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Generosity
Xhelori
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter
John F. Holmes said that there is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up. Khalil Gibran said that generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
Sometimes it just feels gratifying to be generous, whether greatly or minutely, with kudos or anonymously... generous with our time and our own resources, when another player seems to need extra support in some way, or it’s a special occasion, and we’d like to give to them in some way.
What might be in place that can help to safely facilitate this gratifying experience for some of us in Ashes of Creation?
Since it’s Steven’s birthday, it seemed like a good time to bring this up.
Happy birthday, Steven! 🎂🎵🎉
Sometimes it just feels gratifying to be generous, whether greatly or minutely, with kudos or anonymously... generous with our time and our own resources, when another player seems to need extra support in some way, or it’s a special occasion, and we’d like to give to them in some way.
What might be in place that can help to safely facilitate this gratifying experience for some of us in Ashes of Creation?
Since it’s Steven’s birthday, it seemed like a good time to bring this up.
Happy birthday, Steven! 🎂🎵🎉
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Comments
I mean outside of the normative volunteering. It could be something like how you can gift certain home items through the store. Or how the ruling infrastructure of a node chooses to send a thank-you gift out to all the node citizens. Things like this that are not automatic or compulsory.
If the rulers want to send a gift, just announce that they are lowering the taxes for a day.
There is nothing stopping people or guilds from being nice and generous. Why would there need to be a specific system in game for that?
That of course doesn't stop you from Pay-paling your friend the money to buy something from the store; however, nothing requires them to spend the money on Ashes of Creation.
Basically you can give people money if you want, but they can spend it how they want.
He could just reduce the tax for the inhabitants to 0% for a few days or something.
About doing just some nice random things to other people:
I still remember, when I just started out in WoW Classic, playing a warrior dwarf and questing in Duskwood. A random paladin came riding by and stopped infront of me and requested a trade. I accepted and he just gave me some white shoulderguards and a helmet (which was nice, because you normally only got them in later levels). THAT was one of the reasons, why i began doing something similar.
Sometimes its just that ONE act of kindness that makes a community to a good community.
Cosmetic items would not be “P2W” and I would not necessarily wish to be limited to only people I knew in real life. If someone wished to roleplay as sending a house-warming gift (like a floral arrangement – it can even be something that expires, like an actual bouquet would).
Sending money to other players from outside the game is not really conducive to the ingame character continuity.
I have gifted ingame friends house items in ESO, and it does not affect their actual gameplay with their characters. I see little harm in allowing this. There will of course be bound items. Why not a small inventory of small giftable effects? They can make the condition that it has to have a direct recipient and then be bound to that recipient.
I suppose it would be doable to give something crafted that you make, perhaps, that is not even purchased in the game store.
The game is not yet done being coded, so I hope perhaps they might consider a smidgen of this as a possible positive addition to the social immersiveness (is that a word?) within the game.
Virtue is the only good.
Virtue is the only good.
Got any Girl Scout Cookies? I'm in.
Actually, cosmetic items would still be pay to win. As in you could be paid real money for something in game. Please see the stance on that in the wiki.
" I don't want cosmetic items that can be purchased from the market to be transferable... because it is in a way a transfer of money for potentially something in-game.[23] – Steven Sharif"
Yes, most people will actually trade items or gift them. Others will want to bypass some of the game and pay real money for items. Hence the title of 'pay to win'. Unfortunately, it is those others that affect people who are genuinely generous.
I have gifted many items in other games, so I understand your stance. But I like @StevenSharif stance even more.
In the end, it will still be a wonderful game even if we cannot gift items. I hope we can gift crafted items. That would still be a nice action, and possibly the person would get an even better item than from the shop.
Virtue is the only good.
I have not only already read this part of the wiki, I have quoted from it recently here. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/222591#Comment_222591
If the cosmetic gift you send becomes bound upon receipt (as I mentioned as a possible option, and I believe to be ideal) - which means it would NOT be transferrable - then what exactly is the difference between you having it or someone else having that item other than a difference in ownership? The end result is still that it cannot be sold again.
