MMO games are kind of like life. You don't necessarily need friends to play them, but they are much more fun with your friends. Likewise, you don't need friends in life, but it's much more fun sharing it with your friends. So, why do you need a game to force you to make friends? Just go make friends and enjoy the game with them.
Are you guys really that anti social that you need to be forced into talking to people? Are you the type of people who would stand at the wall next to the speakers at the dance and then complain that no one talked to you, and the dance planners didn't do enough to make it a social experience?
It's not rocket science.
Old argument. You don't get it I think.
Some people want to play a game that require cooperation to do certain things. I don't understand what is hard to get here?
You need cooperation of multiple people to raids in raiding game - why you're surprised that some people would like to play game where crafting, trade and parts of open world would also require group of people or interaction?
If you don't like games or activities like that they it is ok - you still will have huge majority of games that offer 90% of things in it avabile in very fast conveniant automatized ways. You're now trying to force what views people shoud have and how ALL games should look like. Embrace diversity.
I'm not trying to force anyone into any belief. Not sure where you got that idea. I'm merely asking why someone feels they need to be forced to be social. Rather than having games that allow for being social, i.e. grouping, dungeons, etc.
So, you're right, I don't get why people need to be forced to do something if they can't just do it on their own. Then when they don't do it on their own, they get upset and say it's the developers fault. Yeah, I don't get that at all.
Ok. One question.
What do you think about an idea to make ALL dungeons and raids avabile for solo player to complete and get same rewards as group does ?
If a dev wants to make a game like that, I have no problem with it. Would I play it? Probably. I'd probably run it both ways. That's what I've been saying. To me, it's better when you have the choice. Sometimes I would make the choice to group with others, sometimes not. I see nothing wrong with having that choice.
I'll never understand I guess why some people need to be forced to do things they claim are the best things to do. If the game's mechanics allow for both styles of play without penalty and you think the best way to play is in a group, then get a group together. However, if someone wants to run it by themselves, I see nothing wrong with that either. People play different ways, and I'm glad some developers have decided to respect that.
Thing is there is always penalty. If you have same rewards solo and group, then crushing majority of people will go solo option because it is more effective. You can go solo immedietaly, while for a group even if you like and play game with auto LFG system it takes time. So grouping is penalized.
If you give bigger rewards for doing it in the group, then you penalize those who want to play only solo.
This was proven to be true both with group quests and scalable instances (like Lotro skirmishes).
---------------
Another thing. Now we have 2012. It is not 1997 where you had in west basically one mmorpg avablable in west or even 1999 when you had ~4 of them. Nowadays it is wide market with dozens of mmorpg's.
So have you considered granting people a choice? Instead forcing certain game design upon people which you think is best, maybe just accept that there are other people who want to play with similar minded people in game that they prefer?
Noone is forcing you. You can just simply don't play if there is a game with mechanics or design you just like.
Forcing argument is simply not true, as noone can force you to play certain game. Why would you even decide to play it.
In example I bought GW2. It is fine game, but I found that I don't like it. I stopped playing, discussed a bit about it and that's it problem solved. I don't go trying to convince me that anyone forced me to play it or complain that it should be changed.
I totally agree with you. I don't think every game should be made the same, with the same mechanics. How boring. But the OP was basically saying they needed to be forced to socialize and I ask, why? There are plenty of games out there that allow for both solo and group play. There are also many that cater to group play. And there are those that cater more to solo play. I have no problem with any of them.
That's been my point all along, give people a choice. If there are games that cater to "forcing grouping", games that "force solo play", and games allowing for both, I don't see a problem.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
I totally agree with you. I don't think every game should be made the same, with the same mechanics. How boring. But the OP was basically saying they needed to be forced to socialize and I ask, why? There are plenty of games out there that allow for both solo and group play. There are also many that cater to group play. And there are those that cater more to solo play. I have no problem with any of them.
That's been my point all along, give people a choice. If there are games that cater to "forcing grouping", games that "force solo play", and games allowing for both, I don't see a problem.
You seem to be under impression that OP is on some sort of fanatical crusade in order to change all or most mmorpg's.
Hell no, at least I did not get that impression. Me myself - I don't want to change anyone's game. Seriously - if someone like GW2 in a way it is designed atm? Nice, grats you found some mmorpg you like. I am very far from wanting to change it.
