Whilst it may be impossible to stop farming, I believe it wouldn't be very hard at all to make life much more difficult for them. For example, consider what would happen if the following rule changes were made in WoW:
i) No character may give money to other characters beyond a total of 50gp in a 24 hour period.
ii) No player may receive gifts exceeding 50gp in a 24 hour period. Any attempts to mail money beyond that period will be returned to the sender.
iii) Any time a player gifts an item worth more than 50gp, they must wait 24 hours before gifting any items whose value exceeds 5gp
iv) No item may be exchanged for other items or gold that exceeds 20x the vendor price for the item
v) All items in the Auction house have a buyout capped at 20 x the vendor price
vi) No player may conduct more than 100 trades with other players or the auction house during a single day
The point is not to make it impossible to transfer money, but to make it slow and complex - i.e. to make it harder to be a farmer and harder to buy from farmers. It would also increase the amount of co-operation and trust needed between the farmer and the buyer before large amounts of money could be transferrd.
The cap on auction house prices is also designed to take away alot of the motivation for grinding. Items whose value far exceeds their vendor price (such as rare recipes) would be more likely to be gifted, when they can no longer be sold for 700gp on the AH.
There may be a few loopholes in the above rules, but they are just a starting point for discussion. I'm sure that if sufficient time and money was devoted to refining them, then a farmer's life could be made much less lucrative.
An alternative approach may be to keep an audit trail of money transfers in the game. I'm sure it wouldn't take a sherlock holmes to track down the characters who are generating large amounts of money by doing the same thing over and over, and then transfering it to a whole load of random people they have never met before. Alot of this detection could probably be automated.
Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe Antipathy wrote: 2) Would you agree that money buying increases the amount of money in the game and that this will cause inflation? No, I don't agree. Farming, regardless of whether the player intends to sell the gold, is what increases the amount of money in the game. Higher level players tend to have fat sacks of in-game currency just taking up space which is why high level guild members donate large sums to lower level guild members. I'll use my maxed character in Guild Wars to demonstrate. While GW doesn't have a persistant world, it does maintain persistance of characters and inventory across servers and instances. My lvl 20 Ranger / Monk has all kinds of money as well just about any weapon, item, or raw material that my newer alts could ever need. I could just as easily give some of that wealth to lower level players. If some lower level players were to join my guild, I would probably give some money and equipment to them. The amount of money hasn't changed. The use of the money has. Instead of having 6+ digits of currency in my inventory, It's now in the hands of someone who will spend it. In other words, the buying of money DECREASES the amount of money that's in the game.
3) Would you agree that money buyers will be substantially better equipped than other people of their level, and that if they become common then this will put pressure on other people to keep up? Yes and no. While peope that buy money will be better equiped, so will players that are members of guilds that "share the wealth."
Even if there were no money sellers, there would still be players that are equiped to the maximum amount due to their guilds or friends. There will always be alternatives to farming. Why should I feel guilty because I can acquire top gear faster than a soloer that doesn't buy money?
Of course, but you do agree that if money buying is commonplace then the number of characters with exceptional equipment for their level will increase substantially?
I tried to address this point in my earlier posts. I recognised that a certain number of characters will be twinked either by their alts or their guilds. I don't think it's possible to prevent this in any game that involves trading and crafting.
However I don't think the occasional heavily twinked character is a problem. Problems occur when these characters become commonplace, putting pressure onothers to keep up. I believe money buying makes this situation far more likely to occur early in the lifetime of a game.
4) Would you agree that some games, such as L2 and FFXI, have already evolved to the point where there is a very large degree of pressure on new players to buy currency? With those two games, it's less a matter of evolution than simply being made for a different market and being converted to a "western" model. Hyperinflation is usually the result of in-game scammers and not money sellers.
How do "scammers" create inflation. They may get rich quick, but I can't see how they alter the total amount of money in the world. This is why I never buy equipment from other players since I can get it cheaper from the in-game shops or just craft it myself. And of course, it's usually just easier to buy items off of ebay than spend in-game currencey. BTW, is the sale of in-game items part of this discussion, or is it a seperate topic altogether?
I think many of the points here could be applied in either case. However it's probably best to keep things simple by not wandering too far off the topic of money selling.
