RMT and other gaming conflicts

[Nekojin]

You two seem to be playing a completely different version of WoW than the rest of us here.

Apparently. The only time I've ever had any problem in keeping a positive cash-flow was when I was raiding back in Vanilla. Back then, raid food, raid potions, and so on cost the guild quite a bit. Since then, not so much. Even repeated wipes during a raid doesn't significantly impact my per-week earnings.

I would dearly love to know what server this is you play on where you've never seen farming bots. Just so I can transfer all my chars there should I ever lose my mind and start playing again. On the servers I've played on, any good harvesting area you'll have to fight jklaldkhakh6, jahdajkhhd7 and kjafhsahf8 for as they run in a straight line from node to node killing any mobs that aggro on them with synchonized spamming of 1 attack skill.

Gurubashi server many years ago, and Chromaggus much more recently (Home of the Ars Brute Squad). Both are PvP servers, which may make somewhat of a difference in our experiences, here.

Gurubashi used to be high-pop, but I doubt it still is**; Chromaggus has (AFAIK) always been low-pop*.

* WoWWiki says that with the addition of dedicated Brazilian servers, Guru went chronically low-pop.
** From WoWWiki: "This server is noted for consistently low population (as shown by the server choice dialog), and a faction imbalance favoring the Horde."

[Gravekeeper]

You keep saying that it's detrimental to the game, but you're not offering any real metrics by which to measure it, only hand-wavy assertions.

Don't bury your head in the sand and claim it a victory. I provided you links to Aion, including ones where NCSoft themselves acknowledge the problem and if you're seriously unaware of Blizzard's years long campaign against goldselling despite being a long time WoW player, I don't know what to tell you.

If Blizzard, the people with all the economic data, say its affecting server economies and disrupting players, what basis do you have to say otherwise? Personal experience? The thing you won't accept from me but continue to use to support your own position?

That last sentence is what I have a problem with. In a properly protected environment, that Sword of Uber had to have been earned by somebody. That it's passed on to someone else rather than vendored doesn't in any way cheapen the accomplishment of the people who earned it properly.

The issue is bringing in an external economic force to bear on in-game balance. As I have said several times now. If someone purchases the Sword of Uber in game from someone else using in-game currency that they themselves earned then they have still accomplished something using in-game mechanics. They have still achieved the Sword of Uber using in-game methods available to everyone.

$50 of disposal income is not available to everyone.

I think there's enough players who reached Inferno mode in the first week that the RMAH is already going to be flooded, "Chinese Farmers" or no. You really give them far, far too much credit.

Yes, its not like they went from a $500 million industry in 2008 to a 3 billion dollar industry as of 2009. That so lucrative crime gangs and prison labour camps are getting in on the action.

The vast majority of which are in China.

All of this happens without RMT going on. A high enough volume of crafters (which WoW has) makes it difficult, if not impossible, for new crafters to enter the scene. This isn't news.

"Well it would probably happen anyway" is not a valid argument for endorsing RMT.

Goldfarmers make a good chunk of their gold through volume selling valuable items and mats on the AH that were farmed up with bots. They both increase the supply and undercut legitimate players. Economically speaking, this is a Bad Thing(tm) and just because it happens inside of a game doesn't magically make economics no longer apply.

Now I have no idea what you're going on about. WoW's "gaping money sinks" are laughable in the face of the earning potential of the average raid-level character, even if they're not raiding.

You two seem to be playing a completely different version of WoW than the rest of us here.

EDIT: I take that back. City of Heroes has Exemplaring, which allows a high-level player to temporarily drop down to another player's level in order to run content at the lower player's level. It works extremely well, but nobody else seems to be willing to follow that lead.

Guild Wars 2 is, thankfully. I've been begging MMOs to copy CoH's exemplar system for years. >.>

I've played on both high-pop and low-pop servers, and never had a problem with getting mats. If there seems to be someone hogging the resource nodes, there are other zones with the same resources. I've never seen an instance where they were ALL being farmed. And, as I've said before, you cannot tell the difference between someone who is farming for gold-selling, and someone who is power-farming in order to stockpile for themselves or their guild.

