Is merching better than playing the game?


#122

disgrace to the PPE name…


#123

why not do both :confused:


#124

Above are my thoughts on the problems with STs currently as well as how to fix them. Pretty much just an in-depth look at what I already said.

Overall, the set is pretty decently balanced. Some of the pieces are a little too good in my opinion, to the point where they defeat the purpose of getting other necro items.

For example, the skull by itself gives the best dps of any skull. Sure, you are trading healing, but it has made the shaittans skull pretty obsolete, since iirc, the shaittans skull was pretty much only used for dps, since it provided the best dps with a reduced radius.

Furthermore, I can wear the robe without the set in order to maximize dps on robe classes. +8 att is crazy. I think some of the att bonus should be moved into the set bonus instead of on the items themselves so that each piece is pretty bad by itself, but together the set does one specific job better than if you were to piece together different items from outside set.

I think that you should have to have the whole set for the items to be strong. Why have a set if people WANT to break it up you know?

This is true, but you can combat this by making the best items, the ones that significantly improve a class or change how the game gets played (for example geb tome, pierce, etherite, bearer) white bag drops or untradeable so that the marginal difference between tradable items is much less. Minimizing this disparity will make it harder for dupers to pick one item to dupe, since there won’t be an overwhelming demand for anything but the top tiered item. This cuts down on their profit.

The fact that people are bartering on USW2 and use realmeye means that there IS an economy for RotMG. The same principles that apply to the real-world economy can be applied to RotMG. You just have to adjust the models a little to account for things such as a single-transaction volume ceiling (8 inventory spaces) or limited storage space (vaults and character slot limits).

I’m using the economic definition of “utility” here, which is basically the amount of “happiness” or “satisfaction” that you get from something. This can come in the form of putting a smile on your face, being useful, making you more popular among your peer group (aka realm group), etc.

Again, I am using the term “Perfect Information” in the economic sense, meaning that I have direct access to a sample size of greater than 30 for the bid and ask spread of all items via realmeye, meaning that I can draw statistically sound conclusions, due to the frequency of which the data is updated and also the sample size being large enough.

It’s not goodwill per se. They are all doing it, because they want to make money on realm. They are purely egotistical reasons.

lol no doubt

I’m going to go with the second option. Well, it was more of a hobby that turned into something marketable. Also, I am three years into college at the best business school in the country. I don’t think it’s that hard to imagine that a student there might possibly have already founded a startup. It’s surprisingly common.

Sure. I have learned a lot about economics from studying RotMG. It has been quite eye opening. At least I can take something from this game and use it later to converse with my peers at a high level about something that might otherwise be described as a “stupid flash game.” I can and have put my work on my resumé, and it is one of the things that interviewers are particularly interested in, because the economy in realm is such a unique gold-mine.


#125

I used to find merching fun back when soulbound items didn’t exist, such as UTs because there were far more items you can add to your… stockpile.


#126

I think it’s supposed to work like this:

  1. Noob sees this super ST item that’ll look great on his Wizard/Archer/Knight
  2. In the process of farming for that one item, noob gets his hands on the other parts of the set
  3. Noob figures he might as well try playing with that set at least once, even though it’s on a class he hasn’t really tried yet
  4. Noob has an unexpected lot of fun with this set and ends up taking a liking to a class he never used before

whereas if you made only the full set have any good pay-off for the hours of farming put into it:

-you’d ensure that only the most hardcore lovers of the specific class the set is for will even try to get it

-you’d be giving an even bigger advantage to the people who can just buy the full set right away from the mystery box.

This raises two questions:

-does this make duping unprofitable enough to completely shut down RWT shops, or is it still something they can keep running forever since the cost is still much lower than the benefit?

-isn’t this going to further disenfranchise actual players, who are already tired of the permaSB on UTs?

Exactly: there is an economy for it, but it by itself is not an economy.

While it could be argued that human life in the real world would be impossible (or at least extremely impractical) without an economy, a video game like RotMG can 100% be played without touching the economy side of it at all. You’re not going to starve to death if you don’t end the month with at least a certain amount of Life pots.

The game only is an economy for you if you choose to focus on that particular aspect of it, which, again, was never the main focus of the game. RotMG will always be about shooting monsters and collecting loot.

This is starting to remind me of philosophy class: “You know this one word you use all the time? We use it in our jargon with a completely different meaning.”

Always interesting to see people’s specialty used in the context of RotMG.

But wouldn’t that make you a complete outlier?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you’ve managed to turn a video game into a learning experience giving you actual marketable knowledge and skills (something that makes me very envious to be completely honest), but for how many other merching players do you think that’s the case?


#127

I’m just going to to link you to this post because I think that it does a pretty good job of explaining it:

Basically, you want to buff the drop rates of ST pieces so that everyone can easily get all four pieces. Make the set itself very strong, but the individual pieces weak, so that you use the set in specific situations, because it is the best at what it does. For example, you could make a rogue set that is super good at dps, but not good for rushing. Rogues are traditionally only really used to rush. Why play rogue to dps when you could play wizard or warrior. The rogue ST could make the rogue compete with the wizard or warrior, but suck at rushing. This way you could really turn the class into something that it is not via swap-outs.

