An MMO is a massive multiplayer online. Simple, right? But I think Animal Crossing is sort of an MMO.
While at it's core, New Leaf is a single player experience that is simple and calm. But Animal Crossing has a collective, hoarding nature. Nintendo even acknowledged this with the secret store room for your house.
This nature, coupled with the easy access forums like The Bell Tree provide, trading is streamlined. And Animal Crossing even comes equipped with an in-game currency, the Bell.
This currency creates an economy, but unlike 'real' MMO's, this economy is detached from the game itself. Something you could get for free in Japan via download could cost billions of bells in NA and Europe.
This has created, from my observations, inflation in the economy. This is what I think ties New Leaf to other MMO's.
The economy is unbalanced.
For example, little Mayor Jimmy could farm white roses in his daily routine, or even treat white roses like weeds due to how common they are in his town. To him, white roses are worthless. But, Mayor Susan for instance, may be working on a big landscaping project with lots of patterns, and she really needs white roses, but they don't grow as frequently in her town due to potatoes.
Jimmy can then sell his roses to Susan for as much as he pleases in in-game bells. So Susan is paying 100 million bells for what someone's trash.
You can even see the inflation of the bell looking back at the oldest posts on Re-Tail. Back then, a silver fishing rod costs what cataloguing costs now. Practically nothing.
And this is only influenced by the amiibo. If New Leaf was a real MMO, amiibo would kill it. amiibo generate Bells. And that ruins the economy.
But we have the TBT, a different form of currency to elongate around the problem created by New Leaf.
People are greedy. They always will be. They'll charge as much as people will pay so the buyers are to blame also. I agree about it being like an mmo in that aspect. It's honestly kinda sad to see what people are charging for stuff.
Hmm...one thing is that making money in NL is much easier/faster than in previous versions. Unless they're hybrids, exotic fruit and flowers can be brought back from the private island we all have in our games (never heard of anyone paying for white roses, but I could be wrong). Maybe if someone needed a whole bunch at once, and they don't want to keep paying 1000 bells to go to the island?
But, on the subject of amiibo cards/figures...it's definitely easier to get the villagers (and exclusive items) that people may want, if one's willing to spend real world money that is. I know I certainly have!
But the region-locked items are definitely a way to make Bells from people who want a particular item, but live outside the area it's available in. Same with items given away at Nintendo Zones, although that's me. I'd prefer buying an item off someone as opposed to taking my device out of the house.
And yes, I can see how the game can fall into the MMO category, especially when playing online with others!
to me as long as the transactions are all virtual and no real money is involved it's not a problem at all ^^''
ok I know I sound simple minded but... I prefer paying 3 million igb or 100 tbt rather than 10 dollars or something so I don't mind much what other players are thinking when selling
so at least in my experince its really different from mmo (that personally don't like at all)
My main issue is making so many items region exclusive. Japan isn't the only place that has 7-11, for example, yet the 7-11 items are for Japan only. Likewise, there are Korea only DLCs, etc. It makes such a limited quantity of these items that they become very expensive for anyone that wants them, and they often get passed person to person. That or people dupe them (and then still sell them for tons).
There is a lot of greed (look at all the people demanding TBT and bells just to visit their RVs, when letting someone visit their town is no cost to them). But there are also a lot of generous people too, I've been lucky to have people give me very fair prices for things I've needed.
But now, if you think about it, there are actually two in-game currencies now (the bell and the meow coupons), and then TBT if you use these forums.
The game has become rather MMO-like because you pretty much have to trade with other players to obtain items you want (or wait years to accumulate them, and by then you might not want it anymore) or just never get them, like country-locked DLC. Sure, you don't have to play with a single other soul, but expect to take forever to achieve any goals. (Also you can say goodbye to the train station pwp because that's solely reliant on people visiting - unless, of course, you have more than 1 DS and more than 1 copy of the game)
Pretty interesting take. I think it has a fluctuating economic market like any multiplayer online game. But I wouldn't describe it a MMO because there's not enough incentive to play online with others except when it's time to trade. I always relate MMOs with guilds and playing in a party...along with the hoarding and collecting.
There's Club Tortimer and such, but you really don't need to go online to play. And even then the rewards aren't intensely sought after.
But I think the ingame bell market was such a mess from the massive amount of duping crowns/thrones. That the introduction of amiibo wouldn't negatively affect the market.
I don't disagree with you, and this sort of mentality really bugs me. I understand people wanting to make SOMETHING for their "trouble", but the massive inflation and greed is insane.
If you want to know why items cost so much, go to the Re-Tail forum here and count the number of buying / wishlist threads on the first few pages and then count the number of selling / shop threads. A lot of people want stuff, but most people don't have much to give back in return except for bells, which are not worth much due to the island, turnips, and hacking / duping. The demand heavily outweighs the supply and that's why prices are so high. Part of the fun of the game is earning your own items instead of buying everything you want. If there is a rare item that you want, but can't get, then you should be able to find another rare item to trade for that item.
