Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] Dungeons & Dragons Online: Cash 4 Gear
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Cash 4 Gear is a new phenomenon creeping into the MMO-space, most notably in Dungeons & Dragons Online. In today's Devil's Advocate, we take a look at the system and offer thoughts as to what it all means. Check it out and then take the discussion to the comments.
Chris Coke, my fellow MMORPG.com columnist on The Tourist, pointed today’s Devil’s Advocate topic to me some time ago, and the topic itself is a little absurd when you first think about it. In the same way that there’s a Cash 4 Gold phenomenon in parts of the world where you can earn money for trading in gold jewelry, the idea of Cash 4 Gear appears to also be making its way into the MMO sphere via Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO).
Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s The Devil's Advocate: Cash 4 Gear.
)
Comments
You must be joking...
For the column, nicely written but I miss the mention of STO which has a similar method since about a year now - true not this direct as DDO will have, you exchange dilly and not the items which will / could be much more volatile. But even with the more steady rate there are players who "play the exchange" all the time...
And Neverwinter's astral diamonds?
I admit I seldom play DDO nowadays, so my main concern about this is what both Victor and in the linked article Roger Edwards referred, LotRO and Mithril Coins...
This seems relevent here http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/paying-to-win
P2w seems rather clearly not bad in and of itself, merely bad depending on implementation, just like any other business model.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
Neither of these games hold any interest to me.
But this is interesting in that it's creating a precedence, which could lead other games into doing the same.
I for one am hoping that it doesn't catch on.
Like I said, look at the link I posted above, the metrics tend to show otherwise, as they should as "p2w" advantages exist in pretty much every sport. Games merging, or closing really depends on many many factors, quality of the games, how the payment model itself is implemented etc.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
A lot of DDO bashing here (LotRo is not doing this described in the article BTW, unless it changed the last year), but I hear no one about EVE online and it's PLEX system. STo was mentioned as well, but all PWI games have this system (sadly). And how about GW2..?
Yes, buying in-game money legally using the publisher is HOT HOT HOT. A certain group of players fall for it (the NOW-generation), and I hope when too many MMOs do it it'll blow over like a lot of trends have done. It'll take time, but eventually we'll be playing normal again without too much pay2win *I hope*
We all seen this comming for well over 2 years now, and for those folks who plat lotro, remember when I told you that lotro would go free to play after ddo did. Well you are about to see something the same happen in lotro.
Pay to win, it has been on the horizon all the time and Turbine/WB been pushing hard to get folks to accept play to win items.
Just saying I am not surprised.
So in other words this is actually worse version of Blizzard RMAH, that everyone and their dog hated so much?
At least in D3 you could get some cash out of it too, here only Turbine gets it all, as I assume that you can't use those shards outside the game? Not to mention it's an MMO unlike D3 where you can solo 100% content(so there is zero influence on you whether someone buys gear for $ or not). Not that I care much about either, just note that in this case company is even more greedy then Blizzard.
Now this isn't new "feature" as some big and successful MMOs have it as mentioned EVE or Guild Wars 2. Guess it feels more fair there as GW2 has no monthly fee(and no premium accounts) and in EVE you can play for free that way, so you can understand that those companies want a some profit too. Here it's more obvious cash grab.
Now whether it's P2W or not depends on gear you that you can buy on such RMAH and whether the game world is persistant(I assume yes as it's MMO). If you can buy same gear as you can find in game in some reasonable time(2-3 hours/2-3 dungeon runs) I don't care. But if you can skip say weeks of gameplay aka buy the current best raid drop, that's too much. At least that's how I see it.
Well, as far as I can tell, top tier gear in most games is locked behind some quest mechanic, usually raiding. As for first life gear disappearing from the regular AH, the really good gear has been gone for quite a while. It was either traded in private channels or done so in the quests that they drop. With the ADAH, this becomes a situation where the true, top end raid gear becomes trade capable. Before now, the majority of top end gear was bound to account or bound to character.
And as to the raiding mechanic being a barrier, I find that hard to believe. DDO is not like WoW where you need to gather 24+ people and then fight with them once the boss fight is over in hopes of reaching the drop first. In DDO, a raid is only 12 people and they all have their loot drops sorted out individually. There is also no one piece of gear that any class HAS to have. While there is plenty of desired gear, not having something will not bar a player from progressing.
