We'll the cash shop, since it's made by the game, so it can use all the tools a programmer can give it to make sure that the gold farmer has a hard life, and to ban him while only being regulated itself by demand and a false sence of scarcity from the prices it itself sets for its wares.
But please, no matter what you do in regards to cash shops, make sure to put in tools to fight gold farmers.
Kilsin said:Who Would Win - A Cash Shop or a Gold Farmer and why? (a bit of fun with a touchy subject) #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
Win at what, exactly? I'm going to pit them against NPCs and in that case the Gold Farmer would win. Why? Because the gold farmer at least plays the game to farm their gold. They have to deal with NPCs on a daily basis. The cash shop person tries to buy their win, but will fail. EVE Online is a great example of this where people would pay real money for Game Time Cards, sell them on the official market place then buy a multi-billion ISK fit ship for ratting (EVE lingo for running NPC missions) only to get blown up because they do not understand the full mechanics of the game.
We, the EVE players, could always tell someone who bought a high skillpoint account (another version of the cash shop) because all the mistakes they make are mistakes we made in the early days as we were learning the ropes.
So putting the Cash Shop person against the Gold Farmer person, the Gold Farmer wins because they play the game.
Tough one. The Cash Shop has the money for all the modern equipment but the Cash Farmers have numbers, no matter how many you strike down they just keep showing up.
On an open field (Final Destination, No Items) I'd give it to the Cash Shop, but if the Cash Farmers are able to use guerrilla warfare then they'll win.
The Gold Farmer, hands down.
Farmers - real farmers, not CEOs of agricultural corps. - are among the hardest working people on Earth. They could beat the snot out of the sales clerks and managerial types you find in most shops.
laughing hard enough to dye at that pun Galden
Cash-Shop: has the latest and the greatest but does not know how to play the character. The kind of person that does a cursory glance and fills the spell bar with highrest damage spells which haappen to be AoE's...in a cramped dungeon where MoB's have high aggro range and wonders why everyone is dieing and blames the players.
Gold-Farmer: Only knows how to kill one type of MoB, wonders why his shield doesnt protect him from the casters bolt and tries to justify his Exiting the game unannounced when he was mezzed because he thought his system went down as being unresponsive.
But in order for these two to fight, they would have ot get to the Arena, and what wil lthere be in Pantheon to prevent them?
Cash-shop: Collective social ostracism (like the Amish?) Cash shop will get a bad rep as being a bad player even after "chances". After one group people will think- in order to get THAT piece he would have HAD to survive THAT encounter and there is NO WAY he could have, playing that way- and they will assume he must be an RMT'er and that will be strike 3 /ignore. And they will tell their friends. The Devs will not be concerned about the Cash-shop. They will be looking for the isp that re-rolled, they will check inventory prior to re-roll and do a V-Lookup of re-roller inventory and cash shop and see a one-to-one match. Then ban the isp. They will also check if the re-roller has no friends. Remember, the Devs also secretly play and hear the same rumors.
Gold-Farmer: Like Eve , pantheon engaged an Economist. Such a surge in Monetary supply will naturally cause the value of Gold to weaken and prices of items to rise due to inflation, foircing the Gold-farmer to move. If left unchecked the sandbox will create new things of value or, players will instead find it more cost effective to adventure/quest for the items instead of buy them, therefore turining the gold-farmer into a player. After a while the gold will become worth, less than the pixel it glows from.
*edit* forgot to add. IUf they did make it to the arena, they would both die. Gold-farmer would start with his same moves, injuring Cash-shop initially even with cash-shops superior armor. IN retaliation, cash-shop uses his biggest spells, and kills them both because Cash-shop is in range of his own AoE and Gold-farmer does not know how to counter AoE spells.
Cash shops replace the demand for gold farmers but cash shops are part of the game (don't have to violate EULA to make profit). Any game with a cash shop likely wouldn't have gold farmers because "paying" for illegal gold wouldn't be worth the risk if you could simply use the ingame mechanics to "pay" for what you would've bought with the illegal gold.
