright control the economy.
This ignores the fact that worldwide those with the least amount of money also tend to have the least amount of free time. So this system screws them over coming and going.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
I think the player in your third scenario would soon be out of business!
Because if he wants to sell his gems for way over market price, he also needs to BUY at way over market price to keep control of it.
If he buys up anything that is undercutting him, but still at a price that most people would deem to high I for one would just milk him out of all his gold.
Seeing as you can not directly buy gold for gems ( that is what I gather at least ) the gold is actually a limited supply, wereas gems are not, as long as one have real dollars in a fair amount.
However, the demand for gems will be far from unlimited, meaning he will soon be sitting on more gems then the server needs in the foreseeable future, because lets face it, anyone with even a slight economic sense is going to try to milk him for gold as well, at a premium rate.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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Exactly. In a subtle way companies makes us believe that:
- People with money have few time and then will spend in the game.
- People without money have a lot of time and will invest time in the game
- We as a company are so kind that we will bring the two together with our benefical system.
And that is simply not true.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Time and Money are the things that we hold high in the real world so why not bring this into the virtual world.
People that work a lot of hours will have little time to play so they can speed it up using their hard earned income.
People that have a lot of time because they dont work will use that to build their characters. Well unless they use their benefits on the game too.
I think its a great system.
They need a title or some type of achievement for those that don't use microtransactions. I for one don't like the idea although it looks like a great system. I would rather just pay a flat fee a month since I have little willpower and will buy gems. I know, just don't buy them! Well it's hard not to for me....I am weak. If there was some type of incentive like titles or a buff I would not use it I beleive. And yes I understand they won't do that because they will lose money.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Have you read the messages above?
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
There are also
- students who study a lot and can play little time, but yet thaey have no money to spend on games
- there are kids playing who might have time, but which are brought to a marketplace not to a playground whenever they will log in and play
I'm really pissed by this f2p-cash shop-real trade market trend.
I want my old p2p sub fee model back, i play to relax and enjoy my free time, not to go back to job or to put any children into a market, while the company should take care of the service with my sub money and profit only on it, period.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Too much blabla threads going on now.
Nobody knows how it will work eventually, we just have to wait and see. Everone is throwing their opinion in the threads and nobody is reading them because we are all too busy giving our opinion.
Can we start threads now to discuss other stuff?
This is indeed extremely worrisome. Selling 'convenience items' in the cash shop implies that players will be inconvenienced unless they buy them - the same thing that goes on in all those horrible Korean F2P grinders.
The in-game time = IRL money equation as a whole really grinds my gears as well. When I'm playing a game, I don't want to think about real life, much less real money. When I see an item I want on the AH for 1000 gold, I don't want to wonder whether it'd be more effective for me to farm the gold in-game or buy it for Euros, based on how much I make in real life. I won't be buying D3 for this reason and it's quite possible that I can't bring myself to buy GW2 either.
Are you kidding me? Youre not gonna buy GW2 because of something stupid as this?
Theres more in this game you know...
Magnums concern is a valid one, but were aren't at that point yet are we?
as for your quote above, please tell me what game doesn't have illegal gold sellers already making this happen. My entire WoW guild bought gold every week. One guy spent $300 the first week of catacysm.
The part you are missing is gold is a second tier currency. So the pressure is on the person who spends less time playing, not the one who spends more cash in RL. You can't buy kharma or Tokens with gold, so wallet warriors are mad as hell about this system. Otherwise they would just buy the gold from illegal sellers. But since all gold can buy is convience, they are spinning right now screaming, I can't buy my purple items with gold, this sucks.
People with money still won't have an advantage over people with time, not if there is anything on the auction house worth spending gold on, and if there is not, why would you buy gold unless the necessities you buy from NPCs are a grindy pain in the butt to get any other way? In which case, won't you feel ripped off?
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
The worst of all is that they have turned this game into a cheap F2P game. It has lost all interest for me.
Good bye. Moving to something else.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
I'm still interested in the game, but my interest has shifted from playing it for pvp and pve to playing it as an economic pvp game. My primary goal will be to get gold and diamonds from other players so that I will have both advantages in game and all future content paid for by others instead of out of my own wallet. It's a different type of game and not the one I was hoping for, but it could still be fun. I suspect spreadsheets may be involved, but I'm enough of a nerd to handle it.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Haha, are you messing around or for real?
If thats the only thing that stops you from playing this game I want to say. cya, bb, we wont miss you.
how pathetic, i really don't get people like you...
Quite the mature response to someone who is expressing their displeasure, but GW2 fans have now passed even the pre SWTOR rabid fanbois.