Dream game: Lineage II minus bots, sellers, and wonky economy?

cygnetsong · September 2007

Games like Lineage II and to some extent FFXI have a problem: people want shortcuts, which leads to sellers, which monopolize the markets, which drives up prices to ridiculous levels, which leads to botting to make money.

My solution would be to make it so the only player-to-player trading would be through anonymous auction listings. That would take away sellers ability to send in-game money to players. Thoughts?

Sovrath · September 2007

Originally posted by cygnetsong

Games like Lineage II and to some extent FFXI have a problem: people want shortcuts, which leads to sellers, which monopolize the markets, which drives up prices to ridiculous levels, which leads to botting to make money.
My solution would be to make it so the only player-to-player trading would be through anonymous auction listings. That would take away sellers ability to send in-game money to players. Thoughts?

No it wouldn't.

The economy in Lineage Ii is very much a part of the game. The way it works is to put the power into the sellers hands. By changing it to auctions you change a significant part of the game.

There are many people who love the economy and the way it is set up. By taking that away you are taking away a huge portion of the game for some people. Also, you will get people complaining about not being able to help friends and family who start the game. Most players want more freedom than that.

Galaxiaceles · September 2007

I like player shops (You can find great deals, whether they messed up the price or it really is a great deal).

I DO NOT like having my computer on 24/7 sitting in town. Make it so you can sell offline. It's not hard.

Other than that, just get a company and GM's that care to run the game ... that's not that hard either ... but I guess it is.

bojinx · September 2007

I agree I like the player shops and the search button makes it much easier to find what you want (as long as the seller spells or abbreviates the item correctly). I just wish they had a buffer zone around the Gatekeeper in Giran.

RudedawgCDN · September 2007

L2's way of players selling their items is one of the worst systems I've ever seen in a game. Sometimes the number of players in a town is sooo bad you can't even get to the gatekeepers.

Having said that, even if they fixed the economy or the Player buying selling system I would never play this game again.

Carebear pvp..... yuck.

rufusangus · September 2007

Theres really nothing wrong with the economy model; I agree it could use some stream lining, but thats not the problem. All the major problems stem from the chinese bots, they flooded the economy with trillions of adena that otherwise shouldn't have been there in comparison to the total number of players.

A few bots here and there arn't enough to make that much of an impact, but lineage 2 got so entrenched with bots that it caused severe and irreversable damage, and NCNA basically left it up to the players to solve the problem themselves. Lineage 2 is a prime example of what can happen when a game is left unchecked and not properly policed. Theres nothing wrong with the game itself, but without policing the players and botters, the persistant economy was trashed beyond anything they had originally planned on, becoming so bad that it made the game twice as hard on new players than it was on its release because the prices got so high, they were impossible to afford without ebaying, which started a vicious circle. Theres really no way to fix it now without a wipe and much stricter rules against botting, but at this point, the games declined so much so that its never going to peak again.

As far as lineage 3 goes, i'll play it IF they fire the NCNA team and bring in people who will put a stop to it, other wise im not wasting my time and money just to watch the bots gradually take over again. The chinese owned Aden on bartz, they owned Aden for crying out loud. Ever red tried to stop them, but without the GM's doing their jobs, the system worked in the farmers favor, not ours. From a few little dwarves running around in early c1 to taking over the entire economy and even castles now, you can't tell me that NC can use ignorance as an excuse for that, they had years todo their job, and it wasn't until it got absolutly out of control that they finally started making promises of a crack down, but by then, lineage was well into its downward spiral.

xersent · September 2007

as far as FFXI things have got alot better.. compared to like 2 years ago.. the prices on stuff have droped by a massive amount.. like a Hauberk would of cost like 1.2 - 2mil Gil .. now there 250k .. just as an example.

And some items that were 10mil are now 1mil so there is a diffrence.

Well thats on my server (valefor)

zensaber · September 2007

dare we dream?