5) Can you understand how people would not want their favourite game to reach that situation? I can understand that someone who spent long, boring hours grinding away would be upset that someone just bought their way to the same place in less than a minute. However, the person you should really be angry at is yourself for not being smart enough to just bypass the grind.
Ok - can you understand how someone who has spent large number of hours enjoying a game and playing it for fun might be upset when he is no longer accepeted into parties because his equipment is substandard. Or people laugh at him because he is level 42 and still can't afford a mount?
Originally posted by Nerf09 *Give it up when talking about economic matters.* Some of you should realize that you are debating with people who think that 1-billion new gas guzzling Chinese Customers has absolutely noo effect on the price of a barrel of oil (supply and demand). Some of you should realize you are debating with people who think that the labor market can be fully exploited (without any negative side effects) by reintroducing the old system of slavery. Some of you should realize you are debating with people who like to throw money at a problem. Some of you should realize you are debating with people who think that reducing supplies through regulation, taxation, and legislative obstructionism has absolutely noooo effect on prices (Supply and Demand). You are talking economic matters to people who dont even understand, even on a more basic level, supply and demand.
I those who attempt to reduce any topic to "Us" v "Them", "Red" v "Blues" or whatever say far more about the quality of political debate in their native country than they do about either their opponents or the issue at hand.
To put matters simply, anything of a limited supply with sufficient desirability will be owned solely by the rich. Whether these "rich" people are the people that earned their in-game cash or if they bought it, only they will have it. If a less-rich person gets the item, they will determine that the cash is more important than the luxury and sell it to a rich person, or they will horde it, at which point it doesn't affect the economy and is therefore moot.
The effect of farmers (and therefore cash buyers, since they are linked) on the economy is that, no matter what, they improve it. Absurd? Consider this: If farmers produce primarily gold, then this puts more gold in the economy which makes any item sold by a player worth more cash. This in turn makes fixed-costs cheaper, like skill training or merchant equipment. If farmers produce primarily items, then this puts more items into the economy which means the price of the item goes down and more people can enjoy these "luxuries". No matter what farmers do, it improves the economy.
The problem with farmers is generally when these farmers interfere with normal player's enjoyment of the game. Like, say, farmers taking up the area where players can take the quest to raise their level cap. But this is primarily a poor design of the game. Another problem is when they camp limited resources. It's much like immigrants working as cheap labor and replacing domestic workers. However, this is generally another sign of poor game design. That is, the world is overpopulated and there is not enough space for everyone to enjoy. There should either be a greater access to the materials, or less people on the server. Games should also support more "intelligent" professions than farming so that players not able to compete with farmers for resouces can instead perform the more complex profession for more pay and simply buy materials from the farmers with money leftover. However, such intelligent professions are generally lacking in MMORPGs. That is, witness in WoW how gathering yields much more cash than crafting, because crafting is "push a button" and nothing more. Since gathering is a more complex profession (look for and find the item), it pays more.
For an example of a complex profession, consider raid gear in WoW. Currently, it is possible to purchase level 60 characters (or otherwise purchase a powerlevelling service), however, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to use a power levelling service to "purchase" raid gear. Why is this? The process is too complex to be profitably farmed. The equivalent cost would likely be 5-10x that of purchasing a level 60 character, and what person in their right mind would pay $5,000 for a WoW character? People are willing to pay $500 for a level 60, as that is roughly the going rate, but they are not willing to take that giant step for raid gear because it cannot be done by minimally trained workers manning multiple computers.
Farming is not going away. Is what you should be asking for is professions that cannot be done by one person manning 3-4 computers simultaneously, or for that matter by bots. Alternately, give everyone the vorpal sword of uber-ness for minimal effort. The option of eliminating the idea of an economy and making goods untradable between characters is not possible, because levels are not tradable but still purchasable.
Of course, but you do agree that if money buying is commonplace then the number of characters with exceptional equipment for their level will increase substantially?
Only at higher levels. Most of us have finite monetary resources and aren't going to lay down cold hard cash unless we're stuck. You make the assumption that most people are going to buy money if it's available. I don't see the point unless there is no other way to get the amount you need in a reasonable amount of time.I've already pointed out alternatives to farming. If I can't get the cash off of my friends, guildmates, or the sale of items I don't need anymore, then I'm going to buy the cash outright.
