Keep RMT But Make It an In-Game Auction House for All Store & Crown Items

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Alleine Dragonfyre, Oct 17, 2019.

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  1. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    Hello @Chris and Community ,

    RMT can be a good thing. Yes it can! It can make money for players and, with my proposal it will make a ton of much-needed money for Portalarium. I am talking ALL Store and Crown Shop items, past and present, not just the new Heritage items. This really should have been something from the start to keep everyone on an even playing field while still being able to make real money.

    How?

    Make it a part of the Crown Shop as a Cash Auction House in-game or on the official site and charge fees and/or percentage commissions paid to Portalarium. It's time they make something off the sale of their own Intellectual Property.

    It's also time to make RMT officially supported to protect both sellers and buyers. By doing this we ALL become "Trusted Traders."

    Why?
    • Convenience: people currently have to go off-site and out of the game to make complicated arrangements to buy things. No need to scour the forums or other trade sites and hope your item arrives. The auction house makes immediate and guaranteed deliveries.

    • Price: Auction houses mean competition. Much like where we check for prices on ShroudoftheAvatar.net an RMT Auction Houses will provide the means for true, real-time supply and demand pricing of items. No more guessing, no more paying too much or too little. Yes, there will be undercutting, but that just means your item isn't worth what it once was. And sometimes, your items will be worth WAY MORE than you thought it was as well.

    • Safety: RMT is completely unprotected right now. If someone rips you off, you're on your own. Never worry again about scammy sellers or deadbeat buyers. We're all Trusted Traders and are enforced by the Auction House.

    • Profit: Some traders may not like this proposal but all my experience in Marketing tells me you're losing business on impulse buys because it's just too inconvenient to buy from you. Plus some of your websites look downright shady, apologies. Wouldn't you rather pay a small fee to get that instant sale instead of no sale at all?

    • Community: Make a name for yourself as a top seller to the entire Shroud community. An in-game Auction House legitimizes your business and puts your name in a centralized database everyone will see. The more you sell, the more people will know you.
    I'm sure there are many other reasons I cannot think of off the top of my head but they exist. Conversely, perhaps there are a few valid arguments against this, but I have a feeling those arguments will always be about putting the individual over the community. Let's put the community, and our growing numbers first!

    Thanks for stopping by!

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2019
  2. Jezebel Caerndow

    Jezebel Caerndow Avatar

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    It would streamline shopping and if it helps catnip games, I am game.
     
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  3. dayero

    dayero Avatar

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    Can you elaborate on that "HOW?" part.
    For example : How to pay out money to players securely and legally? I am not really an expert on US law, this is wikipedias "opinion" on the matter:

    Plus there is the small - tiny really - issue of making payouts secure so that no one can rob you blind if he finds a nice bug in your code handling balances or payments.
     
  4. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    There has to be a way. Other games have done it.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2019
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  5. Katu

    Katu Avatar

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    Diablo 3 had this at the beginning. It was huge failure. It hurt the game badly and after sometime, it was removed fully.
    Item prices floored. Only the very best items had anykind of value.

    "The auction house came out of the desire to legitimize third party trading so that players would stay in the game to do their trading rather than go to third party sites, and as a result reduce fraud, scams, spamming, and the profit in hacking the game, making dupes, etc. The problem is, of course, it over-legitimized trading. It made it too easy. I think we all know this by now and the consequences. We worried about these consequences ahead of time, but we thought the benefits would outweigh the downsides, and WoW’s AH seemed like a good proof of concept. Obviously we were mistaken."

    Jay Wilson, Former Gamer Director of Diablo 3(src)

    EDIT:
    Those who don't know, Diablo 3 auction house allowed to sell and buy with in game currency and real money. Few weeks after release, you could buy super gears ( full set ) for your character, with few dollars ( < 10$ ), unless you aimed for world records, that was as good as you ever needed.
    Farming was made obsolete, because why in the earth would I spend 8 hours grinding for loot, when it costs 10c at store?
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2019
  6. Mylady ‘Gin Gin Darlin

    Mylady ‘Gin Gin Darlin Avatar

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    Nope, not a fan of RMT at all. Port can make money selling things and items can be tradable amongst players for in game gold, but I don’t think RMT should be allowed among players. It just breeds greed and malcontent instead of community. Revenue to Port should be more important then revenue to players.

