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Auction House: Death of Community

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  • william0532william0532 Member Posts: 251
    Originally posted by Impacatus

    It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

    I liked playing an Image Designer in SWG, simply because I liked talking to people and providing a service.  The most fun I had was when the customer only had a vague idea of what they wanted, and we'd work together to decide on something that satisfied them.  My least favorite were the ones that had already looked up what they wanted and just said "hairstyle #32 nose length -2 width +1".

    The second group was much easier and quicker to serve, but without the human element there wasn't much satisfaction.

    So, while I wouldn't want to go back to the days of WTB/WTS spam, I do think you lose something when you make everything automatic.

    One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

    swg had all the community elements, just needed a fun game to back it all up in my opinion. I think auction houses do hurt community. I don't believe it KILLS it, but it doesn't help it. Add in all the other community building anti devices like group finders and what not, and you will not have a community what so ever in my honest opinion. I'm afraid todays games are built for the majority of the player base, and the majority of that base is younger than those that would want a game without group finders, auction houses and what not.

    Image designer lol, that brings back some memories. I actually hired an interior decorator in SWG to decorate my house for halloween lol. That game had the craziest community.

    SWG actually carried me into trying SWTOR, and while the gameplay is pretty fun, and story was decent, I felt like I beat the game quickly and without all those things that communities did in older games, there was nothing left(other than getting black hole gear for all my commpanions lol).

     

    Image designer! Where where you when I created a character and realized I was about 4 foot tall! I couldn't find an image designer anywhere! Damn nge/cu running everyone off. Do you know how hard it was to find an image designer, much less a "master" image designer lol.

     

  • ImpacatusImpacatus Member Posts: 436

    Yep, those were some good times.  Funny thing is, as a male I would never have imagined I'd have so much fun being what was essentially a glorified hairstylist.  I just picked up novice entertainer on a whim, then I thought it was kind of cool that I could magically change things about people then charge them for it.  And yes, I made it to master. :P

    Really, good crafting is rare enough in games, but I hardly ever see ANY games that include a service profession.

    Like I said, I think at least some of the new generation would like sandbox, if they had the chance to experience it.

    If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.

  • william0532william0532 Member Posts: 251
    Originally posted by Impacatus

    Yep, those were some good times.  Funny thing is, as a male I would never have imagined I'd have so much fun being what was essentially a glorified hairstylist.  I just picked up novice entertainer on a whim, then I thought it was kind of cool that I could magically change things about people then charge them for it.  And yes, I made it to master. :P

    Really, good crafting is rare enough in games, but I hardly ever see ANY games that include a service profession.

    Like I said, I think at least some of the new generation would like sandbox, if they had the chance to experience it.

    Yeah that game encouraged alot of fun little oddities. I remember I discovered that I could harvest meat from animals I killed, so I did and sold it on my vendor and my mail box blew up with requests from cooks lol.  I made alot of friends(and got hooked up on buff foods!) from something as simple as hunting/fishing and even the dreaded milking sessions lol.

  • AconsarAconsar Member Posts: 262

    The Auction House is not the true beast that's at fault, it's merely a result of a style.  The true issue is static and generic loot based systems that allow for auction houses to flourish and basic coin systems to inflate.  Asheron's Call was an example of almost everything being randomized with the exception of monster trophies and certain materials of the kind and that money wasn't the only form of currency.  There was a large scale trading system where everything had value, some more so to certain people than others and it allowed for a large variety of not only social interaction but value to ALL items, theoretically.

     

    I miss the days of "hunting" for loot, not knowing what I was going to get and finding a real gem.  Or specifically targeting trophy items because they were a static form of valued trade.  Or you could just loot for cash and sell it off to make money that way.  There was no auction house, it was purely trade interaction.  I wish that type of loot system was more prominent in today's games.

  • ImpacatusImpacatus Member Posts: 436

    Yeah, I know what you mean.  I don't even know why random loot tables went away, I don't know anyone who complained about that aspect of gaming.

    I remember as a newbie I made what I thought was a fortune during a Halloween event by harvesting the parts needed to make costumes.

    If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.

