@Sinist What are your play times? Wanna get some groups together?
If I get more serious into it, sure... as it is now, I have just been watching chat, browsing populations etc.., I really just started playing it to get a perspective of how things have changed.
I will PM you if I get more involved into it. As it is now, I have been just toying with the classes to see how far off they are from what I remember playing at release.
Basically, trade is facilitated by the game system. You set base prices to every item in the game. This is what the developers have established to be the "natural price" of a given item. The natural price is basically an economic principal of the price of a goods that is equal to its cost of production.
Yes because the "government" (developer) controlling the market prices has worked SO well in real life. Obviously its a real solution to the in game issue as well.
Its all starting to make a hell of a lot more sense now.
"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."
Something to keep in mind with forums, is there is an inherent response bias. As in, people that feel strongly about something respond -- while those that don't feel all consumed by the topic do not. An example would be how the Diablo 3 forums have posts pop-up constantly by people requesting /petitioning for an auction hall to be reintroduced to the game (the game is currently itemized so that everyone gets their own personal loot table and cannot trade with anyone who wasn't in the game when the item dropped). The thing is, Blizzard has polled people multiple times and compared playtime numbers, and it is clear that only a pretty small minority wants trade in that game.
In that particular case, the will of the gold farming industry might be bleeding through making an exaggerated amount of posts. However, forums are like this in any context. If you go to the comment sections on political articles -- it is overwhelmingly extreme opinions (not even including the vast quantity of trolls).
When someone on a forum tells you they don't care about the topic, they are generally lying to you and/or themselves.
I know the gold farming industry is quite large, which is why when I see posts from people who adamantly support design concepts that facilitate it, well... it makes me extremely suspicious. I am honestly baffled by the amount of defensiveness concerning the trade topic.
And here it goes. More insinuations. All of our arguments are "illogical, weak, wrong, etc". So, clearly rather than we just disagree, it means we're all secret gold buyers.
It's so beyond ridiculous. It's like saying that someone who argues lets say for lower corporate tax rates (in the US) is just a secret corporate shill, and they couldn't possibly have any logical basis for their argument, its just simply that they have a "secret" agenda.
What you can't seem to wrap your head around is that just because you DISAGREE with someone's premise doesn't INVALIDATE their argument.
I didn't simply disagree, I showed your argument to be invalid. It is as simple as that. Basic logical argument dictates the premises you made are invalid because you did not properly support them.
If you don't like that, make better arguments.
You mocking the application of logic isn't helping your case, it is another fallacy, but it is unbelievable irony because you are attacking the very thing to which you must provide to have a valid point.
The fact you can't even recognize how glaringly wrong you are, in so much as you think you can actually logically "prove" your argument on this topic, shows how fundamental your misunderstanding of the principles of logic are.
This is not a formal logic equation where you can actually "prove" something. You can make cases for your position, but you can't PROVE anything. Why? Because there are WAY to many unknown or unprovable variables.
For example, your entire argument hinges on the idea that RMT/Gold Buying, etc, was literally rampant in original EQ. You can't prove this. Nobody has access to the real data, except maybe SoE, and even then it would have been a limited dataset, and its unlikely they kept all that information around for 16 years.
It's not like we're sitting here observing an apple falling from a tree, which is a 100% reproducible effect, and then basing an argument for why the apple falls from the tree on that observable action.
So please, stop, just stop with the BS. You have 1 position, we have another, neither of us can prove either position, period, end of conversation.
I constantly laugh at the internet and their love of talking about different logical fallacies like its the basis for all argument. If you want, i could go through a friggin laundry list of fallacious arguments you've made over the course of almost 20 pages of posts between this and the previous thread, but, you would simply move the goalpost or try to spin your original position so that it "invalidates" what we point out.
"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."
Yes i witnessed a healer bot in FFXI that shocked me,i never figured anyone would get a bot to play as a normal player.It took me a while to figure it out but being a long time gaming vet,i usually spot cheats eventually. The best and only way is to keep as much server side as possible but sadly developers are looking to unload as much as possible onto the client.Of course there is a fine balance to keep a game running lag free but still i get annoyed not even over botting or RMT but also with people that hack files to find out new content before anyone else.Yes that means exploiting the Auction house before anyone else even knows.
I rather see loading zones than putting 90% of the files on client side.
I just know this,NOT one single developer has shown me the effort or got it right.We always end up with exploits,scripted cheats,RMT and the game suffers because of it.The gaming community on a whole is so sad we even see outside the game cheating to manipulate results for monetary reasons in these Moba's for example.
Yep, which is why I think the approach to a solution has to change. As it is now, all the solutions are doing is treating the symptoms, not the main cause.
Player trade is at the center of all of it. Now if you could create a means to allow players to trade with a reasonable amount of freedom, but still contained with in a system of structure and rules, it would go a very long way to limiting the means to which RMT can excel.
It isn't trade that is the issue, it is trade that exists outside of any reality within a games system. Player trade in games today is really just two people outside the game agreeing on exchanging something within it. With that lack of control by the developers, it is no wonder RMT is rampant in every game out there.
We've already established the only real "solution" to the problem of RMT and such is to completely ban all player trade. We've already established that this game will not ban player trade. That means that RMT and gold buying will exist to some extent, and we have to work on ways to combat the symptom.
Its like guns in the US, hypothetically if you could somehow make every gun in the world thats not a strictly controlled part of the government/military/law enforcement go "poof", then hypothetically there is an argument to be made for banning guns, etc. However, thats a non starter, you can't do that, so you have to come up with a solution based on the reality of the situation at hand.
In MMOs, reality is that RMT will exist to some extent. Like i said before, short of completely banning trade (or making everything no drop), you're not going to solve the root cause.
