*puts on glasses*
Caveat: don't let your bias on childrens breakfast cereals marketing tactics- successfull marketing tactics I might add- bias your opinion. Bradning outward
NASCAR example is a good one, they are not "those " people, people are people.- Branding outward.
Old school S&H Green stamps
- with the trend for going local etc etc, S&H type pantheon stamps may be a nice comeback of a successfull marketing campaign on a local level, local stores and be a way to brand outward.
Aradune said:Let me try to throw you guys a curve ball -- curious as to what you guys think of:
An alternate ruleset server where you *can* buy an item that represents a month of playtime (but that's all, no other real money purchases)?
Sometimes called PLEX. Here's how WoW originally described it:
"We’re exploring the possibility of giving players a way to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold. Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system."
^ Looking in I see the issue being, how can we make it possible to use in game achievements (gold) to allow players to be able to pay for the game by playing. Very altruistic: Let/Help the poor play the game. Let's be hippies and send a box of Ipads to Africa with no explaination instead of stopping mid-way down and paying a years mortgage for this family, or paying a year off of college debt for this 40k a year working person.
blockquote]Preechr
said:
[...]
Obviously, no
sponsorship deal should be physically indicated in the game, so no corporate
logos on cosmetic armor and no "Campbell's Soup Winter-Fest"
how far do
you think something like this could go?
-----------------------
Your
designers could work with players to build items and events players actually
want to receive as rewards for participation.
^ Looking out
Liking nascar and supporting/buying soup that likes nascar. Replace soup with Pantheon. broadly speaking.
Rather than have corporate sponsorship in game have the game on corporate sponsorship. Yes image and branding will be everything on a mature level. Mercedes Benz I think did it succesfully also for a niche market. Orvis Jeep edition, by Chrysler. "a natural marriage for two brands with a repuatation for being authentic", although Dark Myr goldfish snacks may be too cute.
They already have the infrastructure in place, like coding in the numbers on the bottom of Coca Cola caps for free stuff... free game time?. Take the money you spend on Campbells and have that give you a free month- after so many purchaces. Can run regional, or seasonal events.
Buy soup with Pantheon Logo, or image of whatever. Mail in the barcode, open an account to track items and after so much S&H greenstamps/upc codes/box tops- = a PLeX/Krono. Validation checks outside of game- (job of devs or someoe hired for it) will be to reconcile and reward. Very scaleable- extremely Scaleable, credit card companies have points for stuff maybe krono/Plat? win-win all around and the gold famrers wil be eating alot of soup or burdened with having to sell their soup without the UPC attached.
Maybe the expression Go big or Go home applies. But its never been done in an MMO- Nascar works, why not an MMO?
But I get it, I get it, thats not "cool" Is there a way to make it cooL? if so, how? We're talking about alternate monetizing with the intent to encourage play time. personally I tihin the busines model hads to change as there will be lulls in subs. But if EQ made it for so long, why not more so for Pantheon?
Ainadak said:Krixus said:lol. This some serious big brother craziness. You're essentially talking about some kind of guilt by association mechanic. And what data do you have that proves people who bot or exploit would be near each other when doing so? There is none, it's pure conjecture. You want the game to TRACK the other players you are near? Do you have ANY idea the kind of resources required to make that happen? First of all, that's a tremendous amount of data that needs to be stored, and THEN that data needs to be leveraged somehow with some kind of business intelligence platform. You can't just dump that info into a database and be done, it has to be exposed in some meaningful manner. It always makes me shake my head when people who don't understand software/web/server/db development start throwing out these ideas like they are trivial.
It seems like every thread these days is some fluff thread that has nothign to do with the core of the game. At this point: Who cares if there's a living dragon that you zone into, it's a zone that has a theme, great. Who cares if corpses poof or dissolve or burst into a mass of flies? What we should care about are the core mechanics of spellcasting, combat, pathing, leveling, zone design, quest design, loot, etc. Do we really want the devs to be spending resources tweaking the game engine to play pretty cutscene videos while the game loads or do we want them working on AI?
Also, get off my lawn, old man yells at cloud.
If you have reasons that suggest that an idea wouldn't work, then it would be nice if you presented those reasons instead of accusing others for not already knowing them. This is a Pantheon forum and there are not technological knowledge prerequisites, so no idea should be off limits.
As to botters sticking together - I have seen it first hand. I have seen solo bots running around farming, but I have also seen autofollow support bots enabling the farming of the primary bot.
If you take the 5 nearest people every 15 minutes, then you're getting one string every 3 minutes. Over the course of 50 days played, you would have 24k strings for a file size of just under a meg (assuming a string size of 30 bytes). If you cap it at that file size and just delete old data in favor of new, then you have a somewhat sizeable file for each player. To cover a million players in Pantheon, then that scales up to 1 TB of data. I don't think we're talking about massive storage centers here. This may all be faulty accounting, since (as you have accurately guessed) I'm not an expert in this stuff. From what I can tell though, it's not as crazy as you claim it is. All you need to sort the data is an account number or player name with associated server. Please, if you are an expert, then don't shrug your shoulders and wish we were all educated, explain and teach.
On a final note - why does guilt by association not work? If someone is grouping primarily with those who get banned for botting, then I would argue that they should be banned.
Edits - to come off less combative.
So basically because you've seen it happen it means they should implement a system that bans people for being near others who are suspected of botting. Gotcha.
So i can associate what some of you are saying, but it might be best to say it in other terms like Illegal ways to exploit the TOS.
To put boxers and botters in the same sentence is only being disrepectful to guys like me that enjoy just a mild small area and play solo. Especially on late nights or mornings or just to relax.
I never once BOTTED to exploit the game, but i did box in EQ to enjoy it. Big difference. I also never disrespected anyone or steal, or harass any camps.
Its a learning curve, or to add in 6 machines to box a whole group is no different. So please i wish people would understand the two are not assocated.
IN wow botters would run by scripts to do all of the tasks of the main character. They would take 50 toons in to kill a raid boss mob and open plat, or sell it online for real money.
Many of us Boxers would never do such a thing, it was either to enhance a raid main character.
Some of the tone seems off, like boxers and botters are the same in this thread too....
Agree.
Boxing != Botting. They are two distinctly different things.
Yes, people who box to excessive levels are often forced to bot. And those same people are largely what gives boxing such a bad rep by dominating areas with many accounts. But if botting is prohibited and that's strictly inforced, and game mechanics limit the effectiveness of trying to box many accounts, then the outcomes and potential impacts are dramatically mitigated.
On the topic of branding, here's my 2 cents: When you start exploring ways to monetize alterations in the game you sit at the top of the slide that leads to advertisers influencing the game. I think of it like a gateway drug. Some people can have a joint every once in a while at a party and get on with life just fine. Others find themselves consumed by it and next thing you know they are blowing up a meth lab in their basement.
For the loot box thing, please lord no. Just don't inject the influence of $'s into the game at all. It's a corruption. It's a distortion. I have never seen a company stick with the, "Just this one thing" mantra. If nothing else at some point its possible (and in most cases, likely) scenario in which a few years down the road when the game is stable and proven profitable, and then subs start to slide, the developer either says, "hey we already have all the mechanics in places to expand that "just one thing", or they sell the IP ownership to a company like EA that will go full bore into expanding on the mechanics they now own.
Build a game that's compelling, challenging, and engaging and players will play. Build in shortcuts and the shortcuts become the norm. Sure, you might see a short term spike in the revenue stream. But over the long haul you'll see declining participation in the game, and more importantly a declining respect for the company hosting it.
VR is building a game around the core concept that reputation matters. Live it in practice as a company.
Some folks in this thread seem to be under the impression that allowing Plex like systems in the economy, won't bleed over into the non Plex servers.
I really don't believe we can count on that.
I don't want to see the whole trade system taken over by Plex or kronos like transactions, where the gold or platinum you have industriously earned in game, gets put aside as "not as good as kronos" thereby OBLIGATING you to get into the Real Money Trade.
I've already stood my ground over on Agnarr progression server in EQ. I have several times announced in general chat (when I was still there a month or two ago) that if you are asking for kronos ONLY, for an item I want, then my response is NO SALE!
This system is hard to compete with as an ordinary person who doesn't have oodles of money to toss at a video game just to buy expensive pixels.
Be careful what you wish for.
I think that would be the ruination of Pantheon, and in the end lose the respect of a lot of the old school type players that don't believe in that system, and that would include me, and would make Pantheon just another pay to win..game.
Cana
CanadinaXegony said:Some folks in this thread seem to be under the impression that allowing Plex like systems in the economy, won't bleed over into the non Plex servers.
I really don't believe we can count on that.
I don't want to see the whole trade system taken over by Plex or kronos like transactions, where the gold or platinum you have industriously earned in game, gets put aside as "not as good as kronos" thereby OBLIGATING you to get into the Real Money Trade.
I've already stood my ground over on Agnarr progression server in EQ. I have several times announced in general chat (when I was still there a month or two ago) that if you are asking for kronos ONLY, for an item I want, then my response is NO SALE!
This system is hard to compete with as an ordinary person who doesn't have oodles of money to toss at a video game just to buy expensive pixels.
Be careful what you wish for.
I think that would be the ruination of Pantheon, and in the end lose the respect of a lot of the old school type players that don't believe in that system, and that would include me, and would make Pantheon just another pay to win..game.
Cana
Agreed 100%, this is the most worrying discussion i have seen to date. I cant see the games economy ending well with this system in place. I was a bit flawed to see it floated by Brad. At the end of the day it is what it will be and that is out of our hands.. but even just a small amount of support being thrown around for it is puzzling.
Edit: In saying that i am not providing any other money making options for Pantheon in place of it besides the sub format, so i guess if it is needed to keep the game alive.. jeez i hope not.
Hokanu said:CanadinaXegony said:Some folks in this thread seem to be under the impression that allowing Plex like systems in the economy, won't bleed over into the non Plex servers.
I really don't believe we can count on that.
I don't want to see the whole trade system taken over by Plex or kronos like transactions, where the gold or platinum you have industriously earned in game, gets put aside as "not as good as kronos" thereby OBLIGATING you to get into the Real Money Trade.
I've already stood my ground over on Agnarr progression server in EQ. I have several times announced in general chat (when I was still there a month or two ago) that if you are asking for kronos ONLY, for an item I want, then my response is NO SALE!
This system is hard to compete with as an ordinary person who doesn't have oodles of money to toss at a video game just to buy expensive pixels.
Be careful what you wish for.
I think that would be the ruination of Pantheon, and in the end lose the respect of a lot of the old school type players that don't believe in that system, and that would include me, and would make Pantheon just another pay to win..game.
Cana
Agreed 100%, this is the most worrying discussion i have seen to date. I cant see the games economy ending well with this system in place. I was a bit flawed to see it floated by Brad. At the end of the day it is what it will be and that is out of our hands.. but even just a small amount of support being thrown around for it is puzzling.
Edit: In saying that i am not providing any other money making options for Pantheon in place of it besides the sub format, so i guess if it is needed to keep the game alive.. jeez i hope not.
Pretty sure Brad is playing devil's advocate here, just to get a consensus on these systems. I highly doubt he wants to implement this..scroll back a page or two, and see what he says. :) From what I see, 90% of the responses in this thread, are a flat out no. :)
Cana
CanadinaXegony said:Hokanu said:CanadinaXegony said:Some folks in this thread seem to be under the impression that allowing Plex like systems in the economy, won't bleed over into the non Plex servers.
I really don't believe we can count on that.
I don't want to see the whole trade system taken over by Plex or kronos like transactions, where the gold or platinum you have industriously earned in game, gets put aside as "not as good as kronos" thereby OBLIGATING you to get into the Real Money Trade.
I've already stood my ground over on Agnarr progression server in EQ. I have several times announced in general chat (when I was still there a month or two ago) that if you are asking for kronos ONLY, for an item I want, then my response is NO SALE!
This system is hard to compete with as an ordinary person who doesn't have oodles of money to toss at a video game just to buy expensive pixels.
Be careful what you wish for.
I think that would be the ruination of Pantheon, and in the end lose the respect of a lot of the old school type players that don't believe in that system, and that would include me, and would make Pantheon just another pay to win..game.
Cana
Agreed 100%, this is the most worrying discussion i have seen to date. I cant see the games economy ending well with this system in place. I was a bit flawed to see it floated by Brad. At the end of the day it is what it will be and that is out of our hands.. but even just a small amount of support being thrown around for it is puzzling.
Edit: In saying that i am not providing any other money making options for Pantheon in place of it besides the sub format, so i guess if it is needed to keep the game alive.. jeez i hope not.
Pretty sure Brad is playing devil's advocate here, just to get a consensus on these systems. I highly doubt he wants to implement this..scroll back a page or two, and see what he says. :) From what I see, 90% of the responses in this thread, are a flat out no. :)
Cana
Exactly, but i expect if they cant find a way to sell a new form of krono, they will find other ways. Soon we will have this discussion in the forum again.... and again about items being farmed and placed on the open market for 5000x the actual value.
Its the nature of the beast.
Still my suggestion of payment system online effects a different krono type system where as it doesnt sell on the open in game market. It is locked to the users account. Nobody i guess read it, or paid attention to alternate systems for those that do not want 100 cc charges to get a friend online to play.
Not gold, but to activate an account for a friend easy and effectively.
I don't fault Brad for bringing the idea up. This same exact topic came up in the VIP forum a few months back and the response was quite a bit different. To be honest, I appreciate that he has enough faith in the community to have an open dialogue about stuff like this. He mentioned that he was looking for ideas on how it could work ... he presented it as a challenge, which basically means he was already acknowledging that the system as it has been used in other games wasn't the exact direction he would want to take it here, if it was used at all. I will be honest in saying that I am critical of thinking that it can work, but I wouldn't write it off 100%.
My immediate instinct was to react on how I have seen it used in other games, but you never know if the system as we know it could be somehow reshaped to where the pros could be leveraged without the cons. I wish I could think of a way on how it could be done, but I haven't had much luck so far. Either way, I will continue to put more thought into it because I appreciate a challenge. It was stated that the goal for such a system would be to combat RMT ... maybe we could start thinking of different ideas on how to do that that wouldn't require the implementation of something like plex? Having a discussion about things in this format is a good thing ... let's make sure that channel remains open.
Aradune said:Tsanarith said:Are you meaning like Plat in to token Item or ingame Purchase for cash for the token?
Not sure -- it's been done a little differently depending on the game. It came up in a discussion recently. My immediate reaction was 'NO!'. But then after more thought and dialog I thought there was at least enough merit and precedence in other games to bring it to the community and get your reaction. To be clear: totally hypothetical at this point -- would love your opinions and experiences (if any) in MMOs that used such a system.
I wasn't overly opposed to this initially when it was introduced in other games. Unfortunately my attitude towards it soured a bit. EverQuest II, WildStar and some other games became a bit of a train wreck. Every random PUG I seemed to find myself in would often have someone (or sometimes more than one) grabbing up every item as greedily as possible to make gold for their monthly freebie tokens. Say the cleric could use that for an upgrade would get you a response like "I need the gold for my " Helping out the group or common decency became a distant second in many cases. It made taking groups outside of your guild less desirable.
There were a few good groups that were not absolute greed mongers, but this soured me to the whole idea. When you introduce an element of real world value (a monthly sub token in this case), you can end up bringing out some things that will impact gameplay, especially when you have an influx of new players.
I hate to spit on this like I am as I would love to have the perfect idea for VR to get a good monetization method beyond just the subs to keep the content coming and the lights on. But I don't know about this one. On a server alone it might not be so bad. On all of them, see above.
It's a good concept in idea. But it does come with those few issues. Then there are the bots to contend with as money always brings out the botting farmers.
I may get yelled at for this one, but as long as there are plenty of options in the game and included with the sub, however, I wouldn't be opposed to some cosmetic microtransaction packs.
philo said:It is a HARD no from me. Even though I wouldn't play on the server...it would make me think less of the game as a whole if I knew this was available. I'm disappointed that this type of money grab is even being discussed. Integrity is one thing that keeps people playing over the long run. Don't lose peoples faith with this type of garbage.
+1
I'm not a HARD NO, but I'm not a "yes" either.
My personal experience has been mixed. While I, myself, have always paid for my subs straight out, I've seen people that bought kronos in EQ and as they were players with several long term characters that has no in-game money issues, it worked for them and didn't seem to adversely affect the game in any way in regards to their game play or mine. And I once sold a krono for more gold then I really had need for. Again, I know of no adverse issue resulting from this.