If someone like WoW - nice go and knock yourself out having fun.
I just would like also to have game or two well done mmorpg's that have difftent design one that is about cooperation and interdependability. Nothing more, nothing less. Seriously I am not telling you that your mmorpg's are bad or I am not ranting about how mmorpg's have to change.
Just would be fun to actually have some small but well made niche with an actually qualiity game for gamers similar to me.
Solitaire is a game developed specifically for one person. Poker is a game specifically for more than one. Your analogy breaks down in that I'm talking about games that are developed with both styles of play in mind. A closer analogy would be poker you could play by yourself, if you wanted, or solitaire that a group of people could play together.
It's all about choices.
That may be true for the combat side of the game.
The game of crafting and trading is indeed a game specifically for more than one. Some of us want to find a virtual world in which we can play it. People ask why we want to be "forced to interact", well it's for the same reason that poker players want to be "forced to interact".
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
Funny how the original MMOs, namely UO had this right. lol Taken us 15 years to figure out that an auction house is a bad idea.
nethervoid - Est. '97 [UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1 20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
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.
What make your interests more important than mine? If you can talk about it, so can i. And i just say what is fun for me .. no different than you.
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).
Neither revolve around you. We all vote with our wallets. We willl see whose preferences devs pay attention to. And i do like different games. Borderland 2 is very different from Diablo3, and very different from WOW.
And why would i care if you have no MMO to play? That is not my problem.
You seem to neglect the point that you present your argument as correct and everyone elses as wrong. Also, you bringing up co-op/standard multiplayer games in no way contributes to an argument about an MMO. You bring up Diablo 3 so often....
And thankfully, people are voting with their wallets. You and your "I want the same thing over and over" clique is starting to become a minority. Devs are starting to notice that catering to you and others like you is only profitable for the short term.
Also, nothing makes my interests more important, what I tried to point out that you neglect over and over again, is that my opinion leaves room for everyones play style. I don't feel that every MMO needs to be the same so that you can hop in and try it for a month before leaving. If there are games I don't like, thats fine. They don't need to change for ME. And there are MMO's I like. Just nothing that great at the moment.
I'm sure you will just brush off all logic and continue on your crusade to make everything the same. Fuck innovation right? Trying something different is scary!!!!
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.
What make your interests more important than mine? If you can talk about it, so can i. And i just say what is fun for me .. no different than you.
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).
Neither revolve around you. We all vote with our wallets. We willl see whose preferences devs pay attention to. And i do like different games. Borderland 2 is very different from Diablo3, and very different from WOW.
And why would i care if you have no MMO to play? That is not my problem.
You seem to neglect the point that you present your argument as correct and everyone elses as wrong. Also, you bringing up co-op/standard multiplayer games in no way contributes to an argument about an MMO. You bring up Diablo 3 so often....
And thankfully, people are voting with their wallets. You and your "I want the same thing over and over" clique is starting to become a minority. Devs are starting to notice that catering to you and others like you is only profitable for the short term.
Also, nothing makes my interests more important, what I tried to point out that you neglect over and over again, is that my opinion leaves room for everyones play style. I don't feel that every MMO needs to be the same so that you can hop in and try it for a month before leaving. If there are games I don't like, thats fine. They don't need to change for ME. And there are MMO's I like. Just nothing that great at the moment.
I'm sure you will just brush off all logic and continue on your crusade to make everything the same. Fuck innovation right? Trying something different is scary!!!!
And D3 sold 10M copies. Borderlands 2 is a big success. WOW sold 2.7M copies of MOP first week (looks like a decline but a huge success most companies would dream of) and add 1M subs.
So i highly doubt i will have a lack of game to play. And who says anything about them being the same? And what does that have anything to do with game hopping? The point of game hopping is to play something DIFFERENT.
Originally posted by nethervoid Funny how the original MMOs, namely UO had this right. lol Taken us 15 years to figure out that an auction house is a bad idea.
Bad idea? I am sure that is why it has become a STANDARD feature, and even implemented in non-MMOs.
Originally posted by nethervoid Funny how the original MMOs, namely UO had this right. lol Taken us 15 years to figure out that an auction house is a bad idea.
Bad idea? I am sure that is why it has become a STANDARD feature, and even implemented in non-MMOs.
