A Changed Perspective on Release (rmt)

One of the problems I see is folks bringing up are outlier situations to define a term of RMT.

To me RMT is buying oxygen from another player. This can be a deco item, gold or power leveling as we know it in the modern gaming age, its buying something that can be obtained freely but you choose not to pursue that route. (and provided the time you spent accruing the asset was not in violation of game mechanics--aka cheats hacks etc).

Folks bring up what if my account was hacked, what if my friend stole my stuff, what if this and that. This has nothing to do with RMT. These are security issues and should be removed from the conversation in my opinion.

The conversation on RMT is paying another person for their hours of service in a virtual environment where you want to accrue these items without the time investment. In the everyday world you pay folks to perhaps walk your dog, change your oil, cook food for you, in the grocery store you pay for produce which someone else labored to produce and incurred the costs associated with it as well as the time investment. RMT is the real world.

Companies have spent countless dollars trying to remove RMT or the selling of services concerning non-physical items from gaming worlds, some have created marketplaces trying to get more money from those selling items but that also cost the company money to try to develop these procedures.

Instead of worrying that player A is helping player B, become more effective for a price, figure out what player A knows and go do it yourself. Then you can choose to teach for no price or do the same thing.

Instead of whining how this game is choosing NOT to try to fight the inevitable and choosing NOT to waste financial resources, be the police of unfair practices, report what you know to be true hacks in the game or exploited bugs and live your gaming life.

Harsh I know, but everyone needs to stay the hell out of everyone else's beeswax. You will lower your blood pressure and likely live longer. Don't try to keep up with the Jones' that is so 50's.

 

I do like rp for rp sake, but I would argue meta-stuff actually helps that. For example, if we all lived in the game 24/7, the rp aspects would work out. But some people can be here an hour a day, some people can be here 7 hours a day or more. How do you rp that? The one hour player is rp lazy because he didn't plant as much cotton or hasn't mined as much? To me, a closed world economy makes rp less viable and immersive.

 

@Lace there is one miner but very important distinction. If you get away with it and it is not allowed, there will always be the stink of shame if not the pain of being caught. That leaves the pride for those that earn their achievements legitimately though the chosen sacrifice no mater how mundane or tedious. By making cheating legitimate, their is no honor in earning anything.

 

I agree with all you said in your post, but especially that.

 

I don't know about that, but I agree with @Lace anyway that it's a silly thing to fight players doing personal transactions. You might as well fight players doing eachother favors. I joked in the other thread about willing to help people with XP if they bought me a coffee irl. That's what I think of that.

I always thought the add-on store was a worse problem than player-to-player transactions in terms of RP because all that stuff in the add-on store is taken out of the crafting economy, it also has a tendency to lock in game mechanics, and puts pressure on Port to add in anti-immersive stuff to raise funds.

In terms of powerleveling and a few other things, I simply think thats a problem of bad mechanics, because standing idle while someone gives you free XP is kind of dumb, whether its for $ or for igg. Ultimately, I think good RP based mechanics tend to resist the gold farming market. In these cases, I think people should be less concerned with what players are doing and policing them, and make an argument about changing the game mechanics.

 

How is buying stuff any less legitimate then doing it on your own? So buying a car is not a legitimate thing because I didn't make it myself? That logic doesn't hold true at all.

Buying stuff is not cheating. If it was then everyone would be a cheater since we all had to buy the game to play it. Again the logic doesn't hold up.

 

There is a reason why it is not allowed in 99.9999% of games and that reason is called cheating. I apreciate that profiteers see opportunity and come up with the ridiculous motives to justify their actions. Trust me when I say, I don't care. And with that I mean that I don't care if that is what they want to do. I won't look down on them for cheating nor profiteering. In fact, I hope to be the best of friends. It's life and this is just a game. I am just voicing my opinion and truly hoping to not upset or offend anyone regardless of their motivations. Life is short, we need to be friends.

 

That does make any sense at all. If buying stuff with real money is cheating then buying stuff in the game with game currency is also cheating. You didn't get the item yourself in game someone else got the item and then you traded for it. So if we took your logic to an end point all trading is cheating cause you didn't get all the items yourself.

 

but to say that it almost seems you feel all those above you cheated to get there, and we know this is not necessarily true. There are good eggs and bad apples everywhere. I don't discount your point but there are 2 sides as well to yours as mine.

 

Why portal didn't stick to their TOS in regards to Power leveling for money is a mystery. They could have disallowed it and not spent the resources to police it and left the threat of being banned by using or selling the service and when they did stumble upon it still have the option to ban someone to send a message. The threat of banning is often enough to keep people from doing it especially since so many have invested so much time and money into the game so a little xp isn't worth the risk of a ban.

The threat of being being banned for afk macroing and botting is often enough to prevent people from using it to get ahead. Those who truly don't care will do it anyway and eventually get caught. To say it's going to happen anyway why bother trying to prevent it seems like a spineless easy cop out of an approach. People are going to speed and text on their phones why bother telling them not to if they're just going to do it anyway.

Why not leave the same threat with the Power leveling service. They would have saved face in my opinion by not allowing it and avoided having the perception of being a pay to win game and getting out of not being pay to win on a technicality that they themselves don't sell xp it's the players who do it on their market place, but it's not condoned only allowed. Now they appear to cave at the whims of popular opinion to avoid bad PR before launch.