All a system of "structure and rules" will do is cause the "law abiding" players of the game to have to go through a ton of hassle and grief, while the law breakers will simply continue to break the law (or in this case the game rules).
"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."
Basically, i'm just gonna end it all with this. If you truly want us to actually take you seriously at this point, you have to stop with these ridiculous accusations and insinuations. A couple weeks ago i would have thought this type of behavior beneath you, but you've proven time and time again otherwise.
"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."
All a system of "structure and rules" will do is cause the "law abiding" players of the game to have to go through a ton of hassle and grief, while the law breakers will simply continue to break the law (or in this case the game rules).
Sadly i agree with this.
We simply can not avoid RMT and Goldselling without fucking over all the legit playerbase as well. And history has proven time and time again that the legit players actually suffer way worse then the ones we try to fight.
It is like cookies. We all love cookies. We all know they are not exactly healthy. So to fight those companys producing cookies simply to make us fat by sugar,... we could ban cookies!
Well, the companys will just convert to producing pie, while the cookie loving people are screwed.
Silly example? Maybe. But it actually sounds like exactly the same as the discussion about trade. You just can not "fight" trade. People love to trade and it is an integral part of an MMO. Fighting that WILL hurt the consumers more then the evil RMTers. If it hurts the later at all. They will simply increase the prices and ask for your login details to get item xy for you if it is no drop.
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?
Basically, trade is facilitated by the game system. You set base prices to every item in the game. This is what the developers have established to be the "natural price" of a given item. The natural price is basically an economic principal of the price of a goods that is equal to its cost of production.
Yes because the "government" (developer) controlling the market prices has worked SO well in real life. Obviously its a real solution to the in game issue as well.
Its all starting to make a hell of a lot more sense now.
What does real life have to do with this? Where are there any elements of real life in the game? Where is reality in the game world? There are none.
Your argument is invalid. You can't claim "real world" objections in a game world that has no reality. There is no reality in the trade system, no laws of nature that influence decisions with peoples trade.
I'm all for improving a games economy but you can't build an entire games economic system around preventing RMT. It punishes the average normal players more than it prevents what it's supposed to prevent.
The fact you can't even recognize how glaringly wrong you are, in so much as you think you can actually logically "prove" your argument on this topic, shows how fundamental your misunderstanding of the principles of logic are.
This is not a formal logic equation where you can actually "prove" something. You can make cases for your position, but you can't PROVE anything. Why? Because there are WAY to many unknown or unprovable variables.
Logic is a process of evaluation. Your arguments are either
valid/invalid, sound/unsound. If you start with an invalid premise, so
then is your conclusion invalid. You can make an objective argument (one
established by quantifiable facts) or you can make a subjective
argument (logical reasoned to a result).
You however can not claim "difference of opinion" if your premise is invalid, or your subjective reasoning is unsound.
For example, your entire argument hinges on the idea that RMT/Gold
Buying, etc, was literally rampant in original EQ. You can't prove
this. Nobody has access to the real data, except maybe SoE, and even
then it would have been a limited dataset, and its unlikely they kept
all that information around for 16 years.
It's not like we're
sitting here observing an apple falling from a tree, which is a 100%
reproducible effect, and then basing an argument for why the apple falls
from the tree on that observable action.
So please, stop, just
stop with the BS. You have 1 position, we have another, neither of us
can prove either position, period, end of conversation.
It was common knowledge. Anyone who was around playing EQ at this time watched this progression. They saw the massive increases in currency inflation. Sony even had issues with this, fighting it as they claimed it harmed the game. Do you not remember Sony and the fight with Yantis/IGE? Do you not remember Blizzard suing IGE? Here is a link for the blizzard one:
The lawsuit also alleges that "honest subscribers" are at a
competitive disadvantage to those who purchase gold from the firm, thus
throwing the game's mechanics out of balance.
"The game designers and publishers do their best to make those games
to stand the test of time and keep the economies in balance. When people
play the game in an unsanctioned way, for profit, it threatens to send
the game economies out of balance and diminishes the experience of all
the players in the world," Dr. S. Gregory Boyd (pictured left), author
of "A Business & Legal Primer for Game Development," said to Gamasutra.
Most of the SoE issues were on their forums with developers discussing certain aspects of this issue. Those were lost when SoE shut down the forums because they wanted to squelch negative publicity the forums were producing (not specifically to plat selling, but I kinds of topics).
I
constantly laugh at the internet and their love of talking about
different logical fallacies like its the basis for all argument. If you
want, i could go through a friggin laundry list of fallacious arguments
you've made over the course of almost 20 pages of posts between this
and the previous thread, but, you would simply move the goalpost or try
to spin your original position so that it "invalidates" what we point
out.
I admit I have thrown a few fallacies out from time to time, those however do not invalidate my premise, there were acts of frustration by behavior such as yours. You can dismiss all you like, but the facts are the facts.
RMT was a problem and early on, the companies fought it. Now they decided to just become it. These are facts, you can not dispute them.
Besides, RMT in PVE centric games like EQ never bothered me much, minor annoyance perhaps.
So someone bought Blade of Carnage with real money for his twink ranja and now his ranja is able to solo somewhat easier then usual to level 40 while my warrior needs to save DKP and tank Avatar of War in order to get it. Should I be angry about this? Nope, my method of getting the BoC is much more satisfying and fun.
On a PVP server though, yes, I would bitch about it.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
Basically, i'm just gonna end it all with this. If you truly want us to actually take you seriously at this point, you have to stop with these ridiculous accusations and insinuations. A couple weeks ago i would have thought this type of behavior beneath you, but you've proven time and time again otherwise.
