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>PLEX is the client that lets scientists interact with the Lab exchange. The service is launching with the ability to run only computational services, while physical laboratory services will be added in the future. LabDAO has containerized resource-intensive computational services to make it easier to run data. > > The output can then be linked to non-fungible tokens (NFT) for scientists to prove ownership of their data. This is a **fantastic** use of NFTs, and a great example of how many different ways they can be used beyond just ugly JPEGs.
RMT is trading with real money between players for in game items. You buying PLEX with real money is also technically RMT but since you can't convert it back without using a 3rd party, it's a moot point. There's no point in the game where you can generate "real money" and trying to do so with a 3rd party will get you banned. This is drastically different from D3 auction house where you can freely convert real money to items and then back.
I hope the will be two diferent currencies like ISK and PLEX in EVE. So only the guys with PLEX can flex :D
Bullish on EVE Online PLEX
It seemed appropriate given the dismissal of an entire consumer base. The issue with your initial comment is the same fallacy every 3rd year marketing student makes, blaming misunderstanding. Consumers *never* misunderstand products. It’s simply not possible. You design something for a market and if that market rejects you, it’s on you, regardless of the products intention. So the real question to ask is why do gaming focused markets dismiss or reject NFTs? Instead of addressing that rejection, you’ve double down, just like every NTF gaming studio. “No, you don’t understand! My product has all these benefits!!” And look it makes a lot of sense, like a lot. In fact it’s makes so much sense earn-able, NTF adjacent items have been in games for a decade plus (through PLEX and related), and gray markets longer than that. Nearly every game on steam will reward you for playing with sellable, valuable items tied to your account. Everything that is appealing about NFTs is already in gaming. The issues comes from corporate misunderstand of 1) motivation and 2) perception. For motivation, take EVE. You can play in game and earn tokens to pay your subscription and, furthermore, a gray market allows trading of assets. Why does this work? Because people *like* EVE. Or RuneScape, or WoW, or any other game with a gray market. The market, as a whole, doesn’t play to earn. Exchanges are a by product of good initial product design with inherent appeal. Something NTF focused games miss out on by being presented as play to earn. Then there’s image. Diablo Immortal, horse armor, Fortnite skins. Monetization is just a bad look to consumers, and doesn’t have broad appeal and NFTs, play-to-earn, pay-to-win are all poison fruit. Income generation is antithetical to the draw of entertainment products. Fortnite skins are super popular though! Among causal players. Casual players are not the ones creating or engaging with grey markets. And hardcore players, those that are, hate corporate monetization. The Venn diagram of the consumer base doesn’t have a section of “wants micro-transactions” and “engages in player to player sales”. And that last bit ties the two together. No matter how good monetizing games are (people loved steam trading cards!) the market is overtly hostile to monetization in the hardcore space, and those that engage with it in the casual space aren’t motivated by income or player trading enough to fuel an economy. The target consumer doesn’t exist and the well is so poisoned (for the time being) that implementing NFT protocols into existing player driven economies would be unsustainably damaging.
>It's just not though. Most people in tech do not have a good opinion of Crypto or NFTs, and even the people who are extremely in favor of it are all talking about future potential, not current capabilities. Agree, but this doesn't dictate it's future >Okay, so... reward structures are part of basic game design. People simply don't play games that don't reward them in some way, whether it's through winning in a card or board game, or enemies dropping loot in an RPG or MMO. Why does winning in a board game count as a reward enough, when if it was an NFT online board game winning alone wouldn't be enough? >Games can have multiple types of rewards, and rewards are often used to steer player behavior. If a game stops issuing a reward after a certain amount of playing, it's incentivizing the player to stop playing until the reward comes back. Rewards CAN do those things, but so can fun and addictive gameplay. >I really recommend you watch Legal Eagle's video, but in brief they may not even provide anyone with that much. I'll add it to the list >Because if your new players are having to pay the equivalent of 50 cents to a dollar of real world cash to trade items then in most game types those players are simply going to go to a game with a better system. So I think me and you have a very big belief difference in transaction costs with this sort of thing. If I send an NFT from my address to your address, I can't believe someone is paying a 50 cent fee for something I'm not charged for and happens way outside of the developers area. I already know it's carbon neutral on layer 2, but I'm 99% sure there's zero to no cost to developers apart from minting, which is also cheap as hell and getting cheaper. >This is why these mechanics don't show up in most games, because you can't design something assuming you're going to have a million players all the time or your system is going to fail outside of those conditions. Of course not a million, but that's why games do things such as "only competitive on weekends" to encourage a lot of the playerbase to play at the same time. >If someone has a card that makes it 25% more likely that they're going to win then that's still unfair if I can't also get that same card. It's very hard to measure cards that linearly, you could have and $800 7 drop that you may not even live long enough to play because it's a late game creature. Also cards have counters to them, play a counter to that $800 card and it dies all the same >No... you don't feel bad for losing. Most players will look at that and go "why the heck am I being matched with this guy when I've got zero chance of beating him? This isn't fun, I'm going to go play Hearthstone instead." I don't think that interpretation is accurate. If you're not an experienced player, you won't run into those people, if you are, you will know exactly why you're running into those people, and that it is a good thing because you're going to get paid nice rewards for being in the most challenging tier, allowing you to improve your deck faster Also the matches are a lot more even and a lot more winnable then you're giving credit for. Hell if you want to you can design a deck for under $20 specifically to counter the meta $3000 plus decks use, and you'll best them nearly every time. Only thing is your deck will probably lose to people play average cards which will be most people >Mate, you can disagree and believe whatever you want. I am literally telling you what I have read in these publications. I have seen videos and read interviews already about the psychology behind games that milk their users. Our main disagreement about whales is I believe if they are treated too poorly for too long they will leave, you believe they will be loyal to a fault. I believe the line of where that is can be lowered if they are able to cash out everything and leave because it takes away the sunk cost fallacy, you disagree, correct? >GU has these because the official systems are basically unusable, but a normal and actually good game won't have the same need. One of the sites that has GU stuff is called tokentrove, they also do stuff for maybe 50 other games, (at least I think they're games haven't looked into them) So entire buisiness on their own will be dedicated to improving other games, making the idea of a developer designing the exact same thing themselves a bit needless > (which, at present, it does not) 10 second transaction not fast enough? I know you're saying security flaws, but I kinda feel that's a copout >These companies are marketing these NFT games with these slogans because they're marketing to the crypto crowd, who are the extreme minority that are likely to care about most of this stuff. I wasn't marketed what I'm telling you I experienced it. I wanted to google what decks were meta, it brought me to a site called gudecks, they showed me decks others were playing and their win rates, I click on a deck and it shows me what cards I already owned, I had just found this place. By the other cards was a buy button, even a "buy all" in the corner, click click, done. There wasn't a single thing marketed in the game that told me I could do that, I just found it, and it was one of the the easiest things I ever did in my life. >So, this statement is so hilariously wrong I literally can't even, and I'm not about to get into an in-depth discussion of how Eve's markets work or how buying and selling PLEX works. I'll take your word for it, I just know I've seen articles of players paying other players $30,000 in plex for rare ships won by another player. >That's what I'm trying to explain to you, that you can't just slap NFTs into any game and have it just magically work. Agree, that's why I'm expecting many many many attempts until someone gets it right, then it becomes meta. >With a public blockchain there is no way to hide who has what NFTs May not be a bad thing, at least now if someone is trying to do market manipulation you can see exactly how many of something they have in their inventory before buying a "scarce" item
