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One can "pay to win," yes, but in so doing, one has empowered another player to have greater access to the game in return for playing it "harder."
At the risk of sounding like I'm giving a history lesson for which you already know the details, one of the things that, when c-stores were first becoming a thing, people thought about and/or tried to do were create ways to play the game "hard enough" to generate c-store credit. To substitute playing the game for paying money.
The other side of that coin was the thought that c-store items would just be "better" than items one could get in the game, or that the c-store would provide a way to just buy the items rather than having to bother grinding through the game.
Both have their own toxcicity.
However, that toxcicity arises from the way they perversely bypass the mechanisms that the systems are supposed to employ: c-stores are supposed to generate money for the game's owner; items are supposed to be balanced by their rarity and difficulty to earn.
By latching the two sides of the equation together, they become their own check and balance. The rarity of the items is preserved by virtue of the items still being generated strictly by the means of game play, as designed. The c-store currency is never created for free, thus never costing the owner money from sales. Nothing's ever given away for free that was intended to be profitable.
The issues related to paying to win tend to be a combination of "I feel like I just can't compete with those guys who spend money" and "Well, now that I've bought my victory, what can I do?"
The latter is not really addressed all that well by this, and will have to be handled the same way somebody who "finishes" their build through normal gameplay handles it: with more content and thinsgs to do.
The former, however, is mitigated almost entirely by this set-up: if Sandra has "paid to win," she has done so by giving those who earned all the items she's bought the Stars they need to gain access to the "pay only" parts of the game (whatever those are). She's bought them, at least in part, their subscriptions, costumes, etc.
Moreover, Sandra having all that stuff does NOT make that stuff any less rare. She didn't create it ex nihilio by spending real world money. Just as she paid for the Stars Billy (and others) obtained from these transactions, Billy (or others) played the game and earned those items. Their rarity is preserved.
So, yes. It is, in theory, possible to "pay to win" with this setup. However, it bypasses most of the problems with pay-to-win as a thing in games. And the more people try to "pay to win," the more [i]expensive[/i] it will become to do so, because the demand for the "winning" items will increase while the supply remains governed by the drop rates (or whatever else) that generate the items desired.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Okay, so the breakdown seems to be that you believe Sandra will buy more Stars than she needs even if she can't spend them.
I am not assuming that. I am assuming Sandra will buy the Stars she needs to get what she wants. If she can't spend what she has, she's not going to buy more.
If she can spend them, she will buy more.
This gives her a place to spend them. One more thing she might WANT to spend money for.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
The only "breakdown" I see that you want people to get things that they can't pay you for in ways that would allow them to get them without paying you for them. Why don't you simply go the tiny extra logical step of making everything you offer in the cash store free to everyone? If you're willing to let some players experience things they didn't pay money for why not let all of us get it for nothing?
I think it's sorta nice that you have this pseudo-communistic vision that everyone will spread their excess Stars and in-game currency around equally and everything will be hunky-dory just like Star Trek or some such. Unfortunately MWM is a business that will need money for itself AND a way to mitigate third party gold sellers. Your vision of how this will all work will only reduce your potential income and make it an environment that's much more enticing to the gold spammers.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
No, segev's argument is a pretty traditional academic economics argument. It may not work out, but calling it fanciful is not justified. We are dealing in opinion until the real world launch based on other games' experience
Yes... academically communistic. I simply have little faith that what Segev's proposing will work out.
For what it's worth I hope I'm wrong but like I said before I can easily afford to be wrong about this. Segev can't.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Unlike other systems.. MWM has stated that "Every Star on the Market will have been purchased".
In other words, not matter how many people trade game currency for Stars it will only increase the need for some/other players to actually purchase Stars.
MWM is basically saying "We don't care how you spend these Stars, but the source is ONE place using currency IRL"
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I have to say, this is the first time I've EVER been accused of being communist. I imagine, if certain people in leadership positions read that, they'd laugh their heads off in disbelief.
I don't want Billy to get things "for free." I want Billy to provide a service to Sandra. I want that service to Sandra to be so attractive that she will spend more money on acquiring that service than she would otherwise have spent. I want MWM to profit from that expenditure. In order to incentivize Billy to provide this service, I want to offer him c-store credit equal to what Sandra paid extra to gain this service from Billy.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
To be clear I labeled your plan here communistic in nature. Envisioning a system where everyone has equal access to everything and has as many Stars and/or as much in-game currency as they want/need to make everyone "happy" certainly comes off as communistic to me. *shrugs*
Whatever happened to the idea of Billy and Sandra getting out of the game what they put into in terms of whatever amounts of time or money they want to spend? Why should we assume that any excesses in resources I gain while playing the game must (or even should) go to other people playing the game differently than I am? Why introduce factors which would encourage gold spamming just for the sake of "leveling the playing field" between me and thousands of other people I don’t know or care about? Why is it MWM's concern? How many more incredibly obvious questions about this do you want me to keep throwing at you?
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
What concerns me is after that initial creation of a Star it becomes a commodity that the market decides the fate of. MWM loses all effective "control" of it at that point. It's that loss of control that raises all the proverbial "alarm bells" for me.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
For the record, I've never really been a big fan of this whole "Stars" idea. I'd really rather not buy "Stars" and then turn around and spend them, I'd just rather flat out give you my money. I don't want to have to spend $15.00 to get 1500 Stars to spend inside the game. I just don't like the idea of buying fake currency. It's almost like I'm buying Monopoly Money and I can't use it for anything else if I have any extra left over and I can't turn around and sell it for real money. I'm just stuck with it. That just really bothers me.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Specifically, Billy gets out of the game what he puts into it in terms of time.
Sandra gets out of the game what she puts into it in terms of time and money.
Billy will have to put a lot more time into the game to make up for the money he is not putting in to get the same result. How much more is a function of market prices of the goods and IGC he puts up to acquire Stars.
I don't know where you're getting "everybody will have equal access regardless of what they put into it." That's not only impossible (if somebody doesn't play, how can they get anything out of it?), but it's not been mentioned as a goal.
The goal is that those with more time than money can use that extra time to gain access to things one normally needs money to access. But he has to do so in a way that lets those with more money acquire things they don't have time to, themselves.
I am thinking PURELY in market economics terms, trading goods for services, and trying to find a way for MWM to profit from these exchanges by putting them in a form that is generated only when somebody gives MWM money.
The goal here is to harness natural human behavior in such a way that it is mutually constructive and profitable to MWM. A LOT of what I try to come up with is focused on taking behaviors we know will crop up from past experience, and finding a way to make the game USE and EXPLOIT those behaviors rather than tamp them down, and design the game such that the use and exploitation of those behaviors enhances the game and profits MWM (in that order of priority, because better game -> better MWM long-term profits).
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I like and agree with everything Segev says above. As long as you force the playerbase (some segment of it) to have to grind for loot drops, then let them sell that to other players as they wish to do, you're not doing anything wrong. "Wrong" would be selling the gear in the c-store directly. This isn't that, this is letting the grinders sell stuff to the whales, it's symbiotic. Everyone lives in a world where each and every Star cost a penny to create and each and every Very Rare item had to be randomly dropped to create.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
There is precedent for "fake money" being used in this fashion, particularly in online gaming. Nearly every MMO does it in one form or another if they have a c-store, and it actually is something I find to be useful rather than decorative.
It has, most importantly, NOT led to problems in the MMOs and other games that use it. So avoiding it does not seem like a wise action, especially when it can enable so much.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I understand it Segev, don't get me wrong. I'm just not a big fan of it. It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
That's for the devs to decide, like everything else, but I like the Segev plan from what I've heard of it. I think you could start with that from day 1 really. There may not be a lot of lootz for a whale to buy early on, nor much INF to be traded, nor many rare or very rare items to be had, but over time a market will emerge, I feel.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The StarMart is very neccesary. If/when there are customer service issues the company runs into many real problems trying to give its patrons money. They have none of those legal or tax issues when using Stars.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
If Sandra buys enough Stars for herself and Billy; or if Billy buys his and Sandra buys hers, they're BOTH buying the same number of stars in both cases, except in the "Billy buys Stars" part of case #2, Billy CAN'T buy those Stars, sometimes, because of circumstances out of Billy's control. Poor Billy. The game devs in case #2 have abandoned him because he cannot trade the heaps and gobs of IGC he has for some of Sandra's heaps and gobs of Stars, because someone thought it would be a good idea to disallow that type of trade. I just have to respectfully disagree with your entire premise there. The people creating and selling the Stars for real money don't need to have any control over what the players do with it after that as long as it gets sinked out eventually someplace.