  • MyrdynnMyrdynn Member RarePosts: 2,483
    Originally posted by Aconsar

    The Auction House is not the true beast that's at fault, it's merely a result of a style.  The true issue is static and generic loot based systems that allow for auction houses to flourish and basic coin systems to inflate.  Asheron's Call was an example of almost everything being randomized with the exception of monster trophies and certain materials of the kind and that money wasn't the only form of currency.  There was a large scale trading system where everything had value, some more so to certain people than others and it allowed for a large variety of not only social interaction but value to ALL items, theoretically.

     

    I miss the days of "hunting" for loot, not knowing what I was going to get and finding a real gem.  Or specifically targeting trophy items because they were a static form of valued trade.  Or you could just loot for cash and sell it off to make money that way.  There was no auction house, it was purely trade interaction.  I wish that type of loot system was more prominent in today's games.

    best loot system ever, I remember reading back in the day the odds of finding an identical high end item was like 1 in 25 billion

     

  • AusareAusare Member Posts: 850
    Ac1 was about grinding the same mobs over and over. Not that great.
  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Impacatus

    It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

    One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

    Why compromise? The whole point of a AH is to reduce transaction cost (in terms of time and search). It would be pointless to make it expensive to use.

    "Less rewarding" only to those who want to social & chat. The easier you make communication & trade, the more efficient you can do it, and more buyers/sellers you can reach in the same amount of time, the chance of a better deal is higher, and more rewarding.

    This "social community" thing is not desirable, to many, as you might think. There is little value in chatting with people in a GAME, when all you need to do is to open up FB, or SKYPE, or MSN to be social. Sure there are still those who wants a lot of social in their games, but i think "game" is becoming more and more important than "social", unless those who are playing social/FB games.

     

     

     

  • YohanuYohanu Member UncommonPosts: 215

    For me, this is one of the most important things i look for in an MMO. I could go ahead and write a long essae on the matter, but why bother when Raph Koster has already done this for me?

     

    http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/03/20/do-auction-houses-suck/

     

    It is a very good read that outlines the problem in a way that perhaps more users here will understand.

  • bliss14bliss14 Member UncommonPosts: 595

    You know what I thought was cool about GW1 was just hawking your wares in trade chat.  It didn't have an auction house and you actually spent hours entertaining offers for what you were offering. 

    I bet I spent the bulk of my time just trading minipets after i finished prophecies and it was really cool just building plat.  Along with all the hundreds of crafts items.

  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,331

    The whole point about the social aspect in a MMO is to meet people you do not know and sometimes interact in a roleplaying or immersive way. So Skype is not best for this, in game communication is.

    Also the decline in the need to uses Auction houses shows how they have gone down the wrong path, this feeds in to mistakes about crafting and so on. I am not saying people are not using AH’s as much these days, I am saying they don’t even need to use them. We have gone from a situation where you needed to interact with people for purchases, to one where you needed to interact with a AH for purchases, to one where you don’t need the purchases at all.

    So streamlining of game play, making it faster and supposedly better, has once again removed gameplay as that’s what it tends to do. You see that right across the gaming genre but particularly in MMO’s.

  • ImpacatusImpacatus Member Posts: 436
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by Impacatus

    It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

    One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

    Why compromise? The whole point of a AH is to reduce transaction cost (in terms of time and search). It would be pointless to make it expensive to use.

    "Less rewarding" only to those who want to social & chat. The easier you make communication & trade, the more efficient you can do it, and more buyers/sellers you can reach in the same amount of time, the chance of a better deal is higher, and more rewarding.

    This "social community" thing is not desirable, to many, as you might think. There is little value in chatting with people in a GAME, when all you need to do is to open up FB, or SKYPE, or MSN to be social. Sure there are still those who wants a lot of social in their games, but i think "game" is becoming more and more important than "social", unless those who are playing social/FB games.

     

     

     

    Social games actually aren't usually very social at all, but that's beside the point.

    When I just want to play a game, I play a single player game.  Many of them have better story, better mechanics, more exciting gameplay, better pretty much everything than mmos.  If I play an mmorpg, it's because I want to interact with people.

