[MUD-Dev] A world without charity

[Corpheous Andrakin]

--- Eamonn O'Brien <decado at esatclear.ie> wrote:

> All this talk of who owns whos sword and ebay trading lately got
> me thinking, and so I started to wonder why players can trade
> items for money, and the answer is simple, because in game
> mechanics generally allow you to hand an item over to a player and
> to recieve nothing in return, an act of charity. So this got me
> thinking, if the game prevented acts of charity such that all you
> could do with an item was junk it (i.e. remove it from the game
> world, not drop it) or trade it for an equally valuable item what
> would this do to the game world?

Uh oh...

> Item values could be assigned on a simple scale, 0 junk to 10
> godly. Once it was mostly accurate it could be tweaked once the
> game was running by moving items which proved to be more valuable
> up 1 notch on the scale, which is basically a boost to the item
> since it becomes more valuable so no nerf cries should be heard
> (items valued too highly should not be a problem, a poor item
> rated at 4 instead of 3 will not damage the trade system since it
> will be lesser than all items it could be traded with, which
> should not damage the game, at worst it becomes a trade token
> within that value bracket). As long as relative pop rates for the
> items were similar (which presumably they should be for equally
> powerful items) so that there is no easy pop item to trade for a
> very rare item of similar worth then it should become very
> difficult for any out of game trading to occur. Players would be
> less likely to hand over cash for an item if the game required
> them to hand over an equally powerful item with the trade
> anyway. Also when the expansion comes out with bigger better
> items, you can just expand the value scale up to 12 and rank the
> new items accordingly. As long as you keep relatively few
> classifications to prevent making trading impractical it should
> work.

So according to your system, I can't hand over MULTIPLE items of a
lower value just because you have a slightly higher ranked item?
What if I wanted to trade three Level 4 quality gems for your Level
6 quality sword?  You may as well make it a single player game,
that's half the fun, arguing over prices and trying to get the best
price possible for your item or get the best deal possible from the
other person.  The only thing I can possibly see that this does
beneficially is control the economy so you can prevent inflation.

> If you want to allow newbies to be helped, then you can easily
> permit free trade of the lowest grades of items.

So newbies can't get anything other than the crappiest of items?
Great, so no working up for that special quest sword or beating the
boss monster on the lowest level of the dungeon.  What can they use?
Up to rank level 5 items?  Why not just give them a stick and go
tell them to kill a Gnoll King?

> This system could solve several problems:

>   1. Twinking. Since you cannot give items to your newbies until
>   they find equally useful items, twinking becomes a much more
>   restricted option.

I gurantee the newbies will still have the "best" equipment they can
possibly equip if they're in a good guild.

>   2. Muling. Without the ability to freely transfer items, mules
>   become much more difficult to manage, which should reduce server
>   space used for mules. (Note I dont doubt players will still
>   hoard items, but since presumably you have some sort of item
>   limit per player this should end up fairly limited). I would
>   certainly imagine it would be a better situation all round.

Muling is a lot more uncommon than most people think, it's not some
rampant disease that has to be stamped out.  It really doesn't hurt
the economy because transfering an item to another player doesn't
hurt most economies.  Someone had to get that item in the first
place remember.

>   3. Account Trading. Since getting a high level, well equipped
>   account is harder, it should reduce the tendancy to trade them,
>   though conversely this may make accounts more valuable. How do
>   full account trades generally work? I imagine it is either a
>   full transfer of billing information (which should be easily
>   preventable by the operators, just make sure you are always
>   billing the same person for the same account), or just a
>   transfer of the password to have the player transfer all the
>   items to their own chars which would become very difficult under
>   the above system.

Nope, this one should go down under the problems, account prices
would SOAR.  Everyone go to Ebay and type in "DAOC" (without the
quotes) for a search.  You'll find about 700+ things up for
sale. Almost 90% of the stuff there is characters and in game money.
Why?  Item restriction uses...BAM.  In DAOC items have levels and if
your not high enough the item is purple to you and would break in
like 3 uses and as it gets higher above you may actually be WORSE
for you than an item of similar level.  Which is why accounts are
sold instead, generally around $300.

> Problems with this system.

>   1. It prevents genuine acts of charity.

Taking charity out of a game is not cool, but that's an opinion.

>   2. It would be difficult to reconcile this with any craftsman
>   classes. Craftsmen who created items would end up with a bunch
>   of high level items that are presumably pretty useless to
>   them. There are several ways this could be managed, allow
>   craftsmen to melt the items to get components to build new items
>   or something similar might work, though any trade-up cycle would
>   obviously have to be carefully controlled to prevent the easy
>   creation of trade items, conversely if craftsmen was the only
>   way to allow for trading up then it would make those classes a
>   lot more useful in game.

You could work this out in a number of recycling fashions, it may
actually improve a want for the lower level items but putting
different restrictions on items makes more sense to me than not
allowing X item to be traded for Y because they have a different
rank.

>   3. It reduces the use for gold in game (oh no, i hear you cry,
>   my 10 billion gold coins, now useless).

Wait a minute, why is gold useless?  I thought that might be the
savoir of your idea, where you put a price on how much the item was
worth and you'd have to trade that amount to get it from another
player.  Without that, gold has NO use in your game much less
someones "10 billion coins".

>   4. It is a little clunky. Values have to be a bit arbitrary.

Players will complain...a LOT about how one sword is better than
another sword and why does the suckier sword have a higher value
than the good sword?  The balance issues and the testing that would
HAVE to go into this boggles the mind.  I know of no game that was
tested this throughly.

>   5. Players will complain when they cant trade so come up with
>   some backstory nonsense about why items refuse to be just handed
>   over.

So give the player a bunch of BS as to why they can't do something?
Players don't stand for that just so you know.  I wouldn't just quit
your game, I'd boycott it.

>   6. You may have to make some sort of group loot system (let your
>   players bid with all that gold they no longer need) or the
>   grabber will not be able to give over the item.

So for every single loot drop you have to roll on an item ala a
Dragon Kill Point system/Tarasque system?  What if there's multiple
mobs, and the window for loot rolling pops up?  What if someone who
doesn't need the item at all just throws money at it to piss you
off?  Meh, this last one isn't that bad of a suggestion, it does
have upsides.

> Anyone think this could work, and more importantly can anyone tell
> me why it wouldnt work?

Well, besides the fact that you seemed to have turned the game into
a single player adventure and taken out a major part of the
interactive community...yes.  You wreak havoc on a tried and true
trade system which to this point has no problem.

This is to all the game developers who are in a game now or in the
process of making one.  Players WILL sell your items on Ebay if it's
popular.  As shown time and again with EQ and AO, no matter what you
do, players will always find a way to do it and will continue to do
it even if you threaten death on a stick.  They don't give up, which
is not to say that you should if you can REALLY PROVE with actual
numbers that it's hurting your game.  I'm all for ya' if it is, but
if it's not, why keep coming up with all these wacked out methods
that cost moola which could be used for more beneficial things like
marketting and development tools and new hardware?  *cough* and
parties *cough*.

I just hate to see the developer community turn into a pack of
ravenous dogs trying to chew off an arm that still plays and pays
with the rest of the community.  :)

-Lee

=====
Corpheous
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