Having the best armor from killing the most dangerous dragon will feel less like an achievement if your buddy got the same loot on the AH from farming and selling spider silks.
See, this is where i draw issues. I will use a cloak of flames as an example. In "normal" EQ, this item was so stupidly rare that the chances of it actually being sold were next to none. Usually it got passed around from guildmate to guildmate, etc. If, and i stress it was a big IF, it did get sold, it was for a completely stupid price. I remember when i played EQ i saw one go up for sale for 450k pp, this was right at the beginning of Kunark.
So lets take some person who decides he wants to solo to buy that, and he goes and kills hill giants (generally considered a great way to make money), those people depending on class could average between 600-800pp/hr. So, lets shoot for the high side, call it 1k/hr. That means he would have to spend 450 hours just to farm up the plat for ONE item that you, as a raider, could probably get in a ridiculous shorter amount of time.
So his time investment (and other opportunity costs like not playing with his friends, not socializing, etc) is WAY higher than the person who got it via raiding. As dullahan stated, the only thing you're risking in an MMO is time. By going to a dungeon, you have more risk of death, which means you then have to spend TIME working back to your corpse, and more TIME regaining lost XP. Risk reward in mmos is time/reward, they're interchangeable.
Getting back to the guy who spent 450 hours farming hill giants to buy his item, how is this SO BAD? I never once in my entire life EVER heard someone ask another person how they got their super badass item. No one ever once asked a person if they looted their CoF from the dragon. Nobody cared whether they bought it or looted it. It was still a stupidly rare item and to own one was considered prestigious. Even in P99 which has been in kunark for like 5 years, CoF's are still so rare and are still considered prestigious items, and they still sell for a lot of money.
Once again, rarity of an item is not determined by whether it can be bought or sold, it is PURELY determined by how often it drops. If only 25 cloak of flames enter a server a year, there's still only 25 CoF's, whether those were all sold or all kept by the people who won them in the raid, there are still only 25 people on the server running around with CoFs. What the person who won it does with it after the fact is their prerogative. The person who won it from the roll who turns around and sells it doesn't make a copy of the item, it just means instead of him running around with one, someone else is. And if he uses that money to turn around and buy another prestigious item, like say a fungi tunic, then the person who had the fungi tunic doesn't anymore.
Personally i'm not against no drop being used. Just not across the board, or de facto across the board. I wouldn't mind for example if they had a few items they identified as wanting to be super rare super prestigious as no drop (i.e. CoF, RBB, etc) my main issue is when the vast majority of items are no drop and/or no trade.
Post edited by Hrimnir on
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Everything should be a weight of time and effort as such systems is what creates the benefit of any selection of focus. It is why I also hope that Pantheon contains many skills that only level through play (as they did in EQ and how UO had them as well). The reason for such is because it also puts a balance of benefit on those who would choose to adventure. In that way, they guy that masters trade and becomes excessively rich maybe be able to buy their gear, but they still have to spend the time and effort to increase skills. It is a nice pro/con effort/reward system."
I just want to reiterate this from the horse's mouth. He is saying exactly what we have been arguing in these most recent threads, he just decided to change his mind.
Someone who spends a bunch of time slaughtering easy mobs to make plat to buy an item is NOT gaining XP, is likely NOT raising his skills as the mobs are going to be too low or too easy to qualify for skill check raises, and he is going to spend an inordinately larger amount of time doing it then the person who groups up and does it in the dungeon. The "balance of benefit" is well in the margin for the person who groups and does it in a dungeon in a system like original in EQ. Without any of these supposedly needed trade impositions.
The point again is that limiting trade limits players options. Its de facto forcing playstyles, and its the same thing that is wrong with all modern mmos. FORCING playstyles. Not encouraging, not promoting, FORCING (effectively).
For example, daily quests in modern MMO's aren't strictly mandatory, but they might as well be, as the rewards are so stupidly higher than if you try go and adventure to do it. Lets take FFXIV as an example, you could get what was the equivalent of about 10 dungeon runs worth of item tokens just from doing a single daily dungeon run with your daily. Because of this, it started to feel like work, you basically *had* to log on every day and do your dailies or you were missing out on a ridiculous amount of gear. This limited your options. You couldn't just log on and play for 2 hours one day, and 8 hours another day, and blah blah blah. You had to do the dailies if you wanted to advance at anything other than a snails pace. They effectively forced a particular playstyle by putting in dailies. This also effectively decentivized going out and playing outside of dailies as the rewards were so bad. Why spend 3 or 4 hours running dungeons for tokens when you could just go do something else and log in for 1 hour the next day and get the same reward (or better). There was no incentive to investing more time into the game.
Point is, the checks and balances were already in place in older mmos, we don't need to adjust it. EQ already had these in spades. Those checks and balances were primarily a result of long leveling times, group and dungeon XP modifiers, and the lack of an AH (forcing people to have to interact with each other to initiate trades.)
As we've been saying forever now, the key to this is to properly incentivize grouping. You do that via XP bonuses, and making the time/reward ratio as far as items, in the benefit of people who play the game the "intended" way.
Hell, i just thought of a stupidly easy way to remove the incentive for grinding out easy mobs solo. If you can get say 1k/hour mass slaughtering hill giants, then just make it so the average max level player makes around 1200plat an hour in a dungeon (on top of the good xp, enjoying the company of friends, and chances at items they could either wear or sell for even more money).
The point is to make it possible for people to solo, but not the desired option. This is one of the few things FFXIV did right compared to most modern mmos, you could actually get decent xp by just running dungeons. You didn't have to do the solo quest hub grind. Whereas in a game like WoW, you could level about 10x as fast by solo quest hub grinding than by running dungeons, this meant running dungeons was pointless because if you just went and solo quest ground, you would literally get enough levels that the item you worked for in the dungeon would have been outleveled had you just spent that time in the dungeon out solo questing. This was another step on the path to the idea of an "endgame" that you had to power through to before you could start really playing the game. Because there was no real point in running dungeons (bad xp, and the items you get you would just outlevel in a few hours because of ridiculously fast leveling times) then it effectively made solo quest grinding the highly preferred method of play.
TLDR: Make levels take a long time, make grouping give more XP per hour than soloing by a healthy margin, as well as have better rewards monetarily and item wise. Remove AH, force people to engage each other to trade items. Win.
Post edited by Hrimnir on
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I salut you Hrimnir for pointing these things out in so great detail. 100% agree on every point.
Just want to stress one particular point that i see as most important: If you want to talk about "risk" / reward in an MMO, you just have to include the "is it fun?" part. Going out to adventure with friends while gaining xp, skillups, see new content, get to know new people ect., is generally considered "fun". While grinding mobs for hours on end, alone, without advancement is generally considered unfun grinding. If someone does grind hill giants for those 450 hours for that one cloak, he damn well deserved it. And most likely he did not do that because he wanted to, but he accumulated 450 hours solo without getting into a way more fun group to get the items himself.
Don't forget that by adventuring you effectivly get all the items for FREE and in a very short amount of time compared to other means. The trader actually has to pay xxxx gold and he did not get that gold from doing nothing you know. It is usually way more time consuming getting an item for trade then it is to just straight out camp it yourself. If it is easier to get via trade,.... well maybe the item is not all that rare or hard to get then. Those shiny adventuring guys would not sell / trade it for cheap if it was not common, right?
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
I salut you Hrimnir for pointing these things out in so great detail. 100% agree on every point.
Just want to stress one particular point that i see as most important: If you want to talk about "risk" / reward in an MMO, you just have to include the "is it fun?" part. Going out to adventure with friends while gaining xp, skillups, see new content, get to know new people ect., is generally considered "fun". While grinding mobs for hours on end, alone, without advancement is generally considered unfun grinding.
First, thank you.
Second, yes, you bring up an excellent point. As a second to your point, and one my very good friend who used to play EQ with me brought up in a previous discussion. Everyone has different ideas of fun.