I didn't start to imply this may be the case until late in the discussion after numerous unfounded attacks by you and others. Your dismissals and attacks have been going on long before that. You have no intention of treating this discussion seriously because to do so means you have to accept that RMT is detrimental to game systems and player trade without control systems is a large part of that.
In the above recent responses, you specifically argue that it was not a problem, not an issue against all common knowledge of those present at that time.
As I said, your arguments suggest you don't have issues with RMT.
All a system of "structure and rules" will do is cause the "law abiding" players of the game to have to go through a ton of hassle and grief, while the law breakers will simply continue to break the law (or in this case the game rules).
Sadly i agree with this.
We simply can not avoid RMT and Goldselling without fucking over all the legit playerbase as well. And history has proven time and time again that the legit players actually suffer way worse then the ones we try to fight.
It is like cookies. We all love cookies. We all know they are not exactly healthy. So to fight those companys producing cookies simply to make us fat by sugar,... we could ban cookies!
Well, the companys will just convert to producing pie, while the cookie loving people are screwed.
Silly example? Maybe. But it actually sounds like exactly the same as the discussion about trade. You just can not "fight" trade. People love to trade and it is an integral part of an MMO. Fighting that WILL hurt the consumers more then the evil RMTers. If it hurts the later at all. They will simply increase the prices and ask for your login details to get item xy for you if it is no drop.
This is why it makes me think that (about you guys supporting RMT) Hrimnir , he is arguing to give up, that you can't fight it. He even goes on to claim that by fighting it, it harms players. You do realize that I have seen gold sellers make this exact argument? Also note how he mocks with "evil RMTers" as if to imply that my pointing out RMTers as being bad is somehow being unjust? This is what RMT supporters arguments look like.
What is even more telling is that all I am doing is spitballing ideas, talking about issues and possible solutions and look at all of your reactions? You feel threatened by simple discussion. Why? When people get this upset about topics of discussion, there is more to it.
Yes i witnessed a healer bot in FFXI that shocked me,i never figured anyone would get a bot to play as a normal player.It took me a while to figure it out but being a long time gaming vet,i usually spot cheats eventually. The best and only way is to keep as much server side as possible but sadly developers are looking to unload as much as possible onto the client.Of course there is a fine balance to keep a game running lag free but still i get annoyed not even over botting or RMT but also with people that hack files to find out new content before anyone else.Yes that means exploiting the Auction house before anyone else even knows.
I rather see loading zones than putting 90% of the files on client side.
I just know this,NOT one single developer has shown me the effort or got it right.We always end up with exploits,scripted cheats,RMT and the game suffers because of it.The gaming community on a whole is so sad we even see outside the game cheating to manipulate results for monetary reasons in these Moba's for example.
Yep, which is why I think the approach to a solution has to change. As it is now, all the solutions are doing is treating the symptoms, not the main cause.
Player trade is at the center of all of it. Now if you could create a means to allow players to trade with a reasonable amount of freedom, but still contained with in a system of structure and rules, it would go a very long way to limiting the means to which RMT can excel.
It isn't trade that is the issue, it is trade that exists outside of any reality within a games system. Player trade in games today is really just two people outside the game agreeing on exchanging something within it. With that lack of control by the developers, it is no wonder RMT is rampant in every game out there.
We've already established the only real "solution" to the problem of RMT and such is to completely ban all player trade. We've already established that this game will not ban player trade. That means that RMT and gold buying will exist to some extent, and we have to work on ways to combat the symptom.
Its like guns in the US, hypothetically if you could somehow make every gun in the world thats not a strictly controlled part of the government/military/law enforcement go "poof", then hypothetically there is an argument to be made for banning guns, etc. However, thats a non starter, you can't do that, so you have to come up with a solution based on the reality of the situation at hand.
In MMOs, reality is that RMT will exist to some extent. Like i said before, short of completely banning trade (or making everything no drop), you're not going to solve the root cause.
All a system of "structure and rules" will do is cause the "law abiding" players of the game to have to go through a ton of hassle and grief, while the law breakers will simply continue to break the law (or in this case the game rules).
First, stop with the real life examples. A game is nothing like real life, and in fact, that is part of the problem. When you start putting in all the choice and consequences that exist in real life, then you can start using real life as examples as to why this won't work in a game that is fully controlled by the developers. Remember "You are in their world now".
Second, your solutions? Doesn't work... it is failing on Phinny as we speak. Inflation is rampant, RMT is rampant, etc... Your "solution" isn't the answer.
As for your argument on "structures and rules", that can also be made about the adventure portion and has often been made to fight any form of consequence in play. The point is, your response is not discussion, it is a dismissal, especially when you do not attend to the specifics of why a given implementation will fail, but generally refer to issues broadly in order to proclaim conclusions that can not be countered because of your vague attention in a rebuttal.
Oh, and the "We've already established the only real "solution" to the problem of RMT and such is to completely ban all player trade.", No... that is the fallacy you produced to dismiss this discussion.
You haven't even attended to the specifics of the solutions, all you have done is broadly proclaim them invalid and then move on (ie argument of extremes). RMT can be greatly reduced with clever systems, but there must be more control over the game systems in order to make any real progress.
I'm all for improving a games economy but you can't build an entire games economic system around preventing RMT. It punishes the average normal players more than it prevents what it's supposed to prevent.
That wasn't my goal.
My ideas have been all about creating interesting forms of game play with risk/reward, choice conseuence, etc...
Did you read my suggestions? Sorry if it is hard with all the banter going on by the detractors and I, but basically I was saying make player trade a part of the game, beholden to all the game obstacles that adventuring has, but put into a form that emulates real trade systems, all with the risk of loss, and the difficulties produced by poor decisions.