    I'm led to understand that in the outside world, people sometimes meet up with their friends for beer and poker.  I've never heard of anyone meeting up with their friends for beer and solitaire.  That would be daft.  They want to play with each other, not just next to each other.

    If the goal of the auction house is what you say it is, it's not a very good way to achieve it.  It would be even more convinient to just have NPC vendors with unlimited inventory that buy and sell everything at a fixed price.

    From the developer's point of view, players interacting and forming attachments is a good thing, because it leads to longer retention.

     

    @Yohanu Koster is awesome.  Thanks for the link.

    If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.

  • ChrisReitzChrisReitz Member Posts: 115
    Well just shows research and patience is what needed you actually need to memorize and watch. If you cant do that then yea  you will get ripped and the walls will tumble down. Their are common greens to where the marketplace is  basically useless if you think you can actually craft items and buy the materials from the marketplace you are dead wrong that is your mistake right their. you have to make full profit. Get the materials yourself and so on. Not really that hard to do.
  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 32,810

    yeah, I don't like Auction Houses. I much prefer individual shops and bartering with players.

    but I suppose that's just me and a few others.

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  • aRtFuLThinGaRtFuLThinG Member UncommonPosts: 1,387
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    That is only because there is no AH.

    If there is an AH, the attribute of the item will be displayed. So while a good crafter and make better items and charge higher prices, the buyers don't have to care who he is.

    If only you can make a +5 sword, and all swords are +4. On the AH, i can see your +5 sword. But i don't care about you or who you are .. i only care the "+5". The identify of the crafter is MOOT on a AH.

    There was AH in SWG (Market Terminals).

     

    But people prefer to shop because the quality of the stuff that are sold on private vendors are superior.

     

    You are basing AH on the modern day MMO's mentality - where crafting is not a unique process and everything is of certain sets of quality. Back in the day (like in SWG) crafted items quality are dynamic and depended on a variety of factors (not just 3 different levels like rare, epic, legendary, etc).

     

    You haven't seen enough mmos and your judgement is based on limited experience, I'm sorry to say.

  • ExiledTyrantExiledTyrant Member UncommonPosts: 69

    I think auction houses are great additions simply for the fact when a games population gets so high searching through individual shops becomes a headache. I remeber searching playing 2Moons (Dekaron) where setting up shops was your characters livelyhood. It wasn't optional you had to sell in the open market if you wanted to ge anywhere money wise. It had it's nice touches where it really felt like shopping and finding deals was nice, but it also took hours away from playinng the actual game and prices could get out of control at times. With a million voices all saying a different thing it became hard to zero in on items you truely needed. Also monoplies were easy to form and hard to break. I myself have setup monopolies on certain weapons and upgrade material called argates. There were various tricks to be abused in the open market system with little fear of having opposing merchants stop me when I'm one open market in a sea of many. Good for me. but bad for them as having that kind of control over the market made prices iffy to say the least with peoples only option to try and undercut the seller. this leads into extensive investigation of who's doing what to tip the market in such a way.

     

    Auction houses allow you to get what you want in somewhat decent fashion in usually an hour of searching without the headache of constantly navigating stores, haggling, and constant zoning. In dekaron and other games with simliar player run shops I've played  to make out good you would have to shop around 2-3 hours. If you were lucky you found what you wanted you had enough coin before the guy closed shop(being as most shops don't even stay open if the player is offline unlike the AH), and hopefully you weren't ripped off although you have no real idea unless you searched the hundreds of shops 1 by 1 before you made your decision.

     

    Is the auction house 100% neccessary? No problly not, but it's a convenience I would hope is here to stay. My eyes grow weary of searching enless bars of chat log and opening coutnless player shops for hours on end becuase I really need a guantlet upgrade or my weapons could use more gems etc.

    "Do not speak to me of fate!" ~ A fairy tale for the Demon Lord

  • OrenshiiOrenshii Member Posts: 61

    I would like auction houses alot more, if every kid who got on it

    didnt undercut  prices so bad that it makes u just want to npc everything.

    Nothing i find more frustraiting to see auction house history and see

    20 different ppl undercut you but 50%+ to the point the items may

    aswell be sold to the shop.

