A personal struggle with the ethics of gold selling and crowns

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Tahru, Dec 6, 2016.

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  1. Jaanelle DeJure

    Jaanelle DeJure Avatar

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    Sure... there's no reason to be dismissive. However at the same time there is no reason to overstate the problem either. I've just seen quite a few posts by players that seem to imply there is some massive "advantage" that certain players are getting by purchasing gold or xp, whereas in reality it is a small advantage, bordering on insignificant.

    As I mentioned earlier, having tons of time on one's hands to play and being in a guild are WAY bigger advantages than buying gold or xp.

    I would also expect that whenever launch comes around, all of us here in alpha will have a real advantage over new players, regardless of whether or not we did anything exploit-y. We will have all had at least a year in persistence. So it will be interesting to watch all the new players swooping in and complaining about all of us here right now as even the "least" of us will be at a very significant advantage over the noobs coming into the game post-launch.

    I feel similarly abou the 25% xp bonus. While I agree it should be split between multiplayer and pvp, the people who are complaining that they are being "forced" into PvP because everybody else is getting an "advantage" are really exaggerating the problem.

    If I grind for an hour and earn 125K xp instead of 100K xp, that is a small advantage, not a big one. So while I think it's great fo us all to debate and discuss, let's talk about what is really going on rather than exaggerated and hyperbolic statements that are distorting the real picture.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016
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  2. Jaanelle DeJure

    Jaanelle DeJure Avatar

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    Agreed. Enjoying oneself is "winning" at a game, and people can and will define that differently.

    Now that being said if one chooses to define "winning" as having the most GM'd skills and the best gear and never dying or losing anything in PvP... well... that's a definition that's going to be pretty hard to meet. People who define "winning" that way, aren't going to have much fun playing by my own estimation. It seems to me like that kind of person is setting themselves up to be disappointed and frustrated. But to each their own.
     
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  3. mass

    mass Avatar

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    So, these are just my opposing views on the issues you mentioned, not intended to range into hyperbole (and certainly not being attacky):
    1. If the advantage is so de minimis, why pay for it? Obviously, it is not de minimis to you, or you would not have spent real dollars for it. If your enjoyment simply comes from playing with friends (which is great), why feel the need to artificially escalate your advancement? Why not just play the game as is? Wouldn't you rather see the game balanced to be fun during advancement rather than make you feel the need to go outside the game for help? I don't think the type of RMT you described is terribly problematic, except that it necessitates the opportunity for RMT to occur that is problematic, leading me to:

    2. I can go to the player market right now and buy 10,000 ore of my choice with real dollars (or buy the gold that lets me do it in game). That would take me months to gather on my own. Even assuming I had zero producer xp pool, I'd still be able to level mastercrafting at 10% of the time it would take me normally. This means that a person who has not spent the time to level crafting the same way I have can now come in and compete with me for selling those goods, devaluing the amount I can charge for those goods due to increased supply. You could make the argument that the ore is being produced by real players and it's just transferring from one to the other, but in reality, few would grind that ore at such massive amounts if the real world dollars weren't at the other end of it. So, it contributes to supply glut in general, devaluing the efforts of casual players, and increases competition specifically, where high skill level is needed to produce goods.

    And as for new players at launch, I suspect that our advancement will be a deterrent to some, even more so due to the fact that much of our advancement came with easier mechanics. As well, if you go read boards about multiplayer games in general, there are a substantial amount of players who evaluate perceived fairness in terms of the ability to purchase advantage in a game as a decision making point on whether to purchase that game or not.

    I think SOTA can be successful in spite of RMT, but I wouldn't expect this issue to ever disappear from discussions on the game because it is an important issue to some players.
     
  4. LiquidSky

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    If you don't have the producer exp from grinding in the first place...no amount of ore is going to let you level masterworking faster. You can buy the ore, but you still gotta work for the exp.
     
  5. LiquidSky

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    And the 'loss' was instant. SO the net number of winners vrs losers remains the same. All that has happened is one person loses (in game) power and the other gained. It doesn't matter that they made some RL power by getting paid.

    Gold is not being created in these transfers...it is simply moving from one person to another. In fact, it is freeing up gold that will probably be spent on in game stuff, thus improving the economy....since the guy buying the gold probably did it for a reason. And the guy selling it was probably not going to spend it anyways.

    The sky is not falling
     
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  6. mass

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    You need much less xp than you need silver, particularly if your pool is not huge. The ore is far harder to come by than the xp.
     
  7. mass

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    How much of the gold would not have been produced without the explicit real money reward the grinders expect?
     
  8. LiquidSky

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    So you agree with me in that you need producer exp...now you are arguing about the amount. Are you sure you can level up masterworking at 10% of the speed then the person mining it themselves?
     
  9. mass

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    I mentioned producer xp in the original post. I haven't calculated the specific rate. I do know that when I go and exclusively mine silver and come back to master craft, I run out of silver with plenty of producer xp left, such that I could burn through several times the amount of silver I used to continue leveling. Not to mention all the ore and materials needed to craft the items to then be masterworked. The producer xp is the easiest part.
     
  10. LoneStranger

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    You mention SotA(MMOs/online games in general?) as a hobby.... I have heard from many people with many different types of hobbies and one of their goals, aside from having fun doing something they love, is to just break even. I don't want to say that gold selling is right or wrong, because it's not that simple. I just want to give a point of view that some people selling might be coming from.

    As far as the microtransactions/materialization of in-game items, that's pretty much what you get without a traditional subscription model, and in some cases, even somewhat with that.
     