[mod edit]
Cash 4 Gear has been around since vanilla WoW for decades now, this is entirely nothing new. What Turbine did was include it as part of their market/AH system. You can earn astral shards via ingame through favor or sellin the gear which one can easily buy said gear off the AH with in game money and turn around and sell it on the astral exchange or obtain it through normal means of doing the quest. Not to mention more ways to obtain Astral Shards will be included in the game. Unlike Neverwinter which so far it's so grindy that they practically force players to buy AD which in turn can buy better gear (hell even the rolled gear in dungeons ends up being a free for all since nothing is class specific and is BoE which just makes it a free for all), a 2 million AD cost mount which one is forced to buy with real money since one only gets a whopping 1k AD for skirmishes during the event. Not to mention the Zen store exclusive products. At least with DDO one can earn TP via favor to purchase anything offered in the store including Astral Shards.
I don't agree with what they did but at least they make it optional. One can use the market to get the astral shards they want for the gear they want or use the TP they earn for it, and that's not including the monster manual to earn astral shards or the daily die lotto or the future methods to earn astral shards which was stated will be coming. Games like Neverwinter where everyway you look one is nickled and dimed with AD for either runes stones, mounts, mount training, quality gear, AH (which in dungeon gear being BoE and no class restriction along with lvl restrictions good luck on getting the gear for your class lol), and who know what else.
In the old days of MMO's buy and selling equipment was common. So lets say we want to buy this sword that costs 100 gold. Firstly the sale price is configured by basic supply and demand of the players no outside involvement. So to earn this 100 gold, you can play some time farm some money or you can outsource that work to a gold farmer and buy it from him.
Today we have the same system of buying gear for money. One sword, 100 gold. To get that money you can again grind or pay a gold farmer to grind for you. But there is one more option you can now pay the company directly to get the gold. Essentailly the game companies have cut out the middle man of the gold farmer and took their place. Sounds good enough, nobody will miss the spam and such.
Here is where the problem comes in. Because the game company now sells you god directly they have an incentive for you to buy more of it. A gold farmer has no control over the game, but the game company does. So this leads itself to all kinds of potentially unethical hyjinks. Such as that same sword for 100g well we need more money so lets tweak our drop rates to make it rarer, thus raising the price and making people spend more actual cash to get it. Or people are getting gold to easily from grinding mobs, if this keeps up we will no longer be able to sell them our gold. Lets make grining more time cosuming or difficult. Or lets make the leveling process/quests less rewarding, thus to get what you want, you have to spend an insane amount of time getting it or you can just more easily pay us. Its way to easy for companies to manipulate the economies to their financial benifit and against yours, in secret with no checks and balances.
This had been a big problem in GW2 when I was playing it, and the trend seems to be getting worse/stronger. Its a great way for companies to make extra money and since it is secret most of the player base will not realize how manipulated they are. It is dirty business and untransparent. And I personally will not buy into this concept.
Yep. This is why LOTRO added mithril coins to the game. Just wait for the real money auction house to come next.
Why would anyone be surprised by this type of monetization progression in a F2P game. The F2P model only works if the game company can keep people paying and one off payment items can only make them so much before all the potential buyers already have them. So therefore what is required to keep the money flowing in, new items that people will want or new monetization methods.
But why should people have to pay is what the F2P crowd is usually decrying right, well here's just some of the ongoing requirements for running an MMO:
* Servers hosting - Cost is dependant on size and speed required;
* Wages - Devs (obviously), Managers, Accountants, HR, IT Support, Customer Service, Community Managers, etc;
* Rent - Building including power costs, etc;
* Hardware - Either purchased or rented;
* Internet - Required by most employees;
* Phones - Land line as well as mobile phone costs;
* Working capital - You need constant cash flow in order to pay bills, wages, etc on time;
* Building Insurance - All the companies office contents, etc;
* Liability insurance - Getting sued without it could spell the end of your company.
All of these and more are ongoing costs/requirements for running an MMO.
Even those that think B2P alone is all a company should require after release are incredibly naive. The company has just spent the last 2-5 years creating the game without any incoming customer funds, so that B2P must first cover those costs before they make any profit whatsoever and then after release take away from that the ongoing costs. Sounds like an unsustainable business model to me.
Outlaying money each month without a decent return on that expenditure regardless of business model does not tend to go over very well with shareholders, the result usually being the demise of that game.