I've brought this up on IRC before, and I want to document it before I forget. I'll start with a little background:
One of the things we want to do with PW is really target and attract a certain type of gamer. This type is definitely a veteran RPG gamer, who is probably in college or older. They ideally do not have gobs of time, because they should be busy with studies and lives (jobs, families, etc). With most of our ideas, we are targeting this type of player, due to us designing the type of game we would like to play ourselves, and most of us fall into that category.
In thinking about how to nicely dissuade power-gamer types and farmers from trying to dominate our game, I've tried to think of ways on how to make it harder for them, while also catering to our target player type. The thought I had was to have a free, and a regular pay account have access to a certain number of hours per month of play time. The trick is finding the true sweet spot of what our target player really has, in terms of free time to play. The players who want to play more than that would have to pay more for it. This allows us to cash in a little more for players who are cashing in on our game, while also serving (hopefully) to dissuade them from trying to dominate our game, and thusly dillute the purity of the RPG experience.
The other problem is determining what play time is and what social time is. If a player just wants to log in to chat with the guild/friends, it would probably be in our best interest to not count such "play" towards their hours, should we try such a system.
What got me thinking of this system was cell phones. They have proved that an ala carte billing menu can work well with people. This could be along the same lines as a prepaid phone, which there are a lot of now.
I will add my disclaimer now that this could be a very bad idea, but I think with the right amount of finesse, it could end up becoming something viable.
Anyways, since I am at work, I don't have time to outline it further, so this is just the gist. I think we need a list of pros and cons in order to truly refine it, and make it viable.
I would not complain if the game had 2/3 hours free play time/day for each +1 hour/day, during a month, u would have to pay 1+ Euro/dollar/pound, u chose, in the end of the month.
U talked something about various kinds of players and i just had this idea some time ago;
1- thinking in ppl that love FPS(first person shooter) why cant we make the Ranger going that way whit a first person view and head shot system (the player could chose between that or the normal critical strike percentage system in third view)?
2- in some other topic i read some suggestion about, hiding the name or change the1 that is available to every1 to see over ur head or under u, this would put the game more realistic since in reality one can only tell others name if he asks or something.
Moving forward in this line of thinking i thought in the Assassin profession, when u move ur mouse in ur screen it fells like an auto-selecting target ability right? and u think 'if i didnt had my life facilitated this way i would have a really pain in the arse' and Assassin still suxs, but we cant take that.
So how to resolve this problem to make an Assassin more realistic whitout taking that? - Make a Stealth mode, were an Assassin, while unable to attack, can only use hiding skills and related to the 'shadows use', were no1 can just use the mouse to 'see' him/her, if he/she wants to attack would need to stop the stealth mode and any1 could 'see' him/her again and select him/her (ex:As long as u are using this stance u cannot be selected or seen by another player and you cannot attack, if you get nearby an enemy this stance only lasts 3 more secs, all your shadow skills are desabled for 30 secs when this stance ends), just like the 'shadow step' but realistic and donne by the player^^.
All this would make an Assassin player fell realy the rush of being one, whiteout making him/her any more or less powerful that already is ;p.
for visuals of the game the assassin could become a shadow in the ground, which means that in a light area any1 could see that shadow.
I'll try my hand at generating a few pros/cons. This is, in no way, meant to be a position post. It's only meant to help get discussion moving in the right direction.
Cons
- Static billing for dynamic free time (it doesn't account for surges in free time -- i.e. vacation, sick, etc.)
- Static billing for dynamic free time (doesn't account for surges in lack of free time -- i.e. work-travel, vacation, loss of network, etc.)