Probably because it suits non mmos more.
One central AH is a bad idea if you want to include a complex, economical meta game in your mmo for the players to get involved in. More meta game = increase social interaction. It is a good idea if you just want to make the game as accessible as possible regardless as to loss of depth/gameplay/social features.
So it is bad for a complex, community driven mmo. It is good for a pick up and play, just want to LFG RAID game. Horses for courses really.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Originally posted by nethervoid Funny how the original MMOs, namely UO had this right. lol Taken us 15 years to figure out that an auction house is a bad idea.
Bad idea? I am sure that is why it has become a STANDARD feature, and even implemented in non-MMOs.
Probably because it suits non mmos more.
One central AH is a bad idea if you want to include a complex, economical meta game in your mmo for the players to get involved in. More meta game = increase social interaction. It is a good idea if you just want to make the game as accessible as possible regardless as to loss of depth/gameplay/social features.
So it is bad for a complex, community driven mmo. It is good for a pick up and play, just want to LFG RAID game. Horses for courses really.
MMOs are not "complex, community driven" anyway. Most modern MMOs are action RPG with more content & progression.
Sure, you may want to play a blacksmith running your own shop. Personally i want to sell & buy items in the most efficient manner.
And there are people who play the market too. Have you read about the dude that made $10000 on D3?
Socializing adds very little to efficient transaction of items. When you want to buy a computer off the internet, it is quite easy just to look at all the attributes (CPU, memory, price ...) and made a decision. I won't want to talk a person when i do that. Buying a virtual sword where the price and stats are known .. is the same thing.
MMOs are not "complex, community driven" anyway. Most modern MMOs are action RPG with more content & progression.
I'm not sure as to how I am supposed to respond to this part really. If you want a complex economic/economic driven social metagame then a central AH is not such a great idea. I also stated that games not looking to go down that line, well AH is fine. So pointing out that modern mmos are not complex or community driven seems a bit of a waste of time. I know they are.
Sure, you may want to play a blacksmith running your own shop. Personally i want to sell & buy items in the most efficient manner.
Well you don't actually have to focus on being a blacksmith running a shop to get the benefits of a decentralised market place. I'm a massively pvp centric player, but I can see the benefits of a complex economic/crafting system in the right game.
And there are people who play the market too. Have you read about the dude that made $10000 on D3?
I think that has something to do with RMT to be honest which is a entirely different kettle of fish. People can make loads of IG money in an AH game. No doubt about that. But there is clearly more opportunities to "play the market" in a decentralised economy if you know what you are doing, more depth, more complexity.
Socializing adds very little to efficient transaction of items. When you want to buy a computer off the internet, it is quite easy just to look at all the attributes (CPU, memory, price ...) and made a decision. I won't want to talk a person when i do that. Buying a virtual sword where the price and stats are known .. is the same thing.
Well a couple of thoughts occur. First of all is that just because you remove a central AH, doesn't suddenly mean you have to enter into a massive discourse everytime you buy an object as an end user. What it does though offer is interaction between the relevant people heavily involved in crafting, transport and providing goods.
It also doesn't mean that if you are just a casual goods buyer, that you are going to have to treck for hours on end for every item you want. That really isn't the case 90% of the time.
Secondly you are quite right, when you go to buy a computer online you don't want to have to chat to someone about their day. But that is someone different to electing to play a massively multiplayer online computer game with other people.You have elected to enter a social form of gaming. It would be like going into a computer shop, walking up to the counter, pointing at a PC and then refusing to speak to the guy serving you.
Now I am not saying you should have to chat to someone just because you are in an mmo and I am not implying that without an AH you have to spend all your game time chatting. But the analogy you provided just seemed a bit odd.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Jenesee mentioned how Camelot Unchained won't have an auction house because that promotes interaction within the game. Alex agreed that the auction house itself tied into the whole idea of the panel. "I don't care who made the armor I'm wearing," he said, "I don't care who made the potion I drank, as long as it's the cheapest." However, a game like Elder Scrolls Online barely has anything that you can even call a vendor for player wares, let alone an auction house. Where is the line there?
