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why players buy virtual currency ptII
Torak
Member Posts: 4,905
Well the topic looks like it died down....
All in all we had 12 different people give us their reasons for buying virtual currency from sources outside of traditional in game farming.
This, of course, is far far from a scientific survey.
We had quite a few people chime in who never purchased currency.
The views and opinions could not be any more different.
Players who never purchased currency overall seemed to feel that the players who did where cheating in some form. Also that they where looking to "get one over" on non-buying players or that they where simply just lazy. Overall players who never purchased currency where somewhat hostile to players who did.
Players who did purchase currency (of the 12 who said they did) 11 did so because they did not have the time to commit to the needs of the game in order to gather the funds they would need ingame in order to enjoy it. 1 said he was to lazy. The majority of the people who purchased funds all said they had jobs, families and other commitments but also enjoyed MMORPG gaming.
Conclussion
It is a design flaw. Grinding in MMORPG's offer nothing. MMORPGs require grinding to enjoy all aspects of the game. Some people have the time or the tolerance for it, other do not but still enjoy the game overall.
Rather then develope deep emersive online worlds the MMO industry continues to feed the market with prettier and prettier grind machines (or hamster wheels as razorback put it
) Instead of focusing on superior and dynamic gameplay we get nicer looking pictures to swing our weapons at ...over and over.
Proof, the two newest MMORPG's to be released: D&DO - possibly the most limited narrow scope MMORPG yet to be released and RFO a bland level grind which offers nothing at all in an RPG sense.
Is it cheating?
No one was able to answer my question
My RL friend gave me 200gp in DAoC when I logged in for the first time, is that cheating? And if not how is it different from buying currency?
So in a way, we really don't know if it is actually "cheating" The funds where farmered off of mobs ingame. Would that not happen anyway? Does it really have an impact on the game economy or is it just perceived that way? Prices could inflate just on the suspision that there is a glut of cash.
What do I think?
I can certainly understand and relate to what some of the posters said. I have a job and a family also. I understand the time element. I would have liked to NOT have to sell stuff for hundreds of hours in L2 just to get my gear but I did. Was it enjoyable? Not really. Would I do it again? Nope. Do I feel a sense of acomplishment over it? Not really. All in all it was a drag. Would I buy currency it myself? Nope, I would probably just try out a new game. I'm a game hopper anyway. Would I get upset with someone who did buy currency? To be honest, probably not, simply because I don't care enough about the game to actually dislike another "real" human over pertend money in a game.
Do I still hate bots and farmers? oh yes! keep them outta my sight in L2 or I will train your ars and report your corpse
What do you think?
Comments
I think the same as I did the last time time the topic came up. It is cheating because the developers said so. Its a game, it has arbitrary rules. Virtually every game reserves the characters and items as intellectual property, they have the right to rent it out to you, but you can't turn around and sell it.
Why do you have to pick up another card in Go-Fish when you guess wrong?
Why can't I buy my neighbor's monopoly game and use the money from it when playing against other people?
Why should I roll 1d20 for my saving throws instead of a 1d100 in D&D?
Because those are the rules of the game. They don't even have to make any kind of cohesive logical sense. They're arbitrarily decided by the designers, and some times modified by the common consent of all participants, over a playing field of some kind to make "the game".
Thus, giving other people money isn't cheating, because there is no rule against it. In my view, it is simple. There isn't any philosophical justification involved. You don't need to base it on some kind of abstract gaming theory. Its in the rules.
I don't think DDO is a grind. I've played several mmorpgs out now that had no grind in my opinion. They were well made and have tons of diverse content (Everquest II, World of Warcraft, preCU Star Wars Galaxies).
However, what I define as a grind may be different than how someone else does. I played RF Online, Lineage II, and Final Fantasy XI. To me, these mmos require a player to do something repetitively for way too long. It's alright if I must go to an area and kill a bunch of mobs for a while, but I should always have an option to do something else, like craft, or quest, explore, socialize, build/maintain a town or a shop, improve economic/social aspects instead of just combat.