    TBH I think anyone who thinks otherwise is just out for themselves and doesn’t truly care about the game or ports bottom line, but about either lining their own pockets or reclaiming too much money spent on the game.

    RMT is successful in games that are already very well established with huge populations so the company is taking in the money. And have it bolted down to work more in favour of the game then the player. They also have big teams dedicated to just that side of the game to monitor transactions and deal with issues. They also have it all in place so it legally protects the company but not the player.
    Even then the RMT is usually special items that can really only be traded in game for in game currency and not resold via RMT again. If it is those players are usually banned if found out.

    The fact that Chris is going to be removing it from the forums and not (nor have they ever) monitoring transactions shows they don’t want to be held legally responsible, nor do they have the team to manage and continually monitor every transaction for the event of any RMT transactions going wrong.

    I do agree that an auction house in principle would be a helpful thing, but again for in game gold only and with restrictions on the number of items allowed to be auctioned, the time it stays auctioned before having to be reauctioned and cool down periods to stop it just becoming a massive list of over priced items that just sit there indefinitely.

    Edit: AH fees is something I neglected to add in there as Elrond pointed out. Fee for listing, relisting, cancelling. Good gold sink, I agree.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2019
  7. Elrond

    Elrond Avatar

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    I think an auction house for rmt or just for gold would have negative consequences for our economy ..mainly because we can produce stuff faster then it gets out . Even an idexed search would have the same effect of prices falling so low ..making most of activities ingame not worth the time . If we do get an auction house for gold i hope it will have a 10% sell price fee ( payable after item is sold ) ...can be a great gold sink ...

    Diablo 3 auction house crashed because of the crazy amount of items being dropped ..way more then the number of buyers .... a game cant control number of buyers but can control number of items dropped ...so if a balance can be found ...could work .
     
  8. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    Exactly what i keep repeating since a while... ;p but people come and says hey its the offer and demand... right.. but its not the same world as we live in
     
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  9. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    I will wait for @Chris post before I join the RMT topic.
    I have got a really really bad feeling about this. Only thing that keeps me from raging is that he wants to update the trusted trader stuff.
     
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  10. dayero

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    I see you have really thought this through :D
    Yes, it is possible. It's just very expensive, very risky and as others have pointed out might completely destroy the ingame economy.
     
  11. Sulaene Moon

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    That sounds like a good idea.

    The only issue I have is that due to the real money value of virtual property, one that seems to attract the most attention from pro-commodification players is an obligation to ensure that virtual property retains its value. Value comes from the effects of human desire. If no-one wants something, it's worthless; if everyone wants it, it's priceless. Virtual objects are no different from real objects in this regard; where they do become distinct is that they only have value because of the software that provides their context. If the software were to change the meaning of a virtual object, that object's value would also change. This assumption of responsibility places SotA developers in a very awkward position. It implies that, as controllers of the software, developers have a duty to ensure that these characteristics do not change in such a manner as to affect unduly the value of their associated objects. This puts severe - perhaps impossible - constraints on them.

    When players want the ability to "cash out" and see a game as an investment rather then a form of entertainment they make the development and profitability of the developers of the game second to their own.
     
  12. Joe Zhudarak

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    This would destroy the reason for player vendors, its a core feature for this game and a lot of remaining players like to trade, resell and play the market game. An in -game auction will turn player vendors obsolete and also reduce the POT usage.

    We don´t need to be a WOW clone, SOTA need to improve current systems with complete features (not more half baked ones), focus on bug fixing performace and loading times.
     
  13. Bedawyn

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    What I would like to see is a Port-administered location -- perhaps an auction house, perhaps simply a site where people set their own prices -- for sales for CROWNS ONLY. Not in-game gold (we have vendors for that) and not real money. If people want to take the crowns they make and turn them into real money elsewhere, that's on them. But many people would simply turn around and spend those crowns back in the game. And of course, Port would get a commission on each of those sales.
     
