Alyra seems pretty open-minded about the "bad side" of Lineage II, so i felt like i could share something with you ;)
It's a new article that has just been posted on MMORPG.com, written by Staff Writer Dan Fortier, and i dont know, it's not that stupid after all :
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While I'm on the topic, I also find it strange how some can see RMT as cheating. It's a simple fact in the world we live in that people pay more for convenience. Would you call the guy who gets his clothes dry cleaned a cheat because he has more real life cash that he can spend so someone else cleans his clothes while you're stuck at a laundromat ? [...] There are lots of things we choose to pay more for in order to get an advantage in life over someone else every day, and I fail to see how RMT is any different. If anything, RMT seems to create a balance in the MMO world since the people who have all day to play usually have less money than those who actually go out and earn a living. Should a breadwinner be able to spend a few bucks to get some better gear for his toon to compete with Jimmy who has all day to play?...I think so.
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Now, before you start the flaming, no i'm not saying that botting and ebaying is good, i guess there are enough people on these boards who know me and know the way i play and the way i feel about all that, but i also like to keep an open mind about everything, and i must say that the guy kinda has a point !
And let's not forget NCSoft's own M.Garriot who said that, to him, RMT was one acceptable way of playing online games...
Now i hope we can discuss that in a calm and civilized manner, because it's something that we'll have to face more and more in MMORPGs, wether we like it or not...
His argument basically boils down to "it's their money, they can do with it whatever they want".
I disagree with this completely, as Lineage 2 (and most mmo's) is a competitive pvp game, and you are using real life money to buy monopoly money in order to gain an upper hand.
If I may use an analogy myself, that's like an athlete being caught using drugs in the olympics, and arguing that he spent his own money on it.
I have no problems with games allowing players to use real cash to buy in-game assets, but that's a game I will choose not to play.
What I do have a problem with, is when I choose to play a game which doesn't allow it, and people do it anyway because they feel they are entitled to it - even though they click "I agree" on not doing it every time they log in.
I do not wish to play games where my competitive power is measured by the depth of my pocket.
I do not agree that RMT helps to "balance" the gap between casual and hardcore players, as hardcore players are almost always the first to purchase in-game assets.
Since a MMO is a separation between RL and your char then yes it is cheating to use out of game assets to acheive in game goals. His example of dial up vs cable internet is not a valid point because in most cases, someone playing on dialup has the same ability to lvl up as the person playing on cable internet. Cable internet also does not make you wthpwn people of the same lvl as you. Full boss jewels and top equip with +++++++++++++ beyond belief CAN.
The people that buy the in game assets with out of game assets are those that blur the line between reality and their MMO char. I don't like the buying of in game assets. I feel that my success in game should be determined by my actions in the game not my success IRL. It also goes the other way. It doesn't matter how good or bad I do at playing my char, I won't ever be putting PRO L2 player on my resume.
What I dont understand is why people think they NEED to wthpwn in a GAME that makes no difference in the end. All in all, I think that the lower-mid class kid putting himself through college should have the same ability to be successful in this game as the multi-millionaire that has his own personal jet.
Your arguement would really only work if there were no outside buying of assets in the game as it is.
I am not sure what you mean here. Explain how his arguement does not work.
Also game/sports analogies are flawed in MMORPGs since unlike those, there's no single winner in MMORPGs, nor a single purpose.
There are single winners in L2. Castle seiges are won. Sure, there is not a single purpose, but if someone was buying adena to role play, how would that effect anyone else? My point is that people buy adena to do 1 of 2 things
1. lvl faster (and then pvp)
2. pvp better
Both of these point to a single purpose... PvP. You can deny it all you want, but that is what it really boils down to. So, now you have your single purpose and your single winner. I would say that the sports analogy works fine.
I've thought a lot about this issue over the past few years.
While it's true that some players have more desposable time to play a game, if they choose to, there is one common fact among all of us, and that is life expectancy. Hear me out.
Each of us have a certain number of years, or time, on this planet. From a purely actuarial perspective, say the average life expectancy is 75 for illustrative purposes.
Here's the point.
Regardless of individual wealth, or available time, we all, in general, have the same amount of time. That is the common factor we all share.
While it is true those who spend more time in game, typically have more stuff. It is also true those people gave up more of their time on the planet to that game. They deserve more stuff.
Each person needs to make a choice how to spend their time. Time is the most valuable thing we have, more valuable than money for sure.
So if we all "in general" have the same amount of time on the planet then those who play more should have an advantge. They gave more of their time on the planet to a game.
The challenge here is for the game to provide an economy and the mechanics that allow for a greater balance between casual and hard core players. This will never be perfect, but certainly can be improved via game design.
Purchasing virtual property for rl money is the single worst thing to happen to MMO's. I don't buy the real life comparisons. It's a game, and advancement and power shouldn't be up to those fortunate and lucky enough in life to have more money than another.
While we do not all have the same amount of free time, we do all have the same amount of time. That is not true when we speak about currency, and that's the rub.
MrTeedOff : ALL are winners in L2, you win it when you quit, aka beat the game done everything, Castle sieges may be some peoples goals it's not all peoples goals, some may classify winning the game by hitting lv 20, some may not care about lv at all and just use it as a mean to rp with peoples and have there as there winning goal.
His example of dial up vs cable internet is not a valid point
Right, that's why i didnt include it in my post ;)
The thing that i thought was interesting in his column was "i work like hell 10 hours a day to earn some good money, so why should i have a worse experience of a game over someone who does absolutely nothing with his life but sit all day long on his butt ?" :D
It's questionable and debatable, i know, that's why i'd like to discuss it :p
His comparison to dry-cleaning is as ludicrous as ever. These games are not real life, they're a game - if you buy yourself a racecar to participate in a horserace, does that still make sense? It's certainly more convenient for getting from the start to finish line...
An MMOG, just like any other games, has rules that are set out at the beginning, and in the context of which the game makes sense. PvP in Lineage II pretty much stops making sense if you're up against someone who bots or ebays - at least it stops making the sense it should make. What good is locking down a hunting ground when they can just go to a lower-exp area and bot it up there? What good is trying to cut someone off from performing a quest or a raid when they can just buy the results?
Why should you be worse off? The answer is simple - because you put those 10 hours into your work, not into the game. According to basic logic, that means you earn money (which you do), not progress in game (which people think they should have anyway).
No discussion to be had. NCSoft welcomed it with poor game design.
Lineage 2 has a bad name among MMORPG titles because it is the subject to point at for what NOT to do as far as game design is concerned. Everything from their buff system, to class balancing, to armor system, skills, weapons, etc. BAD BAD. The only thing it has going for it is the open PvP, but even that sucks/is dead most of the time due to the exploitation of the game design by farmers.
Lineage II has
- Open PvP and heavy clan center (which is great)
and
- Its economy.
And if all the people who don't enjoy both of these things would kindly [Censored], it would probably be a good game, too. But unfortunately the former attracted people with a severe disdain for the latter, which means no clan cooperation to equip people, no rich dwarves, and no point in the former.
MrTeedOff : ALL are winners in L2, you win it when you quit, aka beat the game done everything, Castle sieges may be some peoples goals it's not all peoples goals, some may classify winning the game by hitting lv 20, some may not care about lv at all and just use it as a mean to rp with peoples and have there as there winning goal.
Not all are winners in a castle seige. Those who "Win" by hitting lvl 20 are probably not considered to be competing. The "buying of in game assets" problem, as I said before, effects the main point of L2 (PvP). Like I said before, do you think buying in game assets would be a problem if L2 was designed as a more role playing game? Does having formal wear make you a better role player? Honestly, it doesnt matter.
I'm not sure I buy the argument that just logging into L2=winning.
If you are a legit player and you log in hoping to have fun PvPing, or seiging, or what have you. And you get consistantly decimated by the 80/80/80 heros with boss jewels and +10 drac bows with curse of doom augments, you are neither winning, nor having fun.
True its hard to compare L2 to a game where there is one winner and all activity in the game is centered around victory.
But it is a game-world based on a predetermined, understood set of rules. Breaking those rules to gain an advantage IS cheating.
We can play monoploy and we can debate whether the rules are appropriate or not. But until your protest outside of Parker Brothers effects a change in the rules, you have to play by the current ones.
I'd say MMORPGs have one tiny thing in common with actual RPGs (and I don't mean 'single player computer RPGs', I mean actual roleplaying). There isn't really a 'winner' or a 'loser' globally - just locally. You win when you ding, you lose when you delevel; you win when your opponent BSoEs, you lose when you lose your rep points, etc.
That means as a whole whether someone feels they are winning or losing is really the only objective measure you could have.
However, ebaying and botting definitely has an impact on the amount of those local wins/losses - if ebayers had to do everything on their own, chances are most of them would get steam-rolled by those who are playing legit now (too lazy to level and get your their own gear would put them in the spot legits are in now).
If that's not breaking the rules to get an advantage, i.e. cheating, I don't know what is.
Stop talking like "It's okay, don't worry about they're doing and have fun. As long as you're legit it doesn't matter."
eBaying and botting destroyed this game. Yes, past tense. What this game could have been had NCSoft made the right decisions about its implementation, and what it is now - it's a failure.
When items cost hundreds of millions of adena, how many people do you think are going to be willing to put adena towards someone else's gear. Sad but true, things are too expensive for that. People join a clan asking for help and they immediately get kicked, even when that person honestly needs help.
I ran an alt through some clan's academy and watched 4 of their members go from level 69 to 76 in less than a week. I play this game about as much as the most hardcore of the hardcore players (I socialize more than I level these days) and I know how fast a nuker can level with an OOP SE tagging along. But Sorceror + SE + PP + EE all from 69 to 76 in 5 days?
If you ever need an A or S Grade weapon, they always have at least 1 of each in Giran. They are single-handedly driving prices up (L2 economy is all about monkey-see monkey-do these days).
Well, the beauty of it is that as a legit, you have to put the same amount of work in no matter how... in fact, squeezing money out of ebayers to purchase gear that you could otherwisely not afford might be easier than having to make it yourself.
Of course there's beauty in it - because no matter how much worse the actual prices get, the actual effort for the legit player don't get worse. That's something wonderful right there.
If this wasn't a competitive PvP game that would be one thing, but we're talking about people who can potentially roll me even though they've only done so much as create their toon and give it a name. No beauty, whatsoever. That's a very "carebear" way of looking at it, IMHO (no offense meant by that term).
It's just not the way I play this game. Maybe you can turn a blind eye to it but in their quest for uberness they also ruin many other aspects of the game. There's a new 9 man bot group in a very nice leveling spot in Valley of Saints. Yippee!!! Looks like NCSoft has been doing a nice job. Anywhoo...
When I got to A grade I had to sell all my C/B Grade items to afford A Grade, and the prices had dropped so much that I lost several million value on each item.
Buy Avadon Robe at 18 Mil, sell at 14 Mil after days of sitting in Giran because no one would buy at "market price". That's the current status of the economy on my "Heavy Traffic" server. Nothing has changed for the better since then.
If you think you're actually going to make a profit selling stuff to illegit players, tough luck on a server with a nice population. Just because they buy adena doesn't mean they are oblivious and have no sense of market savvy. They spend RL cash on it, you better believe they aren't looking to just throw it away.
One person I knew had to sell his BW Robe Set for 17 Mil because it wouldn't sell at any higher price. Usually when people do buy those sets they just want the helm/glove/boots to try to OE them to +6. They're looking for cheap buys.
But it doesn't matter if you make a little off of them, because when you get to A/S Grade and need that new weapon you'll have to buy it from them and they'll get it back out of you x2.
Why should you be worse off? The answer is simple - because you put those 10 hours into your work, not into the game. According to basic logic, that means you earn money (which you do), not progress in game (which people think they should have anyway).
That's an interesting point you have here ;)
Once again i'm not speaking for myself, cos i dont work 10 hours a day (and i dont earn that much money unfortunately :confused:), but i guess you've proven wrong the only point i thought was kinda right in his column...
It's like "you have 10 hours a day that you can use, if you use them to go to work you'll earn real money, if you use them to play Lineage II you'll level up"...
one thing I dont get.. I can understand a Cgrader or even perhaps a Bgrader buying adena becuse they can get best gear for relative litle real money.
But the lvl 80 char? dracbow? bossjewels?draconic? thats alot of real life money, about 500$.
So one can ask if actually the lvl 80 Ebayer is alot less in numbers then one think, becuse the majority of the L2 player is never gonna pay that much for best gear.
Besides, something like 500e/$ isnt even _that_ much. People who work and have established themselves can spend that easily on something they want. Heck, at worst, that would have been my 3 nights at a bar.
It's cute that you're bothered by the fact that some of us manage to adapt and use the economy as it is now. If there were no ebayers (and therefore no inflated prices, but also no farmers), what do you think you'd have to do to get a piece of armor? You'd have to manor, you'd have to quest, you'd have to grovel and beg a present dwarf or make your own; you'd have to raid, you'd have to haggle, you'd have to trade.
Me? I didn't ebay my starting fortune. I made it running giddy little circles in NoS on a total of five different alts, sometimes delevelling and sometimes sineatering to expand the amount of money I could make. I had most of it taken by Fortem, whom I trusted with things to crystalise too readily, just as I hit C grade, and had to start over.
However, I can watch me making money now - if I had 20 million from the get-go, affording top gear all the way to B wouldn't have been a problem at all - maybe even to A. I didn't have those 20 million, I had to earn them first.
If you "only" ebay "a few mil to get you started" (that's the most common of the long disgusting lines of excuses), you have an advantage over those who are trying to start from scratch that you can't possibly underestimate.
What do you think paid for your A Grade, if not ebayed money? Even if you earned it yourself, it'll hardly have been cleaned unless you farmed/manored it all yourself (which I doubt). Being honest about the situation of the market now and the place it puts legit players in doesn't make me an ebayer.
I just talked about all that with a friend over a barbecue yesterday evening :p and he had an interesting theory :
How about the ebaying just reflects the injustice of real life in a roleplaying game ?
In real life, some of us are born in wealthy families, have more money than others and can buy stuff that others cannot... Well, in Lineage II, this could be a RP thing :D : some have more money than others because ICly they were born in wealthier families, so they can afford stuff that the rest of us cannot !
How about that ? ;)
(of course we were a bit drunk, but at the time it seemed to make sense !)
Which would be a great addition if mmo's were supposed to simulate real life. Hopefully I shouldn't have to rant about how that's not such an awesome concept.
Besides, something like 500e/$ isnt even _that_ much. People who work and have established themselves can spend that easily on something they want. Heck, at worst, that would have been my 3 nights at a bar.
One thing I have learned.. never put how much you party for in perspective to other things, just make you sad :D
And 500$ is perhaps not the end of the world for you and me but the economy is not the same at all countries.
Simply put, new players dont want to come into a game like l2 without being at the "top" of the game. So ive come to accept new people "buying" their way after what 3 years, yea they wanna catch up and why not use 2 days of RL revenue of working instead of them wasting 4-5 months to catch up for fun.
Its like them buying a xbox live with say halo or something for $400 or something, and instantly having a sniper rifle and able to fight as well as everyone else.
Simply put, new players dont want to come into a game like l2 without being at the "top" of the game. So ive come to accept new people "buying" their way after what 3 years, yea they wanna catch up and why not use 2 days of RL revenue of working instead of them wasting 4-5 months to catch up for fun.
Its like them buying a xbox live with say halo or something for $400 or something, and instantly having a sniper rifle and able to fight as well as everyone else.
The "Why Not" is the same reason some players like me never used Cheat Codes even in single player games. It's because it's a game, and if you can't enjoy the journey, you are missing most of the actual game. Plus, it cheapens the game and the way one feels about their character, but obviously not all share these feelings, but they are real none the less.
Just returned after two years. Highest levels are 56. I'll find what I need, or make it myself, thank you.
How about the ebaying just reflects the injustice of real life in a roleplaying game ?
In real life, some of us are born in wealthy families, have more money than others and can buy stuff that others cannot... Well, in Lineage II, this could be a RP thing : some have more money than others because ICly they were born in wealthier families, so they can afford stuff that the rest of us cannot !
How about that ?
Doesn't work. RP-wise, ICly, Kyrael's family ("mother", actually, KyraelWardancer is Tree-born and therefore has no father) is extremely wealthy. Kyrael grew up surrounded by what is, to the elven mindset, wealth beyond imagination. She is, as portrayed ICly, a spoiled rich girl with a twisted, bon vivant outlook.
I'm not wealthy in-game. I have my A-grade set and weapon purely through 3 years of working the market, grinding adena (rather than XP), someone else's lucky drop (got my Tallum Helm for 20mil when the average was 90), and a few market tricks that actually paid off for me (where the other, conventional market tricks and tips have regularly failed to do so for me).
Right now, at 66, I suspect I am, in comparison to other characters my level, absolutely destitute. I have under 20 million to my name, and lose adena on a weekly basis. The costs involved with adventuring... shots, potions, travel... currently exceed what I take in during hunts, solo or otherwise. Luckily, I have everything I could really want. I could sell my Dragonslayer and buy another A-grade sword and shield if I wanted to, but I don't see the need. The gear I have is because I like the way it looks, not for stats or best-build.
I also work full-time and make an acceptable wage for what I do, though I'm by no means rich. By the national average, I'm considered "working poor", but, then, that's anyone that makes under $50k a year. There's a lot of us in that boat (the majority of the country, as a matter of fact). Could I afford to drop $500 and ebay the best of the best? Sure. It's roughly half a paycheck, but I could swing it. Will I? No. It's simply not the way the game was meant to be played.
You know what way the game also wasnt meant to be played?
using soulshots. using pots.
those werent meant to be apart of normal lvling.
soulshots were put into the game for emergency use only. same with pots.
you can afford anything you want in this game if you never use those. but only the people who actually played in prelude would know this because everyone now has it burnt into their heads they need to use soulshots.
bots being a perfect example... each bot group makes millions of adena a day. because they dont use soulshots.
It depends on how much your mobs are dropping. If you're getting 3k per mob on average and spend 1k on shots killing it, it's more efficient using soulshots killing it twice as fast. 2k x 2 > 3k x 1
RP-wise, ICly, Kyrael's family ("mother", actually, KyraelWardancer is Tree-born and therefore has no father) is extremely wealthy. [...] I'm not wealthy in-game.
Then we dont have the same way of RPing :p
To me, RPing is not "everything in my imagination", it has to have some real and actual effects on my character ingame.
Even when i play pen-and-paper D&D, Stormbringer or Vampire, the things that are written on my character sheet drive the way my character will act (in some way).
Ingame here, my character is not very wealthy, and he was really dependant on the Clan he has been in (Echoes of Darkness), so i wrote my story accordingly.
I'm not saying that my way is better than yours, of course not, it's just too different ways :)
If you look at my history, you'll see that Olorae herself is quite rich. While this does not translate to liquid assets (adena), it does extend beyond that into intangibles.
Wealth is not measured in coins alone, after all.
But each person has their own way of RPing. No one is more or less better than the others. To add PVP into this mix, you start treading on egos.