Besides, RMT in PVE centric games like EQ never bothered me much, minor annoyance perhaps.
So someone bought Blade of Carnage with real money for his twink ranja and now his ranja is able to solo somewhat easier then usual to level 40 while my warrior needs to save DKP and tank Avatar of War in order to get it. Should I be angry about this? Nope, my method of getting the BoC is much more satisfying and fun.
On a PVP server though, yes, I would bitch about it.
Well, there are far reaching effects here. RMT produces massive imbalances in the economy, eventually forcing developers to change their own controlled economies to deal with the inflation that the RMT produces. That means if you are not active in the player trade economy, trying to keep up through normal game play can become an issue.
In a competitive camping game such as this, you get people who would never or could never achieve an item obtaining them, empowering them to do content more easily that they would normally not have achieved, again giving them an edge in competition for you.
This also translates to a much stronger desire for players to earn bigger pay outs (RMT forces fast inflation in order to encourage currency buying), so that BoC is now fair game for anyone who wants it because everyone needs it (due to that value it brings on the player trade market).
Someone used an example here about a friend who was camping an item and lost out on several rolls to it, there by having a hard time obtaining it. This is often a result of players rolling for cash reward, which increases the competition against you in the game due to RMT inflation results.
With massive influxes of money into the economy, players are drawn to constantly having to buy in due to the inflation. So item camping for hot items becomes a profitable venture, which begins to take up camps that normally would not be sought consistently due to the fact that the need is not really there. That is, some people will buy an item, but not camp for it. So that "need" is created by player trades ease of acquisition.
There are many subtle factors to which cause issues, including RMTs constant pursuit for bugs that produce increased money into the system.
It is unfortunate that the SoEs early forums were removed, there were some great write ups by devs on the details of how RMT affects the rest of the games systems and eventually players experiences. There was a reason they put massive effort early on to fight it.
One thing to remember is that all of these features over the years "TLC, BoE, BoP, required, recommended, etc) have all been done to fight the effects off RMT. RMT drives a game in so many systems. Developers know this, they understand how detrimental it can be to a game.
SoE knew this, they even tried to fight it for a while (as you can see with numerous attempts in many areas of the games over the years), but then they realized that if they could get the players to accept it, they could profit off it. So, by running RMT themselves, it is a form of control over (one of SoEs reasons for starting up the RMT servers) the issue and a profitable one at that.
Pantheon won't be attending to it, so that puts them right back in the spot SoE was before they adopted RMT. So either they fight it, or they become it. Being that the tenants are at complete odds with RMT, they have to fight it. Repeating the exact same systems that led to the problems isn't a solution.
They will need to think outside the box, look at many different ways to "control" the issue, but... with the knowledge and understanding of how detrimental some "controls" can be (ie TLC, BoE, BoP, etc..). If they are careful, and attack the actual problems at their source and implement solutions that are in the spirit of their tenants, they can go a long way to reducing how RMT affects game systems.
This head in the sand naive belief that release EQs EC style player trading will solve all the issues is poorly conceived.
Find the gold sellers. Make them read this thread in its entirety until they break down in tears and swear never to re-offend.
Find the illegal gold sellers, line them up, shoot them in the back of the head and urinate on the rotting corpses is what some would advocate. /shrug
And your personal crusade goes on and on. Meanwhile everyone that does not want to shoot and piss on RMT automatically supports them. Because obviously there is no sane stance in the middle. You are either a RMT or you shoot them.
God, wake up Sinist. You got so deep into your own tiny world of exaggeration that is beyond the "lol, that guy is funny, look at him" - part. Is is really and seriously annoying and the very first topic about pantheon my GF read was this one. You actually scared her away from the game. She literally said: "I don't want to play a game with people like that. If i wanted that i would go back to WoW."
Sure, she will play because i do and we simply play together, but it was a hard hour of talking, just explaining that not every Pantheon follower is as crazy.
Stop. Scaring. Away. People.
You are simply acting like an extremist of the worst kind. You should really just stop responding and posting right NOW and take a breath for at least 3 months, thinking about the crap you are writing here.
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 will add a simple and rewarding fix for everyone. It is shockingly new and has never been done before.
Add a paid person that only works with the banhammer. Ban every RMT outright. Since it is not a free game, let's just take a fee of 40$ per account banned. So about 50 banhammers per Month to pay that person. Everything more is just plain bonus income for the developers. Everything less just means RMT is not an issue at all and the person can work on something else.
RMT has to pay off, otherwise noone does it. If you have to pay a 40 buck "fee" for every adverticement you do it is hard to get any profit out of that.
Also we don't shot with nukes, but use precition strikes this way. You know,... not screwing over legit players. If RMT really goes crazy we can adjust from there. It is damn easy to track them down nowadays. Scripts do all the work GMs used to do by hand before. GMs now simply get a popup "Possible RMT XXX, hit filter yyy with text zzz". GM simply hits the red button and work is done. So seriously. Bring it on RMT, try making a profit if every step you take is tracked.
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?
Find the gold sellers. Make them read this thread in its entirety until they break down in tears and swear never to re-offend.
Find the illegal gold sellers, line them up, shoot them in the back of the head and urinate on the rotting corpses is what some would advocate. /shrug
And your personal crusade goes on and on. Meanwhile everyone that does not want to shoot and piss on RMT automatically supports them. Because obviously there is no sane stance in the middle. You are either a RMT or you shoot them.
God, wake up Sinist. You got so deep into your own tiny world of exaggeration that is beyond the "lol, that guy is funny, look at him" - part. Is is really and seriously annoying and the very first topic about pantheon my GF read was this one. You actually scared her away from the game. She literally said: "I don't want to play a game with people like that. If i wanted that i would go back to WoW."
