Aaah yes, Runescape and Fifa. Games that were a big part of many people's childhood and for some, still are. I can't help but realise that A lot of Fifa problems could be fixed by simply looking at another game's history that has had similar issues when it comes to the game's economy.
Which is: Coin Selling
Quick history lesson for people who didn't play Runescape.
Runescape was one of, if not THE most popular game around 2006-2012. But a serious problem plagued this game...coin selling. But not just any old coin selling, we are not talking about having your mate Barry give you a couple 100k for paying for that McFlurry from Mcdonalds after school.
No, we are talking about Billions upon Billions being exchanged for real life money. Fifa 16 coins that were brought into the game through glitches, or coins that were scammed from other players. So what did Jagex (Runescape Develepors) do? In 2007, they took away free trade. Gave every tradeable item a price band and called it a day. You could no longer transfer millions willy nilly.
Almost identical to what EA did. Removing free trade, putting a price band on every tradeable item and calling it a day
What was the result of this?
Long story short, players left to other games (e.g. World of Warcraft, Call of Duty etc) because of the loss of free trade. Most however left because the loss of other things, which had to be removed as they could facilitate Coin selling. If they had not removed those things, the whole loss of free trade thing to combat coin selling would have been pointless. Things got worse before they got better, resulting in many updates that made a shit problem, even shitter. With people finding new workarounds all the time, and the developers restricting the game even more resulting in the suffering of legit players, to catch the few bad ones. Eventually they called it quits, and after 5 years or so, reversed all the major changes that made the game shit in 2007. But it wasn't enough to get the players to come back. So they released a server which was a copy of the game in 2007, with about 5 staff. And it has more players than its current live version. with all its hundreds of staff, along with millions in budget.
But wait... wasn't there something called the Grand Exchange?
Why yes, I am going onto that next.
Now, how can we fix Fifa Market in Fifa 16 for good As part of their fix, Jagex put in something called "The Grand Exchange".
What is the grand exchange in fifa terms?
It's a stock market with an autobuyer which auto buys the item with the lowest price currently on the "stock market" . Every item has a guide price, but there is nothing stopping you putting in an offer for ridiculously low or ridiculously high and the trade going through. The player has no control over which individual item is bought for him. The only thing he can control is what he is willing to pay. The Grand Exchange will simply buy the cheapest card with the amount of coins the player has put into the offer.
Prices go up or down based on how much the card is traded for relative to it's guide (median) price. This price is updated every 4 hours.
E.g. 1 SIF Bolasie is traded 1015 times in 4 hours, his guide price is 55k. 1000 cards are sold above his guide price compared to 15 below his guide price. Result: Price goes up a lot.
E.g. 2 Pastore played shit in the champions league semi-final against Real Madrid. Now everyone is dumping their NIF Pastore cards. 1000 sold below the guide price of 2.5k compared to 15 offers above his guide price. Result: Price goes down a lot.
E.g. 3 You have a TOTY iniesta but no one is buying this card, and everyone is dumping this card. 1000 people selling but no one is buying this card. Result: Price goes down extremely
The exact change in the median (guide) price is determined by the value of each individual trade/offer. The mean price the card is being bought for. This removes the effect of outliers almost completely e.g. You got pissed with your Courtois card for letting in an easy catch and sold him for 1 coin. But there were 1000 traded for more or less his guide price. It barely even affect his market price.
If we implemented this for Fifa, what issues will it fix?
It will sort out 99% of coin sellers. A Coin sellers cannot chose which individual card he buys, as it will only buy the cheapest card.
It will fix Extinction for 99% of cards anyone is going to give a shit about, everyone has a price and the invisible hand can act once more without the shackles placed on him by EA. The price of a high demand, low supply player will keep rising until supply meets demand.
It will permenantly fix autobuyers for every forthcoming fifa ever. Everyone has an autobuyer now, what's your advantage bruh? But wait...Didnt you just give people who would not have autobought, a simpler tool which they can't get banned over? Nope...Because every card has a buy limit based on its Cardweight . The Rarer the card in packs , The lower the limit is on that card untill we reach a limit of 2 cards. Can't let one noob horde all the Messi's now can we?