In Lineage II and FFXI, in order for a player to earn the currency needed to be competitive, it is necessary to buy virtual currency with real money. I never did it, and when I got to the point in the game when I realized I wasn't going to get much further without doing this, I quit the game.
In RF Online, I didn't mind the grind. I thought it was OK because I always saw results as I was grinding. In Lineage II, it was far more frustrating, as I had to grind for a long time to see any result. In FFXI, if I got into a party, the grind went away, but when I solo'd, I quickly got bored of killing mobs repeatedly, and I could not usually do quests on my own.
I agree with what you wrote about most mmorpgs today, comparing them to the "hampster wheel" and how we are just running along. But we have some newer alternatives, like Dungeons and Dragons Online, which takes us away from the traditional "kill a mob and get EXP". Yes, you still must "grind" through dungeons, but they are interactive environments that require some thought, and cooperation from other players, it's not the same thing over and over.
Even in City of Heroes, I enjoyed the missions, even though some began to feel repetitive, because I enjoy the grouping. So this is how I play mmos, and it infuences how I define them.
I think in RF Online, at least it is fairly easy to earn currency in-game (I can't see any reason for someone to buy it). In other games, I can see the reasons for buying it, but I would never do it. Why should I? As mentioned, it is a flaw in the game, and so I look elsewhere for something I can enjoy without having to pay for in-game currency.
I am looking forward to the upcoming mmorpgs like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Heros Journey, Fallen Earth, The Chronicles of Spellborn, and most of all, Seed. Hopefully, we can find more to these new mmorpgs than just the same old things.
monopoly is just a few peices of cardboard thrown together, but people become easily deeply entrenched in it to the point where they quit or get angry when they start to lose.
without rules, a game, just like life, immediately begins to feel pointless, and then people get bored and quit.
rules create rewards for proper play, and punishments for improper play, thus there is an established method by which players can compete, thus making the game challenging and enticing despite the fact that the outcome has no physical change on the world and means nothing.
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
/agree
Both excellent posts.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
Multiple people keep accusing JMoney95 of cheating in the other thread, even though buying ISK through a time card is allowed and encouraged by the developers/publishers of EVE. One guy keeps on arguing that it's cheating while quoting blocks of text explaining that it's within the rules of the game. I think most of the people who say 'it's just bad because it's cheating' are not being honest, since they seem to have a problem with it even when it's very much not cheating.
If it's such a simple topic, then are you fine with someome buying money in a way that is within the rules of the game, like using game time cards in EVE?
I shall stick with L2 as it is a game we are both familiar and comfortable with. Firstly, your conclusion:
It is a design flaw
How is it a design flaw when the whole premise of the games content is dependent on the time it takes to become a certain level? Do you think politics would be as meaningful in L2 if everyone could level cap in 2 months a la WoW? Could castles be won and held by a clan who had played together only a short period of time? Would Antharas ever have been beaten if our mental stamina hadnt been properly coached for it?
What do you think?
We often idealise early PC games, forgetting that they too suffered from bugs and we were forced to wait for the patch to come through the mail on a floppy disk. We talk of how they challenged us but forget to mention that in pre-internet/pre-walkthru days if the challenge was too hard we had to wait for a friend to find the solution or simply not finish the game. You might be lucky and have a game that offered a "Hint Line"...at premium call charges ofcourse.
My point is that MMO's are still relatively young as a concept and yet the gaming community differs greatly to the one being catered to 10 years ago, and often from the community at the offset of a MMO's development.
Its unfair to blame either one side or another when needs dont meet expectations and vice versa. However, actively supporting the secondary market wont ensure that our future games will be less time-consuming and more challenging, all it does is focus R & D money in the wrong direction.