Sure, she will play because i do and we simply play together, but it was a hard hour of talking, just explaining that not every Pantheon follower is as crazy.
Stop. Scaring. Away. People.
You are simply acting like an extremist of the worst kind. You should really just stop responding and posting right NOW and take a breath for at least 3 months, thinking about the crap you are writing here.
Those who wish to cheat the games are not my concern. They conflict with this games tenants and there are numerous games out there that specifically attend to their cheating play style.
If I am scaring away RMT people, good... They are the problem.
Logic is a process of evaluation. Your arguments are either
valid/invalid, sound/unsound. If you start with an invalid premise, so
then is your conclusion invalid. You can make an objective argument (one
established by quantifiable facts) or you can make a subjective
argument (logical reasoned to a result).
You however can not claim "difference of opinion" if your premise is invalid, or your subjective reasoning is unsound.
*snip*
It was common knowledge. Anyone who was around playing EQ at this time watched this progression. They saw the massive increases in currency inflation. Sony even had issues with this, fighting it as they claimed it harmed the game. Do you not remember Sony and the fight with Yantis/IGE? Do you not remember Blizzard suing IGE? Here is a link for the blizzard one:
The lawsuit also alleges that "honest subscribers" are at a
competitive disadvantage to those who purchase gold from the firm, thus
throwing the game's mechanics out of balance.
"The game designers and publishers do their best to make those games
to stand the test of time and keep the economies in balance. When people
play the game in an unsanctioned way, for profit, it threatens to send
the game economies out of balance and diminishes the experience of all
the players in the world," Dr. S. Gregory Boyd (pictured left), author
of "A Business & Legal Primer for Game Development," said to Gamasutra.
Most of the SoE issues were on their forums with developers discussing certain aspects of this issue. Those were lost when SoE shut down the forums because they wanted to squelch negative publicity the forums were producing (not specifically to plat selling, but I kinds of topics).
Like I said, this is all common knowledge.
*snip*
I admit I have thrown a few fallacies out from time to time, those however do not invalidate my premise, there were acts of frustration by behavior such as yours. You can dismiss all you like, but the facts are the facts.
RMT was a problem and early on, the companies fought it. Now they decided to just become it. These are facts, you can not dispute them.
This entire post in mind boggling. Seriously man i suggest you go enroll in a few informal and formal logic classes in a local college so you can see how DESPERATELY wrong you are. Its actually getting to the point of being sad.
You keep saying "common knowledge". Yet, the vast majority of people here, who were all veteran eq players, many of us with thousands of hours logged, did not experience your supposed "common knowledge".
So that leads us to occam's razor. What is the simplest and most likely true explanation. That we were all idiots and just either willingly or unwittingly ignored this supposedly rampant behavior, OR, that you are hyper sensitive to it, and are blowing it ridiculously out of proportion with reality, and trying to pass that off as fact (as evidenced by your own statements previous to this whole shitstorm)
This is called a sample bias. I have to deal with it constantly in my day to day work. I work in a business field, and the team i work on regularly deals with the "problem" agents of people who sell our product. We never get to talk to the ones who are good at their jobs and thus never come across our desk. If we were to go off purely the data that we obtained on our side of things, we would think literally everyone who sold our product was an incompetent dunce, or a liar. I constantly have to remind our other employees that not all of the people who sell the product are idiots.
You clearly spent a lot of time on the forums, and just like any forum, you're not hearing the whole story, and the problems are always severely magnified and blown out of proportion with reality. Its like if a game has some bug, and people come onto the forums to complain about it. The ones coming onto the forums are the ones experiencing the bug. That might be 10% of the playerbase, the other 90% are off playing the game not posting because they aren't experiencing the bug. If we went off the forums, we would think it was everyone experiencing the bug.
To touch on one last thing, i absolutely remember blizzard suing them. And you just further supported my point that RMT only became a serious problem once the inclusion of an AH or an AH type system like the bazaar came into effect. It was also a result of games being faceroll easy.
In original EQ standing around trying to slaughter mobs indefinitely (like a gold farmer would do) was a very bad way to make money. You were much better off going to level appropriate content and hoping for items to drop you could sell, etc. Because of this that meant you had to be level appropriate, because of the long leveling curve and difficulty of the game, do you really think a gold farmer was going to pay some guy to spend 500 hours leveling to max level, just so he can start farming gold at any efficient level?
Its all a combination of things that worked to create the problem, fast leveling times, faceroll easy content, auction houses, etc. This also meant with these types of mmo's you attract a specific type of player, the type of person who doesn't recognize the value of investing time and effort into progression and is willingly to whatever is necessary to essentially cheat his way to the top.
Nobody here is arguing that RMT isnt going to exist in Pantheon. We're arguing the extent to which it will and whether we need to be investing this much time and effort into combating a problem which in all likelihood isn't going to be a real issue.
It was like the people running around waving their hands in the air shouting about how the population was going to explode and we would be at 14 billion people by this year and blah blah and all these extreme measures that need to be taken to correct it.
Stop being an alarmist.
If it gets ridiculously bad, first, you can strut around saying i told you so, and you will feel very vindicated and good about yourself. second, we can then look at things to fix it.
However, the vastly more likely situation is that it won't be a major issue or one that's outside of the developers ability to properly police.
"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."
Another headshot by Hrimnir. Won't matter though. We should really discontinue this, as its only giving him the attention he craves, and putting a spotlight on the ugly side of old school gamers.
Like Rattenmann said, this conversation and tone is not putting our best foot forward.
