Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MMO without any player to player item/currency transfer.
adam_nox
Member UncommonPosts: 2,148
It seems with every new mmo or online rpg release, there are more and more gold spammers and hackers ready to attack it. And the hackers are only there to support the gold trade. FF14 is an example of how bad it can get.
There are bandaid fixes, but these can only mitigate the damage. Authenticators are an inconvenience (if I want to post on bnet for example, I now have to always have my authenticator handy). GW2's method is probably the best, but the threat will constantly pound on that door till they get an opening. Enough lecturing though.
What about no trade at all, no direct player to player trading? One place you won't find account hackers or gold spammers is marvel heroes. Now people gripe about the limitation of no trading, but honestly that's more because Gaz has made loot finding a grind. Look at D3, player to player trading is just a micro form of AH, and if the AH is bad because everyone just buys their gear, than similarly trading is bad. D3's item rolling system is bad so good luck with person to person trading anything but legendaries.
So no trading. You can craft, but the item you craft is sold to a vendor. The price can fluxuate a bit based on supply to vendors, and demand from buyers. Players can buy items that are craftable from vendors, with similar price fluxuations. It would simulate a market, but without the ability to buy what you have not earned. It would prevent you from helping a friend by giving them stuff, which is something I personally enjoy doing, but so long as the vendor is not ripping the player off on the bid/ask spread, it should work.
Specifically, the more rare an item, the smaller the bid/ask gap, so that a player selling something like a legendary item would get 90% of what it would cost to buy a legendary of the same level of their choice.
Thoughts? Pros, Cons?
Comments
Question:
how are players able to buy something from a vendor with no currency?
Because if the game does have some form of currency it already opens the door towards goldscammers.
Currency would be gained by each player through adventuring, selling items you dont need or by the things you sell. Each player can not trade anything with another so everyone has to earn their own eats. People can assist one another cooperatively but not with cash or equipment. I actually do not have issue with this...depending on the genre.
The only RMT commerce would then be account based.
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999
Gold scams are from trading to real players for real money to game money. No trading possible, this option never exist so no farming needed. The only thing a gold farmer can do at this point is sell accounts directly after they farm on them, this is not the money maker gold farm trading is.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
And cheaters/real world traders won't be able to make money off the game from even account selling...given that no one will be playing it.
It is not that the games freedoms are highly restricted. It is that they are near impossible to cope with given other options.
Player trading is little like an An Auction House/Marketplace. First off, with player trading, you get to choose whom you sell to. And can dicker on the price in real time. With good transactions, one can even establish a long term trade relation with other players...repeat business, and preferential treatments. trad can also be used to aid specific people in specific ways. I can't recall having ever seen an automated system that does any of these valuable things.
Also, this partially takes away from the over all value of an MMORPG. Because, it takes away a lot from your ability to interact with others.
Runescape tried something similar a few years back. In an effort to stop bots and rwt. The put a noose on trading. Players were limited by a number of factors as to how much they could trade with other players within a given number of hours. They also blind sale market place with heavy restrictions. And, they ripped out the games most beloved forms of PvP and replaced them with poor substitutes....
Two things happened initially...The bots were gone. And, half their honest player base left as well. New players slowly trickled in to fill the void and some rage quiters came back. But, so did bots...they found a way. a way to still cheat and rune the game for honest players. despite everything the runescape team did to stop this.
Players just would not stop standing on the soap box of bringing back old PvP and free trade. And, eventually runescape team put it to a player vote. And, even though players new it would allow the bots to come back in force. They still voted to irrevocably bring back old PvP and free trade.
Because, as much as we all hate cheaters. At our core we hate lack of freedom more. Since then runescape team has brought in numerous devices for combating botting, including better secret defenses, better detection software. more brutal punishments, right click reporting. And, even a mini game where players get to punish bots in a very puritan fashion.
By working to find ways that they can combat bots without restricting player freedom. botting has been on the decline ever since.
It really comes down to weighing what is lost with is gained.
What is lost:
1) players gifting others with items, ie: being nice.
2) Crafters lose their player interaction.
One way to lessen the hit on player crafters is having an auction house. That is indirect trading between players, and cuts out the gold sellers.
What is gained:
1) Gold sellers disappear.
I am not sure if the loss is worth the gain. I find myself leaning towards it is worth it
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
You're almost correct. replace "gold" with "desirable or valuable transferable items" and it's easier to see the pros and cons. Well, cons, really, as I can't see any real benefit of an interactive, social, virtual world where players cannot share or trade any items of value or desirability.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Just wanted to point this out and have you look at Wizards 101.
Which is making a pretty penny, and it allowed the developers to make Pirates 101.
So you really think no one would play the game?
You mean the game that revolves around trading cards that players trade with each other?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Firefall has no P2P trading.
