The Elder Scrolls Online

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Dahkoht_sl

shitlord
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Besides the player interaction , the East Commons tunnel system of trade also does something no one seems to mention. It makes goods "matter" more, much more. You can't instantly search a commodity market for every possible item and get instant delivery that Amazon in modern day can't make happen.

It actually is a completely different economic system when you can't rely on everything you want always being there at some price , you have to actually find the item you want. It's just something that can contribute to a true old-fantasy world type environment.

While not for everyone , there's nothing wrong with some game catering to the idea that the world matters more than instant convenience.
 
Zefah

Zefah

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Mellent_sl said:
If you guys regard "spamming the various trade channels" as a wonderful form of "player interaction," then I don't really know what to say. Go check out Path of Exile if you want to get a blast to the past in regards to that.

Edit: Then again, that's pretty much theonlyplayer to player interaction in that game so take it as you will.
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It was wonderful in EverQuest. The East Commons tunnel trading was a huge boon to communities in that game. It created a place for people to gather, and most of them were actually at their keyboards, paying attention. You could often find rare deals and turn them for profit if you played the game right. Not only that, but you'd always be able to go there to get buffs and such from the other players. I made plenty of friends at the East Commons tunnel and started many adventures from there. The bazaar killed that. Sure, it may have increased convenience, but at a huge blow to the community.
 
Erronius

Erronius

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I just wanted to mention that I wasn't talking about selling items per se (and definitely not to the exclusion of other AFK/offline options), though that can either be part of it or not. Has there been other games that have allowed players to set themselves up as AFK buffbots the same way that AC did? I tried thinking of one and I really couldn't think of any. I was actually a little surprised that the topic veered a little towards auction houses, as that really isn't what I was getting at though.

- AFK buffs/wrangles. Not necessarily needed if you have active people on 24/7 that you can pester or hanging out in POK, but there have been times when I've needed buffs or other assistance and no one has been on.
- Crafting I mentioned because I could see that work, possibly, without having to exclude AH/Bazaar. Let's say there's a specific food that you need, but there isn't any on the AH. Well, since your convenience outlet has now been shot to shit, have a window similar to simple LFG where instead you get a sortable list of people in their housing or wherever who are offline but have their toon setup to sell whatever food you are looking for. So you might have to pay a bit more and track down the person, but click on their avatar and have them make you a stack while you're offline.

As I said there are obvious issues but it's just an idea.

Kedwyn_sl said:
Eve is the perfect middle ground.
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Yeah, I liked that it wasn't global and having to go a few systems over to grab something really wasn't much of an issue (assuming you are in hisec of course). And if I really had to have something from Jita...well...then I was off for an excursion out of Heimetar. The fact that you had people who played the game by only playing the different markets while playing Spreadsheets Online and shuffling goods around to take advantage of differences in markets was really, really interesting. Even if I thought that it was boring as shit, LOL.
 
Tuco

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Zefah_sl said:
What makes that more interesting for you? I'm genuinely curious. Is it the reliability and convenience of such a system?
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Zefah_sl said:
It was wonderful in EverQuest. The East Commons tunnel trading was a huge boon to communities in that game. It created a place for people to gather, and most of them were actually at their keyboards, paying attention. You could often find rare deals and turn them for profit if you played the game right. Not only that, but you'd always be able to go there to get buffs and such from the other players. I made plenty of friends at the East Commons tunnel and started many adventures from there. The bazaar killed that. Sure, it may have increased convenience, but at a huge blow to the community.
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Exploring the world, getting together groups to conquer dungeons and whippin' giant beasties was more interesting than sitting under torch 3 in EC spamming the same shit and watching text for an item I wanted. Liquidating goods and spending the money was just a means to play the game for me, not the game itself.
 
Miele

Miele

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Erronius_sl said:
Well we always end up in these debates, and most of the time it seems like people take one of two stances: either they look at whether the game made money as an indicator of success, or they look at games that underperformed, had massive faults and ended up hemorrhaging subs until they had to go F2P as an indicator of failure. The former has the problem that you can still have a game that makes money but by almost any other metric failed horribly, and the latter has the problem that it's very hard to quantify moves to F2P and how well a game performs afterwards, and often people tend to write games off completely once they start tanking after release. STO could be an incredibly good MMO now but I'll never know because I wrote that shitfest off early on.
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Making money may be a metric, but there is a tiny detail: if they gain a million for investing 250, it's a freaking colossal failure from a financial point of view, because 250m can net a lot more money (basic RoI concept) even by letting them rot in non risky investments.
A game like EQ costed around 9m dollars, which is not the 40+ milions you hear about today (e.g. Rift) or the blockbusters wannabe like SWtoR (way above the 200m mark).