It was common knowledge. Anyone who was around playing EQ at this time watched this progression. They saw the massive increases in currency inflation. Sony even had issues with this, fighting it as they claimed it harmed the game. Do you not remember Sony and the fight with Yantis/IGE? Do you not remember Blizzard suing IGE? Here is a link for the blizzard one:
This entire post in mind boggling. Seriously man i suggest you go enroll in a few informal and formal logic classes in a local college so you can see how DESPERATELY wrong you are. Its actually getting to the point of being sad.
You keep saying "common knowledge". Yet, the vast majority of people here, who were all veteran eq players, many of us with thousands of hours logged, did not experience your supposed "common knowledge".
Again, do you not remember the issues with Sony and Yantis/IGE?
You completely ignored that point and anyone who was around during that time knows that issue.
Sony vs Yantis/IGE was a HUGE issue back then. Either you are lying about this, you didn't play EQ during that time, or you were a little kid who was oblivious.
Why don't you explain to people here about Yantis/IGE, you know... because you a are veteran and all, old school and all? Who were they? What were they doing? What was the objection by Sony? What was the issue? Hmm? You have no clue what I am talking about do you? /facepalm
Like I said, you are likely not being honest, or were too young/oblivious to care.
Again, I am right, you are wrong. Not because I say so, but because the facts establish this as so.
Anyone who experienced EQ in the early days knows about Yantis/IGE and the slew of problems that were produced by RMT. By the way, the people involved were doing RMT in UO before EQ was released.
Now please move along and stop trolling with your ignorance of this issue.
edit:
For those of you passing by, I highly suggest you read through those links if you did not experience it or were not privy to what was going on. Yantis/IGE were essentially the start of RMT in the west and most people were against it. It was serious problem, it harmed game play, it cheated the legit player and it wreaked havoc on the economy.
Ask yourself this. Why are they so adamant about denying that there was an issue with RMT in early EQ? Is it because they were ignorant of it (didn't really play release EQ or were too young to remember) or is it because they are advocating it?
Why would simple discussion on possible solutions be so heavily attacked? It makes you wonder.
Comments
I will PM you if I get more involved into it. As it is now, I have been just toying with the classes to see how far off they are from what I remember playing at release.
Its all starting to make a hell of a lot more sense now.
"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
The fact you can't even recognize how glaringly wrong you are, in so much as you think you can actually logically "prove" your argument on this topic, shows how fundamental your misunderstanding of the principles of logic are.
This is not a formal logic equation where you can actually "prove" something. You can make cases for your position, but you can't PROVE anything. Why? Because there are WAY to many unknown or unprovable variables.
For example, your entire argument hinges on the idea that RMT/Gold Buying, etc, was literally rampant in original EQ. You can't prove this. Nobody has access to the real data, except maybe SoE, and even then it would have been a limited dataset, and its unlikely they kept all that information around for 16 years.
It's not like we're sitting here observing an apple falling from a tree, which is a 100% reproducible effect, and then basing an argument for why the apple falls from the tree on that observable action.
So please, stop, just stop with the BS. You have 1 position, we have another, neither of us can prove either position, period, end of conversation.
I constantly laugh at the internet and their love of talking about different logical fallacies like its the basis for all argument. If you want, i could go through a friggin laundry list of fallacious arguments you've made over the course of almost 20 pages of posts between this and the previous thread, but, you would simply move the goalpost or try to spin your original position so that it "invalidates" what we point out.
"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
Its like guns in the US, hypothetically if you could somehow make every gun in the world thats not a strictly controlled part of the government/military/law enforcement go "poof", then hypothetically there is an argument to be made for banning guns, etc. However, thats a non starter, you can't do that, so you have to come up with a solution based on the reality of the situation at hand.
In MMOs, reality is that RMT will exist to some extent. Like i said before, short of completely banning trade (or making everything no drop), you're not going to solve the root cause.
All a system of "structure and rules" will do is cause the "law abiding" players of the game to have to go through a ton of hassle and grief, while the law breakers will simply continue to break the law (or in this case the game rules).
"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
"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
We simply can not avoid RMT and Goldselling without fucking over all the legit playerbase as well. And history has proven time and time again that the legit players actually suffer way worse then the ones we try to fight.
It is like cookies. We all love cookies. We all know they are not exactly healthy. So to fight those companys producing cookies simply to make us fat by sugar,... we could ban cookies!
Well, the companys will just convert to producing pie, while the cookie loving people are screwed.
Silly example? Maybe. But it actually sounds like exactly the same as the discussion about trade. You just can not "fight" trade. People love to trade and it is an integral part of an MMO. Fighting that WILL hurt the consumers more then the evil RMTers. If it hurts the later at all. They will simply increase the prices and ask for your login details to get item xy for you if it is no drop.
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?
What does real life have to do with this? Where are there any elements of real life in the game? Where is reality in the game world? There are none.
Your argument is invalid. You can't claim "real world" objections in a game world that has no reality. There is no reality in the trade system, no laws of nature that influence decisions with peoples trade.
Logic is a process of evaluation. Your arguments are either valid/invalid, sound/unsound. If you start with an invalid premise, so then is your conclusion invalid. You can make an objective argument (one established by quantifiable facts) or you can make a subjective argument (logical reasoned to a result).
You however can not claim "difference of opinion" if your premise is invalid, or your subjective reasoning is unsound.
It was common knowledge. Anyone who was around playing EQ at this time watched this progression. They saw the massive increases in currency inflation. Sony even had issues with this, fighting it as they claimed it harmed the game. Do you not remember Sony and the fight with Yantis/IGE? Do you not remember Blizzard suing IGE? Here is a link for the blizzard one:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/47220/mmo-gold-vendor-ige-sued
Most of the SoE issues were on their forums with developers discussing certain aspects of this issue. Those were lost when SoE shut down the forums because they wanted to squelch negative publicity the forums were producing (not specifically to plat selling, but I kinds of topics).
