All Posts by CactusmanX

Good and evil only exist as opinion, no one is good nor evil, nor any action good or evil, things just are.

People are biological machines that basically have programming to make them act in certain ways and have certain goals, like live, eat, socialize etc., they also develope other goals and methods of acting by interacting in their environment, being other people or just nature, when these are deprived or threatened somehow people deem that as evil.  This is not to say that these actions are inherently good or bad just that it is percieved that way.

The universe is an amoral place, good and evil are inventions of man.

Maybe it is just me but everything you described sounds like a game to me, just with better AI and more consequetial actions to create a more fleshed out world, which can add to the fun of the game but is not the sole form it.

When I say MMOGs are games I mean they are for the purpose of fun, so everything in the game is designed for that end.  I agree that building a world is part of the fun of MMOGs but not the entirety of it, "continents in the game world could drift, weather patterns could be setup to produce seasons, animal NPCs that migrate all over the game world itself, 'intelligent' NPCs that would forge alliances with human controlled PCs and even other NPCs (and even break such alliances to make war...), and other such interesting results" sounds like fun to me too, but that is not the whole game, fighting has to be fun, crafting has to be fun, doing whatever has to be fun, all the features mentioned above has to involve the player in some way that it is interesting and fun.  So it is just not what you can do but how you do it.

One reason I do not like Eve, sure it has options and a more dynamic world but over all controlling the game and gathering resources and fighting I found dull.

I have to disagree, MMOGs are games, they may be immersive and fully developed worlds but still games, as such you can never overlook the visceral fun of playing it.  History, environment and so forth are very useful in creating an interesting and fun experience for players but if the core of your game is lacking then it does not matter much.  Meaning the game may have good story, and an interesting world full of options, but if chopping up orcs isn't fun, or if making armor is dull that the world doesn't matter.  Not saying any MMOGs do a good job at this, some are better than others though.

2 is true but then again so are games, like the sims or any game with expansion packs, the longer you can continue the experience the more money you can get, and the better fan base to develope.

Personaly I do not want to play a virtual world I want to play a game, immersion is important as it makes the game more fun, but developers should never lose sight that they are making a game, not a world sim, everything is aimed at being fun for players, not just creating a realistic world.

I was thinking more a system where loans are given out by NPC banks.  Loans would function to help out players who need extra money, with high risk of course since you could lose your items.

I could see a type of credit score though, that you use to take loans, I guess the big problem is making people repay their loans.  I guess to could so some system where a portion of the money the player earns automatically goes back to the bank, almost like XP debt.  Oh well not sure, how were you thinking it would be done?

Originally posted by deviliscious

Allowing people to get scammed in games by price gougers, and allowing gold farmers to come in and spam everyone in your community nonstop with gold ads,

Reselling items for higher than which you bought them is hardly scaming, it is how you make profit.  Scaming is when you lie to make money, buy a sword for 5g and selling it for 7 the next isn't lieing it is flucuations in the market, the price may decrease the nex day. Jacking prices up is pointless if someone is under pricing you.

 and not providing a means for players to trade that does not include standing there repeating themselves you are creating more problems than solving.

Auction house and/or player kiosks, you can sell items while not even online.

Merchanting your items is only a small part of the game and it is not pleasurable for the majority of players, they want to get the stuff sold so they can go back to  having fun.

Merchantile is only small if you make it that way, just like any aspect.

 Making the enjoyable things to do in the game focus on the players skills, competitive games within the game, and good pvp would appeal to many more people than the ability to price gouge.

Being able to run a business would be very enjoyable to many people, most games do not put much time into it and simply make it where you make junk and sell it, but if players could get creative with items and could actually make their own business then I think you would see more interest in it. 

 In a player run system you can easily manipulate the entire economy with a merchant clan, as I did once in a game I played. If you have a clan of 600 members come in and buy up all of one item jack the price way up where there is no way for anyone to buy it elsewhere you can set the prices of items in game. Do not tell me it cannot be done, because I did it, and it isn;t that hard to do.

You are right commrade the capitalist devils always exploit the worker.

