Business And Economy Archive
Thread: What is the affect of external markets on the SWG economy
If it's duped that's obviously a problem. A 1k square static harvester farm probably isn't best thing for a server as well.
And on the other hand if outside sales help create interest in the game that’s good.
The SWG economy is primarily influenced by the amount of credits in circulation and any given time. More credits = less valuation of credits. Ebay and ICE do not add credits to the ecomony, nor do they remove them. They simply transfer ownership of credits from one character to another. The frequency of transfer has nothing to do with the ecomony. Thus, there is no difference between selling 15,000 credits on Ebay and tipping someone 15,000, from an economic point of view.
jmg416 wrote:
So you both seem to think it actually stimulates the economy. Do you see any problems with it?
Why do you believe that the game makers are so opposed?
In extreme case where external market would be totally allowed, it might lead to situation where actual money is used ingame. Crafters, buffers and other players ingame wouldn't want ingame cash - they would like to have hard real life cash from their items. How many dollars you would like to pay from advanced armor? Is 0.5cents enough from doctor buff?Players might also try to protectmuch more hardertheir ingame interestwith allkind griefing, cheating and dishonest activity.
Anotherissue is that allowing ebaying, would mean that rich people in real life are also rich people ingame.
We are playing, becauseit is fun (?) and it is escape from reality --> Most ofplayers (like me)aren't richin RL--> Most of players can't buy items for hard reallife currency --> Most of players would be poor also ingame, like in real life --> Most of players would quit, because it wouldn't be escape from reality anymore.
Currently ebaying and other external markets don't have huge game stopping effect, because only limited portion from player base actively selling items in external market (also it seems like that most of duping bugs are fixed). It would be actully intresting to see as sociological experiment what would happend if eBaying would be allowed and ecouraged by SOE... (Ofcourse I wouldn't be part of that experiment, because I really have hard time to find "good loot" and I am not rich.)
It makes a game (a thing you do for fun) into sort of work (something you can earn on).
The real life value of game items attracts opportunists - people experienced with the game, or games in general, who develop methods of fastest credits hoarding so they can sell it.
When you compare a regular crafter to ebayer, the difference isnt big at first glance. They are both driven by will to have big bank accounts. But, in general regular player crafter who wants to be rich ingame, will reach the moment he will slow down, take a break, explore other aspects, spend the cash, generally be a aprt of community. The ebayer-crafter will not be a part of community. Players in MMO creates communities (guilds, cities, make friends) and then have fun together. Ebayer is a lone wolf who has a sole purpose to make as much as possible, he doesnt need/want friends, sharing and helping others is something that perceives as loss. When he is able to satisfy demand for his products he will look for other markets (different profession, different server, etc)
Impact of pure ebayer-crafers is not really significant, beside maybe attempts to monopolise and saturate markets and innate will to make as much profit as possible (greed)
What is much more damaging is when ebayer starts to abuse/exploit the system to gather money. The most prevalent examples can be:
- grinding/selling jedi - jedi being in high demand mean you can easily make a living by just grinding them to knigh and selling them. Making it a way to earn leads to exploiting every possible flaw in system just to do it faster.
- loot camping - at least a few good spots to get loot are timed spawns - both mobs to kill and places to loot. Ebayer logs on, kills/loots the spawn, logs out just to come back the moment items/mobs spawn and do it again. This not only is abuse of system and prevents regular players their chance on getting the loot, but in some cases it can also lead to monopolizing the market for certain loot item. Please note that ebayer can do it on many servers at once - it takes 5 min to loot the spawn and timers are long enough so you can repeat on other galaxies.
All that said, ability to sell in-game items and credits tend to bring out the worst traits in every human being, exactly as CA$H does in real world. It leads to increase of abuse of game system, greed showing everywhere, people not playing but just exploiting the system to earn real life bucks and so on.
What I personally dont like most, is that without ebay, people are generally more generous. Fact that anything you own is just virtual makes it easier for every human being to share with others, lend, give away, building great communities and a world that is sort of better the real life. Ebay screws it royally.