Like I said, this is all common knowledge.
I admit I have thrown a few fallacies out from time to time, those however do not invalidate my premise, there were acts of frustration by behavior such as yours. You can dismiss all you like, but the facts are the facts.
RMT was a problem and early on, the companies fought it. Now they decided to just become it. These are facts, you can not dispute them.
So someone bought Blade of Carnage with real money for his twink ranja and now his ranja is able to solo somewhat easier then usual to level 40 while my warrior needs to save DKP and tank Avatar of War in order to get it.
Should I be angry about this?
Nope, my method of getting the BoC is much more satisfying and fun.
On a PVP server though, yes, I would bitch about it.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
In the above recent responses, you specifically argue that it was not a problem, not an issue against all common knowledge of those present at that time.
As I said, your arguments suggest you don't have issues with RMT.
What is even more telling is that all I am doing is spitballing ideas, talking about issues and possible solutions and look at all of your reactions? You feel threatened by simple discussion. Why? When people get this upset about topics of discussion, there is more to it.
First, stop with the real life examples. A game is nothing like real life, and in fact, that is part of the problem. When you start putting in all the choice and consequences that exist in real life, then you can start using real life as examples as to why this won't work in a game that is fully controlled by the developers. Remember "You are in their world now".
Second, your solutions? Doesn't work... it is failing on Phinny as we speak. Inflation is rampant, RMT is rampant, etc... Your "solution" isn't the answer.
As for your argument on "structures and rules", that can also be made about the adventure portion and has often been made to fight any form of consequence in play. The point is, your response is not discussion, it is a dismissal, especially when you do not attend to the specifics of why a given implementation will fail, but generally refer to issues broadly in order to proclaim conclusions that can not be countered because of your vague attention in a rebuttal.
Oh, and the "We've already established the only real "solution" to the problem of RMT and such is to completely ban all player trade.", No... that is the fallacy you produced to dismiss this discussion.
You haven't even attended to the specifics of the solutions, all you have done is broadly proclaim them invalid and then move on (ie argument of extremes). RMT can be greatly reduced with clever systems, but there must be more control over the game systems in order to make any real progress.
My ideas have been all about creating interesting forms of game play with risk/reward, choice conseuence, etc...
Did you read my suggestions? Sorry if it is hard with all the banter going on by the detractors and I, but basically I was saying make player trade a part of the game, beholden to all the game obstacles that adventuring has, but put into a form that emulates real trade systems, all with the risk of loss, and the difficulties produced by poor decisions.
Well, there are far reaching effects here. RMT produces massive imbalances in the economy, eventually forcing developers to change their own controlled economies to deal with the inflation that the RMT produces. That means if you are not active in the player trade economy, trying to keep up through normal game play can become an issue.
In a competitive camping game such as this, you get people who would never or could never achieve an item obtaining them, empowering them to do content more easily that they would normally not have achieved, again giving them an edge in competition for you.
This also translates to a much stronger desire for players to earn bigger pay outs (RMT forces fast inflation in order to encourage currency buying), so that BoC is now fair game for anyone who wants it because everyone needs it (due to that value it brings on the player trade market).
Someone used an example here about a friend who was camping an item and lost out on several rolls to it, there by having a hard time obtaining it. This is often a result of players rolling for cash reward, which increases the competition against you in the game due to RMT inflation results.
With massive influxes of money into the economy, players are drawn to constantly having to buy in due to the inflation. So item camping for hot items becomes a profitable venture, which begins to take up camps that normally would not be sought consistently due to the fact that the need is not really there. That is, some people will buy an item, but not camp for it. So that "need" is created by player trades ease of acquisition.
There are many subtle factors to which cause issues, including RMTs constant pursuit for bugs that produce increased money into the system.
It is unfortunate that the SoEs early forums were removed, there were some great write ups by devs on the details of how RMT affects the rest of the games systems and eventually players experiences. There was a reason they put massive effort early on to fight it.
SoE knew this, they even tried to fight it for a while (as you can see with numerous attempts in many areas of the games over the years), but then they realized that if they could get the players to accept it, they could profit off it. So, by running RMT themselves, it is a form of control over (one of SoEs reasons for starting up the RMT servers) the issue and a profitable one at that.
Pantheon won't be attending to it, so that puts them right back in the spot SoE was before they adopted RMT. So either they fight it, or they become it. Being that the tenants are at complete odds with RMT, they have to fight it. Repeating the exact same systems that led to the problems isn't a solution.
They will need to think outside the box, look at many different ways to "control" the issue, but... with the knowledge and understanding of how detrimental some "controls" can be (ie TLC, BoE, BoP, etc..). If they are careful, and attack the actual problems at their source and implement solutions that are in the spirit of their tenants, they can go a long way to reducing how RMT affects game systems.
This head in the sand naive belief that release EQs EC style player trading will solve all the issues is poorly conceived.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Meanwhile everyone that does not want to shoot and piss on RMT automatically supports them. Because obviously there is no sane stance in the middle. You are either a RMT or you shoot them.
God, wake up Sinist. You got so deep into your own tiny world of exaggeration that is beyond the "lol, that guy is funny, look at him" - part. Is is really and seriously annoying and the very first topic about pantheon my GF read was this one. You actually scared her away from the game. She literally said: "I don't want to play a game with people like that. If i wanted that i would go back to WoW."
Sure, she will play because i do and we simply play together, but it was a hard hour of talking, just explaining that not every Pantheon follower is as crazy.
Stop.
Scaring.
Away.
People.
