MMO Trading, Loot Systems, and Economy

[Xenich]

I had the ultra rare drop drake mount from the one instance, ponycucks couldn't even fathom how great it felt to actually play the game and get rewards that way
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=4415 ... roto-drake

1.6% chance from the final boss of an instance that you had to roll against 4 other people for

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

[SoLong]

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

The token systems exist so that even really unlucky people get what they're chasing eventually. Without it you'd have more grind, not less.

[rusty_shackleford]

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

The token systems exist so that even really unlucky people get what they're chasing eventually. Without it you'd have more grind, not less.

And that's precisely why it sucks. Everyone had their great white whale, that one item that wouldn't drop. They remember it years later.
Nobody remembers the crappy token item they farmed a specific amount of tokens for.

[SoLong]

And that's precisely why it sucks. Everyone had their great white whale, that one item that wouldn't drop. They remember it years later.
Nobody remembers the crappy token item they farmed a specific amount of tokens for.

Hm. Maybe we have a different definition of tokens?

I don't mean just tokens you get from bosses or whatever. Guild Wars 2 has legendary weapons which need either a very, very lucky drop to get their base version that you can upgrade OR you can complete a (******* long) line of achievements to work towards getting the base version after creating prototype weapons.

Technically every player on the server could collect every legendary weapon. But the process was so long and expensive that I only worked towards the one I actually liked, and I still remember mine even years later mostly because the questlines were so well done and I really liked the look.

My first legendary weapon was Nevermore.

Edit: Now I made myself sad by thinking of Guild Wars 2. That game went to **** after Heart of Thorns. No idea if it's **** writers (some obnoxious feminist got fired for ******** on fans on Twitter) or the devs never expected the game to last so long.

[Xenich]

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

The token systems exist so that even really unlucky people get what they're chasing eventually. Without it you'd have more grind, not less.

Still a grind either way, the difference is... with a random drop it is possible to get it early while a token system guarantees it will take a certain amount of time.

I have been on both sides of the coin on the issue having had something take an extremely long time with unlucky rolls in EQ, and in some cases first time I got the item off a boss.

Having experienced that AND the token system, the random system is far superior IMO as it doesn't destroy hope and anticipation, that excitement that the item "may" drop this next time.

Besides, token systems force artificial wall mechanics (ie the run all the dungeons then sit on your rear waiting for timers to reset).

Horrible system and personally I think it is one of the biggest flaws of modern MMO gaming.

[anonusername]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

[rusty_shackleford]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

EverQuest used to have server GMs, each server had their own GM. They were in charge of tracking all inflow/outflow currency, looking for exploiters, etc., If a developer was serious about cheating in MMOs, you'd see these return.
Basically, the only reason mass botting exists in MMOs is because the developers allow it.


Speaking of ML, there's actually a plugin for OSRS that detects botters using ML and mass reports them.
https://osrsbotdetector.com/home
This is entirely community made. If Jagex gave a **** they could do it 10x easier on their end.

[Xenich]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

You don't need player trade to have an MMO. What does "trading" have to do with a with grouping together and obtaining gear they need through play?

Do you know what would happen if there were no player trade in an MMO? Every player would have to earn their gear by being present and accomplishing the task. It means, what people have would be what they actually obtained personally (kind of how they handle raid gear?).

No twinks, no arguments on greeding an item for sale, etc...

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Player trading gives dimension to the gameplay. You can forgo obtaining a rare drop for yourself like a breastplate and instead sell it to another player, and use that money to instead buy lots of buff food and maybe even several pieces for your lesser geared friends/party. The game might not be that hard as to make having that nice rare drop breastplate necessary. Player trading also helps keep cities populated as players set up shop along the main thoroughfare and sell their wares.

[Stack of Turtles]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

You don't need player trade to have an MMO. What does "trading" have to do with a with grouping together and obtaining gear they need through play?

Do you know what would happen if there were no player trade in an MMO? Every player would have to earn their gear by being present and accomplishing the task. It means, what people have would be what they actually obtained personally (kind of how they handle raid gear?).

No twinks, no arguments on greeding an item for sale, etc...

It sounds like you don't actually want to play an MMO, possibly because you only play with obnoxious people who can't cooperate. Try playing with cool friends and trading resources amongst yourselves becomes enjoyable.

[Xenich]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

You don't need player trade to have an MMO. What does "trading" have to do with a with grouping together and obtaining gear they need through play?

Do you know what would happen if there were no player trade in an MMO? Every player would have to earn their gear by being present and accomplishing the task. It means, what people have would be what they actually obtained personally (kind of how they handle raid gear?).

No twinks, no arguments on greeding an item for sale, etc...

It sounds like you don't actually want to play an MMO, possibly because you only play with obnoxious people who can't cooperate. Try playing with cool friends and trading resources amongst yourselves becomes enjoyable.

Played most of them. UO beta and release for a while, EQ Beta 1 to around PoP. WoW till Burning. Led early raids in from EQ up to 72 people (zergs), did AoW with 33 pre-PoP...

There were always asshats, but its worse these days.

I think "buying" your gear be it with real cash or in game gold is silly and bypassing content by people who either "can't" do the content, or are too lazy to play the game to earn it (ie the point of playing the game).

It brings nothing to the game other than to allow people to circumvent actually playing it regardless of how "cool" those people may be.

[Stack of Turtles]

I think "buying" your gear be it with real cash or in game gold is silly

I agree, but you can just... not do that. Those aren't the only kinds of trades in the world.

[Tweed]

Played most of them. UO beta and release for a while, EQ Beta 1 to around PoP. WoW till Burning. Lead early raids in from EQ up to 72 people (zergs), did AoW with 33 pre-PoP...

You're full of ****.

[CSM-101]

Played most of them. UO beta and release for a while, EQ Beta 1 to around PoP. WoW till Burning. Lead early raids in from EQ up to 72 people (zergs), did AoW with 33 pre-PoP...

You're full of ****.

Extrapolate for those of us who have never played UO or EQ.

[Tweed]

Played most of them. UO beta and release for a while, EQ Beta 1 to around PoP. WoW till Burning. Lead early raids in from EQ up to 72 people (zergs), did AoW with 33 pre-PoP...

You're full of ****.

Extrapolate for those of us who have never played UO or EQ.

Anyone who played that much UO and EQ and doesn't want player trading is either a liar or a masochist.

[Xenich]

I think "buying" your gear be it with real cash or in game gold is silly

I agree, but you can just... not do that. Those aren't the only kinds of trades in the world.

It was more of an issue with EQ than games today. Since EQ was contested content and camp based, the trade system resulted in perma camps to farm for gear to be sold on the market.

It made grouping a pain in the rear as anytime something dropped class specific, everyone wanted to roll on it because "I can sell that, its a need!" which was a severe problem in a game with extremely rare mobs and drops.

With instances, BoA, etc... less of an issue to be honest, and it isn't the deciding factor for not playing MMOs today.

Token and daily systems, Speed AoE dungeon runs, face roll content, fast paced twitch play, etc... and of course most people are ********.

Different generation of style, expectations, design and players...

[rusty_shackleford]

being able to trade anything would work if MMOs actually cared enough to keep RMT in check. They've went the complete opposite direction and now do RMT themselves.

[Havitner]

Player economies are fun and add another dimension to an MMO, but certain items should bind to your character when looted and be untradable.

I think WoW handled it well enough:
Crafted items, most crafting materials, and random generic mob drops can be traded.
Dungeon/raid boss drops and all quest rewards become soulbound when picked up and can't be traded.

You can sell the herbs/ore you gathered with your herbalism/mining skill, or the potions/sword you made with them, or the [Prefix] Gauntlets of the [Suffix] you got as a random generic drop from that bandit. You can't sell the Ancient Wyrmfang Dagger you won off Onyxia the black dragon in her lair after you and your raid group killed her.

[Xenich]

You're full of ****.

Extrapolate for those of us who have never played UO or EQ.

Anyone who played that much UO and EQ and doesn't want player trading is either a liar or a masochist.

"Anyone who doesn't think like me is wrong!"

I played on Test up through Kunark beta and the test wipe, then they allowed us to move to production servers (naked, no gear). Did production for a while, raided mostly small stuff (fear, Vox, Hate, etc...), then because I didn't have time to be "on call" for raiding (who does and has a job?), I moved to Stormhammer (40 bucks a month). They had scheduled raids where the guilds first had to pass a qualifying trial (ie tier bosses spawned in the arena) and then you were put into a rotation for raids per week.

It was nice as you actually got to do all the raids without fighting time zones for raid spawns which allowed your guild to set a time to meet and do the raid. It made things a lot smoother and people who worked a lot of hours could actually raid in EQ (I was pulling a lot of hours and on call for my work at the time).

I hated player trade from the get go. On test it was severely frowned on by the people there and EC sellers were ran off when they popped in to try and setup shop. Sever was fairly small (800-1000 at peak). Used to do testing often for the Devs, talked with them constantly and Brad even joined our guilds group from time to time (nice guy, couldn't tank very well).

Production was not very civil, infested with loot whores, ninja looters, Raid ganking, US vs Euro boss wars, etc...

Stormhammer was for the most part a pretty civil group. There were some spats and some BS politics from time to time, but it was nothing like normal production.
@Kalarion


Disagree with what? That you like player trade or the claim that I am full of ****?

Everything I said was a fact or or just my opinion of the issue.

[anonusername]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

You don't need player trade to have an MMO. What does "trading" have to do with a with grouping together and obtaining gear they need through play?

Do you know what would happen if there were no player trade in an MMO? Every player would have to earn their gear by being present and accomplishing the task. It means, what people have would be what they actually obtained personally (kind of how they handle raid gear?).

No twinks, no arguments on greeding an item for sale, etc...

Why not just make a coop PvE game then? What exactly is the MMO aspect providing here?

[Xenich]

If you don't have player trade, why even make an MMO? Just pick between team PvP and coop PvE. If you really want to torture yourself, try to have both coop PvE *and* team PvP. The correct way to handle RWT is to design the game in a way that accounts for bots and multiboxing without making them mandatory and thus alienating casual players. The real issue is going to come as it becomes increasingly easy to apply ML to botting. "AI" may be ********, but that just makes for a more convincing impersonation of an MMO player. You don't even need ML to do it, it's just that botting an MMO doesn't get the same sorts of resources as making a computer win at chess. ML lets the average idiot with a high-end GPU just brute force the problem.

You don't need player trade to have an MMO. What does "trading" have to do with a with grouping together and obtaining gear they need through play?

Do you know what would happen if there were no player trade in an MMO? Every player would have to earn their gear by being present and accomplishing the task. It means, what people have would be what they actually obtained personally (kind of how they handle raid gear?).

No twinks, no arguments on greeding an item for sale, etc...

Why not just make a coop PvE game then? What exactly is the MMO aspect providing here?

You do know what MMO means right? The concept of it has zero relevance to it being player vs player or if there is trade or not.

[Tweed]

I had the ultra rare drop drake mount from the one instance, ponycucks couldn't even fathom how great it felt to actually play the game and get rewards that way
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=4415 ... roto-drake

1.6% chance from the final boss of an instance that you had to roll against 4 other people for

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

Says the *** who paid 40 dollars a month to lick Abashi's nutsack.

[Xenich]

I had the ultra rare drop drake mount from the one instance, ponycucks couldn't even fathom how great it felt to actually play the game and get rewards that way
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=4415 ... roto-drake

1.6% chance from the final boss of an instance that you had to roll against 4 other people for

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

Says the *** who paid 40 dollars a month to lick Abashi's nutsack.

Money well spent.

Some of us were adults working professional jobs for long hours and could not sit on mommy's computer ready to be on call at a moments notice to raid.

I am assuming since you were the "purist", you were raiding on Firiona Vie?

By the way, anyone complaining about "scheduled" raids as if they are a real raider on a PVE server while not doing it on a PvP server isn't doing real competitive raiding.

Besides, the US servers were infested with Euro's spawn camping and swapping all the spawn times to their time zone. It sucked, was major drama and a pain in the rear. Nobody who had a job was raiding that crap.

[Tweed]

Token systems suck, you can calculate exactly when you will get something. It becomes nothing more than a mundane grind.

MMOs need rare mob/loot, camp spawns, etc...

Oh... and if I had my way there would be ZERO player trade. It is only a cheat mechanic anyway that promotes RMT.

Says the *** who paid 40 dollars a month to lick Abashi's nutsack.

Money well spent.

Some of us were adults working professional jobs for long hours and could not sit on mommy's computer ready to be on call at a moments notice to raid.

I am assuming since you were the "purist", you were raiding on Firiona Vie?

By the way, anyone complaining about "scheduled" raids as if they are a real raider on a PVE server while not doing it on a PvP server isn't doing real competitive raiding.

Besides, the US servers were infested with Euro's spawn camping and swapping all the spawn times to their time zone. It sucked, was major drama and a pain in the rear. Nobody who had a job was raiding that crap.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.

[Xenich]

Says the *** who paid 40 dollars a month to lick Abashi's nutsack.

Money well spent.

Some of us were adults working professional jobs for long hours and could not sit on mommy's computer ready to be on call at a moments notice to raid.

I am assuming since you were the "purist", you were raiding on Firiona Vie?

By the way, anyone complaining about "scheduled" raids as if they are a real raider on a PVE server while not doing it on a PvP server isn't doing real competitive raiding.

Besides, the US servers were infested with Euro's spawn camping and swapping all the spawn times to their time zone. It sucked, was major drama and a pain in the rear. Nobody who had a job was raiding that crap.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.

Yeah, kid... sure...

Likely you were a child sitting on your parents computer poop socking constantly in your merry guild of no job hacks.

[Tweed]

Money well spent.

Some of us were adults working professional jobs for long hours and could not sit on mommy's computer ready to be on call at a moments notice to raid.

I am assuming since you were the "purist", you were raiding on Firiona Vie?

By the way, anyone complaining about "scheduled" raids as if they are a real raider on a PVE server while not doing it on a PvP server isn't doing real competitive raiding.

Besides, the US servers were infested with Euro's spawn camping and swapping all the spawn times to their time zone. It sucked, was major drama and a pain in the rear. Nobody who had a job was raiding that crap.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.

Yeah, kid... sure...

Likely you were a child sitting on your parents computer poop socking constantly in your merry guild of no job hacks.

Stay mad, wagie. Anyone who spends money for preferential treatment has no grounds to dictate how things should be for anyone else, you didn't play the game, you paid to cheat.

[Xenich]

EQ contested group content was not bad, in fact it had some good things about it (depending on if they kept the server populations down), but the raiding was horrible, especially as time went on.

Stormhammer was a really cool server specifically because of their raid calendar. If it weren't for that server, I would have never had the time to do many raid targets because on my old server, they were perma camped by Euro's and Zerg guilds.

Another thing that was cool was instant action by GMs. If we had a buggy issue, a GM would actually come and watch the raid to make sure no bugs caused any issues. They also would often show up in dungeons and spawn various names not related to the dungeon, or actually play a Boss and rush a room while the group was taking on another named.

It was hilarious and a lot of fun, with special quests, events, etc...

Not to mention, no serious drama. The *** hats got banned quick on that server. For instance, any guild that killed a raid target that was not on their calendar (or traded by another guild) was banned, no BS, verification and then... bye bye...

Was such a nice change from the drama that existed on the normal servers.

[Xenich]

Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.

Yeah, kid... sure...

Likely you were a child sitting on your parents computer poop socking constantly in your merry guild of no job hacks.

Stay mad, wagie. Anyone who spends money for preferential treatment has no grounds to dictate how things should be for anyone else, you didn't play the game, you paid to cheat.

Thing is, I did both. I did raid contested for a while, but I didn't have time.

My cheating? Yeah... Lets see... what did I cheat? I cheated by not having to be jobless so I could poop sock raid spawns and be on call?

Still took down the mobs as designed, no special treatment other than as I said (if a raid bugged out we had support there to reset it, something all the servers should have been doing, but you know how standard GM support was on those servers).

I betcha my guild did the raid mobs with a heck of a lot less people than you did, and why? Because we didn't zerg to the spawns to insure we could take them down before another got there. We didn't have other guilds pulling in mobs to wipe our raid or sending in Tanks to grab agro to mess up hate lists, etc...)

Is your name Furor? The whiny little no skilled ***** who would zerg his raids, **** block other guilds, threaten GMs and throw tantrums about content being "too hard!"

LOL


You are just angry that your mommy wouldn't pay the bill.


edit:

Had to look up wagie...

WTF

"Someone who hates their job, but works to live a miserable life. Eventually, the wagie discovers his life is pointless and he is only causing pain to himself.
John was a wagie, I understand why he would kill himself"

I hated my job? What? How does paying a higher sub so you can schedule raids for when you have off work time translate to "I hate my job" and think my life is pointless?

Are you ******** and just don't understand what your own kiddie stupid slang means?

[Tweed]

I betcha my guild did the raid mobs with a heck of a lot less people than you did, and why? Because we didn't zerg to the spawns to insure we could take them down before another got there. We didn't have other guilds pulling in mobs to wipe our raid or sending in Tanks to grab agro to mess up hate lists, etc...)

Wow...

► Show Spoiler

What a badass...

[Xenich]

I betcha my guild did the raid mobs with a heck of a lot less people than you did, and why? Because we didn't zerg to the spawns to insure we could take them down before another got there. We didn't have other guilds pulling in mobs to wipe our raid or sending in Tanks to grab agro to mess up hate lists, etc...)

Wow...

► Show Spoiler

What a badass...

You are the one claiming cheating... I point out that I did the raid mobs with less people, which is more difficult... but because I paid more money (ie higher sub for a calendar raids) to be able to select the time to do them because I worked... its cheating...

Do you use logic or are you just mad that you weren't old enough and couldn't get your mommy to pay for your EQ?

Were you even alive when EQ released? Maybe you were still walking around pissing in your diapers?

Do you even know what stormhammer was?