 

I am sorry if I was putting it that way. I am in no position to call someone a good or bad apple. But it has dramatically impacted my satisfaction in the game in a bad way and I feel justified to call it out because the precedence in 99.99% of games backs up my perspective that it is cheating. Nevertheless, this game is just a game that defies the rules and does things differently. Let's find out together in 10 years if that was a good choice or not.

 

I may be off target in what you are saying..

But since we don't live in game 24/7 there are the haves and have nots when it comes to RP (or any other aspect really) Could you not RP that my wife/husband was sick, or my crop got eaten by catepillars and while I would have liked to have gotten a crop of 500 pieces of cotton and only got 150 it is because of this reason? ( reason you choose to rp).

But if you bought some cotton with IRL cash, could you not RP it as OMG my great aunt died and left me her warehouse of cotton?

(again pardon me for not seeing the RP issues and IRL RMT transactions, maybe explain to me better how RMT hurts RP when it seems it can actually be used as a fun explanation)

Cheers @Sher Shadowleaf

 

You at least earned the gold in game to trade for it, so some effort on your part was required through the natural game playing process. Buying the xp and items with your credit card through the forum market place isn't exactly the same as earning them by farming for in game gold or xp.

Having someone level your character for you isn't doing the work yourself. It's like paying someone to do your math homework, because you don't want to and getting credit for it, but you still don't know how to do the math or play your character. Then these people feel cheated, because they paid someone to level their character and they feel like it sucks cause they don't know what they're doing then they write bad reviews about the game saying it's pay to win but you don't get your moneys worth. Then portal steps in and says it's not a condoned service, but we allow it on our market place, if you would like you can sell your account there to recoup your costs, but we're not giving you a refund.

 

Is it worth the resources in a non triple a game to police something that is going to occur no matter what the game is or is about its budget? Why waste dollars on fighting something that is perceived as evil that is done by one level 50 guildie to help a level 10, encouraged in a way by the hospitaller community, and no matter your disdain is going to happen?

I host monthly crafting mentoring events. I am 'selling' abeit for free my services to help new players. I guess I should be banned for not making everyone run uphill in the snow for month with no shoes to level their crafting abilities.

 

I was wondering why no one was bringing the official stance up. Thanks for the link!

 

To this point we all should agree, NO! In fact, AAA games don't even have the budget to stop it. But there is a big difference between legalizing a crime and knowingly just doing what you can to stop it. RL crime is very much the same. That is why I think this particular argument is exceptionally weak

 

I wanna make the distinction from services I have seen in other games where you give your character login information to some company and they LEVEL that character for you in xxxxx number of days and then MAYBE give you the character back without changing the password and you now have a level 100 character versus what we are really talking about here can there is a CLEAR distinction.


Folks that are selling exp as it stands now, DO NOT LOG INTO YOUR account, you have to be logged in, they each operate in their own way, sure some may allow you to basically afk and leech off their xp gain, but keep in mind they are splitting the xp gain they would normally get on their own with you so they are losing something in their 'training' of you. Some folks dont want to just build a pool of xp to smack a gustball or dummy around, and instead actively use the mentoring system to train those skills under the person they are paying for their expertise and bump those skills up which is technically how the system was made.

This is all so situational depending on the consumer and the provider and folks just keep lumping everything together as OMG its all so bad.

It can be made so good with 2 cooperative parties on these transactions or bad as others fear.


It Takes 2 to make a thing go right! --- Think of the powerleveling that way.

 

I don't think you understand how legal power leveling in this game works. You can't give your account to some one or macro actions both would be considered exploits and are not part of the legal RTM system so please don't conflate something that is allowed with something that is not. A legal power leveling service would be someone that goes out with you and kills monsters fairly close to you to make sure you get exp. This range is only 40m so not massive. As the person getting experience you still have to use the skills without botting for it to fall within the legal system. So you will be training your skills which you generally want to do at the same time since time is really the reason people do it. A good service provider would also explain the best way to make your character how you want it. The buyer also can't really leave their characters alone for long periods of time as some are suggesting. The legal system does not allow for AFK leveling or earning exp. You can't afk level cause botting is illegal and if you stay idle and afk the game client will log you out. In no way does the legal system allow you to put no effort into leveling.

Gold is a currency just like real life money. You have to earn both of them. Both are earned the same way. You have to spend an amount of time to get both. Some people have more time in RL then in Game life and vice versus. Allowing Cash and time to have equal footing in the game allows a larger variety of players to enjoy the game. People with short game time can invest some money to get things in game faster so their short time is more enjoyable for them. People who have a lot of time in game can trade that time currency to get the same items. Time is the real currency here. Essentially allowing RMT takes the game from being only power gamers at the top to allow power buyers to also be at the top. So now more people can get to the best place.

 

This is enlightening in the sense I can see how this is being justified. However, I actually believe that is not what is happening most of the time. Having people tow you around as they fight is more boring and tedious than earning experience. I would be will wager that 80% are letting people do double boxing and just getting a leveled avatar later. I don't believe for a second that most are doing it the boring way.

 

Okay hun I feel ya, you see it as a crime, I do not. We can agree to disagree on this one and there is no harm in that.