I mean this isn't some sort of "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach him to fish, feed him forever" type thing, it's an MMO. Acquiring Stars is not a job skill or life lesson to learn. It's a simple matter of plunking down monies for Stars, that's it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The real pressing question is, where are the IGC sinks? Gear that wears down over time? Punishments for getting defeated and having to get gear repaired? Maybe the auction house/market in the game takes a cut of all transactions on a percentage basis?
It would be nice if there were a IGC sink the was a thing that people could buy, like candy bars, that you buy it with IGC, use it once, then it;s consumed and if you want another you buy another. With Stars my big idea was makign the TFs do that, but I don't think it's a good idea to make that the IGC sink as well. What would you do, make people pay IGC AND Stars to do a TF? That sounds bad. Just Stars or just IGC? Also no.
This is where I'm left at a loss. We need a repeat business enabler for IGC now too. That's a poser.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It specifically has caused many issues in NW and you seem to be ignoring the examples I've given here and elsewhere. In theory it should work, but in practice there are several things that can go wrong and have gone wrong there. Usually what initially went wrong was nothing to do with the Zen situation (their stars equivalent), but the Zen<->AD situation magnified a small glitch into a major disaster.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I didnt read half of the posts... and i'm not that great with Accounting.
But I do have a question (sorry if it was already addressed).
- How will you prevent a Gold Farmer from:
a. Offering his services for Stars in exchange for PLing, Selling Rare Drops, etc...?
b. Turning around and selling Stars s/he earned at 1/2 price of what the StarMart does, for real Money?
Side Note:
And what if Zack (yes, the one from Saved by the Bell) gets the same allowance like his younger brother Jack, but Zack is greedy and wants a larger allowance... so he does the Same thing that a Gold Farmer would, and makes his younger brother Jack give him half of his allowance for Stars, which would have cost him twice if purchased in the StarMart.
Using the economics, is it also not plausible for Billy to hoard the very same stars he bought from Sandra and then by playing the market flip them back into the market at a high IGC price? 1 star bought at 50 IGC on day 2, day 20 sells said star at 500 IGC. Day 39 buys star at 150 IGC (market always in flux up and down), day 52 sells at 1000. Billy has played the market and benefited more the Sandra or MWM. Naïve question, what was the problem with COH hybrid business model? They had subs and market but no RLM to IGC system. Dedicated players paid sub and market. F2P paid market. Granted COH market had F2P buying archetypes and access but it allowed the F2P to choose their game content. Does not DCUO follow this business model still, granted you have to pay for DLC but that is a one time RLM infusion to the game.
At a high level, I'm inclined to agree with Segev, at least in terms of time versus money. I see the differences in currency as a very simple comparison. I'm going to pull an Izzy here and provide an image to express my thoughts.
[center][img]http://s13.postimg.org/xy3ie4bvr/cot_money2.png[/img][/center][br]
What I'm trying to illustrate is my view of the difference between IGC and Stars. The qualities of either currency are mutually exclusive. However, with the ability to exchange currency, you can trade the qualities of one currency for qualities of the other.
For instance, maybe you have lots of [color=#00bf12][b]real money[/b][/color] and want a [color=#005aff][b]powerful upgrade[/b][/color] [color=#00bf12][b]very quickly[/b][/color]. Neither currency has all of these qualities, but if you have lots of real money, the ability to trade one currency for the other would allow you combine the qualities of the two.
On the flip side, say you want [color=#00bf12][b]extra character slots[/b][/color] and have spent [color=#005aff][b]a lot of time[/b][/color] earning surplus upgrades. If either currency can be traded, you could arrange to trade away a powerful upgrade for the Stars that you need in order to get extra character slots [color=#005aff][b]without spending real money[/b][/color].
In this hypothetical scenario, both players get what they want, and all qualities of both currencies come into play. The cash for extra character slots and the time spent to generate upgrades both enter the system. Players are more or less exchanging the [i]inputs of the economic system[/i] to get what they need.
I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence or sound condescending with this illustration. It just seems to me that this sort of thing makes sense on its face. I'll go back and sift through the arguments again, but in simplest terms, this is how I see it, and I think this is what Segev might be trying to describe.
Ohhhh, I like that Stars graphic. :D
*takes the Star and stashes it for use later*
[img]http://i.imgur.com/tfhWY6S.png[/img]
[url=http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f31f/index.htm]U+1F31F GLOWING STAR[/url]
If you have a font that renders it like that, anyways. :)
I don't know it might be beneficial what with gold sellers likely existing no matter what. I'm still thinking on it but I guess I really just don't like scenarios where you can pay to win.
Puny Heroes.
One thing to remember as well: Depending on how easy it is for STARS to be transferred from player to player (does it have to be via a market transaction, or can it just be traded), I can see Currency sellers also being able to accrue STARS to sell via out of game means as well.
Of course, if you limit it to just "market transactions" or "can only be traded once" then this cuts down this risk. It doesn't eliminate it, but it *does* cut it down.
If someone buys Stars for the going rate, then sells them for IGC, then the guy that got the Stars by trading IGC for them goes and sells the Stars for less real money than the going MWM rate, the person who lost money there is not MWM. MWM got FULL PRICE for those Stars and the guy who bought them got them cheaper, but not at MWM's expense per se. The person getting ripped off there is actually middle guy who foolishly sold them for less IGC that he should have. It is as if that one guy bought Stars for $10, then sold them for $5. That's HIS loss not MWM's loss there. The guy that loses in that scenario is the guy that sold the Stars for too little IGC, in my opinion. In a market where these trades are happening in a transparent public forum you'd likely be able to gauge better what to ask for the Stars in terms of IGC in the first place, wouldn't you?
You can't stop people who know each other in real life from cutting "shady" deals like giving each other Stars or INF for free and still have an economy to speak of, so I'm not inclined to do that really.
The important thing is that the guy who buys the Stars for the "black market" price actually uses them for something that causes them to get destroyed. Without that last step in force, the Stars just devalue over time.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The thing I worry about is this. IGC is free, besides the fact that you have to spend time in the game to earn it. Stars cost actual money. If somebody is willing to buy Stars and trade them for IGC then the person who HAS all the time in the world to earn IGC turns around and sells back those Stars for money to another player, that would give the person who never buys a single Star and only earns IGC basically a way to make money off of CoT.
I know there are people on WoW that have multiple accounts and do nothing but farm for materials and then turn around and sell those materials for real money. That is basically their whole lively hood and they can make some good money off of it. Wouldn't that be a detriment to MWM if people were allowed to do that? Wouldn't that cause some kind of economic problem and devalue the Star? The value of a Star would basically be equated to an amount of IGC, which as the game gets older will inflate over time. Wouldn't that cause people to not see the worth of a Star as a Star, kind of like when people viewed the Dollar as only a piece of paper?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I've not paid attention to the whole thread but how would a player sell stars for IRL cash?
Crowd Control Enthusiast
They would set up a website advertising that they sell X amount of Stars for X amount of dollars. Basically just like Gold Farmers do.
Now you're going to say that MWM will shut down Gold Farmers from playing if they Spam advertising in the chat channel.
But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to Google how to buy cheap Stars for CoT to find somebody's website that will do that. Or word of mouth as one person tells a friend, that person tells their friends, those friends then tell their friends, etc. It can happen.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm under the understanding that the only way to sell stars is through the open, anonymous market. Not through trades.
Gifting stars would require a purchase of Stars from MWM.
I don't know if this was expressly said before however.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Stars can be also bought by other players from players by using the IGC. Segev has mentioned this already.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Right, on the currency exchange. Market Driven and anonymous. MWM can set the minimum threshold for that market ...
I'm having trouble seeing how someone can sell stars offline for IRL money without using the "gifting" model.. and then they are paying market rate. All stars are bought at market rate that is dictated by MWM. I haven't thought through every scenario quite yet.. but I'm really not seeing it as obviously exploitable.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
For Example.