But, while it was only a few times, I have grouped with people that were so focused on "earning" the gold for their subs that working with the group was secondary -- similar to other experiences posted already.
On one hand, gold farming is a fact of life and I would rather see VR get the cash than "third-party" gold farmers. On the other hand, it can foward negative issues like the above.
Personally, I feel that botting (not boxing) used for gold/plat farming is the bigger issue. I know that it is a difficult issue to tackle as someone always figures out a way to hack the client or packet sniff or some such and it is hard to police.
Perhaps, since botters tend to set up or follow patterns, log tracking can be set up to red flag characters that move in repeated patterns on a regular basis that can be followed up by GM investigation.
Anyhow, I think that's the bigger issue. As for krono/plex like currency, I wouldn't un-sub based on this alone but I don't support it either.
Cheers for righting me on that Cana, I am a bit too busy at work to read it all so I was just kinda spitting my drink or over the concept! You guys are also right in saying its great Brad floats ideas in here for us to feedback on, thats what we want and I was jumping the gun, should have read through! Love this community :)
Man my phone made a hash of that post :p I blame the phone... haha sure
DragonFist said:And I once sold a krono for more gold then I really had need for.
This is all that really need be said in the discussion.
While you might not recognize the impact, the influx of currency into the economy has a massive impact. More gold than you needed devalued gold. So every instance of this transaction made every transaction cost more for every player, with the eventual outcome being a definable inflation of the game currency.
Feyshtey said:DragonFist said:And I once sold a krono for more gold then I really had need for.
This is all that really need be said in the discussion.
While you might not recognize the impact, the influx of currency into the economy has a massive impact. More gold than you needed devalued gold. So every instance of this transaction made every transaction cost more for every player, with the eventual outcome being a definable inflation of the game currency.
I don't disagree with that. However, one can argue that plat/gold farmers were already causing this effect. The main reason, though, that I didn't really need much gold was that I was a heavy raider and most of what I needed could only be gotten via raiding. Gold was only useful for keeping up on crafted food/drink and such which didn't really cost that much.
DragonFist said:Feyshtey said:DragonFist said:And I once sold a krono for more gold then I really had need for.
This is all that really need be said in the discussion.
While you might not recognize the impact, the influx of currency into the economy has a massive impact. More gold than you needed devalued gold. So every instance of this transaction made every transaction cost more for every player, with the eventual outcome being a definable inflation of the game currency.
I don't disagree with that. However, one can argue that plat/gold farmers were already causing this effect. The main reason, though, that I didn't really need much gold was that I was a heavy raider and most of what I needed could only be gotten via raiding. Gold was only useful for keeping up on crafted food/drink and such which didn't really cost that much.
It was true, if it wasnt Selling Terraw MArr characters for 5000 real life dollars, it was at the same time selling gold. (I know i was offered 5000 USD for my 50th necro back then) Scared the **** out of me getting that tell, i was like WTF 5 grand some scam. HAs to be, or some dev playing on me....
The influx of gold was huge, selling it for 20 dollars/per wasnt it? Then selling items etc...
All way before Krono even was alive.
I just want the payment system, i couldnt care less to sell or buy krono, unless they offered it at 9.99 vrs 17.99 like EQ did. Everyone can do the math there. Which they did offer it cheaper then SOE did.
Not saying this stuff did not happen, some of us older accounts do remember stuff.
To farm for cash, to purchase a Krono/Plex type thing, might not be a good idea for the over all games life span.
Players should use the AKA marketplace to purchase Krono's with the strick system put in place.
So in general, anything with Real Money attached to it, we do not wish to see for sale on the open market. Anything with Lore, No drop items you want in the game turning it into a Character locked item.
Thats what i get from all of this, just please make the payment system good for us that dont want a ton of CC charges thats all i ask for.
Now after you got all that from this thread,
I will go farm lock a location down, and turn around /ooc I have this item for sale just dropped. 1000000million plat or it rots. Thats what has been done too.
oneADseven said:I don't fault Brad for bringing the idea up. This same exact topic came up in the VIP forum a few months back and the response was quite a bit different. To be honest, I appreciate that he has enough faith in the community to have an open dialogue about stuff like this. He mentioned that he was looking for ideas on how it could work ... he presented it as a challenge, which basically means he was already acknowledging that the system as it has been used in other games wasn't the exact direction he would want to take it here, if it was used at all. I will be honest in saying that I am critical of thinking that it can work, but I wouldn't write it off 100%.
My immediate instinct was to react on how I have seen it used in other games, but you never know if the system as we know it could be somehow reshaped to where the pros could be leveraged without the cons. I wish I could think of a way on how it could be done, but I haven't had much luck so far. Either way, I will continue to put more thought into it because I appreciate a challenge. It was stated that the goal for such a system would be to combat RMT ... maybe we could start thinking of different ideas on how to do that that wouldn't require the implementation of something like plex? Having a discussion about things in this format is a good thing ... let's make sure that channel remains open.
I want to stress i am glad brad brought it here, even if i do not know what was said. SOmetimes $$$ can sway the idea's the wrong way. Maybe the % of $$$ high end investors do also farm some of the cash from these games? i dunno and do not wish to speculate. swaying the Devs mind into believing it so. Just saying it has happened before if that is the outcome i see.
Aradune said: ... Us making money off plex/krono was honestly never part of my thought process. It was simply this: could some plex/krono system, with specific rules for Pantheon, be implemented on an alternate ruleset server, and by making it tradable eliminate or at least significantly kurb gold farmers? And, of cousre, could *our* system avoid making the game feel like it's pay2win. The only thing one would be buying for real money would be the plex/krono item, nothing else.Some have posted they think it could help, but the overwhelming majority have said no, they just can't see how it would work and avoid doing more good than harm. And, as mentioned, some people really got emotional over me mentioning the idea to the community at all, which honestly disappointed me. As I've stated, I think our community is mature enough and thought there was enough trust between us and them, that I should be able to bring just about anything up and ask for discussion and feedback without causing a panic. The most ironic part has been that some accused me of trying to 'sneak' in a way for VR to make more money at the cost of the game's integrity.... this logic I just don't get because with me taking this to the community for feedback, how could that possibly be interpreted as me being sneaky? It couldn't be more un-sneaky in fact. Anyway, it's off the table now, but if you guys want to keep talking about it, feel free. I don't like hearing the assertion that there is *no* possible way to do something no matter how collectively clever we are -- I've just found that very few things in life or game design is that black and white, that some sort of version or implementation couldn't be imagined and implemented, especially, again, given the talent of our team and the incredible knowledge and passion of our community. *sigh*.
So, a few opinions from a narrow minded selfish human with 20+ years of experience playing MMO's, which you should ignore if you don't care:
We're used to developers deceiving us, so be patient. In the past, dev posts like "What do you think of..?" are ~inevitably followed by "We're implementing.." regardless of what the community says. So again, history is teaching some of us to be very wary when you bring up controversial topics like investing in RMT, even as a theorycrafting exercise.
Krono has completely changed how EQ1 is played. Today, it is THE currency in-game, and is used to buy any in-era tradeable item or Epic. Sure, you could come up with a variation on the theme of implementation, but when you fix the price in $USD of a trade-able in-game item, don't be surprised when the entire economy, and in fact, the point of the game, shifts focus to being a RL job to make RL profit with that trade-able in-game item worth $USD.
And to be clear, what I'm describing is the reality of EQ1 TLP servers today, where Krono is THE HOUSEHOLD INCOME of many many many large guilds. People play EQ1 TLP and farm and harvest krono, items & characters as their means of living. It's their primary revenue stream to buy pudding cups to put in their kids lunch, if you see where I'm going with this.
If you want a solution to kurb, restrict, or halt gold farming, data mine your forums. Or implement a design for your game that ISN'T a loot system from 1999, and actually fixes the source of the problem: infinite gold/item taps and account trading. If you're unwilling to do either or both of those, you are not (IMHO) committed to actually moving the genre forward with a "clever" solution. There are better ways, and dozens or hundreds of those better ways have been enumerated on these forums over the past 3+ years. If you don't see data mining your own forums as viable? Then put up an https://ideascale.com/ and let us iterate on innovation until we have a solution. To be blunt, 30 smart people will never have the collective wisdom and intellect of 10,000 smart people.
And for the record? If you put Krono/Plex or anything remotely similar to investing in RMT in Pantheon? I will not play, no-one I know IRL will play, and I will spend the rest of my days telling everyone I know to avoid Pantheon and just play EQ1 instead, because it would end up being the same toxic cancer. (and EQ1 has more content) That's how much of an impact Krono has had on EQ1 and would have on Pantheon.
X
My vote would be against anything outside of a monthly subscription. I've seen too many games try different things and they've all felt scammy. And they make the game seem... cheap.
Harsh punishments for RMT. Perm bans for gold spammers (so annoying). Do your best to aggressively attack RMT in order to protect the community/economy. That's all I ask. In every game there will likely be some sort of RMT going on, but as long as the staff are on top of it I don't think it will be a significant issue. Some people will risk it. Some people might get away with it. Some people will get banned. Meanwhile, most of us will hardly be aware that anyone is doing it except when we hear about people getting banned lol.
Doing things to make life harder for gold sellers is important. They disrupt a game with their spamming and they disrupt a game with the farming. I could say a niche game like this may not attract many of the lowlifes but we all hope that Pantheon will be successful enough that it WILL and let us plan for success not failure.
Having enough revenue to keep the game going is also important - more important, obviously. VR will, I do not doubt, be deciding issues such as raised in this thread based first on what will help the game survive and much more secondarily (though not trivial) what will make gold farmers less of a nuisance.
A robust system to block goldspam will help a lot regardless of any other decision. Having people monitoring the channels with authority to permanently mute gold spammers *immediately* will help a lot. They do not need to be official VR people. It is not hard to recognize an advertisement to sell gold - community assistants can be named for each server to take action, with *no* authority to intervene in less obvious misuse of chat. If they mute anyone for anything else they can be booted from their positions for abuse of authority even if the person richly deserves it - such a strict limitation reduces the risk to VR of delegating action against goldspam to non-VR employees.
The relevance? The more VR takes *direct* action like this against gold sellers the more it can ignore them in deciding other issues and just consider what revenue sources it *must* have as well as what is good for the game and what will drive off subscribers.
It's amusing watching people threaten a company about not playing their game if they decide to make a decision that most people will never understand.
When I hear people complain about kronos on the TLPs I laugh. Most people have no idea the effect that kronos had. The ONLY reason that kronos were an issue was because they were account wide, meaning the 100 you farmed on your live server meant an immediate mass of wealth on a brand new server.
Being one of the primarily loot masters for arguably the best guild on those servers, I never had an issue selling items for either kronos or plat.
I understand the fear people have around a game becoming p2w. But regardless of this system or not. There will be RMT. Which means the game will be p2w regardless. There are a ton of websites the exist nowadays that allow for the safe sale and purchase of in-game items and services which mean more people are willing to spend money knowing they can't be ripped off.
I've always thought that if you could implement a "trade limit" on these items it would eliminate alot of the RMT possibility. If the items can only be traded once, that means party A nuts it, and either uses it or trades it to party B who is now forced to use it.
The aspect of RMT from farming mass money and reselling the "kronos" would be nulled, and yet the company would still gain the income from having the items purchased.
Curious as to what you guys think of: An alternate ruleset server where you *can* buy an item that represents a month of playtime?
To the extent that the game time item is tradeable for in-game gold and gold is power, it enables a player to indirectly buy power and thus it breaks the #1 of microtransactions. This is a huge con.
On the pro side... there's a lot of things to consider. First, it may be that the "best" items can't be purchased for gold. I suspect a lot of the top level accomplishments in Pantheon will require some gold but also teamwork, skill and time. As long as that's true, it may not "break" the game to sell gold since it is only a small component of power. It also competes directly against the 3rd party "gold farmers". This removes the black market to sell in-game gold which has overall positive effects. Namely, less in-game spam promoting 3rd party websites and a reduced load on GM resources to monitor and police currency trade activity. So it reduces VR's costs and gives them another source of revenue.
I'm skeptical only because so many others game studios have failed to pull it off.
I recently finished working on an idea that I feel could add some value to this discussion. Unfortunately, I can only present it in PDF-format and am unable to upload it to this site. If anybody is interested in checking it out and providing feedback, feel free to send me a PM on Discord. Username: 1AD7#7153