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Secondary Item/Gold Sales
Kurush
Member Posts: 1,303
This is obviously a somewhat touchy issue among MMORPG players, and I'd like to hear the opinions of the forum on this.
I'll start with my own. Personally, though I enjoy MMORPGs, I prefer shooters, simulators, and RTS games. This is because I like games where I'm given an opportunity to excel by using my wits. I don't believe the MMORPG genre is devoid of such opportunity. While games of the genre may not require the manual dexterity that a shooter demands or the careful strategizing of a game of chess, there are strategies you can devise to advance faster and do things that most of your peers cannot. Almost every MMORPG offers some challenge of this kind, though you may have to look to find it. My gaming style means I have no inclination to participate in secondary sales, but I can't say that I have very strong feelings on the issue. I don't feel as if it has affected me. Since gear and gold is merely a means to an end for me, I don't care if other people acquire those things using money. While I may feel indifferent, the fact is that some people do object strongly to this practice, while at the same time, others feel to compelled to participate in it. Before I open this to comment, I'm going to talk about the two positions briefly, if only to give people a chance to understand both sides of the issue before commenting.
The objectors and their arguments:
Accomplishment: Many people play MMORPG's for the feeling of accomplishment. To players who get such a feeling from developing their character through diligence, it is understandable why secondary sales would be frustrating. When somebody watches another person trump their hard work with a roll of bills, it serves to cheapen everything they've accomplished. A MMORPG is supposed to be a world exempt from the sway of real life wealth, and secondary sales destroy this level of seperation.
Cheating: To others, secondary sales do not require extensive explanation. To them, it is a simple thing: cheating. They see that the stated rules of the game ban the practice, and when somebody does something against the rules purely for their own advantage, they conclude that it is cheating. It is hard to say definitively whether this is a correct point of view. Whenever I think about cheating, I remember the original Diablo. Past a certain point in that game's life, the developers simply stopped patching it, something which happened long before the release of its sequel. Why? The engine was inherently susceptible to manipulation by third-party hacks, and by and large, everybody on Battle.net, Blizzard's online service, was cheating. By this, I mean approximately 19 in 20 players. This wasn't something that happened after the game's decline. It became widespread at the height of the game's popularity, and it killed it. Diablo was a good example of something I've come to personally believe about the internet. If you give people on the internet a way to do something that makes their life easier, almost all of them will take it. If it means cheating in an online game, many people will still do it if they feel there is little chance of repercussion. Are secondary sales an example of this? You decide.
Price inflation: The argument here is very simple. Many people do not care if others participate in secondary sales, but they do care if said practice results in higher prices for them. Does the practice truly cause price inflation? The answer to that question is complicated. Rather than spend over half of this post detailing the answer, which the original version did, I will simply say this. The mere act of secondary selling does not cause inflation. Of more concern is the actual amount of currency which is generated and sold in the process. Even this does not have as big an effect as most people think.
There are other arguments against secondary sales which I could deal with, particularly the methods by which items and gold sold by secondary sources are acquired, but I won't touch them for now since they are decidedly more controversial in nature. Instead, lets look at some of the things that those participating in secondary sales may believe. While people may oppose the practice for a variety of reasons, I find the motivations for participating in it to be more universal.
While some people may play a MMORPG for an extensive amount of time and still buy cash or items from an online source, it is my belief that the majority of people who buy products from secondary sources are those who simply do not have enough time to advance through a MMORPG in the typical manner. Still, these people have bought the game and wish to experience the gammut of content that it offers. If they pay with their own money to advance artificially, is that anyone's business but their own? The answer to that question is ultimately a personal one, one which depends on your stance on a variety of questions. Do you think these people are affecting anybody other than themselves? Do you believe such behavior is proper even if they aren't? Having bought a game, does a person have the right to experience all of its content, even if they don't play by the rules? Is it right to participate in the practice even if the game's publisher has a policy against it? Does such a policy even matter in the first place?
If you've read this far, I thank you for your patience. If you have any thoughts, post them. I don't particularly care if your response is emotional or logical, but I ask that people keep it civil in regards to the opinions of others.