Wow supposedly costed something north of the 70 milions, maybe 80. Given that it sold 6 milion boxes fairly quickly at 50$ a pop, even if you discount monthly subs, you can see that they made back their investment four times by the time TBC was about to go gold. On top of that there were these insignificant 50 to 90 mil per month in subscriptions, you know, just a cherry on top.
Blinded by this incredible success, somebody convinced somebody else to invest millions like peanuts to the point Bioware sunk over 200m in... voice acting? Not sure here.

I can only shake my head and be thankful I'm not part of that industry and will never be.
 
K

Kharza-kzad_sl

shitlord
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Erronius_sl said:
Has there been other games that have allowed players to set themselves up as AFK buffbots the same way that AC did?
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Galaxies had afk buffers. Doctors could target the space in front of them and some had long complicated macros set up to spam out what they were offering and do the actual buffing. Dancers and musicians could do the same in starports.

There was no guarantee of payment though, they just relied on /tip. I think later in the game's life entertainer stuff became a sort of trade window where you paid but I don't think you could do that afk. I had an alt for that as I used the "image design" stuff all the time.
 
Grim1

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Zefah_sl said:
It was wonderful in EverQuest. The East Commons tunnel trading was a huge boon to communities in that game. It created a place for people to gather, and most of them were actually at their keyboards, paying attention. You could often find rare deals and turn them for profit if you played the game right. Not only that, but you'd always be able to go there to get buffs and such from the other players. I made plenty of friends at the East Commons tunnel and started many adventures from there. The bazaar killed that. Sure, it may have increased convenience, but at a huge blow to the community.
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Yeah, I never cared for the EC tunnel. Me thinks you are rose tinting the experience. Mostly it was a chore, for buying and selling. And later in the game just getting to it was a total waste of time. The "community" was just a bunch of people spamming the same thing over and over. I'm sure the sellers who hung out there on a regular basis and made that their thing had a bit of a community going, but for the rest of us it was a hassle.

Once I was at the endgame and raiding, EC became such a chore that I would just throw stuff away that people would have payed a fortune for. I didn't have room in my inventory and getting to EC was such a long slog that it wasn't worth my time. Being a tank made EC another world away and a pointless pain in the ass.
 
Ambiturner

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Because people who talk about how great it was only remember the time they found what they needed for a good price or made a big profit selling something. They forget that 99% of the time they were just sitting there reading scrolling text for hours before logging
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Grim1_sl said:
Yeah, I never cared for the EC tunnel. Me thinks you are rose tinting the experience. Mostly it was a chore, for buying and selling. And later in the game just getting to it was a total waste of time. The "community" was just a bunch of people spamming the same thing over and over. I'm sure the sellers who hung out there on a regular basis and made that their thing had a bit of a community going, but for the rest of us it was a hassle.

Once I was at the endgame and raiding, EC became such a chore that I would just throw stuff away that people would have payed a fortune for. I didn't have room in my inventory and getting to EC was such a long slog that it wasn't worth my time. Being a tank made EC another world away and a pointless pain in the ass.
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It took five minutes to get a GG from a Druid with SoW to west commons and run over there.

Mith marr's was in North Freeport.

But it did build community. That intangible made characters not just a random blip on the radar. You would remember names, whether you knew it was happening or not.
 
Grim1

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Utnayan_sl said:
It took five minutes to get a GG from a Druid with SoW to west commons and run over there.

Mith marr's was in North Freeport.

But it did build community. That intangible made characters not just a random blip on the radar. You would remember names, whether you knew it was happening or not.
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It was much more time than that for those of us doing bleeding edge content. You forget that we also had to get back to the spot we logged off at to start the next day's raid. Many times that involved some very dangerous runs. For tanks it wasn't worth it.

And then there was the amount of time sitting there spamming to get something sold. I play these games for the combat and raiding, or did back then. Buying and selling is boring to me, still is. After a night of raiding the last thing I wanted to do was to sit in EC. Fuck that.

But to each their own. I get it that some people like that sort of thing, but forcing the rest of us into that play style is a sure fire way to get people like me to skip the game. I put up with it back then because it was the only game in town. But I won't anymore.
 
Ambiturner

Ambiturner

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Do you want your mmo to be more like actual life or like high school? I'd argue the fact that there's a ton of people you'll meet, but are just a "blip on the radar" is more realistic and imitates an actual world more than seeing the same small number of people every day
 
K

Kedwyn

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Utnayan_sl said:
Too bad it's boring as fuck.
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Sure but it doesn't need to be. The economic system is second to none and can be adapted to the standard RPG world.

People that want the instant gratification can have it and buy it RIGHT NOW. The cheap asses can travel for a better deal and the true Heebs can scour the posts for better deals moving goods to and from for profit. Everyone wins and it creates a sub game that you can either participate in or not.

Throw in PVP if desired and you have the caravan getting raped by pirates or getting to its destination for phat loot. Little bit of risk reward for both sides and needs to be balanced properly but when done right it really can add a ton of dimension to your game.

Same can be said for buffs and needing to interact with people. I don't ever want to go back to needing to sit on my ass for 10 minutes to regen without KEI but I also recognize that needing KEI or a better term wanting it was beneficial to the world and player interaction. As was ports, later on translocates, SOW, AGEO and other cool tools characters could give to help you. Again they don't have to be kick in the balls OP but its nice to be able to buff people. Something you really don't see much since WoW which is sad.

Prior to some idiot saying I want EQ go play it, I don't. The ideas can be implemented in a meaningful way without going back to the terrible design that was Everquest. Fuck me anything at this point is better than the shit we've been fed recently. You know the market is fucked up when you look at TOR and say holy shit that wasn't bad compared to TESO, NVN, WildStar...
 
Grim1

Grim1

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Yes, Eve's buying and selling model is great. And it caters to people who liked EC and people like me who hated it. Eve's combat is what usually puts me to sleep, or as Utnayan put it "boring as fuck". The rest of the game rules.
 
Heallun

Heallun

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Grim1_sl said:
Yes, Eve's buying and selling model is great. And it caters to people who liked EC and people like me who hated it. Eve's combat is what usually puts me to sleep, or as Utnayan put it "boring as fuck". The rest of the game rules.
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It's quite good in large group play (wormholes, especially) when you're a specialized unit in a team. Being able to lock down a ship, kill a ship, repair shields, etc. etc. all in one ship is near fucking impossible. Makes it so your targets have to be relatively tiny in comparison to fleet combat.
 
Daidraco

Daidraco

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We've come to the conclusion several times that community suffers due to convenience. You'll see everyone if there is only one restaurant to go to in a town. Yet, if you have several choices you will only see a handful of people of the same people. The Auction House is comparable to take out food in my opinion. In that, you order what you want and the mail box is your Delivery Boy (which you probably dont want to tip anyways).

The part that I feel like some of you are confused about is that you beckon for some of these methods in order to build community, when they developers should be building tools that create community without the hassle and inconvenience. Make content that spurs community without having a hindrance or annoyance tied to it. Developers have millions and millions of Dollars to play with now ~ Testing ideas out shouldnt be that inconvenient for them.
 
Grim1

Grim1

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Prisons have a community also, that doesn't mean everyone wants to be a part of them.
 
Bondurant

Bondurant

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Utnayan_sl said:
Too bad it's boring as fuck.
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Eve is definitely the game I will never play again ; on both trials I tried to play my way alone and it ended being a complete disaster (got scammed / ganked, but I'm being a noob and I'm okay with this policy, I just need to find more time playing EvE with connections). But man, if you think EVE is boring, you should read about EVE stuff regarding politics, backstabbing, scheming, cloak'n'daggers, Ponzi schemes, BoB defenses, treason, quadruple agents, Titan capital ship ganks and other shit. Granted, gameplay wise one could say it's just a 3D Excel with internet chat. Also spaceship drives are boring and leveling could takes shit tons of time, depending of what you're willing to do. But tbh, as a non-EvE player, EvE meta game is so awesome I'd stab my urethra with elephant cotton swabs just to think I'd ever participated in one of those meta community happenings.
 
Cantatus

Cantatus

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Astral Projection_sl said:
Personally, it is because I didn't sign up for "shopkeeper simulator online". Though I acknowledge a lot of people enjoy trade aspects of online games and it is probably an under-served market.

A potential compromise would be to have an escrow service (not AH) where players put their items in and others players can buy/sell/deliver them for a cut of profits. You would need Eve-like economic numbers and long travel times for it to work though. Would also have to be relatively scam proof.
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EverQuest 2 and FFXI both had a decent middle-ground. They had an Auction House that was a little more limited than what you usually see, but they also gave you the ability to set up your own shop. It was a decent compromise where people looking for convenience could dump their loot on the AH, and those that wanted to establish themselves as sellers could also do so.
 
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