Is it cheating? Well, unsurprisingly, I think it is. I, and a lot of others, could buy gold, but we chose not to. I could cheat in an exam, I could dodge taxes, it's about choice. I'm by no means an intefering middle-classed do gooder with too much time on my hands, I just feel that you take away most of the fun by doing so. What someone think is a grind another may think is a challenge. That doesn't mean you should take the easy option though.
How would you feel if the doctor who is about to perform surgery on you isn't really a doctor but cheated somewhere along the way? I couldn't care less whether someone buys gold from someone who makes $100 a month [that's how much these farmers are paid btw] or is sanctioned like EQ2's Bazaar server or Second Life. These games shouldn't be about who has the most time or the most money. Maybe it's because I come from a 'traditional' DnD RP background that I feel this way, I'm not sure.
To those people who say well I've got the money why shouldn't I buy currency, tell that to me when you got no job because you've been replaced by someone who is prepared to be paid a fraction of your salary or your company moves its base overseas because the labour is so much cheaper. Still you'll have plenty of time to farm the gold then....
No annoying animated GIF here!
yeah it is cheating, but how are you (as a game developer) going to stop it? eliminate trading? there has to be a "currency" of some sort if there is trading right?
the only way i can think of to stop this is to take legal action and bring down the companies that pay the farmers.
the only problem is it isn't illegal, at least not ATM and until it is no matter how innovative you are there will always be a "currency" of some sort and people will be able to buy that currency from these farming companies.
so yeah, not sure how you can stop this but i would like to hear a logical idea how you could.....cuz i sure as hell cant think of one.
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
Originally posted by Pantastic
Originally posted by Xpheyel
I think the same as I did the last time time the topic came up. It is cheating because the developers said so.
Thus, giving other people money isn't cheating, because there is no rule against it. In my view, it is simple. There isn't any philosophical justification involved. You don't need to base it on some kind of abstract gaming theory. Its in the rules.
Multiple people keep accusing JMoney95 of cheating in the other thread, even though buying ISK through a time card is allowed and encouraged by the developers/publishers of EVE. One guy keeps on arguing that it's cheating while quoting blocks of text explaining that it's within the rules of the game. I think most of the people who say 'it's just bad because it's cheating' are not being honest, since they seem to have a problem with it even when it's very much not cheating.
If it's such a simple topic, then are you fine with someome buying money in a way that is within the rules of the game, like using game time cards in EVE?
I have no problem with that at all. If the people who own the game say its alright, then it isn't cheating. Calling someone a cheater when they aren't breaking the rules must require a pretty creative definition of the word.
At the moment, I don't really have a strong opinion about whether it is a design element I like or not. At worst, it might be something I dislike strongly enough to not play the game, in the same way I might not like twitch combat so much that I don't play PlanetSide or don't like cartoony graphics so much that I don't play World of Warcraft.
In general, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of games that do support real-money for in game money for three reasons. Firstly, it does feel like it tilts the playing field in the direction of those with enough discretionary income to spend large amounts of real money on the game. I don't have anything solid on the long term effects of that, though. It might not be as bad as I fear. Second reason would be that it seems like too good a way for developers to suck money out of addicts. Ultimately that would be the addict's responsibility in my opinion. Finally, the game makers aren't always up front with how the system works, that makes me uncomfortable too. The first time I heard of the system was in Project Entropia, which (it seemed to me) hid the details in the manual whilst loudly touting that it was free to play. That was a bad first impression and it sort of sticks with me.
Like I said, though, its a game design/philosophy issue. It'll appeal to some people and not to others the same way Carrot Cake would
Anyway, as for the Grinder's Dilemma, players expect the character improvement from traditional PnP and single player computer RPGs to carry over into the multiplayer genre. However as with computer RPGs, it's possible to run out of content. Repeatable content has a finite lifespan because if characters are to improve, eventually the repeatable content becomes trivial for their power level. Thus, players want to improve, but content is finite. Thus far the only means that have been attempted to solve this dilemma is level caps and treadmills (to keep players from exhausting content too quickly). Since subscriptions are paid for time, the treadmills are designed to take time. Therefore, time = power.
Many players can't be bothered to engage in these treadmills and only want to enjoy the content. The content that they have, I should note, paid for already by buying the game and paying the subscription. Some are willing to even pay more money so that they can enjoy this content, so they buy gold. Or power levelling services or characters, ect.
These games are designed such that one has to invest an abusrd amount of time, but no one has yet tried an advancement system such that those who do have an absurd amount of time don't gain a huge lead (Eve technically does this, but people who play more can earn more cash and instead gain a lead that way).
http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/75332/page/11
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.
(posted in this thread again because I didn't realize there was a Part II to the original thread)
My blog:
http://www.littlesarbonn.com
Thus, developers stick to a formula, if you look at WoW, they basically made the game to ensure maximum profit.
Another problem with the idea is that people don't realize that perceived bad aspects of the game are most likely side effects of amazing aspects within the game. The whole farming aspect is one side effect of having a universal currency in which items are transferable, but what would happen to the game if it wasn't based on currency and items weren't transferable? It would probably be worse and lead to less $$$$$.
You state, that they should be innovative and essentially make an amazing aspect within the game without a negative consequence. My question to you is why mess with a formula that works, you can be innovative but if people don't like it, then you just lost money and that is unacceptable.
A final thing to say, I used to be a very self-righteous player meaning that i would hate anyone who used 3rd party programs, who cheated in games, used hacks, bought items off ebay, etc. Then a few things happened and I basically started buying duped gear in diablo 2 and selling it for a profit. What happened was I realized that video game companies only care about what makes them money and not the integrity of the game. So if they don't care, then i'm not going to care and not only that, i'm going to abuse the system to make some profit.
If they really cared about farmers, for example in WoW, then they would stop it, but they don't probably because it is not cost-effective and if a person spending $40 for 1000 gold on WoW allows that person to get an epic mount and have a subscription for 2 months longer then why the hell not. Now we see game companies put buying currency as a feature within their game. They are slaves for $$$ and that is all there is to it. They will not design more innovative games to curb farmers or to make less of a grind unless they see it as increasing profit.
I would love for a company to make a "good game", by good game i mean a game that is intrinsically excellent, not a game that maximizes profit i.e. WoW.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I have never bought anything in a game for real money. Do I think its wrong? Yes. Do I think its cheating? No.
Its wrong because it creates and fosters a system of farming. And when your trying to complete a quest or just out to have fun only to have 30 farmers preventing it then it is wrong. As long as there is demand there will be supply. Granted there will be farming even without the sale of ingame items. But selling for real money adds to it 100 fold.
But it isnt cheating. Secretly every game company loves it. Even if they wont admit it they love it. Because each sale of in game money, items, or toons keeps people playing. If not for that the person might get fed up and walk. Which is why, IMO, game companies say they dont allow it but never really do anything about it. They might do a token ban here and there but that is the most they will do.
Kai
The post seemed to get lost in all the discussion of whether or not farming is bad, so I hope people don't mind my repeating it below:
....
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.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Mylon makes an excellent point...content is finite. It takes a great amount of effort to put in even the simplest content. Players rip through content fast then a moderate size dev team can even think it up. Think about a new quest in a game you play. It may have taken months of work to get that quest ingame (depending on the depth) and it provides the average player a couple of hours of entertainment. Doing that sort of math and wow, you have a real problem. Only a game like AC is literally stuffed with "content" but look at how long it took to get to that point. On top of it, the game is so old / dated / negelected and exploited its not even competetive to todays games.
That would tie directly into your observation Kai....they really don't mind because it solves part of the problem for them. People will find was to solve their own ingame problems...one way or another. (edit - meaning they can simply add grind content and leave it at that)
interesting theory, but i disagree.....i think it is probably because there is nothing they can legally do about it. look at that kid that made a wow strategy guide and tried to sell it on ebay, they were all over that trying to shut him down.
people would still play just as long if they couldn't buy currency, in fact it is more likely that more people would quit over the frustration of other people just buying the currency or the fact that it ruins the economy so regular people have a harder time buying stuff because the prices have been jacked up.