Torak · September 2007

Although I agree with the OP to a degree, the economy is brutal in L2 and there are to many bots / farmers...I use to think it was a problem that was mainly exclusive to L2.

Not so much anymore. I recently did a whirlwind tour of several MMO's and you know something? The random named "gnhfgl" toon isn't exclusive to L2 anymore. In fact when I reactivated my SOE station, I think there are honestly more gold sellers in their games then players. SWG is so bad you can not even read your chat box without /ingoring about half a dozen spammers. In Vanguard of all the disasterously launched, mess of a game, the first 5 minutes in game I was bombarded with /tells to buy gold, in EQII my mailbox was stuffed with gold spam and I also recieved several /tells within minutes of logging in after over a year of inactivity.

DAoC...pretty much the same but not as extream, it took about 2 days before I got hit with /tells for gold sites.

I haven't played WoW in a long time (2years?) but it was pretty bad back then with the /tells and junk mail ingame, I can't imagine what its like now.

Dunno guys, bots and sellers are everywhere now days. Wonky economies, yeah L2 has a tough one no doubt but look at game slike WoW, easiest economy around. It may as well hand you money and yet its saturated with gold spammers and sellers. Same as Guild Wars (a game I ALWAYS have installed and use as a backup fanasty butt kicker) Spammers and crap there as well.

Its a problem with the players, if no one bought the crap, no farmers/spammers could exist. When you find that perfect game, let me know. L2 was actually the tamest of them all. When I was playing I don't think I ever recieved a /tell once in over a year of play.

I honestly don't know what to say. In L2 you see bunches of bots running around all over the place but they pretty much leave you alone and in SWG there is so much spamming going on you literally can not read your chat box or send a tell or even talk in general chat until you put about half a dozen people on your ignore list only to half a dozen new ones the next day.

I miss the days of training bots for fun and Profit when whites dropped on death. The bots didn't bother me at all in those days, its was more like free loot back then. I really lost most of my motivation to play when they did away with that.

lilune666 · September 2007

There are far more people who bitch about the economy in this game then there are who actually enjoy it. Almost every other MMO too, in fact.

Gee, I wonder why?

Did you ever have to farm in a pen and paper Rpg with your friends? No? Ever have to farm half the time in a single player Rpg? No? What about fantasy fiction? Did Drizzt pay coin for Icingdeath & twinkle? No? Did Elric buy Stormbringer? No? You bet your ass they didn't, because heroes are too busy to worry about stupid shit like money! If Roland had to farm for his guns as long as I had to farm for my A grade, Stephen King would have had to write another three books in the series. (many of you would have liked that, I'm sure.)

Dear mr. MMO developer, please just do away with the lame shit time sinks that you lean on like a crutch. Make something fun instead.

nakuma · October 2007

Originally posted by rufusangus

Theres really nothing wrong with the economy model; I agree it could use some stream lining, but thats not the problem. All the major problems stem from the chinese bots, they flooded the economy with trillions of adena that otherwise shouldn't have been there in comparison to the total number of players.

A few bots here and there arn't enough to make that much of an impact, but lineage 2 got so entrenched with bots that it caused severe and irreversable damage, and NCNA basically left it up to the players to solve the problem themselves. Lineage 2 is a prime example of what can happen when a game is left unchecked and not properly policed. Theres nothing wrong with the game itself, but without policing the players and botters, the persistant economy was trashed beyond anything they had originally planned on, becoming so bad that it made the game twice as hard on new players than it was on its release because the prices got so high, they were impossible to afford without ebaying, which started a vicious circle. Theres really no way to fix it now without a wipe and much stricter rules against botting, but at this point, the games declined so much so that its never going to peak again.

