Poll: Could you play an MMO if...

[Spitfire]

snip

Actually, many players always complain about farmers and bots because they believe they should have to play it fair as well. It's the fact that they pass honest players with minimal effort that people find annoying, and they are sometimes known for the increase in prices as well.

Players can complain all they want, but unless the rules of the game specifically forbid farming, then technically, farmers are playing the game exactly the way it was meant to. If anything, that speaks about the nature of the game in question, not about the notion of MMO economy.

As for the comparison between gaming and not so big money making MMO's, they work differently. I can understand though, but I, and I'm sure many others could play mainly for the game play and not so much the rewards and trading.

I have to admit that I generalized a bit in my post.
I'm certain that there are many people who like to play MMOs just for the gameplay, and that's great, but most MMOs are heavily reliant on Skinner's Box techniques, which players are usually very responsive to. It's only recently that the genre has started to break from its mold somewhat, with games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, or The Secret World, which have a very strong emphasis on story, and the economics in those games can be ignored entirely. However, that, in and of itself, is not a selling point for most people. Just because you can drop every single item in your inventory, and still reach the end game, doesn't necessarily mean that you should, and it certainly doesn't mean that the developers of the game should remove your ability to trade items.

We still get the rewards though, and instead you could trade small items still but nothing epic, would that still be OK?

Depends on the game. I'm not against changing the economics of MMOs, I'm just saying that that aspect of the genre won't go away any time soon.

 

[Nazulu]

[x]depends.

This would have to be a game where trading or dropping wouldn't be needed for some Reason. I can't imagine a System in which i can not grind some "money" to do something for my Clan, my toon or something. No helping noobs out with little items that are immensly useful to them but are scraps for your highleveltoon?

No getting any stuff to create something useful?

I can't imagine such a game with nothing to "have" for you. Even if you made a tetris mmo you'd wanna have straightline blocks.

But i can't discount the possibility. Maybe that "trading" is done in a way that wont require items to change hands. Maybe we'll just operate on each other and put ability enhancing into each others Asses. I dunno.

I guess it's inevitable, trading and dropping is an important factor I'm pretty sure I'm under-estimating.

You can still gather ingrediants to create items and trade with your new toons though.

Also, I was thinking earlier that maybe you could trade over an email or something, have a seperate account for trading or something. Enchanting ones ass is tempting.

 

[Nazulu]

snip

Actually, many players always complain about farmers and bots because they believe they should have to play it fair as well. It's the fact that they pass honest players with minimal effort that people find annoying, and they are sometimes known for the increase in prices as well.

Players can complain all they want, but unless the rules of the game specifically forbid farming, then technically, farmers are playing the game exactly the way it was meant to. If anything, that speaks about the nature of the game in question, not about the notion of MMO economy.

As for the comparison between gaming and not so big money making MMO's, they work differently. I can understand though, but I, and I'm sure many others could play mainly for the game play and not so much the rewards and trading.

I have to admit that I generalized a bit in my post.
I'm certain that there are many people who like to play MMOs just for the gameplay, and that's great, but most MMOs are heavily reliant on Skinner's Box techniques, which players are usually very responsive to. It's only recently that the genre has started to break from its mold somewhat, with games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, or The Secret World, which have a very strong emphasis on story, and the economics in those games can be ignored entirely. However, that, in and of itself, is not a selling point for most people. Just because you can drop every single item in your inventory, and still reach the end game, doesn't necessarily mean that you should, and it certainly doesn't mean that the developers of the game should remove your ability to trade items.

We still get the rewards though, and instead you could trade small items still but nothing epic, would that still be OK?

Depends on the game. I'm not against changing the economics of MMOs, I'm just saying that that aspect of the genre won't go away any time soon.

It's actually not a bad complaint. Just to make sure, I'm talking about the farmers that either bot everything or sell money over ebay and what not. These have never been legal, not in any MMO I've played any way.

I'm not necessarily saying developers should drop trading altogether, I just wanted to see if it would be a problem for any one. I'm sure you already knew that though.

Never heard of the Skinners box technique before, looked it up and was pretty interesting. I thought the skinners box technique would still be in effect if the items still drop though. Or is it a combination of finding and doing what ever you want with it?

 

[80Maxwell08]

Yeah, I hope didn't come of as a smart ass. I do that sometimes.

Anyway, great post, I wouldn't of thought of that. I mean, it happens in all the MMO's from what I've seen but it would be a lot more common I guess if you couldn't trade 'em.

The only solution I can think of for now is to let all the players know that the drops could fall of any monster. Of course the higher the level the better the drop. Hopefully there's a better way to deal with it though.

Oh no you didn't come off that way at all. Don't worry about that.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I guess I'm the only one crazy enough to always go looking for my own ingredients. The further this thread goes the more I agree that there probably should be at least trading for little things. Even though you could make it so you can buy a lot of the ingredients. Or even do quests to get those ingredients.

Don't know if you've played any of the game, but I'll explain where I'm coming from.

The way crafting is set up in LotRO is that after all the intro/tutorial stuff is done, you will run into a quest to pick your character's vocation from one of seven, each vocation is made up of a mix of three professions from a list of ten. Two of the professions in a vocation will compliment each other in creating ingredients for the other.

Armourer: Prospector--Metalsmith--Tailor
Armsman: Prospector--Weaponsmith--Woodworker
Explorer: Forester--Prospector--Tailor
Historian: Farmer--Scholar--Weaponsmith
Tinker: Prospector--Cook--Jeweller
Woodsman: Farmer--Forester--Woodworker
Yeoman: Farmer--Cook--Tailor

Now, since Scholar is the profession that makes dyes, you have to pick the Historian vocation since it is the only one that has Scholar. Several of the ingredients to make dyes comes from farming, so that is covered, but there are some ingredients that come from prospecting. Some of the dye colors that need ingredients from prospecting are, umber, sienna, olive, rust, Rivendell green, Ranger green, white, crimson and black. That is 9 dyes out of the 25 dyes there are in the game. Problem is that the five at the end of that list are the most sought after/used dyes in the game.

List of 25: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Dyes

I didn't know this, but while looking up how to make every dye, I found out that black dye doesn't have a recipe. Black dye can only be made when the Scholar gets a critical success when creating the rust dye. Now that I know this I call bull crap stupid, since black will usually be the most popular/used color in a game. Of course, black dye is sold in Turbines in game store for 100 Turbine points a bottle(basically one dollar a bottle). All other dyes are sold in such a way, but there is no reason to actually spend money on those, because they are easier to make and not as rare.

My point is though, unless you have friends or kinship members that are prospectors(who won't hoard the rare ingredients for themselves), you will have to make an alt character with prospecting and get the character near max level, since dyes like black and crimson are tier 5 and tier 6 respectively, and so are the ingredient are needed for them.

Also, you can't just set the scholar as your alt and the prospector as a main, then get all the ingredients together to pump up your low level scholar to top tier crafting, because most professions have two to three situations where the player can't advance to the next tier unless they go finish a special quest that will be the level that the character should be when they reach that crafting tier. Those two/three situations are usually set at unlocking tier 3, 4, and sometimes 5 or 6.

Don't get me wrong, I love the LotRO crafting system, but there are some major glaring problems.

If you are a solo player, you would have to max at least 4 characters get all things you need for all situations. So if you play at a reasonable pace/amount of time using your method of finding your own ingredients, it would take a year or more of playing almost every day to get what you need to be totally self-sufficient.

Okay, time to take a break. That turned out to be longer then I intended.

 

[Spitfire]

snip

It's actually not a bad complaint. Just to make sure, I'm talking about the farmers that either bot everything or sell money over ebay and what not. These have never been legal, not in any MMO I've played any way.

More often than not, you'd be right, but there are exceptions.
Blizzard, for instance, is one studio who has done nothing to prevent people from selling virtual goods for real-life money, in the case of World of Warcraft, and indeed they've adopted that business model themselves with Diablo 3. So, there's that.

Never heard of the Skinners box technique before, looked it up and was pretty interesting. I thought the skinners box technique would still be in effect if the items still drop though. Or is it a combination of finding and doing what ever you want with it?

Skinner's Box is conditioning someone to perform an action for a reward, and I think that it's generally accepted that in most MMOs, item-based and level-based reward systems, are the most basic and obvious implementation of that. What you do with your reward after you've obtained it is irrelevant in this context.

Hope that answered your question.

 

[Nazulu]

I guess I'm the only one crazy enough to always go looking for my own ingredients. The further this thread goes the more I agree that there probably should be at least trading for little things. Even though you could make it so you can buy a lot of the ingredients. Or even do quests to get those ingredients.

Don't know if you've played any of the game, but I'll explain where I'm coming from.

The way crafting is set up in LotRO is that after all the intro/tutorial stuff is done, you will run into a quest to pick your character's vocation from one of seven, each vocation is made up of a mix of three professions from a list of ten. Two of the professions in a vocation will compliment each other in creating ingredients for the other.

Armourer: Prospector--Metalsmith--Tailor
Armsman: Prospector--Weaponsmith--Woodworker
Explorer: Forester--Prospector--Tailor
Historian: Farmer--Scholar--Weaponsmith
Tinker: Prospector--Cook--Jeweller
Woodsman: Farmer--Forester--Woodworker
Yeoman: Farmer--Cook--Tailor

Now, since Scholar is the profession that makes dyes, you have to pick the Historian vocation since it is the only one that has Scholar. Several of the ingredients to make dyes comes from farming, so that is covered, but there are some ingredients that come from prospecting. Some of the dye colors that need ingredients from prospecting are, umber, sienna, olive, rust, Rivendell green, Ranger green, white, crimson and black. That is 9 dyes out of the 25 dyes there are in the game. Problem is that the five at the end of that list are the most sought after/used dyes in the game.

List of 25: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Dyes

I didn't know this, but while looking up how to make every dye, I found out that black dye doesn't have a recipe. Black dye can only be made when the Scholar gets a critical success when creating the rust dye. Now that I know this I call bull crap stupid, since black will usually be the most popular/used color in a game. Of course, black dye is sold in Turbines in game store for 100 Turbine points a bottle(basically one dollar a bottle). All other dyes are sold in such a way, but there is no reason to actually spend money on those, because they are easier to make and not as rare.

My point is though, unless you have friends or kinship members that are prospectors(who won't hoard the rare ingredients for themselves), you will have to make an alt character with prospecting and get the character near max level, since dyes like black and crimson are tier 5 and tier 6 respectively, and so are the ingredient are needed for them.

Also, you can't just set the scholar as your alt and the prospector as a main, then get all the ingredients together to pump up your low level scholar to top tier crafting, because most professions have two to three situations where the player can't advance to the next tier unless they go finish a special quest that will be the level that the character should be when they reach that crafting tier. Those two/three situations are usually set at unlocking tier 3, 4, and sometimes 5 or 6.

Don't get me wrong, I love the LotRO crafting system, but there are some major glaring problems.

If you are a solo player, you would have to max at least 4 characters get all things you need for all situations. So if you play at a reasonable pace/amount of time using your method of finding your own ingredients, it would take a year or more of playing almost every day to get what you need to be totally self-sufficient.

Okay, time to take a break. That turned out to be longer then I intended.

Yep, that's a mouth full. Thanks for the details.

I've played a classic game that works similar but probably more limited called Lineage 2. You had to work in big clans if you ever wanted to make B grade, A grade and especially S grade equipment. I remember also working in a giant clan where they collected a lot of money and ingrediants and we just gave them to certain people who knew what to do with them. So I have experienced something like it is what I'm saying.

Unfortunately you can not have the same experience forcing trades only to small items. I guess that's a price to pay for more protection.

Sorry, don't have much to say right now. I need to think of a solution.

 

[Nazulu]

snip

It's actually not a bad complaint. Just to make sure, I'm talking about the farmers that either bot everything or sell money over ebay and what not. These have never been legal, not in any MMO I've played any way.

More often than not, you'd be right, but there are exceptions.
Blizzard, for instance, is one studio who has done nothing to prevent people from selling virtual goods for real-life money, in the case of World of Warcraft, and indeed they've adopted that business model themselves with Diablo 3. So, there's that.

Never heard of the Skinners box technique before, looked it up and was pretty interesting. I thought the skinners box technique would still be in effect if the items still drop though. Or is it a combination of finding and doing what ever you want with it?

Skinner's Box is conditioning someone to perform an action for a reward, and I think that it's generally accepted that in most MMOs, item-based and level-based reward systems, are the most basic and obvious implementation of that. What you do with your reward after you've obtained it is irrelevant in this context.

Hope that answered your question.

Actually, I remember when I first played WoW and they just deleted a whole lot of players who cheated, that they would target people who sold money online next. Maybe they became lazy or something. And as for D3, that's one of the reasons I didn't want to buy it.

And from what you explained about Skinner's Box, I'm pretty sure will be just as effective. Unless I'm missing a point, you can still get high level items that are flashy at only high levels. Sure, it's possibly not a good reason at all to get rid of trading, but then it might be.

I don't mean to repeat myself but every MMO I have played has always had hacking problems and people I know has lost all their valuables and just gave up. I figured that might be a small price to pay so you never have to deal with that crap. I even knew some people that stopped playing MMO's altogether because they didn't want to ever go through the pain of losing everything they worked so hard for again.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

snip

Yep, that's a mouth full. Thanks for the details.

I've played a classic game that works similar but probably more limited called Lineage 2. You had to work in big clans if you ever wanted to make B grade, A grade and especially S grade equipment. I remember also working in a giant clan where they collected a lot of money and ingrediants and we just gave them to certain people who knew what to do with them. So I have experienced something like it is what I'm saying.

Yeah, when I played Star Trek Online, I got an in game mail message asking if I wanted to join a fleet, but they said one of the requirements of joining was to give them all my data samples(craft materials) and then whenever I needed something, they would produce it for me.

My problem is I like MMOs, but I'm very much a solo gamer. The times I did join a guild WoW, kinship LotRO, since by nature in certain circumstances I'm a very helping/giving person, I ended up doing a good bit of running errands getting things or collecting crafting items to help a kinship member get the type of sword he wants. So, the games started to end up being less of me playing the main game and enjoying it, and me occasionally doing main content while I worked at getting a couple hundred lots of a certain crafting ingredient and then chatting a lot(with the members) about the game though I'm technically not really playing it in a fun way, and becoming a friend chat with people I will never see in real life. Because of that, I end up leaving the games to actually go play games, or start up new on another server.

Though I have to say, LotRO does good for solo-ers for questing. There are still a few side quest lines here and there where you have to be ten levels higher then the quest to do it solo(because of the elite double health and power state of the enemies), but the non-solo main story section instances basically boost you in power so you can beat them pretty handily. For example, instead of having the normal 1200 or so morale at level 20 or so for a major main story quest, solo you will be boosted to 8000 morale and also get some significant boosts in other stats, then everything goes back to normal when you get out of the instance.

 

[Thoric485]

No, MMOs severely lack meaningful interaction as it is.

Like, what's the fucking point of paying 15 bucks a month for persistent servers, when you can't change anything in the environment for more than a minute and half the time it's "phased", so only you see it?

Might as well replace anything outside of instances and battlegrounds with a lobby interface and be done with it.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Anything that gets MMO's more towards gameplay and less about how much gold you have is good with me.

Untradable crafting mats might be a bit problematic though as was said.

 

[Fishyash]

Dumb idea. I know firsthand why it's a dumb idea.

Jagex tried something similar, and it failed so badly, not just because of this pointless "riot" the players had, they ended up bringing free trade back into the game.

You think by merely removing free trade and drops caused this much ruckus, can you imagine I couldn't imagine playing any MMO without an economy. I rely on trading, it fuels an endgame for the MMOs. It gives some purpose to grinding, and trading can be its very own form of PVP.

 

[Nazulu]

No, MMOs severely lack meaningful interaction as it is.

Like, what's the fucking point of paying 15 bucks a month for persistent servers, when you can't change anything in the environment for more than a minute and half the time it's "phased", so only you see it?

Might as well replace anything outside of instances and battlegrounds with a lobby interface and be done with it.

I don't exactly know what you mean. Could you give me an example?

Dumb idea. I know firsthand why it's a dumb idea.

Jagex tried something similar, and it failed so badly, not just because of this pointless "riot" the players had, they ended up bringing free trade back into the game.

You think by merely removing free trade and drops caused this much ruckus, can you imagine I couldn't imagine playing any MMO without an economy. I rely on trading, it fuels an endgame for the MMOs. It gives some purpose to grinding, and trading can be its very own form of PVP.