We always talk about how some people are loot whores (me), some people are explorers (my roommate), some people are content locusts (my enchanter friend), and other people like to be able to just log in, do something mindless like slaughter hill giants, and engage their friends and socialize without having to invest immense effort of thought into playing the game.
Its like women, right. People like to think there is this universal idea of what is beautiful, and that a woman, lets just take someone like Christina Hendricks, vs Jessica Alba, vs Beyonce, vs Lucy Liu, is objectively "hotter" than the others, and that you can place them in some kind of ranking. Some guys are going to find Beyonce to be orders of magnitude hotter than Lucy Liu, and yet others will find Jessica Alba to be hotter than either Lucy Liu or Beyonce, etc. And then some guys are going to think Lucy Liu and Jessica Alba are too skinny and would find Christina Hendricks to be their proverbial cup of tea.
MMOs are no different, and while a game should be designed around and promote a particular playstyle, it doesn't have to be at the total exclusion of everything else. In any of those situations, most straight men wouldn't say no to any 4 of those women. Because they are all beautiful in one way or another. But like everything people have preferences.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Not gonna read wall of text and not sorry. I dont see any problem at all with any auction house trading. Not even the idea of buying and reselling. The only problem I see is if someone monopolizes the spawn so he can monopolize the market. Otherwise its all good.
I would say "translation: ..." and attempt to point out the absurdity of your comment, but I think everyone here realizes you basically just said you want to comment on something discussed in a thread you are completely ignorant on.
I am sure people will give your responses great consideration, /facepalm
Another point I want to bring out is that the reason you see so many objections to these arguments is because those objecting do not see player trade as imbalanced. That is why any discussion about creating risk/reward, tying the trade system into game play to any choice and consequence form of play is greatly resisted. To them, trade is perfectly balanced and working well to their idea of what a game system should be.
Which is why games that continue to apply these concepts continue to have failing economies and why Pantheon will as well. You can't solve a problem if you keep excusing the cause of it and player trade is the cause of the severe economic failures and numerous game abuses that occur in game systems.
Yes, the games success will hinge completely on its trade system.
Do you even realize how absurd the statements you keep making are? Honestly? I'm seriously asking.
Lets quote that again....
Hrimnir said: Yes, the games success will hinge completely on its trade system.
and again....
Hrimnir said: Yes, the games success will hinge completely on its trade system.
One more time...
Hrimnir said: Yes, the games success will hinge completely on its trade system.
The entire base of your position is that this entire games success is contingent on the trade system? As you stated above and we repeated multiple times.
So apparently, all the rest of the systems in EQ, the game itself the classes, the NPCs, the world, the combat, the exploration, etc... are not what will make this game a success?
According to you, it is the trade system and and if they don't allow a completely open and free system, completely disconnected from the games balance so people like you can buy progression and circumvent the rest of the game, the game will fail?
I don't need to even counter that, your arguments premise is invalid right out of the gate.
See, this is where i draw issues. I will use a cloak of flames as an
example. In "normal" EQ, this item was so stupidly rare that the
chances of it actually being sold were next to none. Usually it got
passed around from guildmate to guildmate, etc. If, and i stress it was
a big IF, it did get sold, it was for a completely stupid price. I
remember when i played EQ i saw one go up for sale for 450k pp, this was
right at the beginning of Kunark.
He is full of it. CoF was not massively rare, it was not common, but
this idea that there was none on the player trade market was full of
crap. All the problems existed, but they were in their infancy, just as
EQ was a new game, and the market hadn't really spawned the RMT focus
and many of the early players were gamers who thought buying over doing
was content bypass, circumvention, etc...
What Hrimnir is failing to inform you is that that 450k pp? Where do you think people got all the money to buy something that expensive? Do you honestly think people farmed that money? It was from duping bugs, that is why items went so ridiculously high.
So lets take some person who decides he wants to solo to buy that, and
he goes and kills hill giants (generally considered a great way to make
money), those people depending on class could average between
600-800pp/hr. So, lets shoot for the high side, call it 1k/hr. That
means he would have to spend 450 hours just to farm up the plat for ONE
item that you, as a raider, could probably get in a ridiculous shorter
amount of time.
Except, they don't just farm the entire amount, they used a buy in amount to get into the trade market then worked the market through buying and selling. You buy in with a 2-3k item, then trade it up, or sell it to another for more, or you buy an item that someone is trying to fast sell and then trade it up for a profit. That is what the traders did in EC.
So how does he trade and farm at the same time? /gasp He uses two accounts, a mule account and sets him up on a different monitor to watch trades while he sits back, watches TV and farms easy content. So the 450 hour claim? Maybe for idiots who had no clue, but not anyone with any sense on how to work the market.
I mean, if the entire issue was that people had to farm hundreds of hours to obtain something as you said, it might be enough of a deterrent, but it is pure bullshit.
So his time investment (and other opportunity costs like not playing
with his friends, not socializing, etc) is WAY higher than the person
who got it via raiding. As dullahan stated, the only thing you're
risking in an MMO is time. By going to a dungeon, you have more risk of
death, which means you then have to spend TIME working back to your
corpse, and more TIME regaining lost XP. Risk reward in mmos is
time/reward, they're interchangeable.
Socializing? Maybe at release, but very quickly they started opening up chat ability and lets face it, this isn't 1999 where chat outside of game was difficult. There is no loss of "friends and socializing" today, that is an invalid argument.
Wait risk is just time?, so there is no skill in play in EQ? It is all just people doing non-skilled actions in play that are time based? Interesting. Not the game I remember. I expressly remember some dungeons and bosses being so difficult that it took very skilled players who knew their classes well and those who did not weren't able to defeat them. Though you say that is all just time.
What do you think people? Is everything just time? No skill required? You have no skill in your class, no skill in your play, all you are doing is spending time, just like the guy farming his plat?
Interesting take you and your buddy Dullahan have, though it is absolutely falsifiable (that means can be shown to be untrue) by anyone who has ever played a variety of games. You guys keep spinning out that bullshit lie, maybe some are stupid enough to accept it.
Personally i'm not against no drop being used. Just not across the
board, or de facto across the board. I wouldn't mind for example if they
had a few items they identified as wanting to be super rare super
prestigious as no drop (i.e. CoF, RBB, etc) my main issue is when the
vast majority of items are no drop and/or no trade.
Which is to say, he likes to be able to buy his progression, you know... because there is no skill in the game, just time and his efforts of farming widgets and working the player market is so very much the same as the guy playing the game, you know... because he has to have options to guarantee his drop!!!
I salut you Hrimnir for pointing these things out in so great detail. 100% agree on every point.
Just want to stress one particular point that i see as most important: If you want to talk about "risk" / reward in an MMO, you just have to include the "is it fun?" part.
LOL
This is word for word the same argument I have seen RMT PTW players make.
What it means is, it isn't "fun" for them unless they can buy it.
It is like you people don't even know what game is anymore.
I'm curious what your thoughts on crafting are Sinist? You're arguments generally are revolving around adventuring and player trade.
But, what about the crafter who sells his wares?
The person who buys crafting gear from the crafter didn't "earn" it either using your views. The player wasn't involved in raising the skill to craft the gear, or the "risk" of failure from the crafter, or obtaining the drops to create the gear (which often come from the adventuring sphere), etc.
Do you still view this as bypassing content as not everyone is a crafter?
Everything should be a weight of time and effort as such systems is what creates the benefit of any selection of focus. It is why I also hope that Pantheon contains many skills that only level through play (as they did in EQ and how UO had them as well). The reason for such is because it also puts a balance of benefit on those who would choose to adventure. In that way, they guy that masters trade and becomes excessively rich maybe be able to buy their gear, but they still have to spend the time and effort to increase skills. It is a nice pro/con effort/reward system."
I just want to reiterate this from the horse's mouth. He is saying exactly what we have been arguing in these most recent threads, he just decided to change his mind.
