The Problem With RCE Business Model

Hi,

this is why I wrote "... has nearly an RCE".

5 EUR/ month. Or 10 Silver (= 10 EUR) when paying with in game currency. Not this dramatic. The developer needs some bread, too, and I actually prefer to pay a tiny sub instead of getting robbed of my money all over the place, like MA does - right, even changing clothes or armor in EU will cost me money!

Is there any guarantee in EU? What if the player I'm trading with is under suspect for whatever reason? What if his PED's/ items are considered illegal? We have to realize that MA doesn't give us any security, too. We have to realize that any trade in EU can yield us a ban, even if we're perfectly innocent. There's lot's of examples for this.

MA is the police, the attorney, the judge and the hangman for EU. There's no way for us to claim/ appeal/ dispute anything in a formalized way. There's not even a position in their book keeping securing the money the participants have in game.

Guess you're wrong here - this is different. "Selling gold/accounts in WoW for real money" is marked a bannable offense by the various EULA's etc. Blizzard doesn't say "Do as you like, but don't bother us with the results!" (as Wurm does), no.
They say "If we catch you doing such, we'll hammer you with a lifetime ban!" And they do.


So, back to topic - what would a perfect RCE game need?

Maybe some kind of formalized mechanics to resolve real-money related disputes?
Such should be possible - any actions are logged anyways, so a "clearing center" could be established. That could be appealed by any participant feeling scammed, and that would check these cases. There could be fines to ensure it's employees wages, taken from the losing party (partly, for sure).

For sure, such would need a detailed "code of behavior" - so that any participant would clearly know what's right and what's wrong. Clear, detailed rules.

Another thing very important would be kind of a "secure bank" to keep all the participants TT value, so that in any case these could be payed out. With priority to any other creditors of the game company.
Would MA go haywire these days quite few of us would see a meager PEC of our money ...


You see, just these few basic requirements for a real RCE are quite challenging. Since any game company has to decide how to best earn the money, it puts this kind of games into a bad disadvantage.
They'll go the easy way, for sure - why try strange new ideas that need a lot of expenses, when we can fail this well with much cheaper alternatives?

Have fun!

 

And you consider "a far cry" and "nearly" to be about the same in meaning??

You would have to change your clothes A LOT to make it anywhere close to a subscription cost. I hardly feel like I'm being "robbed of my money all over the place" by MA. Sure, they aren't perfect, but understanding the costs and risks is part of the challenge/fun of an RCE game.

And you would feel more secure handing over real money outside of a game and just hoping that they follow through with their end of the deal in the game?? Come on! I'm not trying to say that MA is perfect in their position as judge but to suggest that a game like Wurm is a realistic alternative is ludicrous and that is the argument that I was making.

Umm...how am I wrong? I SAID that it is a different risk. My point was that both of those risks are much higher than any transaction in EU. Again, I'm not saying that EU is risk-free but it is the ONLY true RCE and Wurm or WoW are NOT RCE alternatives.

 

Hi,

Oooops ...

Not this much - just clear, undisputable rules, solid mechanics to resolve money disputes, and a sufficient security for the participants "investments".

How would a real RCE ever work without such? This, IMHO, is the main flaw in the RCE business model - since it's about real money, and not few of it to make it interesting, there's the need for rules, mechanics & security. Who but a few "invests" his money because of the beautiful blue eyes of the comm manager (don't know her ...), and because of a few shady promises?
Very few, as you see in EU.

But establishing such is a lot of work. MA didn't get it yet. I don't know of any company that actually did it. A reason why nobody comes out with another RCE? Maybe, IMHO.

This is the second point, for sure. Or the first, as you like. Both of them ([rules, mechanics & security] and [proper economy]) are hard tasks that are so much more easy to fulfill in an environment where it's about (nearly) worthless game gold.

The real cash option of an RCE adds this much of difficulty to implement that, IMHO, many company's are just trying to avoid it.

Easy to ban a gold seller in WoW, SilkRoad or whatever - it's not about real values. Try to ban a misbehaving big land owner in EU, where it is about many 10K's of $, and you'll see the difference.

