disposalist said:One thing that has been pointed out and I believe is completely true for this (and other) aspects of the game is that if VR don't provide something that is useful and usable then it will be done for them and will almost certainly *not* be in a way that is ideal or even good for the game.
The example for trade is that if there is no filterable, searchable, global trade, then we will end up with a discord channel becoming popular that logs every trade and makes a global database which can be searched and filtered and everything but the very final exchange is uncontrolled and for even that I wouldn't be surprised if a trader guild appears to make a paid delivery service. The result of that is no one will need to trade within the game at all and the economy and trading gameplay is utterly at the mercy of an outside system.
The much better way is for VR to develop a system that is in game and is effective and usable enough that the majority will want to use it and external systems can't gain enough of a following.
I would say the same applies to things like mapping, beastiaries, player reputation and policing, etc.
VR seem to currently have the attitude that there will be 3rd party tools, so why do thier own? And that 'player-evolved' systems are even a good thing. This is one of the few things where I think they are being naive and I disagree with their approach. To me it's obvious that 3rd party tools will not be in-keeping with the game design, will have uncontrolled consequences for the game and will likely include a whole load of stuff (ads, spoilers, exploits, whatever) that no one really wants, but will be unavoidable.
I strongly disagree with this stance of automating everything in game because someone will do it out of game. POE (Path of Exile) has a lot of trading and it is done through a 3rd party site and works great. And in P99 people still do auction the old fashioned way quite a bit. All this talk about 3rd party tools ruining trade is just odd to me because from my experience it has worked just fine. Even if you install a filterable searchable global trade there is no guarantee the 3rd party sites won't be more popular or better designed. And why should there be an in game beastiary? Or in game maps? I don't see why those things couldn't be on 3rd party sites. Spoilers, exploits, none of this stuff was on any of the 3rd party sites I went on. Your best argument is the ads on those sites because some of em are obnoxious. But so what? Get a good ad blocker problem solved even on the most offensive ad spam sites. People using 3rd party sites has been a thing for gaming since the internet got popular. The game developers cannot prevent it from happening, so players get to choose how they want to play the game.
If the community opts for a heavily automated 3rd party system for trade that's their choice. That isn't something a developer can prevent, though you seem to think the devs should be spending valuable time trying to create their own fancy system to preempt it. Its not as though VR has a huge staff, something like this would be far down the list imo exactly because the playerbase will take care of it.
Ziegfried said:If the community opts for a heavily automated 3rd party system for trade that's their choice. That isn't something a developer can prevent, though you seem to think the devs should be spending valuable time trying to create their own fancy system to preempt it. Its not as though VR has a huge staff, something like this would be far down the list imo exactly because the playerbase will take care of it.
I completely disgree with this statement. A player economy including how players will do transactions needs to be designed at the same time the game itemization is being designed. They impact each other too much to tack on some sort of trade system at the last second. Yes I want the devs to spend time considering how players are going to buy and sell items. I'll wait a bit if thats what it takes.
EppE said:Ziegfried said:If the community opts for a heavily automated 3rd party system for trade that's their choice. That isn't something a developer can prevent, though you seem to think the devs should be spending valuable time trying to create their own fancy system to preempt it. Its not as though VR has a huge staff, something like this would be far down the list imo exactly because the playerbase will take care of it.
I completely disgree with this statement. A player economy including how players will do transactions needs to be designed at the same time the game itemization is being designed. They impact each other too much to tack on some sort of trade system at the last second. Yes I want the devs to spend time considering how players are going to buy and sell items. I'll wait a bit if thats what it takes.
EppE, I agree that the Devs need to develop the economy safeguards and mechanisms now. One "potential" tool is the Ethereum network ERC-1155 Blockchain. It enables assets to be liquified and removed from the game. But it also can do the opposite and lock things down. We will know more on march 15th when the SDK goes live for Unity. Just not enough information at the moment, but if I was a stakeholder I would make sure they at least looked at it. It also a potential new revenue model. Whatever they do, it needs to stay inline with the pantheon difference. Every "select" rare item could be non-fungible and can have it's own serial number.
Basically you can stop every 3rd party transactions, because every item in game can be tracked by serial number. Granted you would not serialize a stack of raw wood. Nice thing is all this tracking is done on the blockchain, and not the shard server. It would be interesting to know the lag time communicating from the ERC-1155 network to the live shard.
Ziegfried said:disposalist said:One thing that has been pointed out and I believe is completely true for this (and other) aspects of the game is that if VR don't provide something that is useful and usable then it will be done for them and will almost certainly *not* be in a way that is ideal or even good for the game.
The example for trade is that if there is no filterable, searchable, global trade, then we will end up with a discord channel becoming popular that logs every trade and makes a global database which can be searched and filtered and everything but the very final exchange is uncontrolled and for even that I wouldn't be surprised if a trader guild appears to make a paid delivery service. The result of that is no one will need to trade within the game at all and the economy and trading gameplay is utterly at the mercy of an outside system.