Sally spends $15.00 and purchases 1500 Stars from MWM. She then wishes to purchase something off of the Auction House, but it's only purchasable through IGC. Sally then decides to put Stars up on the Auction House for an amount of IGC. Billy wants Stars so he can then turn around and sell them to somebody else for RLC. He doesn't have any capability of buying Stars from MWM. He does, however, have lots of free time to play the game and earn tons of IGC. So he sees Sally's Stars on the Auction House, spends his time earning the proper amount of IGC to purchase Sally's Stars. He then sets up a PayPal account and a website that advertises his willingness to sell X amount of Stars for X dollars. All he has to do now is basically watch the Auction House for people who are selling Stars for IGC and then go buy them up to sell for RLC. All he has to do in the meantime between buying and selling Stars is play the game to earn IGC, preferably by Farming a specific mission that optimizes his IGC per minute.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I believe Segev has also said that you can Gift Stars to other players if you so choose to do so.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Stars are *created* by giving real world currency to MWM, adding them to circulation.
Stars can be *traded* among Players for whatever the Players agree to exchange them for (including in-game currencies), allowing them to circulate as a medium of exchange.
MWM accepts Stars as *payment* for a specific set of "cash shop" services, removing them from circulation.
I'm still having a hard time believing that this is beyond the comprehension of so many people who post in these forums. This isn't Rocket Surgery people.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
AH.. there's our disconnect. From my experience in other games (Champions specifically) I'd assumed that you can sell Items for Stars.. but you can only sell stars in the currency exchange for IGC.
You can purchase stars only through the StarMart or the Exchange. You can't buy stars in the auction house. You can SPEND stars for items listed in the star mart but you cannot buy stars there..
Does that make sense?
Crowd Control Enthusiast
In the proposed system, I believe that Stars are only ever CREATED by buying them directly from MWM, and only ever destroyed by using them to purchase stuff from the Starmart.. Once created in this way, they can be traded freely from player to player either on the market or via player-to-player trading or so the proposed system seems to imply.
The idea was that a dad could buy Stars and parcel them out to the son or whatever while maintaining a policy of "Junior isn't allowed to use the credit card, so I buy the Stars then give him some every so often..." etc.
As far as I'm concerned, as long as the Stars get drained out of circulation at a fairly brisk rate (by people using them to buy stuff in the Starmart), whatever problems this causes are not MWM's problems. Everyone knows how much MWM is charging for Stars, so everyone knows how much money they're truly worth. If someone wants to buy IGC or whatever with their Stars by trading them to someone else (either player-to-player, or through the in-game auction house), it's caveat emptor on that commerce.
The hard part is constantly coming up with new stuff to sell people for Stars. If everything you're selling is a one-time unlock or a respec that people don't need dozens of every month, then you're earning power is limited by how much new crap you can make to sell to people, so you're constantly trying to provide them with new crap, and some people won't want a lot of it anyway. So what you need is what I've been calling a "repeat business enabler" which is a thing that people can buy like candy bars, you buy it, you use it up, it's fun, you're finished, you can buy another later. Things you buy once and keep forever aren't like that, and things you only need a limited supply of, like respecs, aren't like that either.
This is why I posed the thought of selling tickets to individual runs of some TFs. These TFs would be the equivalent of Incarnate stuff in CoX, the premium stuff with good rewards that's usually only open to the subscribers normally. The idea being that the non-subs could buy a ticket to do one run of a TF for some Stars, because you can pretty much ALWAYS do another TF run if you got the Stars. The point of diminishing returns on that is when you get your toon totally "finished" and at that point you make an alt anyway. As long as you're actually playing the game you'd likely want to do some premium TF runs. If you're a subscriber, maybe you just get unlimited access to them for the sub price and don't have to pay anything else, and maybe that's a more economical way to pay for your TFs because you're going to do a ton of them. The details can be worked out, but the point is that the sub who wants to form a TF can throw his SG homeys or RL friends some Stars to help him out by paying for their tickets somehow. This way the broke-but-awesome tanker can still do the premium content by having someone else front him for his services.
BUT this system requires a sink for IGC (in game currency, like INF in CoX) too. Someone mentioned the NPCs being players in the in-game market and maybe just having the game devs go in and delete their accumulated IGC sometimes to curb inflation. Other ideas exist like making people get their Augments repaired for IGC when defeated (devs have said this is off the table for immersion reasons because it feels too much like gear in other games and the Augments aren't supposed to represent a magic sword that needs to be sharpened, etc).
One thought I had was that the game could raise and lower the going rates of IGC awarded for various things based on the current IGC supply at large. The more there is, the less people get for defeating a mob. The problem I have with that is that the rich then horde their IGC and the poor can't really catch up, except by getting lucky and getting a random drop of some really good Augment or recipe or something that people want. So what you might do is cause the IGC drop rates to lower and the randomized swag drop rates to increase in order to tease more IGC out of the people who have it and into the hands of the people grinding for stuff. Also, the auction house should probably take a cut of all transactions like the one in CoX did. I think it's good to have that, or something like that. Posting fees and then a cut of the actual purchase price when the deal is resolved.
A combination of some of that stuff might work well maybe.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
my concern, given all the options that they have for transference, is that they will quickly become the only currency accepted for trades. as they become used more and more for trades the IGC with lower in value until it is basically worth nothing for trades.
I think it would work in theory (trading, gifting, etc)...but people enmass suck. as such, they WILL abuse the system as soon as they figure out the loop holes (and it wont take them long.) yeah, I am not a fan of this whole star thing at all and quite honestly, the more I hear about it the more I am turned off by it. if MWM wants our money then, I say, keep it separate from the game itself. once you start mixing real live money with the actual game play...bad things can and will happen.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
This system sounds very close to the CREDD system in Wildstar. Wildly unsuccessful.
Stars are a necessary currency for games with in-game markets for a number of reasons. So it's not a matter of IF MWM will use a StarMart but HOW MWM will use the StarMart
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Presumably in game currency will be the only thing that drops from defeated mobs or doing missions, and the only thing that allows you to craft recipes and salvage into Augments, and the only thing you can use to pay for SG base rent, so it won't be useless.
Edit: and as Segev has pointed out, if the game doesn't provide a fungible currency, the players will just concoct one on their own, like Stones of Jordan in Diablo II or Event Tickets in Magic Online, so it's either this or have to haul around a thousand Alchemical Silvers wherever you go to be able to barter with other people.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Why unsuccessful?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Items bought for a game are not bought in the actual game...but from the store which is then transferred into the game itself. what concerns me here is we would be effectively pushing real money into the actual game itself...this is a bad thing, imo.
plenty of other games out there allow for the purchasing of IGC via the store. this IGC is then transferred into the actual game from the store. since it is the only currency in the actual game it kinda works. but, if the proposal of Stars being pushed into the actual game as a form of currency, the IGC will devalue as people will only want to do trades for Stars...and as time goes by, inflation will happen and now your talking big money.
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I am unaware of actual decisions to implement player to player trades of stars. If this were true it could lead to problems of stars over taking fame currency. Instead if Stars are only purchased via the market by using in-game currency, and Stars placed on the market are only available by those who spent real cash from the Starmart, and the fame currency is only generated through play, it limits many of the possible issues being discussed.
Segev mentioned this earlier:
Stars earned from a stipend / purchased from the Starmart.
- Can only be used on the Starmart
- Can be sold on the in-game auction house for in-game currency.
- Can not be traded from player to player in-game.
- Maybe possible to gift to accounts through the Starmart but also likely only purchases of services / items on the Starmart can be gifted, not the Stars themselves.
In-game currency is only earned through play, not purchased on the Starmart.
No in-game items are planned to be sold in the Starmart.
The Starmart will most likely have account services, QoL character improvements (increased storage slots, increased auction slots, etc...), micro-subs, sub-package deals, full sub, expansions, mission packs (maybe, with auto-access to any team members for owner), famous / notable celeb authored story-arcs, costumes sets, animation suites, possibly power sets, and so on.
It has been said that anything character affecting, like costumes and animation suites would also be unlock able in-game.
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Hmmm didn't even think of what whiteperegrin thought. Gamers saying I don't want IGC for this rare item I grinded for I want 3 stars for it. Whole new can of worms opened up. Murphy's law variant - if a system can be exploited, system will be exploited.
I do not think fighting gold sellers falls in the responsibility of the ingame economy system, because it is not possible for the ingame economy system to do anything against them. Providing an alternative is the best you can do and Segev's idea does that, by allowing players to trade ingame currency for stars.
The only thing one could do to stop gold sellers would be to completely disable player to player trading.
There are other factors who have already been adressed, that will have a much greater effect. Like the box price, education about the dangers of gold sellers and moderators who ban gold sellers as quickly as possible.
And another thing:
All your examples include just three kinds of people. The poor guy, the whale and the absolute scrooge. I am sorry, but I think those are minorities. There will be a lot of people in between, who have enough time to get what they really need from drops and the marked, enough money to get what they want from the c-store/ subscritions and will likely consider to buy a few stars from another player if they have an abundance of currency, or sell a few stars if they really want something they can not afford right now. Not everyone will fall into extremes.
In NW, players cannot sell stuff for Zen (their stars equivalent) transactions are done in the ingame AH currency astral diamonds. Nw sets a maximum and a minimum on the exchange of 100-500 ADs/Zen.
What happens is that as soon as an exploit hits allowing excessive AD generation, the gold sellers buy up all the Zen on the exchange for 500 each and keep a famine of Zen there. They then buy a load of desirable items from the Zen store (particularly stuff in the weekly sale) and put them on the AH for more than 500x the Zen cost in ADs. This doesn't cost NW anything except that it thoroughly pisses off the player base and people leave.
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I can see two avoidable problems with this NWO system you just described:
1. There are apparently somewhat regular occurrences of what you're calling "exploits" which I takewto be, essentially, mistakes made by the devs in terms of the amount of IGC that something generates per minute of doing it. and...
2. They're placing artificially-imposed upper and lower limits on the IGC-Star exchange rate, which is bound to lead to problems given that the REAL value of Astral Diamonds in real dollars may exceed 500 Zen at times or go under 100 Zen at times and therein lies the potential for exploitation.
In a world where the devs give a crap and try to NOT make "exploits" as much as possible, combined with NOT placing an artificial exchange rate floor and ceiling on the conversion of one type of currency to the other, this would be less problematic, wouldn't it? Also, this is only ONE example of people having Stars and IGC and messing it up, there are examples of it being done reasonably well, aren't there?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And once again, Minotaur points out the obvious ... exploits are a problem.
Lutan also points out another truth ... there is no such thing as Fool Proof, merely Fool RESISTANT. Substitute in "Gold Spammer" for "Fool" and the implications ought to be obvious.
I'd also point out that MWM isn't following the example of Diablo III's disastrous cash shop experience, in which Players could list in-game items for sale in Real Dollars (think eBay) and Blizzard would take a "cut" from the sale price. And just to put a cherry on top of the disaster, one of the in-game items you could sell on the Real Money auction house was ... in-game Gold. Blizzard figured they could squeeze out the Gold Spammers by competing with them directly [i]and incorporate profiteering from farming directly into the game's underlying design at a structural level[/i]. Needless to say, this turned out to be a [b]Bad Idea™[/b].
To give you a sense of just how bad this idea turned out to be, one of my co-workers at the time was seriously considering [i]quitting his full time job[/i] so as to play Diablo III ALL DAY LONG in order to farm ITAMZ to put up for sale in the Diablo III Cash Auction House and be able to pay his rent and bills [b][i]through farming Diablo III[/i][/b] as his new "job."
Let's just say it was a good thing that I talked him out of it ... because even though the potential WAS THERE to do exactly what my co-worker was thinking of doing (Blizzard pays me to play their game!) the reality was bound to be way more unpleasant. Remarkably few people want to LIVE the life of what amounts to being a Gold Farmer, let alone set out to do it deliberately. This is why most of the farming in games is done by BOTS.
And predictably enough, it took Blizzard all of about 6 months to realize that they had created a disaster of an in-game economy by wrapping their arms around the Gold Farmers in an attempt to get a cut from their sales. Last I heard (which was some time ago), the real money auction house got removed from the game.
The problem with Blizzard's idea was that real money could go into the game, and likewise real money [i]could be extracted from the game[/i], with Blizzard getting a "rake" from the sell transaction, in effect subsidizing Blizzard through the amount of real money changing hands for entirely virtual items. MWM isn't going to do that.
MWM's model is that people give real money to MWM and in return MWM gives them Stars. There is no reverse transaction in which people give MWM Stars and MWM turns around and gives them real money in exchange (minus a surcharge fee). Thus ... when people give MWM real money, that currency gets converted into Stars, and MWM is never obligated to give money back to anyone. Those Stars can then be used to obtain goods and services WITHIN the game, but cannot be extracted from the game itself for real currency (ie. the Gold Spammer economic model).
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There is a lot of discussion going on, and I fear that I'm having trouble keeping straight all the lines of conversation. Clearly, the system is not yet set in stone, as even amongst dev posts I'm seeing different understandings of what it should be.
My own preference would be that Stars can be gifted, if players wish, from player to player. The concern I am seeing raised here is that third-party Star-sellers will arise if this is done.
Let me examine the scenario presented earlier: Billy has "gobs and gobs" of IGC, and wants to transform them into USD by using it to buy Stars on the market and then selling them, third party. Assuming the flat rate of $1 = *100 is present in the StarMart - i.e., that's what MWM sells Stars for - Billy will need to offer more than *100 per $1 to be able to undersell MWM.
Let's say, for ease of math, Billy decides to just sell for half MWM's price. He sells *200 for $1. (We're going to ignore credit card fees, PayPal fees, and bulk rates for the moment.)
Sandy bought *200 from MWM, giving MWM $2. Billy sold her gobs of IGC for her *200 (so she could go buy the very expensive item she wanted). So far, this has been all within the design parameters.
Now, Billy wants USD, so he turns around and sells those *200 for $1, to Annie. Annie likes the idea of having *200 for only $1, obviously. Let's even assume Billy's on the up-and-up, and isn't trying to steal her credit card info or anything, so the exchange happens without anybody getting their identity stolen or anything.
Ultimately, MWM still has gotten paid $2 for those *200. The only argument for this having cost MWM money is that Annie might have, instead, purchased those *200 for $2 from MWM. However, it's worth noting that this would have caused inflation in Stars, because there would now be *400 created in this scenario, rather than *200. Which makes it less likely later people will want to buy Stars when they could just get the cheaper Stars on the market.
In the end, what Billy is doing is exchanging time spent grinding IGC for USD. There will come a point where earning sufficient "gobs" of IGC to garner enough Stars to make a worthwhile sale in USD is just not worth the time and effort. As soon as the Annie in the scenario spends her Stars on an item in the c-store, the cycle ends unless a new Sally comes along to buy more Stars at MWM's rate. The "best" this cycle can do is perpetuate *200 for $1 exchanges with Billy while Billy basically sells *200 worth of IGC for $1. The cycle is degenerate unless Stars are not actually sunk. (There's also a big problem with IGC inflation through Billy's repeated mass-creation of the stuff, unless there's a suitable sink for THAT, too.)
Think of it this way: Sally has, effectively, bought a (say) Wal*Mart gift certificate for $2. That's what her *200 represent. Billy has gotten her to give it to him in exchange for IGC. He's now turning around and selling the $2 gift certificate for $1 to Annie. Is Wal*Mart out any money?
(Also, there's a breakdown here somewhere. If Annie took her *200 she just bought from Billy, she could in theory buy those IGC off of him in his next batch. I can't imagine the going rate for IGC remaining the same with all the IGC inflation going on, and the cheapness of Stars. After all, at $1 for *200, Annie could afford to offer twice as many Stars as Sally did for the same IGC. I think we're in the "two salesmen on an island with a rock they keep selling back and forth" territory, here.)
Radiac's concern about having to sink Stars out of the system is accurate, but I will point out that this doesn't seem to be a problem with most MMOs that have c-stores: they seem to have plenty to keep players coming back to buy more (or to lament that it costs money to buy something they want but don't want to have to afford).If MWM is to succeed, we'll have to accomplish that regardless of whether this system is in place or not.
In point of fact, however, this is one reason why I'd love to see [i]subscriptions[/i] be something people could pay for with Stars. This obviously has a number of considerations which must be made, chief amongst them being what the point of a subscription giving a stipend is when you can spend the stipend currency to get the subscription. But it would definitely be a recurring expense that could sink Stars out of the system.
IGC, similarly, must have sinks. This is actually the traditional PROBLEM with MMO IGCs: they inflate because there are NEVER as many sinks as are needed to curb the increase in supply. This will therefore be perhaps a bigger challenge than providing enough c-store items of interest to sink out Stars from the economy.