You are simply acting like an extremist of the worst kind. You should really just stop responding and posting right NOW and take a breath for at least 3 months, thinking about the crap you are writing here.
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?
Add a paid person that only works with the banhammer. Ban every RMT outright.
Since it is not a free game, let's just take a fee of 40$ per account banned. So about 50 banhammers per Month to pay that person. Everything more is just plain bonus income for the developers. Everything less just means RMT is not an issue at all and the person can work on something else.
RMT has to pay off, otherwise noone does it. If you have to pay a 40 buck "fee" for every adverticement you do it is hard to get any profit out of that.
Also we don't shot with nukes, but use precition strikes this way. You know,... not screwing over legit players. If RMT really goes crazy we can adjust from there. It is damn easy to track them down nowadays. Scripts do all the work GMs used to do by hand before. GMs now simply get a popup "Possible RMT XXX, hit filter yyy with text zzz". GM simply hits the red button and work is done. So seriously. Bring it on RMT, try making a profit if every step you take is tracked.
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?
If I am scaring away RMT people, good... They are the problem.
You keep saying "common knowledge". Yet, the vast majority of people here, who were all veteran eq players, many of us with thousands of hours logged, did not experience your supposed "common knowledge".
So that leads us to occam's razor. What is the simplest and most likely true explanation. That we were all idiots and just either willingly or unwittingly ignored this supposedly rampant behavior, OR, that you are hyper sensitive to it, and are blowing it ridiculously out of proportion with reality, and trying to pass that off as fact (as evidenced by your own statements previous to this whole shitstorm)
This is called a sample bias. I have to deal with it constantly in my day to day work. I work in a business field, and the team i work on regularly deals with the "problem" agents of people who sell our product. We never get to talk to the ones who are good at their jobs and thus never come across our desk. If we were to go off purely the data that we obtained on our side of things, we would think literally everyone who sold our product was an incompetent dunce, or a liar. I constantly have to remind our other employees that not all of the people who sell the product are idiots.
You clearly spent a lot of time on the forums, and just like any forum, you're not hearing the whole story, and the problems are always severely magnified and blown out of proportion with reality. Its like if a game has some bug, and people come onto the forums to complain about it. The ones coming onto the forums are the ones experiencing the bug. That might be 10% of the playerbase, the other 90% are off playing the game not posting because they aren't experiencing the bug. If we went off the forums, we would think it was everyone experiencing the bug.
To touch on one last thing, i absolutely remember blizzard suing them. And you just further supported my point that RMT only became a serious problem once the inclusion of an AH or an AH type system like the bazaar came into effect. It was also a result of games being faceroll easy.
In original EQ standing around trying to slaughter mobs indefinitely (like a gold farmer would do) was a very bad way to make money. You were much better off going to level appropriate content and hoping for items to drop you could sell, etc. Because of this that meant you had to be level appropriate, because of the long leveling curve and difficulty of the game, do you really think a gold farmer was going to pay some guy to spend 500 hours leveling to max level, just so he can start farming gold at any efficient level?
Its all a combination of things that worked to create the problem, fast leveling times, faceroll easy content, auction houses, etc. This also meant with these types of mmo's you attract a specific type of player, the type of person who doesn't recognize the value of investing time and effort into progression and is willingly to whatever is necessary to essentially cheat his way to the top.
Nobody here is arguing that RMT isnt going to exist in Pantheon. We're arguing the extent to which it will and whether we need to be investing this much time and effort into combating a problem which in all likelihood isn't going to be a real issue.
It was like the people running around waving their hands in the air shouting about how the population was going to explode and we would be at 14 billion people by this year and blah blah and all these extreme measures that need to be taken to correct it.
Stop being an alarmist.
If it gets ridiculously bad, first, you can strut around saying i told you so, and you will feel very vindicated and good about yourself. second, we can then look at things to fix it.
However, the vastly more likely situation is that it won't be a major issue or one that's outside of the developers ability to properly police.
"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
Like Rattenmann said, this conversation and tone is not putting our best foot forward.
Again, do you not remember the issues with Sony and Yantis/IGE?
You completely ignored that point and anyone who was around during that time knows that issue.
Sony vs Yantis/IGE was a HUGE issue back then. Either you are lying about this, you didn't play EQ during that time, or you were a little kid who was oblivious.
Why don't you explain to people here about Yantis/IGE, you know... because you a are veteran and all, old school and all? Who were they? What were they doing? What was the objection by Sony? What was the issue? Hmm? You have no clue what I am talking about do you? /facepalm
Here, let me help you some:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=1&mid=1075435996761751677&num=0
http://thedruidsgrove.org/archive/eq/t-6517.html
http://www.azzor.com/article/2006/05/general-news/truth-about-ige-and-gold-industry
https://web.archive.org/web/20010418174718/http://www.mysupersales.com/
Like I said, you are likely not being honest, or were too young/oblivious to care.
Again, I am right, you are wrong. Not because I say so, but because the facts establish this as so.
Anyone who experienced EQ in the early days knows about Yantis/IGE and the slew of problems that were produced by RMT. By the way, the people involved were doing RMT in UO before EQ was released.
Now please move along and stop trolling with your ignorance of this issue.
edit:
For those of you passing by, I highly suggest you read through those links if you did not experience it or were not privy to what was going on. Yantis/IGE were essentially the start of RMT in the west and most people were against it. It was serious problem, it harmed game play, it cheated the legit player and it wreaked havoc on the economy.
Ask yourself this. Why are they so adamant about denying that there was an issue with RMT in early EQ? Is it because they were ignorant of it (didn't really play release EQ or were too young to remember) or is it because they are advocating it?
Why would simple discussion on possible solutions be so heavily attacked? It makes you wonder.