Going to try and reset things to one thread. We're getting a little scattered and repeating ourselves here... > I'm saying it's inevitable because it's clearly better then existing technology. It's just not though. Most people in tech do not have a good opinion of Crypto or NFTs, and even the people who are extremely in favor of it are all talking about future potential, not current capabilities. > Ehhhh kind of. People playing a game because of the reward probably shouldn't be playing that game though Okay, so... reward structures are part of basic game design. People simply don't play games that don't reward them in some way, whether it's through winning in a card or board game, or enemies dropping loot in an RPG or MMO. Games can have multiple types of rewards, and rewards are often used to steer player behavior. If a game stops issuing a reward after a certain amount of playing, it's incentivizing the player to stop playing until the reward comes back. > The point of NFTs is having ownership of a right to use an asset, but there is no ownership of the asset. I really recommend you watch Legal Eagle's video, but in brief they may not even provide anyone with that much. > Also how am I able to send cards with zero fee, and sell cards with fees of a fraction of a penny? Those sales have nothing to do with the developers, they shouldn't be paying any of that Because if your new players are having to pay the equivalent of 50 cents to a dollar of real world cash to trade items then in most game types those players are simply going to go to a game with a better system. The reason I assumed the devs would pay transaction fees is because if you want to have any sort of functioning in-game economy in something like an MMO then the devs would have to eat that cost to enable players to trade basically at all. If the players have to eat those costs then that's another thing the developers have to try and design around, and the more constraints like this you have the more limited the types of games you can make are, and the more likely the game is going to end up being just bad. > The nice thing about things being online isplayer bases won't be sectioned off to play in smaller groups, so it will he easier to keep ratios in check This already happens with things like ELO combined with time zones and other factors. This is why these mechanics don't show up in most games, because you can't design something assuming you're going to have a million players all the time or your system is going to fail outside of those conditions. > Yes, if a card is clearly the most antifun card in the game with no warning to see coming and no way to stop it, that would obviously be hated. Even the $800 late game creatures in GU cont even close to guarentee a win. Even mythic cards don't guarantee a win Sure, but that's just an exaggerated example. If someone has a card that makes it 25% more likely that they're going to win then that's still unfair if I can't also get that same card. > You don't feel bad for losing, because you're supposed to lose No... *you* don't feel bad for losing. Most players will look at that and go "why the heck am I being matched with this guy when I've got zero chance of beating him? This isn't fun, I'm going to go play Hearthstone instead." This is why most Korean and Chinese MMOs see very limited success in the western market, no matter how good their core mechanics are, because they implement systems like this and it massively turns off most players outside of those regions. > I believe the research and people in that industry, I don't believe your interpretation of the people or research in that industry Mate, you can disagree and believe whatever you want. I am literally telling you what I have read in these publications. I also studied Game Design in college. You can go look this stuff up yourself if you don't believe me. Search "video game whale article" on Google, or check out JoshStrifeHayes on Youtube, he's got a short-ish video on Whales for a quick overview. > feature demand Just because there is *some* demand does not mean that there is going to be enough to make it worthwhile for the devs to implement and maintain these systems. GU has these because the official systems are basically unusable, but a normal and actually *good* game won't have the same need. For example in WoW there are third party sites that show what's on the auction house and track prices. The vast majority of players don't use them because they have no need to do so. Plus, even if we magically assume that the NFT based solution provides a slightly better or faster experience (which, at present, it does not) the increased costs in time and literal money of implementing it compared to an API based solution don't make up for the marginal improvements that 99% of players don't actually care about. > I don't believe this. Otherwise I wouldn't see these freedoms excessively expressed in NFTs and never expressed anywhere else. NFTs help provide those freedoms I hate to tell you this mate, but this is 100% pure marketing. If you want to be uncharitable you could call it being lied to, though only really by omission. These companies are marketing these NFT games with these slogans because they're marketing to the crypto crowd, who are the extreme minority that are likely to care about most of this stuff. That's how marketing works, you play up your strengths, no matter how weak they actually are and no matter if something else could do it as well or better. WoW has had third party API support for over a decade, but they don't market it because they have so many better things to market their game with, and to players of the game this stuff just sort of exists. The technically minded players