Please convince me RMT is objectively bad for the game (rage abstain)

[lebeststratege]

The more I think about it, the less I see any problem with RMT, here are my thoughts, pls respond with argument, although your opinion is of value, it won't convince me.

PoE is mostly a solo game with interaction through the trade market. There is no competitive scene regarding it, so any external advantage if of absolutely no importance or relevance (including use of ♥♥♥, it's up to you if you want to spend money for your computer to have fun instead of you).

The game possess a free market as a whole, where prices are relative to supply and demand and is based around several currencies (here it's ex * 110 = divine (more or less) and divine 460 = mirror (more or less)). Items are also tiered accordong to perceived value (fluctuating around what's strong and what's fun to play).
PoE is void of microtransaction impacting gameplay (which is great and prevent incentives of difficulty fixing that we see on other "AAA" companies).

On top of that comes RMT. Which allow people who play a LOT to interface with those who have money to spare. It also allows many player to live of the game in exchange for their intensive farm (so they trade their time for money... how is that different from babysitting?). I'd go further by saying that those farmer regularly come across stuff they sell for ingame currencies (which they sell to whales, which often spend it back to them buying items).
People who make money often work a lot, and want to entertain themselves, meaning they wouldn't play (as long) if RMT didn't exist, and RMT sellers wouldn't be able to play as much either (that have to make a living to). Overall the game would be less active and the market would shrink, item would cost more because of that making progress harder.
People buying RMT are often those spending money for cosmetics, giving the devs money for their work... and allowing them NOT to implement pay-to-win.

And all of that happens whether a free player buy RMT or not, meaning they enjoy the benefits of a bigger market, it didn't take anything from THEIR fun playing the game.

Of course there are issues with the legality and the tracking of the money (tax and stuff), but that's not a concern for the game itself.

[lebeststratege]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Deceiver9811:

As people have said, by adding a real world value to currency, the economy of the game is now firmly attached to said currency and the devs lose any ability to control it. The economy can affect your experience playing the game, if you're unlucky with equipment, but have plenty of currency you can trade it for the long hours you might otherwise spend farming for better gear. For this reason alone, the devs want to control the economy of the game so that a player isn't in a position where trading simply isn't an option because the time required to farm the currency for trading is greater than the time required to just farm the gear yourself... unless you shovel out real money for a stack of currency you can then trade for the items you want.

The Devs can't control how much money you make, so if the economy becomes attached to real world currency, they likewise wouldn't be able to control the value of items in the game. Once there becomes a real world profit incentive, that changes the value of your time. Spending 8+ hours a day farming gear or currency is a fundamentally different value proposition when you can actually profit from the time you invest into the game. The more profitable it is, the more people will farm currency. More currency will naturally lead to inflated prices that no legitimate player could afford, and the trade economy becomes more and more dependent on real money. This means if you're not willing to spend money on gear, 3rd parties have effectively removed your ability to engage with an entire system that would otherwise provide an alternative path for progressing your character, which is the core point of games like this.

Wouldn't that happen no matter what if the game is popular and the market is free?
You can't prevent external interferences with thoses settings by definition. Even if you limit the interference by adding steps between money and the game, you also have the problem that there is one common value you can't take out : time.
Whether you spend your time playing or earning money and spending it in the game is first and foremost a matter of efficiency, not moral.

Because right now... the devs ALREADY can't control the value of items : look at "multiple mirror" worth item and ask yourself : would these item be worth less mirrors if RMT didn't exist? Most likely not because there worth is tied to the difficulty of making/looting the item vs the difficulty of getting mirrors. If the only way for both is time, or if the ways are either time or money, you didn't had a lot of variations (time multipliers such as ♥♥♥ is a whole other story).

[lebeststratege]

Diposting pertama kali oleh This PC:

am sorry, there is a lot of complaints that aren't entirely justified on this forum, so I may be primed a little bit. :P
That's entirely on me~

all good, if you have some time and will, I'd like to add you to ask some ingame build related question to you

[<#C77>ex_IllusionisT]

@lebeststratege

Except there is ladder.
Except there is literal competition:

Who reaches level 100
Who gets to zone x the fastest
etc etc.

RMT not only devalues items and affects the exchange ratio, it also provides direct advantage to people climbing the ladder.

The market is flooded with currency farmed by bots, the more currency of something, the less valuable that currency is.

A person that played hundreds of hours to farm 50 divine orbs, just so their value is reduced by overflooded market. That's why in PoE 1, Divine orbs start at 200+ C, and end up 50 c/d.

Not to mention, D in PoE 1 are far more useful than in PoE 2.

The market is silly the way it is without any RMT because of how players themselves oversell their items, and desperate people buy them. Add RMT, and you get a total collapse.

The only saving grace PoE has is the cycles that reset everything.

Just to add something I saw in your post above this one.
People can put items on the market worth 50000 mirrors. But if those mirrors aren't in the economy, then nobody will buy them. But those mirrors are in the economy because of bots farming.

Also, people don't farm the currency they sell. Bots do.