My argument evolved as I considered more issues, something you would understand if you were actually reading the discussion rather than simply regurgitating your tantrum about the game being fine.
So rather than argue these points over and over. I will simply state the following and ask people to consider.
An expectation that with greater
risk will come greater reward.
So maybe everyone can consider this and explain within proper context, and respect to the tenants how spending enormous amounts of time doing mundane acts of little to no risk fits in line with these tenants?
Remember, Pantheon is supposed to provide "an expectation that with greater risk, will come greater reward".
Is that expectation realized by people achieving "greater reward" with little or no risk as people like Dullahan, Hrimnir and others claim?
Are they even correct in their claim that risk is just time in an MMO? If that is true, are all encounters in the game the same of skill? Is killing a undead froglock the same as killing the Frenzy? Do all people have the same skill in their classes and can all people succeed in the game regardless of skill?
They seem to think so, remember... risk is just time, not a means to where skill can be applied to succeed, it is simply a mundane effort of time, equal in all actions, nothing more. Or is it?
I think by the power of literacy and simple logical process, they defeat their own arguments, but don't expect them to realize this, it is how we got here in the first place. /shrug
I'm curious what your thoughts on crafting are Sinist? You're arguments generally are revolving around adventuring and player trade.
But, what about the crafter who sells his wares?
The person who buys crafting gear from the crafter didn't "earn" it either using your views. The player wasn't involved in raising the skill to craft the gear, or the "risk" of failure from the crafter, or obtaining the drops to create the gear (which often come from the adventuring sphere), etc.
Do you still view this as bypassing content as not everyone is a crafter?
Did you see the comment Amathe brought up concerning that?
Crafting in some games actually is an attempt at making it a system integrated into the game play. In EQ, crafting had risk:
exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance:
It's not worth the risk.
So, you could spend a lot of effort collecting, looking for rares, etc... and then in a simple combine "poof"... gone... no item. A loss, a "dangerous chance". Some people thought this "not worth the risk", while others looked at it as worth it because the rewards from some pursuits were fantastic (ie Coldain Prayer Shawl).
Crafting in that respect is a process of risk/reward in the creation of the item. In gaining rewards from adventure, it also is a process of risk (though as Amathe mentioned, maybe not as server which I agreed may have been something needed to consider).
Trade though has no such system. Where is the risk in trade? You can lose in crafting, you can lose in adventuring (loss of exp, loss of money, loss of time, etc..), but where are the negative aspects, the risks and forms of emulation of such choice and consequence or loss as exists in the others?
All I suggested here was to make trade a game system, just as crafting is in some games and how adventuring is and by doing such, balancing risk/reward between them. Then if someone buys an item, at least we know it was of proper risk/reward balance.
After all, the Tenants do say "An expectation that with greater
risk will come greater reward." , so how is that achieved by allowing a player to bypass the risk/reward of content through little/no risk play? If we allow that, then "An expectation that with greater
risk will come greater reward." is demonstrably false.
While I doubt few people are willing to admit this, there has always been a competitive element to these games where part of the thrill of getting a rare item is knowing that anyone else who wants one will have to expend stupid amounts of time, join a group or raid, and get really lucky to boot. That adds to the overall value, mystique and awe of that item. "OMG you got the whatchacallit. You lucky, lucky bastard." Naturally all that goes down the dumper if you can just buy a whatchacallit.
Hrirmnr's points at first blush are well taken, in that truly valuable items are or ought to be kept by the people fortunate enough to get them (and their closest friends and guild mates). Also, if such an item is traded, it will be for stupid amounts of money which Hrirmnr maintains will also take stupid amounts of time (but which ignores that people buy gold).
But as logical as Hrimnr's points are, history has shown that nevertheless even the rarest items get farmed and sold if they can be, and there are more than a few people who have stupid amounts of money to spend (especially gold buyers).
That is why limitations like no drop, BOA, lore, etc were instituted in the first place. Now, Pantheon seeks to remove or constrain those limits without telling us what will prevent the problems they were put in to solve. It's like they are saying there was a problem, it was hard to solve, we were only ever able to solve it in part, and now- we're gonna make it worse.
Or, alternatively, they have decided it is not a problem after all? Which means what, that Pantheon will be a grinder where people just farm for their treasure instead of adventuring?
A grouping focused game should not be a farming game.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Why do we always ignore the totally absurd idea of people combining play styles? Why do we try to factor trader vs adventurer... if in reality every adventurer is trading his drops and every trader usually goes out and does some xp as well?
And why is it so damn important how someone got his sword. Porting a twink in to loot item xy is fine, but buying it is bad? Getting items for free by simply advancing your toon by xping is awesome, but farming wolves for it is bad? Who is going to farm those wolf hides then to make the armor for adventuring? The adventurer himself? But that would mean he gets armor from a crafter by paying him... by trading. That is cheap!
If you insist on calling adventuring "risk", then i insist on farming for the same gear takes WAY more time. So it evens out.
We really need to start seeing the whole system and not some insulated extreme cases that don't exactly matter.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
While I doubt few people are willing to admit this, there has always
been a competitive element to these games where part of the thrill of
getting a rare item is knowing that anyone else who wants one will have
to expend stupid amounts of time, join a group or raid, and get really
lucky to boot. That adds to the overall value, mystique and awe of that
item. "OMG you got the whatchacallit. You lucky, lucky bastard."
Naturally all that goes down the dumper if you can just buy a
whatchacallit.
I admit it, that is exactly why I play a game as such and that is exactly why my friends do as well. That is what made having an epic, or a rare item, etc... in EQ valuable. You can go to the thread where appearance slots are argued and you can see many people claiming that ones look is important, that it means something, etc... that people had to earn it and that allowing people to wear the look of an item all the time takes away from that, yet some completely reverse their position when it concerns "buying" the item? As you point out, and as I have asked people before, what does it say if someone bought it? what does it mean?
Amathe said: Hrirmnr's points at first blush are well taken, in
that truly valuable items are or ought to be kept by the people
fortunate enough to get them (and their closest friends and guild
mates). Also, if such an item is traded, it will be for stupid amounts
of money which Hrirmnr maintains will also take stupid amounts of time (but which ignores that people buy gold).
Hrirmnr's points are logical, but only in the world he creates for them. For instance, he says it takes stupid amounts of time for someone to earn the cash to buy that item. He is correct, IF that person only farms the content only and tries to save that much. What Hrirnnr is avoiding telling you is that the market value of that item was greatly inflated due to the duping bugs and cash value of ALL items all went up because currency was devalued.
This is where my points about "having to play the market" becomes a requirement to even use it. So, that farmer goes out, farms either mundane cash or, the easier way... farms a low level item(s) that has high value and then buys into the market. Once they are in the market, they can then work the system to roll that money up which as I explained is stupid easy to do.
So yes, if in his perfect little vacuum of a world where everyone honestly farmed just coin in the game to pay for the items on player trade, he would be correct, but his argument is not the same world that exists as I explained and also, as you pointed out, it doesn't even deal with the plat buyers which makes matters even worse.
Amathe said: But
as logical as Hrimnr's points are, history has shown that nevertheless
even the rarest items get farmed and sold if they can be, and there are
more than a few people who have stupid amounts of money to spend (especially gold buyers).
That is why limitations like no drop, BOA, lore, etc were instituted in the first place.
Exactly, and why an EC market will only be a speed bump to the same result as all the others. The only difference is that because trade requires a bit more effort, some won't bother and will just use the plat selling market (which again is what happened in EC trading that they refuse to acknowledge). Plat buyers will take the game by storm and money will be abundant and plat buying will be abundant, especially these days when RMT is much more open and accepted than it was back then.
All of those restrictions that they put in were what we were trying to avoid by finding better solutions that were not "in your face" invisible walls that they were. That is what led me more away from my initial suggestions (implementing loot restrictions), to putting in a trade system that has a real system with game play features that replicate risk/reward. By doing that, they may have a bit more control over the influence of RMT as well as insuring proper risk/reward balance.
