Comments on: What Price Fame and Immortality?

By: Nick Carraway

Nick Carraway — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 21:16:55 +0000

Why do you have to pay to be inserted into the lore?

I’m not sure, but I think A Tale in the Desert describes player contributions in it’s lore.

I’ll give you a hint of what is coming: Continuous Content.
It means that everything you do leaves a mark on the MMO world. It means that if you kill 10 rats, those rats aint going to respawn. If you don’t save the world, someone else will probably do it later.

By: KioJonny

KioJonny — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:11:33 +0000

I’d enjoy seeing my name (real or character) stuck into a game in some way.. which is part of what made the Ragnarok Online craft system interesting for me.. forge a weapon or brew a potion and the item name forever (or until some scab breaks it trying to over-upgrade) declares it to be KioJonny’s Wind Damascus or Blue Potion or whatever it is you’ve created. On the other hand I’d also be fine with knowing some guy out there paid $20 or 30 to have an NPC or a tavern or the like after himself.. I’d even consider paying myself, once I’d discovered I really liked the game.
on the Time Vs. Money issue.. I’m playing a game called Rappelz lately.. free to play with a cash shop supplying play-enhancement goods, exclusive (ie. not dropped/sold in-game) equipment and what amounts to “subscriber content”, in the form of a “hidden” town with cheaper npc prices and a wider range of “service NPCs”. The system doesn’t really seem to favor the cash players, as almost anything tradable (equipment and enhancers particularly) can be found for in-game currency as an alternative to buying it for dollars, meaning that a noob (or anyone too strapped for time to go farm his game-currency) can spend a little cash to amass in-game wealth, while a hardcore grinder blowing 8 hours or more of his day in-game can still have access to a majority of the cash items.
For a more concrete example:
I end up playing good lengths of my day (every day), paying around $20 a month for the pay-access area/npcs (because I want to support the game and, frankly, the cheaper npcs are totally worth it) and the occasional one-time output for “extra shiny” armor, while making plenty of game currency to pay for upgrading my gear, while a friend of mine who can only play weekends because of his work schedule has just managed to keep abreast of me by spending around $120 a month on the game to sell consumables (in terms of equipment-quality at least, while I have an account full of alts, he has just his main character). In a WoW situation, I’d just write off playing with my friend until he finally caught up after I hit the level cap.. but even then my gear would outmatch his so badly we’d have a hard time finding things to do that didn’t involve me making him look like a noob because of his non-raid-intensive inventory.
Should I feel bad that he has more in game cash than I do just because he has more disposable income? I don’t see any reason to.
Should he feel bad that my stable of 6 characters with gear as good or better than his 1 character cost me 1/6th as much real cash just because I work a seasonal job that leaves me with my summers off to play games in? Again, I don’t see why.
And if some other guy has both free time and money to blow, why not let him do it through the developer/publisher rather than through a gold-seller (who is most likely cluttering the server with bots to earn said gold)?

By: Verilazic

Verilazic — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:08:32 +0000

What about psycologically though? You put something at the end of a 4-6 hour raid, and “all” it takes is 24 other people and a certain time commitment. You *could* quit/slack off on/take a vaction from your job in order to raid for a while. Obviously that’s a stupid idea. But if one has to pay money for an item, that creates a very official and physical barrier to acquisition. Rather than logistics blocking some people, the structure of the game itself is obstructing them. It’s the difference between hiding a diamond ring in a haystack and locking it in a (hypothetically) impenetrable safe. People will keep looking through the haystack, no matter how big, but they’ll just walk away from the safe.

Hmm, maybe I’m just saying making people spend time instead of money (directly) is better business.

Special servers might work, though simply selling them as being able to pay for items may not be a good idea. Advertising them as something closer to “elite” servers might be better, increase the subscription by like $5 or something, the idea being that the “12 year olds” won’t pay the extra, making the population more mature. Then making it possible to pay for items could work without creating too much of a stigma.

By: Ethic

Ethic — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:50:40 +0000

I’ll disagree again, if you put some unique treasure at the end of a raid that takes 4 or 6 hours to complete, it is not attainable by everyone. Time is money. Some people have time, some have money and I suppose some have both - lucky bastards. But time is not always available to be spent in large chunks at one time and therefore it can make some things impossible to reach. As impossible to reach as putting a financial cost on it anyway for some people. There is a very real chance I will never be able or willing to put 4 to 6 hours straight into a video game. No matter how you handle things, there will always be people that cannot attain some unique item. I don’t believe time is always easier to come by than money is, for me it is quite the opposite.

I’m not advocating that all games should add microtransactions, I’m just saying I’m not against them because I am someone that would be more willing to spend the money, than I am willing to spend the time.

I’m not so sure I want to see the systems mixed though. I think special servers are the way to go personally.

By: Verilazic

Verilazic — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:03:06 +0000

I agree with Cyndre, in that the value of things in MMOs is based on the fact that anyone can - theoretically - obtain them. The fact that many people can’t - practically speaking - obtain them is what makes them more valuable.

Having something for server-firsts seems pretty good, but I agree that it’s kinda a shoe-in once a guild gets ahead of everyone else. And buying something that *affects* other people doesn’t seem right. I don’t want to have to read someone else’s name on a quest just because they paid more. Perhaps not even if they did something in game (though there might be potential there). Flavor items, such as fancy noncombat pets, etc are fine for money. But realize that for some people, the draw of the game is that they can get ahead/on top without a lot of disposable income. If you’re rich, you don’t need to be on top in a game, you’re alrdy on top in RL (or at least well off).

By: Oz

Oz — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:13:54 +0000

Fame is fun. A few of my friends are immortalized in EQ1(Cabbage quest, from my druid playing days), and I’ve always been a bit jealous of them. There was a book of lore on Vex Thal supposed to go into EQ1’s Plane of Knowledge listing my main character as the author, but Sony’s lawyers and I never were able to get together.

Buying that fame though…doesn’t seem as special.

By: Cyndre

Cyndre — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:07:14 +0000

Thats all prespective Ethic… Lets say at a slow pace of play you *could* eventually experience all of the content. You may choose to move on prior to that, but the option is there.

Creating a micro-payment, or unique purchase system, some people are simply not ever going to have that opportunity. Especially the naming thing… What happens to the new players in a venerable world like UO or EQ1 after every tavern and bridge is already been sold? Tough luck, go play in another sand box? By giving a player something, that no other player can ever get, thereafter, you violate, imo, one of the cardinal rules of MMO design. Rare or difficult is ok, but Unique is a design that should never, ever be implimented.

By: Ethic

Ethic — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:52:23 +0000

Problem I have with that comment Cyndre is that there are two things people spend on MMOs. Time and Money. Most MMOs cater to those that spend time. Much of the content designed is for those people. People with more time than money get more content than those that don’t. I don’t see any reason why a game should not cater to those with more money than time as well. Since I don’t have time to grind to the level cap, why should I be locked out of much of the content?

Currently, those with disposable time can be more unique than someone who either doesn’t have it or won’t spend it.