New survey for AO players - hurry! (Buying items wit RL cash
yes, especially since it will also drastically affect the number of item->credit->RL cash farmers in game.
As in it will lower their numbers (which is much of the intent). That will mean that "normal" players will simultaneously have access to large amounts of credits on-demand while also having fewer items on the market to buy because the farmers won't have as much reason to farm.
I reallllly wish Funcom would contract a economist to help them answer this question. I'm afraid they will end up putting something into place that just makes things vastly worse in the end.
As in it will lower their numbers (which is much of the intent). That will mean that "normal" players will simultaneously have access to large amounts of credits on-demand while also having fewer items on the market to buy because the farmers won't have as much reason to farm.
I reallllly wish Funcom would contract a economist to help them answer this question. I'm afraid they will end up putting something into place that just makes things vastly worse in the end.
Sorry Doc but I am going to argue against you on this one. I see three distinct options.
1] FC allows players to buy credits from them for RL cash, ONLY. This will give FC cash and also drive up hugely the price of items for sale. If this is all that is allowed, it will also drive out the farmers as Doc is suggesting as they cannot compete with FC. What it means for players is that if you have access to cash, you will be able to buy the perfect character. No camping Panda for a BoC, buy the looting rights for RL$50-. The game will totally lose any challenge or interest.
2] FC allows players to use ingame credits to buy play time, ONLY. This drives up the demand for camped items to sell and therefore thier prices. Cash farmers start to make a killing provided they can sell cash at less than the game subscription. (eg. Pay FC $10-/mth to play or pay farmers $5-/mth to play). Once again the game is corrupted. You either need the cash to buy all your equipment from farmers, or a super twinked setup to compete with them in OD Boss fights. There is already a lot of factual information about people working in online "sweat shops" where they operate 8-10 PCs at one time for 18 hours a day camping items for cash. Give ANYONE the sniff of RL cash in exchange for something online and they will try to abuse the situation.
3] FC permits a combination of buying and selling for RL cash. All the worst of both options.
Therefore, the ONLY way to stop the growth of cash farmers is for FC to supply in-game credits for RL Cash and ONLY to do that much. However, that will ruin the game for everyone that does not have huge amounts of cash. Why should I support a Beast Raid if the guy who gets the BoC is the one paying the most RL Cash for it?
Any and All ingame-RL exchange of value can only corrupt and destroy a game.
1] FC allows players to buy credits from them for RL cash, ONLY. This will give FC cash and also drive up hugely the price of items for sale. If this is all that is allowed, it will also drive out the farmers as Doc is suggesting as they cannot compete with FC. What it means for players is that if you have access to cash, you will be able to buy the perfect character. No camping Panda for a BoC, buy the looting rights for RL$50-. The game will totally lose any challenge or interest.
2] FC allows players to use ingame credits to buy play time, ONLY. This drives up the demand for camped items to sell and therefore thier prices. Cash farmers start to make a killing provided they can sell cash at less than the game subscription. (eg. Pay FC $10-/mth to play or pay farmers $5-/mth to play). Once again the game is corrupted. You either need the cash to buy all your equipment from farmers, or a super twinked setup to compete with them in OD Boss fights. There is already a lot of factual information about people working in online "sweat shops" where they operate 8-10 PCs at one time for 18 hours a day camping items for cash. Give ANYONE the sniff of RL cash in exchange for something online and they will try to abuse the situation.
3] FC permits a combination of buying and selling for RL cash. All the worst of both options.
Therefore, the ONLY way to stop the growth of cash farmers is for FC to supply in-game credits for RL Cash and ONLY to do that much. However, that will ruin the game for everyone that does not have huge amounts of cash. Why should I support a Beast Raid if the guy who gets the BoC is the one paying the most RL Cash for it?
Any and All ingame-RL exchange of value can only corrupt and destroy a game.
A lot of People already buy creds for this game. there are dozzens of sites offering creds and such. whoever is going to spend rl cash in this game does not care if it is leagel or not by FC rules. Do you think there are players out there that the only reason they dont buy creds is a fear of fc catching them?
Most of the "game economy" has already been inflated, and abused. I realy dont see the mass flood of people buying creds just because FC says its ok now but buy through us.
Perhaps they should show how much rl cash you have spent on a toon, when you shift + left click on them, right under where it says how many times you have been killed by aliens.
the part about buying game time with ingame credits is what worries me
Most of the "game economy" has already been inflated, and abused. I realy dont see the mass flood of people buying creds just because FC says its ok now but buy through us.
