Money Is Not A Problem

[RF Online] One of the more interesting aspects of Rising Force Online is its economy. Rather than forcing the player to find out the best ways to make money, the game supplies the easiest way: Mining. In fact, mining plays a central role in making the game possible and fun. Unfortunately, mining is hardly a fun and interactive activity.

Mining in RFO simply requires a mining tool and some batteries. All the player does is places their player in a mining spot, click the mine button, and then goes AFK. If you don’t go AFK, the only thing you can do while mining is chat, so the game pretty much supports AFK mining, which most people usually do overnight. A single night of mining without any difficulty (i.e. getting killed or being disconnected) can bring in anywhere between 300k-500k, depending on how long you sleep, of course. That is just normal mining, however.

PvP plays an important role in RFO. PvP is actually the only reason to even play RFO because otherwise you’re left with a Korean MMO grind set in an anime inspired sci-fi setting (think Phantasy Star Online). The game has three CW (Chip Wars) a day at 8 hour intervals. These battles pit the three races against each other in an R v R v R battle in which it’s a free for all between the races to see which race can destroy and capture the other two race’s chips (not potatoes). Whoever wins gets control over a central mining area called the core. Here the mining goes by two or three times as fast as normal mining and rare ore is more common than lesser ore. In turn, a race can double or triple its race’s income by winning a CW. The amount of time a race gets depends on how well they did in the battle. The use of money goes out and beyond merely buying things, however, and is what makes RFO’s economy interesting.

There are two types of currency in RFO. One is a race specific currency, which is used to buy most everything, from potions to equipment from the auction house. The other is gold, which can be created by exchanging race currency or by selling things that sell for gold, such as refined ores. The exchange rate is dependant on how much race specific currency a race has. Whichever race owns the most gold (probably a percentage) as a total gets a larger tax cut from NPCs. This is important because buying potions from NPCs in large bulk quantities is one of the most important things in RFO. RFO supports potion spamming. If you get low on health, use a potion. Potions are on a three second timer and they are not used in case of an emergency like in many MMOs. In fact, if you don’t use potions, you’re going to have an extremely difficult time leveling up and you’ll just be three second cannon fodder in PvP. Gold is also used for purchasing the all important Recovery Items, which are the only ways to regain some of the lost XP from dying in PvE.

RFO makes money making easy and simple, but it’s no where near fun. It’s also an interesting idea to extend the faction competition outside of PvP and into economy. Unfortunately, this system doesn’t exactly support stupid people. The more stupid people a faction has, the less those people will be exchanging to gold, and thus that faction may be at a higher risk of having higher taxes or an unstable exchange rate. Another concern over mining is faction balance. Some servers clearly have a factional bias, which has an obvious impact over who wins CWs. One could argue, however, that the more players a faction has the more likely they’ll have a larger “stupid people” population.

I like the “money is not a problem” aspect of RFO. Unfortunately, while it is more attractive in the economy sense, the PvE and grinding is very similar to Lineage 2. I have yet to take myself to PvP territory, which will determine if I truly will stick with RFO or not, but I have made the decision to quit FFXI, yet again. With WoW being my main focus, FFXI just requires too much time be a secondary MMO. RFO fits into secondary much better.

.:lufia22:.