It will bring back merchenting on Fifa Something that is mostly dead on Fifa right now
But wait...this is not Runescape, Cards have individual values: such as Contracts, Chemistry style, Fitness, Injury status.
Yep, you are right. Which is why those values are saved for your every player, any time you sell a one. It will remember that your Doumbia had a Hunter Chemistry Style and 99 contract because it knows you're a sweaty bastard. So if you buy Doumbia again, he will still have the same Chemistry style, fitness etc. as when you sold him...BUT ONLY FOR YOU. And when you buy a player you haven't bought before, he has default everything.
My suggestion
It also remembers how many goals your scored with that player and doesn't show how many he has scored with his last owner or in total for that individual card, only globally a goal to game ratio. So you can stop crying when you see that his last owner scored 83 times in 45 games and you have yet to score in 11 games. Its like knowing how big your girlfriend's ex's penis was. It's mostly not a good idea to know he has a 12"er and you are rocking a 3" "size small". It also shows his average post match player rating for you and globally. So you can now compare your dick with the rest of the world like you always wanted, and shout about how you have an average rating of 8.9 with a shit player. How you must be a god among Men.
I'm still not convinced, couldn't all this lead to price manipulation by groups of players like it did initially in Runescape. Probably, but this time we know its coming. Manipulated items will stick out like a sore thumb, shit players which are crazy expensive wont stay expensive for long. Leading to a maximum buy price freeze. Or increased cardweight by EA. Easily solve able. This practice is illegal in the real life stock market. Ea can make this a ban-able offence when it comes to large groups manipulating like this. Not to be confused with an innocent fifa merchenter like yourself ;)
So why is this approach almost certain to succeed? Because another game has been beta testing this concept for us... for 8 years. The Grand Exchange is still strong today in Runescape. It is the foundation of the economy and is a truly beautiful thing.
I had wanted to save this idea for any EA interview I might have been in. As I really do love the Fifa series. I have owned every single one since Fifa 2002, I grew up in a poor family so I would save up all year and buy last year's Fifa. It honestly hurts me to see this game go to shit. I hope someone high up-ish reads this from EA so they could actually do something. If some of you could tweet this to anyone who might listen at EA. It would no doubt help the game.
I also have other ideas on some possible improvements for the game. But I wont go into detail today. About 8 thousand charecters are enough for tonight.
Which is: Coin Selling
Quick history lesson for people who didn't play Runescape.
Runescape was one of, if not THE most popular game around 2006-2012. But a serious problem plagued this game...coin selling. But not just any old coin selling, we are not talking about having your mate Barry give you a couple 100k for paying for that McFlurry from Mcdonalds after school.
No, we are talking about Billions upon Billions being exchanged for real life money. Fifa 16 coins that were brought into the game through glitches, or coins that were scammed from other players. So what did Jagex (Runescape Develepors) do? In 2007, they took away free trade. Gave every tradeable item a price band and called it a day. You could no longer transfer millions willy nilly.
Almost identical to what EA did. Removing free trade, putting a price band on every tradeable item and calling it a day
What was the result of this?
Long story short, players left to other games (e.g. World of Warcraft, Call of Duty etc) because of the loss of free trade. Most however left because the loss of other things, which had to be removed as they could facilitate Coin selling. If they had not removed those things, the whole loss of free trade thing to combat coin selling would have been pointless. Things got worse before they got better, resulting in many updates that made a shit problem, even shitter. With people finding new workarounds all the time, and the developers restricting the game even more resulting in the suffering of legit players, to catch the few bad ones. Eventually they called it quits, and after 5 years or so, reversed all the major changes that made the game shit in 2007. But it wasn't enough to get the players to come back. So they released a server which was a copy of the game in 2007, with about 5 staff. And it has more players than its current live version. with all its hundreds of staff, along with millions in budget.
But wait... wasn't there something called the Grand Exchange?
Why yes, I am going onto that next.
Now, how can we fix Fifa Market in Fifa 16 for good As part of their fix, Jagex put in something called "The Grand Exchange".
What is the grand exchange in fifa terms?
It's a stock market with an autobuyer which auto buys the item with the lowest price currently on the "stock market" . Every item has a guide price, but there is nothing stopping you putting in an offer for ridiculously low or ridiculously high and the trade going through. The player has no control over which individual item is bought for him. The only thing he can control is what he is willing to pay. The Grand Exchange will simply buy the cheapest card with the amount of coins the player has put into the offer.