- MMO games are built on sense of community (need some way to stay logged in and interact)
- Getting in a groove/on a roll can be interrupted with demoralizing effects
- Favors the efficient/smarter/faster player (causes players to spend less time interacting and more time developing their character)
Pros
- Repels power-gamers to a degree (makes it uncomfortable to continue in some cases)
- Adds potentially-needed revenue (we have a thread somewhere with many ideas for income)
- Korean virtual guilds (yes, they exist) mitigation (unprofitable to farm resources)
- Normalization on game play across the board to a degree (less über players vs. new players)
- Causes players to actually have a life (principle is that players must do something during offline time)... most should already
Of course, both categories need to be prefaced with "To a degree" since they will always be those munchkins and others that either have the funds to beat the system or find some way to exploit the system. I think Jerky's main point to this thread, if I understand him correctly, is that this procedure will impede many power gamers, and the rest will generate income to offset whatever costs Jerky incurs from running the servers 24/7. I think we should definitely explore this area more, remembering that there is no "silver bullet" to fix the problem. Instead, like clothing in Utah, solutions must be applied in layers.
Tangent:I suggested something a while back that sort of applies to Jerky's concern that needs resolving. Since this world is bound to be huge, and if travel is an integral part to character development, then it would behoove the player the spend their offline time traveling. If travel takes upwards to 8-12 hours, that would allow for only 4-8 hours of play a day (assuming they traveled once per day). I'll see if I can find the thread and repost or edit.
Edit: http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?showtopic=6282&st=20
Searching for a viable business model is a good idea. But as I understand your post, people who play a lot would pay a lot because we don't want them to play a lot. That's quite an is unusual model. (That's a huge simplification, yes.)
I assume there is no way to differentiate social time and play time. After all, playing can be a social activity. Attracting a certain type of gamer is -in my opinion- more related to game design than to business model.
The only way for that is rewarding social activity.
Rewarding sociability is a huge domain. Social networking is moving to that trend providing users real or artificial money if the user is creating popular content. I am not implying that PW should use the same technic but rather that if you want a certain type of gamer the game should provide advantages to them. (So far, I am only stating the obvious.)
One possibility would be e.g. to break the experience/time relation. The basic idea in every mmorpg is that you gain experience by playing. As a consequence, the more you play, the more experienced you will be. The game promotes the creation of über character. (See 'top ten players' lists.) Players want then to have one and so will either spend a lot of time to get one or pay for one. (That's the idea behind farming, you pay someone time.)
One idea to break the experience/time relation would be e.g. to cap the experience gained for a certain amount of real time. Enforcing a strict limit like "if xpgained > threshold then no more xp" would be a pretty bad way. It could be more dynamic way, like multiplying the gain by a ratio that would lessen the more experience you gain over a certain amount of real time. And the ratio should at the end tend towards a non null limit.
That sounds like mathematics. If you want an idea : K0, K1, K3 being strictly positive constants, x the total amount of experience gained over a given amount of time, and r your ratio, you would end up with something like r = K0/(x+K1) + K3 . K3 would be the limit, and the constants need to be fixed such as for every possible x 0 < r <=1 .
I would like to add that this way of implementing experience gain is more realistic. Three days without sleep in a classical moorpg can grant you -with the old experience/time relation- great 'powers' (call it whatever you want), but in real life that's not really the case. Even after only one night without sleep, you won't be as much productive as before.
PS : There is also the concept that gaining experience over one skill should lessen other skills. I think that this kind of experience gain should not be capped. That way a character will always be able to evolve, either by specializing or by changing his/her 'master' skills. But I have yet to think how to include that with the rule I mentioned. above.
Ethan, I think that's a fantastic post. I've come to most all those conclusions as well, but I think that implementing a mix of ideas could be the best solution. If time played > xx hours or skills gained > xx points, enter fail mode. If time played > xx hours AND skills gained > xx points, enter observer mode. With Fail Mode being an increased rate of critical failure (destroying whatever materials with which you're working like food crops, metallurgy, lumber, etc.; awkward attack/defend patterns causing much less dmg dealt and much more received; restricted access to certain NPCs/quests; so forth) and Observer Mode being a state of either A) drunken stupor or 2) (B=smilie) 100% critical fail rate or C) movement and speech controls only.