     

    I Think one of the few games who had a decent auction was FFXI and even had sellers

    names after you bought an item, if you wanted to contact them. However this was

    well before the goldseller fiasco and the hated abyssea expansion. IMO the best game

    at its prime hands down.

     

    Oren

    Destiny has cheated me
    By forcing me to decide upon
    The woman that I idolise
    Or the hands of an automaton

    Without these hands I can't complete
    The opera that was captivating her
    But if I keep them, and she marries him
    Then he probably won't want me dating her

  • jagd241jagd241 Member Posts: 54

    Not to keep pushing the game but there are no Auction Houses in Project Gorgon

    http://www.eldergame.com/2012/09/the-case-against-auction-houses/

    For the reasons identified by the OP and in this thread on the devidary above.

     

     

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by aRtFuLThinG
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    That is only because there is no AH.

    If there is an AH, the attribute of the item will be displayed. So while a good crafter and make better items and charge higher prices, the buyers don't have to care who he is.

    If only you can make a +5 sword, and all swords are +4. On the AH, i can see your +5 sword. But i don't care about you or who you are .. i only care the "+5". The identify of the crafter is MOOT on a AH.

    There was AH in SWG (Market Terminals).

     

    But people prefer to shop because the quality of the stuff that are sold on private vendors are superior.

     

    You are basing AH on the modern day MMO's mentality - where crafting is not a unique process and everything is of certain sets of quality. Back in the day (like in SWG) crafted items quality are dynamic and depended on a variety of factors (not just 3 different levels like rare, epic, legendary, etc).

     

    You haven't seen enough mmos and your judgement is based on limited experience, I'm sorry to say.

    I don't think you understand the point.  Those private vendors should put their wares on the AH, because it reaches more customers.

    And there is nothign special about dyanmic item qualities. That is so in D3. Every crafted item, or any looted item has random attributes. In fact, a AH is a perfect place to buy/sell these items because it is much easier to search for what you need.

    Crafting has NOTHIGN to do with how it is traded. Bartering is just inefficient. Moving around to multiple ventors is just inefficient.

     

  • SuraknarSuraknar Member UncommonPosts: 852
    Originally posted by jagd241

    Not to keep pushing the game but there are no Auction Houses in Project Gorgon

    http://www.eldergame.com/2012/09/the-case-against-auction-houses/

    For the reasons identified by the OP and in this thread on the devidary above.

     

     

    Nice post by the OP, the case of the Auction House has been debated many times over the years, I myself have made a similar post as the OP several years ago.

    Nevertheless, I agree with the way it was done in UO and SWG, (Raph Coster was involved with both mind you).

    Some other games did not have an auction house, such as Lineage 2, instead people set up shop with their characters, honnestly I did not like that approach at all, albeit it seems like it is a popular one with Asian MMO's.

    I prefer the vendors of UO and SWG, of cource these imply some type of Housing system to be in as well, and many MMO's have abandoned that idea.

    So when you have no houses and when you do not want your players to sit idle for hours when they rather be out there adventuring, what do you do? How do you provide a convenient means of exchange. And lest be specific here, an Auction House is not an Economy, it is but an Exchange center, there is much more involved in order to have an Economy.

    And most MMO's moved away from that idea too. Because most MMO's focus on the Action part and do not want necessarilly to offer the Fantasy of running your onw business. But they want everyone to be able to spend a less time as possible in economical activities, and be able to exchange items with other players with the least possible impact to their time spent doing so.

    Th auction house is the solution.

    In a game such as WoW, it might be a good thing since it is a game focussed on Questing, you do not want your players spending tim running to Auctioneers. I personally very seldom used the AH in WoW too, I can actually count the time I used it on my fingers during the many months that I played it.

    Another reason is because MMO's after WoW are designed to appeal to Fans and non Fans of the genre. And the average person will expect in a Virtual Environment to have the same convenience that they get in their every day life. When you need something you just go and buy it at the Super market, the Convenience store and all the other stores...

    The auction house makes that possible while also periting people at the same time to sell something as well.