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  14. slandrew

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    A couple of opinions on this:

    1.) Taking out the auction house did nothing to improve the game either because they went a step too far in making none of the items tradable anyway. So, while the sentiment of "why waste time grinding if I dont need to?" was made obsolete, it was just replaced with the similar, yet polar opposite sentiment of "why waste time grinding if I can't earn something for it?"

    2.) Which leads into my second point and the actual reason why Diablo 3 failed and could never succeed. People wanted the same experience they had in D2. Problem is, nearly everyone's sought after experience in D2 revolved around some sort of scamming of players, using a bot that was explicitly against the rules, or some other nefarious behavior. When they made D3, they eliminated all of those bugs. So people were unable to get that same feeling.

    3.)I personally believe that D3 is a better game than D2, but I completely understand why people who loved D2 hate it. It is not possible to get the same feeling while playing it. Kinda similar to other games heh
     
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  15. Charon

    Charon Avatar

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    Has anyone stopped to consider that possibly the reason people chose to purchase something, via RMT, is because the item(s) they'd like to buy are no longer available through Catnip?

    Personally, I've done both. When I had the option I purchased and upgraded bundles from Port. When those options were removed I was left with 2 options .. purchase COTO's or purchase from other players. I could've purchased everything I received in the bundles from players for less but I CHOSE to support Port. I no longer have that option unless I want to make multiple purchases of COTO's and go through the lot upgrade process.

    If Catnip would like more than $9 a month from me make supporting the game easier and simpler not involve more steps and convoluted.
     
  16. Pawz

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    There are a great number of economic/business reasons this won't work...I could write a book to go over them all but in the end it simply can't work and won't happen. I'm a huge proponent of RMT but it has to stay outside the game. There are endless ways to monetise the game, bringing RMT in house isn't one of them.
     
  17. Boris Mondragon

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    I will wait to see what Chris has to say about this entire proposal before I either completely or somewhat agree with it.

    Remember these two important things:

    1) We live in a society that promotes profit, consumerism and instant gratification. Many SOTA players have an ample discretionary spending budget for this hobby that allows them to purchase the in game gold to get what they want and get it now. This is the current culture period.

    2) @Chris needs to rally the remaining players who will hopefully help recruit more. I hope he handles this so called “RMT” issue with care. You want to set a “Catnip Games Convenience Fee” that automatically gives them 10 percent of RMT transactions, I can agree with that. You want more reinvested into the game? Give me something worthwhile to spend it on. There is a separate thread on what we are willing to pay for and which will help keep the lights on and expand our dev team size.

    R/Boris/El Pirata/Black Sails Forever
     
  18. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

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    I think the simplest solution is to drop RMT (and anything like it) from the forums and point everyone to the approved Trusted Trades. Anything else would be clearly stated as unsupported. This moves 99% of the RMT customer service issues to the TTs.

    The whole point of dropping RMT support is to reduce their support tickets from scammers to as near zero as they can get. Adding more work to come up with a new system or modify the existing system is not going to free up the time for the team to work on the game.

    With player owned towns, they can't completely drop RMT. But, CN would at least get a some income to take care of those transfer.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2019
  19. Aetrion

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    My main concern here is that in the wider gaming community having a game that heavily monetized is about as popular as foot fungus. Blizzard tried it with Diablo 3 and that didn't go over well at all. Of course Shroud has a slightly different target audience, and is played by a lot of older people with more disposable income, but there is still something grimy about the idea that in a game where power is traded freely the de facto currency becomes the dollar.
     
  20. Oakenhammer

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    I think an in-game RMT auction house would have this same effect on SotA as it did in Diablo 3. In Diablo 3, I bought 2 billion gold for a couple bucks, which allowed me to purchase a set of gear off the non-RMT auction house that increased my character's damage output by something like 5000%. I basically dominated the rest of the game and didn't have to worry about any of the loot, which kinda spoils the core mechanic of the game. I still even have a sizable chunk of that gold left despite the pretty sizable gold sinks they added in the expansion after removing the auction house.

    For SotA especially, the supply of items is drastically larger than the demand and it would be a much more dramatic race to the bottom. How many thousands of items does everyone have sitting in banks and chests they'd like to unload?

    Additionally, RMT has already had a pretty negative effect on SotA and putting it front in center would probably cause more harm than good.
     
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