By itself, this is little more than an irritant. But combined with having to pay a bit of hard earned cash for minimal gains and maximum fails makes the habit of power gaming a bit more unappealing. Very rarely will a player stay logged in with Observer Mode turned on just to explore the countryside if they're shelling out bucks just to have exploration not count toward their cartography skill.
Or maybe, observer mode could be a mode where no payment is required after hours and one can simple stay logged in to interact with the populus.
All these are just ideas that will probably, eventually, be thrown away, but are meant to spawn ideas. What do you think about these Ethan? Jerky?
The same thing happened on irc last night. I was accused of having communist ideas, and all counter ideas ended up being just as (if not moreso) communist .
Seriously though, I would love to be idealistic and just say that the gameplay will take care of it; howerver, lets face it, how many gold farmers or power gamers really care about the gameplay? For farmers they want a popular game that they can cash in on. They don't care whether the game is level-based or skill based. Some power gamers will, but others are after the "tabula rasa" (no pun intended) of a new game; that is to say, they want a new starting line where they can burst out and get the lead through pouring in endless hours of time.
In the end, gameplay or not, they will come in droves. It is our job to both design good gameplay that doesn't reward their kind(s) and come up with possible solutions.
A kind-of musician's humble opinion:
- When I 'play' my game, I want to play, as in, it's an escape from real life
- Following that, I want my time spent in my escape to be better than my time spent out of my escape
- If I am frustrated in life, I'm going to be escaping more, especially if the cause is something I have no control over
- Therefore I'm going to be spending more time in my escape, and the game will be making me happy, even if nothing else is
So then there's the question, is the game a moral tool to tell people they can have X amount of time a day to enjoy themselves using the tool we created for them, or is it a gift to people saying that this is a tool we created and we are giving it to them to reap and sow whatever they can from it.
I am opposed to restricting time played, imposing restrictions, and deterring players from wanting to play longer periods of time because I know that I myself would want to spend as much time as I can in a fantasy world, regardless of the game creator's good intentions for my time.
I stopped playing WoW because of how much time it took to enjoy, in the end, with all these 'elite' guilds requiring people to play 20 hours a day. I didn't like that at all, and simply couldn't do it, but I did like that people had the choice to do that. I'm not eager to start impeding the player's freedom, and think that there might be actual mechanical/gameplay ways to normalize the playerbase, regardless of time played.
For example, notoriety. If a player plays more, there's more of a chance he'll be famous. Fact. This is a perk that doesn't affect gameplay, but still rewards someone for their time.
Another example, exploration. A player that plays more will have the opportunity to explore more land. Fact. While this player who plays much more will have the advantage in mapmaking and will know more about the enemies in the region, this doesn't directly affect their abilities to kill monsters, which I guess is where we are going with this.
Should players who play more become stronger players?
And my answer is yes, because they have put the time in to do that, and that is their escape and what they want to do.
However, then there is the question, 'why not just buy a really strong character instead of playing one?'
The answer here, I think, is the developer's job. Firstly if all levels are able to play with each other, it wouldn't matter different level brackets either. Secondly, if a major draw of the game is the environment, the beauty, the gameplay, this would also deter people from just wanting to fight stuff, regardless if that is what they really want to do. In the MMORPGs I have seen (which truthfully isn't too many) fighting is the major idea of the game. You run, you fight, you level up. You can have a profession on the side, but you're a hero, a fighter, a defender.
I am hoping PW will be different. You can fight, but you might still be less powerful than the rich baker, who can hire men to kill you.
You can be the most powerful banker in the game, but that one rogue still might be able to slip past your defenses and get your gold. This is the stuff I want to see, and so in the end my argument is for balance, and not for any normalization of player's times.
Sorry for the very long post, and I hope I didn't overlap on anything said before I'm very tired and need sleep.
Wow echo, thanks for that thoughtful response. It was well thought out and mentioned many possible drawbacks. I will try to respond to these below.