I've brought it up before, and I believe the panel agreed, that there is a middle ground. That's where Star Wars Galaxies became relevant to our discussion again. Players could place items on the auction house, which was called the bazaar, but there was a credit cap. That meant items like doctor's buff packs and other items that were worth more than the cap had to be sold on vendors. Thanks to a patch well into the game's life, eventually players could search all the vendors in the galaxy through the bazaar terminal in towns, but players had to go to the player-run vendor to actually purchase the item.
That system was layered on top of a crafting system that made crafted items unique by allowing players to name them and experimentat on their stat layouts, all of which combined to inspire player interaction and even loyalty. Alex told a quick story about how he had run into a guy in Star Wars Galaxies who stopped him to say, "Hey, I made that armor!" To which he replied, "Hey, I bought your armor! It saved me from a Krayt Dragon."
It was a simple exchange, really, but sometimes the simple things make an MMO seem bigger than a place where you just sit in your garrison with your minions and pets.
If you'd like to hear the whole audio version of the panel, Jenesee Grey uploaded the recording to her site.
Originally posted by mrneurosis Good for them. Sounds like another MMO catering to niche community with its backward ideas.
I think, as much as I want to disagree, you might be right. On a surface level, a lack of AH, or even just a commodities market, does force more player interaction. For what you might consider "mmo purists", this seems a good thing, because it rewards the socializing aspect they espouse as genre-integral.
However, here's the thing. Someone is going to fulfill that role now. Someone is going to fill their days, in shifts with others even, bartering, brokering, buying, and while they're doing this, there will be no controls. Some will become very prominent as "handlers" or "fixers", wherein, because of knowledge of html, they advertise via their own websites what items they buy or sell outright, at what price, and where to go to find the contact guy. No single person without this capacity will have an opportunity to compete, as would have been the case had the ah been conventional and universal across the board. They're swapping out a lesser evil for a regiment of technical domination and while some proponents will get very "in-game currency" wealthy, many more will be frustrated and it will lead to a loss of population base... but why stop there. If customers access your market through the html-friendly ui, accept payments to paypal. Now what have you created...
Secondly you are quite right, when you go to buy a computer online you don't want to have to chat to someone about their day. But that is someone different to electing to play a massively multiplayer online computer game with other people.You have elected to enter a social form of gaming. It would be like going into a computer shop, walking up to the counter, pointing at a PC and then refusing to speak to the guy serving you.
you are assuming everyone plays MMO to interact with other people in an economic fashion. That is simply not true, given the progression combat/loot nature of many MMOs.
It was a simple exchange, really, but sometimes the simple things make an MMO seem bigger than a place where you just sit in your garrison with your minions and pets.
Don't you mean it made the MMO feel smaller?
I mean I could have 8 alts worth of characters churning out Blacksmith armor. It would sell, because it's great-quality gear for starting into raiding.
But I would never see it on any player, because WOW is actually a big place with so many players that it's rare that I'd ever group with someone who had the armor.
Most ways of fostering a community will naturally make the game feel more like a small town than a big city. Whether that's a bad thing depends on which you romanticize more.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yeah I'm not really buying this. I absolutely hated trading via chat to the point that I just turn that chat off completely and I still found the older games had way more social interaction. If you want to try to pin it down to only one thing it is easily instancing. Nothing killed the social aspect of these games more than sticking everyone in their own little box. Cross server dungeon finders just made it even worse since now you play the game with throw away friends that you know you will never see again.
There are plenty of other things to point at but nothing else is anywhere near as close.
I believe that the mechanics should fit the game setting. I would be realistic to have a auction house, GPS, and maps of sorts in a modern or futuristic game.
In a high fantasy game that is supposed to mimic a more primitive life style where you are just trying to survive in the wilderness and there is a lot of unknown I don't believe the auction house makes much sense. You can have auction houses in towns, but they would likely be limited to the surrounding area. Transporting goods to other areas might be very dangerous or take a long time. People would likely sell their goods themselves in a shop they setup or if they are hunters they would just sell the goods and go back out hunting. It all depends on what you are harvesting/making.
In a high fantasy game that is supposed to mimic a more primitive life style where you are just trying to survive in the wilderness and there is a lot of unknown.
Says who? You can easily tweak the lore to say instead of technology, the setting has magic in its place, and that allows for magic portals, magic communications, magic auction houses, and so on ... you get the idea.
In a high fantasy game that is supposed to mimic a more primitive life style where you are just trying to survive in the wilderness and there is a lot of unknown.