Xeovar wrote:
What is much more damaging is when ebayer starts to abuse/exploit the system to gather money. The most prevalent examples can be:
- grinding/selling jedi - jedi being in high demand mean you can easily make a living by just grinding them to knigh and selling them. Making it a way to earn leads to exploiting every possible flaw in system just to do it faster.
- loot camping - at least a few good spots to get loot are timed spawns - both mobs to kill and places to loot. Ebayer logs on, kills/loots the spawn, logs out just to come back the moment items/mobs spawn and do it again. This not only is abuse of system and prevents regular players their chance on getting the loot, but in some cases it can also lead to monopolizing the market for certain loot item. Please note that ebayer can do it on many servers at once - it takes 5 min to loot the spawn and timers are long enough so you can repeat on other galaxies.
this is the 'answer' to the original post. The ability to sell on ebay leads to an increase in 'players' who have no interest in playing and who mine (for want of a better term) the game for it's real world value at the expense of the true gamers.
In short, people who buy and sell accounts/items/credits externally degrade the experience of the legitimate players.
Kisses
Cass
In short, people who buy and sell accounts/items/credits externally degrade the experience of the legitimate players.
I would like to know your opinion on how it degrades the experience for others. I definately feel that it does, but only in a way that they are not directly aware of.
jmg416 wrote:
I would like to know your opinion on how it degrades the experience for others. I definately feel that it does, but only in a way that they are not directly aware of.
Ok first off, I have never even looked on E-Bay to buy credits, they are too easy to make as it is. However I do not believe that the trading of credits on E-Bay is widespread enough to effect the SWG economy. Even if it were, the effect would be minimal.
If online buying and selling of credits were widespread the effect would be minimal since the pre-conditions for widespread online trading would create the very situation that online trading would induce.
Right now, the value of credits is determined by what they can buy in game. Widespread selling of credits IRL for real money would create a new means of valuing credits. If buying credits were common and expensive it would increase the value of the credit. If buying credits were common and cheap it would decrease the value of the credit.
The first scenario (sales are common and expensive) is unlikely. In order for this to happen, credits would have to be very difficult to obtain in game. Such a low money supply would inflate the value of the credit. Therefore the inflated value of the credit due to this expensive online trading would only increase a trend already in place.
The second scenario (sales are common and cheap) is even less likely. For online prices to be low, there has to be a lot of credits available for sale. That would only happen if there were a vast surplus of credits in the game. A large amount of credits in circulation would push the value of the credit down. Again, the downward pressure on the credit, caused by widespread cheap online sales, would only exacerbate a trend that was already in place. This scenario is less likely because if credits are widely available in-game, players are less likely to bother spending real money to get more.
Just my humble theory of course, if I am wrong please point it out.
In game credits get sold for real cash.
In game credits then have a 'real value', at least according to some.
Can you sue for credits lost in a server wipe? A glitch? An error? If they're worth something...
The common sense answer is no - you can't. They 'belong' to SOE, they're part of the game.
Does that mean that you're selling something you don't own? Tricky.
Some people say they're selling the time and effort to get those credits. Fair enough, but here's a thing - that time and effort has a real world value then. Can you be taxed on it? Are you 'working' while you're in the game? Child labour laws kick in?
BIG STINKY CAN OF WORMS.
Sure, most of us know how ridiculous this sounds, but it's tiny steps all the way. In a world where you can sue because you scalded youself on a hot coffee, and a world where you have to say that a bag of peanuts 'may contain nuts' - these are not so unlikely steps that could be taken.
Even when not thinking about this - it creates a division between players who have money to spend, and those who don't. I don't think we play to have real world limitations inflicted on us again - where the real world haves and have nots end up virtual haves and have nots too.
In the long run, you'll end up with people who want cash, farming.
People who want easy credits, buying.
And the people who feel it's unfair, leaving in droves. I'd be one of the latter.