The money making problem in VRMMORPGs

[farmer]

I mean the thing is, novels don't really need a realistic portrayal of earning money through MMOs. The point of an MMO novel is that making money is not the main focus of the MMO, but rather how the character progresses through the MMO. The MMO setting is just a backdrop to characters interacting with other characters, bosses, content, which most people would care about.

Simulating a realistic portrayal of economics through MMO settings can be done, but you might as well write a novel simulation of real life. That's why Solo Leveling got so popular; It's really just an MMO but brought to the real world. You don't need to build a world around an MMO if there's already one that everyone is familiar with.

"Gates" that spawn in the real world are just Dungeons that people clear.

The "in-game currency" is just real currency now.

"Items, Weapons, Levels, etc," are just parameters for how people can get stronger by investing time through the system. Much like how when you invest time in a company or build something, you get money in return. Just as you spend time to level up, you get items and whatnot to exchange for money.

Normal people that arent "Awakened" are now NPCs.

Companies are now Guilds.

Countries are now Alliances.

Get the parallel?

Now, companies can control gates, they lease gates to "Awakened" people. People clear dungeons and get rewards, and those rewards are bought/sold for real-life money. You can get killed in real life, you just lose all your items and there is permadeath. It's the equivalent of the game dropping all your items and banning you when you die.

I'm not saying this as a suggestion for how people should write, but I hate popular LitRPGs. I hate it because they don't read like how playing games feel like. The appeal of games is its fairness; it's how you'd get to the same result as long as you put in the same input in the same sequential manner to other people. As long as you can do the same exact thing as the best player in the world, you too can be equal to the best player in the world. All of your accomplishment are measured only by your dedication whether in your speedrun timer or your ranking in whatever leaderboard. No games is actually perfectly fair of course, things like luck and money plays a big factor for a lot of them, but it's a virtue for games when it's designed to be the most even playing field.

LitRPG hates fairness. The MCs would get a unique class, unique titles, unique skills, unique quests, unique equipment. LitRPG MCs always have this one thing he has that no other player can have and it would become the key that makes him different from other players in every way. That's important to have for a story MC, but it's not how it feels when I play video games. My experience of getting better in games is more about learning all the mechanics, studying from footages of top players and practicing what I learned.

Aren't you writing LitRPG to appeal to people who play games? Why do these stories always end up turning into a progression epic? If you can pull it off with a regular fantasy setting, why'd you have to involve blue boxes into them? Just write a regular fantasy smh

 

[NotaNuffian]

But if they can kill you it's obviously by design of the creators. So what exactly do you expect GMs to do?
Listen to the whiny little bitch who set out knowing the risks, but doesn't want to take the loss?

And if they shouldn't interfere, what exactly is wrong with a specific person not being traceable in settings that usually have the game played by millions around the world?

I am not asking for GM to play police, that is retarded.

When I think about tracking, I was thinking something like having your guildmates or associates to find yoir PKer and if he is infamous, then it should be easy? Or not, because fugitives are still an issue.

I was more thinking about folks who try to earn some cash for a living ingame and get hit by PKers, who are one of the intended disasters by the game creators. But there is a different feel between dying to a monster by your own stupidity versus getting mugged by bandits, sort of like working in a lawless state.

 

[Wintertime]

I'm not saying this as a suggestion for how people should write, but I hate popular LitRPGs. I hate it because they don't read like how playing games feel like. The appeal of games is its fairness; it's how you'd get to the same result as long as you put in the same input in the same sequential manner to other people. As long as you can do the same exact thing as the best player in the world, you too can be equal to the best player in the world. All of your accomplishment are measured only by your dedication whether in your speedrun timer or your ranking in whatever leaderboard. No games is actually perfectly fair of course, things like luck and money plays a big factor for a lot of them, but it's a virtue for games when it's designed to be the most even playing field.

LitRPG hates fairness. The MCs would get a unique class, unique titles, unique skills, unique quests, unique equipment. LitRPG MCs always have this one thing he has that no other player can have and it would become the key that makes him different from other players in every way. That's important to have for a story MC, but it's not how it feels when I play video games. My experience of getting better in games is more about learning all the mechanics, studying from footages of top players and practicing what I learned.

