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The Economy, and Tradeable Items

Dear AoC fans,

I am concerned by the prospect of all in-game gear and items being "tradeable".  It's a policy that can potentially compromise the game's... integrity.

In Runescape, the best weapon in the game is called the "twisted bow". It's worth 1.1 billion gold, or about $900.  The twisted bow blows every other weapon out of the water, by a margin of up to 50% more DPS, against certain monsters. If you have the means to get a hold of this bad boy, you can easy-mode almost everything in the game. If not... then, well, you're a pleb. The bow is a hard requirement to join many PvE-oriented groups, amping up the pressure to dish out some real life cash to gain a foothold in the game.

The problem is: even if the devs don't engage in corrupt practices, the players will. As soon as the game grows big enough, you'll see black markets sprout all over the place... ashesgoldcheap.com. aocbargains.com. When players are permitted to exchange real-world currency with in-game assets... they invariably will.  As long as items are tradeable, the game is pay-to-win.

This situation creates two distinct classes of players: the plebs, and the elites. if you're poor IRL, you'll always be at a crippling disadvantage, having to play the game the hard way. If you're loaded IRL, the game will grow dull. You won't have to do endgame PvE, or farm materials, for the best gear. You can die and lose your armor as many times as you like- it's readily replaceable. Just swipe your debit card, and you're all kitted out.

An unrelated problem is that when items are buyable, they lose their intrinsic  value. Let's say you kill the level 500 Demon Dragon, and get the rare Legendary Demon Dragon Sword. You can't prove you actually earned it, and didn't buy it. The item, being a tradeable commodity, loses its esteem, its achievement value. All it's worth is X amount of gold.

Could having an in-game economy pose a problem? Am I overthinking it? What do you all think?

Comments

  •  As for getting a legendary weapon. This would be simple just give  A achievement when it was first received. As for the other really depends on how the economy is being set up. There’s some great ways  or I should say make it more expensive for the gold farmers 🤗🤗😉😜
  • I think you are overthinking it.

    Legendary items are going to be rare.   If someone gets one they may keep it, they may sell it for a fortune, but there is going to be one of them.   
  • This has been beat to death here and in other venues. They have been building the game since day one with one of their specific goals to reduce gold selling, RMT, and bots. The problems other games have had in the past is that they have always tried to react after launch or just didn't care. They have several things in place to reduce those issues to negligible levels (impossible to claim eradication). Some of those have been discussed, others they are not talking about to keep people from trying to find workarounds. Realize every action you take in game is being tracked. Every trade, every kill, every interaction. They have 3rd party vendors who specialize in this that have been working with them from day one, and will be able to generate real-time reports of suspicious activity and alerts. Since there is no trading of account bound items that are bought on the store, no way to buy stuff with in game currency, and a host of other blocks, it removes the profit motivation quite nicely. Here is a link to one such vendor that we know of that has had input and their systems integrated since inception. https://www.panopticonlabs.com/
  • You won't have too many people holding Legendary items on a server, those things will be rare
  • 1. Rmt will exist in some form. It cant be helped. The Russians will be all over it ASAP.

    2. RMT that you know of will be curbed hard core simply due to lack of fast travel. Meaning it has to be worth someone's time to spend at least a few man hours per purchase/sale just for delivery.

    3. It wont be game breaking. P2W generally becomes game breaking when gear that doesnt exist in the game becomes available to the affluent. Selling things you can get yourself via playing is not half as bad. Although I do agree to the OPs concern of haves and have nots.

    4. All of this is far far more preferable than not having a fully functioning economy. The only thing that should be account bound is items purchased with Ember.

    Trust me on #4 if you dont believe me. 
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