There is a marketplace, so you can sell things found in-game to other players, but you can't directly trade. ATM, there are no gold-sellers. People have seen some, but most are a scam since there is no way to securely deliver the in-game currency.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
To whom? Not everyone wants to play a crafter with player interactions.
Marvel Heroes also have no AH, and no trading. They may add it later, but so far it works fine.
CoH for the first three years; no lewt of any variety.
I know, people often are so enamored of the standard model that they can't believe anything else ever worked; but, it did.
They eventually did create lewt, and auction house, and economy...and the gold spammers appeared (as predicted).
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It was a fantastic game at the time as well. Do you think diminishing returns hurt or changed peoples motivation?
Some of the most intense group PVE I've ever played.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Basically what the OP is saying is all pricing is directly managed by NPC.
What would happen is a gold seller would accumilate wealth in NPC only curency and/or craftable/rare items and either buy out a specificly high priced item therfore raising the price or flooding the market with an item reducing its cost dramaticly enough to make a trade with a player who then can rebuy the items to sell later or sell their items at a higher price back and forth untill the trasaction was completed
The other problem is the system really does look a bit... governed maybe even comunist...
The only MMO I know that has a similar policy is PSO2. I believe players cannot trade unless they purchase the ability from the cash shop, or they need to earn enough "fun credits" for a 3 day pass to trade.
However, I consider the game more ARPG, then MMO.
i don't exactly see why this would still be considered an MMO, with a concept like this in place. why not just make npc's sell everything you could possibly ever create, eliminate crafting and this NPC-auctionhouse concept, and just go straight to making people quest for it....i mean, thats pretty much what would happen anyways, wouldn't it?
game starts, you can't trade with anybody or anything, and your entire goal is to grind for mats to make stuff to pretend-sell to other players...i think id rather play some console rpg and pretend the npc's are real players....just seems easier.
In Marvel Heroes you CAN trade items,just not cash.
Just find a lonely corner and drop things on the ground.
Make sure there isn't anyone nearby to swipe the loot.
I wasn't around City of Heroes at the start, but what I think killed the game was they never even tried to merge servers.
Went back a while before they shut down and there were a ton of empty servers.
( I had my characters on two of those,neither of which was one of the two high population ones {Freedom or Virtue} ) so it seemed empty of players.
If they had merged down to 2-3, I suspect I would have found people to play with and would have stayed.
Simple answer, and this is where i give wushu some credit
Personally gold scammers / spammers don't bother me, I don't nor have I ever bought gold, however seeing as they are a problem, to start with simplify money, make it BoP, at least then any trade must happen via an ingame third party, thus traceable, then any decent gaming company can pick up on any 'drastic' out of character prices. To allow inter player trading then in the major cities have a 'third party NPC' toon who you both trade too, then when both parties agree he facilitates the trade, again any extreme pricing would flag up on the server
To see this in simpler terms look at EvEs market history, it shows the price for each item over a period, the volume sold but also the key - The high price, now every now and again you see a spike, but this will be picked up via a 'warning' system. and then looked into
The other possible solution might be a barter style system, in real life prior to money being uniformed if you wanted something you offered something in returns - However, for this to work the game would have some serious dramatical changes to the standard mmo.
You could have things like player housing being built by using barter system, "I will buy that purple sword for 2hours work on your house lol"
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game
where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
Use this code for 21days trial in eve online https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=d385aff2-794a-44a4-96f1-3967ccf6d720&action=buddy
Yeh, and because it is so unsecure, it is essentially the same as no trading since almost no one will use it with a stranger.
I don't need to trade to have fun in this game, although admittedly a AH probably will make it more fun.
Still, I do not recall the chat channels filled with spammers.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
knight online used to do this all the time, so i wouldn't put that concept past any dev. wasn't just gold tho.
It's not just that there are exploits/farmers .... Sometimes a free market simply isn't fun. There's less accomplishment when you acquire something that other players are simply bored of.
I think MMOs are doing a good job of integrating more tokens and bind-to-X gear to make trading more limited and more enjoyable.
I do feel that trading is an important source of interaction and should not be completely abandoned if possible, but that said, I can also live without it.
I think it's absolutely worth it, one thing that will go away are the annoying idiots who have high-level characters funding low-level alts, giving them millions in gold to go out and buy the best armor and the best weapons, especially in the PvP arena, so they can win without having earned any of it.
The other way it could be done is to limit the amount of gold/value that can be given to any particular character per day. It stops people from dumping millions of gold or high-end weapons on characters of low level, the higher level you get, the more you can receive, but it should never be a huge amount of money on any given transaction. It would still allow for goldsellers, unfortunately, but it would require them to have hundreds of characters to pass on a small amount of gold each and it would take hours to accomplish. Nobody would do it.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
If it's an alt, how did the player not earn it?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre