Gold selling, PLing, etc.

okay.. I LOL"DD!!

WheW! That was funny. Now that The Daaxmeister has officially welcomed you to the forums would you mind explaining what a "gold seller" is?

And welcome!!
 
Well in other Simu games, while they do not condone the selling of items/wealth in their game, they do not actively inhibit it. I speak from experience in GS3/4
 
MUDs aren't prone to have powergamers, and so not goldfarmers or PLers. Simu games for whole seem to be controlled on such issues from a strong community of dedicated players. The same that keep ganking and griefing happening in their very open 'PvP' games.

Will Hero's Journey draw some people? Good gods I hope not. Again, no Simu game that I know of has any kind of level grind with an end game at the end, which seems to be the biggest drive for farming/PLing. Also, gold farmers tend only to set up where they can make a profit. Sigil and Vanguard are a bad example as they're right up with WoW/EQ2 on game play and popularity. There were goldfarmers on Florendyl from day one :(

I'd compair Hero's Journey more in line with games like Saga of Ryzom. Smaller, fan and community driven likely with not much of an influence on wealth and 'uber-leetness'. Perhaps I'm wrong though?

*goes back to trying to find the Thieve's Guild in DragonRealms* Been looking for a darn week!
 
At this point in the timeline of MMOs, goldfarming has come a long way. Most MMO's today share almost exact systems of currency and ways to get it and goldfarmers have turned their craft into a simple formula. This makes keeping them out a problem.
 
At this point in the timeline of MMOs, goldfarming has come a long way. Most MMO's today share almost exact systems of currency and ways to get it and goldfarmers have turned their craft into a simple formula. This makes keeping them out a problem.

hmmm... quite right His Majesty The Daax (<---- demonstrates proper greeting for Daaxmeister to nOObs. pft!!)

To some extent I think this may be to HJ's advantage. If i'm not mistaken farming takes advantage of macroable repetitive task but i've yet to see anything via the articles indicating that in game characters can macro via the Hero Engine.

If they do allow macroing it should be seperated from the combat and harvesting systems and allowed only for say... the annimation system i.e. singing, dancing, brandishing weapons, katas, fun stuff like that. I see absolutely no usefull reason to allow players to macro the lewt, combat, and/or harvesting functions of their characters.

I've also not seen anything that indicates gold can be lewted from slaying, a silly feature imho anyways, what the heck is a fawn or boss villan doing with 20 gold LOL!!. They shop at the in town vendors to??

Hero Engine is brand spankin' new coded from the ground up trying, in my opinion, to add a graphical aspect for those used to RPing in text based games and it seems that they would've thought of the farming problem to some extent by not letting combat & targeting to be player scriptable that way.

Looking at the brochures - the game annimations can be scripted via Hero Script and allows for "per-character" macro substitution, but one has to be trained in Hero Script to use it properly and probably granted level access to it??? (2006 & 07 Hero Engine Brochure -Annimation System)

If its available to people in game for targeting, harvesting, looting annimations etc. then there will be problems.

Other than that the only thing I can see that they would have to worry about is 'game sweatshops'. Masses of people (1-100 or more) who will run through quest gathering, leveling all for the loot to hand over to one or more accounts. HJ would then have to 'data mine' to track who transferred and into which account these massive amounts of items, Wry, and gold went to and take appropriate action.

Farming for rare Wry might be hampered by restricting them to RP rewards, player longevity, guild growth, belonging to a province or player created town, and to be handed out by GM's only? But that would drive the price insanely high for some eh?

I do think a lot of 'farming value' has been dealt with via the fact that you can wear what you want/find and socket them with Wyr to boost their stats, color etc.

Long story short: Get rid of macros for player toons and solve more than half the problem then data mine suspicious accounts.

*see what happens when you take a day off... you ramble*
 
MUDs aren't prone to have powergamers, and so not goldfarmers or PLers. Simu games for whole seem to be controlled on such issues from a strong community of dedicated players.

Heh. Speak for yourself. I've made a substantial sum from GS3/4. I'll say the number is over $1,000 and under $25,000.
 
I'd say Simutronics wont have a strong stance on the issue until after Hero's Journey is released. Even if perhaps singular players are making money off things like this, they probably are not largely ran through with entire companies doing so yet.

Edit: Reading through every little article. Here's something I found.

"This is a divisive issue in the US, but in some cultures, such as Asia, it’s expected and is considered normal for players to purchase items with real world money. As game designers we are forced to treat this issue as a fate accompli and assume this activity will take place, sanctioned by us or not. When we put Hero’s Journey in Asia, we’ll even have to consider how to facilitate this activity in order to please our customers there.

Our current inclination is to try and protect both the customers who do not engage in this activity and protect those who are likely to engage in it. As such, our game design assumes players ARE engaging in this activity but also attempts to reduce the opportunity and need for out-of-game sales."
 
I have a quick question about this... why are gold farmers and the industry itself so bad? It ruins the economy?

I've just never seen it. Games like WoW, I know people who had to buy gold JUST to keep up with repairs costs, in raids. They didn't have time to farm themselves, you see, just to MAKE money, with their schedules. So, it's not like gold farmers runined the economy for them... they kind of NEEDED those people.

I guess that if everyone buys gold, it makes anyone selling anything able to jack up the price because they know someone will pay because they are wealthy? O.o That is bad, yes. But can it really be contained?

I dunno. I've never bought gold, is it expensive dollar wise? Just trying to understand, honestly, why people are SO against it.
 
I have a quick question about this... why are gold farmers and the industry itself so bad? It ruins the economy?

There's a couple reasons why it's frowned upon. First is that it inflates the overall economy since there are significant groups of people generating large amounts of coin. In an MMO economy you have to think about the two controlling factors of it. The money being generated and the money being removed (being put back into the system). Basically, if the amount of money being generated is far greater than the money being taken out on things such as repairs or spent at NPC vendors/shops, then there is increasingly more and more money floating around between players. Over time, it depreciates the value of the currency so items begin selling for larger amounts of money.

The other problem with buying money (in some games), is that it allows players who have more real world money to gain an edge in game. For example, a gamer that doesn't have a lot of extra money, but enough to pay their subscription wants some uber weapon. To acquire this weapon, he must either put many hours of gameplay into earning it (somehow) or many hours into earning game money to buy it. Another player, who happens to have a lot of extra money to spare decides that they want all the best gear in the game and buys enough in game money to fully outfit his character in the best equipment. So, the point is, that player's out of game wealth disrupted the balance of the game by allowing his character to become more powerful by simply spending real money.

Personally, since it is going to happen, I think there should be sanctioned servers for it, like there is in EQ2. At least that way, players that are interested in spending more for in game benefit have a place to go where there are other like-minded players. And likewise, players who are interested in making money by selling in game goods know that they have a definite and sanctioned market to do that.
 
Another group that is really hurt by (and the economy as well) is with newbies.

Good level 15 items can now sell for far, far more than a true newbie could pay without buying gold.
 
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