I would dearly love to know what server this is you play on where you've never seen farming bots. Just so I can transfer all my chars there should I ever lose my mind and start playing again. On the servers I've played on, any good harvesting area you'll have to fight jklaldkhakh6, jahdajkhhd7 and kjafhsahf8 for as they run in a straight line from node to node killing any mobs that aggro on them with synchonized spamming of 1 attack skill.

Welcome to capitalism. Seriously.

And that makes it okay because?

If there's no direct competition, so the fuck what? Do you want a gold star for never using RMT or something? It's about as valuable as the achievements being attained.

What I want is for games to remain balanced and fun for all involved instead of this cynical acceptance of capitalism where people can just buy their way to victory over others. There is no need to bring real world economic inequality into gaming ( and don't give me some bullshit about life not being fair, you know full well what I'm talking about here ). Also, there are precious few online games that don't involve competition of some sort.

Ignorant bullshit.

If this were true, then nobody would buy the cosmetic crap for sale for Saints Row the Third because it's primarily a single-player game, and it's easily proven that people do pay real money for shit that not only doesn't help them in any competitive manner, but doesn't necessarily ever get seen by anyone else.

Ignorant bullshit like confusing DLC with RMT?

This is all kinds of opinion being stated as fact. It will tick off some people. But nobody has stated why those people being ticked off should matter, or why those people should even be ticked off in the first place.

Seriously? Why don't they matter? Are you really this cynical about gaming? No wonder you don't understand anything I've been trying to say.

[HYHYBT]

The value of an accomplishment is directly proportional to the time and difficulty involved in achieving it. If that time and difficulty is bypassed, it loses value as an accomplishment.

Its also the reason none of the analogies being presented here apply. It doesn't matter if you repaired the computer yourself or had someone repair it because you were not in a computer repair competition at the time. If you had bet Frank you could repair a computer faster than he could, then when you sit down to do it, pay Jim $50 to do it for you to beat Frank, Frank is going to be rightfully upset.

AHA! Now we're getting somewhere, though the two paragraphs don't seem like the same point at all.

On the first one: depends on how much the person doing the accomplishment values it. Nothing else.
On the second: I could get that, if the game were some sort of race, or if you were forced to play only with those who had spent the same length of time in the game as you had. Are those true? If not, then again, why does it matter?

[Andara Bledin]

Even though its directly deterimental to both the health and spirit of gaming while conversely giving dickshits up at the top like Kotick yet more avenues of consumer assfuckery. Which they will keep continuing to push until consumers finally snap.

Welcome to capitalism. Seriously.

Where he is doesn't matter as long as we're both in the same arena being measured by the same metrics.

If there's no direct competition, so the fuck what? Do you want a gold star for never using RMT or something? It's about as valuable as the achievements being attained.

RMT cannot even exist unless a multiplayer scoring metric of some sort is in place. Because without a multiplayer metric, nothing has real world value to pay for.

Ignorant bullshit.

If this were true, then nobody would buy the cosmetic crap for sale for Saints Row the Third because it's primarily a single-player game, and it's easily proven that people do pay real money for shit that not only doesn't help them in any competitive manner, but doesn't necessarily ever get seen by anyone else.

In a single player game, the Sword of Uber has no value whatsoever. You could earn it or just console cheat one up.

And yet, people are still paying cash for these things. And not even things with an effect, like the Sword of Uber, but shit like alternate costumes such as for sale with Marvel vs Capcom 3.

If they are bypassed with RMT, it cheapens the achievement and ticks off people who earned the Sword of Uber rather than just swiped their credit card.

This is all kinds of opinion being stated as fact. It will tick off some people. But nobody has stated why those people being ticked off should matter, or why those people should even be ticked off in the first place.

Considering that there's almost never any sort of gold star awarded for merely possessing a Sword of Uber, I don't see how it matters beyond some individuals' headspace.

^-.-^

[Nekojin]

You and Neko have been basically arguing that this is effectively a harmless trend thats too bothersome to stop and you just don't understand why anyone would care. Even though its directly deterimental to both the health and spirit of gaming while conversely giving dickshits up at the top like Kotick yet more avenues of consumer assfuckery. Which they will keep continuing to push until consumers finally snap.

You keep saying that it's detrimental to the game, but you're not offering any real metrics by which to measure it, only hand-wavy assertions.

The Sword of Uber only has real money value because its difficult to achieve in an enviroment where the rules cannot be circumvented by cheating. In a single player game, the Sword of Uber has no value whatsoever. You could earn it or just console cheat one up. No one really cares. It only has value in a multiplayer enviroment where the rules cannot be bypassed. If they are bypassed with RMT, it cheapens the achievement and ticks off people who earned the Sword of Uber rather than just swiped their credit card.

That last sentence is what I have a problem with. In a properly protected environment, that Sword of Uber had to have been earned by somebody. That it's passed on to someone else rather than vendored doesn't in any way cheapen the accomplishment of the people who earned it properly.

All thats going to happen with D3's RMT Auction House is the same thing that happens to WoW servers. The Chinese farmers ( who by now already have a stockpile of shit to sell ) will flood the AH with underpriced items relying on volume over quality. Causing item deflation to the detriment of legitimate AH users until the AH is ultimately just for and used primarily by farmers.

I think there's enough players who reached Inferno mode in the first week that the RMAH is already going to be flooded, "Chinese Farmers" or no. You really give them far, far too much credit.

In WoW this would create an economic divide whereby long time players on a server aren't bothered at all. They have gold already. Crafters are driven out of business, they can't compete so they give up crafting, volume sell mats instead or just start raiding. While new players would face an economic barrier whereby they can't get ahead in the game because item deflation means they can't compete with the farmers on a business level.

All of this happens without RMT going on. A high enough volume of crafters (which WoW has) makes it difficult, if not impossible, for new crafters to enter the scene. This isn't news.

They can't make as much gold as they're suppose to be able to make and suddenly they're facing WoW's gaping money sinks with less gold than the game is designed to give them. Drumming up more business for the goldfarmers.

Now I have no idea what you're going on about. WoW's "gaping money sinks" are laughable in the face of the earning potential of the average raid-level character, even if they're not raiding.

This was the situation on my first WoW server. There was an "old guard" of players that were filthy rich and amused themselves by twinking lowbies so they could one shot gank new players. There weren't enough crafters around because it was too much bother for no profit. New players to the server couldn't compete with either one because of the resulting economic situation. So they played till 20-25 or so then moved to another server after they got fed up. You couldn't form a group for any instance under 30 for the life of you at any time of day.

That's been the situation for years now, and has nothing to do with RMT. It has to do with server population and age - if you've got a thousand max-level players and a few dozen lowbies scattered across the levels, you're not going to be able to form up a raid group for lower dungeons - if you want to do them, you're going to need to have a high-level player from your guild run you through it. That's the nature of the beast. Every MMO has that same problem - low-level zones become barren wastelands. I have yet to see a compelling solution for that.

EDIT: I take that back. City of Heroes has Exemplaring, which allows a high-level player to temporarily drop down to another player's level in order to run content at the lower player's level. It works extremely well, but nobody else seems to be willing to follow that lead.

My last WoW server as a younger server so it wasn't so far gone and Blizzard had gotten better at farmer control in the in-term since. It still had bad deflation on certain items and crafting was still largely pointless as you couldn't compete with the goldfarmers. Both for prices and for good resource nodes as they camped them 24/7 with bots.

I've played on both high-pop and low-pop servers, and never had a problem with getting mats. If there seems to be someone hogging the resource nodes, there are other zones with the same resources. I've never seen an instance where they were ALL being farmed. And, as I've said before, you cannot tell the difference between someone who is farming for gold-selling, and someone who is power-farming in order to stockpile for themselves or their guild.

[Gravekeeper]

First, not all games try for a level playing field. Directly competitive games, such as, say, Street Fighter will absolutely do so. Other games may have imbalances built in to require diversity from the player base.

Diversity is a seperate thing from actual imbalance.

And I never said we should go in the complete opposite direction. What I did say is that I think the whole brouhaha over RMT is a whole lot of HWFO without much substance.

You and Neko have been basically arguing that this is effectively a harmless trend thats too bothersome to stop and you just don't understand why anyone would care. Even though its directly deterimental to both the health and spirit of gaming while conversely giving dickshits up at the top like Kotick yet more avenues of consumer assfuckery. Which they will keep continuing to push until consumers finally snap.

Yes, but what on earth does Joe Blow on the other side of the planet's effort or lack thereof have to do with your sense of achievement?

Where he is doesn't matter as long as we're both in the same arena being measured by the same metrics. Thats how the whole concept of "score" came about in the first place. RMT cannot even exist unless a multiplayer scoring metric of some sort is in place. Because without a multiplayer metric, nothing has real world value to pay for.

The Sword of Uber only has real money value because its difficult to achieve in an enviroment where the rules cannot be circumvented by cheating. In a single player game, the Sword of Uber has no value whatsoever. You could earn it or just console cheat one up. No one really cares. It only has value in a multiplayer enviroment where the rules cannot be bypassed. If they are bypassed with RMT, it cheapens the achievement and ticks off people who earned the Sword of Uber rather than just swiped their credit card.

In a singleplayer game, this wouldn't matter. There's no one around to see your Sword of Uber. There's no one around to compete against with it. It has no value beyond the in-game currency its worth. It only has RMT value when its in an enviroment where you can show it off and compete with it.

All thats going to happen with D3's RMT Auction House is the same thing that happens to WoW servers. The Chinese farmers ( who by now already have a stockpile of shit to sell ) will flood the AH with underpriced items relying on volume over quality. Causing item deflation to the detriment of legitimate AH users until the AH is ultimately just for and used primarily by farmers.

In WoW this would create an economic divide whereby long time players on a server aren't bothered at all. They have gold already. Crafters are driven out of business, they can't compete so they give up crafting, volume sell mats instead or just start raiding. While new players would face an economic barrier whereby they can't get ahead in the game because item deflation means they can't compete with the farmers on a business level. They can't make as much gold as they're suppose to be able to make and suddenly they're facing WoW's gaping money sinks with less gold than the game is designed to give them. Drumming up more business for the goldfarmers.

This was the situation on my first WoW server. There was an "old guard" of players that were filthy rich and amused themselves by twinking lowbies so they could one shot gank new players. There weren't enough crafters around because it was too much bother for no profit. New players to the server couldn't compete with either one because of the resulting economic situation. So they played till 20-25 or so then moved to another server after they got fed up. You couldn't form a group for any instance under 30 for the life of you at any time of day.

My last WoW server as a younger server so it wasn't so far gone and Blizzard had gotten better at farmer control in the in-term since. It still had bad deflation on certain items and crafting was still largely pointless as you couldn't compete with the goldfarmers. Both for prices and for good resource nodes as they camped them 24/7 with bots.

[Andara Bledin]

So the majority of gamers are pathetic and flawed? Achievement is a huge component of online gaming. Its a huge component of offline gaming when Achievements are involved as well ( There's a reason they're called "Achievements" ). Any arena where there's a comparison of achievement between players will cause achievement to be important and short cuts to achievement to be looked down upon.

I didn't say what you think I said. It's when you measure your e-peen achievement against random people who you can't even say for certain are even people that it gets pathetic.

The level playing field is the ideal that a game developer aims for. Arguing that because achieving it is difficult we should go in the complete opposite direction is ludicrous.

First, not all games try for a level playing field. Directly competitive games, such as, say, Street Fighter will absolutely do so. Other games may have imbalances built in to require diversity from the player base.

And I never said we should go in the complete opposite direction. What I did say is that I think the whole brouhaha over RMT is a whole lot of HWFO without much substance.

I honestly don't understand how you don't understand.

The value of an accomplishment is directly proportional to the time and difficulty involved in achieving it. If that time and difficulty is bypassed, it loses value as an accomplishment.

Yes, but what on earth does Joe Blow on the other side of the planet's effort or lack thereof have to do with your sense of achievement?

^-.-^

[Hyena Dandy]

The value of an accomplishment is directly proportional to the time and difficulty involved in achieving it. If that time and difficulty is bypassed, it loses value as an accomplishment.