Just kidding, but anyway what you described is called a cartel, sure if you got a bunch of people together they could buy all of one item on the auction house and jack the price up, but there is a problem, one organizing that many people, can be done, but is very hard, and two they can't stop other people from putting that same item on the auction house, all it takes is one person to under price the cartel to make them not effective, 3 unlike real life there aren't any goods that people absolutely need, they will wait or seek alternative methods, and really they won't have to wait long.

Originally posted by deviliscious

Why does money need to be the barrier? Why not make it actual  things in game such as difficult area , higher player risks, and levels as barriers instead , so everything in game cannot be bought , it has to be earned.

Say a boat or a house etc. these are usually considered goals to work toward for players that take the time to save their money, a reward for their hard work.  But if everyone can get tons of money easily and the prices of good cannot increase, then this goal is easy to get, infact anything I need to buy is no problem.  People use the term easy mode game a lot, but I think it would apply to this game.

If you wanted it so that players have to "earn" the items rather than buy them then drop money entirely and switch to a non tradeable currency like honor or the like.

True that could happen, but then again it is a game, you could prevent prices of collateral from falling, like in WoW for instance where all items have a vendor price that never changes, so you could base collateral value on a seperate vendor system, so that a margin cal wouldn't occur.  Also limit the frequency and number of loans taken.  You could even make it so that the bank takes the items and changes it into money of the exact value, we can do that since it is a game.

Not sure what kind of chaos you have in mind but as long as there is an ingame explaination.

Real world trades and account trades, while I think it is stupid to exchange real money for non real items, they don't have a negative impact on the game other than annoying spam.  Bots on the other hand are a problem as they monopolize areas and make for a ghost community, then again bots are used for more than farming money, leveling as well.  Selling gold to players might cut down on gold farming bots but not leveling bots.  Most the big MMOGs do not have bot problems anyway, they do a good joob of keeping bots out and catch them quickly.

Also an unintended consequence of the website selling gold is that there is tons of money floating around, so money is no longer a barrier for anything. 

Originally posted by deviliscious

When the supplies it takes in a game to make something become worth more than the actual items that are made there is a problem with the system. That is what happens though once you have alot of players playing, because people would rather  buy their supplies than  get them themselves, thus driving up the price of the supplies cost and down the actual  end product cost. By doing this you have no profit from drafting the items yourself, you lose $ instead, which is bad for the game because then you have to spend more to work the skill at all.  There are many issues with player driven economies and the impact on differnt aspects of the game due to supply and demand. This does affect gameplay for  the new player base. I disagree that the impact is minimal, it dampers their enthusiasm to work the skills, which does lead to  overall game dissatisfaction. Keeping in mind that items would also be received from drops and be sold in the market the amount of items available can be determined by drops as well, not just dependant upon crafters.

I know exactly what you mean but I don't think player economies are the problem.  But like I said it is that way because gear constantly gets better and better, no body wants the finished product because very few people are at that level, and usually you can find better gear in drops.  To solve this problem I prefer having no gear drops and balanced items, meaning all items are statistically equal just balanced different and you have to buy all your gear from players and/or NPC, it doesn't randomly drop anymore.  This way, though newer players have less variety of things to make, but the things they can make are equal to that of vet players making their products still useful.

The logical justification of paying people to have fun in the game is that you want people to have fun in your game no matter what they choose to do. If they don;t like the skills, or serious play they can goof off and still have fun.  That isn;t that hard to understand.  Just because what they think is fun doesn't make sense to you, does not mean that it is unenjoyable for them. But hey .. if  beating each other down keeps people playing .. have at it, who am I to say they shouldn't?

Yeah not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do that, just that paying them for getting killed or randomly killing people is a very immersion breaking experience, where did the money come from? why was it given to them? etc.  It makes sense from a developement perspective to reward people for doing whatever.  But it does not make much sense in the game universe, if you can justify it happening through the lore fine but that seems hard to do.  If that makes sense.

When the game does not sell gold, it loses out on the profits from it, and it opens the door for real world sellers to come in and not have competition. I personally would not want to buy gold in a game, I like to earn everything myself, but I have real friends that play on weekends only that don;t have time to earn it to go have fun, and for those people they should be allowed to buy it if they want. I do not view it as a "dishonest practice" but rather a choice of whether or not it gives you satisfaction of earning it yourself.  Keeping in mind that if they do sell gold, they could allow for lower monthly fees for everyone on the game because they have alternate income comming in.  There are more players that do not agree with item shops  than gold selling, and would definately take gold selling over item shops. If you put the options before the public to choose which is better ..