Aren't you writing LitRPG to appeal to people who play games? Why do these stories always end up turning into a progression epic? If you can pull it off with a regular fantasy setting, why'd you have to involve blue boxes into them? Just write a regular fantasy smh

I agree.

 

[Zirrboy]

I am not asking for GM to play police, that is retarded.

When I think about tracking, I was thinking something like having your guildmates or associates to find yoir PKer and if he is infamous, then it should be easy? Or not, because fugitives are still an issue.

I was more thinking about folks who try to earn some cash for a living ingame and get hit by PKers, who are one of the intended disasters by the game creators. But there is a different feel between dying to a monster by your own stupidity versus getting mugged by bandits, sort of like working in a lawless state.

I don't get what you're on about. Unlike the lawless state, nothing is forcing you to pick a game that has pvp with looting. You're gambling for drop chances either way and if it's rare enough to be that valuable, you should have met PKers on the myriad previous runs. Failure to account for that is on you.

The guild thing is just slightly better than looking on your own. Sure, someone might see them, but they might just as well not. And whether you can turn the sighting into a gank is another matter entirely.

I'm not saying this as a suggestion for how people should write, but I hate popular LitRPGs. I hate it because they don't read like how playing games feel like. The appeal of games is its fairness; it's how you'd get to the same result as long as you put in the same input in the same sequential manner to other people. As long as you can do the same exact thing as the best player in the world, you too can be equal to the best player in the world. All of your accomplishment are measured only by your dedication whether in your speedrun timer or your ranking in whatever leaderboard. No games is actually perfectly fair of course, things like luck and money plays a big factor for a lot of them, but it's a virtue for games when it's designed to be the most even playing field.

LitRPG hates fairness. The MCs would get a unique class, unique titles, unique skills, unique quests, unique equipment. LitRPG MCs always have this one thing he has that no other player can have and it would become the key that makes him different from other players in every way. That's important to have for a story MC, but it's not how it feels when I play video games. My experience of getting better in games is more about learning all the mechanics, studying from footages of top players and practicing what I learned.

Aren't you writing LitRPG to appeal to people who play games? Why do these stories always end up turning into a progression epic? If you can pull it off with a regular fantasy setting, why'd you have to involve blue boxes into them? Just write a regular fantasy smh

Free power handouts and plot armor are not exclusive to LitRPGs and the MC being just that good doesn't necessarily sound more engaging to me tbh.

 

[NotaNuffian]

I don't get what you're on about. Unlike the lawless state, nothing is forcing you to pick a game that has pvp with looting. You're gambling for drop chances either way and if it's rare enough to be that valuable, you should have met PKers on the myriad previous runs. Failure to account for that is on you.

The guild thing is just slightly better than looking on your own. Sure, someone might see them, but they might just as well not. And whether you can turn the sighting into a gank is another matter entirely.

So what I was trying to convey was that VRMMORPG novels are unrealistic (duh), considering that their PK (free-for-all PvP) system is detrimental to the player base as it is built to encourage griefing with players can now actively seek others out to harm and rob them. Coupled by the fact that when real money transaction is involved, this becomes akin to getting robbed IRL from my pont of view.

What you state is true, don't like, then don't play.

But in VRMMORPG novels however, it seems that the entire world economy is run within the virtual world and opting out is just telling people to starve to death. Yes, there is a lot of bull with this sentiment.

What my point is trying to go through is too much freedom is anarchy and the game itself would not be so popular with casuals as they are constantly on the lookout for predators and for those who spend money into the game, it sucks for them unless they can get a guild to deter these PKers looking for wealth.

I have not much comment on the guild thing, cuz it is just like "what is your standing?" , if you are in a cushy spot with henchmen (lol) , you can task them like the antagonistic guilds from tons of VRMMORPG novels to hunt down MC and feed him. If not, tough shit like the backstabbing dude in Nova Terra Titan, who got kicked out of the Ragnarok guild after losing to MC.

