If this happens, say good by to game design with good game play as priority one. Cryptic will need to ensure as much Zen and EC are spent in game as possible, with no one feeling like they can cash out.
[SIGPIC]Want to know more about Cryptic's hidden lottery odds and outcomes? Read my posts below.[/SIGPIC] Lock Boxes: The true value - (thread link) Jem'Hadar Bug Odds - (thread link) Galor Creation Rate - (thread link) Find me in TSW - TSW Chronicle Profile
If you're unemployed this would count as declairable income, thus reducing any help you get from the state. Throw in the tax forms and we have a whole bew kettle of fish to deal with.
However I do agree this does give me a bad feeling too.
Actually depends on the state and the income brought in. If you hit a certain limit, that's when you lose benefits.
If Cryptic were actually interested in players "cashing out" for playing an MMO, then they should be paying foundry authors who produce quality spotlight worthy content missions a fair wage of Zen in return. So, yeah, they dont really care. :rolleyes:
By law Perfect World / Cryptic couldn't do that, you have to earn tangible money, not script.
But them paying Foundry Authors for their stories is the most likely thing in STO that would allow players to earn real money while playing.
If this happens, say good by to game design with good game play as priority one. Cryptic will need to ensure as much Zen and EC are spent in game as possible, with no one feeling like they can cash out.
Or you just keep the cashout below the average expense per item.
A C-Store item is NOT pure profit. A portion of each purchase is cost. Probably, all of it is treated as cost until the labor behind it is paid off.
But look at the average cost of an item if looked at how its development cost is repayed over a year over a year. Say it's 30%. (Possible as some items don't break even in a year. But this would hold if the average time to recoup the cost of an item was 4 months, weighing in that some never break even and some probably break even in 30 days.)
So if you let people cash out for up to 30% purchase value of ZEN, it's the same difference. Cryptic takes a 70% profit in that case, same as if they'd sold a C-Store item with a 70% profit margin. And a better deal if stipend points cannot be used for it although that's tricky to track.
Really, though, I think it could work in a game with a dilithium<->ZEN<->real money type economy but there are too many ways stipend points could be laundered here. Could work for NW.
For STO or CO, the best route I could see would be to have Cash <-> Dilithium/Questionite <-> ZEN. This would shield dilithium value from stipends and other distortions cheapening it.
You would always want to turn ZEN into dilithium to get cash if nothing else. Creates a constant pull for dilithium demand while the supply remains fixed. Has the effect of making the C-Store MORE accessible to non-paying players since C-Store is in ZEN and this would make ZEN easier to get with dilithium... and dilithium easier to get with cash than ZEN.
Now, the flipside is that I could always convert dilithium to cash (instead of ZEN) and use the cash to buy ZEN.
I THINK it would stabilize out.
Would be interesting to see what would happen if you could trade dilithium for cash (or cash for dilithium -- probably with Cryptic getting a cash cut either way) or you could trade dilithium for ZEN (or ZEN for dilithium) but you couldn't turn ZEN into cash directly (but you could turn cash into ZEN, as always). I'd wager more people would trade dilithium for cash than ZEN. The relative value of ZEN crashes, making ZEN easier to earn in game. But Cryptic would still be making money off of every ZEN sale and getting a cut every cash purchase. Which provides an extra layer of profit.
I sell for the minimum (at 25 dil per ZEN) and get 12,500 dilithium.
I sell the dilithium for cash that somebody else supplies (at 30 dil per $0.01 and Cryptic gets a 20% cut).
The buyer pays $4.17 for 12,500 dilithium, saving money over if they'd bought ZEN. Cryptic makes $0.83 for no labor on their end before card processing fees. I make $3.34 there.
Actually depends on the state and the income brought in. If you hit a certain limit, that's when you lose benefits..
I can only talk UK wise. When claiming JSA/ESA and having any money coming in you must declare it. There is a certain amount that is ignored then benefits are cut by one pound for every pound over it. It would also be declarable tax wise, though I doubt you'd have to pay tax on it.
Failing to do both of these risks charges of fraud. This to me is one of the problems of it. Even though legally ignorance is no defence, you could see quite a few people unwittingly become criminals. These people could in all other ways be perfectly law abiding people who wouldn't knowingly break any law.