The much better way is for VR to develop a system that is in game and is effective and usable enough that the majority will want to use it and external systems can't gain enough of a following.
I would say the same applies to things like mapping, beastiaries, player reputation and policing, etc.
VR seem to currently have the attitude that there will be 3rd party tools, so why do thier own? And that 'player-evolved' systems are even a good thing. This is one of the few things where I think they are being naive and I disagree with their approach. To me it's obvious that 3rd party tools will not be in-keeping with the game design, will have uncontrolled consequences for the game and will likely include a whole load of stuff (ads, spoilers, exploits, whatever) that no one really wants, but will be unavoidable.
I strongly disagree with this stance of automating everything in game because someone will do it out of game. POE (Path of Exile) has a lot of trading and it is done through a 3rd party site and works great. And in P99 people still do auction the old fashioned way quite a bit. All this talk about 3rd party tools ruining trade is just odd to me because from my experience it has worked just fine. Even if you install a filterable searchable global trade there is no guarantee the 3rd party sites won't be more popular or better designed. And why should there be an in game beastiary? Or in game maps? I don't see why those things couldn't be on 3rd party sites. Spoilers, exploits, none of this stuff was on any of the 3rd party sites I went on. Your best argument is the ads on those sites because some of em are obnoxious. But so what? Get a good ad blocker problem solved even on the most offensive ad spam sites. People using 3rd party sites has been a thing for gaming since the internet got popular. The game developers cannot prevent it from happening, so players get to choose how they want to play the game.
If the community opts for a heavily automated 3rd party system for trade that's their choice. That isn't something a developer can prevent, though you seem to think the devs should be spending valuable time trying to create their own fancy system to preempt it. Its not as though VR has a huge staff, something like this would be far down the list imo exactly because the playerbase will take care of it.
It doesn't require everything being 'automated', just some basic mechanic that's good enough such that 99% of players use it. If only 1% of players are unhappy with the in-game system, a third-party site is unlikely to be needed and, even if someone makes it, is unlikely to catch on and, more importantly, gain any power.
Yeah, as soon as EQ1 TLP servers hit Luclin, and The Bazaar is introduced, tlpauctions stops being necessary. That's happened several times now, as each TLP server progresses to that point.
If VR puts a global search with prices in Pantheon, then they won't be necessary there either. If VR doesn't feel that's something they want to do, that's fine too, tlpauctions (or anyone else) could fill that need indefinitely.
tlpauctions does one thing better, they offer a history of prices, but that's not enough of a draw to keep doing it, when The Bazaar is in-game and offers everything except historical prices.
I would rather it all be out of game. Don't cater to it, force people to use external measures. Design the game according to a given expectation and if players try to cheat it, then they can live with the consequences of such by the community finding out they are circumventing the games play with outside game cheats.
This was done even in EQ. People began to buy items online from Yantis (RMT) or use power leveling services. These were means for players to bypass the games content externally, and it was looked down on. In fact, so much that many would get black listed when people found out they were buying their items online.
So, design the game as intended, let people do what they will do anyway. Don't cater to cheats because people will cheat anyway. It is player blackmail. That is, treat it as they are planning on doing maps. Players can look up outside if they want, but internally, you don't get a map cheat.
Tanix said:I would rather it all be out of game. Don't cater to it, force people to use external measures. Design the game according to a given expectation and if players try to cheat it, then they can live with the consequences of such by the community finding out they are circumventing the games play with outside game cheats.
This was done even in EQ. People began to buy items online from Yantis (RMT) or use power leveling services. These were means for players to bypass the games content externally, and it was looked down on. In fact, so much that many would get black listed when people found out they were buying their items online.
So, design the game as intended, let people do what they will do anyway. Don't cater to cheats because people will cheat anyway. It is player blackmail. That is, treat it as they are planning on doing maps. Players can look up outside if they want, but internally, you don't get a map cheat.
Yes it was pretty funny to come across a LvL 50 character who did not know their way around the world of EQ.
I already spoke about blockchain technology and serialing items and/or characters for security. i hope they do it. Blockchain will be the "next" thing. If the game is going to be something in 2029, then the need to incorporate it now. Even if it's thier own in-house blockchain using Hyperledger or something like that.
VR should design a game that works the way they want it to - and that will attract enough people to be financially viable - without worrying too much over whether some people will "cheat".
People will - it is inevitable.
But that doesn't mean locking the game into what could be done in 1999 either. Some of the things that have become almost universal in MMOs since then are not *bad* merely because they are less than 20 years old.
Having no mechanism within Pantheon to facilitate buying and selling by players is at least as bad - maybe worse - than adopting a worldwide instant broker or auction house and instant worldwide mail. Many players will view that as just *too* primitive. Some will just leave a game that they view as perpetuating 1999 limitations on what a game *could* do for no actual gameplay reason - just nostalgia. Others will use third party work-arounds.
The regional market alternative that VR has been considering is a reasonable compromise. It emphasizes a core concept - making the world feel larger and more realistic than would be true with a universal market mechanism tying together cultures and factions that may hate each other - that may not even *know* about each other.