Perhaps they should show how much rl cash you have spent on a toon, when you shift + left click on them, right under where it says how many times you have been killed by aliens.
the part about buying game time with ingame credits is what worries me
So first you buy a lvl 220 toon then buy a few bills to sit around loaded in Old Athens and have no clue how you actually can kill a grey mob.
Thats sounds big fun to me
Well since im froob and my main advy isnt that high in lvl (154) I never had piles of money and when i had from lucky drops (pump trainee, a ga1 disc) it was more luck then skill involved and allmost instantly invested in my toons. Camping stuff for creds is not even an option since well im allmost never online and get ODed when I am online by SL toons.
So I understand why some people would buy some creds, but overal I have the idea that this will mess economics big time. Thus making it for people with limited playtime even harder to buy gear.
Also its sometimes very frustrating iff you have no creds and see your gear getting uber outdated so making you gimp. Specially since due my very limited playtime I mostly solo stuff.
So most of my gear is farmed by myself, help from friends and very occasional bought. But not going to buy me ingame creds.
Thats sounds big fun to me
Well since im froob and my main advy isnt that high in lvl (154) I never had piles of money and when i had from lucky drops (pump trainee, a ga1 disc) it was more luck then skill involved and allmost instantly invested in my toons. Camping stuff for creds is not even an option since well im allmost never online and get ODed when I am online by SL toons.
So I understand why some people would buy some creds, but overal I have the idea that this will mess economics big time. Thus making it for people with limited playtime even harder to buy gear.
Also its sometimes very frustrating iff you have no creds and see your gear getting uber outdated so making you gimp. Specially since due my very limited playtime I mostly solo stuff.
So most of my gear is farmed by myself, help from friends and very occasional bought. But not going to buy me ingame creds.
i agree wiht Cutie 100%.
2 ways u can play game.
1 free. be froob, ding 200 ( or 199 lol) and have a look around at a fantastic game!! and suffer the pain of having armor and wepons that are just about good enough to kill most things. But have fun!!
2. pay account. lvl 200 - 220+, join teams and raids to hopefully get the best possible armor and wepons that will easily kill everything.
most of the best stuff is unique or nodrop. ppl will work hard to get these items. go to every single raid so they get maximum points to roll/bid for the specific item they want. = FUN!!!
so now FC think " how can we make more money from a 6 year old game thats dieing slowly. every review slams the techincal issues but ppl still love it?"
answer: more content bigger tougher mobs so only the best can kill. so ppl will always want the best item. lets make the best item not nodrop so it can be traded. lets give them access to unlimted game credits for real money. lets see how long we can milk this cash cow before it bites us on the ass.
the money FC will make will not go into producing better "game experience". it will go into FC's pockets. then they can tell advertisers and other game companies how much money they have made in 6 years which will help them sell their new products.
a new player to AO will prolly not buy a 220 toon and not have a clue what to do. But exisitng players who would like a new toon and not bother with the ding will buy "out of box 220" and will prolly pay extra real life money to make sure the new toon is wealthy and not have to farm. = cheat code ( in old game console language)
buying game credits for real life money is the same as putting in a cheat code the same way u would put in code for infinite lives = spoiled game no fun. u move on to something else
i dont agree with buying credits but u can if u want to. its your choice. The game mechanics will change. the economy will change. thats why they called it "Anarchy", anything can happen. 1 minuite u is ubah. next patch u is gimp. if u dont like it, re-roll, dont play or wait for next patch.
FC will try to make as much money from us as possible. thats why companies exist. its not for OUR benefit ( the players) its for Profit.
sry for long boring post but i wanted to express my feelings too.
2 ways u can play game.
1 free. be froob, ding 200 ( or 199 lol) and have a look around at a fantastic game!! and suffer the pain of having armor and wepons that are just about good enough to kill most things. But have fun!!