I just wonder what kind of culture it would bring to the game. I can definitely picture people doing massive afk'ing and incoming additional selfish and anti-social behaviour.
i saw what cashing out did to secondlife. it became a giant shopping mall with an abundance of shady-types and outright thieves looking for their easy pot of gold.
then there will have to be ways to create more sinks, deal with largescale sweatshop farming ventures, control the dil market and discourage speculators, recognise gambling laws (but i think foresight is the reason gpl is hardly used), etc etc. the guys over at secondlife opened a huge can of worms that you should study before jumping into the cash-out game.
please dont.
If Diablo 3 can have a real money auction house, then yes i think turning Zen back into $ could be a thing for STO.
Some of us have earned everything that there is to unlock in the C-Store via Dilithium Exchange, have completed our Starbases and are now just sitting there watching Tons of Dilithium and Zen pile up while the C-Store doesn't keep up with what we could spend on it. And NO i will not waste it on LuckBox shenanigans.
"It'd be great if people could cash-out," Zinkievich said - as in, earn real-world money by playing Neverwinter...
No, it wouldn't, it would be awful. But the "potential" to earn real currency by playing a game can sell alot of boxes, so expect more developers to intentionally tank their own game trying to adopt this approach.
Still, to me the threat is less about hacking and more about bot "gold farmers" cranking away even if not very efficiently, and hurting cryptic's bottom line.
Cryptic can easily profit off bot activity; the only problem is that they'll need to subjugate the entire game to the activity level of those bots, making for a very unpleasant experience for the average gamer.
If they're talking about monetizing NWN in this way, then I feel safe in assuming NWN will not be a good game.
Speaking of cash, did everyone else get a spam mail in sto today from some gold farmer ?
Anyway, one thing they could do is make it subscribers only, might get more people to sign up and then make the cash per zen ridiculously low, maybe 1 cent pr 10,000 zen.
Also, come up with a new currency so the 3-year-old farmers don't bankrupt the company first day out
If Diablo 3 can have a real money auction house, then yes i think turning Zen back into $ could be a thing for STO.
Some of us have earned everything that there is to unlock in the C-Store via Dilithium Exchange, have completed our Starbases and are now just sitting there watching Tons of Dilithium and Zen pile up while the C-Store doesn't keep up with what we could spend on it. And NO i will not waste it on LuckBox shenanigans.
Except that the Diablo 3 auction house was a horrible plan! :rolleyes:
I just wonder what kind of culture it would bring to the game. I can definitely picture people doing massive afk'ing and incoming additional selfish and anti-social behaviour.
I literally LOL'd hard at work at your forum picture sig, thats great man! I didnt explain to my coworker what I was laughing at, she wouldnt get it, but I do.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
The Cashing Out option seems like it would be pretty awesome and harmless, but it actually can have severe negative effects. The main one is that you will attract an extremely greater amount of botters, scammers, etc. etc. which can really TRIBBLE up the game. Another negative is it removes the veil so to speak of the value of your in game actions. Grinding out dilithium becomes much less appealing when you have a direct value you can sell it for, generally something extremely lower than minimum wage. It is not rational that your brain would think like this, especially when you can buy zen to convert to dilithium etc., but it happens. A common complaint I saw about Diablo III was people saying it felt more like a job than a game, and this is more or less an inevitable result of adding a cash out option.
Clearly he was misquoted - he actually said "Crashing out."
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
There are folks with dozens of characters and unrefined dilithium stockpiles in the millions thanks to a certain exploit that Crypic fixed. This would be great news for them.
No just no. This was done by Blizzard for Diablo 3 and it absolutely ruined the game. Now granted alot of it had to do with their Real Money Auction House, but you could still cash out your Blizzard Bucks into real money through PayPal. This "cashing out" option is one of the many problems with D3 as of right now that will never be resolved.
I would not wish this option on any other game, even those that I highly detest and despise. Leave it as it is. Even though Cryptic has its fair share of problems, its doing alot better than most companies out there.
Imagine this: 10 new T6 ships got released (no, not 10 new types with infinite stock, 10 Ships. For 10 Players. Now in the Zen-only-Auctionhouse).
And if you now think that is a mindblowing overreaction: No, its not. Its what cashout "games" (These type of "games" usually refer to themself as virtual worlds) do and have done. They are not games anymore except for the really, really rich.
On the bright side: They usually need to be build to be what they are, they don't get transformed to it. Chances are next to zero that STO will get the massive consumerbase alienating overhaul that it would require to become a cashout virtual world.
Not entirely correct, bills need to be paid after all. Besides, Cryptic is not the kind of company that's geared toward that sort of thing. They never have been. This might just be me, but it strikes me as a bad thing to change business strategies three times in three years. (Remember what happened last time?)