Some of us have a core concept of pretending it is 1999 all over again and games and computers couldn't handle things like buying and selling in any way other than standing in a tunnel 24/7 yelling at each other. But I think most of us do not, and would rather spend our time crafting, harvesting, exploring, and adventuring.
dorotea said:
The regional market alternative that VR has been considering is a reasonable compromise. It emphasizes a core concept - making the world feel larger and more realistic than would be true with a universal market mechanism tying together cultures and factions that may hate each other - that may not even *know* about each other.
Well said dorotea. I remain confident that Ceythos, Joppa, and others at VR will build something reasonable and "modern" that takes into account everyone's desires, fears, and concerns, without necessarily caving in to any of them.
Nephele said:dorotea said:
The regional market alternative that VR has been considering is a reasonable compromise. It emphasizes a core concept - making the world feel larger and more realistic than would be true with a universal market mechanism tying together cultures and factions that may hate each other - that may not even *know* about each other.
Well said dorotea. I remain confident that Ceythos, Joppa, and others at VR will build something reasonable and "modern" that takes into account everyone's desires, fears, and concerns, without necessarily caving in to any of them.
I agree. I feel absolutely certain that on at least a few important issues they will not do it the way I want - but overall Pantheon will have *many* things I do want and will be enormously better than any of the MMOs I have played in the past. I feel absolutely certain that it will be better than EQ simply because they have the luxury of 20 years of experience of what worked and what did not work. And 20 years of progress in what can be programmed. And, just maybe, where they don't do it my way they may be right. They are the professionals.
dorotea said:Having no mechanism within Pantheon to facilitate buying and selling by players is at least as bad - maybe worse - than adopting a worldwide instant broker or auction house and instant worldwide mail. Many players will view that as just *too* primitive. Some will just leave a game that they view as perpetuating 1999 limitations on what a game *could* do for no actual gameplay reason - just nostalgia. Others will use third party work-arounds.
It isn't a technology issue, it is an idealology issue. Like travel, like many aspects of play, these "convenience" have take away some aspects of play that take time, and time is the one thing that slows play and promotes longer and more meaningful interaction in play, as I said like travel. If it takes time to find people, to search through a vendor, to go from town to town, etc... it slows game play, slows the process of automation in play which creates many problems over time to which we see in modern MMOs.
This is no different than the min-map and auto-map issue. One could also say that by not having a mini-map and a auto-map that shows all locations automatically for you, displays locations, quests. key points of interest, etc.. then it is a "primitive" game and some will just choose to not play. In fact, some have stated this very fact in other venues.
Some people are going to cheat things, fine, but just because those people will not play the game if you don't design the cheat into the game, isn't a sound reason to put them in.
As has been said, this game isn't being designed for everyone, it is being designed to fit a idealogy in play that has been lost, dismissed, and often at times called "primitive".
Tanix I actually agree with a great deal of your most recent post in this thread. While there are people that want things done the way EQ did them *because* EQ did them that way, it is totally unfair to characterize anyone that wants severe limitations on trading as having this as the motivation. I don't think I said that was your motivation, or the motivation of some of the others that agree with you, and I certainly didn't mean to imply it.
To say that, of course, would be to put *myself* in that camp, and I am not. My postion has been that mail should be slow and inconvenient even between characters on the same account, that banking should be inconvenient and limited to getting items out of the same bank you put them in not having a magical worldwide network with instant teleports from branches in one city to branches far away, amd that markets should be limited and inconvenient with the same limitations as banks - regional not worldwide or continent wide.
I don't mean to imply that we agree on these issues - we do not. But I think it is fair to say that we both want far different systems of commerce and trading than one sees in any mainstream MMO today - far more limited, restrictive and outright inconvenient.
So. Yes for both you and myself it *is* a matter of what we consider the ideal gameplay not a technology issue. You want little or nothing in terms of mapping. I want a map limited to the basics - without many modern features. Showing what the character would know about the terrain and nearby major features but not showing the location of enemies and not having little arrows pointing out where to go for quests, Do we agree - heck no! Do we agree that we want a *lot* less convenience than we would get in WoW or LOTRO or Rift or EQ2 - heck yes. You want little or nothing in terms of a broker or an auction house. I want the type of broker or auction house that our ancesters had many years or centuries or even millenia ago - on a strictly local basis. Do we agree - heck no! Do we agree that we want a *lot* less convenience than is typical in in mainstream games today - heck yes. Similar analysis on mail and banks quite likely.
In other words I agree this is mostly a disagreement on "idealogy". I agree Pantheon should have far less "convenience" than is typical today. I agree that the game isn't, should not be, and will not be for everyone or even for most players. Or even for 25% of MMO players.
There - now we can focus on where we do *not* agree. How small a niche should it try and fill - my answer is a larger niche than your answer. How many conveniences do we avoid in mapping - your answer is almost all mine is many. How many conveniences do we avoid in markets and banking and mail - my answer remains many, your answer remains more than I want.