2. pay account. lvl 200 - 220+, join teams and raids to hopefully get the best possible armor and wepons that will easily kill everything.
most of the best stuff is unique or nodrop. ppl will work hard to get these items. go to every single raid so they get maximum points to roll/bid for the specific item they want. = FUN!!!
so now FC think " how can we make more money from a 6 year old game thats dieing slowly. every review slams the techincal issues but ppl still love it?"
answer: more content bigger tougher mobs so only the best can kill. so ppl will always want the best item. lets make the best item not nodrop so it can be traded. lets give them access to unlimted game credits for real money. lets see how long we can milk this cash cow before it bites us on the ass.
the money FC will make will not go into producing better "game experience". it will go into FC's pockets. then they can tell advertisers and other game companies how much money they have made in 6 years which will help them sell their new products.
a new player to AO will prolly not buy a 220 toon and not have a clue what to do. But exisitng players who would like a new toon and not bother with the ding will buy "out of box 220" and will prolly pay extra real life money to make sure the new toon is wealthy and not have to farm. = cheat code ( in old game console language)
buying game credits for real life money is the same as putting in a cheat code the same way u would put in code for infinite lives = spoiled game no fun. u move on to something else
i dont agree with buying credits but u can if u want to. its your choice. The game mechanics will change. the economy will change. thats why they called it "Anarchy", anything can happen. 1 minuite u is ubah. next patch u is gimp. if u dont like it, re-roll, dont play or wait for next patch.
FC will try to make as much money from us as possible. thats why companies exist. its not for OUR benefit ( the players) its for Profit.
sry for long boring post but i wanted to express my feelings too.
A freshly picked BLUE rose for j00
<3
<3
Having played a game that has a shop that sells items for real cash, I can tell
you that it doesn't stop the farmers from selling in game creds.
As long as there is a demand for something, someone will be willing to fulfill it.
That said, its easy for a company to monitor and flag changes to accounts
and do investigative bans on misuse of the license agreement.
It is also easy to jump on train that makes money if you see one passing
by ...
you that it doesn't stop the farmers from selling in game creds.
As long as there is a demand for something, someone will be willing to fulfill it.
That said, its easy for a company to monitor and flag changes to accounts
and do investigative bans on misuse of the license agreement.
It is also easy to jump on train that makes money if you see one passing
by ...
Yarr!
In my opinion, any game with the structure of AO is doomed for farmers, no matter what anyone does. Out of the "possible" things that can be done, nothing would easily be the best for the GAME, but Funcom would make a killing if they started selling things, and they know that.
The person that plays AO is willing to sit at a computer, and play a game wherein the sole objective for 6+hours is to click something and press the "Q" button on your keyboard once every 30minutes (Perhaps more depending on difficulty of mob, but not by much.) To this crowd you could easily offer items and creds to for real money.
The best thing, it seems most people agree is things staying the way things are (least from reading the threads here) so I don't have to back that thought up quite as well q-: - Basically OD wars continue (I didn't think they were that bad.) - people continue to attend cooperative raids (If someone is willing to log on every 8 hours for a month to get a virtual item, they might fall into the above category) - and the economy will remain.. well, it's insane now, but it wouldn't become outrageous. Not that bad really, that's why people who leave AO always check back every once and awhile because they do miss the crazy antics of watching people trade plots of land for a small backpack that adds maybe 5% damage on to each hit.
Now for the (near)perfect solution - everyone ready? - here goes!
Moar instancing.
FC needs to instance all rares. There is no reason that with over 500 people online(Probably a lot more, but that's just my wild stab) only one person should have loot rights to a mob that spawns every 10, 30, 60, 240, 480, 10% every 10, 30mins, etc. that's absurd.
Alien invasion did well in my opinion, allowing raiders to spawn monsters that drop phatz when they wanted to. You could go farm an item that spawned the raid when you wanted to then run over to a convienently placed city (in almost any other game this would need to be a public terminal, but because of AO's strong org pride [Go AP!] everyone has access to a city, or can get access by promising certain drops to a provider.)
This could be semi-easily implimented in the shadowlands by simply adding the phatz to be dropped from mission bosses at roughly the same rate that it drops now, and having a lower % scaled mission reward (bad at words, meaning instead of getting a token 100% after killing all mobs, you start out with persay a .01% chance of getting a token then as you kill it raises itself to a 1% chance) which could be traded in for a phat that would be determined on what mission you rolled. Two options for missions would be random mission (would pick a mission from all the possible phatz missions on that zone) - for people who want to just try to get some money - or token mission (if you farmed a moderate drop token from a common mob, you could do the mission on that token [Infernal Vertex would 1/10 drop a token that would give you a shot at a MBC.]) - for people who are trying to get something for one of their characters. Normal EXP missions could also randomly drop a phat.
Also, beast/zods/mercs/outzone, etc should be runnable whenever a raidforce is ready to do it, but there would be instanced missions that would need to be completed. In the instance of beast it could go something like this - "Awaken the beast, unlock the 5 altars" - then you would get a special token at the end of each of the missions that you would use on some nodes on the way to beast to get him to pop. Normal 4-8-whatever hour spawns could also still be up, but would be in a different instance than the "whenever I want" raids.