Amathe said: Now,
Pantheon seeks to remove or constrain those limits without telling us
what will prevent the problems they were put in to solve. It's like
they are saying there was a problem, it was hard to solve, we were only
ever able to solve it in part, and now- we're gonna make it worse.
Well, if you remember early on in the TLC thread, Brad discussed some with this about it. He recognized that there were problems presented by the trade system, that removing it would go a long ways to solving many issues, but he didn't think that was the right solution which is why he asked us to consider various issues and resolutions with the RMT market as well as the issues that TLC solved. So they do know and understand the points you are making.
We keep getting side tracked by those who keep claiming trade is not an issue, that it presents no problems that simply putting in the old EC trading will solve everything (or at least make the problem not an issue) which I know to be a complete farce due to my experience with seeing how different the systems changed as I moved from Test to the Production servers. EC trade is not the solution, it is merely a small obstacle to a very experienced player and company base who have been dealing with working these faux economies for over a decade or more.
Amathe said: Or,
alternatively, they have decided it is not a problem after all? Which
means what, that Pantheon will be a grinder where people just farm for
their treasure instead of adventuring?
A grouping focused game should not be a farming game.
Well, this is a volatile issue and as you noticed a lot of the people upset with me are Pantheon subscribers, so I would imagine this is a topic that has to be tread very carefully for if he takes a side, it could set in stone a given position (your comment about it being a farming game) and immediately turn off people. So I think that as well as they may not have a lot of time, and they just aren't ready to commit to a position is maybe the issue here.
If you read some of the replies here, some think the entire point of EQ is trade. Hrimnir stated that trade was the make/fail of this game. I strongly disagree and it makes me question him and people who agree with him their motives when a sub portion of the game, not even with a real system is far more important than the entire game itself.
As I have said, nothing wrong with a trade system, but it needs to brought into the game and designed with the same risk/rewards aspects of game play that any other system has (adventure, crafting, etc...).
I'm inclined to agree with @Amathe . While I've stated my opinion, that I would prefer no mob dropped loot could be traded, I do see the valid points you all make. I agree, not every rogue/monk/zerker/etc, is going to line up and get their FBSS 1x1 but i'm still not thrilled with the Idea of getting an item that you never had to "work" for. Yes, I know spending 10000000 hours farming pelts is "work" but to @Sinist point, it's with little to absolute no risk. Does that mean the guy or gal who isn't lucky enough to get into the Frenzied camp let alone win the roll gets left out? That's where the "community" comes into play. That's the point I think a lot of us are missing. We're so enveloped in the other aspects, we totally forget about the community playing a part. That was the whole point of EQ, develop friendships, join a guild, take your turn at a piece of that epic loot you want. If you have one guy farming it, he's going to get flamed and eventually no one will purchase his items and no one will group with him. I honestly don't think you can stop the gold sellers, as mentioned in posts before, SOE at the time found this to be true, so they offered their own cash shop. The other point people need to see is you may not get that FBSS the first night you attempt it, hell, you might not get it the first week! That's what made EQ so magical, when you did get your item, it was a sense of accomplishment, you paid your dues, you learned how to break the camps and you spent time with your friends "earning" your item. If you want to spend 100's of hours farming HG's to save up 50k plat to buy an item, so be it, but I do think it should come with VERY moderately reduced stats for not having been part of the actual hunt for said item.
Why do we always ignore the totally absurd idea of people combining play styles? Why do we try to factor trader vs adventurer... if in reality every adventurer is trading his drops and every trader usually goes out and does some xp as well?
There is no game play in trading. It contains no systems, no structure, no risk/reward, no choice/consequence and really has little to no control by the developers outside of simple money sinks. The problem here is that due to this lack of control, a trader can through many ways circumvent the main portion of the game by obtaining items they did not play the game to obtain.
This isn't a JRPG where people sit and farm gold over and over to save up for yet another powerful item. It is a game of adventure, of risk/reward, of seeking out and obtaining the proper rewards for your efforts.
So, when a player uses the player trade market, they are bypassing the adventure game. I know many people who don't use the player trade market, they play the game, obtain their rewards as the game is designed, put in the effort and take the risks to progress.
A trader does not. They bypass that requirement. There is no argument here.
And why is it so damn important how someone got his sword. Porting a
twink in to loot item xy is fine, but buying it is bad? Getting items
for free by simply advancing your toon by xping is awesome, but farming
wolves for it is bad? Who is going to farm those wolf hides then to make
the armor for adventuring? The adventurer himself? But that would mean
he gets armor from a crafter by paying him... by trading. That is
cheap!
Same reason I care when people buy plat and use the market to get their item. The same reason I care about the fact that some game companies hand out exp potions, gear, advancement, etc... for money. Money isn't the issue here, it is paying for advancement instead of doing the content.
How are you going to port in that twink? You going to escort them into the dungeon with mobs that often see through invis, have maybe low level agro, etc.. and try to keep them alive to get to that item? Well, that act alone could be rather difficult and such won't be easy if they balance the amount of bonus a low level gets from spells/items, etc... In the end though, they did go through the dungeon to get to it. Are you seriously saying a person buying it safely on a vendor is equivalent?
Who is going to farm for components to have an item made? Lets see... the adventurer who wants to have something made from them? Actually, he pays the crafter for their services to which if it is a solid system of design, that crafting will be risky (possible loss) which means you will lose your items, and then have to go farm some more so you can have the crafter try again?
Besides, I said make trading a system like crafting and adventure, with risk/reward, choice and consequence, etc... Do you not like games? Or is it that you like all of your games to have a "special" code that allows you to bypass play?
If you insist on calling adventuring "risk", then i insist on farming for the same gear takes WAY more time. So it evens out.
We really need to start seeing the whole system and not some insulated extreme cases that don't exactly matter.
Risk isn't time, it isn't simply effort, it is a chance of loss, failure, etc... I am saying risk/reward balance.
As it is, an adventurer goes to a dungeon, works their way in with the risk of dying and having to do it over again, with the requirement of skill to succeed (they may not even be skilled enough to gain access to the area or even fight the boss), then they have to wait for the boss to pop, beat it, and hope for that item to drop that they are looking for.
Even the crafter in some systems has to use skill to make their item (vanguard did well on this) and there is the risk of losing your item (EQ had this). On top of that, if the crafter is farming items for their crafts, they have to replace what is lost and if the items are specific and rare, hard to get, etc... they have to search out just like the adventurer to obtain those rare items.
Now...
How do you make the trader side achieve similar efforts and results? The trader does not need to continue effort into the world in either crafting or adventuring, they just need a buy in and they can start working the market eventually becoming extremely wealthy (I have done this myself in a game to prove a point to someone).
Where is the comparable risk? where is the comparable loss? Where is the system? Where is the game play designed by the developers? Where is the control they have when a player abuses trade when there are no such things as abuses in trade because there are no rules, reality or structures?
Make trade every bit as risk/reward and choice/consequence focused as adventure and a good crafting system and you have balance. Otherwise, all you have is an element in the game everyone uses to bypass the required content in the rest of the game.
Eve Online takes all of the concerns and all of the solutions brought up by the OP, crumples them up, soaks them in lighter fluid, and uses a blow torch to set them on fire.
We are basically seeing two opposite, yet basic approaches to combat RMT or inflation, open and free market or a highly restrictive or complete lack of a trade system.
One allows for the market to drastically dilute the effects to the point of no consequence, the other strips out a bedrock MMO system along with the social aspect that comes with it.
Instead of treating the economy and that style of gameplay as a minor mini-game within the larger game, developers should treat the economic gameplay as an equal partner in the game.
There is a whole segment of gamers who equate a few general chat spammers selling gold as a signal that a game is being ruined by RMT is borne of nothing more than people's inability to rationally think about a topic. These are usually the same people complaining, to no end, that games are no longer sandboxy enough for them.
