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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Gotta Go Sell
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
"OH LOOK! Junk! Let's pick it up!" Every game is filled with it and for some inexplicable reason, players pick up every gray (or useless) item to sell in town for ridiculously low prices. Would that happen in real life? In today's Star Wars: The Old Republic column, MMORPG.com Community Manager Michael Bitton climbs up on his soapbox to discuss the needless tedium associated with selling grays. Check out his thoughts and weigh in with your own in the comments below.
I’m not sure exactly where this phenomenon began but I’ve always been a bit perplexed by it. Every time I hear “Gotta go sell” it is met with a groan, I even groan when I have to inevitably say it myself. Selling grays just breaks up the flow of whatever you happen to be doing with an unnecessary run back to town to unload your junk off to a guy who is always eager to buy your crap at a super low price with his deep pockets full of gold.
Read more Mike Bitton's SWTOR: Gotta Go Sell.
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Comments
A little extra money doesn't hurt, even if its a pathetic amount. It all adds up and since in TOR you don't have to break stride to do so, I really don't mind it. Doing it yourself does get annoying though.
For all we no those grey useless items might actually be worth decent amounts in bulk for TOR.
"Selling grays just breaks up the flow of whatever you happen to be doing..."
I think that's the whole point. Yes, once you reach a high level, it can get incredibly tedious to get rid of junk that adds very little to an already large fortune, but at low levels, there needs to be a way to create enough dough to get by.
Quite frankly, I was getting worried that TOR was cutting out all of the features of traditional MMO's that might 'keep you out of the action', so I am glad this is still in.
Some people don't just want to pew pew all the time (ie: me).
i'd say it began in diablo
portal to town > sell crap
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Yeah it's a waste of pack space but I do think greys are a necessary evil. If you kill over and over again and get nothing but a few coins, credits, whatever every time it's going to get boring. I agree that running back to town to sell those greys is a dumb practice but for some reason some people just can't let them go. I collect them and if I wind up in a group if I run out of space they are the first things to get deleted.
Yeah, but you would rather plunder someones wallet than taking his boots after you killed him. Vendortrash sucks.
I did not see a single person loot anyone in all the 6 movies, therefor I conclude that vendortrash is against the lore, at least for the good side. Who knows what tghe darkside do?
Really, vendortrash is the dumbest part of MMOs. Only someone pathetic poor individual would loot like this, like the poor people following the armies in the 30 year war.
Of course you would pick up something that looks really expansive from someone you offed, but not junk items. Only cash should drop beside premium items in any game.
It's not about what it's worth, it's about how pointless it is to have greys in the first place. You dont actually use it, it's trash. Why not kill mob x credits in your wallet or it drop crafting mats.
this is how you made money back in Asheron's Call other than farming rare keys. People would run a plugin that would pop up loot that was worth at least **** value and was under *** weight and just farm mobs at the bottom of a dungeon for 30 minutes and pickup everything you could until you hit 300% encumbrance.
Olthoi Eviscerator Lair runs, recall to rithwic I think it was, sell everything under 5k there for extra profit and to lose the extra weight, then sell rest where you plan on buying your MME notes. good times.
lately most MMO's have turned vendor trash into something you break down for a raw resource (AC eventually did this too/first!).
I'm not sure what is included in 'grays' and what not, but often it isn't just grays what you find.
Often it may be worthless to you, but to another person that has a certain crafting skill it's something they can use for their crafting.
As for GW2, I'm not aware of all the info, but I've read nowhere that there wouldn't be 'grays' in GW2. Isn't this just hopeful speculation, not facts, that ANet has found another solution for 'grays'?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You missed the point entirely. Why not just hand out that extra money upon the death of the mob?
Actually, I have an answer. The reason for grey items lies in the psychology being used by game companies to keep you addicted. MMO's, like slot machines, use a variable ratio reward schedule. On average, every Xth time you do the action you are being trained to do (kill a mob/ insert coin and pull lever), you get a reward. The variability means you that always think that the next time could be the big one. The grey items are there to keep going in between the rarer rewards. They give you just enough so that you feel you're getting something out of the activity because if you go too long without a reward, the behavior gets extinguished. Also, a more consistent reward helps to get you addicted in the first place.
But why don't cash rewards serve that role? They're too easy to ignore; it's just a sound effect and a counter being incremented. Having to pick up and then sell the item forces you to acknowledge it as a reward.
Quite honestly the problem is the absurd amount of items our characters can carry in these games. I mean, 5 backpacks? 200 healing potions? 1000 arrows? Spare set of plate armor for "tanking" WTF?!?!?
