A somewhat common practice in FFXI was to "merc" things for people for gil, that usually involved one of 3 things:
1 - Selling an EX item for gil (and exclusive item, that cannot be transfered or traded), by killing the mob that drops the item, inviting the person to the party, and letting them get the item.
2 - peforming some sort of mission(s) or quest(s), or just getting a player from point A to point B, for gil
3 - power leveling or leveling someone while AFK
While 1 and 3 seem to violate the spirit of the intent of the designers, especially #3, the idea of being a mercenary for money is a fun and good idea I think.
The only problem with doing these things is they require trust, and one party to either pay or perform the service up front. It was not uncommon to hear about(or personally get) people not upholding their end of bargains.
Would it be difficult to implement some sort of complex trade mechanics to let people be mercenaries in this manner? An agreement where X amount of gold is payed upon completion of Objectives A and B for player xyz, where the objectives can basically be anything that could conceivably be done in the game?
I think that would be really awesome
I remember paying someone 5 platinum once to run me and my friend from Rivervale to Qeynos safely; we were level 8. We gave him the money and he took us all of the way. I don't remember his name, but he was a high level paladin, in his 40s. One of my many memories of EQ.
Can I ask for an example of what you propose? I do like the idea myself, but I feel that it could be a little too open ended to make a system built into the game that enforces it.
Hey PADPAD, neat idea. I immediate thought about bounties on a PvP server. It will be interesting to read what people think about your idea, but I'll take this as an opportunity to post some of my related, yet more abstract thoughts on game design regarding ideas like this.
What's cool about a "sandbox" or hands off games like Pantheon is that most of these player/player interactions have the potential to emerge naturally. If the social structure of Pantheon is anything like we hope, the ramifications of violating trust could be vast. If a rumors spread that you are constantly scamming people, people probably won't want to group with you.
Now, I think one of the most difficult decisions developers have to make is rooted this question: "Should we supplement [an emergent behavior] with in-game mechanics?" From my MMO experience, the correctness of this answer is typically determined retrospectively.
For example, early on in EverQuest when they noticed we were all huddled in the EC commons spamming each other with "WTB/WTS/WTT this item", they correctly recognized that the addition of the in-text item linking mechanism would be to the benefit of each player while preserving the core of the naturally emerged trade behavior. They alleviated the need for us to memorize or externally look up item stats and the chat became cleaner as it was no longer required to post item stats. However, games which have full blown global auctionhouse (an example of over supplementation), the beauty and fun of the naturally emergent trade dynamic is effectively lost.
So what level of supplementation is appropriate? Clearly, we see there exists both an upper and lower bound, but what metric can they use to determine to which degree the emergent behavior needs to be assisted? Now things get really tricky. One would think that if the majority of players are complaining about some aspect of emergent behavior X, then it would be appropriate to add in-game mechanics which alleviate that aspect. However, due to the complexity of emergent behaviors, that alteration could have unforseen consequences, even to the omniscient devs, which could ultimately lead to a new, even more devestating problem. If you continue this process of improperly tweaking aspects which get complained about the most, you'll eventually get a hand-holding modern theme-park MMO where everything is trivialized. This fallacy of interpreting what the majority says as correct is known as Argumentum ad populum. In government, we see many democracies try to avoid this by having "senate/house" divide where different populations, not just the majority, can chime in. In other words, we don't always know whats best for us, even if the majority thinks they know. (Remember, everyone thought the world was flat at some point.)
So why did I go on this long-winded rant? I think players giving tasks to other players would be pretty cool, but hope it emerges naturally. I'm not convinced the core game should build anything explicitly regarding this... yet. If we see in testing that the game system is built such that players are naturally driven to do these sort of 'mercing' tasks, yet there is some design flaw which is inhibiting it, then we start the complicated discussions on whether or not we should incorporate a new mechanism addressing it.
But yeah, neat idea. I'm definitely looking forward to read what people think about it! (sorry for the wall of text)
I believe that is a community based trust, not necessarily a game mechanic. You could ask a higher lvl player to get you from point A to point B and if that player insist ( which most wouldn't ) then it would be up to you to believe that he would. Now if he takes that money and bails, then you could spam his name and his offense in chat and that in itself would be punishment for that player being that no one would ever trust him again. * cheers :)
PADPAD2 said:1 - Selling an EX item for gil (and exclusive item, that cannot be transfered or traded), by killing the mob that drops the item, inviting the person to the party, and letting them get the item.
This reminds me of a very cool /command feature that was in Vanguard. Not many people knew about it but I recall using it on several different occasions. The "/give (character name)(item link) ".
Just a couple of useful instances where i used it was:
>A group mate has fallen and was unable to loot for himself a rare quest item drop. Or some upgraded armor or weapon piece that only they could use. Instead of risking the rot timer a group mate could /give them the item.
>As a higher level character doing some exploring of lower level areas I would sometimes find rare loot and equipment, do a /who and find a newbie who could make use of said item, send them a tell and invite them to group and /give them the loot.
As long as your group member was in the same "chunk" they would receive the loot in their inventory. Didnt matter if it was nodrop.
Very useful imo and i wouldnt mind seeing it again in Pantheon.
Edit: I would personally never use this to SELL loot, but technically it could be.
Amsai said: As a long time player of XI. I remember this kind of stuff. But it happened naturally in XI. Certain player services I'm for and others I'm against though. So I don't think a mechanic is needed. But I will say I'm not a fan of the PLIng or Loot services. For the same reasons I'm against zergs. It bypasses challenge. That said while those things don't sit very well with me. I don't know if devs should go as far as preventing it.
I agree Amsai.
Reputation should matter. I dont support mechanics that eliminate the need for trust, and with it the consequences to ones reputation for violating that trust. I'm also not supportive of artificial means to allow players to circumvent intended gameplay for the sake of convenience. As soon as a game starts to slide down the slope of convience it's inevitably an eventual slide toward barely needing to maintain conciousness to "achieve".
Agreed... this sort of "system" should be player controlled.
If we're talking a large amount of plat, go through a 3rd party who is trusted on the server.
If it's just a few silver, name and shame. Let the community handle it.
Motsui said:PADPAD2 said:1 - Selling an EX item for gil (and exclusive item, that cannot be transfered or traded), by killing the mob that drops the item, inviting the person to the party, and letting them get the item.
This reminds me of a very cool /command feature that was in Vanguard. Not many people knew about it but I recall using it on several different occasions. The "/give (character name)(item link) ".
Just a couple of useful instances where i used it was:
>A group mate has fallen and was unable to loot for himself a rare quest item drop. Or some upgraded armor or weapon piece that only they could use. Instead of risking the rot timer a group mate could /give them the item.
>As a higher level character doing some exploring of lower level areas I would sometimes find rare loot and equipment, do a /who and find a newbie who could make use of said item, send them a tell and invite them to group and /give them the loot.
As long as your group member was in the same "chunk" they would receive the loot in their inventory. Didnt matter if it was nodrop.
Very useful imo and i wouldnt mind seeing it again in Pantheon.
Edit: I would personally never use this to SELL loot, but technically it could be.
I remember this. was a great feature
Hiring my toon out and gifting gear.... GOOD DISCUSSION :)
This topic is just one more reason for a "real" world. Instancing prevents most of this activity, doesn't it?
Love the tale of offering a 40-something Paladin 5 plat for an escort to Qeynos. I played - still play him, actually lol - a Paladin in EQ. I can see this happening. Met many people when I started who did things like this and usually refused payment. We Paladins are just GOOD PEOPLE! /grin
The /gift command.... very cool. Played Vanguard but wasn't able to play with any consistency. :(
Not sure I see the need for a mechanic of any sort. This is just GIVING BACK. Some people are more generous than others. Just as in life. I remember tales of someone taking that 5 plat and going LD. Deliberately. Reputation.... it's a biaatch ;)
Enjoyable conversation :)
In the interests of KISS ('Keep it simple, stupid') i'm not sure of the need for a complex trade mechanism...
.... however ....
It does remind me of a thread elsewhere where we were dicussing reputation and another on quests/logs.
----
My Journal (I create some bookmarks)
Intro: This is the Journal of Evoras, a Summoner who trained under Sinistra of Frostfell in the year 1476 FA.