Instead of treating the economy and that style of gameplay as a minor mini-game within the larger game, developers should treat the economic gameplay as an equal partner in the game.
Yeah, that is what I have been saying.
Tie in all systems with each other that relies on each other, make trade a part of the game, just as the other systems are. That is exactly what I (the op) was saying. Where did I mention "minor mini-game"? I said it should be part of the game.
Instead of treating the economy and that style of gameplay as a minor mini-game within the larger game, developers should treat the economic gameplay as an equal partner in the game.
Yeah, that is what I have been saying.
Tie in all systems with each other that relies on each other, make trade a part of the game, just as the other systems are. That is exactly what I (the op) was saying. Where did I mention "minor mini-game"? I said it should be part of the game.
You are seriously bad at bringing your point across then. Because i definitly don't see you arguing for trade as being equal. You just sound off as wanting to remove trade due to it not being equal.
Eve Online takes all of the concerns and all of the solutions brought up by the OP, crumples them up, soaks them in lighter fluid, and uses a blow torch to set them on fire.
We are basically seeing two opposite, yet basic approaches to combat RMT or inflation, open and free market or a highly restrictive or complete lack of a trade system.
Actually i did not think about eve as an example, but i like it. A great example of a totally free trade system that is not only a huge part of the game, but also works extremly well.
No rules whatsoever. Player make the rules. If enough adventurer say "trading is cheating", then they would simply not sell their loot and destroy it so noone else can get it.
Trading would die, but it would die due to the community wanting it. And i would be fine with that actually. (Maybe just because i am the adv guy myself most of the time,... not sure how a real trader would think about that lol).
On the other hand, if enough adventurer want to sell / give away their spare loot for eggs and apples,... so be it. Freedom just like i love it in an MMO. No dev enforced rules, only rules the community wants.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Instead of treating the economy and that style of gameplay as a minor mini-game within the larger game, developers should treat the economic gameplay as an equal partner in the game.
Yeah, that is what I have been saying.
Tie in all systems with each other that relies on each other, make trade a part of the game, just as the other systems are. That is exactly what I (the op) was saying. Where did I mention "minor mini-game"? I said it should be part of the game.
You are seriously bad at bringing your point across then. Because i definitly don't see you arguing for trade as being equal. You just sound off as wanting to remove trade due to it not being equal.
Actually, that was not my argument. I started saying "no trade" only as an example to show how trade is the root of a lot of problems that exist. Others took this and ran with it building straw mans to claim I wanted to remove trade from the game.
Seriously, and honestly go back and read all of the discussions in the TLC thread and this one.
What did you think I meant when I said "risk/reward" balanced properly for trade? I said multiple times that trade contains no controls, no rules, no structures that exist in the rest of the game as balance.
I started this thread, here is some of the things I said:
Does
this mean "trade" is bad? Nope, it merely means uncontrolled systems
without proper constraints and design controls to keep it balanced with
the game creates huge problems that developers really can never truly
remedy because they have absolutely no control on the games player trade
systems.
"keep it balanced with the game"
See that?
And my solution I mentioned in the OP:
They do it by making trade a game system with pros/cons, risk/reward,
lore/faction influences and design, having taxes, fees, fine,
regulations <snip>
I am talking about making trade a game and tying it in with the rest of the game. In the TLC thread I discussed numerous approaches... I was looking for discussion, ideas, etc... what do you think I have been dealing with all these posts?
Now if you were reading peoples straw mans of my points, I can't help you there. Go read it again, I have been pretty consistent in this discussion over these two threads. Has my position changed over time? Some, yes.. but not drastic, I merely pointed out that effort/time alone is not a proper means to establish risk/reward and I clearly explained why. /shrug
BTW, next time you are unsure about my position, just ask for clarification. Don't summarize me without being sure, ask me. This isn't a pissing contest.
When you come up with an idea for making trading better, I'll be sure to let you know. Nothing you have proposed thus far has had any positive effect on making trading better.
In fact most of your proposals would completely destroy Pantheon in the eyes of the niche it is targeting.
I always wanted to see a game where instead of being a adventuring warrior trying to get your next pair of magical pants -- things were done more from a perspective of a lord or commander or some kind. The idea is to provide a big sandbox with lots of economic activity (mostly done by AI you manage as a lord). Guilds would probably form empires and others might forego actually building their own castle or kingdom because they would rather be raiding as pirates or something.
One of the problems with trade in MMOs -- is it is all about magical weapons and a few craft items that are used to make magical weapons. This is simply not how economies really run. In a more realistic trade environment -- things like boatloads of of wheat (not to mention the boats) would be extremely valuable and requires all kinds of managing and socializing to obtain. For me to really get on board with a trade-heavy system enthusiastically, it would have to be more like real medieval trade and less like Magic the Gathering trade.
If you think about all the adventuring parties depicted in Lord of the Rings onward, a lot of times they represented elite fighters on the field, diplomats that dealt with various empires and lords, and served some purposes involving thousands of people in a kingdom. It wasn't all about the band of 25 guys trying to do some dragon job for the best shield in the game. Not that that doesn't add to the game world as well -- but it be cool if kingdoms and empires more a part of the whole experience. Right now, kingdoms seem to be ornaments for lore and a nice backdrop.
When you come up with an idea for making trading better, I'll be sure to let you know. Nothing you have proposed thus far has had any positive effect on making trading better.
In fact most of your proposals would completely destroy Pantheon in the eyes of the niche it is targeting.
You haven't entered the discussion, you haven't even made a logical argument and have extreme issues with just keeping up on the reading of the discussion. What makes you think I give a damn about your contributions after your continued attacks and dismissals?
I always wanted to see a game where instead of being a adventuring warrior trying to get your next pair of magical pants -- things were done more from a perspective of a lord or commander or some kind. The idea is to provide a big sandbox with lots of economic activity (mostly done by AI you manage as a lord). Guilds would probably form empires and others might forego actually building their own castle or kingdom because they would rather be raiding as pirates or something.
One of the problems with trade in MMOs -- is it is all about magical weapons and a few craft items that are used to make magical weapons. This is simply not how economies really run. In a more realistic trade environment -- things like boatloads of of wheat (not to mention the boats) would be extremely valuable and requires all kinds of managing and socializing to obtain. For me to really get on board with a trade-heavy system enthusiastically, it would have to be more like real medieval trade and less like Magic the Gathering trade.
If you think about all the adventuring parties depicted in Lord of the Rings onward, a lot of times they represented elite fighters on the field, diplomats that dealt with various empires and lords, and served some purposes involving thousands of people in a kingdom. It wasn't all about the band of 25 guys trying to do some dragon job for the best shield in the game. Not that that doesn't add to the game world as well -- but it be cool if kingdoms and empires more a part of the whole experience. Right now, kingdoms seem to be ornaments for lore and a nice backdrop.
Yep, to achieve that you would have to design the entire game from the ground up to achieve that level of balance and organizational goals. It would be interesting to see true game play in all environments of the game though, especially the various levels of roles, but honestly I have no idea how that would work.
I think the best Pantheon can do is to try and "simulate" various elements of risk/reward to try to tie it into the balance of the game (factions, politics, etc...). It doesn't have to be perfect, and it can have lots of "only in this worlds reality" type of reasoning to its implementation, but it could go a long way to actually making the trade system responsible to play rather than being the route most take when they don't want to play the game.
I always wanted to see a game where instead of being a adventuring warrior trying to get your next pair of magical pants -- things were done more from a perspective of a lord or commander or some kind.
This is a fun idea (for some other game). There was an mmo based on Age of Empires, but it failed. There is also one that is in beta based on Civilization that may do better.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
See, this is where i draw issues. I will use a cloak of flames as an example. In "normal" EQ, this item was so stupidly rare that the chances of it actually being sold were next to none. Usually it got passed around from guildmate to guildmate, etc. If, and i stress it was a big IF, it did get sold, it was for a completely stupid price. I remember when i played EQ i saw one go up for sale for 450k pp, this was right at the beginning of Kunark.
