Steam market, inventory and X4?

[Sorkvild]

Hello Egosoft, are you considering advantages of Steam inventory infrastructure to introduce various selection of in-game items, decorations, paint jobs, skins, etc, etc (to some extent of course, let's not get crazy here).

Also what you X-enthusiasts do think about such possibility? Yay or nay?

[Alan Phipps]

Do you mean as paid DLCs perhaps?

[Sorkvild]

Depends what DLC. I'm not talking about expansion packs (for which I will gladly pay for).
I'm talking about in-game drops, purchasable crates or rewards - call it what you want. Small things you can live without, mostly decorations, things that are not necessary for you to purchase nor needed to complete the game, things you can sell on the market for $ or exchange with another player. Lets be honest - things that keep many games rolling and attractive these days.

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

Do you mean as paid DLCs perhaps?

What I think OP is talking about is more like TF2's hats or the weapons and skins in DOTA2, which is more like microtransactions and very different from what people mean by "DLC."

Personally I would be very much against this. 100% supportive of actual DLC though.

[Alan Phipps]

Yes, I linked that thread so that the general forum reactions to various DLCs and add-ons could be seen there without repeating all those discussions here.

[Sorkvild]

I read that thread before. No one mentions the possibility of Steam Market (not Steam Store where DLC is being sold) and trading in-game items for real money or exchanging them for other items often from different games or game copies depending on rarity
Otherwise my question would surely drown there among replies whether to pay for an expansion or not and get freebies in patches like in 00's

[Rei Ayanami]

I'm talking about in-game drops, purchasable crates or rewards - call it what you want. Small things you can live without, mostly decorations, things that are not necessary for you to purchase nor needed to complete the game, things you can sell on the market for $ or exchange with another player. Lets be honest - things that keep many games rolling and attractive these days.

If you are talking about selling items that you can get ingame for money, like Blizzard did with Diablo 2 or 3 (can't remember) :
I don't think that would work very well, considering savegames are saved on the users pc and everyone is free to edit their saves however they want. It only works if the player state is actually saved on a server and not able to be manipulated.

Also, wouldn't the game need to be age-restricted the moment real life money gets involved?

On top of that : What about modding? If you put something like a real life cash market for ingame items in the game, the game would have to be severely restricted against most kinds of mods, otherwise you could have mods that increase the drop rate of items, etc, so it'd greatly hinder mod development.

Do you mean as paid DLCs perhaps?

What I think OP is talking about is more like TF2's hats or the weapons and skins in DOTA2, which is more like microtransactions and very different from what people mean by "DLC."

Microtransactions are most of the time not used to give player a good feature nor are they usually there to, as many PR-people from AAA-publishers and -developers say, "give players options", their sole purpose in most games is to be a subtle and psychologically manipulative way to squeeze as much money out of a player without the player realizing it.

I'm sure Egosoft has enough respect for the players and their games to not introduce manipulative "features" like microtransactions .

[Sorkvild]

The use of Steam Market does not push the game into R category, other things do - like violence, use of drugs, language...

In-game drops (rewards) are very specific yet handling of that stuff is strictly on a server side. Neverthelss I don't see a dependence between in-game purchase menu and mods, for example if you want get that hot camo for your ship for that loose 49 cents in your steam wallet - then why the heck not, eh.

[Rei Ayanami]

Neverthelss I don't see a dependence between in-game purchase menu and mods, for example if you want get that hot camo for your ship for that loose 49 cents in your steam wallet - then why the heck not, eh.

So you want microtransactions. Sorry, but i'm vehemently against any form of microtransactions, it's a shady business practice that demonstrably affects the computer gaming industry in a bad way.

[Axeface]

Im not sure how it works in TF2, ive never played it, but I do think that that sort of thing should stay firmly in games like that, online and other such games where (to use a buzzword) 'immersion' or any narrative are non-existent. Putting things that reminds me of the real world or real world things in games distracts me from the experience a lot.

[Morkonan]

I think a sort of "Trading Market", like there is for some games on Steam, doesn't work well with a game like X4 seems to be.

It'd look like some cheap cash-grab or promotional attempt and, at the end of the day, there's nothing in an X type game that is difficult to get or is worth "trading."

FPS tradeables and their markets are weird and esoteric things.

[Vandragorax]

This sort of thing definitely would not have a place in the X series.

Firstly it alienates a large player base who see it as a "carrot on a stick" type feature which adds nothing to the gameplay itself, and secondly it detracts heavily from the "simulation" part of the game by being a feature that is completely out of place in the game world and breaks immersion so much that it's jarring.

Not to mention of course that we won't be seeing multiplayer (which would include in-game trading) any time soon in the X series as it is predominantly a single player, simulation experience, so there is no way to "show off" all of these sort of "prizes" you can get from TF2 style system which completely bypasses the actual point of getting them in the first place as they are really just designed to be a bragging right, and create a false sense of desire/need by others that they need rare items to brag harder than the next person.

On a personal note, I despise these sort of systems and avoid games that use them because it is such a shallow reason to keep playing, and it would detract so heavily from the immersion of the game world.

@OP - I'm genuinely interested in what you feel are the "advantages" of such a system, as you put it What would you consider are the good points about such a system because I can't think of any myself, other than creating a load of cosmetic 'things' for us to be able to collect which could be fun if done properly (but not in the way the marketplace currently does imo).

[CloneWarrior85]

Yes, i'de like hats and skins that coat 4000 bucks please.




Are you serious? The least companies falling for this the better the game community will be.

[sd_jasper]

To be fair, "tradable" and "sellable" are different things on the steam system. Theoretically, a game could have in-game items that drop that can be traded to other users through this system, but can't actually be sold.

Although I'm not sure any game has ever done that. I think I *might* have a few TF2 items that are not flagged to sell, but can be traded...?

That said, what's the point in such a system? People pay for vanity items in multiplayer games to show off their unique avatar or whatever. In a single-player game, there isn't much incentive to buy this sort of item.

And mod-able games and micro-transaction tend to go together like oil and water. And with the the recent backlash at Bethesda for their "creation club", I think this would cause a lot of animosity with the fan-base.

[spankahontis]

Do we really want to repeat what's going on with Star Wars Battlefront II ??

Loot crates, pay to win, legalised gambling, all that poo.. EA are taking a hammering for it (Not that they don't deserve it).