"Cashing Out" is a very difficult thing to do, and requires constant monitoring of cash flow, the manpower and infrastructure to handle such a business format is so unwieldy, I can count the number of companies that have succeeded on one hand. (and a quick google search yields a laundry list of those who have failed)
And the last Cryptic needs is to become more like CCP. :rolleyes:
They also need to mail out W-2's and get a federal employer ID
EDIT
As well some parts of the world gambling for cash is illegal. By having a cash out options lockboxes(or any other in-game item) change from having an equivalent $ value to having an actual measurable and legal equity. Which would cross the line in some States/World Regions involving Online gambling for cash. In fact any thing utilizing a random number generator from STF loot drops to dice rolls could be potentially actionable with the right legal argument if a cash out option is avail. and depending on it's limitations. I just don't see Cryptic/PWE putting a noticeable percentage of a major law firm on retainer to make just this part work.
DBL EDIT: oh yea and another thing
Isn't there a bill (US) being worked on to apply state taxes to online purchases and would this fall into that bailiwick?
only if Cryptic is the payer/employer not PWE, not sure if they would have one
Either way they would have to follow requisite reporting procedures in other countries that have users with "payouts" not just US. Having worked in payroll and HR I can see that getting complicated since this is somewhat undefined territory for tax purposes internationally. Laws will probably be all over the place for some time in regards to mmo "payouts" since it has not ,as yet, become a common practice.
EDIT my gut feeling on it is if you don't have a pretty serous legal team to help you set precedent you might want to let someone else dip their toes in first.
Comments
Lock Boxes: The true value - (thread link)
Jem'Hadar Bug Odds - (thread link)
Galor Creation Rate - (thread link)
Find me in TSW - TSW Chronicle Profile
Interesting... does anyone else find it odd this is coming from someone whos left and come back to Cryptic ala Dan Stahl style?
Make of that what you will.
redshirtarmy.com - RedShirtArmy Podcast
STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)
Actually depends on the state and the income brought in. If you hit a certain limit, that's when you lose benefits.
By law Perfect World / Cryptic couldn't do that, you have to earn tangible money, not script.
But them paying Foundry Authors for their stories is the most likely thing in STO that would allow players to earn real money while playing.
They wouldn't go to Jail, they would go to Federal Prison for 10-20 years.
Or you just keep the cashout below the average expense per item.
A C-Store item is NOT pure profit. A portion of each purchase is cost. Probably, all of it is treated as cost until the labor behind it is paid off.
But look at the average cost of an item if looked at how its development cost is repayed over a year over a year. Say it's 30%. (Possible as some items don't break even in a year. But this would hold if the average time to recoup the cost of an item was 4 months, weighing in that some never break even and some probably break even in 30 days.)
So if you let people cash out for up to 30% purchase value of ZEN, it's the same difference. Cryptic takes a 70% profit in that case, same as if they'd sold a C-Store item with a 70% profit margin. And a better deal if stipend points cannot be used for it although that's tricky to track.
Really, though, I think it could work in a game with a dilithium<->ZEN<->real money type economy but there are too many ways stipend points could be laundered here. Could work for NW.
For STO or CO, the best route I could see would be to have Cash <-> Dilithium/Questionite <-> ZEN. This would shield dilithium value from stipends and other distortions cheapening it.
You would always want to turn ZEN into dilithium to get cash if nothing else. Creates a constant pull for dilithium demand while the supply remains fixed. Has the effect of making the C-Store MORE accessible to non-paying players since C-Store is in ZEN and this would make ZEN easier to get with dilithium... and dilithium easier to get with cash than ZEN.
Now, the flipside is that I could always convert dilithium to cash (instead of ZEN) and use the cash to buy ZEN.
I THINK it would stabilize out.
Would be interesting to see what would happen if you could trade dilithium for cash (or cash for dilithium -- probably with Cryptic getting a cash cut either way) or you could trade dilithium for ZEN (or ZEN for dilithium) but you couldn't turn ZEN into cash directly (but you could turn cash into ZEN, as always). I'd wager more people would trade dilithium for cash than ZEN. The relative value of ZEN crashes, making ZEN easier to earn in game. But Cryptic would still be making money off of every ZEN sale and getting a cut every cash purchase. Which provides an extra layer of profit.
That's the most promising scenario here, I think.
I have a stipend of 500 points.
I sell for the minimum (at 25 dil per ZEN) and get 12,500 dilithium.
I sell the dilithium for cash that somebody else supplies (at 30 dil per $0.01 and Cryptic gets a 20% cut).
The buyer pays $4.17 for 12,500 dilithium, saving money over if they'd bought ZEN. Cryptic makes $0.83 for no labor on their end before card processing fees. I make $3.34 there.
I'm trying to sort out who loses.
I can only talk UK wise. When claiming JSA/ESA and having any money coming in you must declare it. There is a certain amount that is ignored then benefits are cut by one pound for every pound over it. It would also be declarable tax wise, though I doubt you'd have to pay tax on it.
Failing to do both of these risks charges of fraud. This to me is one of the problems of it. Even though legally ignorance is no defence, you could see quite a few people unwittingly become criminals. These people could in all other ways be perfectly law abiding people who wouldn't knowingly break any law.
I just wonder what kind of culture it would bring to the game. I can definitely picture people doing massive afk'ing and incoming additional selfish and anti-social behaviour.
then there will have to be ways to create more sinks, deal with largescale sweatshop farming ventures, control the dil market and discourage speculators, recognise gambling laws (but i think foresight is the reason gpl is hardly used), etc etc. the guys over at secondlife opened a huge can of worms that you should study before jumping into the cash-out game.
please dont.
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Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
A few more Foundry exploits like the last one and I could pay my rent playing STO.
Beers,
Jengoz =/
"Star Trek Online is powered by the most abundant resource in the galaxy . . . Gullibility"
Some of us have earned everything that there is to unlock in the C-Store via Dilithium Exchange, have completed our Starbases and are now just sitting there watching Tons of Dilithium and Zen pile up while the C-Store doesn't keep up with what we could spend on it. And NO i will not waste it on LuckBox shenanigans.
Cryptic can easily profit off bot activity; the only problem is that they'll need to subjugate the entire game to the activity level of those bots, making for a very unpleasant experience for the average gamer.
If they're talking about monetizing NWN in this way, then I feel safe in assuming NWN will not be a good game.
And then there's that. Personally, I think lock boxes will eventually draw IRS attention, but this immediately draws it.
Anyway, one thing they could do is make it subscribers only, might get more people to sign up and then make the cash per zen ridiculously low, maybe 1 cent pr 10,000 zen.
Also, come up with a new currency so the 3-year-old farmers don't bankrupt the company first day out
Except that the Diablo 3 auction house was a horrible plan! :rolleyes:
I literally LOL'd hard at work at your forum picture sig, thats great man! I didnt explain to my coworker what I was laughing at, she wouldnt get it, but I do.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
<chuckle>
Mission accomplished then as crashing all of the Cryptic games at once is rather impressive.
I would not wish this option on any other game, even those that I highly detest and despise. Leave it as it is. Even though Cryptic has its fair share of problems, its doing alot better than most companies out there.
And if you now think that is a mindblowing overreaction: No, its not. Its what cashout "games" (These type of "games" usually refer to themself as virtual worlds) do and have done. They are not games anymore except for the really, really rich.
On the bright side: They usually need to be build to be what they are, they don't get transformed to it. Chances are next to zero that STO will get the massive consumerbase alienating overhaul that it would require to become a cashout virtual world.
I will dye your armor 4 free!
They also need to mail out W-2's and get a federal employer ID
EDIT
As well some parts of the world gambling for cash is illegal. By having a cash out options lockboxes(or any other in-game item) change from having an equivalent $ value to having an actual measurable and legal equity. Which would cross the line in some States/World Regions involving Online gambling for cash. In fact any thing utilizing a random number generator from STF loot drops to dice rolls could be potentially actionable with the right legal argument if a cash out option is avail. and depending on it's limitations. I just don't see Cryptic/PWE putting a noticeable percentage of a major law firm on retainer to make just this part work.
DBL EDIT: oh yea and another thing
Isn't there a bill (US) being worked on to apply state taxes to online purchases and would this fall into that bailiwick?
I think they HAVE one of those. :-)
only if Cryptic is the payer/employer not PWE, not sure if they would have one
Either way they would have to follow requisite reporting procedures in other countries that have users with "payouts" not just US. Having worked in payroll and HR I can see that getting complicated since this is somewhat undefined territory for tax purposes internationally. Laws will probably be all over the place for some time in regards to mmo "payouts" since it has not ,as yet, become a common practice.
EDIT my gut feeling on it is if you don't have a pretty serous legal team to help you set precedent you might want to let someone else dip their toes in first.