As far as lineage 3 goes, i'll play it IF they fire the NCNA team and bring in people who will put a stop to it, other wise im not wasting my time and money just to watch the bots gradually take over again. The chinese owned Aden on bartz, they owned Aden for crying out loud. Ever red tried to stop them, but without the GM's doing their jobs, the system worked in the farmers favor, not ours. From a few little dwarves running around in early c1 to taking over the entire economy and even castles now, you can't tell me that NC can use ignorance as an excuse for that, they had years todo their job, and it wasn't until it got absolutly out of control that they finally started making promises of a crack down, but by then, lineage was well into its downward spiral.

I agree the game itself is not the problem its the bots, screwing up the economy. Just like a real encomy, if you flood the economy with enough coin the value goes down, prices go up on items that were once 3-7x less expensive. After a while these items are all increased or inflated in pricing to supply to meet the demand. what it comes down to for example a sword u need is grab B was once 5 mill adena now its over 15 million adena (could be greed, could be bots who knows but majority is bots boosting prices so that can sell that adena at a large profit) the debate can go on for ages lol

my rreason for leaving was not that I didnt like the grind, yeah it was hard,yeah i got Pked or trained a few times, but it was fun!, yapping and talkingh smack to ya groupmates, clanmates, going out pvpng, pking people, coming to people rescue from reds trolling around cuasing problems.pvp was awesome, killing bosses in catacombs,seiging was sick as hell loved it watching ya back whenever u went soloing in certain spots i loved it. but the economy is so pooched now, its damage is irreversible if I wanted to buy a damacasus sword id have to pay 70 mill adena stock( though i saw one for 68 mill adena +4 enchanted which isnt a bad deal considering the other prices damas around Giran) this was over 6 months ago is it different? less? more? id bet more. i had my entire Doom armor, inc luding shield minus the dama sword (had a +4 SLS) i was lucky I got my Doom when I did for my DA cause i saw the price in doom armore go 10-40% higher over the course of 2-3 months. yet another example. mats? another sick example, mats costing before 500-2000 adena now running 5k-20k adena. its like a snowball effects it ever-increasing ever escalating.

now the question i ask myself, woould I go to Lineage 3? hell yeah, but how long would the honeymoon last? til the game is flooded yet again with chinese bots ( though lets not paint with a broadbrush as there are Im sure euro based bot and american based bot outfits) lets hope the team involved with policing doesnt rely on allowing us players to police the game, we as players can only do so much, when it comes down to it, NCsoft GM's are like god's mighty bolt of lightning out of the sky banning the tresspasser into oblivion( banned)

I think they really need to rethink botht he gameplay system architecture, how buying and selling between players are orchestrated and able to be enforced as well as policed. I think a major overhaul on the economy and how players trade, and implement purchase and selling by a huge degree. but I also believe in player based shops as u can find some fantastic deals ( as i loosely detailed above:P) but i feel some good can come from lineage 2, lets hope NCsoft learns their lesson and implements them into Lineage 3. cya then I hope.

isurus · October 2007

By now I must sound like a broken record but here I go again, you are all wrong. The problem that needs to be solved first and foremost is L2's design.

What else can you do?

Hire hundreds of deputy GMs to police every single potential RMT exchange ever? Pay their recurring salaries for x years rather than a one time fee to a handful of designers and coders?

I often hear the argument, "it's the mindset of western gamers that needs to be fixed."

lol? how exactly are you going to solve that problem? Play subliminal messages through their headphones whenever they are in-game?

People are lazy, they want instant gratification. And other people will supply them that gratification if they can make some money off of it. This is how it is and this is how it always will be.

You can either design for it or deal with the consequences.

Fix L2's economy, and everything else will fall into place.

And before anyone starts chanting, "you will never stop 100% of RMT"...

Well no shit.

But that doesn't mean it can't be cut down to size. To at least the point where only a small minority of rich and stupid players participate in it. To the point where you don't see farmers botting 24/7 in every necrop and catacomb on the map. To the point where adena sellers aren't mass whispering everyone in Giran. Where the average player doesn't feel compelled to ebay just to stay competetive.

These things can all happen but the solution is not to hire more GMs, or an out-of game RMT cyber police force, or subliminal radio to brainwash your players into not ebaying.