There's a point to keep in mind here; if free accounts can concievably be used by farmers, they will. In great quantities. So placing play-time limits on them is futile because they will just make more accounts and rotate between them. Filtering out IP addresses isn't really a viable answer to this, for several reasons.
Eh, I didn't read through nearly everything. I like the idea Ethan had about the longer you're logged into the game, the less skill you gain. Now if we make it relate to the amount of game time, instead of real time, we have something interesting. We can then simulate the player being awake for days at a time.
If we have 4 game days in a real day, it means the average player probably won't play over 2 game days in a day, leaving plenty of time to recover when he comes to play the following (real) day. It essentially allows about 4 hours of game time each day where the player will receive the full skill level he is entitled to. After that, the game character starts to get tired, loses reaction times and coordination, and gains less skill. Could even throw in something fun where if the player is logged on for 5 or 6 game days, he'll just pass out and you're forced offline for 7 or 8 game hours (about 2 hours real time). It's a minor penalty and will keep people from playing for too long. You could also make the health deteriorate after 4 days.
OT: When Jerky brought up gold farming I got a crazy idea in my head. What if we make the amount of resources in the game finite? Over time we'll be simulating what will happen on earth when our resources run out. If things don't work out we can always add a new area with more resources, or even just respawn the old ones.
You are all saying "Time = Power" but im not familiar whit this think. My MMORPG experience resumes to 'Guild Wars' and there once you get to lvl 20 theres no more.
Farmers can have VERY GOOD LOOKING armor and weapons and lots of money, but their stats are the same has a any other finished (lvl 20) character.
Once you unlock the skills you find better for you, you can only use 8 to go battle whit.
So for me all that 'Power' resumes to is your own ability to chose a built (the 8 skills you chose to go battle whit) and to use it in battle, and your skill to actually battling.
Power = ability to use your mouse and keyboard in a battle (GW rocks^^)
PS. has u can see from my avatar i farm a bit
World-wide limit = hoarding.
Supply and demand say that if a resource is scarce, those with the resource can set the price... ergo, it makes perfect financial sense for people to stockpile and hit the world limit as quickly as possible, then slowly sell their stock while controlling the points where the resources spawn.
A per-player limit would make it impossible for people to hoard.
I don't think that there should be a limit on money, but if someone is collecting 300 rabbit skins, then they're no longer a productive member of the economy. If there is only one time per year that a resource can be gathered, such as fruit, etc., then it makes sense to have enough of a stockpile to last through the expected shortage. Otherwise, the most efficient economy is one where a good is consumed as quickly as possible.
Players like hoarding; who are we to deny them that part of the gameplay? Besides, limited storage has been done in nearly every previous mmo, and all it does is encourage people to create mules.
What about the idea of a tax on taxable items? It could be a money-sink as well as a way to keep the concept of decayable income active.
Of course there are pros and cons to this like anything else.
Taxable items:
Revenue (liquid assets like coins)
Increase (farm produce, fatlings)
Land (owning/building upon it)
Perishable items:
Bio-matter (skins, etc.)
Consumables (food, drink, potions, elixirs)
Collectables (wood, herbs, metals)
Like always, different items having different decay rates...
Just some ideas to keep this thread off-topic.
I agree. I've had taxes in the design for quite a while now. I think its another step in the right direction.
I will move the topic from in-game economics to in-game history but only to say again that if we don't want people do something we have to reduce the value of it relatively to the other things.
Player invests time in order to gain something. This is a fact, we can't( and don't want to) change that.
In a part of the MMO games, the only value that can be obtained and kept is character's power. (By the way, from an economy point of view, that's an open system.) This value can be obtained by anyone and is only related to the character and not the player, so it can be easily traded. As stated by someone , even if we try to put limits on this, this won't change. *
'Sociability' assets on the other hand can not really be traded i.e. the business/friends/enemies network has not much value for another player as they are more related to the player and how (s)he plays. The gameplay should thus promotes networks building as a protection against farming but also as a feature.