I tried to address this point in my earlier posts. I recognised that a certain number of characters will be twinked either by their alts or their guilds. I don't think it's possible to prevent this in any game that involves trading and crafting.
It's also impossible to stop the exchange of in-game money for the real thing. I agree that designers need to create games that take the emphasis off of the grind and into something that more interesting. However, I think that most of these games are missing a HUGE opportunity by not providing an auction service to players that accepts real money. If you charge 25 cents to the seller on every sale, you could probably do away with subscriptions altogether.
BTW, Roma Victor will be selling in-game currency themselves but RV is more of a sandbox game so it should be something to watch as this debate matures. What? You thought this was gonna go away?
However I don't think the occasional heavily twinked character is a problem. Problems occur when these characters become commonplace, putting pressure onothers to keep up. I believe money buying makes this situation far more likely to occur early in the lifetime of a game.
They already are commonplace and not because of professional farmers. People that group a lot, and play in guilds, advance 30% faster than players that don't. Soloers aren't going to stand a chance against that. I think it's kinda funny that you don't see "twinking", a far more common practice, a problem, but money selling is a big problem to you. And it's about a 50/50 split as to those who practice it. If you aren't buying money, you're getting it from friends, alts and guilds. It's a lot like prostitution; Why is it illegal to sell something that you can legally give away for free?
ow do "scammers" create inflation. They may get rich quick, but I can't see how they alter the total amount of money in the world.
Perhaps "hyperinflation" was the wrong word to use here. I'm not quite sure what the word is when prices go up but the money remains fairly constant. Depression maybe? Anyway, if you want to know why the prices go up it's because scammers sell things to newbies for an ungodly amount of money and the newbs grow up to overcharge the next batch of newbs. Somewhere along the lines, the overcharging becomes a standard and the prices rise. You could say that the overcharging causes newbs to farm more, thus creating more in-game currency and inflating the in-game economy. But that would be "blaming the victim" and the victim is NEVER at fault.
Ok - can you understand how someone who has spent large number of hours enjoying a game and playing it for fun might be upset when he is no longer accepeted into parties because his equipment is substandard. Or people laugh at him because he is level 42 and still can't afford a mount?
<shrugs> There are alternatives to farming and they're quite a bit more fun than camping a spawn point for days on end. Join a guild and they'll probably hook you up just to protect their reputation or keep a "competitive edge." When you let someone into your guild, it's usually because you like the person and are willing to invest some time and money into seeing them perform at your level. Guilds have always been in the business of power leveling members so it's really no different than money selling or leveling services. Or do you want to ban guilds now because the give an "unfair" advantage? If you're worried about people laughing at you then you have some problems with self esteem and confidence that better gear is just not going to help.
Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe Antipathy wrote:
Of course, but you do agree that if money buying is commonplace then the number of characters with exceptional equipment for their level will increase substantially?
Only at higher levels. Most of us have finite monetary resources and aren't going to lay down cold hard cash unless we're stuck. You make the assumption that most people are going to buy money if it's available. I don't see the point unless there is no other way to get the amount you need in a reasonable amount of time.I've already pointed out alternatives to farming. If I can't get the cash off of my friends, guildmates, or the sale of items I don't need anymore, then I'm going to buy the cash outright.
I belive money buying is commonplace in many games. It's difficult for us to measure how common, but it's hard to imagine that an industry with very few customers could support the level of advertising we see.
I also believe that money buying is more common at mid-levels. Particularly amongst lower skill players who find themselves hitting a brick wall as the difficulty of a game increases.
I tried to address this point in my earlier posts. I recognised that a certain number of characters will be twinked either by their alts or their guilds. I don't think it's possible to prevent this in any game that involves trading and crafting.