Comments
i say go for it. i could probably care less if someone else bought their max level toon or bought tons of ingame cash in order to pay for a house, mount, armor, whatever.
why?
well, people that can't play their toons don't stay in the group i'm in very long. whether that's because they're actually 8 years old, bought the toon, or just really bad at the game -- don't care. if you can't handle yourself, we're not incurring debt and loss because of you. if it's a game that doesn't have debt or loss, well, it's already a game giving itself over to the lowest common denominator (i.e. 8 year olds, people who buy max level toons, and people that are really bad at games), and i probably won't be playing it very long.
inflation? well, if the game has crap for an economy to begin with, the inflation will be there regardless of folks buying gold or not.
things i look for to know how the game's economy will be:
*can you lose items in the game? items lose durability and will eventually be unrepairable and broken PERIOD. or, when you die, mobs and/or players can loot some or all of your goodies. item loss means people will be buying more items. means more people will be crafting and selling those items. means prices go down. no item loss means that crafter can sell one item once to you and you never need that item again. means less crafters putting stuff up for sale because there's less people buying them. which, surprisingly, makes the prices go up and stay up. i know supply/demand would dictate otherwise, but well, in the mmo world of craptastic fun, it seems to go up.
*craftables. does the game have some sort of crafting? which is better in this game, drops or crafted items? by how much is it better? games where drops are better, means that the merchant style players aren't going to be there. why should they? this means that the genius little kids will be pricing stuff at a bazillion dollars cuz they see one gold farmer put his/her items up for a fortune. a ton of reasons why drops being the best items in the game is a bad idea and hurts the economy way moreso than buying gold.
*marketplace. is there some sort of world-/server- wide marketplace/auctionhouse? is it just on vendors and you have to hunt them down and look at each individual vendor? how exactly is this set up in the game? if people compete globally, prices will be less overall. however, if people only have local vendors; then if you spend time searching, you can find things priced incredibly low and take advantage of those prices.
in summary, if buying/selling gold and items is hurting the game you play -- that game already has problems that it's *brilliant* devs need to address. moreso than getting out that next craptastic expansion.
the views expressed in this post are mine and mine alone. if you don't agree with them, well, i'm sure you'll just put something like "j00 R wrungg!~!!!1111oneonethree~!@!! pew pew pew zomgwtfbbq~!@!!213$3646743234!@#@#!@ and i'll think wow, you're right, i'm wrong".
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I don't like it. At all. However, nothing I can say here will change that so it's a mute point. I think the reason I don't like it is because:'
I'd say no. You may have bought the client (or you may not have), but you have not bought the server. You pay for the privilege of using a service provided by somebody else. This right is granted on certain conditions that you are (at least morally) bound to accept. While prosecution is a bugger, I still don't consider it anybody's right to play by their own rules in these games.
You pay for the right to play by the rules, not for the right to do as you please.
I'd also say no for another reason: Your very presence in the game has the power to affect the gaming experience of other players. Players who uphold the rules and finds that cheats / violations of any kind reduces the fun. Rather: "Is that anyone's business but their own?" Yes. Perhaps primarily because people who are annoyed make it their own bussiness, but their right to do so is far stronger than a violator's right to violate. Part of what they (should) get for their payments is access to the game - as long as they play by the rules. Furthermore, establishing a set of rules for the service consitutes some degree of promise, since the rules apply universally. A cheater damages the offered product (or alters it if you desire a more neutral word), and the honest player has a right to receive what he paid for. (The cheater has too, but the red statement still applies)
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
I'd say no. You may have bought the client (or you may not have), but you have not bought the server. You pay for the privilege of using a service provided by somebody else. This right is granted on certain conditions that you are (at least morally) bound to accept. While prosecution is a bugger, I still don't consider it anybody's right to play by their own rules in these games.
You pay for the right to play by the rules, not for the right to do as you please.
