EpicSquirt :Bots and account theft is a problem in Aion. Grinding is not.

But, if the tedium of grinding encourages the use of bots which may facilitate account theft (via bots laden with trojans) they are not so very separate things, and it becomes difficult to truly say that the problem ends with the former when the later can be attributed as a cause.

What I was saying just now in contrast with IainC may be that the value a grind brings in terms of rarity may sufficiently offset the tedium of dealing with exploiters so as to stay the course regardless.

Though this might be doing them more justice than they deserve. Really, when it comes to mainstream game design, or any other entertainment field, it’s more about imitating what’s worth and damn the consequences as long as you keep making money.

IainC :

geldonyetich :
You’re saying “3rd party exploiting would not happen if you don’t bring about forced rarity” but it could very much be that the developers are willing to humor 3rd party exploiting if forced rarity brings about more popularity.

I’m absolutely not saying this because it’s demonstrably untrue.
3rd party exploiting is pretty inevitable regardless. You can have only two levels and a super fun journey from one to the other and there will still be players who’ll want to go straight to two without any of that boring intermediate stuff.

Yes, I meant what you were saying was “3rd party exploiting would not happen as often” instead of “would not happen” outright. Sorry about the ambiguity.

geldonyetich :
You’re also saying “the new model adapted by MMO developers has shown that decision moments are a bad thing for retention.” That’s an interesting assertion to make considering I can look at Sir Bruce’s charts right now and see that the most popular MMORPGs on there are ones that have forced decision moments. Yes, World of Warcraft is one of them.

Any time that a player has to make a decision whether or not to continue playing your game brings a chance that the wrong decision (from your point of view) will be made. In my experience most players leave a game at fairly clearly defined points, they reach a crossroads and have to decide what they are going to do next. In some cases they decide that what they’d like to do next is play someone else’s game.
Successful games (like WoW) make those crossroads as subtle as possible so there are few paradigm shifts in the overall experience or points in the progression where there is no attractive short term goal in sight. Unsuccessful games give players clear go/no go points and wave goodbye to a portion of their playerbase each time.

Personally, I don’t see anything subtle about the rarity of WoW end game raid gear, it gets as many complaints as any MMORPG ever has about how difficult it is to acquire. But I do acknowledge that WoW at least reduced rarity on the way up.

geldonyetich :
You’re saying “3rd party exploiting would not happen if you don’t bring about forced rarity” but it could very much be that the developers are willing to humor 3rd party exploiting if forced rarity brings about more popularity.

I’m absolutely not saying this because it’s demonstrably untrue.

3rd party exploiting is pretty inevitable regardless. You can have only two levels and a super fun journey from one to the other and there will still be players who’ll want to go straight to two without any of that boring intermediate stuff.

geldonyetich :
You’re also saying “the new model adapted by MMO developers has shown that decision moments are a bad thing for retention.” That’s an interesting assertion to make considering I can look at Sir Bruce’s charts right now and see that the most popular MMORPGs on there are ones that have forced decision moments. Yes, World of Warcraft is one of them.

Any time that a player has to make a decision whether or not to continue playing your game brings a chance that the wrong decision (from your point of view) will be made. In my experience most players leave a game at fairly clearly defined points, they reach a crossroads and have to decide what they are going to do next. In some cases they decide that what they’d like to do next is play someone else’s game.

Successful games (like WoW) make those crossroads as subtle as possible so there are few paradigm shifts in the overall experience or points in the progression where there is no attractive short term goal in sight. Unsuccessful games give players clear go/no go points and wave goodbye to a portion of their playerbase each time.

Rather, I’m pointing out that this grinding model, universally terrible it may be, is nonetheless known to produce a desirable result of producing this sense of value.

You’re saying “3rd party exploiting would not happen if you don’t bring about forced rarity” but it could very much be that the developers are willing to humor 3rd party exploiting if forced rarity brings about more popularity.

You’re also saying “the new model adapted by MMO developers has shown that decision moments are a bad thing for retention.” That’s an interesting assertion to make considering I can look at Sir Bruce’s charts right now and see that the most popular MMORPGs on there are ones that have forced decision moments. Yes, World of Warcraft is one of them.

There’s no logical fallacy to be found in blanket statements that satisfy what we know about games, but they nonetheless bog down when we attempt to bridge the gap from conception to integration. Therein is where the bogging down in details occur.

The second is almost universally a terrible model anyway, if option B is better than option A but requires a long and arduous grind to achieve then what will happen is that players will either put themselves through that long and arduous grind (complaining bitterly all the time) or they’ll quit citing the horrible grind that they need to undergo in order to compete. There was a long held fancy amongst MMO devs that making things difficult to achieve would create rarity and value, actually what the last ten years or so of MMO history have shown is that instead it just creates a bar to playing your game that your players have to decide whether they want to clear or not. Decision moments like that are a bad thing for retention.

Aion is a haven for botters not because of any lack of detection tools or an unwillingness from NCSoft to deal with them, but because the game design practically forces you to take time out of your levelling or PvPing to earn money for consumables, new equipment and upgrades.

To some extent, I wholeheartedly agree that a game with a tremendous grind encourages players to seek alternatives, whether they be illicit software or third parties offering a shortcut. That people are willing to shell out cold, hard, life-sustaining cash for virtual goods sort of indicates that there’s a massive deficit.

However, is that the whole story? Not really. To an extent, what’s being created by implementing a grind is something very important: true value through rarity. Sure, we could let the players have their cake and eat it too, but how much achievement would they really feel from that?

What we have here is really more of a matter of unresolved middle ground that varies subjectively by instance. You make the game have value, there will be people attempting to trivialize that value for a profit. Even in a world without anything to gain of particular value, there still exists people who would rather find shortcuts to gain the upper hand.

So we’re back to where we started: A good sentiment, but it bogs down in the details.

Why let the facts interfere with a good rant?

In EVE, there are so many skills that it has yet to be proved possible to get to the maximum level in all, even if you started playing on day one; so if you just joined, you can’t ever catch up with the guys who have been at it for years.

You keep saying that and it continues to not be true. I’m pretty sure you know this as it’s been pointed out to you multiple time already so I’m at a loss to explain why you persist with this misguided notion.

geldonyetich :
A good sentiment, but it bogs down in the details. Exactly what kind of tool exists to prevent people from giving their password to others? To prevent them from botting?
About the only decisive thing an MMORPG can to prevent RMT is to simply not implement a mechanic that allows a players to transfer anything to another player, and this is an imperfect solution for many reasons. (e.g. It doesn’t prevent power leveling services. It prevents the whole idea of a player-based economy. It prevents players from helping out their friends. Ect.)

You can mitigate the problem to a large extent in design. Aion is a haven for botters not because of any lack of detection tools or an unwillingness from NCSoft to deal with them, but because the game design practically forces you to take time out of your levelling or PvPing to earn money for consumables, new equipment and upgrades. By attaching a Kinah cost to practically every aspect of character progression, NCSoft have made accumulation of wealth the primary factor for most players because that’s what you need to do to move forwards and Pavlovian games design elicits predictable Pavlovian responses.