It's also impossible to stop the exchange of in-game money for the real thing. I agree that designers need to create games that take the emphasis off of the grind and into something that more interesting. However, I think that most of these games are missing a HUGE opportunity by not providing an auction service to players that accepts real money. If you charge 25 cents to the seller on every sale, you could probably do away with subscriptions altogether. There will be games that pursue this market. I won't play them. The effect of such a marketplace will be transfer inflation from game money to real-world money. I could easily see such a market reaching the point where someone may have to spend a $1000+ to get the equipment needed to join the servers uber-guild. Other players, who may be far more skillful, will be driven out by an unwillingness or inability to pay these amounts.
If you fancy playing a rich-man's game, I'd suggest taking up polo..., although I hear that soccer clubs are far more profitable.
BTW, Roma Victor will be selling in-game currency themselves but RV is more of a sandbox game so it should be something to watch as this debate matures. What? You thought this was gonna go away? I never said anything was going to go away
However I don't think the occasional heavily twinked character is a problem. Problems occur when these characters become commonplace, putting pressure onothers to keep up. I believe money buying makes this situation far more likely to occur early in the lifetime of a game.
They already are commonplace and not because of professional farmers. People that group a lot, and play in guilds, advance 30% faster than players that don't. Soloers aren't going to stand a chance against that. I think it's kinda funny that you don't see "twinking", a far more common practice, a problem, but money selling is a big problem to you. And it's about a 50/50 split as to those who practice it. If you aren't buying money, you're getting it from friends, alts and guilds. It's a lot like prostitution; Why is it illegal to sell something that you can legally give away for free?
I do see havy twinking as a potential problem. However, as I said, it would be much harder to prevent without removing other, enjoyable aspects from games (e.g. trading, crafting etc)
It is clear to me that the effects of gold selling stack with the effects of twinking, putting even more pressure on other people to keep up. And gold selling is preventable.
How do "scammers" create inflation. They may get rich quick, but I can't see how they alter the total amount of money in the world.
Perhaps "hyperinflation" was the wrong word to use here. I'm not quite sure what the word is when prices go up but the money remains fairly constant. Depression maybe? Anyway, if you want to know why the prices go up it's because scammers sell things to newbies for an ungodly amount of money and the newbs grow up to overcharge the next batch of newbs. Somewhere along the lines, the overcharging becomes a standard and the prices rise. You could say that the overcharging causes newbs to farm more, thus creating more in-game currency and inflating the in-game economy. But that would be "blaming the victim" and the victim is NEVER at fault.
I think this may be a guild wars problem. I have not seen any sort of serious problem along these lines in other games.
Ok - can you understand how someone who has spent large number of hours enjoying a game and playing it for fun might be upset when he is no longer accepeted into parties because his equipment is substandard. Or people laugh at him because he is level 42 and still can't afford a mount?
<shrugs> There are alternatives to farming and they're quite a bit more fun than camping a spawn point for days on end. Join a guild and they'll probably hook you up just to protect their reputation or keep a "competitive edge." When you let someone into your guild, it's usually because you like the person and are willing to invest some time and money into seeing them perform at your level. Guilds have always been in the business of power leveling members so it's really no different than money selling or leveling services. Or do you want to ban guilds now because the give an "unfair" advantage?
How many more times do I need to say it.
My main problem isn't with the occasional person enjoying an advantage through twinking or guild support or whatever.
My problem comes when a large enough proportion of the player base enjoy unfair advantages that it puts pressure on the remainder.
If you're worried about people laughing at you then you have some problems with self esteem and confidence that better gear is just not going to help.
Never did I say I was worried about people laughing at me (I already have 2 WoW characters who acquired mounts at 40). That doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of players with low self-esteem and confidence, and that some of them may feel pressurised to resort to gold buying in order to keep up with others.
I'll give you reasons. You may not like what you read but I'll put it strait.
Availablitity is the number one reason people buy game currency online. Someone makes it possible for these people to not have to "grind" for what they have. Sadly enough it's not just the farmers who make this happen, its all the playerbase itself.
1337 idiots... imo this is the biggest load of crap reason to play a game period, the need to be ubar and so fourth to have the best armor weapons and so on in a game without having to do the maps or kill the mobs essential to get that stuff is only enablement to the online currency problem.
Laziness...BIG REASON. Why grind for anything anymore if a farmer can sell you what you want for 5 dollars and you have your daddys credit card.
And probably last but not least, NO DAMN SKILL, I think all of the reasons above lead to the buying...you can get it yourself period so you buy it.