In theory, they would have to dupe more items to be profitable, since they can’t just dupe one item. This would increase their costs or at least the time involved, making it more of a pain for them. My guess is that RWT will always be a thing, but at least you can make it harder for them. Less people would buy from RWT sites if the benefit of buying is lowered. Right now, pierce is the best. I am highly incentivized to RWT and buy it, because EDET just don’t compare and pierce is expensive life-pot wise. Also, it is hard to find pierce naturally. If you make pierce untradable, now there is no competition for EDET. The price will probably go up a bit, but you can offset this by getting the supply to increase via the drop rates. As a RWT company, I was selling things worth 4-6L. Now i’m selling EDET which is worth like 2-3L. You just cut the amount of money that I can charge for my item in real dollars in half. That hurts.

The top tier of items should never be able to be purchased with life pots or gold. You should have to find it on your own. That brings joy to the game. This is the problem with pierce. It is the best spell, and everyone can get one with a few life pots. That shouldn’t be. Meanwhile, tablet, which could take 6 months to find, is utter garbage. I’d rather just use pierce.

Whether you accept that it is an economy or not doesn’t change the fact that it operates like an economy and economic principles still apply. Supply and demand are still in effect. It’s like you don’t have to believe that Donald Trump is the U.S. president, but if you are a citizen in the U.S., you still are liable to following the executive orders he sets out.

True. Like uhmmmm, begging the question in philosophy is a technical term. Logically sound. Etc.

No? I can list off dozens of my college peers that have started their own companies while still in college.

I mean this was a bit of a tangent. I was just demonstrating that the values and laws of the real world and economics can be applied to the game.


#128

You know what, I’m just going to go reply on that thread instead. Our posts in this thread are already long enough as is.

Honestly I’d be fine going back to peer-to-peer RWT instead of having big RWT shops and fucking spambots everywhere.

There have been countless “the economy is RUINED!!!” threads ever since the first duping. Years of merchants continuously whining at almost every single change in the game because they were getting fucked over and losing their profit margins.

Meanwhile, the majority of the community barely even knows about merching or thinks it’s that one thing weirdos who spend way too much time on USWest do.

At the end of the day, the people who merch are just an insulated minority that has very little power over the game. You could recreate an extremely simplified version of real-life economy in any online game with a trading function, that doesn’t mean your little experiment is going to impact the game in any significant way.

(which is why your comparison with Donald Trump doesn’t work, as he wields actual power over the US)

You misunderstand.

I wasn’t asking if you were an outlier in your college, because I have no personal experience of that kind of environment.

What I was getting at was that you’re more than likely an outlier in the RotMG community. How many players here do you think have that sort of education going on? How many players do you think have this much knowledge of finance and economy?

And most importantly: how many players do you think are actually using their experience merching in this game as base for their real life?

I’m trying to put your personal experience into perspective, basically.

Of course they can, but that doesn’t mean the game isn’t going to be only a very simplified version of these values and laws, and it also doesn’t mean these values and laws will have the same importance in the context of a virtual world as they do in the real one.


#129

I prefer merching mainly because it took me like 4 hours to turn 2 mana into a Jack the Ripper skin + 1 life tbh.


#130

merching is how i gotta decent gear and life pots in the beginning. i only merch when i can’t play. most of the time i farm dungeons, because its fun and i like white bags


#131

HOW DARE YOU
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#132

someone call this man a medic


#133

I don’t need a medic i need a jack the ripper skin :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :gun:


#134

someone get this man a Jack the ripper skin


#135

i’ve been hoping for that everyday since i lost mine :frowning:


#136

I’m saying though.

That’s actually not entirely true. While the merching community IS relatively small, the best merchers have considerable influence over prices. Do you know how detrimental releasing 500 of an item onto the market in a single day is? Terrible. It actually doesn’t take very much capital to sway prices. You can see the impact for rarely traded items like planefetter in a single day with maybe only 25-50 purchases. One person can easily cough up 50L and drive the price up.

Just because you don’t know that the economic process exists doesn’t mean you don’t know how to use it. I mean every knows the concept of buy low, sell high. Everyone knows basic demand shock and supply shock principles.

I reckon that I am the only one. My point was more that it can be done, because I’ve done it.

It’s true that you can make something that appears to not obey the economic laws of the universe, but that is hard to do. Why reinvent the wheel?


#137

But that’s exactly my point: the only thing you can do is affect the prices, and that’s going to have very little impact on the game itself.

In the real world, if you significantly change the price of daily necessities (basic foodstuffs, water, clothes, …), you will have a significant impact on the majority of the populace.

In RotMG, if you try to raise the prices of basic items (stat pots, for example) too much, people will just go out in the realms and loot those by themselves instead of buying from you.

If you try to raise the prices of the rarer, more expensive stuff (typically STs and skins), you’ll only affect the minority of people who care about these items but don’t already have them and aren’t already rich enough to keep buying them regardless of the price; and even then, all you’ll be doing is forcing them to spend maybe a couple more hours of farming to get the Etherite or Pierce they want.

So, as I was saying: you’re an outlier.

That’s not what I’m saying.

Just because RotMG contains traces of the field you’re specialized in does not mean that particular field is the most relevant when talking about the game.

You can make an analysis of it from the standpoint of an economist, some sociologist could make a marxist analysis of it, some feminist could make their own analysis as well, … at the end of the day, none of you would be completely wrong, yet none of you would be able to change the fact that RotMG is a video game and is primarily about shooting monsters, dodging bullets and collecting loot.


#138

Are u all right? Also, how do you “lose” a Jack the Ripper skin? Did you lose the account or die with it in your inventory?


#139

I think he might just really want one


#140

got scammed :frowning:

and no i’m not alright


#141

I need to stop being lazy and buy one someday just to have it unlocked lol.