Immortal
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- Oct 24, 2007
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Points of note: Arguments against calling this Virtual Universe “gambling”. Or “casino”.
I am going to give my points of view here as I feel would not be given the attention they deserve if they were not related.
I see many people that make the connection “losing money=gambling”
If this is true, are you gambling when you fill your car up with petrol? Yes. – you are assuming that petrol will aid your car. You are assuming that petrol will perform the function you expect it.
If this is true, when buy a sandwich combination you’ve never tried, are you gambling? Yes. What if you don’t like it, or it makes you sick? You just lost money! Gambling! Maybe you purposefully eat more of it to make yourself even more sick, then file a court case against the sandwich company. Gamble!
Spending time at work: gamble! You are gambling every week by going to work expecting to get paid. What if they go bankrupt? You just lost time + money because you didn’t work for some other company. In fact you’re gambling
Yes they seem to be somewhat silly examples, but I think they demonstrate the point on. If you consider every action in life to be a gamble, it loses it’s meaning.
This is one reason why I consider the ‘g-word’ to be completely dirty and inappropriate when referring to a virtual universe. The difference between this and other online pastimes is ... you can actually get something material back at the end of the day.
Let’s say you do not think the above arguments against EU g-wordism labelling are addressing the issue. Let’s say that you consider a short-sighted money-in money-out situation to be a valid standpoint.
EU, to me, is primarily an RPG. Let’s compare then to other types of RPGs
Single player RPG (or in fact, any game). Cost $100. Will last, on average, about 3 days. So ...you just blew $100. You can’t take it back to the store and exchange it (unless you are unethical)
Other online RPG’s : Subscription fee $20. You never see that $20 again. There are no other options than to obey the in-game rules of skilling. Avatars that have been worked on for six months *might* be sold for $300. And there is no guarantee of sale. So for 6months life cycle...$300. $50 a month... 3 hours afk work/month for the average person. So the overall effectiveness is ? Zero. So what would be the point playing? Someone asks what you did for 6 months? “Nothing” You’ve maxed out the character already. There is nowhere to go, inflation is rampant in such games. Currency meaningless.
Why? Because the way returns are generated, you get SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than what you put in. “So???!?!?” You ask naively, almost shouting.
Think about this: If every person got 110% return, every time they did something, how much more do they have at the end of the day?
“10%!!!!” You say without thinking. How did you come by that conclusion?
So say you have 1000 coins, and the world you are looting has 1000000 coins. You own 0.1% of all coins.
You loot 110%, now you have 1100 coins. I profited 10%!
No, you didn’t. What’s you total value? The world just got 10% in the same time. The world now has 1100000 coins. You still have 0.1% worth! So you gained NOTHING.
Do the same in EU. You might break even @ 100% return. You gain skills. They are sold for markup. Probably end up being 50 coins for the same hunt. So you gained 50 coins. It’s not that visible though –I bet you don’t do skill scan after every hunt either.
In levelling up, you become more proficient at hunting, your mining abilities allow you to use higher level finders that can search deeper where rarer ores lie, in crafting there are two levelling factors: quality of BP’s and skills to click the bp. Then there are activities such as coloring & texturizing that for all economic intents and purposes, have zero gain bar the skills associated with them.
Levelling up in all of these activities reduce the cost of doing that activity in the future. Find me one ‘casino’ where the more you sit at the machine, the less ‘money’ you have to put ‘in’, and get the same return. Bottom line, you will never find such a place. The difference with EU is, as you progress, the amount you put in starts being outweighed by the amount of return. Sometimes it’s hard to notice this because there are an awful lot of overheads if you are an intense hunter. Fap, Armor repair, gun decay, the list goes on. It is understandable why people give up too soon. EU is not about having the best equipment and hunting the biggest mobs. It’s about playing within your means. Matching the weapon to the mob, the finder to the ore, or the synergy of the craft.
Investment
Try walking into a casino, and ask to buy shares. Ask to ‘buy’ a machine that you can then use, with the hope that the machine will increase in value over time.. I don’t think the laughter will have died by the time you’ve crawled back to your car and smothered yourself with potato chips. There are ways to generate income in the universe that do not require you do be proficient in anything but know-how. This is where smart resellers come in. Resellers themselves feed off the greed, impatience, stupidity or status grabbed-ness of others. Take items with no market history for example: long time successful resellers don’t touch them. Items WITH market history though, they get snapped up as quickly and for as low cost as possible.
Items
Find me a casino that gives out prizes that make it cost less for ‘slotting’, or reduce the amount of time needed to continue ‘slotting’. Or one where another ‘fellow slotter’ would be willing to pay their yearly slot-wage to get said prize, even if it might be of low real-world value.
Devil’s Advocating my own argument
Recently a thread was started” “i clicked XXX BP with 9 fails in a row. It’s worse than vegas”
Well this should be the clincher, shouldn’t it? In a casino, you would expect some return. If this isn’t an indication enough that EU is clearly NOT a casino if it gives so many fails in a row. It really is beyond me how a high level crafter can not understand their own profession? Did they not test the loot on the machine they were using to make sure they would get some return? If after 3 fails why did they not stop? That is certainly the advice professional gamblers would use. “Three fails in a row and you leave”. We know EU is cyclical...sometimes there are are extremely good loot periods, sometimes bad, sometimes a tick on Chance of success craft bar won’t work for 20 clicks, and sometimes the one next to it works as many times in a row. It does amaze me how long time players have not yet learnt to read loot patterns. I guess using autoclickers while afk does have it’s disadvantages.
I have had similar fails. Sweating. Last night (I was tired of poor loots) I sweated a Bristlehog Old. For half an hour (or was it more?). The first 15 or so tries were FAILS. To anyone, this should be an indication it is not regular chance ( i.e. 1 in X tries succeeds) to loot or to sweat or to craft or to mine, it is one of timing, it is one of serendipity and one of contingency. Timing won’t get you anywhere in a casino, except a boot out the front door.
“But I had to pay money” argument etc
You put money into the game. You are making an investment. For this investment, MindArk gives you a pre-agreed conversion rate of PED. What you do in the game from then on is up to how intensely you want to play, or what you want to achieve. If you want to continue hunting with stupidly low economy weapons, you are allowed. If you want to continue hunting crap looting mobs, you are allowed. If you are going to craft very riskily on condition knowing full well you get a better average return on quantity, don’t blame anyone but yourself if you fail in that goal. You(presumably) have tested the system and know how it works.
EU rewards those who are persistent. A casino doesn’t. The intensity of ingame skill-time an avatar needs to have clocked before they realise this reward is what is unpredictable, and that is what makes it exciting.
I am going to give my points of view here as I feel would not be given the attention they deserve if they were not related.
I see many people that make the connection “losing money=gambling”
If this is true, are you gambling when you fill your car up with petrol? Yes. – you are assuming that petrol will aid your car. You are assuming that petrol will perform the function you expect it.
If this is true, when buy a sandwich combination you’ve never tried, are you gambling? Yes. What if you don’t like it, or it makes you sick? You just lost money! Gambling! Maybe you purposefully eat more of it to make yourself even more sick, then file a court case against the sandwich company. Gamble!
Spending time at work: gamble! You are gambling every week by going to work expecting to get paid. What if they go bankrupt? You just lost time + money because you didn’t work for some other company. In fact you’re gambling
Yes they seem to be somewhat silly examples, but I think they demonstrate the point on. If you consider every action in life to be a gamble, it loses it’s meaning.
This is one reason why I consider the ‘g-word’ to be completely dirty and inappropriate when referring to a virtual universe. The difference between this and other online pastimes is ... you can actually get something material back at the end of the day.
Let’s say you do not think the above arguments against EU g-wordism labelling are addressing the issue. Let’s say that you consider a short-sighted money-in money-out situation to be a valid standpoint.
EU, to me, is primarily an RPG. Let’s compare then to other types of RPGs
Single player RPG (or in fact, any game). Cost $100. Will last, on average, about 3 days. So ...you just blew $100. You can’t take it back to the store and exchange it (unless you are unethical)
Other online RPG’s : Subscription fee $20. You never see that $20 again. There are no other options than to obey the in-game rules of skilling. Avatars that have been worked on for six months *might* be sold for $300. And there is no guarantee of sale. So for 6months life cycle...$300. $50 a month... 3 hours afk work/month for the average person. So the overall effectiveness is ? Zero. So what would be the point playing? Someone asks what you did for 6 months? “Nothing” You’ve maxed out the character already. There is nowhere to go, inflation is rampant in such games. Currency meaningless.
Why? Because the way returns are generated, you get SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than what you put in. “So???!?!?” You ask naively, almost shouting.
Think about this: If every person got 110% return, every time they did something, how much more do they have at the end of the day?