I can see how that makes the accomplishment of the person DOING it lesser. Not how it makes YOUR accomplishment lesser. You still put in the same time and effort.

[Gravekeeper]

I honestly don't understand how you don't understand.

The value of an accomplishment is directly proportional to the time and difficulty involved in achieving it. If that time and difficulty is bypassed, it loses value as an accomplishment.

Its also the reason none of the analogies being presented here apply. It doesn't matter if you repaired the computer yourself or had someone repair it because you were not in a computer repair competition at the time. If you had bet Frank you could repair a computer faster than he could, then when you sit down to do it, pay Jim $50 to do it for you to beat Frank, Frank is going to be rightfully upset.

[Rapscallion]

I'd still like to hear how someone else's buying something diminishes the *sense of accomplishment* felt by those who make it themselves. (And no, it hasn't been explained already. If you think you have explained it, you either really didn't say what you meant to, you answered a slightly different question than the one asked, or you're just really bad at explanations. Generic you's.).

Alternatively, you could have a different viewpoint on what's important.

Rapscallion

[HYHYBT]

I'd still like to hear how someone else's buying something diminishes the *sense of accomplishment* felt by those who make it themselves. (And no, it hasn't been explained already. If you think you have explained it, you either really didn't say what you meant to, you answered a slightly different question than the one asked, or you're just really bad at explanations. Generic you's.)

Dismissing the birdhouse example out of hand doesn't work (though I think adding the parts about how much better the bought one was weakened it considerably.)

I have, on occasion, paid for computers to be repaired. I've also repaired some myself, occasionally unsuccessfully but not too bad a record for an amateur who mainly works on his own stuff. The feeling I get on seeing the reassembled machine display the Windows or Apple logo for the first time is in no way diminished by my knowledge that, somewhere, another person has paid a shop to do the same fix. Nothing provided thus far in this thread explains why accomplishments in an online game would be any different, and "games are to escape reality" is especially inapt.

Now, if the complaint were instead that people who have gone the "easy" way are bragging about being further along, that would be totally different.

[Gravekeeper]

That's a personality flaw, plain and simple. And, honestly, I've always found it rather pathetic.

So the majority of gamers are pathetic and flawed? Achievement is a huge component of online gaming. Its a huge component of offline gaming when Achievements are involved as well ( There's a reason they're called "Achievements" ). Any arena where there's a comparison of achievement between players will cause achievement to be important and short cuts to achievement to be looked down upon.

20 years ago we compared high scores in the arcade. Now we compare achievements. Its competition. AKA what the vast majority of games since the dawn of time have been about. Would you play a game of baseball if anyone could just buy a home run for $50?

Except that, as mentioned, the level playing field is a myth.

The level playing field is the ideal that a game developer aims for. Arguing that because achieving it is difficult we should go in the complete opposite direction is ludicrous.

As for your examples:

#1 Some games need equipment. You don't play goal in hockey without pads. So what? Also, your examples are PC specific.

#2 And the game will separate the two of them using game mechanics so they're both competing with others in the same bracket as themselves. So what's your point?

#3 Disadvantaged how? Some people don't like that sort of play to begin with. Also, anyone has the tools to form their own guild or improve their skills to get into a better one. If me and my circle of idjit friends can do it in our spare time and with two of our DPS intoxicated its certainly not unobtainable to the average joe.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't see any diminishment of what I've achieved in a game due to someone else having more time available to play on a game to do the same thing.

You might not, but other people have argued exactly that as a reason to not let people do RMT.

Also, as regards the "as level a playing ground as possible" concept, who gets to be the arbiter of what's "level" and "fair?" Seems to me that the game designers are really the only ones who should get to decide that.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

I don't see any diminishment of what I've achieved in a game due to someone else having more time available to play on a game to do the same thing. It often means they've spent the one week playing a game for forty hours, where it may take me four weeks or more to do the same thing - we've both spent the same amount of game time playing to achieve the same things. It's taken them fewer weeks to get to a certain level, but they've put in the time in the game.

Rapscallion

[Hyena Dandy]

But does someone else getting something because they have more time diminish your accomplishment of doing it?

Or because they belong to the world's top guild, and you don't?

Or because their computer's better?