I once bought a house in Ultima Online in the very early days, mainly because I could find no room to place one. I had attempted to buy a house in game, and I was scammed, which pretty much emptied my wallet of gold in the game. Yeah, it was stupid of me to be trusting of someone, but I was still screwed over. But I wanted a house, so I ended up buying one for about $50 (yeah, that was the price back then for a little shack). That little house gave me the greatest pleasure ever because my next door neighbor was one of the meanest pkers on the shard, and it became my lifetime goal to kill that guy as many times as I could (after he killed me a few times). I ended up turning red and very bad at one point because I made it a habit to kill him and ANYONE who dared to visit him. I had to have killed at least a hundred people who were friends with this guy. One guild practically declared war on me. God those days were great.
There will be games that pursue this market. I won't play them. The effect of such a marketplace will be transfer inflation from game money to real-world money. I could easily see such a market reaching the point where someone may have to spend a $1000+ to get the equipment needed to join the servers uber-guild. Other players, who may be far more skillful, will be driven out by an unwillingness or inability to pay these amounts.
This point sticks out to me. The rest of your post just convinced me to agree to disagree with you, but this one I have to answer.
This isn't really an issue with "one-shot" items like potions, scrolls and, of course, currency. What you have to remember is that as there is more currency in the game, it's real world value will become less. The developers could actually regulate this by keeping tabs on how much currency is in the world and adjusting drops accordingly. I could go on to explain that you would be mostly selling items, but we are just talking about currency so that's what I'll stick with. Another solution is to fix the resources in the world with the number of active (played within the last 90 days) subscribers. A game like this would almost have to be built around crafting. Kinda like Goonzu or Roma Victor. Yes, crafting will be a big part of RV. Another thing to keep in mind is that developers could make NPC vendors who would buy and sell low and then delete the extra money. You would also probably need certain mobs to loot players that they killed and allow players to loot other players.
Think of it like Tokens at an arcade. Once you've spent your dollar for tokens, you can't exchange them back. You can sell them to someone else, but you've pretty much spent your money. You can't get too mad when someone loots you since you weren't able to cash in that money anyway. In a well regulated game economy, that's linked with real world currency, the price of currency will remain stable and cheap. The problem occurs when players sell money in games where the amount of currency is totally unregulated. The game I described doesn't have to be a rich man's game. It can actually be cheaper than a monthly subscription game. It all depends on how well you execute it.
Comments
i) No character may give money to other characters beyond a total of 50gp in a 24 hour period.
ii) No player may receive gifts exceeding 50gp in a 24 hour period. Any attempts to mail money beyond that period will be returned to the sender.
iii) Any time a player gifts an item worth more than 50gp, they must wait 24 hours before gifting any items whose value exceeds 5gp
iv) No item may be exchanged for other items or gold that exceeds 20x the vendor price for the item
v) All items in the Auction house have a buyout capped at 20 x the vendor price
vi) No player may conduct more than 100 trades with other players or the auction house during a single day
The point is not to make it impossible to transfer money, but to make it slow and complex - i.e. to make it harder to be a farmer and harder to buy from farmers. It would also increase the amount of co-operation and trust needed between the farmer and the buyer before large amounts of money could be transferrd.
The cap on auction house prices is also designed to take away alot of the motivation for grinding. Items whose value far exceeds their vendor price (such as rare recipes) would be more likely to be gifted, when they can no longer be sold for 700gp on the AH.
There may be a few loopholes in the above rules, but they are just a starting point for discussion. I'm sure that if sufficient time and money was devoted to refining them, then a farmer's life could be made much less lucrative.
An alternative approach may be to keep an audit trail of money transfers in the game. I'm sure it wouldn't take a sherlock holmes to track down the characters who are generating large amounts of money by doing the same thing over and over, and then transfering it to a whole load of random people they have never met before. Alot of this detection could probably be automated.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
The effect of farmers (and therefore cash buyers, since they are linked) on the economy is that, no matter what, they improve it. Absurd? Consider this: If farmers produce primarily gold, then this puts more gold in the economy which makes any item sold by a player worth more cash. This in turn makes fixed-costs cheaper, like skill training or merchant equipment. If farmers produce primarily items, then this puts more items into the economy which means the price of the item goes down and more people can enjoy these "luxuries". No matter what farmers do, it improves the economy.