Minotaur, I'm not ignoring your examples, but I am not sure they apply accurately, here. Please do feel free to correct my misaprehensions; I do want to grasp the issue. It sounds, to me, like these are not issues with there actually being such a market, but rather are issues with the code that generates ADs. Zen are, if I'm not mistaken, created only when somebody buys them. The problems therefore come in from two sources: ADs suddenly spiking in supply (and thus allowing the early-graspers to make a killing in Zen before ADs plummet in value); and market manipulations performed by Perfect World as they alter the price of Zen for reasons of their own. I do not advocate MWM manipulating the price of Stars to impact the market. I can't think of how that serves a useful purpose. If Stars are becoming inflated, it means we need to come up with more things to sell, not that we need to manipulate Star prices (since doing so would only exacerbate the problem).
JayBezz, can you elaborate on WildStar's system and how it has proven so unsuccessful?
To wrap this up, I have revised my original model for simplicity: I think it is probably best if all market exchanges be IGC for "thing." "Thing" can be a bundle of Stars, an item, a stack of items, etc. Thus, if you want to use USD to buy, say, that shiny augment for your Sonic Boom power, you'd have to use USD to buy Stars, sell the Stars on the market for IGC, then use the IGC to buy the augment on the market. A little cumbersome, but it avoids having to double-list items in prices in Stars and IGC.
With sufficient transparency in the market, people should be able to clearly see the going exchange rate. Assuming MWM is managing to produce c-store items people want sufficiently to keep MWM in business in the first place, there are sufficient Star sinks to prevent inflation of Star value compared to IGC. If anything, I would expect IGC to become more and more inflated compared to Stars as time went on. Unless we can manage to sink IGC much better than most MMOs do.
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This sounds like a problem induced by the maximum value of AD/Zen.
If there is a famine of Zen and no cap on how many AD can be charged per Zen, this would self-regulate fairly quickly as snapping up Zen would require increasingly more ADs as the demand for Zen rose. Unless I'm not understanding something you're saying correctly.
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The complications of trying to allow two different currencies listed for items are a primary reason I've revised my proposed model to have IGC always be one side of any market exchange. (What players do in personal trades is up to them.) That way, if you want Stars for your rare item, you obtain them by selling the rare item for IGC and then buying Stars with that IGC. The going rates will still be fair market value on both. It is, admittedly, an extra step.
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It seems like a similar economic problem as rent control. By setting the artificial limit at 500, whenever there is an abusive exploit, the supply of IGC goes through the roof while the cost of zen remains at 500 and cannot adjust further to the new supply of IGC.
His problem is that if there was a method of rapidly generating ingame currency (either via legal means or exploits), you can then use this currency to buy up/trade with others your "exploited" currency for "Stars".
As long you as you allow "Stars" to be traded between characters directly then you will see people offering large amounts of "ingame currecy" in exchange for STARS.
Not a problem you say? Well, I will just find an quick and easy method of farming up in game currency and start shouting out in trade channels "Offering 120million X for 400 stars".
If that 120 million takes me 10 minutes to get (compared to 10 hours possibly), people might well go "yeah, I will give the guy some stars, i need some currency".
The player does the exchange, you start funnelling the STARS through alts/accounts. And then you go off to sell those STARS on a website for LESS than that MWM is offering.
Sure, MWM might have made money off the selling of the STARS in the first place. Now another company is making money off it as well... and you are not seeing a cut of it.
Of course, the problem here is that STARS are a "limited" resource. There is only enough in the system as people have bought and put up for sale/trade.
That doesn't mean that it WON'T happen. Just that it *could* happen. And as Terry Pratchett said (paraphrase) "1 in a million odds happen nine times out of 10"
Hence why I am nigh constantly on the lookout for ways to sink in-game currency so that inflationary pressures due to unequal supply and demand don't do this exact thing.
And as much as everyone gripes and complains about the Dilithium Economy in Star Trek Online, it at least hasn't succumbed quite so horrifically to inflationary pressures endemic to most MMOs. That's because the supply is constrained (less than +10k Dilithium can be refined per day, per character) and the game is chock-a-block FULL of Dilithium sinks just about everywhere, with Fleet Holdings being one of the biggest potential drains to pour gobs and gobs of Dilithium into. So you wind up with something akin to a nigh constant [i]scarcity of Dilithium[/i] even though it's possible to obtain the stuff relatively consistently.
To give everyone an extremely concrete example to work with ... before I stopped playing, STO was offering a bundle of 9 starships for 15,000 Zen (which translates out to around $150). The current market price for Zen-to-Dilithium at the time was in the 160-170 Dilithium per Zen range ... so lets call it 170 Dilithium per Zen to make this example easy.
15,000 * 170 = 2,550,000 Dilithium
So if I wanted to pay nothing for Zen [i]myself[/i] ... I would need to mine [i]and refine[/i] 2.5 million Dilithium so as to buy up a lot of Zen off the exchange market. At a rate of 8000 Dilithium refined [b]per day, per captain[/b], that would take me approximately 319 captain-days to accomplish. Playing 4 captains every day ... that's about 80 days. In other words, it would be theoretically possible to GRIND my way to being able to afford to buy that bundle of 9 starships in about [i]3 months[/i] provided I could meet my "daily quota" of mining and refining every single day for that long ... and didn't have anything ELSE I'd want to spend Dilithium on crop up in the meantime.
Total time cost of undertaking this endeavor? Something on the order of 6-8 hours PER DAY [b]just farming[/b] Dilithium on all 4 of my captains. Net result? At 6 hours a day for 80 days, that's 480+ HOURS of [b]WORK™[/b] to receive a benefit that would have cost like $150 if I'd just bought the Zen in the first place. It was literally a pennies earned, pound foolish method ... but it was possible, and could be done. And that's even before considering the fact that PWE fairly often (ie. whenever they need a cash injection for a quarterly statement to investors) offers Zen Sales where they give you extra Zen for forking over your money to them (the more you give, the bigger the bonus in Zen they give you).
And that was just ONE way to sink Dilithium in the game ... there were lots of others. There were Fleet Holdings projects that could require hundreds of thousands and even MILLIONS of Dilithium be sacrificed to them in order to even BEGIN their construction. Which was fine, of course, for big Fleets with lots of members contributing, but was an absolute killer for small Fleets of limited means and resources.
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I would argue that, by virtue of the fact that the Stars were intiially bought from MWM at MWM's price, MWM saw a "cut" of the sales already.
While I have concerns regarding third-party resellers of Stars (just as I do gold-sellers of a more traditional variety), it does not strike me as a problem that actually undermines MWM's profitability. I'm less confident in saying it poses no problems to the game's economy, but I am so far failing to see how it actually would. Again, provided we provide adequate sinks for Stars, so they don't start just staying in the economy and thus inflating in value.
Redlynne, I am encouraged by your analysis of STO's economy. Some of the things I've been pondering for IGC sinks are along those lines. I'd really like to see bases have exponential curves on their monthly rent as they get bigger and better. (This need not be all one "rent" price, but could be a combination of things, including power requirements, unique reagents and maintenance materials for base items, and the like.)
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I would still rather have MWM take my actual real life money for any Subscriptions, Micro-Subscriptions, or Cash Store purchases. I feel they should leave the In Game Currency to making purchases from the Vendors in the game and the Auction House. I believe this would allow MWM to make the most money possible from it's player base. If there is a capability to be able to Gift or Trade Stars to other players there will be a loss of sales to MWM.
How?
People who will buy Stars may have excess Stars available at their disposal. Gold Farmers will find a way to hoard those excess Stars and then turn around and sell them for a lower cost than MWM does, therefore cutting out the profit MWM could potentially make from selling Stars to another person to make purchases in the Cash Store. Now you are going to say that MWM already made money off of the Stars that were bought. True. But after those are bought and there are excess Stars left over, that is where you will lose sales. Those Stars will be sold for IGC, which is free to make. In turn someone will sell those Stars to someone else for Real Money at a cheaper rate. That person will use those Stars that they bought from someone else for a lower price to make a purchase in the Cash Store. When instead, if they had had to use real money MWM would have made a profit off of that instead of a loss due to recycled Stars bought at a cheaper price from a third party selling Stars at a lower cost than MWM. You will basically find yourself relying on a few people buying Stars from MWM to fund MWM, while other people will take advantage of those people having excess Stars left over that they don't need.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
That's a part of it, and there are pros and cons to this approach. You run the risk of Zen/stars becoming so expensive that only the exploiters can afford to buy them. My suspicion is that it would have gone up to like 10000+ instead of the usual 500. This means that while you might actually get a peak in star sales from people wishing to cash in at that rate which could be short term good news for MWM, a lot of free players would just see stars as irrelevant, and their goals unobtainable and quit.