know how it works and more of what is possible, and occasionally you see people ask for stuff like an out of game auction house (only to be told why it's a bad idea by everyone else...) but mostly it just doesn't come up. It's the same way Eve doesn't actually market stuff like the third party API, because that stuff is for tools developers and the players who are already super involved in the game. Same for WoW and its third party plugins and overlays. They don't market that stuff, it just exists. > Aka providing liquidity to a free market, is that supposed to be bad? The problem with the bots is that they provide an unfair advantage compared to having to manually click "buy" in the game. Playing the market in a game is fine. Writing a script to do it while you sleep is unfair to most players. > They do need a tax form on file with them, but that doesn't stop preteens from making money Yeah, it really actually does, lol. You can't cash out if you're under 13, and if you are under 13 you'd have to lie on your tax form. Also, while it may be *possible* for a 14 year old to make money it's not super likely because of the thresholds and the mechanics of actually making Robux. > Read the link you sent, it says it may impact their parents tax returns 😂😂 Either way, tax alone won't shut down that buisiness model I never said it would shut it down, I said it was one reason that companies didn't do this sort of thing. It's not a hard blocker, just one more complication and impediment to it. Again, these sorts of games have existed for over 20 years at this point, but they've never gone mainstream because their mechanics don't appeal to most people. > If I straight up deposited a million dollars into EVE I could spend it all and still need more So, this statement is so hilariously wrong I literally can't even, and I'm not about to get into an in-depth discussion of how Eve's markets work or how buying and selling PLEX works. Sufficed to say I've played on and off for 13 years now, and this is not how it works. At all. This is why there is *still* actually debate within the community on whether or not Eve is even really "Pay to Win". Most players are far more concerned about the impact of bots than real money. > So my mindset going into those videos will be their balance sucked and made it not fun I mean, yeah, but that balance is a consequence of the mechanics and monetization. That's what I'm trying to explain to you, that you can't just slap NFTs into any game and have it just magically work. The NFT element affects the game mechanics, and it does so in ways that are inherently negative to what the majority of players consider a "good game experience". > That is a con, but it can also work the other way. If something can be abused and there is mechanism in place to outright prevent that abuse then abuse will occur. With an API then access to what items someone has can be restricted through basic security 101 level measures, and the player can limit what information they share with what sites. With a public blockchain there is no way to hide who has what NFTs, the only challenge is associating a name with an item, and for rare items that becomes possible as soon as someone uses the thing publicly.
> True, that's why I think the transformation may take up to 10 years, this problem is solved with time This isn't a case of time, it's a case of needing to either have an established franchise and a lot of money or have a good game and have it become successful despite the negative stigma of crypto and NFTs in the gaming space, not to mention all of the design challenges this sort of system introduces. > For all the integration that people use them for. You want to make a site to gamble with them, go for it. The best part is as people get creative 3rd parties can build off other 3rd parties all without needing developer approval. So, gambling would actually be a potential liability for the developer, since they created the assets. They could probably get around that, but it's still a problem. Also, as previously noted, a half decent API system does everything NFTs do. It's also going to be cheaper and easier to develop and more secure for the average player, since they don't need to personally secure their crypto wallet, the developer just needs to secure their servers, and they have a lot more resources to do so. > The cost is so microscopic that even the tiniest fart of royalties will blow the entire problem away. [This is not accurate](https://news.bitcoin.com/average-ethereum-gas-fee-jumps-20-per-transfer-l2-fees-follow-rise/#:~:text=Zksync%20offers%20common%20ethereum%20(ETH,will%20cost%20%240.52%20per%20swap.). > People liked it when osrs released bonds redeemable for membership, and can also be bought from other players with in game currency, people liked that. Yup, and Eve has had PLEX in one form or another for almost its entire lifetime. That's still not equivalent to NFT trading. For one those items aren't redeemable for out of game currency, for another they're *one* item type that basically just represents game time. Systems like this allow dedicated players to play for free and also cut off RMT by creating a price ceiling, which reduces their potential profitability. In short these systems are popular and successful in *some* games because they solve a specific problem, they don't extend to all game systems or the NFT space generally. Players generally react extremely negatively to directly paying for progression outside of the Korean and Chinese markets where it's more culturally accepted. > The point I was making was their move of creating mythic cards was accepted and liked, this first started like a year ago, and that decision has nothing to do with the current bugs in the game. Also the gusubreddit is for complaining only, there are other gu fan subreddits where you won't find complainers. I'd argue that the