This asset is however not permanent, which is partly the reason why there is no much value for another player. A permanent asset would be simply said history. What should be permanent is not the characters but their history. (http://www.guildcafe.com/Vox/04073-Smith-Dynamic-Worlds.html) Again the world design should promotes that even though the design of such feature might not be easy.
* If you think that this fact implies that my first post's idea is not that good, that's true.
(Just to keep things in perspective, someone, somewhere will find a way to turn "using" this into "ABusing" it.)
Hyrup's Loophole Law
If something can be abused, it will be.
Prevention of decaying materials could be a profession ingame. I could see taxidermy being a specialization to leatherworking. That jump is easy to make. But what about dry rot? Wood (even when treated) decays at a fairly significant rate compared to other materials... even some biomatter. Metals (swords, shields, breastplates) will rust. Stone will erode SLOWLY. Paper, books, torches, and so forth...
Also, Brotoi mentioned something long ago about RMT transactions and hording. It's still a good read.
http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?showtopic=7266
I wonder if perhaps we should allow ingame trade of game time - that way we provide a way for:
* Players to buy ingame currency with rl money (not something we really want, but something players will do anyway)
* Players to finance their play time with ingame currency (some players, especially young players in poor countries, will appreciate this a great deal - and age is not equivalent to maturity)
While not providing a way for players to buy rl money with ingame currency. The idea is that this could undermine the RMT business somewhat, without hurting our game.
It's not a new idea of course. EVE allows it, and from what I can tell, players seem mostly positive to it.
There are a few Chinese online games out there that make ends meet by what they term "micro-transactions." There is no monthly fee to play, and everything can be experienced in the game without shelling out a cent. The purchases made are for (mainly) customizations and tweaks for characters. For example, if you want hair that doesn't fit into the two hair types per race per gender, it requires a small fee (just a couple bucks/quid -- nothing big). Or perhaps you want to customize your character portrait away from the boring default one, or have a character biography written about you, or whatever. Most everyone can afford a couple bucks here or there, and with 10,000 players (extremely rough estimate) it helps things for a bit. Then when a player get bored of a look or article, just a couple bucks changes it all.
Minthos, in my opinion, I would prefer to have game developers/owners shy away from charging players RL money for anything that can be tied directly or indirectly to ingame advantage. Player-to-player transactions will always occur just as you said. Whether it be a friend talking to another telling him they'll buy him lunch if he can use his heals for the next hour, or whether it's a Korean gold farmer trying to make a few American dollars to feed his family (whatever), transactions will occur. I guess you can call that, Minthos' Currency Law and tack it to Raph Koster's site.
Unless you make everything in the game bound to the character, you will have RL money transactions. This comes at a huge price, however, in that no ingame economy exists either (no trade, no selling, etc.). I doubt we want that. So that brings us back full circle to what Jerky originally posted about ways to either interrupt the RL transactions or find a way to siphon off a bit.
Summarizing this post... my opinion:
- Ingame currency will trade hands
- Real-life currency will trade hands
- Admin charging money for ingame advantage = bad
- Micro-transactions = good
- This thread needs MUCH further exploring
Ok to start out, I stopped reading posts once I saw the word Economy (or skipped to the next).
In the begining of the thread people are talking about making characters exp/skill gain based on the amount of time played.
Did we forget that most MMOs require players to rest to recover HP/MP? In FFXI I wait up to 5min if I forget my pj's (my recovery+ gear). That's nearly 5 game hours and unless we are REALLY moving I wait 5-7 min before doing anything anyways! Trust me, my character is well rested by the end of a day from getting his 2-3 power naps. Why should I get penalized in the name of realism because I'm fallowing realism?
Now some MMOs recovery is automatic when not in combat (EQ2 and some free ones I've played).