The problem with farmers is generally when these farmers interfere with normal player's enjoyment of the game. Like, say, farmers taking up the area where players can take the quest to raise their level cap. But this is primarily a poor design of the game. Another problem is when they camp limited resources. It's much like immigrants working as cheap labor and replacing domestic workers. However, this is generally another sign of poor game design. That is, the world is overpopulated and there is not enough space for everyone to enjoy. There should either be a greater access to the materials, or less people on the server. Games should also support more "intelligent" professions than farming so that players not able to compete with farmers for resouces can instead perform the more complex profession for more pay and simply buy materials from the farmers with money leftover. However, such intelligent professions are generally lacking in MMORPGs. That is, witness in WoW how gathering yields much more cash than crafting, because crafting is "push a button" and nothing more. Since gathering is a more complex profession (look for and find the item), it pays more.
For an example of a complex profession, consider raid gear in WoW. Currently, it is possible to purchase level 60 characters (or otherwise purchase a powerlevelling service), however, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to use a power levelling service to "purchase" raid gear. Why is this? The process is too complex to be profitably farmed. The equivalent cost would likely be 5-10x that of purchasing a level 60 character, and what person in their right mind would pay $5,000 for a WoW character? People are willing to pay $500 for a level 60, as that is roughly the going rate, but they are not willing to take that giant step for raid gear because it cannot be done by minimally trained workers manning multiple computers.
Farming is not going away. Is what you should be asking for is professions that cannot be done by one person manning 3-4 computers simultaneously, or for that matter by bots. Alternately, give everyone the vorpal sword of uber-ness for minimal effort. The option of eliminating the idea of an economy and making goods untradable between characters is not possible, because levels are not tradable but still purchasable.
Antipathy wrote:
Of course, but you do agree that if money buying is commonplace then the number of characters with exceptional equipment for their level will increase substantially?
Only at higher levels. Most of us have finite monetary resources and aren't going to lay down cold hard cash unless we're stuck. You make the assumption that most people are going to buy money if it's available. I don't see the point unless there is no other way to get the amount you need in a reasonable amount of time.I've already pointed out alternatives to farming. If I can't get the cash off of my friends, guildmates, or the sale of items I don't need anymore, then I'm going to buy the cash outright.
I tried to address this point in my earlier posts. I recognised that a certain number of characters will be twinked either by their alts or their guilds. I don't think it's possible to prevent this in any game that involves trading and crafting.
It's also impossible to stop the exchange of in-game money for the real thing. I agree that designers need to create games that take the emphasis off of the grind and into something that more interesting. However, I think that most of these games are missing a HUGE opportunity by not providing an auction service to players that accepts real money. If you charge 25 cents to the seller on every sale, you could probably do away with subscriptions altogether.
BTW, Roma Victor will be selling in-game currency themselves but RV is more of a sandbox game so it should be something to watch as this debate matures. What? You thought this was gonna go away?
However I don't think the occasional heavily twinked character is a problem. Problems occur when these characters become commonplace, putting pressure onothers to keep up. I believe money buying makes this situation far more likely to occur early in the lifetime of a game.
They already are commonplace and not because of professional farmers. People that group a lot, and play in guilds, advance 30% faster than players that don't. Soloers aren't going to stand a chance against that. I think it's kinda funny that you don't see "twinking", a far more common practice, a problem, but money selling is a big problem to you. And it's about a 50/50 split as to those who practice it. If you aren't buying money, you're getting it from friends, alts and guilds. It's a lot like prostitution; Why is it illegal to sell something that you can legally give away for free?
ow do "scammers" create inflation. They may get rich quick, but I can't see how they alter the total amount of money in the world.
Perhaps "hyperinflation" was the wrong word to use here. I'm not quite sure what the word is when prices go up but the money remains fairly constant. Depression maybe? Anyway, if you want to know why the prices go up it's because scammers sell things to newbies for an ungodly amount of money and the newbs grow up to overcharge the next batch of newbs. Somewhere along the lines, the overcharging becomes a standard and the prices rise. You could say that the overcharging causes newbs to farm more, thus creating more in-game currency and inflating the in-game economy. But that would be "blaming the victim" and the victim is NEVER at fault.