“10%!!!!” You say without thinking. How did you come by that conclusion?
So say you have 1000 coins, and the world you are looting has 1000000 coins. You own 0.1% of all coins.
You loot 110%, now you have 1100 coins. I profited 10%!
No, you didn’t. What’s you total value? The world just got 10% in the same time. The world now has 1100000 coins. You still have 0.1% worth! So you gained NOTHING.
Do the same in EU. You might break even @ 100% return. You gain skills. They are sold for markup. Probably end up being 50 coins for the same hunt. So you gained 50 coins. It’s not that visible though –I bet you don’t do skill scan after every hunt either.
In levelling up, you become more proficient at hunting, your mining abilities allow you to use higher level finders that can search deeper where rarer ores lie, in crafting there are two levelling factors: quality of BP’s and skills to click the bp. Then there are activities such as coloring & texturizing that for all economic intents and purposes, have zero gain bar the skills associated with them.
Levelling up in all of these activities reduce the cost of doing that activity in the future. Find me one ‘casino’ where the more you sit at the machine, the less ‘money’ you have to put ‘in’, and get the same return. Bottom line, you will never find such a place. The difference with EU is, as you progress, the amount you put in starts being outweighed by the amount of return. Sometimes it’s hard to notice this because there are an awful lot of overheads if you are an intense hunter. Fap, Armor repair, gun decay, the list goes on. It is understandable why people give up too soon. EU is not about having the best equipment and hunting the biggest mobs. It’s about playing within your means. Matching the weapon to the mob, the finder to the ore, or the synergy of the craft.
Investment
Try walking into a casino, and ask to buy shares. Ask to ‘buy’ a machine that you can then use, with the hope that the machine will increase in value over time.. I don’t think the laughter will have died by the time you’ve crawled back to your car and smothered yourself with potato chips. There are ways to generate income in the universe that do not require you do be proficient in anything but know-how. This is where smart resellers come in. Resellers themselves feed off the greed, impatience, stupidity or status grabbed-ness of others. Take items with no market history for example: long time successful resellers don’t touch them. Items WITH market history though, they get snapped up as quickly and for as low cost as possible.
Items
Find me a casino that gives out prizes that make it cost less for ‘slotting’, or reduce the amount of time needed to continue ‘slotting’. Or one where another ‘fellow slotter’ would be willing to pay their yearly slot-wage to get said prize, even if it might be of low real-world value.
Devil’s Advocating my own argument
Recently a thread was started” “i clicked XXX BP with 9 fails in a row. It’s worse than vegas”
Well this should be the clincher, shouldn’t it? In a casino, you would expect some return. If this isn’t an indication enough that EU is clearly NOT a casino if it gives so many fails in a row. It really is beyond me how a high level crafter can not understand their own profession? Did they not test the loot on the machine they were using to make sure they would get some return? If after 3 fails why did they not stop? That is certainly the advice professional gamblers would use. “Three fails in a row and you leave”. We know EU is cyclical...sometimes there are are extremely good loot periods, sometimes bad, sometimes a tick on Chance of success craft bar won’t work for 20 clicks, and sometimes the one next to it works as many times in a row. It does amaze me how long time players have not yet learnt to read loot patterns. I guess using autoclickers while afk does have it’s disadvantages.
I have had similar fails. Sweating. Last night (I was tired of poor loots) I sweated a Bristlehog Old. For half an hour (or was it more?). The first 15 or so tries were FAILS. To anyone, this should be an indication it is not regular chance ( i.e. 1 in X tries succeeds) to loot or to sweat or to craft or to mine, it is one of timing, it is one of serendipity and one of contingency. Timing won’t get you anywhere in a casino, except a boot out the front door.
“But I had to pay money” argument etc
You put money into the game. You are making an investment. For this investment, MindArk gives you a pre-agreed conversion rate of PED. What you do in the game from then on is up to how intensely you want to play, or what you want to achieve. If you want to continue hunting with stupidly low economy weapons, you are allowed. If you want to continue hunting crap looting mobs, you are allowed. If you are going to craft very riskily on condition knowing full well you get a better average return on quantity, don’t blame anyone but yourself if you fail in that goal. You(presumably) have tested the system and know how it works.
EU rewards those who are persistent. A casino doesn’t. The intensity of ingame skill-time an avatar needs to have clocked before they realise this reward is what is unpredictable, and that is what makes it exciting.