1. binding items to players/ making all items nontradable

2. item shop

3. game goldselling

which of those options would be best for overall gameplay? because these days that seems to be the only choices we have.

Why do you have to do any of these? 

1. Is in place because the gear in the game becomes exceedingly powerful and they want to limit the number of people who have it, balance gear better and reduce the  power difference and this is not needed.

2 and 3 are just alternative payment plans

2 is there so players think the game is free to play with an option to buy extra items, usually though you are forced to buy extra items if you want to keep playing.  I see nothing wrong with the 15s buck a month method, equal payment for equal useage.

3 is not needed, I may not like gold sellers but they do not ruin games, at most they can make a game have a high population of bots, but good bot detection is the solution here, and if a game can be played by a simple bot then there is a problem anyway.

Originally posted by deviliscious

Lowering prices due to supply and demand is bad for new players because they do not get the same opportunities to sell the same items at the same price as the people who first started the game. When they found out that say a player that played for 5 years sold the exact same items they are making now for much less, they feel ripped off. This causes discouragement for them to keep playing the game which equals less appeal to new player base. This greatly limits new players in the community and less profits for developers.

I think the effect of this is minimal, of course the more of something there is the lower it costs, anyone that gets irate over this is rather cluesless of how economies work anyway, for most people this is a non issue as long as they can get what they want. Besides everything I have seen in games suggest that there is massive inflation, where all items become higher priced due to money accumulation. Anyway the biggest reason low level stuff is not worth much is because of hierarchal games, if the majority of the player base is at level 40 they do not want level 20 gear, this comes with the territory of level and skill based games, especially ones with large power differences.  Flexible prices are not the enemy,  the basic game design is.  Flexible prices is makes it so that players can actually maximize their profits while servicing the max number of buyers.

You do not get your $ for your items until you "sell" it to market for a fair price, therefore you get your production costs then at the time of sale. If production costs are not considered when pricing an item, what is the point in making items that require more production time to make?

They are, by the market, sellers price for what they are willing to sell for and buyers choose the best price.  In a free market I am in more control of how I price my goods and how I value my time.  Otherwise commrade, you are being told what your value is.  And still players need incentive to produce different goods, if a particular helmet is selling for a lot that is because there are many players that want it.  The prospect of making more money drives me to make the helmet and also providing players with more goods they want.  If I get paid regardless, demand does not matter, so if there are fewer helmets than buyers then it will not be remedied as there is no incentive.

Paying players for doing things that you may see as nonproductive, they may see as "fun" and since any games primary reason for existence is "fun" I say they are serving their purpose for playing. Yes dumb and dumber can sit there all say long killing each other.. who does that hurt? how does that affect the enjoyment of the game for other players? I say it does not and there is no point worrying about things that do not affect others gameplay. Why does it matter to the game economy? I think time could be better spent on finding more enjoyable activities in the game for all players to do rather than worry about a couple of noobs killing each other for their own amusement.

It is hard to logically justify the payment of randomly killing people, or getting randomly killed, in a lore sense.  That is mainly the problem, who would pay you to do that?  It wouldn't ruin the economy, but it would probably leave players scratching their heads, as it does not make much sense.

If you make supplies that players require to do battle, and skills and events that they can " use up" there will always be a requirement for money in game. No you cannot stop gold selling , and whether or not a game sells it or not does not change how easy accessable it is. It is currently easy to buy gold, characters, and items for just about every game on the market. By the site themselves selling the gold, players will be less likely to use other sources, thus reducing the demand from gold sellers regardless of how popular a game becomes. They would have to directly compete with the game itself, which makes it alot less profitable for them. Making a alot of variety in game of how you obtain items and skills allows for people to actually want to do the things in game and takes away from the repetitiveness of the game itself.

Personally I see buying gold for outside money as a dishonest practice.  By the company selling the gold themselves true they cut down on gold sellers, but they actually encourage gold buying, as now you cannot get in trouble for it.  Unlike most things, prohibition of gold selling actually lowers the number of people doing, as you could get banned etc.  Another problem is that there are many players that do not approve of gold selling, and having the company being the number one gold seller could be a turn off, I personaly would not buy any game that did that.