I'd also say no for another reason: Your very presence in the game has the power to affect the gaming experience of other players. Players who uphold the rules and finds that cheats / violations of any kind reduces the fun. Rather: "Is that anyone's business but their own?" Yes. Perhaps primarily because people who are annoyed make it their own bussiness, but their right to do so is far stronger than a violator's right to violate. Part of what they (should) get for their payments is access to the game - as long as they play by the rules. Furthermore, establishing a set of rules for the service consitutes some degree of promise, since the rules apply universally. A cheater damages the offered product (or alters it if you desire a more neutral word), and the honest player has a right to receive what he paid for. (The cheater has too, but the red statement still applies)
if a game can be hurt by someone buying gold/money/items/whatever; then, that game's economy has issues.
if you're running a gaming company, do you really want to just ban account after account cuz they bought/sold on ebay? you're denying yourself money and for every account you ban (some possibly mistakenly), you're making a bad name for yourself in the gaming community as a whole.
why not look at it, then figure out WHY the buying/selling is hurting the economy and then fix those problems.
if a game can be completely redone (not saying in a good way), like soe did with swg; then, surely, other games can figure out how to fix the problems in their game's economy, yes?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
You also erronously confuse banning macroers and ebayers with bad publicity. There is a very large subset of MMOG gamers who dislike eBaying in-game items, and who would look extremely favorably on a company which takes a very hard line against people for doing so. However, the inharent difficulty of tracking and stopping most people like that means that its a problem without a real solution for most games.
In the short run, it may cause a few lost subscriptions from banned macroers. However, if there is a lucrative secondary market for a game, they'll be back. What is not so trivial is the loss of people who are disgusted by playing alongside bots and farmers, and who have seen the in-game economy turn to crap. Losing a few accounts to try to control eBayers is by no means a bad investment for a game company.
I know that I would quit any game which in any way legitamized the secondary market (bye, SoE!), and I'm sure I'm not the only one with such sentiments.
First rule of capitalism:
Whatever the market will bear.
Supply and demand economics are simple. Value is set by the intersection of the demand for a product/service and the supply of a product/service. If there was no demand for virtual item resale, there would be no supply. The demand is clearly evident, because the supply is so widespread. Prices remain static, and in many cases rise. Clearly there is an appetite in the consumer body for this type of service.
Personally, I have no interest spending my time buying or selling these items. I get paid a great deal more money for what I do in life than I could ever get from being involved in this business. If I'm going to do work on a computer to earn a buck, I'd rather get paid $100 for an hour of work than $100 for many, many hours of work. Additionally, I greatly enjoy "doing it myself" in these games. In fact, I usually prefer to solo so as to take personal pride in almost all aspects of my accomplishments.
But my personal feelings aside, I am of a mind to realize that other people either enjoy the profit motive of the business or enjoy the timesavings as a consumer. I see no fault in the exchange of time for money, which is the basic exchange being made here. It bothers me in no way whatsoever to measure my accomplishments against someone who got to the same goal in another way. I know what I did, and I take pride in it of its own.
Now, that being said, the rules of games are as they are. If a game so chooses to make it against their rules, then to engage in the game is to engage in the rules. That's not to say people won't break the rules...obviously they do. But it's the human condition to consider rules (or laws) as inconvenient when they stand in the way of personal desires. People do drugs recreationally, despite their use being a felony. This is one example among many.
I don't fault people for having such strong feelings about this issue. It's complicated. But it is here to stay, regardless of what people try to do to stop it.
i agree with your post.
i don't like the ebayers or the
iges and such who constantly spam trade channels and what have
you...
why can't a game come up with a way to fix the economy
to where this sort of thing really isn't profitable?
why do
some games attract these sort of people/farmers/companies and others
don't?
COx will probably never have this issue, as there's
not really anything TO sell.
but the thing of it is
like you said, how are they REALLY going to stop it?
if
you ban enough accounts, you're going to mess up and ban innocent
people. that's where the bad press/bad word of mouth comes in.
i mean, look at ingame suspensions now -- if you watch and listen
long enough (and you're a griefer), you figure out what triggers the
bannings and you goad people into it. then you're the hurt
innocent and some poor person is banned for a day or week or
whatever. same quality (or lack thereof) are going to be
banning *farmers*.
i think we've seen in a few games that
banning doesn't address the problem.
loot is
probably always going to be a big part of a lot of these games.
think about the games where a lot of the high end equipment is
crafted. do those games have the problems with farmers/botters
as others?
off the top of my head - ultima online. there
is probably always a lot of stuff from this game being sold on ebay.
but in this game, does it really matter? you can have 5 toons
per shard. you can have a maxed out crafter of everything with
probably two toons. so, you could just about make some of the
best items ingame, as long as you gather the mats, or buy them off
someone's vendor, or whatever. you could also go kill buff mobs
and likewise get some of the best items ingame.