 

[Zirrboy]

So what I was trying to convey was that VRMMORPG novels are unrealistic (duh), considering that their PK (free-for-all PvP) system is detrimental to the player base as it is built to encourage griefing with players can now actively seek others out to harm and rob them. Coupled by the fact that when real money transaction is involved, this becomes akin to getting robbed IRL from my pont of view.

What you state is true, don't like, then don't play.

But in VRMMORPG novels however, it seems that the entire world economy is run within the virtual world and opting out is just telling people to starve to death. Yes, there is a lot of bull with this sentiment.

What my point is trying to go through is too much freedom is anarchy and the game itself would not be so popular with casuals as they are constantly on the lookout for predators and for those who spend money into the game, it sucks for them unless they can get a guild to deter these PKers looking for wealth.

I have not much comment on the guild thing, cuz it is just like "what is your standing?" , if you are in a cushy spot with henchmen (lol) , you can task them like the antagonistic guilds from tons of VRMMORPG novels to hunt down MC and feed him. If not, tough shit like the backstabbing dude in Nova Terra Titan, who got kicked out of the Ragnarok guild after losing to MC.

The most unrealistic part of this is allowing real money transaction outwards imo. Not only does the company waste potential paying customers on third party sellers, who would obviously be below shop prices, but also enables money laundering.
That's why RMT is usually forbidden, afaik.

And as for perma pvp, just look at gta multiplayer or Dark Souls. There's obviously a market for it already and the existing novels assume half of the population has become RPG nerds in a few decades, so why not go a step further?

 

[Kenjona]

Ahem, as someone who has earned money through RMT (World of Warcraft and Diablo) before. I will only talk about real world present day (Or a decade or two ago actually) transactions.

Diablo was a grind fest and to really make money you needed bots and/or a lot of luck. If you had 4 accounts set up it was relatively easier to do the grind needed for it. Selling everything but the bare minimum you needed for the boss fights. If you knew all the boss fights well enough it was doable. Their bot detection was only so-so back then. If you tried grinding solo or with friends it very much was only through luck that you made anything beyond enough for a meal a week.

WoW (World of Warcraft) main transactions were done on websites hosted in another country than the USA or European countries. Do to lawsuits killing it in the US and Europe.
WoW was also a grind fest for materials and this is where Asian countries made money during its heyday.

You paid them at their website and they mailed gold, items or mats to you.
Before I left they started RMT with you buying their "Monthly play time" as an item and then selling it to others for gold. Or you could buy it with gold then turn around and sell it for cash, which is what I did and in a week worth of regular playing and selling on the auction houses I could easily get $20-$200, nice to support a hobby but not to make a living in most 1st world countries.

EVE online. Did not get to far into this but did dip my toes into it.
There are websites that sell monthly subscriptions, items, ships and characters for cash.

They main thing with monthly subscriptions is they can be bought in game for whatever the games currency is (Gold/Credits/Snickers ) and then sold for cash at a discount under cutting the company, which was happening with EVE.

Most games (All those above especially) have power leveling where either a team would run you through an event or dungeon to gain experience (Legal to most games ToS) and you paid them in in game currency. Paying them in out of game currency was usually against ToS.
Or you would go to a website that would either bot your character or actually have a person run your character for you and run it through events/dungeons gaining experience. The last was dangerous as your password was now out there in the wild as it were and if you did not change it right after the power leveling you might lose everything on all your toons connected to that account.


How does this all relate to gold farming and RMT in stories, the biggest farmers were Chinese and then the other Asian countries, hence I guess the most RMT based stories are from China and then the other Asian countries.
Adding this because it fits. Luckily for me I have not had this issue before:

 

[CarburetorThompson]

The most unrealistic part of this is allowing real money transaction outwards imo. Not only does the company waste potential paying customers on third party sellers, who would obviously be below shop prices, but also enables money laundering.
That's why RMT is usually forbidden, afaik.

And as for perma pvp, just look at gta multiplayer or Dark Souls. There's obviously a market for it already and the existing novels assume half of the population has become RPG nerds in a few decades, so why not go a step further?

Entropia Universe has pretty much everything in-game worth real-world currency, the game dev even has a banking license in some countries. Players have sold in-game items for hundreds of thousands of dollars in usd. By allowing outwards transactions and being the one to facilitate it rather than a third party, the game dev can actually take a cut of the sale and make money.

Wouldn't really call gta or Dark Souls an mmo, but Runescape 2 had a short-lived spin-off called Darkscape which was full pvp with no safe zones.

 

[Zirrboy]

Entropia Universe has pretty much everything in-game worth real-world currency, the game dev even has a banking license in some countries. Players have sold in-game items for hundreds of thousands of dollars in usd. By allowing outwards transactions and being the one to facilitate it rather than a third party, the game dev can actually take a cut of the sale and make money.

Of course you'd want the trade cuts, I just didn't expect someone to burden themselves with the legal responsibilities of a bank that come with them.
Most instances I know go with the safer option of making paid ingame currency tradeable and having it offer exclusive options.

 

[Daitengu]

Entropia Universe has pretty much everything in-game worth real-world currency, the game dev even has a banking license in some countries. Players have sold in-game items for hundreds of thousands of dollars in usd. By allowing outwards transactions and being the one to facilitate it rather than a third party, the game dev can actually take a cut of the sale and make money.

Wouldn't really call gta or Dark Souls an mmo, but Runescape 2 had a short-lived spin-off called Darkscape which was full pvp with no safe zones.

I don't think a game with under 100k subs is a good indication of company controlled RMT with lootable pvp being successful.

And unlike Entropia, in novels, most areas beyond the starter villages are pvp. With the op talking about most areas just being lootable pvp.

IRL pvp based mmos are niche, with lootable pvp mmos being a niche of that niche. And that's not even counting RMT. Unlike what novels want to portray. Ya know, being the hottest thing with millions of players.

 

[Kenjona]

Entropia Universe has pretty much everything in-game worth real-world currency, the game dev even has a banking license in some countries. Players have sold in-game items for hundreds of thousands of dollars in usd. By allowing outwards transactions and being the one to facilitate it rather than a third party, the game dev can actually take a cut of the sale and make money.

Wouldn't really call gta or Dark Souls an mmo, but Runescape 2 had a short-lived spin-off called Darkscape which was full pvp with no safe zones.

Runescape originally had PvP everywhere, so yes you could even be ganked in town, and the PK'ers would get away fast enough the town guards could not get them. People would camp outside dungeons or choke points in the land to gank people. Worse were the ones who would kill your pets and animals while you were working in a "safe zone". Since animals and pets were "neutral" in alignment the guards ignored it and if you retaliated you were the one attacked by the guards.

Lots of learning curve for MMO's in those days.

 

[Ai-chan]

I have no idea how EVE online and other MMORPG economy fully works. If I have to guess, it is based on trust that when you sell something online to a bloke, he will pay you with paypal or something. Similar examples are Diablo having their own auction house and these are simply ways to illustrate how the money flow from in-game to IRL. Here is my problem with that when applied to novel's VRMMORPGs; griefing.

Picture this scenario, you are going on a continuous quest and maybe even streaming to earn some extra clouts on the side, the rewards for quest completion is up to ten years worth of an average man's salary and you had been slogging through for a month. The end is near, you cry out in happiness and then, a motherfucker just busted in to KS and even PKed you, causing you to not just lose the rewards, but also your progession and equipment. How the fuck has no one tried to dox the PKer and shank him to death already?

Similar cases can be fighting a raid boss, streaming for your patreons or even just grinding mats. If some dickhead decides to PK me and steal my shit, I will try my best to either locate the man myself or gather victims and campspawn the guy until he quits the game.

I of course know that there are PK guilds which are companies/ triads that will protect their members etc etc and in most of the VRMMORPGs novels, these types of griefing are handwaved with things like "untraceable to user" and it often makes me do this face.