Imagine you have a thing that I want. If I offer you a cosmetic item in exchange for that item - by me buying it and sending it straight to your account - then the item you have that I want, that I am buying from you, I am buying it for real money.
This is exactly what the developers don't want to happen. It isn't a case of worrying about being able to resell it or not, as it has already been used to buy an item with real money.
This seems like a bit of a Slippery-Slope appeal. It is not a direct monetary exchange. If it were to hypothetically go to court in a civil suit, then direct causality could not be established for violating the core tenets of the game concept.
I do not believe this game is striving to end all possible instances of quid pro quo. Occasionally a player will want something in exchange, whether it be for helping with a dungeon group or crafting an item, or a player will desire something that another player can facilitate in obtaining, however that may be achieved.
Someone will always try to find a loophole to game the system. We don’t live in a Utopia. This shouldn’t mean we must be entirely parochial about prevention, to the point we lose the optimal balance between autonomy and security.
The resort where I worked for almost 20 years took a risk and made the decision to remodel the gift shop in the lobby. They knocked down all of the walls facing the lobby and pushed the displays out a bit in order to draw more traffic into the gift shop. This also increased the likelihood of more shoplifting (it’s an easy escape with no walls and no scanners to walk through), but they decided since it was already inside the building and the bellstand and the front desk would be staring right at it most of the day and would notice things (along with the existing security cameras), it would be worth the risk.
They were right: The guests enjoyed it more and frequented the gift shop more often, and sales nearly doubled. Thefts increased a smidgen, but were still rare and unsubstantial compared to the gains.
In order for it to be a slippery slope, there you need to at least start a down hill trajectory. Intrepid are taking the extreme stance on not allowing pay to win, and have included the ability to buy other players cosmetics in that stance. With this stance, there is literally no way to buy something in game for another player with real money.
If they were to allow players to buy cosmetics for others, that would be the beginning of the slipper slope, as that would see a means by which a player could buy an item for another player using real money - thus the *start* of the slippery slope down towards full developer implemented RMT.
There are many issues with this analogy.
Intrepid have not made the stance they made on gifting cash shop items in order to increase the sales of cash shop items - they made it in order to increase the sales of game subscriptions.
I guarantee that the resort in your example wouldn't have expanded the gift shop if the only room to expand it in to meant they lost half their seats in the dining room - they were able to expand it with no negative impacts on any otehr revenue strems for the business.
If Intrepid allow people to gift cash shop items to others, their revenue from subscriptions will drop.
I think something is getting lost in translation. You just explained exactly that what you are proposing is indeed the Slippery Slope argument.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Slippery-Slope
I am not quite clear on what you are using to estimate this gain/loss math. There is no actual physical “space” within an online game store, and no “space” that is not a lot of lines of code to be a proxy for the idea of space.
I am playing this game either way, whether or not there is any sort of non-p2w gift system, and I am resourceful enough to figure out a way to exercise generosity with minimal guilt and good conscience, and within the confines of the game environment. Most failures are due to a lack of imagination.
I also thought it might be fun to brainstorm a bit, see what interesting ideas others may have, clever ways to be kind and all – what with all the dreary drudgery of the pandemic marching on, but you’re not having it.
Goodnight. 😊
The first step towards that end - the step that could be argued that it is the start of the sloppery slope - is allowing players to gift items in the cash store to others. By not allowing this right from the start, Intrepid are refusing to take even that first step towards that slippery slope.
I am interested to hear what you think the slippery slope they are heading down by not allowing gifting will end up in. In the case of Ashes, it is less about space and more about the fact that there will be people that will not play the game (and thus not pay a subscription) if Intrepid allow for gifting items in the cash shop.
The end result is the same as if the cash shop expansion meant the loss of seats in a dining room though - it is an attempt to increase one revenue stream at the expense of another.
Just to be perfectly clear, there will be no way you can take real money and convert it in to anything you can give to another player - and still fall within the games EULA/ToS. You can (probably) hand out anything you have acquired in game to other players, but if you acquired those in game items with real money, you broke the rules there somewhere.
The only way there will be to buy an item that you can give to another player is if you go to a third party site - which will exist, but is against the EULA/ToS, and will put your account at risk.
Or you can just Pay-Pal money to people, but then they are able to do with it as they see fit.
Step 1: I buy the Crimson Cloak of Cheese in the Ashes shop for $20.
Step 2: I trade the cloak in-game to a high level elf who hands me 100,000 gold coins in exchange.
Step 3: I use those 100,000 gold coins to buy high-end armor and weapons that I’d normally spend hours grinding and/or questing to earn.
So, I just bought high end gear for $20. And worst of all, it is 100% within the rules and sanctioned by Intrepid because they are the ones who sold me the cloak and let me trade it in the game. Nobody can report me, I can’t be banned, because I’ve done nothing wrong. They might as well just let me directly pay cash for high end gear. It’s the very definition of pay to win.
Sure, you can use the old gold farmer method of sending cash to a seedy web site and meeting some guy in the game who hands you the gear. But in that case the transactions are happening outside of the game, are unsanctioned, and Intrepid has cause to ban people if they can prove it.
Edit, will you buy it for me? I'll give you 1,000 gold!
I highly doubt most players are solely interested in the cosmetics, or that this is their endgame for Ashes of Creation. The core concept for this game is not primarily as a dress-up game; it is just one attractive facet.
I also suggested that the giftable items could be smaller effects, perhaps a floral bouquet, a wreath, or a music box that plays a holiday song, that they can be temporary (expire after a time) and the gifts may also change with the seasons. They can be things that exist in the shop under their own sub-tab solely for the purpose of gifting as one would a greeting card. They do need to make all of the cash shop items giftable.
I am going to confess, I will not quit the game if people send me small tokens like bouquets and wreaths. My sense of purpose in the game will not be fulfilled by this.
Yes! That is the sense I am getting, here. I came asking for whimsy on creative ways to be generous in Ashes of Creation, but have been mostly met with it being regarded as something with the greater potential to foster unfairness, similar to people abusing welfare and food stamps. It seems to be more interesting to debate about whether or not gifting a cosmetic would be exploited to lead to “P2W” situations than it is to offer ways they like to practice kindness and generosity ingame.
Alternatives are welcome but were not offered much, other than exchanging PayPal IDs to give someone money to get something on their own, which is similar to what I do to be lazy and uninvolved with other people’s birthdays, weddings and such (here’s a gift card, go find something yourself, because I CBA).
Instead of embracing the possibility of spreading joy, we’d rather avoid any sense of vulnerability and dress-rehearse tragedy.
It just might be a tad depressing. 😂😅
Nobody else has any fun or clever ideas for being generous, only Honey Bunches of No?
OK Scrooges, you win. It seemed like a nice idea, but not enough are interested. Thank you for your time.
That being said go make peoples day with In game gifts! With Ashes systems, us helping each other will benefit everyone!
On the other side, you can always provide buffs through consumables. These are really appreciated.
Also helping through quests and other stuff.
I don't want a system that rewards helping with in game mechanics because people will find a way to exploit it.
Ashes is going to ban those players, not try to appeal to them.
If you wanna be generous, hand out items at random, reduce taxes in your node, take some newbies on a dungeon run, give people gear, PayPal them money. There’s ways to be generous without completely turning the game into a sanctioned gold selling cesspool.
All we are saying is that Intrepid has already stated that you cannot gift cash shop items.
There are lots more ways to be generous without spending real world cash. Give out items, help out other people, lower taxes, have your guild all stand around and protect a newbie while they gather. Stand on a corner and give out 2 gold pieces to every other passerby. Gather flowers and give them out.
Lots of things to do in game!
Help a player out with leveling if you wanna be generous. Teach them the aspects of the game that are complicated and give them a foothold within the gaming world, become their friend.
Whilst it is a nice thought that you want to be able to gift your friends shop items, as others have stated it is likely not going to happen due to the gold selling nature of it all. With almost everything (aside from shop cosmetics) being tradeable, there is no stopping you from making items in-game through professions or buying them through auction houses and giving these to friends.
A being can not judge light if he has never seen it, neither can he judge darkness if he never has been it