i think
crafting high end equipment DOES help deter a never-ending-spamming
of farmers/botters from jacking up an economy.
uo is the
only one that comes to mind. i know ryzom, horizons and eve all
have high end crafting, but i don't think any of them really have an
ebay market.
so, if this theory is off, could someone
please provide a game where craftables are pretty much equal to drops
for the best items ingame & where farming/botting is both
prevalent (and on ebay or similarly sold, like ige or something) and
has jacked up the economy?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Is the feeling of accomplishment greater in a MMORPG than a single player game that players will feel cheesed off that a guildmate paid chinesegold.com or whoever? It's certainly possible to cheat in a single player, no one bats an eyelid if you use a cheat for Oblivion or whatever. Is the fact that there is no /godmode in World of Warcraft that drives people to buy virtual currency? I think we should focus this debate less on "Shame on you for buying adena for Lineage" to trying to understand why it is okay to cheat in an offline game to not in a MMORPG.
It all boils down to does it have an effect on an economy and that's never been proved or disproved. Although the effect of gravity is obvious there is still no clear cut theory on what gravity actually is. Just because you can't prove something, common sense should tell you that there is an effect.
No annoying animated GIF here!
I think the other (and I think more relavent) condition of Ryzom, Eve and Horizons is the fact that they have very low populations. It's not cost effective for gold farmers to work there, they dont have anyone to buy what they are selling.
Honestly, the only way to really get rid of it is to have a economy like CoH (before the Supergorup Liars) where there was basically nothing to buy. Crafters will and do jack their prices up to obsene numbers in games that have gold farming. Trying to find a set of 100% crafter armor below 25 pp was impossible when I was playing DAoC and my guildleader was a LGM in armorcrafting. Drops, well that is pretty much par for the course. Know you are going to be hosed. Either have nothing to buy, or have everything sold by NPC merchants with set prices, then you have prices set to levels that are what the devs designed. Crafters will be forced to set thier prices lower thant he NPC's to move items, and if the NPC prices are set low, then people don't need to buy "pharmed" gold. Lots of people won't like that idea and I can understand that (especially crafters and auction house whores) but the only way to really control it is to"really control it". The problem with "player economies" is quite honestly the players. Let's face it, most of the people you run across in you average MMO are pretty much scum, and won't blink an eye about stabbing you in the back, kinda like real life.
Is there a solution that would be amiable to both crafters and noncrafters while still keeping gold farming to a minimum? I really can't say, I'm honestly not experienced near enough in economics to have much of a clue. Maybe we get Allen Greenspan to look at this problem, he knows a thing or 2 about creating and maintaining a robust economy. And he's not working for the FRB anymore, hehe might need a job.
do the ebayers hurt the eve economy at all?
i don't believe gold sellers and such really have any effect on the UO economy.
so in addition to games with high end craftables, we can add games with an open pvp type environment, which would include shadowbane and eve both.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
i don't believe gold sellers and such really have any effect on the UO economy.
so in addition to games with high end craftables, we can add games with an open pvp type environment, which would include shadowbane and eve both.
They slightly depress the prices on low-end crafter resources (minerals) which can be obtained completely from safer space (and are always in high demand reguardless of prices, due to how common and necessary they are for all goods).
As a whole, the economy is not significantly altered by bots. CCP, the EVE dev company, also takes a hard line against eBaying and macroing, which means that it can be difficult for macroers to last long enough in the game to aquire the higher-end resource-collection ships.
That's easy, cheat in a 6-man poker match and IF you are caught then you got 5 angry people. Point is though those 5 angry players complain to CS only to watch that player continue unchallenged. Maybe they get banned, unlikely though, but CS are after the farmers not the buyers so odds are in your favour that you can contune to buy gold with no reprecussions. Because we all know the Chinese farmers are to blame, don't we? Knowing something and proving it are quite different.
Okay then what if this poker match is online and there is real money at stake as opposed to a "friendly". Except when someone gambles $1000 it's not actually $1000 but because someone cheated they are only gambling $40. They bought the "$1000" for $40. They get a competitive edge over the other 5 players. Okay it's not very realistic with that example, no-one would give away $1000 for $40, but the principle is the same.
No annoying animated GIF here!