Then once combat starts the 5 backpacks, 2 sets of plate armor, Broadsword of Keen, GreatAxe of Valor, Warhammer of Might, Longbow of Legend, 1000 arrows and 200 potions I am carrying do not seem to impare my ability to fight (with my Vorpal Longsword and SHield of the Ancients)
As a result we just grab everything.. we become instant corpselooters and grab countless "grey" items that no one would ever realisticly sell such as "ruined lizard tail" or "broken goblin jaw"
So in sort.. let there be vendor greay, but make encumberance and bulkiness actually matter again. This way I'll have to choose between taking that lovely "grey" vase to sell to a collector or the wad of bandages that might help save my life.
PS: We've all had characters like these but just try and picture exactly what your great warrior would really look like when he travels with 5 backpacks, 200 healing potions, 1000 arrows, 2 sets of plate armor, a broadsword, a greataxe and warhammer a longbow, a longsword and a shield. Not to mention filling the reast of his packs with "grey loot"
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Most of the time something having credits just wouldn't make sense. There are various creatures in the universe that simply wouldn't need to have credits on it. It puzzles me when i kill a rodent and it has 3 copper on it. What did it do eat the money? Wouldn't that hurt it's digestive system?, how did it manage to eat it? did someone drop money? and if nearly all these rats have money on them and are likely eating them off the ground, why am i not seeing the money to? Whereas if i cut off it's tail that makes sense. Every rat has a tail. The only thing that needs to be explained away is why a merchant would buy em. Course you can have junk merchants for that and problem solved.
Which brings back to why they have vendor stuff in the first place. Unless a creature is either sentient or likewise to eat something sentient it really shouldn't have any kind of money on it. I go back to the rat thing again. Unless you expound on some contrived way of explaining why it has money on it. Then it makes no sense, no vendor is going to accept coinage from a rat, or otherwise unless it's sentient enough to understand transactions.
Personally i feel that its a good thing in my opinion to have your companions sell your loot, you have to tatically know when it's safe enough to sell the loot as you'll be without your companion for a minute while they go sell your stuff off. Would be even cooler if you could tweak your companions behavior to either light sided/dark sided to get you more credits with certain vendors.
They implemented a feature something similar to the coin system in piriates of the carribean where all your treasure went immediately into coins and while it made it simple. It didn't really add anything, infact it made it more focus on the grinding, and actually made it more boring in my opinion. Maybe i'm arachic and like things a certain way but looting was always a major thing for me back in the day, right behind the story of course :P
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I think you're underestimating the "ka'ching" value greys can bring.
Let's say we have a mob that on average drops 25 creds/silver/whatever and a grey worth 25 creds. So 50 creds total. You're suggesting that instead of that the mob would simply drop 50 creds. We're talking about an economy where usefull weapons/armor cost a few thousand creds and consumables a few hundred creds.
Personally I don't find 50 creds anyting at all to get excited about. It doesn't feel like much at all. Say we're saving for an 8.000 cred gun. That's 0,625%. In the end the player is left with the feeling of not getting any closer to his goal at all.
What greys do is that they delay the monetary reward and instead pay it out all at once. So say I have 50 slots full of greys. 25*50 = 1250 creds. That's 15,625% towards my goal. Even though it took the same amount of time the cash is paid out in a much shorter frame making it feel like so much more.
In addition to that there's the packrat value they bring. It's simply more fulfilling to walk off the battlefield with a backpack full of collected goodies, even if they don't have any use besides selling. And they go some way in adding realism to looting fallen enemies. The complaint that you can't loot a sword of an NPC even though he's clearly wielding one seems a common one, making that NPC drop a "broken sword" goes some small way to helping against that.
All in all I think greys are a good thing. They can be annoying, but I think MMOs need a bit of annoying. MMOs are clearly made for the long-term playing experience. And that experience is just much better if you have to go through some annoyances before getting the reward.
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i like this solution. even if you get overloaded or run out of inventory-space just a bit later. but it makes much more sense. and it motivates some players to have a look into crafting.
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I am not sure I agree with the whole concept of dropping gray items that just sell to a vendor who then in turn does not do anything with them, but then, I dont disslike it either.
I like the route torchlight took, and apparently SW will take, sending my mut bak to town to offload all the crap I have is a good thing.
I wonder tho, taking a page from the book of diablo, I wonder why no developer has ever considered taking gray items and allowing the player to improve them.
Imagine gathering say ten broken gray swords, and then giving them to a slvager, who tanes those ten, and turns them into 1 working normal sword, suddenly your bags and bags of crap have been turned into something you can actually use.