I do not want to keep making quote strings, anywho,

Prices lowering from supply and demand are not bad for new players at all, if prices decrease then yes they make less money but they also need less money to buy things.

What does kill the value of crafted ltems is hierarchy and BoP type gear,  when weapon A is vastly overpowered by weapon B then weapon A is useless, as the player base grows weapon A is needed less and less as there are fewer and fewer players that level.  There is no need to limit prices if you are making all the gear/items useful for everyone at any level.

The reason not to pay players for production, instead pay for sells is because it gives incentive to switch production to items that people are paying the highest for, meaning items in high demand, this makes it so that people make more money by making high demand items rather than low demand items, meaning all the people who want the high demand item are more likely to get it.  Sure people could chit chat but that doesn't mean that the demand for goods is being met.

And once again paying for killing people and paying for losing, you are essentially paying players for doing stuff, it doesn't matter if it is useful or not.  paying people for defending a city is useful, as defending cities is benificial to everyone.  But gankers and paying the ganked encourages non productive behavior, and lets me do schemes like my friend and I taking turns killing each other for money, completely pointless and non useful actions but I got money from it.

If you want money to remain useful you have to make it where players have to keep spending it, gear repair, pershable goods make it where there is a constant need to spend money, along with having lots of goods and services to spend money on, players could make all this as well as do repair.  You can't stop gold selling, but you can make gold sellers contribute to the game while trying to sell gold.  How this works is making money non farmable, meaning not doing a repetitive task over and over again to gain money indefinatly.  Making it so that money does not spawn in drops would help a lot.  To gain money players have to do something of value for other players or the community, making things and selling it to people, defending cities, catching bounties and the like should be the only source of money, exchange between players and NPCs for goods and services they provide each other.  Combine this with the constant need to send money to keep playing and even the gold farmers contribute to the economy and community.  So yeah I agree you can't stop gold farming but at least you can make gold farmers useful to the community, the company selling gold does not really improve the game in my opinion, even though it is a solution to curb gold farmers, it makes gold buying easier to do.

Originally posted by deviliscious

Originally posted by CactusmanX

1. I like the idea of allowing players to make all items, but why even have max stat reward items, their mere presence contridicts #3

No, a max stat item is a reward for the effort and hard work it takes to get max stats, so that a goal oriented player would actually have something to show for their efforts. I even think that the player with the highest stat in each skill should have a statue with their name on it in the city that supports that field. for example the highest stat in range has a statue at the range guild, the player with the highest stat in mining has a statue of them in the miners guild.

So are max stat items generally better than crafted items, like epic gear?  If they are then that makes it where you can't keep upgrading items, they do become obsolete as soon as you get the max stat gear.

2. Why limit prices of players goods?  it destroys the incentive to make and sell things as there is no way to have any advantage in the market, it takes away the competitiveness from players, if all silver swords were 50g then why does it matter who I buy it from.

the reason you set prices is that when players start gaining levels prices drop for higher level items, therefore the items become  worth less than the work it takes to get them. With set prices even new players get a good price for their work, even if they haven't played the game for 5 years, they still get the same price for the higher level items as the first person who got there. It doesn;t matter who you buy it from, you can get it immediately from the market, and the seller can get a fair price immediately from the market,  no tiem wasted trying to barter a better deal.

But I would argue that a fair price is whatever is agreed upon, the reason prices lower for most goods as time progresses is because more people can make them, you are increasing the supply of whatever good, so the price decreases, or there is a better item so that the demand for the other item decreases, lowering the price.

3. That is a good idea to make it where items do not just become obsolete

yes if you can upgrade and salvage items to suit your current needs there is no "useless item in the game.

4. This makes no sense as players would then be rewarded for merely making things, not making things people want to buy.  This takes the strategy and planning out of business, as long as you make things you will be rewarded, not to mention this opens up the ability to farm money , while flooding the market with junk.

people like to make things that are at the highest level and give the most xp regardless of demand usually. Then the market gets flooded with those items because they are the high xp items, so  this way they could make what they want and still amke a profit at it,  fun is the most important thing in a game, if a player is being forced to do things they do not think is fun in order to make $ in  a game they usually get sick of it and stop, if they can make $ doing anything they want, they do not have to stop having fun.