Easy to change the economy parameters in WoW, SilkRoad or whatever - it's not about real values. Try to make such changes in EU, where people will lose real money due to, and have fun facing the sh*tstorm and the lawyers ...


Guess this is why the big company's are not jumping the train yet. I don't doubt that they'd be interested, and I don't doubt that EU is closely watched, I'd not even doubt that there'd be quite such projects sleeping in the pipelines.

But RCE, in a scale to be interesting for the big company's, is still a can of worms. Too much problems not resolved yet, too much uncertainty, too much alien - today.

I'm quite sure it will come sooner or later - especially the "pay as much as you want, and maybe even withdraw it later" approach is pure gold, and might bury the current f2p/ item shop fashion, but IMHO it's a long way to go. I could imagine that, when one company finally starts, there'd be quite a lot of them all of a sudden.

MA will not be this company. They will be the pioneers that are used as guinea pigs - as soon as they'd maybe someday would get it done, they'd be swept away with the release of quite a number of RCE's from the big studios. IMHO.

Have fun!

PS: MelMan, guess we'd be by far too much off topic discussing this further, here. If interested, drop me a mail, plz. And have fun!

 

I've had the impression that MindArk has done very well with the RCE for many years; throughout the whole history of EU and before that with PE and that they are in a very strong position. It may seem that the EU platform is 'migrating' bit by bit from Sweden to the USA/more professional studio's, but I think that MA know exactly what they're doing. They still steer the EU ship; it doesn't matter where it migrates to; geographically or otherwise - they will still be in control of it.
As to completely independant RCE mmorpgs comming along in the future putting MA out of business; who knows... They would have to make sure that their RCE models were completely different, otherwise they might end up beeing sued :)

 

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Afterworld is coming allthough it toke more time as many would have hoped for.

In April starts preRelease work.
In May we want start testing Survival.

Today also new screens off survival came
http://talk.afterworld.ru/?showtopic=5037

little foot note aw is created by gamers who wantend to create a better PE and acctually came from PE

 

I answer the starting post to get back on track again :)

The thing you call the fail isn't the real fail. There is limited risk for MA/planet partner to have to pay back all the money they have. A player that sells out doesn't TT the items and resources to get his withdraw. He sells it to other players, so it's actually risk free for MA/planet partner. Only if all players at the same time would TT all the items/resources they have would it be bad, and the risk for this to happen is very low since we all have payed markup for the items we have and have the chance to sell to other players for markup. Actually MA is very clever in the way that they force us to lock PEDs in to clothes and other stuff while they skim of the ingame market with decay and ammo burn etc. The fail they could do is to not take care of the ingame market and push us to pay markup for stuff, the day no one pays markup is the day they fail. To increase their earning they need to fuel the ingame market with more markup stuff such as limit the drops of UL things, more BPs for crafting stuff, more unique stuff, especially BPs and beaty. They also must work hard together with the planet partners to make more diversed planets so that each planet has its own uniqe atraction. Planets must be able to add planet unique stuff and functionality. If for example planet partner X would like to add free apartments for all visitors, it should be possible. (maybe bad example)

 

I think the fundametal problem with RCE-s like EU is that it forces participants to be enterpeuners, and take risks that they would not otherwise take. Because the RCE really tightly links real and virtual life, it should provide for the fact that most of us are not taking the risks in the real life that we are taking in Entropia. Except of course, in Entropia, there is no alternative. And because there is really no separation between our virtual and real lives in a RCE, we are taking risks in real life that we are not prepared to take. Just in peds, not dollars.

In other words, what is needed is an equivalent of "colouring" for ALL professions where you can calculate your returns - and are then offered the chance to go outside of these and take the extra risks, and of course, returns. Or rather, people have to be offered the chance to box themselves in into a "I hunt in this biodome and will get 90% of loot back from each and every mob" or "I mine in this biodome and get 90% back from all hits" or "I go work in that factory crafting and I get 90% TT back".

And this cannot in some way be hidden behind "colonist" experience or waved away. It was no different with any colonies to date. Will never be either.