Explorer's Log Bookmark
Here I make notes on the route taken, interesting things i see. Perhaps an odd plaque on a tomb i screenshot and annotate. They are date stamped and written in the journal with my nice cursive script. I include bawdy limerics about people i meet, too. None are very good ... indeed they are very very bad.
Merceraries Bookmark
Here I make notes on people I have dealt with:
QENDIL the Crusader was hired to get me acoss the Fire Swamp for 5 platinum. He refused all but 10 gold to cover food and whet-stones. We encountered many many ROUS, including a setient head-rat which we slew, obtaining its odd-looking pelt. I insisted he take the skin for its fire protective properties. He gave me 10 plat for it, saying it was very rare. I took the money to pay for my ever more expensive spells.
MELEK the Rogue agreed to show me the secret way to the Burned Woods for 5 plat. Unfortunately he got disconnected almost immediately. I never saw him again, but have heard from others he is not to be trusted.
Adventurers Bookmarks
Here I might make list of good or terrible players (from 'ignore' list etc)
KILSIN: Rogue 12 - good in combat but never let him pull. Ever.
SMEGHEAD: Dwarf Crusader 3 - think he is a commie.
So, the idea of a journal is to link in notes etc and help you keep track of reputation of other players. The better reputation has consequences, the more it was impact players in a positive way. Helping players keep information for themselves in an in-game journal would mean they would better be able to assess potiential PUG members for example. It would be a 'more useful' version of the current style of 'friends' lists and 'ignores' etc with the added attraction of VR not having to make a Quest tracker system. YOU can take notes of chat (including quest chat from NPCs) in your journal. YOU take ownership of your quests, what you log, notes you make etc.
It could even be saved locally in some 'rich text' format. Heck, you could just re-skin a mini-browser in-game which opens a local page etc.
Our raid guild in EQ2 would at times Sell useless loot. We would ask in channels if someone wanted to buy it and accept an offer. then we would let them join raid zone in give us the plat and assign an Item. Once they added the transmuting skill we had more reason to transmute a fabled item. But then again raiding is very costly when your guild supplied all potions ammo and armor repair. I remember some nights it would cost the guild a a few hunderd plat to repair everyone and give out potions.
This was all done in game no third party services so I feel it wasnt a bad thing to do it also gave other people in crappy guild decent gear at times. and help keep the economy in check by taking plat out of circulation
PADPAD2 said:A somewhat common practice in FFXI was to "merc" things for people for gil, that usually involved one of 3 things:
1 - Selling an EX item for gil (and exclusive item, that cannot be transfered or traded), by killing the mob that drops the item, inviting the person to the party, and letting them get the item.
2 - peforming some sort of mission(s) or quest(s), or just getting a player from point A to point B, for gil
3 - power leveling or leveling someone while AFK
While 1 and 3 seem to violate the spirit of the intent of the designers, especially #3, the idea of being a mercenary for money is a fun and good idea I think.
The only problem with doing these things is they require trust, and one party to either pay or perform the service up front. It was not uncommon to hear about(or personally get) people not upholding their end of bargains.
Would it be difficult to implement some sort of complex trade mechanics to let people be mercenaries in this manner? An agreement where X amount of gold is payed upon completion of Objectives A and B for player xyz, where the objectives can basically be anything that could conceivably be done in the game?
In EQ1, a similar mechanic was multi-questing whereby multiple people would turn in quest items in such an order than the last person to turn in a required item received the quest reward. In Velious everyone would sell the armor molds dropped in the raid zones through multi-quest. Provided everyone had the require faction standing, it worked. Yes, it required a lot of trust and people did get screwed quite often by untrustworthy people. The downside was that it really did encourage higher end guilds to continue to farm areas with small groups to sell these items. As they were overgeared/overleveled for the area they could do with a small number of people what a normal full size raid of 'designed-for' level/gear players needed.
Helping people get around the world? That is great and should not be discouraged. It's a good social interaction after all.
As for powerleveling, I'm personally against it because it harms the long-term survival of the game. By one person skipping content through powerleveling he has diminished the pool of people available to those of that level. Fewer people to group with others and those people left alone will leave and the only people who will join the game will be those who already know someone and will get powerleveled. A constant flow of true newbies is necessary.