So lets take some person who decides he wants to solo to buy that, and he goes and kills hill giants (generally considered a great way to make money), those people depending on class could average between 600-800pp/hr. So, lets shoot for the high side, call it 1k/hr. That means he would have to spend 450 hours just to farm up the plat for ONE item that you, as a raider, could probably get in a ridiculous shorter amount of time.
So his time investment (and other opportunity costs like not playing with his friends, not socializing, etc) is WAY higher than the person who got it via raiding. As dullahan stated, the only thing you're risking in an MMO is time. By going to a dungeon, you have more risk of death, which means you then have to spend TIME working back to your corpse, and more TIME regaining lost XP. Risk reward in mmos is time/reward, they're interchangeable.
Getting back to the guy who spent 450 hours farming hill giants to buy his item, how is this SO BAD? I never once in my entire life EVER heard someone ask another person how they got their super badass item. No one ever once asked a person if they looted their CoF from the dragon. Nobody cared whether they bought it or looted it. It was still a stupidly rare item and to own one was considered prestigious. Even in P99 which has been in kunark for like 5 years, CoF's are still so rare and are still considered prestigious items, and they still sell for a lot of money.
Once again, rarity of an item is not determined by whether it can be bought or sold, it is PURELY determined by how often it drops. If only 25 cloak of flames enter a server a year, there's still only 25 CoF's, whether those were all sold or all kept by the people who won them in the raid, there are still only 25 people on the server running around with CoFs. What the person who won it does with it after the fact is their prerogative. The person who won it from the roll who turns around and sells it doesn't make a copy of the item, it just means instead of him running around with one, someone else is. And if he uses that money to turn around and buy another prestigious item, like say a fungi tunic, then the person who had the fungi tunic doesn't anymore.
Personally i'm not against no drop being used. Just not across the board, or de facto across the board. I wouldn't mind for example if they had a few items they identified as wanting to be super rare super prestigious as no drop (i.e. CoF, RBB, etc) my main issue is when the vast majority of items are no drop and/or no trade.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I just want to reiterate this from the horse's mouth. He is saying exactly what we have been arguing in these most recent threads, he just decided to change his mind.
For example, daily quests in modern MMO's aren't strictly mandatory, but they might as well be, as the rewards are so stupidly higher than if you try go and adventure to do it. Lets take FFXIV as an example, you could get what was the equivalent of about 10 dungeon runs worth of item tokens just from doing a single daily dungeon run with your daily. Because of this, it started to feel like work, you basically *had* to log on every day and do your dailies or you were missing out on a ridiculous amount of gear. This limited your options. You couldn't just log on and play for 2 hours one day, and 8 hours another day, and blah blah blah. You had to do the dailies if you wanted to advance at anything other than a snails pace. They effectively forced a particular playstyle by putting in dailies. This also effectively decentivized going out and playing outside of dailies as the rewards were so bad. Why spend 3 or 4 hours running dungeons for tokens when you could just go do something else and log in for 1 hour the next day and get the same reward (or better). There was no incentive to investing more time into the game.
As we've been saying forever now, the key to this is to properly incentivize grouping. You do that via XP bonuses, and making the time/reward ratio as far as items, in the benefit of people who play the game the "intended" way.
Hell, i just thought of a stupidly easy way to remove the incentive for grinding out easy mobs solo. If you can get say 1k/hour mass slaughtering hill giants, then just make it so the average max level player makes around 1200plat an hour in a dungeon (on top of the good xp, enjoying the company of friends, and chances at items they could either wear or sell for even more money).
The point is to make it possible for people to solo, but not the desired option. This is one of the few things FFXIV did right compared to most modern mmos, you could actually get decent xp by just running dungeons. You didn't have to do the solo quest hub grind. Whereas in a game like WoW, you could level about 10x as fast by solo quest hub grinding than by running dungeons, this meant running dungeons was pointless because if you just went and solo quest ground, you would literally get enough levels that the item you worked for in the dungeon would have been outleveled had you just spent that time in the dungeon out solo questing. This was another step on the path to the idea of an "endgame" that you had to power through to before you could start really playing the game. Because there was no real point in running dungeons (bad xp, and the items you get you would just outlevel in a few hours because of ridiculously fast leveling times) then it effectively made solo quest grinding the highly preferred method of play.
TLDR: Make levels take a long time, make grouping give more XP per hour than soloing by a healthy margin, as well as have better rewards monetarily and item wise. Remove AH, force people to engage each other to trade items. Win.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Just want to stress one particular point that i see as most important:
If you want to talk about "risk" / reward in an MMO, you just have to include the "is it fun?" part. Going out to adventure with friends while gaining xp, skillups, see new content, get to know new people ect., is generally considered "fun". While grinding mobs for hours on end, alone, without advancement is generally considered unfun grinding.
If someone does grind hill giants for those 450 hours for that one cloak, he damn well deserved it. And most likely he did not do that because he wanted to, but he accumulated 450 hours solo without getting into a way more fun group to get the items himself.
Don't forget that by adventuring you effectivly get all the items for FREE and in a very short amount of time compared to other means. The trader actually has to pay xxxx gold and he did not get that gold from doing nothing you know. It is usually way more time consuming getting an item for trade then it is to just straight out camp it yourself. If it is easier to get via trade,.... well maybe the item is not all that rare or hard to get then. Those shiny adventuring guys would not sell / trade it for cheap if it was not common, right?
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Second, yes, you bring up an excellent point. As a second to your point, and one my very good friend who used to play EQ with me brought up in a previous discussion. Everyone has different ideas of fun.
We always talk about how some people are loot whores (me), some people are explorers (my roommate), some people are content locusts (my enchanter friend), and other people like to be able to just log in, do something mindless like slaughter hill giants, and engage their friends and socialize without having to invest immense effort of thought into playing the game.
Its like women, right. People like to think there is this universal idea of what is beautiful, and that a woman, lets just take someone like Christina Hendricks, vs Jessica Alba, vs Beyonce, vs Lucy Liu, is objectively "hotter" than the others, and that you can place them in some kind of ranking. Some guys are going to find Beyonce to be orders of magnitude hotter than Lucy Liu, and yet others will find Jessica Alba to be hotter than either Lucy Liu or Beyonce, etc. And then some guys are going to think Lucy Liu and Jessica Alba are too skinny and would find Christina Hendricks to be their proverbial cup of tea.
MMOs are no different, and while a game should be designed around and promote a particular playstyle, it doesn't have to be at the total exclusion of everything else. In any of those situations, most straight men wouldn't say no to any 4 of those women. Because they are all beautiful in one way or another. But like everything people have preferences.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I am sure people will give your responses great consideration, /facepalm
and again....
One more time...
The entire base of your position is that this entire games success is contingent on the trade system? As you stated above and we repeated multiple times.So apparently, all the rest of the systems in EQ, the game itself the classes, the NPCs, the world, the combat, the exploration, etc... are not what will make this game a success?
According to you, it is the trade system and and if they don't allow a completely open and free system, completely disconnected from the games balance so people like you can buy progression and circumvent the rest of the game, the game will fail?
I don't need to even counter that, your arguments premise is invalid right out of the gate.
He is full of it. CoF was not massively rare, it was not common, but this idea that there was none on the player trade market was full of crap. All the problems existed, but they were in their infancy, just as EQ was a new game, and the market hadn't really spawned the RMT focus and many of the early players were gamers who thought buying over doing was content bypass, circumvention, etc...
What Hrimnir is failing to inform you is that that 450k pp? Where do you think people got all the money to buy something that expensive? Do you honestly think people farmed that money? It was from duping bugs, that is why items went so ridiculously high.
Except, they don't just farm the entire amount, they used a buy in amount to get into the trade market then worked the market through buying and selling. You buy in with a 2-3k item, then trade it up, or sell it to another for more, or you buy an item that someone is trying to fast sell and then trade it up for a profit. That is what the traders did in EC.
