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Let's begin with an end to bind on pick-up, soulbound, etc...
Vymm
Member Posts: 112
Maybe similar to one of my other posts, but with a little different spin to it. Here we look at one aspect of the video games today:
ECONOMY
Why is it that most MMOs have a difficult time with crafting, itemization, economy and gold sellers? I believe we see a great deal of the economy issues and money sinks due in part to the lack of sellable items.
Most people, I believe, would agree --- that you would pay a great deal more for items, spells, mounts and craftable (USABLE) items ... than to repair armor 24/7. The issue we are seeing in the MMO market today is the flavor of "Bind" items. We are beginning to see this type of itemization in more of the current games with newer games adding level restrictions, class restrictions, race restrictions, faction ... pvp rank... height in RL...job in RL... I mean when will it end? Why did these "Bind" items come to be?
Bound items came into existence due to the player base accumulating massive amounts of gold ... twinking then began to rear its ugly head... I mean, was it so bad? Some of the higher end weapons were so much better than the level based items at those levels so it would be beneficial to that player to obtain such items too allow for faster leveling. SOE was one of the first to see this as an ISSUE. They began tagging items to character only. NO TRADE -- was their model. As more and more levels were obtained more and more NO TRADE items surfaced. This set the stage for the world of MMOs to implement the model in all of their games.
The question I have is ... was this successful? Was taking this twink idea out of the picture, on SOME level the answer. Would we be better off today if more twinking was allowed and guilds could sell off some of the uber loot?
Personally, I feel like a limitation on items is only making the issue worse. Now we see guilds selling RUNS, selling quests and selling anything they can to make profit? Was the idea of the MMO to move to a rich mans club vs a poor mans club? The trend begs the average player to buy gold.... I mean it screams for them to buy it. Guilds are able to charge insane amounts for these runs .... why? How is it different than the one person seller model. Let me explain...
Guild X -- can beat an encounter. They are the only ones on the server. They obtain the sword of X. They equip all members with the sword of X ... ut oh. No one needs it anymore. Now what? Lets sell as many spots as we can to players to buy the chance at sword X. Now rotting items NEVER reach market -- this drives the price on said goods WAY up. So instead -- we sell runs to the truly elite **cough** gold buyers or players online 24/7.
Players 1, 2,3 all pay 300 for the run for sword X. 900 is given to the guild. The guild may have 30 people on the run. Each member in theory should get 30 gold ... they never do, but lets pretend they did. One person gets sword X from the run, the other two players get armor ... everyone leaves happy in general. This keeps going week after week ... People from the guild who do the run ... accumulate guild DKP or whatever.... no one ever spends DKP on the items that no one needs... runs become nothing more than loot runs for people they dont know. No one cares to bid on the pointless loot because it is a guild fund. Or merely 30g ... do you think people would bid on the item if they could sell it in the open market? Maybe yes and maybe no ... maybe they would buy it for their alt ... if the alt could equip it (but they cant) ... maybe they would give it to a friend who was coming up in levels.
Instead ... we are now stuck with guilds selling the items to pay for other guild members armor repairs or potions.
I prefer an open economy --- if it drops -- may it be sold. Let the players determine the economy ... NOT SOME LOOT SYSTEM PARAMETERS.
Maybe its just me
Z
Comments
If they were done in a way similar to GW where customized items to your character gave you extra attack% then it would be great or for story purposes where say a dragon crafted for you a special weapon it would be really moronic to trade it off.
Agree -- certain instances I could see. I am more referring to the idea of normal drops. I mean in todays games ... 6 man groups get NO DROP items. This to me is insane.
I respect your opinion but I don't share it.
I LOVE not having to craft, and just going out there and picking up items from mob, "hey a named, oh cool, look what I found, etc", I love that.
And I HATE, having to sort through vendor prices, seeing if I have the money, keeping money on me, trying to find out what the best way to make money is, comparing prices......"
nooo =/ I don't like that.
Lol, ok, I don't mind there being people who love trading, I love to adventure and do quests instead that give me no drop items.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Agreed different stroke for different folks -- I can see your point of view as well. I respect all opinions and love to hear about it. I always wonder what the pulse of the MMO community is set too.
I love a real fluid economy .. I actually like the more player to player interactions rather than auction houses, etc. I loved knowing who the sellers were, some people used to sell all day and never adventure ... to me thats real market. Real markets where people need to decide -- do I sell today, hunt for items, buy items at low costs, make items to sell ...
Again, thats me.
The soulbound items are the best answer to fight gold selling. Saying gold selling is a problem, then saying one of the key features against it should be removed, doenst make much sense.
You give an example that guild sell 'runs'. Guess what? Farmers also did that. They never got very far with it since it doenst work properly from the "exploiter" point of view, making it not profitable.
Altought isnt very funny, but i dont have much problem with guild runs. Prefer to have some few downsides, then having alot of downsides. In the end, those same guild sellers, will regreat it, since they lost their time gearing up everyone else, and they got passed by.
Also, binded items is a good way to reward player for achievments. Ok, so someone kills the hardest boss in the game, gets a sword, then sells it to some 'noob' that bought gold. Does it sound interesting?
So now what? The 'noob' goes PvP with his godly gear, without having to had any trouble getting it?
I remember the days of D2, and the mass item sellout by farmers, and i just hope D3 will have soulbound gear, else, it will become the biggest joke ever.
Some studies point that gold sellers will make more profit then game makers, in the next few years... fun times ahead... not.
Dont try to remove the biggest gold selling 'block'... (that exists so far...)
_________________
Senhores da Guerra
Soulbound items in my opinion just force players to experience the game. Back when there was no need to farm for anything, players would just take heaps of gold and buy it, never experiencing certain boss encounters or certain dungeons.
I don't believe in bind on create crafting i think it is stupid since crafting is a economic thing, and should be used to build a market not only improve yourself, but as for all other items they should be soulbound. Except mounts. I don't understand the concept behind Soulbound Mounts.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
For more specific examples, see Runescape.
That game is an exercise in people playing a game without actually playing the game. They just grind and grind and grind and never actually do anything. Then they spend the billions of gold they've earned on a piece of gear they'll never use because they don't risk their stuff killing the hard monsters that drop the good loot.
Personally, I think soulbound items are a terrible idea, but it's pretty much required unless you have some sort of permanent durability system in place. If items are destroyed after too much use, it becomes a money sink to wear gear over your "pay grade," so to speak. People won't be in such a rush to buy stuff better than they could earn themselves.
Best example of what no soulbound items does for a game is the early days of UO.
Items, and tradeskills thrived because people lost gear ALL the time. You craft to replace gear or to sell to others so you can make money to buy replacement gear. Zomg, that sounds like *gasp* an economy!
Items break, items decay, items get stolen. There is nothing that so valuable you want to quit the game if you lose it because all the crafted stuff is just as good.
No game will ever have an active thriving economy as long as people dont lose/ wear out items
I agree on the wear/decay.I won't lose unless there's a drop on death,because i don't pvp.Most people that don't want decay in a game are the real pvp guys,that don't want to have to risk losing something or have to work to replace it.
Whether or not "bind on equip", "bind on pick up" and soulbound is good depends on the game.
A game needs to have some sort of sink to remove items from the economy. Eve Online does this by destroying the ship and most of its components in battle. This approach is not suitable for all games. Imagine losing your epic armor that took you days, maybe even weeks, to obtain.
Many games use bind on equip so that items do not stay in the game forever after a player has obtained an upgrade to that item. If an item stays in the game forever and can be resold indefinitely, you will eventually have an oversupply and no market for that item. This is a disaster for crafters because their items become worthless. Similarly there will be an oversupply of dropped items if they stay in the game forever and can be resold indefinitely.
Gold farmers hog spawns where good items drop. This often means that adventurers are forced to purchase an item rather than having the fun and adventure of winning the item themselves. Bind on pick up may prevent this in this type of game.
Real time wear and tear is one way of removing items from the game. However, routinely repairing and replacing worn armor can be a tedious detail that you may prefer to be left out of the game. Also, if the game world has epic armor and weapons, should these also wear out?
Is is consistent with the story for a player to purchase an item that is a reward for completing a particular quest or encounter?
Most good games are usually a combination of "bind on pick up", "bind on equip" and "free to trade as many times as you like".
The trick is to get the right balance in a player market so that an item is not worthless due oversupply.
Go play diablo 2.
Overflow of items, items becoming money, and gold becoming worthless. The economy is totally out of whack, and items are passed from char to char, so you can just farm with farm chars and give em to your main who's spec'd to pvp with no penalty.
Enjoy
It's not fun
(note if you are a supporter of items actually breaking, then your obviously one of the scrubs who sit outside of the raid/pvp chains and call them easymode and welfare and etc. Allthewhile still being in greens and blues.)
If raid items break, then they are gonna have to have high drop rates so high so that you could replace your worn down piece each time you beat the enemy. PvP items? well it depends on the pvp system.
Im for a player driven economy. Advancement games based on items is not compatable with that.
Bind on pickup is retarded. When I have beaten a game then let me farm with my hi lvl char items for my twinks. I understand that ppls would sell then items like on D2. But then how about bind on account instead of pickup ? So you only could trade "soulbound" items on your account / chars. So farmers couldnt sell em but you would be able to farm for your twinks.
Now I have always to log into 2 accounts for farming and thats annoying.
I can accept BOP or BOE or AOP but it is a matter of drop rate especially when it comes to class armor set or newly added weapon from new boss or new instance. Sometimes, you have to repeat many times to get it done.
MMORPG is not a strategy game so the economy structure is not possible to grow, however, I think low economy still better than deteriorated inflation. In all F2P, the economy is like Zimbabwe, many items in F2P cost 30KK, or 25millions, or buy 10 millions gold for $9 etc. The inflation in all F2P become so high only because everything based on real money.
A rare item may have a price like selling a genuin Picasso painting. If virtual money under influence by real money then it never will be a good economy in game because real money only increased game coin more depreciation.
If real money dominate the game economy then it is either a F2P or a game full of gold sellers. And it is even worse to grind when there are always a group of BOTs or gold farmers.
If your not advancing through content with tiers of gear, then theres no reason for PvE to exist at all. The days of exploring dungeons and etc for no benefit are done, we've all seen the caves and temples before, i don't care enough to fight through 100 mobs, just for the sake of seeing the zone.
If it was story driven, then it's really a guild wars style game.
But in all honesty, if you wanted it to be like this
1. Crafters can learn recipes by dismantling npc equipment(its not usable). It has to drop pristine or you find a bunch of mediocre ones.
2. Crafters have to create items for a target'd player, and it'd be fit for him, so after learning to make progression recipes, you then can make them for individuals, with pieces found in raids/etc high places.
There you go, progression and player economy.
This is just my opinion, no need to flame etc.
IMO there is nothing wrong with getting rid of bound items, BUT you have to have a system that supports it.
Either by having items decay/destroyed over time, or go back to making uber items hard to get. By bringing back real raids, not this WoW raid stuff, .. 40 ppl.. wtf thats not a raid. Atm im thinking of my EQ days of the uber loot economy. Where you had players just trading rare armour/weapons/etc all the time. There were 2 ways to get the uber items, be in a massive guild, or alliance of guilds and go Raiding(alot of you WoWers wont know what that means) or by trading multiple lesser loot for 1 major piece. Make items hard to get or create through crafting.
IMO alot of these problems of no economy in new games is because the games are so casual and rare items are easy to get which leads to items needing to be soulbound/bop. ..etc.
The other issue of bound/bop items is if they dont have it, you get crazy twinks, ala EQ. But what is really wrong with this? .. if you have spent the time to improve your main to the point where you can give rare armour/weapon to your alt, so what?,. sure new players or alts will be jealous, but when they group with you they are the ones who benefit.
thats my view on bind on pick-up/bound items which came about from casual OGs( I dont call them MMORPGS anymore)
.
Does anyone know how to make a mmoRPG anymore?
Non tradeable items, except quest items, don't belong in any game, it's unrealistic and forces linear gameplay. A non tradeable quest item which results in a tradeable reward item though is ok, but the reward item must be tradeable or the same forced linear playstyle is created.
Developers force raiding on us by making the best items non tradeable and it's bullshit. I refuse to raid, so a game with raiding where the best items are non tradeable raid reward items, becomes unplayable for me. I can however play a game that includes raiding if all the raid reward items are fully tradeable so I have an alternative means of earning them, thru valid in-game trade.
The argument for limiting 3rd party RMT sales by making the best items non tradeable is false, because they can simply sell characters equipped with those non tradeable items. Making items non tradeable does not impact RMT sellers, it just ruins the game by forcing linear playing.
If you refuse to raid, then you don't need the items, just quit playing the game. A good pvp system will offer its own rewards, so you won't need pve loot if your not going to pve.
You could say "but i could use it for the tiered non raid content".
The thing truthfully is, that non raid content can't be tiered, because the items can only be so hard, because you can only have things balanced around 1 tank and 1 healer.
And if it required the raid gear for the non raid gear, it would cause people to buy gold, or to farm for their set just to do the content.
There simply is NO reason to not have soulbound items, unless your lazy and just want all the rewards without the work of actually get them(and no farming gold to buy them is not work).
Theres no reason to punish people who do the content, by causing their items to decay, or to make them extremely rare to get. WoWs system is already bad enough, with it taking sometimes months to get items you want, or a month or two to even get a item because it doesn't drop. It's not like you get a full set of raid gear right away.
You want to play a player driven economy mmo?
The truth is you wouldn't like it if it were to exist. You can quote UO or the like, but the thing simply is, that people want more from games, they want hard pve encounters, they want to work together with their guild to achieve things. They want rated pvp, and pvp with meaning.
Not many gamers truely want to go back to UO where the content was bad, but the player options presented were a false majority.
You talk about Crafting.... This is acutally the reason "Bind on Equip: item came about.
Crafters would make item X.... then sell it... then make item X again but could not sell it because the person that bought it and used it was now selling item X for half the price.
Bind on Pickup came about from EQ, with level 1 characters running around using level 50 weapons.
It is a solid system. It makes you go spend time getting item X.... instead of buying it.
I couldn't vote because the poll is to simple.
No, I don't like no trade items.
However, if you get rid fo them, they must be replaced by a different game mechanic, or else you will get mudflation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation
If you want to get rid of no trade items, then I suggest there be a percentage chance that items break, which means they are destroyed, and not repairable.
I used to like the bazaar in EQ when it came out. Most items were not no drop so there were lots of things to buy and sell. People would just sit there buying and selling things all day long.
Twinking and also giving items to other players that I no longer needed was one of my favorite things so I was not to happy with no drop items. It is very restrictive even though I can see cons against not having it. There is a point where to much freedom is taken away and the game becomes bland and boring. I think that is what we are seeing with a lot of MMOs now. Devs think this have the perfect formula for making everyone happy and know how to control everyone in their games, but in truth they are making their games very bland because of going overboard in trying to control things going on in their games.
Was it EQ2 or DAoC? I forget.
Anyway, one of them would decay items rapidly if used by a player taht was to low level for the item, which made twinking not really worthwhile.
Sure, a 15th level could put on that 40th level gear, but in a few days it would be worthless, and cost a fortune to repair.
Was it EQ2 or DAoC? I forget.
Anyway, one of them would decay items rapidly if used by a player taht was to low level for the item, which made twinking not really worthwhile.
Sure, a 15th level could put on that 40th level gear, but in a few days it would be worthless, and cost a fortune to repair.
I guess that would work, but as I said I iked being able to give stuff to my chars or other peoples chars. In EQ it was very difficult to solo for a lot of classes so twikning someone helped them out a great deal.
Was it EQ2 or DAoC? I forget.
Anyway, one of them would decay items rapidly if used by a player taht was to low level for the item, which made twinking not really worthwhile.
Sure, a 15th level could put on that 40th level gear, but in a few days it would be worthless, and cost a fortune to repair.
I guess that would work, but as I said I iked being able to give stuff to my chars or other peoples chars. In EQ it was very difficult to solo for a lot of classes so twikning someone helped them out a great deal.
It was DAoC. I spent a lot of time getting diamond seals once to buy a red blowing staff. A real big deal back then. I gave it to my friar who was level 5. I never used it because he was too low level but I would take it out for show now and then. I used it in a duel once and its con dropped from 100 to 97 after a few swings. Not easy to repair, and unlike other games, those items couldn't be repaired forever. It was a great system. BOE and BOP is just a lazy cop out like instancing.
Darkfall Travelogues!
Was it EQ2 or DAoC? I forget.
Anyway, one of them would decay items rapidly if used by a player taht was to low level for the item, which made twinking not really worthwhile.
Sure, a 15th level could put on that 40th level gear, but in a few days it would be worthless, and cost a fortune to repair.
I guess that would work, but as I said I iked being able to give stuff to my chars or other peoples chars. In EQ it was very difficult to solo for a lot of classes so twikning someone helped them out a great deal.
The problem is twinking ruins game balance, and leads to mudflation.
Here's a simple example:
YOu log onto the game for the first time, and do a 10th level quest. You get a 10th level sword, adn go hurray!
Now you twink a character, and he goes to do a 10th level quest with a new player. Your twinked character is level 10 with a 20th level sword. The new player goes, what a rip off. I did this quest, and got this crappy sword. I was robbed.
Now the quest is worthless, and all 10th level players need 20th level swords to keep up.
Mudflation begins to set in, and just gets worse.
EQ was a grouping game, which is what made it fun. Solo play was SUPPOSED to suck.