We mustn't be arrogant about this, bugs/exploits are very likely to happen, and the two absolute crackers they had in NW should be used as examples.
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First, I want to echo my earlier statement that I like and agree with what Segev has been saying.
Second, the idea I had in mind was that Stars bought on the MWM Starmart would not be a currency on the auction house/market in-game but rather a traded commodity, that is, you'd only be able to buy/sell recipes augments, etc off the market with IGC, and Stars would be one such object you could buy with IGC. That was my original belief all along.
Third, I don't think the secondary market for Stars that get's created is as bad a thing as everyone else thinks it is. Wizards of the Coast sells Magic: the Gathering cards in pseudo-randomized packs, then game store owners will trade in individual cards. If you buy a pack and get a cool foil mythic rare, you might be able to sell that ONE card for more moeny than the pack cost you, and Wizards of the Coast doesn't get a DIME of that, the store owners and customers do. So what? That secondary market commerce is what keeps game stores open, to a large extent, and they need it to be able to provide a place for people to gather, play, trade cards with each other, etc.
Wizrards of the Coast doesn't demand that their representatives officially approve every cards-for-money transaction that occurs between players and game stores, and they don't see any profits from it other than what they get for selling the packs of cards to the stores wholesale. They've even proclaimed that they're NEVER going to reprint certain very expensive cards so as to allow the game store owners the ability to trade in the at higher prices on purpose (The Reserved List). EVERY magic card is made by Wizards and they get their $3.99 per pack or whatever and what follows is a community of players gathering at stores to play their game, which costs money, and that whole phenomenon is driven by the secondary market for shiny ultra-rare cards. It has worked well for like 20 years, despite people exclaiming that "Magic is over" many, many times. The head of R&D for Magic, Mark Rosewater, has written articles entitled "The top 20 things that 'Finally Killed Magic' but really didn't" etc.
The all-important factors in this, as I see it, are having sufficient Star sinks and IGC sinks. That the Lynch pin of the entire thing.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Simplest way to price a User Generated Content space, such as a Supergroup Base, would be by Volume. Simply take the cubic volume of space used by the construction and there's your price tag. After that it's simply a matter of applying multipliers to those individual prices and just adding everything up.
So empty space could cost 1 IGC per cubic foot to buy. This then, Minecraft style, allows you to define the volume of space you have to play with. For reference, an 8x8 Decorative [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Decorative_Room]Great Room[/url] could contain up to 32x32x48=49,152 cubic feet per floor block on the Plot map. Multiply that by 8x8 and you get up to 3,145,728 cubic feet of empty volume to fill with "stuff."
Decorative objects could cost 1 IGC per cubic foot to buy also. These objects would have defined "hitboxes" delineating their size, which then also makes the scaling of objects possible (the bigger versions just cost more).
FUNCTIONAL objects would then apply a multiplier of "X" to the price of 1 IGC per cubic foot. At the same time, if you've set up the Functional objects to be scalable in size, you'd allow Players to essentially "pick" their level of extravagance. Likewise, such "service demand" factors as Power and Control could likewise be keyed into the scaling of Functional objects, once again at a per cubic foot level of demand. That way, bigger objects both generate and demand in larger quantities. So instead of a One-Size-Fits-All solution, you wind up with a Many Sizes Fit A Variety Of Solutions result. At that point, all you have to do is add up the additional Functions to determine the "X" multiplier. I'm thinking that things like "adds Power" and "consumes Power" would each be a +1 modifier to the "X" multiplier, as would "adds Control" and "consumes Control" as well. Services such as Entry/Exit Portal would be another +1 modifier. PvP Defense and PvP Offense would be another source of +1 modifiers to the "X" multiplier ... and so on.
If you're looking at that and thinking that can become a rather large sink in a hurry ... well ... isn't that [i]kind of the point[/i]?
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Here's the thing: if you do it like I proposed where everybody spends real money on their Subscriptions and Cash Store purchases, the only thing you'd have Gold Farmers doing is advertising "$9.99 for 150 million IGC!!"
If you have both forms of currency then you give Gold Farmers twice the capability to advertise for money.
I was looking for a better analogy to compare what I have been trying to convey in previous posts and I think I found it. The A.C.A.
We will have a select group of people trying to basically fund the entire game for everybody. I fear MWM will have to increase their prices to try to compensate for doing that. Forcing the people who do pay to pay more so that the people who don't pay can still have access to everything.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
So you will have no problem with me selling STARS for 1/2 the price of MWM charges... I mean, I got mine from ingame... either legally or via an exploit.
Now, if that is the case, then surely you would have NO problem for me charging other players Real money for Powerlevelling services or currency either.
Personal lairs and SG bases will need to have some pretty cool stuff they allow you to do, what I don't know exactly, to make them attractive to most if not all players. Maybe crafting, maybe some added inventory for recipes and augments and stuff, maybe a thing that gives you daily missions to do like the tip missions, like the Superfriends "Trouble Alert" system, maybe teleporters to various places, what else?
Unless the personal lair is an integral part of the game itself to the point where you basically NEED one, I can see where some (many?) people would just not build one at all. But then on the other hand, if they have nothing else to spend their gobs of IGC on, maybe they do make one after all. Also, it had to be user friendly to make. Some people will just say "this is too complicated, I'm done" even if they want something and can afford it.
As for other ways to sink IGC, there was the idea of letting the NPCs trade in the market at large and them deleting some of their extra IGC from time to time (maybe even delete some of their unwanted salvage parts too?).
Also, an idea I posted yesterday and am still thinking about: in the real world, the government can control inflation to some extent by controlling the amount of money printed, the prime lending rates, etc. What if the game varied the amount of IGC that mobs drop based on current economic data they could mine out of the game every so often (once per fiscal quarter maybe)? So when LOTS of people are on playing, and lots of mobs are dropping IGC, the game will lower the rate of IGC per mob defeat to some extent and each mob will drop less IGC during those times. Then, when people are largely NOT defeating a lot of mobs, the IGC per defeated mob rate goes up. Thus the number of people playing and amount of IGC per defeat would hopefully form a feedback mechanism by which the market might regulate itself, to some extent. At times when lots of people are trying to grind for lots of IGC, because they perceive it to be valuable, then the rate at which it is generated would trend downward, at times when there are fewer people on grinding out IGC, the rate of IGC generation per mob would trend up.
Another thing you could do as part of that is to make the relative chances of rare and ultra-rare recipes (which require IGC to craft and thus are a sink) go up when the IGC generation rate goes down, so that at times when IGC is considered "plentiful you lower the rate at which it is created AND increase the rate at which the recipe-as-sink is created, thus pumping more IGC out of the economy that way too. Then when IGC becomes more valuable and scarce, you increase the rate of generation of IGC and decrease the rate at which rare and very rare recipes drop.
What about that?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I don't like that that's going on, and I would prefer to play my games personally instead of paying someone else to play them for me, but I can't really see the sense in trying to stop it from happening after a certain point. At some point you've done all you can really do to prevent PLing and people will still manage to do it, it's just a matter of what extremes you're willing to go to to make it less convenient for the PLers. I would want to try to prevent people from getting ripped off (credit card info stolen, login password hacked, etc) but I don't see how I can stop one guy from paying some other guy in real life to PL his toon for him.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I guess crafting recipes into Augments isn't really an IGC sink so much as a form of temporary IGC sequestration. Your IGC isn't destroyed, it's bound up in an Augment that's (hopefully) slotted into a power in a toon. Assuming there is some amount of IGC inflation (and frankly I can't imagine there wouldn't be, it's just a matter of keeping to like 5% per year or something that's considered "low") the value of your Augments, in IGC , will tend to rise over time and the best investment will be in Augments and stuff that retain their desirability on the market.