So how does he trade and farm at the same time? /gasp He uses two accounts, a mule account and sets him up on a different monitor to watch trades while he sits back, watches TV and farms easy content. So the 450 hour claim? Maybe for idiots who had no clue, but not anyone with any sense on how to work the market.
I mean, if the entire issue was that people had to farm hundreds of hours to obtain something as you said, it might be enough of a deterrent, but it is pure bullshit.
Socializing? Maybe at release, but very quickly they started opening up chat ability and lets face it, this isn't 1999 where chat outside of game was difficult. There is no loss of "friends and socializing" today, that is an invalid argument.
Wait risk is just time?, so there is no skill in play in EQ? It is all just people doing non-skilled actions in play that are time based? Interesting. Not the game I remember. I expressly remember some dungeons and bosses being so difficult that it took very skilled players who knew their classes well and those who did not weren't able to defeat them. Though you say that is all just time.
What do you think people? Is everything just time? No skill required? You have no skill in your class, no skill in your play, all you are doing is spending time, just like the guy farming his plat?
Interesting take you and your buddy Dullahan have, though it is absolutely falsifiable (that means can be shown to be untrue) by anyone who has ever played a variety of games. You guys keep spinning out that bullshit lie, maybe some are stupid enough to accept it.
Which is to say, he likes to be able to buy his progression, you know... because there is no skill in the game, just time and his efforts of farming widgets and working the player market is so very much the same as the guy playing the game, you know... because he has to have options to guarantee his drop!!!
This is word for word the same argument I have seen RMT PTW players make.
What it means is, it isn't "fun" for them unless they can buy it.
It is like you people don't even know what game is anymore.
But, what about the crafter who sells his wares?
The person who buys crafting gear from the crafter didn't "earn" it either using your views. The player wasn't involved in raising the skill to craft the gear, or the "risk" of failure from the crafter, or obtaining the drops to create the gear (which often come from the adventuring sphere), etc.
Do you still view this as bypassing content as not everyone is a crafter?
So rather than argue these points over and over. I will simply state the following and ask people to consider.
What is Risk?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/risk?s=t
Risk is not just time. It is risk of loss, a dangerous chance, etc...
So, we know that, now lets look at the tenants.
http://pantheonmmo.com/game/game_tenets/
So maybe everyone can consider this and explain within proper context, and respect to the tenants how spending enormous amounts of time doing mundane acts of little to no risk fits in line with these tenants?
Remember, Pantheon is supposed to provide "an expectation that with greater risk, will come greater reward".
Is that expectation realized by people achieving "greater reward" with little or no risk as people like Dullahan, Hrimnir and others claim?
Are they even correct in their claim that risk is just time in an MMO? If that is true, are all encounters in the game the same of skill? Is killing a undead froglock the same as killing the Frenzy? Do all people have the same skill in their classes and can all people succeed in the game regardless of skill?
They seem to think so, remember... risk is just time, not a means to where skill can be applied to succeed, it is simply a mundane effort of time, equal in all actions, nothing more. Or is it?
I think by the power of literacy and simple logical process, they defeat their own arguments, but don't expect them to realize this, it is how we got here in the first place. /shrug
Did you see the comment Amathe brought up concerning that?
Crafting in some games actually is an attempt at making it a system integrated into the game play. In EQ, crafting had risk:
So, you could spend a lot of effort collecting, looking for rares, etc... and then in a simple combine "poof"... gone... no item. A loss, a "dangerous chance". Some people thought this "not worth the risk", while others looked at it as worth it because the rewards from some pursuits were fantastic (ie Coldain Prayer Shawl).
Crafting in that respect is a process of risk/reward in the creation of the item. In gaining rewards from adventure, it also is a process of risk (though as Amathe mentioned, maybe not as server which I agreed may have been something needed to consider).
Trade though has no such system. Where is the risk in trade? You can lose in crafting, you can lose in adventuring (loss of exp, loss of money, loss of time, etc..), but where are the negative aspects, the risks and forms of emulation of such choice and consequence or loss as exists in the others?
All I suggested here was to make trade a game system, just as crafting is in some games and how adventuring is and by doing such, balancing risk/reward between them. Then if someone buys an item, at least we know it was of proper risk/reward balance.
After all, the Tenants do say "An expectation that with greater risk will come greater reward." , so how is that achieved by allowing a player to bypass the risk/reward of content through little/no risk play? If we allow that, then "An expectation that with greater risk will come greater reward." is demonstrably false.
Hrirmnr's points at first blush are well taken, in that truly valuable items are or ought to be kept by the people fortunate enough to get them (and their closest friends and guild mates). Also, if such an item is traded, it will be for stupid amounts of money which Hrirmnr maintains will also take stupid amounts of time (but which ignores that people buy gold).
But as logical as Hrimnr's points are, history has shown that nevertheless even the rarest items get farmed and sold if they can be, and there are more than a few people who have stupid amounts of money to spend (especially gold buyers).
That is why limitations like no drop, BOA, lore, etc were instituted in the first place.
Now, Pantheon seeks to remove or constrain those limits without telling us what will prevent the problems they were put in to solve. It's like they are saying there was a problem, it was hard to solve, we were only ever able to solve it in part, and now- we're gonna make it worse.
Or, alternatively, they have decided it is not a problem after all? Which means what, that Pantheon will be a grinder where people just farm for their treasure instead of adventuring?
A grouping focused game should not be a farming game.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
And why is it so damn important how someone got his sword. Porting a twink in to loot item xy is fine, but buying it is bad? Getting items for free by simply advancing your toon by xping is awesome, but farming wolves for it is bad? Who is going to farm those wolf hides then to make the armor for adventuring? The adventurer himself? But that would mean he gets armor from a crafter by paying him... by trading. That is cheap!
If you insist on calling adventuring "risk", then i insist on farming for the same gear takes WAY more time. So it evens out.
We really need to start seeing the whole system and not some insulated extreme cases that don't exactly matter.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Hrirmnr's points are logical, but only in the world he creates for them. For instance, he says it takes stupid amounts of time for someone to earn the cash to buy that item. He is correct, IF that person only farms the content only and tries to save that much. What Hrirnnr is avoiding telling you is that the market value of that item was greatly inflated due to the duping bugs and cash value of ALL items all went up because currency was devalued.
This is where my points about "having to play the market" becomes a requirement to even use it. So, that farmer goes out, farms either mundane cash or, the easier way... farms a low level item(s) that has high value and then buys into the market. Once they are in the market, they can then work the system to roll that money up which as I explained is stupid easy to do.
So yes, if in his perfect little vacuum of a world where everyone honestly farmed just coin in the game to pay for the items on player trade, he would be correct, but his argument is not the same world that exists as I explained and also, as you pointed out, it doesn't even deal with the plat buyers which makes matters even worse.
Exactly, and why an EC market will only be a speed bump to the same result as all the others. The only difference is that because trade requires a bit more effort, some won't bother and will just use the plat selling market (which again is what happened in EC trading that they refuse to acknowledge). Plat buyers will take the game by storm and money will be abundant and plat buying will be abundant, especially these days when RMT is much more open and accepted than it was back then.
All of those restrictions that they put in were what we were trying to avoid by finding better solutions that were not "in your face" invisible walls that they were. That is what led me more away from my initial suggestions (implementing loot restrictions), to putting in a trade system that has a real system with game play features that replicate risk/reward. By doing that, they may have a bit more control over the influence of RMT as well as insuring proper risk/reward balance.
Well, if you remember early on in the TLC thread, Brad discussed some with this about it. He recognized that there were problems presented by the trade system, that removing it would go a long ways to solving many issues, but he didn't think that was the right solution which is why he asked us to consider various issues and resolutions with the RMT market as well as the issues that TLC solved. So they do know and understand the points you are making.