[Deceiver9811]

Diposting pertama kali oleh lebeststratege:

Wouldn't that happen no matter what if the game is popular and the market is free?
You can't prevent external interferences with thoses settings by definition. Even if you limit the interference by adding steps between money and the game, you also have the problem that there is one common value you can't take out : time.
Whether you spend your time playing or earning money and spending it in the game is first and foremost a matter of efficiency, not moral.

Because right now... the devs ALREADY can't control the value of items : look at "multiple mirror" worth item and ask yourself : would these item be worth less mirrors if RMT didn't exist? Most likely not because there worth is tied to the difficulty of making/looting the item vs the difficulty of getting mirrors. If the only way for both is time, or if the ways are either time or money, you didn't had a lot of variations (time multipliers such as ♥♥♥ is a whole other story).

First, your question wasn't "Is it even possible to stop RMT?" or anything like that. You wanted people to argue it's bad for the game, and regardless of it being possible to fight, it is still bad for the game. Secondly, the devs can control the value of items by changing drop rates, or adding new ways of farming currencies that are in high demand. However, none of that matters if the value is attached to real world currency, as the ease of acquiring said currencies ceases to be a relevant factor when one can make a real world profit off the hours they spend farming them.

If GGG makes the currencies harder to farm, the market will crash and things will settle down to much more reasonable prices... except they actually won't because the currencies are harder to farm so it still takes an unreasonable amount of time buy items listed on the market, especially because there'd still a huge amount of currency circulating from when it had a higher drop rate. Even if GGG snapped that currency out of existence (Let's ignore the ethics of such a decision), it would just increase the real world value of the currencies, and the value of 8 hours a day farming them would thus remain unchanged.

The average player is going to value their time differently than someone who can profit off their time playing the game, and that is the reason you see items being 'sold' for multiple mirrors. The market is flooded with the currency from people farming them to sell for real money. If you take RMT out of the game, you remove that profit incentive and the value of the currencies drop as time becomes an actual cost for those willing to farm the currencies.

[Xersin]

Diposting pertama kali oleh This PC:

I'll tell you why people RMT:
The game is hard to figure out, and it frustrates people, so they turn to shortcuts.
It has nothing to do with not having time to play the game, at least in the vast majority of cases. If anything, someone will RMT because they have time but can't play the game.

Then they're playing the wrong game. Don't make our game worse because they're not mature enough to realize that a game that requires a time sink isn't something they should be playing without time.

[Zogtar]

"Money = your status in the world" is an objectively good enough reason to not allow RMT...

Don't understand why you'd fight for it.

[GirthQQuakes]

I'm just going to destroy your first point, and not spend the time on the rest of your post.

"PoE is mostly a solo game with interaction through the trade market." This is a blatantly false statement. I map and do bosses with friends daily.

RMT increases prices for legitimate players, and allows for "PayToWin" when that's not what's intended by the Devs. It's also against the rules and may result in an account ban or suspension.

[BeerManMike]

just make an item board/auction house? what is all this geocities website trading, ooo ooo now "whisper" that player, now teleport and find him, now triple check you aren't being scammed, accept trade, teleport out, leave party. No, i don't want to talk or interact with other players, let me buy that white base for 2-3 orbs off the board and be on my way ffs

[Salmon Snake]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Licher.Rus:

RMT is bad for players - it devalues low-end items, so nobody want to bother with them. It overvalues mid-end items, which starts to cost as truck. And it insanely overvaluse high-end items.

But developers support haveing RMT in their game

How?

Simple: by adding extremely powerful yet very rare items, which could absolutely change your gameplay from 'manageable' to 'eazy-peasy'

Till this wont be changed - there will be RMT.

It is the whole black market around POE1, where people having thousands of dollars profits at the start of every League.

Same will be in the POE2.

P.S. And not, they aint working hard - bots do

chase uniques are fun for players and have to be part of the game

[Dr. Rockso]

Diposting pertama kali oleh lebeststratege:

pls respond with argument, although your opinion is of value, it won't convince me.

So which is it? Do you want to be convinced or you can't be convinced?

[königplatzen]

because you'd pay real money for some ingame nonsense, which gets wiped at some point. Why would anybody do that.

[DarkFaceGlow]

“Please convince me”
“It won’t convince me”

[Orclover]

If I have to convince someone that pay to win is a bad environment to play in then we have no basis in the same reality to even begin a dialog. Get out.

[crzyfsh123]

It's not the RMT, it's the bots that feed it. If you want to farm away and sell your loot, fine by me.

But as soon as you automate it and run it 24 hrs a day, the output far exceeds anything any human can accomplish.

[Scarsick]

Diposting pertama kali oleh DarkFaceGlow:

“Please convince me”
“It won’t convince me”

Pretty much sums up this thread.

It seems like OP is trying really hard convince himself that RMT in a game like this is not cheating.

I don't waste time with people who don't want a discussion, so go ahead and keep bots who make a living out of suckers happy and have fun killing stuff with your wallet.