MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

On May 5th some new house items will be making their way to the Station Marketplace, they follow the same graphics as the last round of house items, and are absolutely beautiful to look at. These new items have created a few issues both in game and out - but there’s a pretty valid reason for them when you find out why.

Voices were raised in the forums discussing the positives and negatives of station cash, and these items in particular because they are so unique compared to what the crafting class ‘carpenter’ already makes. Some felt it de-valued their craft classes, since a player could just throw down some real life money and purchase items that were far superior to what they could create. Others mentioned that at best these SC (station cash) items were aimed towards a niche market, and there was no way they would replace a hard working carpenter since they have a huge amount of items that they can create.

Whether you personally agree or disagree with station cash is not the main focus I want to mention today (not this time at least!) there was a point that was brought up: the fact that none of these station marketplace  furniture pieces can be placed within a guild hall. You are more then welcome to place the items in your house, or even a friends house, but you are unable to place them within a hall.

There’s actually a reason behind this - though you may not consider it a valid one from your personal perspective it’s just one indication on how developers think on a different level then players. Guild leaders have the ability to remove you from a guild and thus ban you from the guild hall - all it would take is for one guild leader (or officer) to kick out a member who has placed their station marketplace items within a hall for disputes to arise. You can in essence ’steal’ something that a player has dedicated an amount of real life cash towards.

Now, you can debate the fact that ALL items cost ‘real life’ money due to paying for an account monthly, and that players could lose items that they had placed be they station marketplace items or not, but station cash items were never intended to be placed within halls, for that specific reason.

Of course, there could be ways to fix that. Allow guild members to ‘donate’ an item towards a hall with the realization that they COULD potentially lose it. Allow a new flagging system to flag items based on a guild name so that it’s tied to the hall. It’s easy for me to spout off ideas since I’m not a game developer and I don’t have the faintest idea how hard it would be to implement a system like that. I’m sure it would take manpower that teams simply don’t have right now, or it would have already been looked into and done.

It’s important as players to remember as we’re begging for some new feature to be added to the game that the developers are NOT actually out to get us and screw us over - despite what we may all think. There ARE reasons behind their choices, whether we agree with them or not, and it’s typically some very simple fact that we just haven’t taken the time to look at because we’re glancing at things from a players perspective and not from the developer side of things.

Personally? I’m loving the new items in game. Sure my carpenter is a little put off that she can’t create these items herself, but for those who can afford to spend the money on these items they certainly do look awesome.

One thing I WOULD like to see, is all of the station marketplace items flagged as heirloom. This tag allows you to trade items between characters on your account via the shared bank. Right now the person who claims the item is the only character who can place / wear / use it. If there was an heirloom tag at least I could share items between all of my characters. /Feedback is a wonderful thing!

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