We keep getting side tracked by those who keep claiming trade is not an issue, that it presents no problems that simply putting in the old EC trading will solve everything (or at least make the problem not an issue) which I know to be a complete farce due to my experience with seeing how different the systems changed as I moved from Test to the Production servers. EC trade is not the solution, it is merely a small obstacle to a very experienced player and company base who have been dealing with working these faux economies for over a decade or more.
Well, this is a volatile issue and as you noticed a lot of the people upset with me are Pantheon subscribers, so I would imagine this is a topic that has to be tread very carefully for if he takes a side, it could set in stone a given position (your comment about it being a farming game) and immediately turn off people. So I think that as well as they may not have a lot of time, and they just aren't ready to commit to a position is maybe the issue here.
If you read some of the replies here, some think the entire point of EQ is trade. Hrimnir stated that trade was the make/fail of this game. I strongly disagree and it makes me question him and people who agree with him their motives when a sub portion of the game, not even with a real system is far more important than the entire game itself.
As I have said, nothing wrong with a trade system, but it needs to brought into the game and designed with the same risk/rewards aspects of game play that any other system has (adventure, crafting, etc...).
There is no game play in trading. It contains no systems, no structure, no risk/reward, no choice/consequence and really has little to no control by the developers outside of simple money sinks. The problem here is that due to this lack of control, a trader can through many ways circumvent the main portion of the game by obtaining items they did not play the game to obtain.
This isn't a JRPG where people sit and farm gold over and over to save up for yet another powerful item. It is a game of adventure, of risk/reward, of seeking out and obtaining the proper rewards for your efforts.
So, when a player uses the player trade market, they are bypassing the adventure game. I know many people who don't use the player trade market, they play the game, obtain their rewards as the game is designed, put in the effort and take the risks to progress.
A trader does not. They bypass that requirement. There is no argument here.
Same reason I care when people buy plat and use the market to get their item. The same reason I care about the fact that some game companies hand out exp potions, gear, advancement, etc... for money. Money isn't the issue here, it is paying for advancement instead of doing the content.
How are you going to port in that twink? You going to escort them into the dungeon with mobs that often see through invis, have maybe low level agro, etc.. and try to keep them alive to get to that item? Well, that act alone could be rather difficult and such won't be easy if they balance the amount of bonus a low level gets from spells/items, etc... In the end though, they did go through the dungeon to get to it. Are you seriously saying a person buying it safely on a vendor is equivalent?
Who is going to farm for components to have an item made? Lets see... the adventurer who wants to have something made from them? Actually, he pays the crafter for their services to which if it is a solid system of design, that crafting will be risky (possible loss) which means you will lose your items, and then have to go farm some more so you can have the crafter try again?
Besides, I said make trading a system like crafting and adventure, with risk/reward, choice and consequence, etc... Do you not like games? Or is it that you like all of your games to have a "special" code that allows you to bypass play?
Risk isn't time, it isn't simply effort, it is a chance of loss, failure, etc... I am saying risk/reward balance.
As it is, an adventurer goes to a dungeon, works their way in with the risk of dying and having to do it over again, with the requirement of skill to succeed (they may not even be skilled enough to gain access to the area or even fight the boss), then they have to wait for the boss to pop, beat it, and hope for that item to drop that they are looking for.
Even the crafter in some systems has to use skill to make their item (vanguard did well on this) and there is the risk of losing your item (EQ had this). On top of that, if the crafter is farming items for their crafts, they have to replace what is lost and if the items are specific and rare, hard to get, etc... they have to search out just like the adventurer to obtain those rare items.
Now...
How do you make the trader side achieve similar efforts and results? The trader does not need to continue effort into the world in either crafting or adventuring, they just need a buy in and they can start working the market eventually becoming extremely wealthy (I have done this myself in a game to prove a point to someone).
Where is the comparable risk? where is the comparable loss? Where is the system? Where is the game play designed by the developers? Where is the control they have when a player abuses trade when there are no such things as abuses in trade because there are no rules, reality or structures?
Make trade every bit as risk/reward and choice/consequence focused as adventure and a good crafting system and you have balance. Otherwise, all you have is an element in the game everyone uses to bypass the required content in the rest of the game.
We are basically seeing two opposite, yet basic approaches to combat RMT or inflation, open and free market or a highly restrictive or complete lack of a trade system.
One allows for the market to drastically dilute the effects to the point of no consequence, the other strips out a bedrock MMO system along with the social aspect that comes with it.
Instead of treating the economy and that style of gameplay as a minor mini-game within the larger game, developers should treat the economic gameplay as an equal partner in the game.
There is a whole segment of gamers who equate a few general chat spammers selling gold as a signal that a game is being ruined by RMT is borne of nothing more than people's inability to rationally think about a topic. These are usually the same people complaining, to no end, that games are no longer sandboxy enough for them.
Tie in all systems with each other that relies on each other, make trade a part of the game, just as the other systems are. That is exactly what I (the op) was saying. Where did I mention "minor mini-game"? I said it should be part of the game.
Actually i did not think about eve as an example, but i like it. A great example of a totally free trade system that is not only a huge part of the game, but also works extremly well.
No rules whatsoever.
Player make the rules.
If enough adventurer say "trading is cheating", then they would simply not sell their loot and destroy it so noone else can get it.
Trading would die, but it would die due to the community wanting it. And i would be fine with that actually. (Maybe just because i am the adv guy myself most of the time,... not sure how a real trader would think about that lol).
On the other hand, if enough adventurer want to sell / give away their spare loot for eggs and apples,... so be it. Freedom just like i love it in an MMO. No dev enforced rules, only rules the community wants.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Actually, that was not my argument. I started saying "no trade" only as an example to show how trade is the root of a lot of problems that exist. Others took this and ran with it building straw mans to claim I wanted to remove trade from the game.
Seriously, and honestly go back and read all of the discussions in the TLC thread and this one.
What did you think I meant when I said "risk/reward" balanced properly for trade? I said multiple times that trade contains no controls, no rules, no structures that exist in the rest of the game as balance.
I started this thread, here is some of the things I said:
"keep it balanced with the game"
See that?
And my solution I mentioned in the OP:
I am talking about making trade a game and tying it in with the rest of the game. In the TLC thread I discussed numerous approaches... I was looking for discussion, ideas, etc... what do you think I have been dealing with all these posts?Now if you were reading peoples straw mans of my points, I can't help you there. Go read it again, I have been pretty consistent in this discussion over these two threads. Has my position changed over time? Some, yes.. but not drastic, I merely pointed out that effort/time alone is not a proper means to establish risk/reward and I clearly explained why. /shrug
BTW, next time you are unsure about my position, just ask for clarification. Don't summarize me without being sure, ask me. This isn't a pissing contest.
In fact most of your proposals would completely destroy Pantheon in the eyes of the niche it is targeting.
One of the problems with trade in MMOs -- is it is all about magical weapons and a few craft items that are used to make magical weapons. This is simply not how economies really run. In a more realistic trade environment -- things like boatloads of of wheat (not to mention the boats) would be extremely valuable and requires all kinds of managing and socializing to obtain. For me to really get on board with a trade-heavy system enthusiastically, it would have to be more like real medieval trade and less like Magic the Gathering trade.
If you think about all the adventuring parties depicted in Lord of the Rings onward, a lot of times they represented elite fighters on the field, diplomats that dealt with various empires and lords, and served some purposes involving thousands of people in a kingdom. It wasn't all about the band of 25 guys trying to do some dragon job for the best shield in the game. Not that that doesn't add to the game world as well -- but it be cool if kingdoms and empires more a part of the whole experience. Right now, kingdoms seem to be ornaments for lore and a nice backdrop.
Run along kiddo.
I think the best Pantheon can do is to try and "simulate" various elements of risk/reward to try to tie it into the balance of the game (factions, politics, etc...). It doesn't have to be perfect, and it can have lots of "only in this worlds reality" type of reasoning to its implementation, but it could go a long way to actually making the trade system responsible to play rather than being the route most take when they don't want to play the game.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests