Restrict My Trades!
The topic of the moment in the MMO blogosphere is RMT, or Real Money Transfers. Lum, who I usually agree with, started the discussion by asserting that games in which RMT is desirable are inherently flawed. Wrong, unless catering to the inborn human desire to achieve in your game’s design is a bad idea, which it’s not. Psychochild and Moorgard chimed in with their thoughts on the subject as well, so I’ll go ahead and give mine.
The short answer to Lum’s point that players would be playing their game if it were fun rather than paying to advance is that, when given the chance to advance in almost any aspect of life for small effort, people will jump on the opportunity. Let’s think of another fun activity–hockey. If I could pay a couple hundred bucks more for equipment that made me better than other players and I could afford it, I would. Why? Uhh, because it’s the path of least resistance.
I’m not even going to go into more analogies, nor will I try to prove Lum wrong (more than I’ve already tried), because the other two who have already commented on the subject already did an acceptable job of that. My point here is going to be, basically, that RMT is the sux and isn’t fair to players who don’t expect it to happen going in, but that the fact that it happens in your game is absolutely no indication that the game was designed poorly.
In any game that has any sort of achievement whatsoever, RMT will be a problem. It may not be a big problem, but it will exist. Even if you have no money, levels, or items in the game, if there?s something that you can get through effort (like a house or anything that indicates status), certain players will desire to obtain such prestige with minimal in-game effort (like, say, through real money transfers).
It?s our job as developers to help mitigate the issues by pursuing those who break the rules as best we can, or to go ahead and say that practice is just fine and create rules and controls for it in the game. In my mind, it almost has to be all or nothing. That is, you need to fully support it on all your game servers, or you have to fully oppose it on all your game servers. The middle ground just pisses people on both sides of the coin off. Then again, maybe this practice will become the norm and will replace subscriptions, but we’re not there yet.
The desire to pursue the path of least resistance in games by participating in real money transfers is not a game design flaw, it’s a flaw of human nature. Can we design around that flaw? Yes, but we’d have to fundamentally change MMOs to fully avoid that desire, and I’m pretty happy with a lot of the goal-oriented fun that exists in current online games (and happens to passively provoke RMTs).
Amen.
Cheater! You re-used part of your comment over on Moorgard’s site in this post.
But, as I said over there, there will always be reputation even if there’s nothing else to be gained like equipment, etc. Characters can always be bought and sold given the impossibility of truly limiting character access to only one person.
So, yeah, Lum’s pretty much wrong.
No, Lum’s pretty much right
We have three issues:
1. Grinding is not fun
2. Level-apartheid
3. Related to both 1 and 2, item-centric design.
Solve those and you no longer have an RMT issue.
The game’s fun to actually play rather than to get someone else to play for you. You can play with your friends regardless of time commitments. You don’t need or want or there simply aren’t any “uber” items.
What on earth is there to spend RL money on?
Restrict My Trades!
Cael said:
Actually, I see Ryan’s point.. Not that I would disagree on your issue-list as being issues in and of themselves, but to state that you no longer would have an RMT issue is unfortunately inaccurate. To look at it on a most basic level.. assuming you had no grinding, no skills, and no levels in a game.. you would have to look to some form of advancement or at the very least “differentiation” which inherently can be perceived as a form of social advancement.
You have a choice.. to either have or not have uniqueness for the characters in your game. To choose not, is to make a game that will bore players quickly (assuming an MMORPG of course here.. this may work lovely for regular single or smaller scale multiplayer games), but have no need for RMT (because everybody is really the same). Choose to have it and well we’re back to where we are today, item-centricity is irrelevant in this case as it’s simply one of the primary ways of creating differentiation amongst characters.. along with a list of many other ways…
As Ryan said, it’s human nature to seek the path of least resistance.. If you don’t HAVE to invest the time and effort to gain status and advancement, then you likely will not… UNLESS of course you see and recognize the real value in time spent with content regardless of level or status, in which case you’ll likely advance slower, but probably enjoy the overall experience that much more.
Ye gods, not that old chestnut again.
You’re different because a computer says you are?!?
No. No, i’ll blog my response.
item-centricity is one of the primary ways of creating differentiation?
of course! that must be why 90% of pre-CU characters in SWG were wearing Composite Armor and running around with Stun Batons!
If the Wii and PS3 lines proved anything, its that we live in an item-centric world. Trying to change that very basic human nature (go visit a kindergarten class if you don’t think its something your born with) is most likely never going to happen with-in the context of a virtual world. Whether it has great content or not.
Since starting playing EQ2, I’ve seen many changes come and go throughout the game. When it started there was not alot of no-trade /BoP items until reaching max-level. Dungeons were farmed and the auction house was full of goods. Then some changes happened. More and more dungeons had named mobs with no-trade items. Was this a direct response to RMT ? I would of loved to of been a fly on the wall during these dev discussions. With the release of EQ2′s KoS expansion, many named mobs started dropping great items that were tradeable, many discussions were had within my guild on why this change in was made. We were not mad about it or anything, it was more of a “Wow, thats quite a change.”
If every high level item was tradeable, the broker would be filled with raid-drop quality items. Thats probably not a good thing in my opinion. Currently we put virtual controls on these items (such as no-trade) to stop this but not all items are given this status. There are still some great items that are selling for huge amounts of coin with in the game. This almost promotes the buying of virtual gold to me. If some items are never ( I mean Never) going to be with-in my reach as a player, why not spend some RL money to buy it?
When I go out golfing with my friends, its not about who has the best clubs or what shoes we’re wearing. Will those things improve my game? Possibly… much like a new fabled chest piece may improve ones groups tank. Its about having a good time with good people and how we feel about ourselves at the end of the game that matters most. Do I get mad at my buddy for buying a new driver that hits farther than mine? No I make him buy me a beer cause obviously he’s got cash and laugh about how much fun we had smacking a little white ball around the grass.
LOL! Ok, good point Kohs, and perhaps my choice of terms wasn’t quite right. “Item-centricity” is not one of the primary ways of differentiation.. “Items” however, are or perhaps I should just say “can be”, but also levels, skills, badges, classes, etc.. In the case of SWG, it had the problem where it was really not desirable to have anything LESS than Composite Armor for PvP, because you knew the other side would have it as well, and nobody would want to attack a base without the best equipment you could create/obtain.
Of course, being such a common armor-set, it was valued more for it’s utility than as a symbol of status. People did not always wear their Composite everywhere they went, as they wanted to keep it in good condition for when it was needed in battle. When not in battle, there was a bit more differentiation in clothing… but even still, that was not really my point anyways.
Let me be clear that I’m not making the point that differentiation is the driving force of RMTs in MMORPGs. Status and achievement are. People naturally want to achieve as high as they can go. If everybody is able to hit that mark, then so be it, but that doesn’t suppress the urge to get there. If something enables the advancement even a small amount higher than the current cap, then it becomes very desirable as well. If the amount of time and effort investment to reach the status cap is greater than a person is willing or capable of putting forth, then the player will either have to accept that the highest status level is not achievable and lower their expectations towards a goal that is challenging yet more easily accomplished… or they can choose the RMT route, reaching their desired status level goal, but really cheapening the value of being at the level itself and the entire experience of the game by skipping past it. If it were easy to obtain, then it would ALREADY not be very valuable and therefore would vastly reduce the likelihood that a player would resort to RMT to obtain it.
The short version.. yeah I pretty much agree with everybody else and cannot think of a workable solution for the life of me. =)
Oh, and Cael.. I apologize if I end up dragging up old topics or making old points. I’m still pretty new to this and while I have been doing A LOT of reading, it’s quite possible and even likely that I’ll make a point that may have already been discussed, resolved, and/or killed. I just ask that you go easy on me in these cases and point me in the right direction if I missed something
Thanks! =)
[...] Grouchy Gnome (”Nerfbat”) [...]
Nick: Long-standing fight i have with the catass community. They insist that they need levels, skills and predefined “advancement” in order to play an RPG because otherwise they can’t play a role.
Wheras i maintain that we’re all in Plato’s cave but those particular troglodytes are looking at the wrong wall.
Related link: The value of in-game money vs. monopoly money: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/11/theres_nothing_.html
[...] It started (this time) with Lum, and then spread to Psychochild and from there to Grouchy Gnome, Moorgard, Cael, and Nick over at My 2 Copper: Real Money Transactions. [...]
[...] Lots of commentary out there this past couple of weeks revolving loosely around RMT.? ( from Scott Jennings, Brian Green, Matt Mihaly,?and Ryan Shwayder (Nerfbat), amongst others.? ?For my part, I’m just?wishy-washy on the whole topic.? While I have no love for gold farmers, and personally think spending?RL money on something as?transient as?virtual gold pieces in a MMO is often inadvisable, I also understand and sympathize with the motivations of some of the purchasers, and think that RMT controlled by the developer would actually be a very reasonable business model to pursue. [...]
It is definately true that people tend to be inherently selfish and will take the path that gives them the most bang for the buck. If a person with a high interest in a game has disposable income but little actual time to devote to gameplay the RMT portion can come into play. Or they might just wish to have the best to be the best and RMT can facilitate that.
But, there is something deeper that needs to be addressed in these games. Carrots and the meaning of a game itself.
In most of the games we play, be in sports, consoles, chess, or even something as real life as hunting, we have a defined goal. That goal is winning. Of course, playing the game is a fun activity in itself, but most people would rather win than loose.
Now, in a culture and a world that thrives on winning games how can we convince them that max level isn’t a win?? Or that the best gear isn’t a win? Or that doing something the fastest isn’t a win? How do we inform these people that they are attempting to win something that is inherently unwinnable?? How can you win something that never ends?
You can’t really do that in our current crop of games. Put a person in at level 1 and point out that there are 60 levels and they will suddenly have 60 as a goal. Point out the best gear and they will have that as a goal. Even our terminology facilitates this type of thinking….END GAME. Its a very human thing to attempt to get to the top of the mountain, swim the river, get the nice car and house, and our current games are chock full of carrots that play on that obvious human quality.
The main problem is that we aren’t building games where the development of the character is the primary goal. We are building games where the character is merely a means to aquire the other goals/carrots within the game. The characters themselves don’t actually grow and improve outside of the itemization and level carrots. In our current games, if you stripped the character of every item they had , would they have any value??
That is an inherent flaw in our current games since eventually it just becomes a race for gear and levels because its the only measurement of ‘character’ in these games. When being the best of the best depends on itemization you almost immediately loose to the RMT because you actually designed the perfect home for it.
Quoth Gaereth:
Y’know, that’s exactly why I play EQ2 (one of the best/prettiest games on the MMO market today) and actively follow Simutronics’ Hero’s Journey. While the company has been doing a few things wrong with their PR and delaying the game to market the engine (which GMG should look into, seriously) their track record as a small company that produces an excellent product is there. Further, they seem to be more character-centric in their design as opposed to item-centric. That alone is why I’m rabidly drooling at the gates waiting for a beta to open up, despite my letdown by Vanguard and my scarred experience from being a VanBoy.
Sure, there’ll still be RMT, but in a less item-centric game it’s possible for a basic set of equipment bought from *gasp* an NPC vendor to suffice in all but the most extreme situations. RMT will be mostly used to get around grinding up a character and seeing the ‘end game’ – the solution here is to make lots of fun things to do at all levels and allow people to play together even with large differences in their power levels. Heck, some content could be designed around a high level character and one or several lower ones helping them out.
As an aside, I’m sure there’s some tricky thing a company could do with their EULA to get the RMTs to stop (by massively increasing risk), but it would either produce a massive PR backlash or result in an expensive legal challenge (or several *thinks* hundred *ponders* make that thousand *nods* smaller ones).
RMT and Microtransactions…
I’m a bit late on this discussion. Nerf, Raph, Damion, Matt, Korea, etc. have all touched on RMT (real money trades) and microtransactions. They both boil down to paying real-life currency for in-game goods (or services).
Here’s one examp…
[...] months ago. Or the somewhat more civil but nonetheless passionate clash of wills occuring some time later [...]
[...] months ago. Or the somewhat more civil but nonetheless passionate clash of wills occuring some time later [...]