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On January 10 2012 19:17 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2012 18:27 paralleluniverse wrote:On January 10 2012 09:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:
but I don't have any problems with people buying items or characters from people who have made those items or characters. I mean take wow for example, say you're 26 years old and you're working, but you wanna play arena. you need a level 80? char but you can't spend the 500 hours it takes to get there, however you have no problems forking over whatever it costs to some chinese guy. I understand that it might take some of the "novelty" or whatever of having found some super awesome gear when you notice that lots of other guys have purchased even better gear, but I think that's just something you gotta deal with. be happy you have enough time to grind if that's what you did, I guess. In your example, I would argue that if the person is unable to make his own arena-worthy character then he doesn't deserve to have an arena-worthy character, and certainly shouldn't be able to buy one. Then the argument may shift to the assertion that it takes too long or too much grinding to make a character that is able to effectively compete in arenas. If that is the case, the solution should be to make that easier, rather than allowing players to buy characters, items or gold for real money. The latter benefits rich people, and I can think of no justifiable reason why a game should single out rich people for particular benefits, while the former is fair and equal for all players. Welcome to capitalism? I mean I'm serious, trading money for time and vice versa is completely standard in almost all aspects of life. It makes sense it would transfer into gaming as well. People are always going to do this. If you're rich enough you won't care about its legality. It makes sense for game makers to legalize it, remove the scamming aspect, take a 5% profit from it, and destroy all the gold selling sites by making their service better.
I'm well aware of capitalism in real life, and I have no problems with it for the most part. But a video game is not real life.
The solution to it being too hard to make a viable arena character in a game is to make it easier, not to allow character, item, or gold buying. The latter is a real life solution to a game problem, and is unfair compared to the former, which is better.
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A few years ago in FFXI, gil farmers completely fucking ruined the game and the in-game economy. I mean reaalllyyyyy bad. They camped popular mobs and used third party bot programs to get claims on a lot of popular enemies.
In a situation like that I could never support gold buying, because in doing so you support the people who are ruining the game for everyone else.
If the gold sellers have no effect on the game, then I don't really care.
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On January 10 2012 20:03 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2012 19:17 dcemuser wrote:On January 10 2012 18:27 paralleluniverse wrote:On January 10 2012 09:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:
but I don't have any problems with people buying items or characters from people who have made those items or characters. I mean take wow for example, say you're 26 years old and you're working, but you wanna play arena. you need a level 80? char but you can't spend the 500 hours it takes to get there, however you have no problems forking over whatever it costs to some chinese guy. I understand that it might take some of the "novelty" or whatever of having found some super awesome gear when you notice that lots of other guys have purchased even better gear, but I think that's just something you gotta deal with. be happy you have enough time to grind if that's what you did, I guess. In your example, I would argue that if the person is unable to make his own arena-worthy character then he doesn't deserve to have an arena-worthy character, and certainly shouldn't be able to buy one. Then the argument may shift to the assertion that it takes too long or too much grinding to make a character that is able to effectively compete in arenas. If that is the case, the solution should be to make that easier, rather than allowing players to buy characters, items or gold for real money. The latter benefits rich people, and I can think of no justifiable reason why a game should single out rich people for particular benefits, while the former is fair and equal for all players. Welcome to capitalism? I mean I'm serious, trading money for time and vice versa is completely standard in almost all aspects of life. It makes sense it would transfer into gaming as well. People are always going to do this. If you're rich enough you won't care about its legality. It makes sense for game makers to legalize it, remove the scamming aspect, take a 5% profit from it, and destroy all the gold selling sites by making their service better. I'm well aware of capitalism in real life, and I have no problems with it for the most part. But a video game is not real life. The solution to it being too hard to make a viable arena character in a game is to make it easier, not to allow character, item, or gold buying. The latter is a real life solution to a game problem, and is unfair compared to the former, which is better.
The difficulty of the task is irrelevant.
Video games are part of real life. No matter how much you could roleplay it differently, they're bits of code stored on a server somewhere and should not be bound by different rules and principles because of this. I fail to see the distinction between the two.
Increasing the power of your character in a video game is not different from buying rare Magic the Gathering cards on the internet and using them to beat your friends who don't have the money to do it. There are a hundred other applicable analogies as well. You mention it is "unfair". Unfair to who? Why is it unfair? I think there are quite a few other perspectives you are ignoring.
The main reason we think it is a bad thing is because we were raised on video games that were aloof from the influence of capitalism. At the time, there did not exist means for developers to monetize games past the initial purchase fee. Over time, the internet and other advances (persistent connections, MMORPG popularity, etc.) have allowed for this. We are culturally biased against capitalism in gaming and believe that gaming should be held separate on an elite pedestal where problems can only be solved through skill and time because that is how things were in the past.
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On January 10 2012 23:34 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2012 20:03 paralleluniverse wrote:On January 10 2012 19:17 dcemuser wrote:On January 10 2012 18:27 paralleluniverse wrote:On January 10 2012 09:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:
but I don't have any problems with people buying items or characters from people who have made those items or characters. I mean take wow for example, say you're 26 years old and you're working, but you wanna play arena. you need a level 80? char but you can't spend the 500 hours it takes to get there, however you have no problems forking over whatever it costs to some chinese guy. I understand that it might take some of the "novelty" or whatever of having found some super awesome gear when you notice that lots of other guys have purchased even better gear, but I think that's just something you gotta deal with. be happy you have enough time to grind if that's what you did, I guess. In your example, I would argue that if the person is unable to make his own arena-worthy character then he doesn't deserve to have an arena-worthy character, and certainly shouldn't be able to buy one. Then the argument may shift to the assertion that it takes too long or too much grinding to make a character that is able to effectively compete in arenas. If that is the case, the solution should be to make that easier, rather than allowing players to buy characters, items or gold for real money. The latter benefits rich people, and I can think of no justifiable reason why a game should single out rich people for particular benefits, while the former is fair and equal for all players. Welcome to capitalism? I mean I'm serious, trading money for time and vice versa is completely standard in almost all aspects of life. It makes sense it would transfer into gaming as well. People are always going to do this. If you're rich enough you won't care about its legality. It makes sense for game makers to legalize it, remove the scamming aspect, take a 5% profit from it, and destroy all the gold selling sites by making their service better. I'm well aware of capitalism in real life, and I have no problems with it for the most part. But a video game is not real life. The solution to it being too hard to make a viable arena character in a game is to make it easier, not to allow character, item, or gold buying. The latter is a real life solution to a game problem, and is unfair compared to the former, which is better. The difficulty of the task is irrelevant. Video games are part of real life. No matter how much you could roleplay it differently, they're bits of code stored on a server somewhere and should not be bound by different rules and principles because of this. I fail to see the distinction between the two. Increasing the power of your character in a video game is not different from buying rare Magic the Gathering cards on the internet and using them to beat your friends who don't have the money to do it. There are a hundred other applicable analogies as well. You mention it is "unfair". Unfair to who? Why is it unfair? I think there are quite a few other perspectives you are ignoring. The main reason we think it is a bad thing is because we were raised on video games that were aloof from the influence of capitalism. At the time, there did not exist means for developers to monetize games past the initial purchase fee. Over time, the internet and other advances (persistent connections, MMORPG popularity, etc.) have allowed for this. We are culturally biased against capitalism in gaming and believe that gaming should be held separate on an elite pedestal where problems can only be solved through skill and time because that is how things were in the past.
This would be a more suitable analogy.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=301815¤tpage=8
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I think the most striking inference that can be drawn from this thread is that an overwhelming majority of respondents are against buying items and gold for real money, but a majority of posters are people who agree with buying items and gold for real money. It seems that these people, more than the other side, feel the need to attempt to rationalize why they agree with what was once thought cheating.
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I voted "I agree". It's quite simple actually.
1. If i was still in school and could play 5 hours a day I would have voted "I don't agree" simply because time is the only currency I have as a kid and i trade my time in order to get better items and feel that my character is badass. I get to participate in "better" clans/ harder raids etc.
2. Now that I have a full time job and a soon to be married I can play 2-3 hours a week. So time as a currency is no-no. So either I suck it up and have a "bad" character, one that can't get the best items or participate in the hardest boss modes/raids, or Blizzard realizes the gamers grow older and wants to continue be "at the top" but only this time they don't have the time for it but instead $$.
<3 Blizzard
They always cater to my needs. Always perfect timing. I quit WoW a year ago due to not having the time to be at the top and then BAM Blizzard in august announces RMAH for Diablo 3.
Now you better believe I'm hoping that for their next-gen mmo they will have a RMAH so I can buy power and have an awesome character.
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On January 12 2012 21:21 papaz wrote:
I voted "I agree". It's quite simple actually.
1. If i was still in school and could play 5 hours a day I would have voted "I don't agree" simply because time is the only currency I have as a kid and i trade my time in order to get better items and feel that my character is badass. I get to participate in "better" clans/ harder raids etc.
2. Now that I have a full time job and a soon to be married I can play 2-3 hours a week. So time as a currency is no-no. So either I suck it up and have a "bad" character, one that can't get the best items or participate in the hardest boss modes/raids, or Blizzard realizes the gamers grow older and wants to continue be "at the top" but only this time they don't have the time for it but instead $$.
<3 Blizzard
They always cater to my needs. Always perfect timing. I quit WoW a year ago due to not having the time to be at the top and then BAM Blizzard in august announces RMAH for Diablo 3.
Now you better believe I'm hoping that for their next-gen mmo they will have a RMAH so I can buy power and have an awesome character.
It's all about you.
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I think it's a really stupid idea, especially for role playing games. You play such games to escape from the harsh reality, not to deal with even more corruption and money fixation. Nothing good whatsoever can come of mixing in game currency with real life currencies, it only baits clueless teenagers into thinking they can make a living of playing a game.
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I think it should be legal because whatever, people can do whatever they want... on the other hand, I won't have much fun getting my neck snapped by 12 year olds with rich parents.
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I don't mind people buying vanity items for real money, that's up to them. When it starts to affect game balance i have a problem.
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In MMOs like WoW it's obviously not a good thing, but mainly because of the botting associated with it imo. The way it works in EVE however, is a good example of how to do it right. In EVE you can basicly buy an ingame 30-day gametime card called a "PLEX". These cost like 20 dollars and can be sold in game to other players. Unfortunately EVE can't really be compared to other MMOs, so I don't really know how this would work in a traditional MMO.
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EPT