The solution is to cut the snake off at the head through design rather than chasing the tail through administration.

walker68 · October 2007

Originally posted by rufusangus

Theres really nothing wrong with the economy model; I agree it could use some stream lining, but thats not the problem. All the major problems stem from the chinese bots, they flooded the economy with trillions of adena that otherwise shouldn't have been there in comparison to the total number of players.

A few bots here and there arn't enough to make that much of an impact, but lineage 2 got so entrenched with bots that it caused severe and irreversable damage, and NCNA basically left it up to the players to solve the problem themselves. Lineage 2 is a prime example of what can happen when a game is left unchecked and not properly policed. Theres nothing wrong with the game itself, but without policing the players and botters, the persistant economy was trashed beyond anything they had originally planned on, becoming so bad that it made the game twice as hard on new players than it was on its release because the prices got so high, they were impossible to afford without ebaying, which started a vicious circle. Theres really no way to fix it now without a wipe and much stricter rules against botting, but at this point, the games declined so much so that its never going to peak again.

As far as lineage 3 goes, i'll play it IF they fire the NCNA team and bring in people who will put a stop to it, other wise im not wasting my time and money just to watch the bots gradually take over again. The chinese owned Aden on bartz, they owned Aden for crying out loud. Ever red tried to stop them, but without the GM's doing their jobs, the system worked in the farmers favor, not ours. From a few little dwarves running around in early c1 to taking over the entire economy and even castles now, you can't tell me that NC can use ignorance as an excuse for that, they had years todo their job, and it wasn't until it got absolutly out of control that they finally started making promises of a crack down, but by then, lineage was well into its downward spiral.

exactly

walker68 · October 2007

Originally posted by Torak

Although I agree with the OP to a degree, the economy is brutal in L2 and there are to many bots / farmers...I use to think it was a problem that was mainly exclusive to L2.
Not so much anymore. I recently did a whirlwind tour of several MMO's and you know something? The random named "gnhfgl" toon isn't exclusive to L2 anymore. In fact when I reactivated my SOE station, I think there are honestly more gold sellers in their games then players. SWG is so bad you can not even read your chat box without /ingoring about half a dozen spammers. In Vanguard of all the disasterously launched, mess of a game, the first 5 minutes in game I was bombarded with /tells to buy gold, in EQII my mailbox was stuffed with gold spam and I also recieved several /tells within minutes of logging in after over a year of inactivity.
DAoC...pretty much the same but not as extream, it took about 2 days before I got hit with /tells for gold sites.
I haven't played WoW in a long time (2years?) but it was pretty bad back then with the /tells and junk mail ingame, I can't imagine what its like now.
Dunno guys, bots and sellers are everywhere now days. Wonky economies, yeah L2 has a tough one no doubt but look at game slike WoW, easiest economy around. It may as well hand you money and yet its saturated with gold spammers and sellers. Same as Guild Wars (a game I ALWAYS have installed and use as a backup fanasty butt kicker) Spammers and crap there as well.
Its a problem with the players, if no one bought the crap, no farmers/spammers could exist. When you find that perfect game, let me know. L2 was actually the tamest of them all. When I was playing I don't think I ever recieved a /tell once in over a year of play.
I honestly don't know what to say. In L2 you see bunches of bots running around all over the place but they pretty much leave you alone and in SWG there is so much spamming going on you literally can not read your chat box or send a tell or even talk in general chat until you put about half a dozen people on your ignore list only to half a dozen new ones the next day.
I miss the days of training bots for fun and Profit when whites dropped on death. The bots didn't bother me at all in those days, its was more like free loot back then. I really lost most of my motivation to play when they did away with that.

When I was playing LOTR id get atleast 3 or so gold selling tells per day and an ingame Mail spam.

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Dream game: Lineage II minus bots, sellers, and wonky economy?

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Dream game: Lineage II minus bots, sellers, and wonky economy?

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