I'd prefer to have neither, but gold farmers are tough to filter from my understanding.
Cash shop because it's easier to turn real money into game cash than farm it. The gold farmer at least has to work for it in game. And other than some that box a group or do it for a living, who hasn't farmed gold before?
No one wins there. And I am not sure what they are fighting to win as they tend to serve entirely different markets/desires anyway.
Darch said:Cash shops replace the demand for gold farmers but cash shops are part of the game (don't have to violate EULA to make profit). Any game with a cash shop likely wouldn't have gold farmers because "paying" for illegal gold wouldn't be worth the risk if you could simply use the ingame mechanics to "pay" for what you would've bought with the illegal gold.
I'd prefer to have neither, but gold farmers are tough to filter from my understanding.
A gold farmer is one without a soul. It cannot be killed.
A cash shop is a capitalist fat cat that can buy itself a victory in any given situation.
Some questions in life simply do not have answers, and the conundrum of a cash shop vs. a gold farmer falls squarely into that category.
Strange questions call for weird answers :-)
The gold farmer knows how to play and he knows how to get money by actively working for it.
The cash shop presents its goods and hopes to earn a buck.
The goldfarmer can earn in contious pace.
The cash shop will have fluctuating earnings.
So overall, the gold farmer would win.
If the cash shop is a person buying from a cash shop, if it has ingame utility or benefits...the cash shop will fly by the gold farmer. Less time to invest and always one step before the gold farmer.
If the gold farmer is a cash shopper... exponential growth and out of control...they'll probably drown in their cash and get bored in due time.
Ideally we will have gold farmers - and a robust spam filter that keeps almost all of us from even seeing their ads.
Lack of gold farmers doesn't mean an effective prevention approach - it means a game so marginal or outright dying that the gold farmers are uninterested.
Thus my rooting interest is that we have some - with the good spam filter ameriorating many of the negatives.
Short term i would say Gold Farmer
- they actively play and monitor the market
- many in numbers difficult to ban
- huge profit gain with less employee to none for a short period
- destroy the community, contents, and the game's life
- push ads to visit site to buy junk
Long Term i would say Cash Shop
- has a department team main focus is to design new cometic
- has the finacial to push new expandsion
- can become f2p and p2w
- destroy the community and the game's life "slow death"
- push ads to visit site to buy junk
Edit: i hate to say it but cash shop win. i dispised both as they are shaddy practices especially cash shop cosmetic who prey on players with a fashion eye for detail.
cash shop would win
-centralized advertising with game wide broadcasting
-can offer exclusive items with security
-access to economic analytics and trends on demand
-can control markets via regulations and set pricing
-can hinder gold farmers directly and indirectly
gold farmers have too many cons vs a cash shop
-communication channels that be shutdown in game, forcing 3rd party advertising
-must monitor market information, which is a much slower data collection and can be shorted by devs, also can't compete if the system markets are regulated or information is delayed
-has to build an external infrastructure which can be unstable for consumers, lawsuits and unethical business practices
cash shops are inevitable. there has always been a huge underground 'black market' for mmos. any modern mmo should have a cash shop as a way to prevent potential gain of revenue being sapped by 'the little man'
there aren't many mmos i can think of that do cash shops well. EA(electronic arts) would be the example of not what to do. PA(Pearl Abyss) has some glaring stuff, but has potential. RG(Riot Games)has a good approach with aesthetics and doodads without affecting gameplay, but doesn't allow much room for independent cgi artists, like they make a 25% profit for each product they make selling.
i have my reservations about cash shops and gold farmers, but i prefer to see a sanctioned and regulated source of business while allowing the little man some income for his work. better that everyone wins than fighting each other. besides the smart predators(cash shop and gold farmers) should work together to feed on the cattle(players and consumers).
9 of the top 10 grossing video games right now are free-to-play with cash shops. Gold farmers have no chance. Gold farmers might make $10s of Thousands. Cash shops make $Billions