Granted that if that ever DID happen the economy might go "wtf?" for a few weeks and heaven forbid a casual player might be able to enjoy some nice items too, but items would still retain a good deal of effort to get. You would still need to get lucky, and spend some time to do it, but you would be able to decide when you want to do it, and it would make for a really cool system overall.
All of this would never happen of course, it would make things too easy on the player - something that Funcom seems dead set against. Also the engine would die, hamsters suffer from cardiac arrest, oh and Funcom devs would have to put their thinking caps back on and stop producing cheapo "lets grab some money from the player really quick" booster packs for a few months. However, it's just a nice rant to write and get out there, see if anyone else sees things the way I do (-:
See ya around AP!
In my opinion, any game with the structure of AO is doomed for farmers, no matter what anyone does. Out of the "possible" things that can be done, nothing would easily be the best for the GAME, but Funcom would make a killing if they started selling things, and they know that.
The person that plays AO is willing to sit at a computer, and play a game wherein the sole objective for 6+hours is to click something and press the "Q" button on your keyboard once every 30minutes (Perhaps more depending on difficulty of mob, but not by much.) To this crowd you could easily offer items and creds to for real money.
The best thing, it seems most people agree is things staying the way things are (least from reading the threads here) so I don't have to back that thought up quite as well q-: - Basically OD wars continue (I didn't think they were that bad.) - people continue to attend cooperative raids (If someone is willing to log on every 8 hours for a month to get a virtual item, they might fall into the above category) - and the economy will remain.. well, it's insane now, but it wouldn't become outrageous. Not that bad really, that's why people who leave AO always check back every once and awhile because they do miss the crazy antics of watching people trade plots of land for a small backpack that adds maybe 5% damage on to each hit.
Now for the (near)perfect solution - everyone ready? - here goes!
Moar instancing.
FC needs to instance all rares. There is no reason that with over 500 people online(Probably a lot more, but that's just my wild stab) only one person should have loot rights to a mob that spawns every 10, 30, 60, 240, 480, 10% every 10, 30mins, etc. that's absurd.
Alien invasion did well in my opinion, allowing raiders to spawn monsters that drop phatz when they wanted to. You could go farm an item that spawned the raid when you wanted to then run over to a convienently placed city (in almost any other game this would need to be a public terminal, but because of AO's strong org pride [Go AP!] everyone has access to a city, or can get access by promising certain drops to a provider.)
This could be semi-easily implimented in the shadowlands by simply adding the phatz to be dropped from mission bosses at roughly the same rate that it drops now, and having a lower % scaled mission reward (bad at words, meaning instead of getting a token 100% after killing all mobs, you start out with persay a .01% chance of getting a token then as you kill it raises itself to a 1% chance) which could be traded in for a phat that would be determined on what mission you rolled. Two options for missions would be random mission (would pick a mission from all the possible phatz missions on that zone) - for people who want to just try to get some money - or token mission (if you farmed a moderate drop token from a common mob, you could do the mission on that token [Infernal Vertex would 1/10 drop a token that would give you a shot at a MBC.]) - for people who are trying to get something for one of their characters. Normal EXP missions could also randomly drop a phat.
Also, beast/zods/mercs/outzone, etc should be runnable whenever a raidforce is ready to do it, but there would be instanced missions that would need to be completed. In the instance of beast it could go something like this - "Awaken the beast, unlock the 5 altars" - then you would get a special token at the end of each of the missions that you would use on some nodes on the way to beast to get him to pop. Normal 4-8-whatever hour spawns could also still be up, but would be in a different instance than the "whenever I want" raids.
Granted that if that ever DID happen the economy might go "wtf?" for a few weeks and heaven forbid a casual player might be able to enjoy some nice items too, but items would still retain a good deal of effort to get. You would still need to get lucky, and spend some time to do it, but you would be able to decide when you want to do it, and it would make for a really cool system overall.
All of this would never happen of course, it would make things too easy on the player - something that Funcom seems dead set against. Also the engine would die, hamsters suffer from cardiac arrest, oh and Funcom devs would have to put their thinking caps back on and stop producing cheapo "lets grab some money from the player really quick" booster packs for a few months. However, it's just a nice rant to write and get out there, see if anyone else sees things the way I do (-:
See ya around AP!
