Plat/PLing for cash... Can it be stopped?

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:21 am

Requiel wrote:A very large number of those players are enjoying the experience of just playing. The levelling is secondary to many of them, they just enjoy playing their character. I don't think you understand this mindset of the ultra casual gamer, which is understandable as you come from a very different game experience. These people play the game for the sake of playing the game.

I would be interested in your true definition of casual gamer... I consider myself to be a casual gamer, playing odd times and for little duration at each sitting... I user to be a lot more "powergamer" in attitude but some things have gone to change that. I'll leave it to imaginations and memories to work out what it was.

What Crom said is very true... there has been very little new blood as the main community sees it but the warning signs were there from the early days that the game was simply not marketed to its full potential or have the supply chain logistics or agreements in place to ensure a reasonable distribution of expansions let alone the core game... even those of us that know of the game have found it difficult to find a copy of the game or it's expansions when we know what we are looking for. Bums on seats, bums on seats...

Post by **Xest** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:35 am

Maybe I'm different to others but tbh after a fixed amount of hours put in to acheive things I'm content with extra time I put in being rewarded with nothing more than fun.

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:39 am

Luz wrote:lol

omg so pwned I got
u too arc !

Ehm, not from where I am sitting I didn't

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:40 am

problem is with DAOC that the endgame for a lot of people is RVR.... now ask yourself why people such as myself have 8 level 50 toons... not thanks to PLing but from playing them through the PVE environment 43 days to 50 on my hero only to find it was not a feasable solo class most of the time in RVR... Bard... solo rvr... I think not... I've gone trhough 7 characters to find the one that I can play effectively and still have fun playing... fun which seems to be the focus as it is being pointed out. If frustration gets the better of me I may go to pve and level a bit on an alt to get some fun out of the game...

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:46 am

If you wanted to look at an effective way of getting revenue... and giving some control back to parents mythic/goa could do worse than looking at their subscription model.... have people on contract at a monthly fee with unlimited online time... and another option that was a pay as you play type scenario buying online hours in blocks and they get used as you spend time online... I'd happily change to pay as I play type option as I dont feel that I get the best value for money these days as I no longer have the time or opportunities that i used to for online gaming.

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:05 pm

Xest wrote:
All that said, I do kinda feel that bots are still entirely unjustified and are a problem that could have been resolved all the way through - there are plenty of opportunities Mythic could have taken to resolve the issue but haven't and I think many other people have noticed this, this is why you'll have to excuse me and perhaps other people for still beleiving bots and nothing but a money grab. I think even providing potions that give you all buffbot buffs for 30mins and cost a few gold each would at least be enough to please many people.

.

Sad thing is there dood that Mythic went on record a long time ago saying that they did not want potions to be an essential part of RvR. I have 2 lgm alchs, none are ever asked for buff pots. The buff pots you can make are so low anyway that no one in the right mind would want to order them even for PvE. Also the timer on those low pots is ridiculously punishing with most of them lasting only a mere 5 mins max, which makes it kinda pointless crafting them as you would need huge amounts of them if you wanted to get down to doing any serious PvE.

I have tested them in RvR and PvE. While both scenarios have a slight gain in character performance, the gain made is punished by the down time in crafting them along with the fact that they last too short a period of time. Not that Requiel can do anything about this as if we here were to RightNow suggestions to the game we get told to go to Mythic direct and make our thoughts known. But all the same those pots are rather pathetic and in my honest opinion it demeans my time and the trade of an alchemist in game because their design and implementation is so poor :/

Alexandrinus · Post by **Alexandrinus** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:13 pm

RVR is the endgame wich holds peeps in the game.
PVE is...is....is....ok sometimes its nice to do it....if i have enough time...wich i dont have...so PVE is .....i have to do it sometimes(fgs).

<ankh> · Post by **<ankh>** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:16 pm

Takitothemacs wrote:problem is with DAOC that the endgame for a lot of people is RVR.... now ask yourself why people such as myself have 8 level 50 toons... not thanks to PLing but from playing them through the PVE environment 43 days to 50 on my hero only to find it was not a feasable solo class most of the time in RVR... Bard... solo rvr... I think not... I've gone trhough 7 characters to find the one that I can play effectively and still have fun playing... fun which seems to be the focus as it is being pointed out. If frustration gets the better of me I may go to pve and level a bit on an alt to get some fun out of the game...

I agree with this - and I used to have 15-16 lvl 50's who I had exp'd mostly the good ol fashion way. RvR rocks but I enjoyed the chance of doing alot of things without the need of watching my back for mids/albs too. PvE in other words

/Ankh

Gandelf · Post by **Gandelf** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:28 pm

If Requiel is being honest about the percentage of PvE players being far greater than the percentage for RvR, then RvR in no way can be the end game for the majority of players. If Requiel has all the statistics to prove this, then why should he lie? We have to trust Requiel's word for it and if it is true that RvR is a minority pastime, then I just don't understand why there are still players who are disputing this. Everyone knows that Elizabeth II is the current British Monarch—who in their right mind would dispute this fact unless they were "off their rockers"?

I do believe however that GOA/Mythic are guilty of not doing something about buffbots and it is clearly down to money grabbing.

Buffbots are wrong. They need to be got rid of.
PLing services are wrong. They need to be stopped.
Plat for cash is also wrong. It needs to be stopped.
Anything designed to bypass game content is wrong. It should be stopped.

End of story.

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:30 pm

[quote="Requiel"] If you couldn't get a template unless you played 24 hours a day for five days straight, that would be wrong and would make the game inaccessible to anyone who worked for a living. Happily that's not the case. QUOTE]

Well, that was not exactly true here what you say in the end. I am not trying to have a go at you because you are not a Dev. As has been mentioned before about poor game design, Trials of Atlantis in its original state required quite alot longer than 120 hours of game play to get that template. I had no BB and I am unemployed and was playing most of the day, it took me months to get my template - purely because the design of the game gave those with BB's advantage in PvE. It was just far too much regulation on that expansion and ultimately turned the community against each other due to the obvious unfairness of the expansion.

It very badly designed and I really hope Mythic learned a very hard lesson about this because with the new expansion aimed at returning to Atlantis, I really do hope that for the sake of the remaining players that they go easy on you. On a personal note I had hoped that Mythic would return to Shrouded Isles for the next expansion as you can clearly see they did leave openings there for the future. It's just too bad that they did consider and still do quite emphatically Atlantis as their 'baby' so to speak.

On Req's note about MMO's and community, during the beta test of DDO earlier this year, the game design was purely based on grouping. Ok, the class system was different in the PvE and thus made all classes relevant to grouping because of the game design. However there was a massive cry for solo content mainly because grouping in an MMORPG is not always viable due to having the right type of classes/people on at the same time - dynamic of game play is an important issue here. Codemasters caved in and now there is quite a bit of Dungeons and Dragons online that has solo content.