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[Suggestion] A Real Money Market:
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
Mentioning @strumslinger and @goatshark here because I think its an idea that may be interesting to them and I would have whispered it to strum, but I thought it would be interesting to see what the community has to say about it.
So I have been toying with an idea for a while now on how to beat the bots and provide money to the Cryptic devs, whilst not upsetting the playerbase and I think I have finally come to a conclusion on how to do it. What I suggest is for Cryptic to add a real money market to Neverwinter.
What I mean, is a market where people can buy and sell things in game, but with real money. It would be in the form of an auction house, similar to the one we have now, only where the bids and buyouts are done with real cash. A player could then put money into this system and then buy items, or sell items and then withdraw money. This benefits Cryptic because it allows them to take a cut of the money players put in. Say you pay x amount and put x amount, then Cryptic gives you 90% of x that you are able to spend in game. Say you purchase something for y amount, well, the player who sold you something for y amount loses 10% of that y amount which then goes to the Cryptic devs and the player gets y-10%. Say a player wants to withdraw z amount into their IRL bank account, well, they can withdraw z amount, but they get taxed 10% of the amount in the process.
So, you may be asking, what makes this idea any better then the system we have now, what makes it beneficial and why should we, as the player and Cryptic, as the developer, buy into this?
The reason is simple. Firstly, I am not suggesting this system replace our own, merely augment it. So the current AH would still exist as is. Below, I will list the positives of implementing a system like this:
1) It creates a market that competes with the bots. As it is, third party sites exist for players who want to buy and sell things for real money because the ability to do so does not exist in game, by adding this to the game, you are reducing their customer base, thereby reducing the amount of income that goes to them and also increasing the amount of income that goes to Cryptic, because those people who were previously sending their money via third party sites are now sending it through Cryptic.
2) It allows players to have the ability to get something out of a game. It attracts f2p players because they can grind, grind and grind and actually see some tangible real world benefit from it.
3) It allows Cryptic to make money from players without having to make new content. It provides a passive form of income, made by the transfer of real money between players that is sustainable and acts as Cryptic's own mini economy. This is a huge plus as unlike microtransactions, it requires no development effort or resources to actually generate money.
4) It gives Cryptic information into how much players think items are worth in game, this gives them an idea of how to price things in future and acts as valuable marketing information.
5) Real money is not a currency that cannot simply be "created out of thin air" and does not need a "currency sink". This is a huge plus, as it makes it an economy far easier to manage.
6) It provides Cryptic with an excuse to unbind items. By Unbinding items and doing away with BoE, BoP and BoA almost entirely, you provide more things that players can sell on a real money market, meaning that players will be more interested in investing in such a market as there is more for them to buy. Almost all gear pieces could be completely unbinding, so your armour could never bind at all. Obviously, things like class sigils would have to remain bound, but a legendary lostmauth's horn of blasting, because its not something infinitely reclaimable, could become something players could sell. This also provides the devs with the excuse of optionally binding all RP, because gear pieces that are created with RP are no longer bound.
There are likely some holes in my idea and it will be interesting to see what players think of it, its just that personally, I see no harm in creating something like this, it weakens the power that bots holds in the economy, with no cost to the players or the devs.
So I have been toying with an idea for a while now on how to beat the bots and provide money to the Cryptic devs, whilst not upsetting the playerbase and I think I have finally come to a conclusion on how to do it. What I suggest is for Cryptic to add a real money market to Neverwinter.
What I mean, is a market where people can buy and sell things in game, but with real money. It would be in the form of an auction house, similar to the one we have now, only where the bids and buyouts are done with real cash. A player could then put money into this system and then buy items, or sell items and then withdraw money. This benefits Cryptic because it allows them to take a cut of the money players put in. Say you pay x amount and put x amount, then Cryptic gives you 90% of x that you are able to spend in game. Say you purchase something for y amount, well, the player who sold you something for y amount loses 10% of that y amount which then goes to the Cryptic devs and the player gets y-10%. Say a player wants to withdraw z amount into their IRL bank account, well, they can withdraw z amount, but they get taxed 10% of the amount in the process.