One way to combat that IGC inflation is to make BETTER augments the make some of the older ones (which we spent IGC to make) obsolete every so often. That way people are like "to heck with this worthless old non-optimal junk,l I want the NEW style one that's 1% better." I don't recommend doing this all that often, as it is pure power creep, which is bound to come up too, like death and taxes, but I 'd like to see that happen very slowly as well.
Even with all of that said, the existence of crafted Augments does not per se mean there is more IGC "liquidity" out there in the market. It's like spending your money on a collectible and wait for it to appreciate in value, which takes time. In the meantime, there's less IGC floating around because you spent some to make your Augment.
I'd personally not be averse to revisiting the idea of making the Augments cost IGC to "refresh" or something every so often. Although this makes them feel like other games' gear, and I understand that concern, fiscal responsibility may require us to apply the laws of increasing entropy and conservation of energy to the Augments and Refinements such that they lose their effectiveness over time and need to be reset with an outlay of IGC. There could be a minimum point below which no Augment or Refinement ever goes, so it might have a nominal effect on your Damage, but then after a long time spent neglecting the upkeep on it, you end up only getting like 75% of the stated Daamge increase out of it because it's worn down to that over time.
What this would also allow for is the creation of different Augments that decay at diffident rates, and lose different amounts of effectiveness when they do. Some you want to keep "fresh" as much as possible, some you feel you can afford to let slide for a long time, maybe forever, others that are SO expensive to maintain in the long term that they're actually losing you IGC if you have too many of them, but BOY HOWDY are they powerful to have slotted when "fresh", etc. In that world I'd like each Augment and Refinement to have its own state of decay in which it exists, but then have a "push this button to refresh all of your stuff in one fell swoop" button too.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Another way to look at the "gear degradation" thing is from the opposite direction. It's not that an Augment wears down over time, it always gives you whatever it gives you, but then you can drop a "power pellet" on it to SUPERcharge it for a short time and that effect wears off eventually, leaving you with the plain "not supercharged" Augment again. at the end. Spending IGC on temporary power pellets is no different from making the gear degrade to some low end minimum value over time, it's just a matter of how you look at it. Either way there's IGC being spent on temporary increase in whatever the Augment does for you, whether you look at it as "getting something extra for the IGC" or "using IGC to reverse the process that causes the loss" the number and damage dealt will be the same either way, you just set the Damage Augment's "normal" output to be the low end number and then when "Power Pellet SUPERcharging" is in effect hit's upto 100% of it's potential.
Personally, I'd rather think of my toon as a guy who trains and works hard (spends IGC) to keep himself in tip-top shape for fighting crime (has Augments at or near 100% mostly) than think of the same toon doing the same things as a power-pill-popping junkie.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is why I really hate discussing monetization. It's a never ending cycle of bad ideas that just end up pissing people off in the end.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
The real value of Stars aren't going to be devalued because no matter how much time a player has to pour into CoT to earn IGC to buy Stars, those Stars are being sold by MWM for a set amount of RL currency. The Stars are not purchasable directly from MWM with IGC. The price per Star in IGC will fluctuate based on supply and demand, as well as the level of IGC in the game, but it won't affect the absolute value of the Star in RL currency.
You could also vary the IGC prices to craft stuff over time too, to try to keep the price of crafting a thing in line with it's estimated value. In fact this could be done for all such "pay IGC to do a thing" IGC sinks as far as I can tell. Just raise prices to keep step with inflation, like real stores do.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I understand the fear that the Auction house will be full of items (specifically GOOD items) being sold only for stars.. but that's kind of the point. You got something people want and don't have IRL cash.. you can still get stars by selling on AH for stars.
Lots less will be traded for IGC but that's okay too... it'll be a good idea to tie an IGC cost to the AH to post items to remove more IGC currency that way as well. Asking for alot of stars costs alot of IGC.
http://www.wildstar-online.com/uk/game/service/credd/
Their system is wildly unsuccessful because it uses its IRL currency to buy game-time as a proposed Free2Play system. It also became THE currency to have for gear and other performance affecting goods.
The basis of their system is very sound but their StarMart equivalent sold nothing the players found valuable.
In my post.. when I say "This system" I'm not referring to Segev's proposed StarMart system that sounds like CREDD I'm refferring to what WhitePeligrin was talking about (direct trades for Stars). All stars should come from the gifting module, meaning MWM gets paid EVERY time a star is bought, even if bought for someone else.
I'm in love with the StarMart system. I think as long as there is no possibility for direct trades from a player for Stars then the system is close to sound. The only real necessity is for MWM to set minimum requirements on the Auction/Exchange to cost IGC to post items for Stars, eliminating the opportunity for someone to post "free" stars into said exchange.
Also the StarMart will un-doubtably sell things that players actually WANT to buy (unlike Wildstar's). Many things players will want will be exclusively sold in the StarMart and this is a good thing.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Segev has said that he desires the ability to trade and gift Stars though.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Trading Stars is a great mistake.
Gifting them is a great benefit.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
And if you can gift Stars, you can trade them. It's just easier to get ripped off if it's a 'mutual gift' than a trade.
Gifting and Trading is the same basic principle. It's just one requires an exchange of two items to occur. The other just means I can give you something, but you don't have to return the favor. Even though we both know that that's exactly what will happen if trading isn't allowed.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm repeating this only because I'm seeing concerns that I hope this allays: I believe it will work better if all transactions on the market are IGC from the buyer for "item" from the seller. "Item" can be "bundle of Stars."
This has the unfortunate impact of requiring a two-step process to exchange your Stars for in-game-useful items: You must first sell your Stars for IGC, then spend the IGC to buy the item(s) you want.
It has the positive effect of making it so that there is never a problem of "I can't get the item I want without Stars, because nobody's selling it for IGC," as well as avoiding a problem of having to list items in both Star and IGC prices.
I would LIKE to permit players to transfer Stars between each other. The advantage I see in restricting it to market sales alone is that it prevents third-party resale of Stars, at least not without finding a major loophole (which I don't put it past people to do). But if we permit ANY transfer of ANY items/currency between players directly, they can finagle their way around it. If Johnny wants to give Timmy Stars, but is not permitted to do so via direct transfer, he could instead sell those Stars and give Timmy the IGC from the sale. Timmy can then purchase Stars from the market with that IGC. If IGC can't be handed off directly, then buy an item of the right value and hand that off.
Only by preventing any direct player-to-player gifting at all would this be prevented. I'm not sure we want to do that.
Although...THAT could be a subscriber benefit: the ability to perform DIRECT player-to-player trades.
We want "free" players to use the market; that's how they partcipate in the Star economy. The abuses of third-party sales come about due to direct transfers, largely. (I'm sure there are other means, but still...) If you must have a subscription to be able to engage in this, the threat of a ban on an account found to be violating the EULA would actually have teeth.
This is assuming we find these behaviors to be problems we must solve. I'm still not 100% convinced of that, but having the tools in place in case it proves to be so can't hurt. (This concludes another "thinking out loud" portion of Segev's Mind Theater.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Gifting and trading are not the same thing.
Gifting happens from the "Purchase Stars" module. Which means in order to have stars to Gift you MUST buy them from MWM.
Trading is basically "unbinding" the stars put to your account to give to another player. If you have sold something for Stars then those stars are bound to your account and cannot be gifted. Trading Stars should never be allowed. Only through either the exchange or Auction House (in which there is a MWM dictated exchange rate for IGC and the process is largely anonymous.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Gifting is a subset of Trading ... because Gifting is actually [b]Trading For Nothing[/b] as far as the game's mechanics and accounting systems are concerned.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Agree.
What do you think about making prices and IGC generation rates (drops from defeated goons) a thing that the devs might adjust when the need arises to try to offset inflation?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
We have fundamentally different definitions of "gifting".
I go to the MWM Site. I buy Stars. Before they are spendable I choose to bind them to my account or gift them to a friend's account.
http://www.wildstar-online.com/uk/game/service/credd/
Check out their gifting model.
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The idea of "giving away something to another player for free" can only happen using IGC. Stars can not be given to players directly. Only through purchasing the stars from MWM.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm not so keen on directly and deliberately manipulating drop rates of IGC. Having prices in IGC at vendors fluctuate according to market pricings is something that would be part of vendors playing the market, if that happens.