  11. Silis

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    The exp applied to a skill on use is a % of the total available pool up to a maximum for that skill. Just having enough producer exp to use all the silver is not the same as getting the maximum amount of possible skill for your silver. If you were starting at 1 and going to 100 masterworking with a pool of 5356408 you would need less silver than if you started with a pool of 1102195 because you have to use the skill fewer times. Those numbers are not random but based on the known data about the game as applied to skills currently, the first for what is optimal for GMing from 1 and the second is the total exp it takes to GM a skill with a 1x multiplier. As a result buying the ore to grind your skill on a small pool is actually incredibly inefficient.
     
  12. Sator Faryn

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    I'm a person with some extra money to spend, and very little time to play. All the gold I bought came from players in third world countries like Austalia, France, Germany, and Texas. ;-)

    I love this game and I'm having a great time playing the way I do. And part of that enjoyment is due to the fact I can buy game gold.


    Sator Faryn
     
  13. mass

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    It depends on what bottleneck you are trying to eliminate, right? For me, I'm trying to use the least amount of silver to level the skill, so I'm concerned about the inefficiency you describe. For someone who has virtually unlimited silver, you don't need to grind out that huge xp pool to get maximal percent application per masterwork; you only need to the total exp. Inefficient for silver use? Sure, but if you're just buying it all with real money, who cares?
     
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  14. mass

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    Calls'em likes he sees'em :p
     
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  15. Katrina Bekers

    Katrina Bekers Localization Team

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    All good and fancy, but XP is being sold for real money too.

    This is probably the worst aspect (in a sea of filth) of what I call the "nyah nyah I'm RL richer than you" syndrome.

    Even if I can barely believe the narrative of who claims not to have time to grind and earn their resources, when the equation includes such things as leveling characters, I start to tend to lose faith in anything good coming out of that, besides an ego race that will leave behind the ruins of every game.

    But that's just me, and my desire NOT to compete with other players based on the size of my bank account (even if I have plenty of disposable income for toys like these), but on the dedication to the game and its mechanics.
     
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  16. Duke William of Serenite

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    I have played about 80% of the mmos out there. They all have sold gold in chat or on external forums. Now what I hated wasnt that someone was buying gold for cash. What bothered me was the constant spamming in chat channels.

    At least here you dont see it, well unless you come here to the message boards. I applaud the devs of this game for keeping it out of game and part of the message boards.
     
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  17. Lumajo

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    There are two kinds of warriors in this world my friend, real warriors and credit card warriors.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2016
  18. LoneStranger

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    Hey, I fight extremely hard to stay on task while at work to earn that money!
     
  19. nonaware

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    real money trading is the reason i am here as it adds gravity to my actions and the actions of the others in the world of shroud that i find absent in other non rmt/rce games.

    i am a bit of an odd ball i acknowledge. when playing civ 4 back in the day i would not really try to win but watch what the ai civs did and try to stir the pot and watch what happened.

    there was a mod that allowed for rebellions and new civs would be created from them. watching these interact and fight was a blast.

    then i discovered mmos... while not quite the same feeling of watching large scale events of civs clashing and breaking down it was close if on a micro level as opposed to a world one. i missed UO by the way never got a chance to play it.

    i messed around with a few mmos that i cant remember the names of then i discovered entropia universe a real money economy game. and all the pieces came together and i found that excitment and immersion that i had when i was playing civ.

    watching people and the complex schemes that they would set up to achieve their desires and then the conflict that ensues when two or more schemes or goals arrive at a cross purpose. it wasnt just digital things that people were competing for it was money, it was power, it was and is people not just competing but putting their all into these battles that were no longer just rep or gamer status but something much easier for me to place value on and that is money...

    trading networks worth thousands of usd...

    items and equipment that people had payed thousands of usd for...

    the transport of thousands of usd of materials through full loot space between planets...

    the scale the scope the sheer monetary value... it boggled my mind and engaged me beyond anything i could experience in real life. (i mean magic and space ships and respawns lol...)

    i still play entropia a bit but i hate the rng of loot there lol lootuis never really favored me with her grace.

    i went to other games after that and still did rmt even if against the rules as it added that element of immersion to the games that i found other wise lacking as the worlds had no value to me other wise... so i added it myself to achieve it even if somewhat lacking and dangerous...

    archeage was the best of these games and i still miss it at times but it had its problems as everthing no matter how much they tried was static. world bosses. classes. dungeons. repeatable silly pvp battles. the same thing over and over. the actions and schemes never really changed the shape of the world and effected the people within them.

    then there was shroud... and here i am even tho i have taken breaks its in early access after all... there are going to be frustrations and such... one example is agriculture being so bad currently.

    i understand that most dont enjoy this like me and accept it :) sorry that what i find fun and engaging detracts from what you find fun but i am not going to change as it does not cause you harm or effect your well being in anyway i am concerned with.

    i have no idea why all my post are turning into these long drawn out rambles recently... sorry :) ill work on it :p brevity and clarity are not gifts that i was blessed with.


     
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  20. mass

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    This is actually the only compelling justification I can see to RMT; you can get the feeling like your efforts extend beyond the game and have real world value. Sure does raise the stakes, and the demand for cheat-proof systems though, which I think we are a long ways a way from. Also, since there is zero protection against fraud from player to player transactions and no officially supported system for RMT transactions, there is unbalanced access to the RMT gray market (in my opinion).

    Good counter point, though.
     
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