Prices go up or down based on how much the card is traded for relative to it's guide (median) price. This price is updated every 4 hours.
E.g. 1 SIF Bolasie is traded 1015 times in 4 hours, his guide price is 55k. 1000 cards are sold above his guide price compared to 15 below his guide price. Result: Price goes up a lot.
E.g. 2 Pastore played shit in the champions league semi-final against Real Madrid. Now everyone is dumping their NIF Pastore cards. 1000 sold below the guide price of 2.5k compared to 15 offers above his guide price. Result: Price goes down a lot.
E.g. 3 You have a TOTY iniesta but no one is buying this card, and everyone is dumping this card. 1000 people selling but no one is buying this card. Result: Price goes down extremely
The exact change in the median (guide) price is determined by the value of each individual trade/offer. The mean price the card is being bought for. This removes the effect of outliers almost completely e.g. You got pissed with your Courtois card for letting in an easy catch and sold him for 1 coin. But there were 1000 traded for more or less his guide price. It barely even affect his market price.
If we implemented this for Fifa, what issues will it fix?
It will sort out 99% of coin sellers. A Coin sellers cannot chose which individual card he buys, as it will only buy the cheapest card.
It will fix Extinction for 99% of cards anyone is going to give a shit about, everyone has a price and the invisible hand can act once more without the shackles placed on him by EA. The price of a high demand, low supply player will keep rising until supply meets demand.
It will permenantly fix autobuyers for every forthcoming fifa ever. Everyone has an autobuyer now, what's your advantage bruh? But wait...Didnt you just give people who would not have autobought, a simpler tool which they can't get banned over? Nope...Because every card has a buy limit based on its Cardweight . The Rarer the card in packs , The lower the limit is on that card untill we reach a limit of 2 cards. Can't let one noob horde all the Messi's now can we?
It will bring back merchenting on Fifa Something that is mostly dead on Fifa right now
But wait...this is not Runescape, Cards have individual values: such as Contracts, Chemistry style, Fitness, Injury status.
Yep, you are right. Which is why those values are saved for your every player, any time you sell a one. It will remember that your Doumbia had a Hunter Chemistry Style and 99 contract because it knows you're a sweaty bastard. So if you buy Doumbia again, he will still have the same Chemistry style, fitness etc. as when you sold him...BUT ONLY FOR YOU. And when you buy a player you haven't bought before, he has default everything.
My suggestion
It also remembers how many goals your scored with that player and doesn't show how many he has scored with his last owner or in total for that individual card, only globally a goal to game ratio. So you can stop crying when you see that his last owner scored 83 times in 45 games and you have yet to score in 11 games. Its like knowing how big your girlfriend's ex's penis was. It's mostly not a good idea to know he has a 12"er and you are rocking a 3" "size small". It also shows his average post match player rating for you and globally. So you can now compare your dick with the rest of the world like you always wanted, and shout about how you have an average rating of 8.9 with a shit player. How you must be a god among Men.
I'm still not convinced, couldn't all this lead to price manipulation by groups of players like it did initially in Runescape. Probably, but this time we know its coming. Manipulated items will stick out like a sore thumb, shit players which are crazy expensive wont stay expensive for long. Leading to a maximum buy price freeze. Or increased cardweight by EA. Easily solve able. This practice is illegal in the real life stock market. Ea can make this a ban-able offence when it comes to large groups manipulating like this. Not to be confused with an innocent fifa merchenter like yourself ;)
So why is this approach almost certain to succeed? Because another game has been beta testing this concept for us... for 8 years. The Grand Exchange is still strong today in Runescape. It is the foundation of the economy and is a truly beautiful thing.
I had wanted to save this idea for any EA interview I might have been in. As I really do love the Fifa series. I have owned every single one since Fifa 2002, I grew up in a poor family so I would save up all year and buy last year's Fifa. It honestly hurts me to see this game go to shit. I hope someone high up-ish reads this from EA so they could actually do something. If some of you could tweet this to anyone who might listen at EA. It would no doubt help the game.
I also have other ideas on some possible improvements for the game. But I wont go into detail today. About 8 thousand charecters are enough for tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment