Curse

moriz · Mar 29, 2009, 10:37 PM // 22:37

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Oh? By whose standard? Yours? The community on QQ forums?

your standards. you've admitted that those items have no inherit advantage over any others.

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There are lots of ways to measure success, yours isn't the only one, and many (most?) people could care less about your yardstick.

Lots of people care about this stuff. Every UWSC/FoWSC player, every player that spends time in Kamadan AD1 regularly, every DoA player, every dungeon runner, every map runner. You're outnumbered.

every player who plays for a few hours at a time, every player who plays for fun, every player who player who fools around for shits and giggles, every player who plays with friends, every player who plays pvp, every player who plays pve, and yes, even those who plays both equally, care very little about this stuff. you are outnumbered. badly.

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However, they also made super-rare shinies that people fight over, and they haven't watered down their value. This implies that they recognize that there is a (large) market for this sort of thing and that they need to satisfy it in order to maximize the number of players buying their game. The devs have reason to care, and have demonstrated that they care through their actions. This concept is called revealed preference.

the devs don't water down their value because the value will water down by itself. anet primarily add stuff to the game because they think it would be fun for the players. the last thing they care about is how it will be traded, because the market will regulate itself. you shouldn't care either.

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Sure, they don't have to do anything to support this market. But they have financial incentives to do so - they want to sell GW2 to as many people as possible. What I'm saying here is that XTH is a stupid profit-maximization strategy unless the company will go bankrupt without selling a ton of cheap accounts to meet immediate debt payments.

anet does not have financial incentives here. they are now making/maintaining the flagship franchise for ncsoft in north america/europe. do you honestly think they are short on money? if ncsoft is not completely retarded, money would be pouring into the GW franchise. after all, anet did double their staff over the last year or so. even if ncsoft go belly up, the GW franchise will be eagerly sought after by every major studio in the world. money is basically no object for GW, unless they completely mismanage it.

if anet wants to sell GW2, they need to generate buzz. having a gigantic tournament, with ingame prizes, is probably the best way to generate buzz both for current players as well as future ones. if it happens to sell more accounts because people are really keen on making ingame gold on it, then it's even better.

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Did you know that if you start from absurd premises and then apply logic, you arrive at absurd conclusions? Setting up a straw man and beating it down impresses no one.

The problem is that one person can purchase dozens of accounts and then transfer the in-game benefits to a single account. That's trading RL cash for in-game cash. That's RMT. You've still done nothing to address this, except to claim that no one cares because you don't. That doesn't follow logically.

heh, YOU accusing me of using strawman arguments, when you've been using one all along. you still have not conclusively prove that zkeys actually generate significant amount of gold in the game economy. indeed, you are still trying to compare GW economy with a real life economy, which is a completely futile exercise. until you've come up with something that can prove zkeys actually generate gold, instead of shuffling it around and drawing it out of someone's storage, your entire argument is basically unfounded.

not to mention, there's nothing wrong with my argument. buying privilege to use account? true. playing XTH is one of the benefits? true. accounts can generate ingame gold? true. gold on one account can be traded to another? true. everything i said in that sentence is true. i did not base them on anything that's untrue, or even hypothetical.

upier · Mar 29, 2009, 11:11 PM // 23:11

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Depends on which ones we are talking about. The devs created tons of limited miniatures that were given out in large quantities. They created items like Tormented gear, FoW armor, chaos gloves, etc. as well. They also created extremely rare drops and stocked dungeon chests and the end chests of FoW and UW with them.

Items that cannot be farmed have been hit first. Items that cannot be farmed quickly (ultra-rare drops) will be next. With enough zkeys kicking around, the time price associated with acquiring all valuable in-game items through any means other than farming them directly will keep increasing.

And you know what's really tough about inflation? Once the expectation of inflation is created, it is incredibly difficult to get rid of. People change their behavior in a fashion that tends to lead to more inflation.

The only thing that will change is the fact that the super rich will just need to get ever richer if they will want to obtain said items.
For your average Joe - nothing will change.
He is too poor to obtain them now and he will be too poor to obtain them later.

Amnel Ithtirsol · Mar 30, 2009, 05:05 AM // 05:05

Sorry.
Some people here seem to have a very serious misconception regarding the difference between RMT and XTH.

There Is No Difference Between RMT And The XTH.

RMT gives you x gold (ingame, play money) for x dollars (real life currency) for doing absolutely nothing in-game at all. You only need to purchase the additional accounts, make your picks on the site and log in once a month to collect your keys... you don't have to play the game at all.

Arguments that any account can generate gold is indeed correct but then you have to consider that the player will need to do something to generate said gold in-game, not just thumb suck a couple of predictions and collect the loot once a month. Anyone here tried ecto farming recently?

Most people have a single account, some went to the trouble to purchase a secondary for storage etc. But, the rich kid can (and does) buy many more accounts - very similar to buying large amounts of ecto and plat for real money. Where RMT is something like $xxx for x amount of gold (once off) the XTH is $9.99 for x amount of free keys per month, EVERY MONTH.

DreamWind · Mar 30, 2009, 06:34 AM // 06:34

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Originally Posted by moriz

your standards. you've admitted that those items have no inherit advantage over any others.

They have an advantage, just not the one you are thinking of or care about.

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Originally Posted by moriz

every player who plays for a few hours at a time, every player who plays for fun, every player who player who fools around for shits and giggles, every player who plays with friends, every player who plays pvp, every player who plays pve, and yes, even those who plays both equally, care very little about this stuff. you are outnumbered. badly.

Far more people care about money or titles and XTH than skill or pvp or just about anything else. Its just a fact of the game now. More people would rather be rich in money and titles than be good.

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Originally Posted by moriz

heh, YOU accusing me of using strawman arguments, when you've been using one all along. you still have not conclusively prove that zkeys actually generate significant amount of gold in the game economy.

Which is true, but they don't have to do that to be a massive problem.

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Originally Posted by Amnir Ithtirsol

There Is No Difference Between RMT And The XTH.

Winner.

zwei2stein · Mar 30, 2009, 07:21 AM // 07:21

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Reread. My point was: they are driving people away from GW2. You make more money over the long haul by retaining your customer base, not by pandering to a select few for short term gains at the expense of everyone else.

Anet royally pissed me with consumables & pve only skills. Probably more than you are with this XTH business. I would swear i'd never buy GW2 year ago ... but now? I would not, but reasons changed and are not related to anet actions anymore.

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

You redesign the game and make it so that you can only earn shinies for accomplishments. You further make it so that shinies are non-transferable. In short: you get rid of drops and the economy entirely, eliminating RMT.

And people would buy accounts. Or runs. Look at wow, it has this achievement "preservation" in form of best items being soulbound. Result? People are buying accounts or single characters, or buying Raid runs with guaranteed rolls on items they want. In GW, people did buy high ranked accounts or paid for fame. Community frowning on it does not really solve that.

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

The title system has the right concept, but it falls woefully short of the efficient solution. Lose the titles and replace them WITH the shinies for accomplishments. Then the community will properly sneer at those who purchase accounts (just as they sneer at purchased gold cape trim). You win as the developer by stripping faux accomplishments of legitimacy, and not by legalizing RMT.

Shinines for achievements? In theory, awesome.

But then you realize that only good players can get em and other, just as (or even more) dedicated, customers want them too but cant get em. And there is lots of them. And not only that, if these thing are reward for true achievements (like, say, killing X the hard way), it will take good players few hours to get em and spend rest of their game related time bitching on forums how easy it was while others bitch how insane it is. We were there, ursan happened. Remember?

So you end up making them grind rewards instead, approachable by everyone who has time. That's not improvement really. It's just combining grind and bling.

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Legalizing RMT will drive away 50-80% of the audience and leave ANet bankrupt. It's like the dark side of the Force: once you start down that path...

We are already there; been there for some time, people just didn't notice.

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

That's a large market because it's inexpensive. Turn your game into an RMT haven and it becomes an expensive luxury market. That's the kiss of death for a game with huge development costs. Not enough people will buy the game to enable the developer to float the debt payments long enough to acquire the long term influx of RMT cash from players.

