Given that they tried this before and didn't do it after I'm guessing they just want to scare people into coming back. If they actually did do it then it would be almost impossible to get "old" players to ever return.
So yeah you're right, not blackmail. Scare tactics.
Just curious what you all think about this tactic some developers are using now. Demolishing very expensive housing, deleting characters, killing pets etc if you stop playing for 1-2 months.
Is blackmail a good way to keep people playing an MMO or a turn off for new players and vets alike?
My outlook is that it makes me far less likely to come back for major content patches if they destroy what I had last time I logged in, it also makes me less likely to get things that will end up owning me than me owing them.
why not call it rape? How about molestation?
You aren't active, they should delete your characters.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
if I do not pay my mortgage for 90 days is it blackmail to foreclose on my house?
Its more like this: You bought the house fully (you bought the game and expansions) You pay a fee to be able to use the front door key to your own house. You build an extension on the house and nobody complained at the time, they knew full well you were doing it. You go on holiday for 2 months and come back and the person who owns the key smashed the extension down saying they made some new rules while you were away.
Plots are limited having a house that is empty , (the owner doesnt play ), make no sense when there are current players that want a house and cant buy one because all the house are taken...by ppl that dont even play anymore.
the rules are :
- Free company housing that has not been accessed by at least one member within forty-five days.
- Private housing that has not been accessed by the owner within forty-five days.
- Purchased plots of land upon which an estate has not been built within forty-five days.
i dont see why private housing has limited time (this are instanced and i dont know if limited?)
45 days are "on the low" side....60 would have been better.
I do not post often on this site but as a player of FFXIV I read most threads on the game and noticed that Scorpex-x always has to find a way to give the game a negative spin. One could assume you no longer play the game. I find it funny that you need to continue to talk negatively about the game.
The article states some of your housing items and 80% of what you paid for estate will be placed with the resident caretaker. You will have 35 days to claim them. If you don't like the game design move on and find something to fill your void.
Just curious what you all think about this tactic some developers are using now. Demolishing very expensive housing, deleting characters, killing pets etc if you stop playing for 1-2 months.
Is blackmail a good way to keep people playing an MMO or a turn off for new players and vets alike?
My outlook is that it makes me far less likely to come back for major content patches if they destroy what I had last time I logged in, it also makes me less likely to get things that will end up owning me than me owing them.
Some of this does make sense though I don't know many games that do this (not many games have "inthe world housing for example)
If there is in the world housing then they shoudl give you a few months but I think it's ok for them to free up the plot.
Having said that, I always thought that, for the "game in my head", it would be fine to allow a 2 month or so grace period and then have the house start to deteriorate. if the player comes back before it "goes" then they have to pay a lot to get the house in shape and maybe even have to work on it for say a month or so.
To keep them from just logging in to keep their house in perpetuity the house could, each time, take longer to fix.
I'm all for freeing up names after a certain period of time as it's not fair to hold names that will never be used. The only caveat to that is to have an in game list where players can see if the name was held before by another player.
I don't see any reason to get rid of pets simply because you stop playing for a bit.
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Games need to make money, if you dont get that then you need to learn fast. Game companies are not charities to hand out free stuff because we demand it. If you get any free stuff say thanks and dont get upset when everything is not free.
Just curious what you all think about this tactic some developers are using now. Demolishing very expensive housing, deleting characters, killing pets etc if you stop playing for 1-2 months.
Is blackmail a good way to keep people playing an MMO or a turn off for new players and vets alike?
My outlook is that it makes me far less likely to come back for major content patches if they destroy what I had last time I logged in, it also makes me less likely to get things that will end up owning me than me owing them.
This is how P2P was able to maintain the monthly sub for years. They would take away your toys if you didnt pay... and didnt offer anything additional in return. It is only now that F2P subs are competing against P2P subs that they consider providing some type of service in return.
These houses can cost upto 20-50 million to get and the housing plots once lost can't be reobtained.
If you want to take a break for 2 months and cease paying your sub they demolish them.
How is it not blackmail? pay the sub or we demolish your house!
The tried to add this before and player outrage made them stop, now they are trying again. Instead of fixing the problem and making housing instanced they are punishing anyone that take a break.
If you have a house you cannot take a break, they didn't tell you this when you bought the house either.
So you mean extortion not black mail. Black mail os I know something you don't want others to know so if you don't do as I say I'm going to tell everyone and destroy your reputation
These houses can cost upto 20-50 million to get and the housing plots once lost can't be reobtained.
If you want to take a break for 2 months and cease paying your sub they demolish them.
How is it not blackmail? pay the sub or we demolish your house!
The tried to add this before and player outrage made them stop, now they are trying again. Instead of fixing the problem and making housing instanced they are punishing anyone that take a break.
If you have a house you cannot take a break, they didn't tell you this when you bought the house either.
So you mean extortion not black mail. Black mail os I know something you don't want others to know so if you don't do as I say I'm going to tell everyone and destroy your reputation
Extortion and blackmail do not fit as with games, no one is forcing you to play it or you will get your hand chopped off / Or we will tell your wife you used to be a woman. You wana give us money here is what you get for your money. You dont want to pay us, hope to see you back again. Done.
Not at all it is blackmail. "Pay us money or we destroy your house", since housing is the most expensive item in the game that's the very definition of it. Not quite sure why it's being defended.
It's being defended precisely because of the reasons given.
I would give a nod to housing being expensive and perhaps if a house is removed the player should get a portion of his/her original "in game money" investment.
Otherwise it becomes a way for a player to unload the house and get a chunk of change when in reality they woudl have to sell it to someone in game, maybe for less than they paid for it.
Post edited by Sovrath on
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
In SWG, they had whole swaths of land taken up by villages from players that hadn't logged in for 6 months or more. Should they have just let them sit there when other players who actually paid would have liked the spot? They finally started going on mass deletions and I don't blame them. That's the problem with housing that actually takes up space in the game, and why I find instanced housing to be better.
However.... "Do what I say or I hurt you" has always been the purview of the worst people in the world.
To balance out the overall tone of most posters, it's admittedly pretty bad to wipe a player's progress while they're gone. It implies an instanced housing system is eating up more storage space than it really should (or at least that it lacks a way of dynamically shoving active players' houses together while shifting inactive players to some form of cold storage.)
So while it might be required due to poor technical planning, it's still a bad idea. Any theoretical player who is successfully "blackmailed" (actual definition of blackmail notwithstanding) would be outweighed by all the other players who came back and were pissed that the game abandoned their progress.
That said, certainly the OP is over-demonizing the problem...I haven't seen them mention the 80% refund you get when you lose your house, and at least one poster corrected them that it's 3 months inactive (not 2.)
But again, even though the OP isn't doing the greatest job criticizing the problem, it is a legit complaint. Games I've worked on it seemed like people generally agreed that the cost for storing data was completely trivial compared with the "cost" of pissing off players by wiping their progress.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Doesn't seem to be a great idea when it comes to bringing back inactive players, but if the game is growing in popularity and those resources are becoming scarce for newer players, it seems a reasonable direction to go. The way it is outlined in that link seems reasonable.
This is standard for any game with open world housing. Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Archeage... having the land fill up with vacant/abandoned houses makes no sense, especially if you have new players coming in.
For almost a year now, housing in each of the city states has been at max, so this cleans house and frees up locations for players that are actually playing.
SWG had a maintenance system. You had to pay upkeep on your structures so they didn't go boom.
But I have to question the need for such a tactic in today's market. Seems counter productive.
I sure as hell am not going to pay to keep a house in a game I don't want to play anymore. And I certainly won't consider coming back if I am forced to start over.
This is a shady letter I got and only after 2 months of inactivity, truly pissed me off, no reason other than "billing inactivity" and I actually had to look up and provide my last AP purchase which to me was totally and completely asinine:
This is a notice of a suspension of service to this account due to billing inactivity. To ensure the safety of your account a ban has been put in place to prevent any misuse. If you would like to reclaim your account please send a ticket to our customer service representatives. Here is a link: https://www.aeriagames.com/contact In order to expedite your claim we ask for you to provide the following information in your ticket.
The name of the account you are trying to reclaim
The email address for the account
Most recent AP transaction history
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused and we look forward to assisting you. Sincerely, Aeria Games Admin Team
Just curious what you all think about this tactic some developers are using now. Demolishing very expensive housing, deleting characters, killing pets etc if you stop playing for 1-2 months.
Is blackmail a good way to keep people playing an MMO or a turn off for new players and vets alike?
My outlook is that it makes me far less likely to come back for major content patches if they destroy what I had last time I logged in, it also makes me less likely to get things that will end up owning me than me owing them.
If the items obtained in the game are so important to a player, then why stop their subscription in the first place? Why not just take a little break and keep the subscription running, since the game has already proven to be good enough to pick up again later?
Some of them will give you bonus for login in everyday. In TERA you get a 5% power bonus for 7 consecutive days. I despise this practice. It is the easy way to force people to login everyday, then you add the daily quests to force people to play a little bit everyday.
wait .. why is it "forced"?
You don't have to get the bonus stuff. If you want to ... well .. that is your choice.
Marvel Heroes do that too (daily bonus). And I log on only when i want to. So what if i miss some of those .. the game is not going away any time soon.
It's kind of like when WoW had a penality on exp gain after a period of time. They changed it to rested exp and now it's suddenly ok and an optional bonus.
If you want to be competitive, you have to do it. Of course no one if forced like no one is forced to play games at all.
I suppose that is me .. i don't play games to be "competitive" .. particularly not pve games. What happened to play a game at my own pace? I don't have to be "competitive" to finish a single player game faster than others, and the same way, i don't need to be "competitive" to advance fast in an online game.
I do understand if someone wants to be in e-sport .. then the incentive is a bit higher.
To balance out the overall tone of most posters, it's admittedly pretty bad to wipe a player's progress while they're gone. It implies an instanced housing system is eating up more storage space than it really should (or at least that it lacks a way of dynamically shoving active players' houses together while shifting inactive players to some form of cold storage.)
So while it might be required due to poor technical planning, it's still a bad idea. Any theoretical player who is successfully "blackmailed" (actual definition of blackmail notwithstanding) would be outweighed by all the other players who came back and were pissed that the game abandoned their progress.
That said, certainly the OP is over-demonizing the problem...I haven't seen them mention the 80% refund you get when you lose your house, and at least one poster corrected them that it's 3 months inactive (not 2.)
But again, even though the OP isn't doing the greatest job criticizing the problem, it is a legit complaint. Games I've worked on it seemed like people generally agreed that the cost for storing data was completely trivial compared with the "cost" of pissing off players by wiping their progress.
If a company is doing it to clear up data storage then sure, I would agree that they shouldn't get rid of players' items/housing. Provided that it is next to nothing to keep this data.
I think it's more to free up space, names, etc for other players. Then it is legitimate. Also do you really want a game world filled with abandoned towns? Though a good way to deal with that is to have monsters move in and make it a player leveling ground or event.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
If only real governments enacted similar policies... it would prevent greedy bastards having several empty holiday homes while many others struggle to pay their rent and feed their families.
They do. Don't pay your rent or mortgage they will take it. Don't pay your taxes they will take it. Abandon it and a squattor moves in its their in 7-10 years on average.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Same goes for housing in Lord of the Rings online and EverQuest II. What I think is worst is what Guild Wars 2 is doing - keep playing for free updates ot else pay $10 (400 gems) for it.
Asking the Q of OP - I think it's very bad. It might even turn people away from these MMOs or they won't even start on the things that might be deleted when the take a break...
They do. Don't pay your rent or mortgage they will take it. Don't pay your taxes they will take it. Abandon it and a squattor moves in its their in 7-10 years on average.
Well, it was a throw-away remark, but, mortgage and rent are contractual... nothing to do with the government. Seizing assets has nothing to do with your house being vacant, it is an unrelated issue. Adverse Possession... yes, in extreme circumstances this can result in some redistribution of wealth, but it is hardly reliable.
If a company is doing it to clear up data storage then sure, I would agree that they shouldn't get rid of players' items/housing. Provided that it is next to nothing to keep this data.
I think it's more to free up space, names, etc for other players. Then it is legitimate. Also do you really want a game world filled with abandoned towns? Though a good way to deal with that is to have monsters move in and make it a player leveling ground or event.
I'm sure in some games those matter, but in this specific example (FFXIV) neither seem to apply. Only a fraction (2%?) of players own houses, so even if they weren't autogenerated (which I think they might be? "Axehilt's House") there wouldn't be much name conflict. Abandoned neighborhoods don't seem like a problem either, since I don't think you can actually do anything with an active player's house.
So I just assumed it was a technical thing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Given that they tried this before and didn't do it after I'm guessing they just want to scare people into coming back. If they actually did do it then it would be almost impossible to get "old" players to ever return.
So yeah you're right, not blackmail. Scare tactics.
why not call it rape? How about molestation?
You aren't active, they should delete your characters.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Plots are limited having a house that is empty , (the owner doesnt play ), make no sense when there are current players that want a house and cant buy one because all the house are taken...by ppl that dont even play anymore.
the rules are :
- Free company housing that has not been accessed by at least one member within forty-five days.
- Private housing that has not been accessed by the owner within forty-five days.
- Purchased plots of land upon which an estate has not been built within forty-five days.
i dont see why private housing has limited time (this are instanced and i dont know if limited?)
45 days are "on the low" side....60 would have been better.
The article states some of your housing items and 80% of what you paid for estate will be placed with the resident caretaker. You will have 35 days to claim them. If you don't like the game design move on and find something to fill your void.
If there is in the world housing then they shoudl give you a few months but I think it's ok for them to free up the plot.
Having said that, I always thought that, for the "game in my head", it would be fine to allow a 2 month or so grace period and then have the house start to deteriorate. if the player comes back before it "goes" then they have to pay a lot to get the house in shape and maybe even have to work on it for say a month or so.
To keep them from just logging in to keep their house in perpetuity the house could, each time, take longer to fix.
I'm all for freeing up names after a certain period of time as it's not fair to hold names that will never be used. The only caveat to that is to have an in game list where players can see if the name was held before by another player.
I don't see any reason to get rid of pets simply because you stop playing for a bit.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Black mail os I know something you don't want others to know so if you don't do as I say I'm going to tell everyone and destroy your reputation
I would give a nod to housing being expensive and perhaps if a house is removed the player should get a portion of his/her original "in game money" investment.
Otherwise it becomes a way for a player to unload the house and get a chunk of change when in reality they woudl have to sell it to someone in game, maybe for less than they paid for it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
However.... "Do what I say or I hurt you" has always been the purview of the worst people in the world.
So while it might be required due to poor technical planning, it's still a bad idea. Any theoretical player who is successfully "blackmailed" (actual definition of blackmail notwithstanding) would be outweighed by all the other players who came back and were pissed that the game abandoned their progress.
That said, certainly the OP is over-demonizing the problem...I haven't seen them mention the 80% refund you get when you lose your house, and at least one poster corrected them that it's 3 months inactive (not 2.)
But again, even though the OP isn't doing the greatest job criticizing the problem, it is a legit complaint. Games I've worked on it seemed like people generally agreed that the cost for storing data was completely trivial compared with the "cost" of pissing off players by wiping their progress.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
But I have to question the need for such a tactic in today's market. Seems counter productive.
I sure as hell am not going to pay to keep a house in a game I don't want to play anymore. And I certainly won't consider coming back if I am forced to start over.
If the items obtained in the game are so important to a player, then why stop their subscription in the first place? Why not just take a little break and keep the subscription running, since the game has already proven to be good enough to pick up again later?
I do understand if someone wants to be in e-sport .. then the incentive is a bit higher.
I think it's more to free up space, names, etc for other players. Then it is legitimate. Also do you really want a game world filled with abandoned towns? Though a good way to deal with that is to have monsters move in and make it a player leveling ground or event.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
So, blackmail that's ineffective? I'm okay with bumblers attempting extortion (badly).
Asking the Q of OP - I think it's very bad. It might even turn people away from these MMOs or they won't even start on the things that might be deleted when the take a break...
So I just assumed it was a technical thing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
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