Cash for Credits! What does it mean to you?

[jan]

To me this discusion is a bit meh. The real problem lies in the games ability to deal whit the influks of fake credits, to avoid a runaway inflation economy.

Personaly i have no issue spending a few £ a week to support the running cost to keep the game running. How i pay those £ is realy not a problem in my eyes as ultimatly i gain the pleasure to play a game i love My fave tho is if i spend £ i prefer it to be vanity items since it have the lowest inpact on the game negatively.

So i urge ppl to take the lesser evil to make sure we can play this game whitout any worryes.

 

[Davidtq]

To me this discusion is a bit meh. The real problem lies in the games ability to deal whit the influks of fake credits, to avoid a runaway inflation economy.

Personaly i have no issue spending a few £ a week to support the running cost to keep the game running. How i pay those £ is realy not a problem in my eyes as ultimatly i gain the pleasure to play a game i love My fave tho is if i spend £ i prefer it to be vanity items since it have the lowest inpact on the game negatively.

So i urge ppl to take the lesser evil to make sure we can play this game whitout any worryes.

Inflation will only be an issue if we have high end loot that isnt available from in game vendors. As long as ship yards and npc cargo vendors do all the buying and selling the players arent really going to be setting any prices and inflation never happens. Excess credits just pile up in peoples bank accounts and bought credits get hoovered up by ship sales etc. If every resource and or item can be obtained from in game vendors prices will never run away...

EDIT: If we get custom crafting, player gathered resources and phat loot and player to player sales of the same THEN we will have a runaway economy regardless of official credit sales.

 

[HaiderGill]

Never really thought about it. So you earn money in ED and you can turn it in to real money Sounds good to me, play ED all day and you paid too. I'll type up my resignation.

 

[Cody]

<chortles>

 

[Davidtq]

Never really thought about it. So you earn money in ED and you can turn it in to real money Sounds good to me, play ED all day and you paid too. I'll type up my resignation.

Where have you been for the last 10 years? This is exactly what the chinese gold farmers have done in games where theres no official way to buy in game currency.

I did work out that I could quit my day job to play Star Wars Galaxies full time once upon a time. I Decided that the repetetive nature of gameplay required to consistantly make the big bucks was far more "work" than work...

I did however make a fair chunk of money over time from that game, certainly more than my subs costs over the games life. I remember one particular deal I sold a cute little birdy for enough credits to sell for cash and buy a nice guitar amp... I just found my inquisitive nature led me to earn more credits than I could possibly spend on things I wanted and there was that pesky hard coded currency cap

 

[Memnoch]

You are no longer the target audience for the game, people who pay money instead of playing are. Every change from this point on will be made to their benefit and to your detriment.

I dont believe a word of that Im afraid. Ive played Alpha the game is great fun already. Im going to be able to fight and trade my way to the top regardless of whats in the store.

Bambi does have a valid point, but one that may not apply directly to this game but it certainly does to others. Take a game like Blacklight Retribution. It's been a long time since I have played this so bear that in mind just in case I get something wrong. You earn new weapons by earning points, earned by kills and winning matches. Now let's say for sake of argument that you need 10,000 XP to get the next weapon. At 100 XP a kill that could take a while. Now the developer introduces MT that allows you to buy the weapon outright for £10+ or rent it for a week for £5.

The player that coughs up the money gets that gun before the player who won't pay and probably has an edge in combat. Now the developer realises that people are willing to pay money for these things, and gets(!) greedy and wants more money. So it adjusts the amount of XP you need to earn to get the weapon for free from 10,000 XP to 25,000 XP. All of a sudden the non-paying customer has been screwed over not once but twice. The developer makes his slightly grindy game into a massively grindy game to direct people towards its MT store.

Now with ED, without an RPG like progression system that we know of and no XP per kills, how would this apply? Well, there will be the purely cosmetic stuff, of course. No harm there. But then there may be the ability to straight out buy a bigger, badder ship, giving you that advantage as described above in BR. Or simply bigger weapons without having to earn all those credits the old fashioned way. You know, playing the game.

One way to alleviate would be to have restrictions on who could buy the more powerful ships. For instance, does it make sense that some newbie pilot with a lot of credits bought with real money, ranked mostly harmless and with no military rank or affiliation, should be able to buy a death machine like an Imperial Courier? Would the Imperials simply hand this thing over? So you "gate" these things until players have achieved enough military rank or "Elite" ranking until such a time they would be trusted by the vendor with them.

I'm sure this is very un-popular. But then so is the idea of a wallet turning up and buying themselves to Elite status.

 

[popuptoaster]

Bambi does have a valid point, but one that may not apply directly to this game but it certainly does to others. Take a game like Blacklight Retribution. It's been a long time since I have played this so bear that in mind just in case I get something wrong. You earn new weapons by earning points, earned by kills and winning matches. Now let's say for sake of argument that you need 10,000 XP to get the next weapon. At 100 XP a kill that could take a while. Now the developer introduces MT that allows you to buy the weapon outright for £10+ or rent it for a week for £5.

The player that coughs up the money gets that gun before the player who won't pay and probably has an edge in combat. Now the developer realises that people are willing to pay money for these things, and gets(!) greedy and wants more money. So it adjusts the amount of XP you need to earn to get the weapon for free from 10,000 XP to 25,000 XP. All of a sudden the non-paying customer has been screwed over not once but twice. The developer makes his slightly grindy game into a massively grindy game to direct people towards its MT store.

Now with ED, without an RPG like progression system that we know of and no XP per kills, how would this apply? Well, there will be the purely cosmetic stuff, of course. No harm there. But then there may be the ability to straight out buy a bigger, badder ship, giving you that advantage as described above in BR. Or simply bigger weapons without having to earn all those credits the old fashioned way. You know, playing the game.

One way to alleviate would be to have restrictions on who could buy the more powerful ships. For instance, does it make sense that some newbie pilot with a lot of credits bought with real money, ranked mostly harmless and with no military rank or affiliation, should be able to buy a death machine like an Imperial Courier? Would the Imperials simply hand this thing over? So you "gate" these things until players have achieved enough military rank or "Elite" ranking until such a time they would be trusted by the vendor with them.

I'm sure this is very un-popular. But then so is the idea of a wallet turning up and buying themselves to Elite status.

If the free players get screwed like that then they should vote with their feet and move on, the pay players would soon get bored with empty servers and everyone else having the same weapons.

what normally happens though is the free players keep playing but they just complain a lot and the games publisher doesn't care because they are not paying but are still playing and are, in effect, just cannon fodder for the pay players to kill.

Its very simple, if things go bad, just stop playing, there are a million PC games to choose from.....

 

[jedt]

why are these threads being necroed like this?

 

[Kawboy]

Diablo 3 was destroyed by online DRM requirement. That combined with shop made it very unpopular, because Diablo 2 was popular due of...piracy, and modding culture around it. Shop played some minor role there, also fact that Blizzard really went there and tuned game to make people actually use that shop. And all that was happening in offline single player game.

I have a different opinion on this one. Both because of personal experience and the fact that D3's sequel will still have the same DRM, but they are loudly and proudly talking about removing the stores. Blizzard is aware of what killed the game and they're trying hard to regain their player base. I can't say that DRM isn't/wasn't a factor, but their determination to make it a money pit was the primary cause.

 

[DYSEQTA]

Im mainly looking for peoples concerns here though, and to see if they can be addressed seperately. Rather than the continual yay or nay debate. I personally think cash for credits is fine and reasonable and can be implemented without affecting to any great degree the none credit buyers. But I want to see waht people are afraid of and this is one of those things.

My concerns with credit selling are as follows:

1. As the acquisition of credits or the items for which credits can be exchanged are the underlying core of all perceived success in a game like ED then paying money for them circumvents game play. This defeats the point of the game and so harms the user's play experience whether they are cognizant of it or not
2. Although many will cite fairness for the time poor as a justification I suspect the reality is that those more likely to spend big on credits are those that are also spending a lot of time playing
3. If there is to be a player influenced economy in a game then selling credits will inevitably have a destabilising effect on that economy

To be honest I can't see any positives to selling credits for a game legal or otherwise so I cannot list any.

On the subject of ongoing funding for a persistent universe type game I believe that the only fair systems for collecting money are either access credits (paying for time played) or a cash store selling items for customising your play experience but that have no actual effect on game play, "bling" in other words.

Access Credits are completely fair as each player pays the same amount to play no matter whether they play a little or a lot but also means that those with easy means to pay (the gainfully employed for instance) pay less actual money than those with easy means to play (the unemployed for instance). So it's fair as in equal but perhaps not socially responsible.

A cash store based around bling is also fair in as much as injection of money into the game does not effect your fellow players and allows each person to decide for themselves exactly how much they are willing to spend. It however has other dangers. A game like GuildWars 2 is a good example in my opinion of a problem when it comes to selling cosmetic items. If the items sold are not "lore friendly" then they can literally ruin the game for others. I love GW2 as a game but I no longer play it because entering a dungeon with a Charr warrior wearing a pink plush Quaggan backpack and shooting rainbows from his unicorn bow and bashing enemies with a disco ball mace totally ruins the atmosphere for me.

Summary:
In my opinion selling credits just isn't good no matter how you look at it and if continuous funding is required then paying a fee directly proportional to play time or a cash store of lore friendly items for personalisation with no-effect on game mechanics are the only fair options I see.

 

[Asp Explorer]

If the store is a grim inevitability, and I think it probably is, how about making items available in the store different, but exactly functionally equivalent to, items available purely in-game?

That would make it be easy to tell who plonked money on what, the store users get their shiny bling, FD gets money, and non-store peeps won't have to worry about being at any disadvantage.

A reskinned pulse-laser sold as a Rainbow Emitter Of Shinyness, with appropriate rainbow-death-goodies would be a sure hit with a certain demographic. Loadsamoney!

Of course, for everyone else with a functioning brain, a simple checkbox to "disable store skin effects" would keep everyone happy

 

[Ref Minor]

I actually downgraded my pledge so I would start with 100c and a sidewinder.

The rest is up to me. If I become a hermit play 5hrs a night I might have a successful space empire, if I can only play a few hours a week then I will be a down at heel space bum trying to make ends meet.

I don't really agree with MT but at the end of the day companies consume money and something needs to pay to keep the servers running. It's a hard one to balance on the scale of bling to magic bullets.

 

[Mephane]

If the store is a grim inevitability, and I think it probably is, how about making items available in the store different, but exactly functionally equivalent to, items available purely in-game?

That would make it be easy to tell who plonked money on what, the store users get their shiny bling, FD gets money, and non-store peeps won't have to worry about being at any disadvantage.

A reskinned pulse-laser sold as a Rainbow Emitter Of Shinyness, with appropriate rainbow-death-goodies would be a sure hit with a certain demographic. Loadsamoney!

Of course, for everyone else with a functioning brain, a simple checkbox to "disable store skin effects" would keep everyone happy

Nah, I think the store should only sell the reskin to be then applied to the actual equipment that still has to be earned within the game. (Though the reskin should be a permanent account unlock, i.e. buy once, apply as often as you want.)

 

[popuptoaster]

I don't see an issue still, the only other game I regularly put money into is World of Tanks.

I cough up about £16 a month for a premium account which gives me 50% extra credits and XP and the amount i put in also gives me some spare "Gold" that I can use to convert the free XP you earn while fighting with a tank into useable XP for any tank.