Ok, fair enough.

I don't know how trading is related to PvP though? I don't know exactly why grinding would lack purpose when you can still grind everything? And there would still be an end game because you could still fight giant monsters to get special weapons for moving on to bigger targets or PvP.

I did read all the way through the page you linked, and I really appreciate it. However, it's very different that suddenly an update occurs that screws everything you've already enjoyed in the game, to a game that didn't have it in the first place. Also, I think the trades work a little different in that game because I didn't understand some of it.

I'm thinking more now of just having small trades in the game, would that be alright? You'd have to take into consideration that if a game already had this rule, that it would be built around it instead of just chucked in.

 

[Nazulu]

Though I have to say, LotRO does good for solo-ers for questing. There are still a few side quest lines here and there where you have to be ten levels higher then the quest to do it solo(because of the elite double health and power state of the enemies), but the non-solo main story section instances basically boost you in power so you can beat them pretty handily. For example, instead of having the normal 1200 or so morale at level 20 or so for a major main story quest, solo you will be boosted to 8000 morale and also get some significant boosts in other stats, then everything goes back to normal when you get out of the instance.

I don't know what the morale does but it sounds like a plan. Almost every MMO I played required you to work in teams no matter what, and the others let you play solo but you couldn't play any of the quests by yourself unless you had really great weapons and armour.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

I don't know what the morale does but it sounds like a plan. Almost every MMO I played required you to work in teams no matter what, and the others let you play solo but you couldn't play any of the quests by yourself unless you had really great weapons and armour.

I knew I should have explained that. Instead of a "life" bar, you have a "morale" bar.

There are things called Hope and Dread that will effect your morale. If you are in a quest with good NPCs that is familiar from the books or game story important, they will add hope points to a little stone type thing that is set in the mini map ring. When your character has hope, that stone is blue, and your character will get a morale boost while around that NPC. When your hope is really high, the yellow mini map ring shines blue.

On the opposite end, occasionally you will encounter enemies and main story enemies(during in game "drama" playable scenes) that will add points of dread to your character. If your character is feeling dread, then that stone I talked about turns red and your morale gets decreased in that situation, you'll get a red bar that locks part of your morale so that it is lower. Finally with dread, when you are at full dread, that mini map ring turns red and the mini map in the ring disappears and is replaced by Sauron's eye. You get to see this in the hobbit and men beginning stories when you get up close to a Ring-Wraith.

Other than that, morale is basically life.

Edit: Also, people that have the jeweler profession, can make usable tokens that will add points of hope to you for 30 minutes to an hour.

Edit: Edit: I forgot to add when you are at full dread, your character is basically cowering in place and can't done anything.

 

[Nazulu]

Snip

I don't know what the morale does but it sounds like a plan. Almost every MMO I played required you to work in teams no matter what, and the others let you play solo but you couldn't play any of the quests by yourself unless you had really great weapons and armour.

I knew I should have explained that. Instead of a "life" bar, you have a "morale" bar.

There are things called Hope and Dread that will effect your morale. If you are in a quest with good NPCs that is familiar from the books or game story important, they will add hope points to a little stone type thing that is set in the mini map ring. When your character has hope, that stone is blue, and your character will get a morale boost while around that NPC. When your hope is really high, the yellow mini map ring shines blue.

On the opposite end, occasionally you will encounter enemies and main story enemies(during in game "drama" playable scenes) that will add points of dread to your character. If your character is feeling dread, then that stone I talked about turns red and your morale gets decreased in that situation, you'll get a red bar that locks part of your morale so that it is lower. Finally with dread, when you are at full dread, that mini map ring turns red and the mini map in the ring disappears and is replaced by Sauron's eye. You get to see this in the hobbit and men beginning stories when you get up close to a Ring-Wraith.

Other than that, morale is basically life.

Edit: Also, people that have the jeweler profession, can make usable tokens that will add points of hope to you for 30 minutes to an hour.

Edit: Edit: I forgot to add when you are at full dread, your character is basically cowering in place and can't done anything.

Hehe, that's interesting, it's good to see something a little original.

However, I don't like it. I'd rather the game make me actually scared than forcing me into a corner. You don't mind criticism do you?