fact that that exists isn't a good sign. I've played a LOT of online games, and ones where the main subreddit is primarily full of complaints are not healthy games with robust playerbases, they're games in slow decline. > First, no one says your odds of winning are based on money spent. Regardless of it was or wasn't I would prefer that system You're in the minority then, there's a reason that whale-centric games tend to be more niche or polarizing. There are a few that have broken out into the mainstream, but not many, and those few that have tend to have fairly softer monetization for the average player and either no PvP or limited PvP. Also this style of monetization, targeting whales, is almost by definition pay to win. The whole psychology of whale players is based around paying for some kind of advantage in a game that they like, you don't generally see whales in games that only have cosmetics for sale because you can only have a limited number of cosmetics equipped at once and once someone finds ones they like their spending slows down. > For other games I'd say that would be true, however some thing you never expect to reasonably aquire, so that thought wouldn't even cross your mind. I've never once felt bad for not having a 300k card, and I'm happy it is in the game. This is more of a "you" thing than a "the average player" thing. This is why the vast majority of games don't implement things like this, because they feel unfair and turn off a large majority of players. > Rare drops can be acquired without spending money, so this isn't exactly the same pay to win model. If you can convince one of those other 5 guys to sell you their weapon you can buy it, but it will be up to them if they sell it to you. If sales are possible then they will always exist, and P2W will thus exist. This is just a hard fact, the idea that the option exists but people won't use it is pure fantasy, and the average player is smart enough to understand this and see that the whole system means that players with the most IRL money have a huge advantage. > Were other players ever effected by this necklace? Doesn't matter, the fact is that it happened and people reacted. You can see the same thing in WoW and a hundred other games. Every time the idea of removing stuff like "Account Bound" gear comes up it gets shouted down, HARD, because the vast majority of western players do not like these systems, so any game that incorporates them is limiting its success from the start. > In my thousands of games of GU I've played against that 300k card once This says more about GU's playerbase activity than anything. Eve Online for a long time had 4 Titan class ships in the entire game, but they utterly dominated Null Sec PvP for years. Once one of these items makes its way into the hands of a motivated player it will continually show up in the subset of the game that player is involved in, and thus have an outsized impact on gameplay in that area. GU's mechanics somewhat mitigate this, but one card existing among thousands of players is also a pretty extreme design decision and only works for something like a card game where assets are cheap to produce. > Small if to me, the costs are hardly additional, with a huge upside with revenue stream varieties means costs can be much more invisible to the point where it almost feels like a free game. It's really not a small "if". Consider that in most games the vast majority of transactions are for cheap items, meaning the potential royalties from those transactions are tiny and likely below the cost of the transaction in most cases. So you're losing money on things like new players trading cheap swords and crafting materials. Also because any F2P game has a lot of player churn as people try out the game the majority of players at any given time are going to be low level. This means you either end up restricting trading in some substantial way, or you need to increase monetization compared to a game that doesn't have NFTs. > A transaction goes like this: "Click card, click buy, metamask pops up and says "confirm transaction" I click confirm, transaction done, card in game." The website doesn't control metamask and nothing will change unless I confirm it through metamask. Yeah that's laughably bad security... I don't even do computer security professionally and I'm pretty sure I can think of a half dozen ways to drain stuff out of someone's wallet with a malicious website, not to mention the potential for accidental transactions. There's a reason that other, better, games have password re-entry, credit card PINs, and all that other verification, and it's because it protects against some of the easiest forms of fraud and malicious activity. > No one uses the regular storefront because it's trash, NFTs let the 3rd party take over the job, and do it how they want to. Again, this could be done with an API cheaper and easier than integrating NFTs into a game.
I'm not sure about the market share but there are still a shit ton of people who prefer to *technically own* the media and do something on it on their own - from just simply archiving, usage in big data, and sometimes make their own media servers (PLEX, KODI, ETC). I doubt P2P will ever be out of the picture even with all the regulations and police intervention throughout the years. r/DataHoarder
Sundae Swap, PLEX, & LTO
Nah I dont use streaming platforms, I use PLEX and download torrents and upload them to that.
EVE Online. It’s got a player base that would jump at the chance and is savvy enough to benefit from it. It already allows players to trade fiat for PLEX.
Hasn’t stopped other people from doing just this. Making videos and sharing names does not mean it isn’t. I know sarcasm is hard to notice online, but come on dude! USI Tech, PLEX Coin. I know people downvoting me all probably invested. Don’t hate me, I’m not the one scamming you. Truth hurts