    So everyone can buy and everyone can sell and no one needs to become a Merchant to do so.

    That is fine if you are not looking for some depth of gameplay, ifyou are not seeking to play out the Fantasy of running a business, and most of the non fans of the genre are happy with it, and that is why at this point the AH has become a de facto feature.

    But if your game has no depth, how are you going to insure its long term viability or profitability. Most people will play it for 3 months (many others just play them for one not subscribing ever), and then the decline starts...

    Companies play with Marketing and the way things are expressed, because they know the average player does not have in depth understanding of some concepts and will just accept what is vehiculated.

    When Game X, lists one of its feature to be a engaging and dynamic economy but the only thing that it contains is an Auction House, that is rubish in reality.

    Not even WoW has an economy per se, it does have an Exchange system which fills the needs of some of its players but that is about it.

    An Economy is defined by the activities of people (players in this context) consisting of the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of goods and services as required to satisfy the needs of people in a given society (the in game community of players in this context).

    Do you really need to produce anything in WoW? Do you need to distribute anything? Do you actually need to consume anything? Do you need to exchange anything? The answer in no, you can play from lvl 1 to lvl 90 without ever engaging in any of these activities just doing your qusts going to the instances and arguably the raids.

    On the other hand in a game such as SWG, you had certiain needs, while not a game breaking need, when you wanted to have a bigger house, when you wanted to expand your city, when you wanted to get better materials even or finished goods, a better weapons or a Droid or even a Pet, to assist you in your line of activity, thee was a place from certain specilists that provided this to you. You may have been playing the Fantasy of being a bounty Hunter, your chances of success were enhanced by having some good quality equipment (you could still be successfull if you did not have it, but to alesser degree, since it is a game, a certain minimum threshold had to be insured). And so you had the player who was  playing out their fantasy of being a Weaponsmith spending most of their gameing time having fun engaging on the economic activities required to their own success in making better and better weapons that you as a bounty hunter could buy from, and then have fun with in doing that which you spent most of your time in game, shooting stuff.

    There was synergy like that and a wider appeal to many and diverse players with different tastes and preferences as well as fantasy goals and aspirations.

    And this interaction between all these diverse players made up the gameplay experience.

    Oh yes the crafter could play WoW too, and try to play out their fantasy usingthe Ah but it is a half baked experience for them, in time they will just have to conform to the way the game is played or simply quit bored. Because rpeating instances to get gear and doing quests all day long or staying up late for a spot in a raid is simply not what that particule person is having the most fun with...

    So yes, I think too, that shoe boxing an "Economy" to simply being a way forpeople to exchange things which they do not need...is detrimental to an In game community, simply because the laws of enthropy will render it eventuallly homogeneous. And a community flourishes in the long term by being diverse...not by being made up of only the same parts.

    What do we say when we see people living in small towns and villages moving off to the big cities, when they close their stores stop workingtheir lands, stop producing their goods? We say that these communities are dying, well same thing happens in MMO's too. The common denominator being Human beings who are naturally and inherently diverse.

    But apparently it takes a rocket scientist to understand this when it comes to designing an MMO...or even worse, the Rocket scientist gets discarded by the Financeers...looking for a short term profit.

    - Duke Suraknar -
    Order of the Silver Star, OSS

    ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
  • defector1968defector1968 Member UncommonPosts: 469
    Originally posted by aRtFuLThinG
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    That is only because there is no AH.

    If there is an AH, the attribute of the item will be displayed. So while a good crafter and make better items and charge higher prices, the buyers don't have to care who he is.

    If only you can make a +5 sword, and all swords are +4. On the AH, i can see your +5 sword. But i don't care about you or who you are .. i only care the "+5". The identify of the crafter is MOOT on a AH.

    There was AH in SWG (Market Terminals).

     But people prefer to shop because the quality of the stuff that are sold on private vendors are superior.

     You are basing AH on the modern day MMO's mentality - where crafting is not a unique process and everything is of certain sets of quality. Back in the day (like in SWG) crafted items quality are dynamic and depended on a variety of factors (not just 3 different levels like rare, epic, legendary, etc).