Well you never said people gained XP from making things, but still they are gaining money merely for making things not selling things, they are not productive members of the MMO society so to speak as they do not always provide goods that are in demand.  And I still think people would gravitate to what they can make cheaply and quickly and selling it in bulk.  And for an economy to work you need incentive to produce goods in high demand as opposed to others, otherwise demand for goods may never be met.

5. Fun maybe but rewarding not really, if I agreed to protect the farm from goblins but I failed I shouldn't get anything, have to try again.

you get less for participating, but more  for succeeding, that way if you have new players , or simply players that aren't very good, they can still make $ while doing things. The fact is not everyone that plays these games will ever be good at them, no matter how they try they just won't be, then they go whining about the game because it wasn;t fair to them. If  you allow them to at least get something for losing they will stop their whining and can have fun too. The only reason I put that in there as for the griefers, kill 2 birds with one stone=x.

I don't know maybe paying on a per kill basis or helping capture a tower or such, but getting things for losing, that sounds like it would be exploited, kind of a "ok now you kill me," thing, unless I am misunderstanding it.

6. Then all the people that have lots of real world money to blow would have tons of in game money, this is bad because one I think it is unfair to gain money in game for not actually playing the game, but with the price limit you have a few players that can afford anything they want while the other players cannot adjust their prices hence the rich get richer while the poor stay poor.

sure they can have $ and it stops real world traders, but with set prices they will not have an advantage because if  skills and  combat are not based on items there is only so many items they are going to need in  the game that money can buy. money cannot make you a better fighter, nor will there be a  max money reward in the game. That allows them to go around saying oh I am so rich, but even the poor guy can  slaughter them on the battlefield.

Then what is the point if having a lot of money doesn't matter that much I don't see the need for a system like this at all, especially if you make money doing anything pretty much.  If they are that lazy foreget them :P

Also since you make money doing basically everything in the game, the only way you would stay poor is if you just stand there and do nothin. lol

1. I like the idea of allowing players to make all items, but why even have max stat reward items, their mere presence contridicts #3

2. Why limit prices of players goods?  it destroys the incentive to make and sell things as there is no way to have any advantage in the market, it takes away the competitiveness from players, if all silver swords were 50g then why does it matter who I buy it from.

3. That is a good idea to make it where items do not just become obsolete

4. This makes no sense as players would then be rewarded for merely making things, not making things people want to buy.  This takes the strategy and planning out of business, as long as you make things you will be rewarded, not to mention this opens up the ability to farm money , while flooding the market with junk.

5. Fun maybe but rewarding not really, if I agreed to protect the farm from goblins but I failed I shouldn't get anything, have to try again.

6. Then all the people that have lots of real world money to blow would have tons of in game money, this is bad because one I think it is unfair to gain money in game for not actually playing the game, but with the price limit you have a few players that can afford anything they want while the other players cannot adjust their prices hence the rich get richer while the poor stay poor.

While I always try to make a virtual rendition of me in the game, I make plenty of other characters too, male and female, and different races, orc, dwarf, etc.

People should just make what they want to.

Originally posted by SpeechMan

I have also thought about the possibility of loans in MMOs and came up with an exploit, for which I have not yet found a solution to prevent.

Start an alt, take huge loan, transfer the money top main/buy stuff and transfer it to main, delete alt.

I figured that players could only loan out so much money as they had value in items, collateral in other words.

If a player failed to pay their loan in time or deleted their character their stuff would be taken from them automatically and auctioned off.

And you could make it so that the items used for collateral can never be sold until the loan is payed off.

There are certain advantages in a game world that the real world doesn't have.

Anarchy is an impossible state to reach,

Even if there was a society based on the teachings of Jesus but with no police, lawmakers etc. then it is still a dictatorship and there is still law.  The law is Jesus' teachings and it dictates how you are to act, you merely enforce them on yourself because you agree.  Morality is self imposed law.

But anywho, I resent anyone or anything that tells me what to do, it may be an inexcapable reality but not one that I have to accept.  It doesn't matter how much their values are inline with mine or how much they can provide for me, they are still trying to tell me what to do, and I hate them for it.