As ever, I feel I must emphasize that for that to work and not cripple new players' ability to play the game, this will require strong balance of effective IGC sinks compared to IGC generators. The tricky bit here is that new players have the least ability to generate IGC, which can make it a prohibitive barrier to entry unless there are enough [i]small[/i] sinks on which to spend IGC, as well. Items which remain cheap no matter what. This may be achievable by making items which are mostly or only of interest to lower-level PCs.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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@$#&$@#!!!!!
I just can't do it anymore! The frustration!! I'm just going to walk away now.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Must Have It NAOU! :O
Well, Me and another 30 to 40 thousand players. Well thats not actually accurate. Since Street Fighter 5 will come out Soon(tm) that number will spike to 100,000. :)
Strange. I've used the Trade Window in multiple games (City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Star Trek Online, TERA, Elder Scrolls Online, [i]need I go on?[/i]) to "Gift" things that weren't in-game currency to friends and as favors. I put up my "stuff" in the Trade Window and hit Accept. My trading partner offered nothing ... no items or in-game currency ... and the trade was accepted and processed. The Trade Window not only allowed this functionality but it is EXPECTED to be able to allow it.
The fact that you cannot accept this FACT is your problem, JayBezz, not mine.
What you're actually talking about is "binding" certain things to either an account or a character so as to limit who they can be given to. This is often referred to as either account-bound or character-bound (or soul-bound in fantasy world settings) so as to restrict the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinking]Twinking[/url] potential of certain classes of items.
Blizzard "learned their lesson" about Twinking as a result of the experience of Diablo II, where absolutely NOTHING was ever "bound" to a specific character or account. Needless to say, the concept of gear being "soul-bound" showed up VERY early in World of Warcraft so as to prevent this kind of "Free Trade" transaction from being possible. The limitation was ... if you use it, you can't trade it after you've equipped it (or even just picked it up and put it into inventory).
Depends on what you mean by "given to players directly" I guess. Star Trek Online has the Dilithium/Zen Exchange, which I've mentioned before. Zen are "bound" to your account, but you can put them up for bid on the exchange (how many, at what price) and if another Player offers that price, then your stock begins selling and the Zen get transferred from Player to Player.
The wrinkle in all of this are some fiddly bits on the interface that would probably bore you (and a lot of other people) to tears, but it's relatively straightforward. The difference is that both Zen and Dilithium are "bound" to your account in Star Trek Online, with the added nuance that while Dilithium is [i]technically[/i] bound to specific captains, you can use the Dilithium Exchange as a sort of "account bank" to move Dilithium into the exchange (at prices intentionally set to not incur a transaction), switch captains, go back to the exchange, cancel the bid that was never intended to sell and withdraw the Dilithium that had been moved onto the exchange by the first captain into the second captain. So the Dilithium is still effectively account-bound, although through the medium of the Dilithium/Zen Exchange you can move refined ore around among your own captains ... and ... with a little bit of jiggery pokery through the magic of the market, buy and sell Dilithium for Zen (and vice versa) to shuffle stocks around in ways that permit other accounts to buy and sell those commodities to you. You can't move those commodities through a Player-to-Player Trade Window (which would allow "gifting"), but you can do it through the Exchange for buying and selling of Dilithium/Zen.
To take it even further, and bring the experience of Magic the Gathering (Tragic the Spending?) back into the story ... in Star Trek Online there's even a brisk trade on the auction house in the game for items that can only be bought with Zen. Things like Fleet Modules. Fleet Modules are basically "permission slips" that allow you to buy upgraded "Fleet" versions of existing ships. Depending on the ship you're trying to buy, it could cost you anywhere from 1-4 Fleet Modules (plus other currency/commodities) to be ALLOWED to purchase the Fleet Ship that you're after. Those Fleet Modules are 500 Zen each ... so a ship that requires 4 Fleet Modules is going to cost 2000 Zen (in Fleet Modules) to buy. And yes, before you ask, I've done this myself for some of my captains.
So there's basically two ways to acquire Fleet Modules, worth 500 Zen each. You can either buy them with Zen yourself ... or ... someone else can buy them with Zen and put them up for sale in the game's auction house for Energy Credits (EC). If you want to buy them using Zen, but don't want to fork over YOUR real money yourself to Perfect World Entertainment (ie. let someone else do that for you!), you'll simply need to mine (and refine!) enough Dilithium inside the game to buy 500 Zen on the Dilithium/Zen Exchange and then go to the Zen Store, plunk down your Zen and get your Fleet Module(s). But since the Fleet Modules aren't "bound" to either your captain or to your account, they can be traded on the open market for Energy Credits, and there's usually a couple dozen of them or so up for sale at any given time.
When I wanted to buy a ship that required Fleet Modules to acquire, it was easier for me to buy the modules off the auction house for Energy Credits than it was to mine and refine the Dilithium needed to buy the Zen. I'd just spend a few days doing the Tour the Galaxy mission on each of my 4 captains, netting around 1.9 million EC per day for my troubles, and every 4-5 days I'd earn enough Energy Credits to buy another Fleet Module. If I needed 4 Fleet Modules, it would take me about 3 weeks to earn enough Energy Credits to buy them all without ever needing to deal with Zen myself. Why? Because someone else had already done that for me and was selling the results of their efforts on the open market for in-game currency.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The vendor pricing in terms of how much IGC they'll pay for whatever swag they buy and what they'll sell that swag back at are on thing, but I was referring to the IGC cost to do things like pay rent on bases, pay to craft a thing out of components, etc. So like, if it's normally 10,000IGC to craft a doohickey, you might make that cost go up or down based on a slider you have for doing that. You COULD slave all such prices for crafting, rent, etc to a sort of "prime rate" in the sense that if you fee like there's too much inflation, you could up the prices of all such IGC sinks by say 5% to make those prices more commensurate with the value you're getting for your IGC. That way the sinks sink more IGC but sink the same "buying power" worht of IGC over time, after accounting for inflation.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
You are talking about apples and I'm talking about pineapples. They may sound alike but they are not.
The "trade" function cannot be allowed to accept Stars. Only In Game currency and In Game items.
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Again when I talk about "Gifting" I'm talking about BUYING for another player only. As seen in:
Wildstar: www.wildstar-online.com/uk/game/service/credd/
Marvel Heroes: https://marvelheroes.com/news/news-articles/gifting-arrives-just-time-holidays
and many other games. The "Gift" is something purchased (from the company using IRL currency) for another player. PURCHASED. Not using the trade window. Having absolutely nothing to do with the trade function.
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Finally please don't be rude. It adds nothing to the conversation.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Auction House should only use in game currency.
Alright. I think we've exhausted this topic; we seem to be talking in circles. I will be ceasing in this thread for the time being, as I fear anything more I say would create confusion and discord rather than clarity.
I won't say I won't engage the topic again; I know I'd be lying. I like the topic, but I don't think I can say anything I haven't already said in a way I haven't already said it, here.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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From the company standpoint allowing players to spend their Stars in as many functions as possible is a good thing.
There is no functional difference between a Currency Exchange for Stars and an Item Exchange for Stars.
What am I missing?
Crowd Control Enthusiast
From what I notice in games. When one can easily convert cash bought items to ingame currency, while better for the company than the gold spammers, it starts raising the prices of other items bought with in game currency at the AH quickly.
To the point that normal play to afford an item is going to take what feels like forever to obtain an item, when the next one comes out that you also want.
That all said, no matter how they do it, I'm going to likely play it if I like the game.
if stars are allowed into the actual game as a form of currency/commodity, I have 20 bucks that says it will become the ONLY currency accepted by many players within 6 months.
dead set against the idea of making them available for purchase via player/player trades, auction house, etc...just thinkin we're asking for a nightmare to occur, which in turn affects the long term lifespan of the game. as such, why are we attempting to make this way more complicated than it needs to be? keep purchasable items in the store and that's it...it a player can't afford a one time $5.00 purchase for some 'dohicky', I am truly sorry, really I am!...but that does not mean we should tweak the system to try and force store purchased items to folks who don't/can't spend a dime on the game itself.
not to mention, that in the long picture, I am thinking you would actually loose sales...how? I start the game and buy some stars (spend them etc)...but after playing for a year I now have IGC coming outta my ears...as such, I will no longer be buying them from MWM but from the AH via IGC. lost sales... just one of the many ways MWM would (and I would put another $20 to say WILL) loose money if something like this was implemented.
that said, I am also walking away from this subject and will go into a wait mode...for more information and the actual game, which is still a good ways out.
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