     You haven't seen enough mmos and your judgement is based on limited experience, I'm sorry to say.

    SWG never had AH, just market with fixed prices, in AH u can auction the price of the item.

    For auctions was the trade channel and trade chans are in all games.

    fan of SWG, XCOM, Defiance, Global Agenda, Need For Speed, all Star Wars single player games. And waiting the darn STAR CITIZEN
  • madazzmadazz Member RarePosts: 2,115
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by Indol

    I think nixing the idea of the AH goes hand in hand with nixing global chat.

     

    A realistic approach to player interaction is more conducive to immersing people in a world than one that people can associate with forums or IM'ing which will cause people to act differently than if communcation and interaction were all done in the context of the actual game.

    Which is exactly what i do NOT want. "realistic" is not necessarily fun to me. I want cross realm grouping. I want IM chat. I am not livnig a second life, i am playing a multiplayer game. Anything that makes playing with people easier (like NOT restricting me to people on a server) is a GOOD thing in my book.

    You, and others like you are the reason that all games are being made the same way, and thus, the reason many games can't hold a lot of peoples attention past the first month. I've said this to you MANY times, LEAVE THOSE WHO WANT A DIFFERENT GAME ALONE! It's all well and good that you feel the need to present your argument for making all games the same, but you need to understand that other people have different interests that don't need to coincide with what you believe is "GOOD". Every thread that has someones opinion on what they don't like in a game, is shortly followed up by you stating how what is already being done, should be continued. The OP is not arguing for ALL games to have it removed, nor is he arguing that all games going forward should have the AH removed either. He is sharing an opinion, you are sharing your's, but regardless of anyone elses opinion, you come back and try to find a way to nicely state they are wrong. 

    Thank everything that the world of gaming doesnt revolve around you. Otherwise I'd have no hopes for an MMO to come around and capture my attention span for more than a month. You remind me of that guy who bought GW2 and started complaining it should be more like WoW, when it already is a lot like WoW. Heaven forbid one game is different! (even if GW2 is pretty standard, but down scaled).

  • MyrdynnMyrdynn Member RarePosts: 2,483

    Bump cause this topic was the community spotlight in MMOFTW this week

     

  • MyrdynnMyrdynn Member RarePosts: 2,483
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by jagd241

    Not to keep pushing the game but there are no Auction Houses in Project Gorgon

    http://www.eldergame.com/2012/09/the-case-against-auction-houses/

    For the reasons identified by the OP and in this thread on the devidary above.

     

     

    Nice post by the OP, the case of the Auction House has been debated many times over the years, I myself have made a similar post as the OP several years ago.

    Nevertheless, I agree with the way it was done in UO and SWG, (Raph Coster was involved with both mind you).

    Some other games did not have an auction house, such as Lineage 2, instead people set up shop with their characters, honnestly I did not like that approach at all, albeit it seems like it is a popular one with Asian MMO's.

    I prefer the vendors of UO and SWG, of cource these imply some type of Housing system to be in as well, and many MMO's have abandoned that idea.

    So when you have no houses and when you do not want your players to sit idle for hours when they rather be out there adventuring, what do you do? How do you provide a convenient means of exchange. And lest be specific here, an Auction House is not an Economy, it is but an Exchange center, there is much more involved in order to have an Economy.

    And most MMO's moved away from that idea too. Because most MMO's focus on the Action part and do not want necessarilly to offer the Fantasy of running your onw business. But they want everyone to be able to spend a less time as possible in economical activities, and be able to exchange items with other players with the least possible impact to their time spent doing so.

    Th auction house is the solution.

    In a game such as WoW, it might be a good thing since it is a game focussed on Questing, you do not want your players spending tim running to Auctioneers. I personally very seldom used the AH in WoW too, I can actually count the time I used it on my fingers during the many months that I played it.

    Another reason is because MMO's after WoW are designed to appeal to Fans and non Fans of the genre. And the average person will expect in a Virtual Environment to have the same convenience that they get in their every day life. When you need something you just go and buy it at the Super market, the Convenience store and all the other stores...

    The auction house makes that possible while also periting people at the same time to sell something as well.

