Consider everything I say to be as it concerns PvE. PvP systems are irrelevant to the discussion as it concerns this game because this game will not have a concern for PvP in any real meaningful purpose.
Okay, so let's examine it from the pure PvE perspective: A single player RPG. Absolutely no PvP, because you are the only player.
Not at all. A multiplayer game where cooperative play is required to progress through many aspects of the world (group/raid content). Just because currency is not tradable does not make it a single player game. In fact, I think you are being rather facetious in saying so.
There were certain fights in EQ where a potion (not just HP or mana) was useful as a solution to an encounter design.
This is also true of any single player RPG. But *A* solution is not the ONLY solution. There are OTHER solutions. Solutions which won't cost you a potion. And don't say it's just me: Potion-hoarding is archetypal. LOTS of RPG players think this way: "oh, I'll just save the potion/scroll/whatever for when I *REALLY* need it, surely this can't be it". If it's the only solution, then you're looking at an fixed cost, and you can't do anything about fixed costs: If your gameplay can't pay for fixed costs, you lose the game, game over.
Sure, and those solutions may or may not be viable. For instance, you may lack the group makeup for a given boss encounter and that potion might be the edge your group makeup needs to win. I am not talking about static design where the potions are required, rather it is an option that may or may not be needed depending on numerous other variables and conditions.
Don't think of it as a "failed" form of game play , rather think of it as a style of play (This is one of the many differences between old school vs new school).
If you can't generate enough funds in-game to meet your baseline ammo costs, you can't do anything because doing things requires paying your ammo costs. At this point, you have two options: Find subsidy, either by subsidizing yourself with more profitable characters (And why are you carrying this deadweight character if it is costing you money rather than earning you money? No PvP = no need to pay for a warship), or getting your guild to subsidize you (Again, why, for all the same reasons as previous); or scrap the character as not economically viable. It's interesting that a game will let you create a character that isn't economically viable rather than giving you a popamole package which the developers promise to make sure is playable, but...the point remains: Your character is not independently viable and can only be sustained via subsidies or PvP(inc. auction house). If the game has no trade or PvP, then subsidies cannot happen, and all characters must be economically self-sufficient
You misunderstand. I am not saying you will not be able to generate enough funds (ever), I am saying that you may not have enough funds to purchase what you need when you want it. I gave an example of this that explained what I was talking about (stop arguing and start discussing). You might have enough money to afford a few of your spells (not the entire 10-15 you got at that level) so you have to choose what would be most beneficial at that time, then go out and continue to gather money. Eventually you will have enough to afford them all. You are doing this while also managing your funds for food/water, components for spells (bone chips, diamonds, etc...), skill training, and so on. All of this has to be managed. If you don't and you blow all of your money, well... you will have to go out and gather more to be able to afford those supplies. This is a layer of play, a system of character development management.
Contrast this with the way things have becomes as it concerns spells. If spell costs are always affordable, then there is no need to have them cost anything. If they do not cost anything, then there is no point in having people go pick them up. The result is the systems where people ding a level and the spells magically appear on their hotbar. They have no money management, not sub game play where they have to make choices. Everything falls in their lab. Subtle but key game play elements are lost, simplified, dumbed down.
Like I said, you will have money to buy your spells, but it may take you a couple more levels of saving if you were poor with your money. If you are spend thrift, inattentive to character development and management, well... you were likely always poor, always complaining about how all these things were "inconvenient" and a waste of time (ie mainstream player).
This sort of money management type system was common in EQ and that is the perspective to which my comments are based. Considering this game is based on EQ and the many subtle systems to which it had, I think this system is relevant.
EQ had PvP, however. A character that could not sustain itself via PvE alone could still PvP for money. Remember, trade and the auction house are considered PvP activities.
If you can't sustain yourself in PvE alone, then you likely shouldn't be playing the game. What is the old PvP saying "Learn to Play"? No, trade and the AH are not. That is your pigeon holed definition. not all trade is a player vs player competition. Many people trade for the purpose of mutual benefit. I have something you want, you have something I want. Is it a fair trade or do you purpose otherwise? While you may see it as "playing a game", I don't, I see it as an element of social interaction. It is why car dealers hate me. I don't budge, I don't play games, and often I go over their head and deal with the fleet manager because he doesn't care about the games either. That is, your definition is based on the fact that you view any trades as a means to screw the other guy over. That is a method of trade, but those have classifications as well, some call them snake oil traders.
I personally enjoyed the management of my money. It was nice to have to pay attention to what I was making, to have to make decisions of "Do I spend it on this spell or that first, what about this skill or that... etc...), it was a certain style of strategy of play, especially when you considered that if you ran out of food and water, healing and mana regen was greatly reduced.