Says who? You can easily tweak the lore to say instead of technology, the setting has magic in its place, and that allows for magic portals, magic communications, magic auction houses, and so on ... you get the idea.
You can justify anything by creative writing.
Of course you can justify anything, but that doesn't always make it a wise decision. Even with the most creative writing, an idea can still fall flat on it's face because it was a stupid idea to begin with; justified or not.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Comments
I totally agree with you. I don't think every game should be made the same, with the same mechanics. How boring. But the OP was basically saying they needed to be forced to socialize and I ask, why? There are plenty of games out there that allow for both solo and group play. There are also many that cater to group play. And there are those that cater more to solo play. I have no problem with any of them.
That's been my point all along, give people a choice. If there are games that cater to "forcing grouping", games that "force solo play", and games allowing for both, I don't see a problem.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
You seem to be under impression that OP is on some sort of fanatical crusade in order to change all or most mmorpg's.
Hell no, at least I did not get that impression. Me myself - I don't want to change anyone's game. Seriously - if someone like GW2 in a way it is designed atm? Nice, grats you found some mmorpg you like. I am very far from wanting to change it.
If someone like WoW - nice go and knock yourself out having fun.
I just would like also to have game or two well done mmorpg's that have difftent design one that is about cooperation and interdependability. Nothing more, nothing less. Seriously I am not telling you that your mmorpg's are bad or I am not ranting about how mmorpg's have to change.
Just would be fun to actually have some small but well made niche with an actually qualiity game for gamers similar to me.
That may be true for the combat side of the game.
The game of crafting and trading is indeed a game specifically for more than one. Some of us want to find a virtual world in which we can play it. People ask why we want to be "forced to interact", well it's for the same reason that poker players want to be "forced to interact".
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
see the part that says "At Least i am" ......I am speaking for myself .....
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
You seem to neglect the point that you present your argument as correct and everyone elses as wrong. Also, you bringing up co-op/standard multiplayer games in no way contributes to an argument about an MMO. You bring up Diablo 3 so often....
And thankfully, people are voting with their wallets. You and your "I want the same thing over and over" clique is starting to become a minority. Devs are starting to notice that catering to you and others like you is only profitable for the short term.
Also, nothing makes my interests more important, what I tried to point out that you neglect over and over again, is that my opinion leaves room for everyones play style. I don't feel that every MMO needs to be the same so that you can hop in and try it for a month before leaving. If there are games I don't like, thats fine. They don't need to change for ME. And there are MMO's I like. Just nothing that great at the moment.
I'm sure you will just brush off all logic and continue on your crusade to make everything the same. Fuck innovation right? Trying something different is scary!!!!
And D3 sold 10M copies. Borderlands 2 is a big success. WOW sold 2.7M copies of MOP first week (looks like a decline but a huge success most companies would dream of) and add 1M subs.
So i highly doubt i will have a lack of game to play. And who says anything about them being the same? And what does that have anything to do with game hopping? The point of game hopping is to play something DIFFERENT.
Bad idea? I am sure that is why it has become a STANDARD feature, and even implemented in non-MMOs.
Probably because it suits non mmos more.
One central AH is a bad idea if you want to include a complex, economical meta game in your mmo for the players to get involved in. More meta game = increase social interaction. It is a good idea if you just want to make the game as accessible as possible regardless as to loss of depth/gameplay/social features.
So it is bad for a complex, community driven mmo. It is good for a pick up and play, just want to LFG RAID game. Horses for courses really.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
MMOs are not "complex, community driven" anyway. Most modern MMOs are action RPG with more content & progression.
Sure, you may want to play a blacksmith running your own shop. Personally i want to sell & buy items in the most efficient manner.
And there are people who play the market too. Have you read about the dude that made $10000 on D3?
Socializing adds very little to efficient transaction of items. When you want to buy a computer off the internet, it is quite easy just to look at all the attributes (CPU, memory, price ...) and made a decision. I won't want to talk a person when i do that. Buying a virtual sword where the price and stats are known .. is the same thing.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
bump because this was taken from the following link
http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/01/26/pax-south-2015-why-arent-mmos-more-social/
Auction house bad
Jenesee mentioned how Camelot Unchained won't have an auction house because that promotes interaction within the game. Alex agreed that the auction house itself tied into the whole idea of the panel. "I don't care who made the armor I'm wearing," he said, "I don't care who made the potion I drank, as long as it's the cheapest." However, a game like Elder Scrolls Online barely has anything that you can even call a vendor for player wares, let alone an auction house. Where is the line there?