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
Is that uber sword too expensive? Go get two of them, sell one for mega profit, and keep the other.
IMO farming does ruin the economy because you have farming on a mass scale and usually it is just for a certain type of item or a certain type of mob that generates the fastest profit for them.
so it is not usually balanced as you claim, and farmers most defiantly don't improve the wealth of the game......they improve the "wealth" of the people that decide to buy the currency and make it harder for the people that don't.
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
The problem I have with farmers is that they create an artificial economy, or they move the fixed point of the economy in a direction that is condoned by the developers. I don't like things being artificial, i like "invisible hand of wealth" to find its place naturally.
In the crux of the situation is not whether farmers ruin the economy it is whether you believe the economy is ruined by farmers.
Mylon, in the end it is all interpretation, all farming does is move the set point of the economy, it is up to people to determine whether it reaches a point where it is ruined or not, perhaps the game's designers set the point too high so it's tough to afford items, thus farming would bring the set point to a lvl where most people enjoy it.
In the end I wouldn't say farmers improve the overall wealth of the game, I think they create an unaccounted economical force in the game in which the effect is open to intepretation.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
The main problem with gold selling is still the by products of it which is content held hostage by grinders and active groups exploiting for gain. I don't there is any MMO player that has NEVER been inconvienced by a farmer holding a quest mob or a chest or some other content hostage for hours without any way to work around it.
You diminish the overall entertainment of a game when you have other people playing it as WORK/BUSINESS. What games should do it offer payfor items themselves on a limited basis so those that don't care about paying to get ahead can but can be handled in a managed balanced manner.
The problem is that all of the "farmers ruin the economy" complaints are unfounded. All I here is that someome will see that there is inflation in a game, and that there are farmers, and since they don't like either one say that farmers are responsible for inflation. I've never heard anyone who claims that farmers ruin the economy explain how they determined that it was farmers and not things like higher-level players buying lower-level items (for alts, guildies, etc.); it's always just boldly declared that inflation can be blamed on them.
Plus, an inflated economy actually helps new players most of the time. The fact that items on-market are inflated means that low-level characters can sell things they collect for excessive amounts of money too, and a lot of items that go for super-high prices aren't actually needed for a low-level character.
The trouble is, it takes alot of time grinding and farming for items to sale and the small money drops. Alot of people are too lazy to do that so turn to the short cut and buy their money. Bam! Game economy goes to the pits and everything is overpriced. You dont realise what an item is really worth till you hit the lvl cap. Even then you go eyeballing the auction house and say to yourself "Pfft, that much for that sword? Retards!" Is it the players need to catch up with others who already have what that player wants? Id have to say that half the problem. Or it can be to get an advantage over others. I prefer playing solo so I always choose classes that dont exactly need to be grouped to enter an area and clean house. Worries about dungeon ninjas. The real cheaters are the ones who hack and mod to make gold. I dont know how its done or really care to find out. Those are the people who need to be banned and fined and whatever else you can throw at them. Some snotty little twerp living at home with mommy and daddy with access to a credit card to buy his way into a guild or to corner a trade skill to the point you have to buy off them to get anything good, they can burn as well. Yes, Ive ran my mouth eough, to make it a shorter version of my bitching, stop cheating everyone else who doesnt buy the currency. It bad enough vendors sale overpriced JUNK that noone wants or needs.
Ive heard rumors that SOE doesnt do anything to the currency sellers cause they get a piece of the action to keep them at bay. Truth? Who knows.................I stopped playing Everquest because the game has went to Hell already cause of the ingame economy. WoW is slowly heading down the same path. Im sure others have seen this in other online games. Wait for it cause it will get worse and you'll be in the same boat with me. Depressed and fed up with being poor