Sure, but those decisions ultimately have a fixed solution: You MUST create an economically sustainable character somehow, or your character is unplayable. You decide what corners you cut off. It's basically just character building, only instead of skillpoints and statpoints, you're allocating gold.
Interesting, you say character building? in an RPG you say? Interesting, imagine that.
As a side note, this system also gave some classes and races pros and cons (ie a Ogre consummed food at a higher rate, and certain classes had spells to summon water/food). So, no... game doesn't "end", it is a process of choice and consequence and it worked very well in EQ until mainstream began to demand change.
If your character isn't viable, then yes, your game basically does end: Your character's economic output and reserves hit zero. You starve to death. Same as real life. Sure, the game may not formally declare GAME OVER, but if you cannot afford to fire your gun, you can't afford to kill monsters to get more gold. You flatline. You are dead.
There are always viable solutions. Maybe not ideal or to the liking of the player, but they exist. Again, EQ had this type of system, I am describing, and yet... never did this happen. If you are broke, without ammo, without food/water, you can still gain money and save to eventually get back up to speed. It will be slow if you are at rock bottom, but to hit there, well... you kind of deserved it and really were piss poor at managing your character (which is why some didn't like EQ). If you run out of food and water, your HP/Mana gain would slow to near stop (not entirely, but would take a long while if you let it go that long). Even if you had no weapons, no ammo, no armor, you could still go back and fight low level mobs with your fists to get copper where you could afford a piece of food and water which would last you a while. There was not "end", there was just a long list of piss poor choices which resulted in a very difficult recovery. Call it a "consequence" of poor character development in a "character development game".
Well, it was more than potions. For instance, several spells in EQ used gems bought or looted to cast spells. Everything from "Cats eye aggets" which were fairly cheap, up to black diamonds and diamonds which were extremely expensive.
Like I said, ammo costs. Can't afford ammo? Use your knife. Can't kill anything with your knife? Game over.
No knife, use your fists fighting beetles and swamp flies, get some money up selling shells, wings, etc... then buy a cheap knife off the vendor, then kill some harder mobs for better money, buy some ammo, and lookie... you are up to speed! Amazing how character development systems work. this is one of those areas you are arguing with me where you said that your 3rd party knowledge of EQ is failing you. Like I said, this system existed and worked fine in EQ. No "end", no "game over", well.... I take that back. Maybe for the lazy and inept. /shrug
This is another component of play that players spent currency on for game play. Some would use them often, others situation based. In the end, this system was more than the games of today where vendors really aren't vendors as much as they are a money exchange station.
Vendors that you can both buy and sell to are still money exchange stations. At the end of the day, it's economics. A price controlled vendor is basically the same thing as price controls in real life. They distort the market, allowing activities which shouldn't persist to persist and enabling activities which shouldn't exist to exist.
RL != Game. No system to date even gets close. That said, my point is that vendors in most games today sell useless crap there is no need or real purpose for. In EQ, vendors were useful. They sold all kinds of components, food, water, etc... AND they sold items people brought in and sold to them as well. The idea of price control as I speak here is that they can keep the progression mechanics sound up through he levels and into new content while player economies allow people to amass huge amounts of coin which invalidates any form of currency gating in a game system (which EQ used to be heavily based on). Freedom in a game economy is irrelevant, this isn't a rights issue, it is a balance issue of keeping the systems function as originally intended. You like to break systems, that is fine, but broken systems lead to imbalanced games and when games reach that? They become wastes of time. The enjoyment for some people is that there is a consistent means of progression that is measured and they can work their way up through to a goal. You can scoff at it, dislike, it etc... but it is merely a style of play you dislike, much like I dislike the elements of play that you enjoy.
For me, I want NPC vendors to be more than that. I don't want everything I wish to get or need be that of having to pander to volatile and easily manipulated player markets.
You say volatile, I say dynamic. If the economy is purely static, what you have is a linear optimization problem. That isn't gameplay, that's math.
I like to know that if I see that item for sale for 10 gold, that if I go out and work hard to save up 10 gold, I can afford it within the games designed system. A reasonable time spent of effort to reward of expense. Player systems outpace game systems rather quickly. For instance, when I played WoW on release, people traded items at a reasonable value that reflected the effort to obtain them at that level. So, as a level 5 I could go out and make money off the things I killed, come back and afford that item. In a matter of a couple months, WoWs AH turned that into a joke. That level 5 might be able to earn 5-10 silver in a long session of play lets say, but now that item is being sold for 10-50 gold. That is, for that level 5 to be able to afford that 10-50 gold item, by the time they were able to earn the cash through game play, well... the item would be way beneath them in value. It would be pointless to even try. So, they are forced to try and gain some items and sell them on the AH to be able to afford anything on the AH. This is why I do not use the AH in most games as it is a system that is separate from the actual game. It doesn't function like a real world economy, there are no market controls from the game world to keep in it tact like reality does and once gold selling hits it, well.. it becomes pointless (much like what people claim WoWs market is today).
So no, I don't care for that volatile play (or as you say... Dynamic... ohhh "jaz hands!!"). Like I said, I want a straight deal, straight price, no gimmicks. /shrug
Not a PvP game we are talking about. We aren't discussing PvP, rather PvE. I know you think the only game worth playing is PvP, but look at this from an objective internalized view (ie its a PvE game), not constantly from an external one.
Trade is PvP. Nearly all MMOs have trade. Ergo, nearly all MMOs have PvP. An MMO without trade and without PvP...is a single player game with bad lag, fascist admintration, and other players filling the roles of the NPCs. And an outlandish price tag. As such, pretty much all MMORPGs, as opposed to MOBAs, have trade (and therefore, PvP).
No, you play trade as PvP. You are like that guy who puts on the gloves to do some friendly boxing and you start pulling sucker punches and hitting below the belt because you want to win. You think you are in a fight and so you go all out while I think we are just having fun boxing, etc.. The same is with trade. You see trade AS the reason for play (you have stated this in past arguments), that is what you do, that is your game. Problem is, trade is a tool in these types of games, not the point. So your unhealthy approach creates problems as you are trying to fuck everyone over who are really just wanting to play a character development game in a fantasy world where they can explore and challenge themselves against the environment.
Personally, I don't see how you can find playing these games with any real interest. It must be because you manipulate the markets for real money profit. That would explain why you continue to play AH master in games where there really is no skill in doing so. I mean, its like shooting fish in a barrel how stupidly easy it is to play the AH game and get ridiculously rich at it.
Here is the thing Norfleet. I understand you try to reason a certain way to justify all things to fit in a neat little box (ie all games are pvp because trading anything between someone is pvp), but those are fallicous positions. You are pigeon holing everything into your narrow definition through very loose translation. I don't accept it. So, undersstand that and you don't have to keep wasting my time with "everything is PVP OMG!!!" stupid arguments. Just because a butter knife is a knife, doesn't make it a weapon. You are going back to your everything is a nail argument in the past. If that is the case, not going to bother. I mean, for fucks sake, I have been discussing simpe mechanics and all you have been doing the entire time is going on and on about fucking PVP. FFS we get it, you love PvP! /sheesh
This system creates a since where people can manage their income and then save to gain bigger and better through standard progression. The market can't be manipulated as game play is required to earn income to buy products in the store, all balanced as the developers see appropriate to the progression of the system. No easy gimick lotto wins. No buying gold to circumvent play. You want to afford that item off that vendor, better get to playing.
Sure, and that basically just means gold earnings vs. costs is another statistic in your character build. Such a rigidly controlled system is also incredibly boring. Beating the system is the entire point of a PvE game. Without a system of sufficient complexity that it cannot be so rigidly controlled, and without any other players, you may as well be playing Tic Tac Toe against the machine. Boring.
Layers of progression is the point. Many thinsg to manage. You find it boring, not everyone else does. /shrug
So again, the point is not "This game isn't the PvP game I want". Rather the point is "How would this PvE system work, what are the pros and cons, possible abuses, etc.."
In this case, your pros are your cons: Pro: System is rigidly controlled and utterly predictable, and thus no unexpected behaviors should occur. Con: System is rigidly controlled and utterly predictable, and thus reduced to a dry exercise in linear optimization. If currency has no trade value, there is not really a pressing reason not to budget all of it. There is also not a pressing reason to acquire it. Abuses: A hole exists in your control and your players slip the net somehow. You may or may not find it practical to simply ban them all.
You are not a player Norfleet, you are an exploiter. That is why you dislike standard PvE systems. You love to fuck everything up, to see the tears of those you fuck over. You are narcissistic and honestly, for an older guy, you have a serious case of ADD by the expectations of your play. So far though, you have;t even discussed anything. All you have done is complain and bitch about how my mentions aren't PvP. I get it fuck head, you love PvP. You want PvP, but if you can't reasonable discuss anything outside of wanting PVP, then you are a one trick pony, not even a bright one, like a kid who won't fucking shut up at the store because he wants that candy bar! /boggle
Even your Everquest had trade. I doubt people want to play an echo chamber.
Barter system allows for full player to player trade, but your focus was so heavy on PvP that you missed it. You aren't very useful in discussion man.