Ok - can you understand how someone who has spent large number of hours enjoying a game and playing it for fun might be upset when he is no longer accepeted into parties because his equipment is substandard. Or people laugh at him because he is level 42 and still can't afford a mount?
<shrugs> There are alternatives to farming and they're quite a bit more fun than camping a spawn point for days on end. Join a guild and they'll probably hook you up just to protect their reputation or keep a "competitive edge." When you let someone into your guild, it's usually because you like the person and are willing to invest some time and money into seeing them perform at your level. Guilds have always been in the business of power leveling members so it's really no different than money selling or leveling services. Or do you want to ban guilds now because the give an "unfair" advantage? If you're worried about people laughing at you then you have some problems with self esteem and confidence that better gear is just not going to help.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
I'll give you reasons. You may not like what you read but I'll put it strait.
Availablitity is the number one reason people buy game currency online. Someone makes it possible for these people to not have to "grind" for what they have. Sadly enough it's not just the farmers who make this happen, its all the playerbase itself.
1337 idiots... imo this is the biggest load of crap reason to play a game period, the need to be ubar and so fourth to have the best armor weapons and so on in a game without having to do the maps or kill the mobs essential to get that stuff is only enablement to the online currency problem.
Laziness...BIG REASON. Why grind for anything anymore if a farmer can sell you what you want for 5 dollars and you have your daddys credit card.
And probably last but not least, NO DAMN SKILL, I think all of the reasons above lead to the buying...you can get it yourself period so you buy it.
I once bought a house in Ultima Online in the very early days, mainly because I could find no room to place one. I had attempted to buy a house in game, and I was scammed, which pretty much emptied my wallet of gold in the game. Yeah, it was stupid of me to be trusting of someone, but I was still screwed over. But I wanted a house, so I ended up buying one for about $50 (yeah, that was the price back then for a little shack). That little house gave me the greatest pleasure ever because my next door neighbor was one of the meanest pkers on the shard, and it became my lifetime goal to kill that guy as many times as I could (after he killed me a few times). I ended up turning red and very bad at one point because I made it a habit to kill him and ANYONE who dared to visit him. I had to have killed at least a hundred people who were friends with this guy. One guild practically declared war on me. God those days were great.
But it all came from that little $50 house.
My blog:
http://www.littlesarbonn.com
Antipathy wrote:
There will be games that pursue this market. I won't play them.
The effect of such a marketplace will be transfer inflation from game money to real-world money. I could easily see such a market reaching the point where someone may have to spend a $1000+ to get the equipment needed to join the servers uber-guild. Other players, who may be far more skillful, will be driven out by an unwillingness or inability to pay these amounts.
This point sticks out to me. The rest of your post just convinced me to agree to disagree with you, but this one I have to answer.
This isn't really an issue with "one-shot" items like potions, scrolls and, of course, currency. What you have to remember is that as there is more currency in the game, it's real world value will become less. The developers could actually regulate this by keeping tabs on how much currency is in the world and adjusting drops accordingly. I could go on to explain that you would be mostly selling items, but we are just talking about currency so that's what I'll stick with. Another solution is to fix the resources in the world with the number of active (played within the last 90 days) subscribers. A game like this would almost have to be built around crafting. Kinda like Goonzu or Roma Victor. Yes, crafting will be a big part of RV. Another thing to keep in mind is that developers could make NPC vendors who would buy and sell low and then delete the extra money. You would also probably need certain mobs to loot players that they killed and allow players to loot other players.
Think of it like Tokens at an arcade. Once you've spent your dollar for tokens, you can't exchange them back. You can sell them to someone else, but you've pretty much spent your money. You can't get too mad when someone loots you since you weren't able to cash in that money anyway. In a well regulated game economy, that's linked with real world currency, the price of currency will remain stable and cheap. The problem occurs when players sell money in games where the amount of currency is totally unregulated. The game I described doesn't have to be a rich man's game. It can actually be cheaper than a monthly subscription game. It all depends on how well you execute it.