You can also use gold to convert into in game credits which i only did once because the exchange rate is poor and credits are not hard to earn in game, and you can use gold to buy premium tanks which are not as good as normal ones but earn more credits while you play them.

So i get some advantages from paying real money, but nothing game breaking, there were some items that you could buy with gold like better ammo and reapir kits etc, but since they changed those to be available with in game credits as well as gold then there really isn't any "pay to win going on but they still get my money.

As its not a sub and i can still play without a premium account i occasionally miss a few weeks if I'm busy or just skint.

WoT has many issues but the payment model seems to work alright.

 

[Mephane]

WoT has many issues but the payment model seems to work alright.

As a pure F2P title, yes. For a game that needs to be bought, will have traditional paid expansions etc. what you describe is way overkill. Fairly cheap cosmetic unlocks should be enough to cover the ongoing server cost, development of new content and features will be paid for by the sales of the expansions containing them.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

As a pure F2P title, yes. For a game that needs to be bought, will have traditional paid expansions etc. what you describe is way overkill. Fairly cheap cosmetic unlocks should be enough to cover the ongoing server cost, development of new content and features will be paid for by the sales of the expansions containing them.

Not exactly. FD plans to provide small content upgrades for free. Bigger game play features will cost.

 

[Davidtq]

My concerns with credit selling are as follows:

1. As the acquisition of credits or the items for which credits can be exchanged are the underlying core of all perceived success in a game like ED then paying money for them circumvents game play. This defeats the point of the game and so harms the user's play experience whether they are cognizant of it or not
2. Although many will cite fairness for the time poor as a justification I suspect the reality is that those more likely to spend big on credits are those that are also spending a lot of time playing
3. If there is to be a player influenced economy in a game then selling credits will inevitably have a destabilising effect on that economy

On your first point that is YOUR idea of core gameplay success. You may well find the game has a short shelf life for you. Certainly in Elite and frontier I have very very quickly acquired more credits than I could ever spend and then spent the best part of 30 years still playing the games. I am hoping for a game with a massive life of things to do once my credits exceed my needs by far. Certainly that was my experience in Star Wars Galaxies, I ran out of need for credits Many years before they shut the game down with me still finding plenty to do.

Understand that what you get out of a game is not what all people get out of the game. I had a friend for 6 years in one mmo, he bought credits from time to time. He just couldnt be bothered with "grinding" cash (in a game where the grind wasnt balanced to leverage a cash store) He enjoyed his bounty hunting which never paid off big he enjoyed his socialising, he enjoyed exploring, he enjoyed experimenting with how the game worked he enjoyed helping newer players. He never had huge wealth behind him from his credit buying it was bits and pieces here and there to fund his own form of fun. He had an in game income that allowed him to spend his time in game the way he wanted. He was a great guy but he just didn't like the in game mechanics to make an income. Different strokes for different folks, but buying credits is not guaranteed to harm someones game play it gives them the experience they want, rather than forcing them to jump through hoops that YOU find fun. Certainly I knew plenty of credit buyers who were long term players and enjoyed their game more for it. Not every one has the hamster on a wheel being fun mentality.

Look at my table of prices \ equipment on the first page. exactly how many people have both £7,000 to blow on just the hull of a ship AND have all day to spend at the pc?

If there is any player influence on the economy then there will be credits for sale from non official routes anyway. Having exactly that affect as every other mmo to date has proven. The rampant inflation will still happen but the cash will be going to sweat shop grind masters instead of going into further development of the game. Also the credit farmers are infamous for affecting regular players game play in their search for the best ways to make the credits they sell.

Some examples Ive seen of farmers being negative for gamers include, Credit card fraud. The farmers would drop off the currency then rip off their credit cards to open farming accounts. This problem was so vast that SOE had major issues with credit cards being declined because of it.

Account hijacking. Yep people would pay for gold or levelling hand over their usernames and passwords and get their accounts stolen... Guess how sympathetic the GM's were?

Spawn Camping. This was rife during the beryl shard era in Lotro. Stealth characters would camp shard droppers. absolutely great for business... the lack of available shards drove up AH prices, which made more gold for the farmers to sell, they were creating both product and demand for their product in one routine. Meanwhile legitimate players were faced with grinding mobs for cash to pay inflated prices on shards. Should their have been a legitimate source of currency the shards could have been gained through game play by the regular players.

Spam Spam Spam, although games have got better at slowly squelching the credit sale spam there is little more disruptive than seeing chat bubbles over characters heads in busy areas saying "www.mmogamesale.com cheap gold!!!"

To be honest I can't see any positives to selling credits for a game legal or otherwise so I cannot list any.

Well its going to exile illegal credit farmers for a start, along with all their disruptive farming in game.

It means players who dont find mindless credit aquisition can get on with what they enjoy in game. Someone may want to just visit as many worlds as possible and cant be bothered to run cargo from lave to leesti for 6 months to do so. Cash for credits isnt for everyone its for those who find fun in other areas of the game.

The simple fact is that a decade of mmo's has proven there is a good market for EXACTLY that service. There is a demand there that companies can turn into cashflow. There is a demand BECAUSE not all gamers find making money which is necesary to fund their gameplay "fun".

On the subject of ongoing funding for a persistent universe type game I believe that the only fair systems for collecting money are either access credits (paying for time played) or a cash store selling items for customising your play experience but that have no actual effect on game play, "bling" in other words.

Whats unfair about people with no money being able to play for free supported by willing spenders of money with cash to spare?

Bling bling bling... Euyuck nothing there to get cash out of me there either, Eve started up their noble exchange, Ive not even got round to spending my free currency there. I realise its a grand dream to have a game funded entirely by vanity, but its not going to be enough. You are entitled to your opinion that its the "only fair" method. But what about those poor chaps who love their bling but have no cash. Poor little mites are forced to remain in their working class rags even in their gaming lives. All you do then is create the haves and have nots differentiated by their digital finery... Fair? or rubbing the poors noses in it further . To remove all doubt the last section is purely for fun...

Access Credits are completely fair as each player pays the same amount to play no matter whether they play a little or a lot but also means that those with easy means to pay (the gainfully employed for instance) pay less actual money than those with easy means to play (the unemployed for instance). So it's fair as in equal but perhaps not socially responsible.

A cash store based around bling is also fair in as much as injection of money into the game does not effect your fellow players and allows each person to decide for themselves exactly how much they are willing to spend. It however has other dangers. A game like GuildWars 2 is a good example in my opinion of a problem when it comes to selling cosmetic items. If the items sold are not "lore friendly" then they can literally ruin the game for others. I love GW2 as a game but I no longer play it because entering a dungeon with a Charr warrior wearing a pink plush Quaggan backpack and shooting rainbows from his unicorn bow and bashing enemies with a disco ball mace totally ruins the atmosphere for me.

Summary:
In my opinion selling credits just isn't good no matter how you look at it and if continuous funding is required then paying a fee directly proportional to play time or a cash store of lore friendly items for personalisation with no-effect on game mechanics are the only fair options I see.

That is of course your opinion and you are welcome to it. I personally see lore friendly bling is a minor additional income, I see cash for credits as something that will happen in game regardless if theres a player driven economy and player to player trading so Frontier might as well take the money. I see nothing any less fair about someone buying credits than some buying bling. Both affect certain types of "have nots" equally.

At least with credits they CAN make them through in game play and eventually be on a completely equal footing with those spending cash. Certainly by playing smarter in games Ive manged to gather currency legitimately faster than the grindingest gold sellers and have ultimately been far wealthier (in game) than any credit buyer for it.

To my mind though the game was launched from the very start in kickstarter with cash for credits on the table. My long term experience of MMO's and the supply and demand side of cash for currency tells me that the devs tapping this market is only a good thing.