    So everyone can buy and everyone can sell and no one needs to become a Merchant to do so.

    That is fine if you are not looking for some depth of gameplay, ifyou are not seeking to play out the Fantasy of running a business, and most of the non fans of the genre are happy with it, and that is why at this point the AH has become a de facto feature.

    But if your game has no depth, how are you going to insure its long term viability or profitability. Most people will play it for 3 months (many others just play them for one not subscribing ever), and then the decline starts...

    Companies play with Marketing and the way things are expressed, because they know the average player does not have in depth understanding of some concepts and will just accept what is vehiculated.

    When Game X, lists one of its feature to be a engaging and dynamic economy but the only thing that it contains is an Auction House, that is rubish in reality.

    Not even WoW has an economy per se, it does have an Exchange system which fills the needs of some of its players but that is about it.

    An Economy is defined by the activities of people (players in this context) consisting of the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of goods and services as required to satisfy the needs of people in a given society (the in game community of players in this context).

    Do you really need to produce anything in WoW? Do you need to distribute anything? Do you actually need to consume anything? Do you need to exchange anything? The answer in no, you can play from lvl 1 to lvl 90 without ever engaging in any of these activities just doing your qusts going to the instances and arguably the raids.

    On the other hand in a game such as SWG, you had certiain needs, while not a game breaking need, when you wanted to have a bigger house, when you wanted to expand your city, when you wanted to get better materials even or finished goods, a better weapons or a Droid or even a Pet, to assist you in your line of activity, thee was a place from certain specilists that provided this to you. You may have been playing the Fantasy of being a bounty Hunter, your chances of success were enhanced by having some good quality equipment (you could still be successfull if you did not have it, but to alesser degree, since it is a game, a certain minimum threshold had to be insured). And so you had the player who was  playing out their fantasy of being a Weaponsmith spending most of their gameing time having fun engaging on the economic activities required to their own success in making better and better weapons that you as a bounty hunter could buy from, and then have fun with in doing that which you spent most of your time in game, shooting stuff.

    There was synergy like that and a wider appeal to many and diverse players with different tastes and preferences as well as fantasy goals and aspirations.

    And this interaction between all these diverse players made up the gameplay experience.

    Oh yes the crafter could play WoW too, and try to play out their fantasy usingthe Ah but it is a half baked experience for them, in time they will just have to conform to the way the game is played or simply quit bored. Because rpeating instances to get gear and doing quests all day long or staying up late for a spot in a raid is simply not what that particule person is having the most fun with...

    So yes, I think too, that shoe boxing an "Economy" to simply being a way forpeople to exchange things which they do not need...is detrimental to an In game community, simply because the laws of enthropy will render it eventuallly homogeneous. And a community flourishes in the long term by being diverse...not by being made up of only the same parts.

    What do we say when we see people living in small towns and villages moving off to the big cities, when they close their stores stop workingtheir lands, stop producing their goods? We say that these communities are dying, well same thing happens in MMO's too. The common denominator being Human beings who are naturally and inherently diverse.

    But apparently it takes a rocket scientist to understand this when it comes to designing an MMO...or even worse, the Rocket scientist gets discarded by the Financeers...looking for a short term profit.

    very well written, if you try origins of malu let me know. We seem to be very like minded, would be fun working with you

    or any other game for that matter, waiting for a non pvp full loot sandbox where I can be a Merchant again

     

  • aRtFuLThinGaRtFuLThinG Member UncommonPosts: 1,387
    Originally posted by defector1968

    SWG never had AH, just market with fixed prices, in AH u can auction the price of the item.

    For auctions was the trade channel and trade chans are in all games.

    I don't think the OP's (or in fact most post here) meaning of AH was on the EXACT function of the "auction" of AH, but on the fact that you can buy and sell things centrally.

     

    It really doesn't matter whether they have the ability to "auction" with the AH. It is just one of the ways to buy and sell things.

     

    GW2's AH is not technically an "auction" either.

     

    It is more of a question of how AH affects communities (which my opinion is that not much really, but lack of player vendor impacts more). So the technically of whether AH is "auction" capable is actually inconsequential to this discussion.

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