Luxury market is not whole game. Its not even point of this game. The only items that actually matter are either overly cheap (basic max equipment for pve, pvp equipment) or can be gotten with little market interference ("HOM recognized" items are not drops but are crafted at NPCs instead in infinite supply). Just let people waste their cash on FOTM items.

Gli · Mar 30, 2009, 09:59 AM // 09:59

To those can't see an advantage to spending money on multiple accounts to rake in hundreds if not thousands of Z-keys a month: take off your blinders.

Here's the simple truth for you, in just one sentence:

Vast amounts of Z-keys give people an advantage in the competition for limited resources.

If such an advantage is bought instead of played for, it taints the game for others in that competition who don't want to spend real money.

Now, if the competition for shinies is of no interest to you, fine. I feel the same way about PvP balance, which is why I never argue on that topic.

fb2000 · Mar 30, 2009, 11:58 AM // 11:58

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Originally Posted by moriz

your standards. you've admitted that those items have no inherit advantage over any others.

I have been away for a long time and defo dont care much about competitive play, but still, what about the Denravi axes and similar stuff? The 1 handed weapons with 55hp on them? Were they eventually removed from the GW world??

Anyhow, I too don't see any real problem with XTH :x (then again, I don't care about BUYING shinies, I prefer finding my rare stuff on my own). And to most that say "I wont buy GW2 because of it", stop lying, I'm sure at least 90% of you eventually will (provided its not a total failure)

PS. But yeah, I got 2 extra accounts

esthetic · Mar 30, 2009, 02:09 PM // 14:09

QQ some mohr...

If you care so much about pixels, ANet says buy more accounts from them and not gold from those off shore gold farming pirates. Simple as that.

So who does ANet like the no lifer who spends 24/7 online with one account taking up resources or the rich kid who bought multiple accounts on line a few hours a week? What behavior do you think they want to promote?

This kind of strategy works as it does only affect the esthetics and not the actual game play. No matter how many accounts you have you cant get an advantage over the one account person when it comes to game play.

You bought the game already if you are not going to give ANet anymore money gtfo. And the threat you are not going to buy GW2 cause you are pissed off at ANet for them trying to make money is ridiculous. Think of the hours spent just hit "/age" and see the hours of enjoyment you had for what $49.99? multiple campaigns so $150.00? For that many hours of enjoyment ANet provides don't you think they deserve a little scratch here and there?

moriz · Mar 30, 2009, 02:23 PM // 14:23

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Originally Posted by fb2000

I have been away for a long time and defo dont care much about competitive play, but still, what about the Denravi axes and similar stuff? The 1 handed weapons with 55hp on them? Were they eventually removed from the GW world??

Anyhow, I too don't see any real problem with XTH :x (then again, I don't care about BUYING shinies, I prefer finding my rare stuff on my own). And to most that say "I wont buy GW2 because of it", stop lying, I'm sure at least 90% of you eventually will (provided its not a total failure)

PS. But yeah, I got 2 extra accounts

mods that mimic the denravi weapons became a common drop. 55 monks can still be run, but no one would bother since shadowform can now be infinitely maintained by assassins. not to mention, the 55 offhand is kinda useless in a pvp setting.

btw, there is a pretty big difference between RMT and XTH: with XTH, the money is going towards anet. this does not violate the EULA. whereas with RMT, money is going towards some dude operating somewhere in china. this DOES violate the EULA. while anet does not particularly need money now, given how heavily funded they are by ncsoft, being able to sell more accounts is always a plus.

anyways, you've all agreed to XTH when you pressed the accept button on the EULA. if you really object to this, i should've pressed the other button.

fb2000 · Mar 30, 2009, 03:57 PM // 15:57

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Originally Posted by moriz

mods that mimic the denravi weapons became a common drop. 55 monks can still be run, but no one would bother since shadowform can now be infinitely maintained by assassins. not to mention, the 55 offhand is kinda useless in a pvp setting.

Well I meant the Denravi AXE... Guess you didnt bother to read my post,however short it was.