So, you may be asking, what makes this idea any better then the system we have now, what makes it beneficial and why should we, as the player and Cryptic, as the developer, buy into this?
The reason is simple. Firstly, I am not suggesting this system replace our own, merely augment it. So the current AH would still exist as is. Below, I will list the positives of implementing a system like this:
1) It creates a market that competes with the bots. As it is, third party sites exist for players who want to buy and sell things for real money because the ability to do so does not exist in game, by adding this to the game, you are reducing their customer base, thereby reducing the amount of income that goes to them and also increasing the amount of income that goes to Cryptic, because those people who were previously sending their money via third party sites are now sending it through Cryptic.
2) It allows players to have the ability to get something out of a game. It attracts f2p players because they can grind, grind and grind and actually see some tangible real world benefit from it.
3) It allows Cryptic to make money from players without having to make new content. It provides a passive form of income, made by the transfer of real money between players that is sustainable and acts as Cryptic's own mini economy. This is a huge plus as unlike microtransactions, it requires no development effort or resources to actually generate money.
4) It gives Cryptic information into how much players think items are worth in game, this gives them an idea of how to price things in future and acts as valuable marketing information.
5) Real money is not a currency that cannot simply be "created out of thin air" and does not need a "currency sink". This is a huge plus, as it makes it an economy far easier to manage.
6) It provides Cryptic with an excuse to unbind items. By Unbinding items and doing away with BoE, BoP and BoA almost entirely, you provide more things that players can sell on a real money market, meaning that players will be more interested in investing in such a market as there is more for them to buy. Almost all gear pieces could be completely unbinding, so your armour could never bind at all. Obviously, things like class sigils would have to remain bound, but a legendary lostmauth's horn of blasting, because its not something infinitely reclaimable, could become something players could sell. This also provides the devs with the excuse of optionally binding all RP, because gear pieces that are created with RP are no longer bound.
There are likely some holes in my idea and it will be interesting to see what players think of it, its just that personally, I see no harm in creating something like this, it weakens the power that bots holds in the economy, with no cost to the players or the devs.
Post edited by thefabricant on
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Comments
Given the droprates on those items a really small percentage of the playerbase would benefit from this.
PWE would also probably have to spend a good amount of money having lawyers look things over to implement this. If this was an option they'd have implemented this at launch too.
see what a disaster it was
why i still to this day boycott blizzard and will never give them another cent.
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
I went cooking while browsing the AH, when my {insert litle toddler name here} who is my litle brother/ son / cousin bought for 1000 $ of useless stuff, how can i get my money back?
Example:
Player spends $1 real money on lockbox key. Player is lucky and wins valuable reward. sells reward for $10. Player withdraws $10 real money. This kind of activity would almost certainly be subject to gambling laws in most countries. Instead, why not just open an online casino?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe
and with how cryptic likes to make some stuff worthless in an instant there would be a lot of pissed off ppl with reason to hurt them
winning/losing money in a game of chance is essentially what gambling is.
If lockboxes were removed or changed to give a fixed (always same) payout, then maybe this proposal is possible. It might also be necessary to replace all random rewards with non-random rewards.
The reason that the current lockbox system is legal is because Cryptic does not allow withdrawing real money.
When you buy a lockbox key with real money, you can't get that money back from Cryptic, except for refunds. You might be able to sell that item to another player for real money, but that's between you and other player and does not involve Cryptic.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gambling
1. the activity or practice of playing at a game of chance for money or other stakes.
2. the act or practice of risking the loss of something important by taking a chance or acting recklessly
Buy ammo, shoot monsters, monsters loot.
Laser shots were around 10cents each.
One armed bandit slot machine casino. ;D
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
The solution, IMO, is to invest in a few human GMs to monitor the big zones, like PE. A second step in the right direction would be to put a bounty on botters/RMT-ers if discovered and properly reported by players - say 100 Zen or something, (if you are the first person to report a verifiable case of a bot or RMT spammer, you get the bounty). Of course, since these reports would have to be reviewed by a real person, there'd have to be a penalty for incorrect or fallacious reports, (like reporting someone you don't like to try and silence them).
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
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