I've brought it up before, and I believe the panel agreed, that there is a middle ground. That's where Star Wars Galaxies became relevant to our discussion again. Players could place items on the auction house, which was called the bazaar, but there was a credit cap. That meant items like doctor's buff packs and other items that were worth more than the cap had to be sold on vendors. Thanks to a patch well into the game's life, eventually players could search all the vendors in the galaxy through the bazaar terminal in towns, but players had to go to the player-run vendor to actually purchase the item.
That system was layered on top of a crafting system that made crafted items unique by allowing players to name them and experimentat on their stat layouts, all of which combined to inspire player interaction and even loyalty. Alex told a quick story about how he had run into a guy in Star Wars Galaxies who stopped him to say, "Hey, I made that armor!" To which he replied, "Hey, I bought your armor! It saved me from a Krayt Dragon."
It was a simple exchange, really, but sometimes the simple things make an MMO seem bigger than a place where you just sit in your garrison with your minions and pets.
If you'd like to hear the whole audio version of the panel, Jenesee Grey uploaded the recording to her site.
I think, as much as I want to disagree, you might be right. On a surface level, a lack of AH, or even just a commodities market, does force more player interaction. For what you might consider "mmo purists", this seems a good thing, because it rewards the socializing aspect they espouse as genre-integral.
However, here's the thing. Someone is going to fulfill that role now. Someone is going to fill their days, in shifts with others even, bartering, brokering, buying, and while they're doing this, there will be no controls. Some will become very prominent as "handlers" or "fixers", wherein, because of knowledge of html, they advertise via their own websites what items they buy or sell outright, at what price, and where to go to find the contact guy. No single person without this capacity will have an opportunity to compete, as would have been the case had the ah been conventional and universal across the board. They're swapping out a lesser evil for a regiment of technical domination and while some proponents will get very "in-game currency" wealthy, many more will be frustrated and it will lead to a loss of population base... but why stop there. If customers access your market through the html-friendly ui, accept payments to paypal. Now what have you created...
you are assuming everyone plays MMO to interact with other people in an economic fashion. That is simply not true, given the progression combat/loot nature of many MMOs.
Some only play MMOs for the content.
Don't you mean it made the MMO feel smaller?
I mean I could have 8 alts worth of characters churning out Blacksmith armor. It would sell, because it's great-quality gear for starting into raiding.
But I would never see it on any player, because WOW is actually a big place with so many players that it's rare that I'd ever group with someone who had the armor.
Most ways of fostering a community will naturally make the game feel more like a small town than a big city. Whether that's a bad thing depends on which you romanticize more.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yeah I'm not really buying this. I absolutely hated trading via chat to the point that I just turn that chat off completely and I still found the older games had way more social interaction. If you want to try to pin it down to only one thing it is easily instancing. Nothing killed the social aspect of these games more than sticking everyone in their own little box. Cross server dungeon finders just made it even worse since now you play the game with throw away friends that you know you will never see again.
There are plenty of other things to point at but nothing else is anywhere near as close.
I believe that the mechanics should fit the game setting. I would be realistic to have a auction house, GPS, and maps of sorts in a modern or futuristic game.
In a high fantasy game that is supposed to mimic a more primitive life style where you are just trying to survive in the wilderness and there is a lot of unknown I don't believe the auction house makes much sense. You can have auction houses in towns, but they would likely be limited to the surrounding area. Transporting goods to other areas might be very dangerous or take a long time. People would likely sell their goods themselves in a shop they setup or if they are hunters they would just sell the goods and go back out hunting. It all depends on what you are harvesting/making.
Says who? You can easily tweak the lore to say instead of technology, the setting has magic in its place, and that allows for magic portals, magic communications, magic auction houses, and so on ... you get the idea.
You can justify anything by creative writing.
Of course you can justify anything, but that doesn't always make it a wise decision. Even with the most creative writing, an idea can still fall flat on it's face because it was a stupid idea to begin with; justified or not.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
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