From all the posts claiming the real "goal" of the game isnt item-hunting, I thought you would think of Pvp first before pve farming

moriz · Mar 30, 2009, 04:27 PM // 16:27

ah, the denravi axe no longer have those mods. so yes, that was basically removed.

and your second statement is incorrect.

bitchbar player · Mar 30, 2009, 04:29 PM // 16:29

You must mean the denravi sword which was the only sword in prophesies with a +5 energy mod. When factions was released weapons with +5 energy could be crafted and the HOD sword became almost worthless.

@Moriz the 55 offhand is far from useless in pvp. Swapping to that offhand when the other team wants to time kill you is a pretty good option.

moriz · Mar 30, 2009, 04:39 PM // 16:39

technically true, but its almost never used. it is a very marginally useful item, and most players go without it. you can probably count the number of times it had been used on one hand.

DreamWind · Mar 30, 2009, 06:45 PM // 18:45

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Originally Posted by esthetic

This kind of strategy works as it does only affect the esthetics and not the actual game play. No matter how many accounts you have you cant get an advantage over the one account person when it comes to game play.

So what? You get advantages in other ways in a game where game play is less important than money and titles by many players standards.

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Originally Posted by moriz

btw, there is a pretty big difference between RMT and XTH: with XTH, the money is going towards anet. this does not violate the EULA. whereas with RMT, money is going towards some dude operating somewhere in china. this DOES violate the EULA.

There is no difference. Real money trading=Trading real money for in game items. And the problem here is not the EULA...the problem is Anet on multiple occasions specifically saying that they would not engage in selling in game items, but this is exactly what they are doing just hidden under the "XTH" title instead of in the store.

moriz · Mar 30, 2009, 06:52 PM // 18:52

except they are not selling items, they are selling accounts. and if you recall, the EULA allows for the use of XTH on each account. you've agreed to it when they updated it, when they added XTH in the first place. they are allowed to do this. more specifically, YOU'VE allowed them to do this.

XTH is not going away.

DreamWind · Mar 30, 2009, 07:00 PM // 19:00

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Originally Posted by moriz

except they are not selling items, they are selling accounts.

Which directly turn into items. Again, same thing.

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Originally Posted by moriz

and if you recall, the EULA allows for the use of XTH on each account. you've agreed to it when they updated it, when they added XTH in the first place. they are allowed to do this. more specifically, YOU'VE allowed them to do this.

I don't know why you keep bringing up the flawed EULA. For one nobody reads it. For two nobody denies it (because most don't see it until after they have already bought the game). Most importantly though Anet can change it at any time do to any thing, but that still wouldn't make it right. They could change the EULA to allow them to do RMT in the store and it would still mean they lied to us.

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Originally Posted by moriz

XTH is not going away.

And that is the problem.

moriz · Mar 30, 2009, 07:47 PM // 19:47

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Originally Posted by DreamWind

Which directly turn into items. Again, same thing.

then if i manage to make any gold/items on an account, that amounts to RMT by your definition? alrighty then, just so we're clear.

btw, you must consider the bonus mission packs "RMT" also. after all, you pay $10, and you'll get UNLIMITED items. gee, should we remove that also?

Gli · Mar 30, 2009, 07:56 PM // 19:56

You don't get any more items playing the bonus missions than you get for playing most other parts of the game, moriz.

DreamWind · Mar 30, 2009, 08:08 PM // 20:08

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Originally Posted by moriz

then if i manage to make any gold/items on an account, that amounts to RMT by your definition? alrighty then, just so we're clear.

btw, you must consider the bonus mission packs "RMT" also. after all, you pay $10, and you'll get UNLIMITED items. gee, should we remove that also?

Meh now you're just grasping at straws. You and I both know how XTH is different from the examples you gave. Your argument boils down to Anet using loopholes so everything is ok.

moriz · Mar 30, 2009, 08:27 PM // 20:27

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Originally Posted by Gli

You don't get any more items playing the bonus missions than you get for playing most other parts of the game, moriz.

on the contrary, you get items that you can't get anywhere else in the bonus missions. by the definitions used by some people in this thread, that means it gives users who have the bonus pack a huge advantage. and by their rather bizarre logic, that means the bonus mission pack is RMT. also by those definitions, the BMP is even worse than XTH, because the items generated basically makes the ingame economy irrelevant. after all, you need to pay money for it. XTH is, at least, free for all accounts.