Well unless we all start with a million credits from the get go, how are we supposed to by anything at such a low level without these type of items. I mean, even in SWG your inventory got very full turning lairs and such. The junk dealer never bought everything you had and in turn you either destroyed the items or sold them on the vendor. I see the same happening for TOR. You know you will get credits for doing missions and such and on the way get useless loot, as well as items that you will want to keep for a certain time. The whole system is just part of how mmo's work and i can't see any way around it. Atleast in TOR you will have a companion to send out and do the selling if you so choose.
Warhammer did this.. and at least one other game I played but cannot remember it's name ATM
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Of all the potential things to discuss about ToR you chose grey items and how you hate having to stop what you are doing to clean out your bag space. From the developers own words you can send a companion to sell it making it a non issue. I get that the whole premise of the article is weather the grey items should be in the game at all but come on man this is the best you can come up with this week?
The fact that you mentioned GW2 also leads me to believe this was a thinly veiled attempt to hype GW2. There was no specific mention of grey items from ArenaNet just that they would attempt to cut out game mechanics that dont "work". There was no reason to bring up GW2 at all since there has been no mention anywhere from ANet about vendor trash in any form it makes me think your soap box has ArenaNet stamped on it.
I think it really depends to be honest. If there was some sort of crafting system where grays are somehow needed, then I guess it could be useful. But if it's the type of crap you find that has a description such as "You can sell it at a vendor" or whatever, then that is just pointless in a way. I agree that they should just add more to the gold dropped by the mobs if the greys are not useful for anything because of inventory space. In some cases selling greys actually give you a decent amount of currency believe it or not, especially at early levels. Later on, I personally just don't pick them up or destroy them if I don't need them.
I don't think this will be a major problem in SWTOR, because it's something that has been implemented in every MMO, and if you think about it not many complain about it. You can always choose to A) Fill up your inventory and do those annoying "run back to town to sell" B)Not pick them up or C) Pick them up and destroy the ones you don't need to make up space. Luckly TOR is giving you option D) Send your minion to do your work (Hell yeah!).
I agree it does make no sense. Why put items in the game that have no use whatsoever? Every in game item should have some use to someone. May as well just have mobs drop money.
LOL...So even 'vendor trash' is Blizzards fault...
Personally I would like to see stuff the the mob actually would have on them drop. For instance if I beat darth vader shouldnt i be able to take his bad ass lightsaber and probably take his mask too hell id take his whole outfit lol. but what doesnt make sense is when a wolf in wilderness drops sword of pwnage or some shit like this. and they should make what we can carry actually what a normal person can carry someone mentioned that and its true. well true in a sense that i like the point lol anyway...
I think the inclusion of grey items in loot has nothing to do with money, it's more a woot or wow loot factor. People want something for their troubles, so if you kill something and it doesn't drop anything there is a lack of enjoyment. Or you may think it's bugged somehow, because certainly if it dropped something it could drop other things...but if it doesn't drop anything at all, then maybe it's broken. Also, from a story standpoint I personally like looking at what drops, even gives me a little chuckle now and again when I see something funny drop. Like as a rogue in World of Warcraft, picking pockets was pretty useless cash wise, but sometimes you'd find silly stuff like cheesy romance novels or other oddities. Things like that make a game feel more real IMO.
Best I can tell, the introduction of 'greys' is a throwback to the real root of MMO's, namely traditional table-top RPGs.
In those tabletop RPG's you'd basically have FFA Full Loot on everything, except stuff that broke during the fight (which would be a GM decision more than anything else). You could take stuff like the armor of your fallen foes, but it would be a tradeoff with weight, because while valuable, your party could only carry so much - And even hard cash would weigh you down, which is why gems are often used as currency as well.
I think that since weight is a non-issue in most (all that I've seen) MMO's, and bag space is extraordinarily generous compared to a table-top RPG, early developers felt they needed to adjust this table-top mechanic to something that worked in an MMO setting - hence the grey items to simulate your bags being filled up.
It would be interesting to see an MMO that took this original table-top mechanic (which was basically a counter to the players becoming too rich too fast) and use that. It would mean a lot of additional coding and systems though, as players should then also be given the option to buy and use pack animals and such to carry all of their stuff.
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Gotta say I don't mind it at all. To me it's like a lotto when something drops off of a mob, sometimes you get something worthwhile and sometimes not. At least we can sell it for some extra money and be done with it. I think it would take away from the game if everytime something dropped it was a great piece of "whatever".
No I am literally referring to the trash grays that can onl be sold to vendors. Not gear or mats or anything (those would typically be white +).