Also, the only person this exp/skill gain would hurt are the players that only have time for 1 character/account. Since accounts with 1 chacter are free (assuming the payment plan Jerky has talked about in IRC with me) farmers/power players will play 2-3 accounts and just rotate as the exp/skill goes to crap. Farmers would not be effected, and account sellers would have 2-3 characters ready for sale in the same amount of time to get 2-3 characters for sale...
Also, for the little I have read on ingame economy and the sale of money for money... Look up how people make money buying and selling money in Real Life (and the country's they avoid and why). If you control the amount of one currency you can make it not worth the time to gather your currency (yes I'm proposing taking the economy behind the dumpster forcefully). Make it not worth money sellers time. If its about game play, then those that need $ shouldn't need to spend pointless game time gathering it... Hell, sell in game money for real money yourselves! The money sellers wouldn't dare undercut you, it's be like cutting off a foot when you undercut them! (Oh no, more dumpster time with the economy). Artisans get credit/sign EVERY piece of anything they make. If they are higher skill its higher quality and there demand to make the gear increases, they get what they want. Customers with hardly any money for items that cost next to nothing. Not quiet communism, we aren't buying 10,000 of the same pants and telling everyone to wear them...
This was a late night rant btw... If I terried off course let me know. I'll be back just before bed again tomorrow night ;-D
A lot of interesting ideas, some of them contradictory. Personally, I've always wondered why MMORPGs don't impose some kind of time limits. It solves numerous problems while causing only minor annoyance for the majority of players.
Anything you can do that complicates the lives of RMT companies is good. Their profit margins are small and the sooner a game becomes unprofitable the sooner they move on to some other game.
Other than Aria's off-topic post about Assassins and Rangers, I haven't seen anything in this thread that I dislike. Personally, I think all of the ideas here are good ones, even those that appear contradictory at first glance. For example: limited resources vs. unlimited currency. At first, these seem like impossible to reconcile opposites. The fact of the matter is, this is exactly how the real world works. Currency is effectively unlimited while all resources are finite, regardless of how high the limit is. As a result, regular attempts are made to limit currency as well, which always leads to one economic disaster or another (either hyperinflation or depression).
A game economy mimics the real world, but a game should not become an economic simulation. If it does, then we wind up with the same problems of poverty, marginalization, and oppression that the real world exhibits and no one wants to play a game that excels in recreating the stress and frustration of real life. As impossible as it seems, time limits solve this problem nicely, and to then turn around and charge extra to those players with both time and money to spare seems to me to be icing on the cake.
You want to spend 40+ hours a week maxing out all your stats, no problem, it'll cost you $x.xx. You just want to log in an forget about life for awhile? Cool! That's free!
Seems like a nice marketing model to me, and is the exact same method American utility and phone companies have used for generations (a low-enough flat-rate equals free in actual practice). On top of that we add micro-transactions for alternative art resources (dyes, armor, weapons, crafting patterns) with equal functionality to freely available ingame assets and now we're looking at an entirely new way to market a game.
However, in order for the players to accept this model, we would have to insure there is never a wasted moment in the game. There would have to be systems in place to allow players to play without stopping for the time they are in the world. Imposing long rest times, long travel times, or making necessary NPCs such as trainers and provisioners inaccessible from certain areas of the map will rapidly destroy the benefit the free gamer receives and regardless of our real intentions will communicate to our customers the idea that all we care about are those players who pay for extra time.
But, yeah, provided a happy medium can be found that preserves gameplay and uses free vs. pay to impose a soft limit on game time, I think we're onto something truly innovative.
It will be tough, Brotoi. Any choice we make will most definitely have pros and cons. For an example of a con, I enjoy helping others progress in the game, especially if those new players are professional and mature. If this concept goes into effect, I will lose that portion of MMOs that I enjoy to be able to progress my little character within the few hours I'm allotted, unless we revolutionize the concept and use an idea not presented as of yet. But I have a feeling that I'm just going to have to live with a decision made by the community at large this time. And that's okay if the pros outweigh the cons.