Like why? Why would anyone think that there would be no repercussion in stealing/ robbing money? A dude got stabbed to death when he got doxxed by his murderer because the murderer thought he teabagged him in CSGO.

Ps. Limited events also count, but in this case, this is more of a competition thing and if you suck at getting the W, then it is your fault because that is akin to a buyoff.

From a programming standpoint, programming a non-repercussion PK is quite easy. All you have to do is programme so that the act is not identified if nobody is watching.

Let's take for example Workd of Warcraft. You can't really do anonymous PK because everyone have a name on top of their heads. But what if a single paragraph of code is added so that this name on top of the head is turned off by default. When your client runs the game, the code is turned on, such as "playernametag=1" where it is 0 by default.

You make it so that there is a range for this to be seen, such as "if playerrange>=100: playernametag=0" so that everyone can't see other people's nametags if they're outside 100 range.

Then you add another code "if playercount in instance <=5: playernametag=0" so that if there are 5 of less players in a particular instance, player name tags are turned off.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can even add a line of code so that in the case of the above conditions fulfilled, the character models will also be blurred so that you can't guess who it is from their class and equipments.

So you'd be like "Hey, you're Jerry, right? You're late - why are you stabbing me? Wait, Jerry is wizard, you're not Jerry!" And then die from being assassinated in a place people's rarely go to.

 

[greyblob]

The end is near, you cry out in happiness and then, a motherfucker just busted in to KS and even PKed you, causing you to not just lose the rewards, but also your progession and equipment. How the fuck has no one tried to dox the PKer and shank him to death already?

Similar cases can be fighting a raid boss, streaming for your patreons or even just grinding mats. If some dickhead decides to PK me and steal my shit, I will try my best to either locate the man myself or gather victims and campspawn the guy until he quits the game.

hmm.. maybe most people are not psychotic murderers who'd trade life in prison to get back at a griefer.
the correct recourse would be milking the situation as much as possible by hunting the assailant in game and creating a 20 video youtube series out of it

 

[Kenjona]

From a programming standpoint, programming a non-repercussion PK is quite easy. All you have to do is programme so that the act is not identified if nobody is watching.

Let's take for example Workd of Warcraft. You can't really do anonymous PK because everyone have a name on top of their heads. But what if a single paragraph of code is added so that this name on top of the head is turned off by default. When your client runs the game, the code is turned on, such as "playernametag=1" where it is 0 by default.

You make it so that there is a range for this to be seen, such as "if playerrange>=100: playernametag=0" so that everyone can't see other people's nametags if they're outside 100 range.

Then you add another code "if playercount in instance <=5: playernametag=0" so that if there are 5 of less players in a particular instance, player name tags are turned off.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can even add a line of code so that in the case of the above conditions fulfilled, the character models will also be blurred so that you can't guess who it is from their class and equipments.

So you'd be like "Hey, you're Jerry, right? You're late - why are you stabbing me? Wait, Jerry is wizard, you're not Jerry!" And then die from being assassinated in a place people's rarely go to.

In the case of early Runscape, there were "masks" that could hide ones identity and no names above anyone's head. I remember getting ganked by the US Presidents; Ford, Carter, Reagan and Washington. It turned me off to Runescape as I was a solo player just getting into MMORPG's and did not have the spare cash to spend on a game that cost me a Monthly fee to play it and while I was paying an hourly fee to log into the internet on 56.6k dialup, woot!

 

[Ai-chan]

In the case of early Runscape, there were "masks" that could hide ones identity and no names above anyone's head. I remember getting ganked by the US Presidents; Ford, Carter, Reagan and Washington. It turned me off to Runescape as I was a solo player just getting into MMORPG's and did not have the spare cash to spend on a game that cost me a Monthly fee to play it and while I was paying an hourly fee to log into the internet on 56.6k dialup, woot!

Back then, we called Runescape as Run Escape. Because you play it and run away shortly after.

 

[Kenjona]

Back then, we called Runescape as Run Escape. Because you play it and run away shortly after.

Pretty much, it was a fantastic world at the time. But no real controls over the stuff that happened.