There is always going to be hyperinflation in this game, I don't think it's very realistic to expect a stable economy to ever happen (unless you're in a controlled community) when it's just so easy to hack.
I agree with that one. I end up hoarding more then I need. And then end up selling half of it anyways. I always have the "hoarding" mentality in games. When I offer something up for trade I try to make it the fairest. Between what's it worth and the little bit of work that goes into giving the item to the person
The economy is ACNL is pretty different from an MMO's because players aren't connected in the same way. If you use a community shop/auction area on an MOO, items are worth what all the players decide it's worth.
In ACNL you're not linked to all the players in the same way. You choose which communities you play in, like deciding to trade/shop only with other people on TBT or your best friends or whatever. And what villagers, items, etc are worth really depends on that community and how much people have and how much they're likely to spend.
I agree with you on some points, but ACNL's economy is vastly different from that of an MMO. ACNL is a simulation game with online capabilities, but online play is not a requirement when playing. It's economy is inflated not because of an update, but because of cheating methods that would get you banned on an MMO (if those methods are even available in the first place)
Susan might be willing to pay 100m for white roses because to her 100m isn't a lot of bells at all. She got 999 bells with the click of a button, which took her just a few seconds. Or maybe she didn't cheat for it, but acquired crazy amounts of bells by selling items and villagers to players that do cheat (which would explain why she needs to buy roses and doesn't just cheat for them.)
To Jimmy 100m is a lot of bells because he doesn't cheat for bells and this is his first big trade. In his eyes he is exchanging his trash for treasure so the price of the item seems inflated. But to Susan the trade seems 100% fair because 100m is nothing to her. She'll make it back in no time by selling off a few junk items. And with time Jimmy will come to see bells the same way.
In an MMO this doesn't really work out. There is no magic button that will automatically help you hit the ingame currency cap. These sorts of things are usually restricted to single player games. A player could bot for ingame currency, but this will take time and it will also be risky. They could also buy currency from somebody that bots, but again this is incredibly risky as games often have a way of catching gold buyers (specially if you buy a large amount of gold) not to mention that this would cost a lot of their money and most players won't be able to afford such luxury.
In ACNL You could cheat and nobody would be able to prove it because it's a single player game. You could say "I spend all my time farming beetles in the island!" or "I see a lot of villagers offsite!" and no one will be able to prove that you're lying. You could even show off an unreleased item and claim innocence by telling that everyone that a Japanese player gave it to you as a gift (which a lot of players on the forums did with the unreleased white christmas tree)
In an MMO there would be witnesses so it's easier to control the actions of players. If You're botting someplace a person could report you and get you banned. Even in games like Vindictus which are entirely instance based it's incredibly easy to pinpoint these players. In a pay to play MMO buying gold or botting is dangerous as you'd lose everything you've invested into your account. In a free to play MMO there is less risk involved, but repeated botting could IP ban you forever.
In ACNL there is no punishment. Even in forums like this one that are against cheating, there is really not much you can do because you can't prove that someone is cheating in the first place. And even if you ban them here they could still trade on other websites like tumblr, reddit, gamefaqs, etc. and who knows... their items might even make it back into this forum through another user.
Which brings us to another point... in an MMO like FFXIV there are different online communities. And in game the communities are divided by servers. The Japanese players are different from the American players. And even in the American servers things are different: they RP in places like Balmung, but on Excalibur you might be made fun of for Role-Playing. But overall the economies are similar everywhere because you have to go through the same process to get the items.
With ACNL every community has a COMPLETELY different economy:
Imagine this: 3 players from around the world create a small community for themselves. None of them cheat so they sell the items at low prices to each other. They're from different regions as well so they can get each other region exclusive items and might even trade these for free because that's just their thing. You won't see this sort of unspoiled purity in an MMO.
Obviously we do have websites with bigger fanbases. But even then things are completely different. On tumblr I get a lot of people willing to give me items that I want for free, on reddit as well. Here on TBT people expect me to pay a lot. This is because the different communities have different personalities. And because those websites do more to encourage giving gifts. Let me explain....
If somebody cheats for everything that they get on ACNL they have no need to trade for bells, items, or villagers. They can get everything they want with just the click of a button. So if a player like this goes on a website like tumblr, gamefaqs, or reddit to trade it would be a waste of their time to ask for anything in return because the things that the community can offer are things that can just cheat for without going through any sort of trouble. So the cheaters that trade there usually just do it out of kindness.
On TBT its different because the forum has its own currency, which you can't cheat for. Sometimes you can even use this currency to buy actual games. So a person that cheats and trades on this website would be getting something that they wouldn't be able to get anywhere else: TBT bells.
So whereas a player on tumblr can say "I'm going to give pocky the Hello Kitty set for free because maybe she'll follow me in return" a TBT user might be like "I'm going to ask pocky for 1000 TBT bells for this Hello Kitty set so that I can buy x game with it." (granted reddit users do it for upvotes and tumblr users for follows/likes/reblogs but it's easier to upvote/follow/reblog/like than it is to earn tbt bells)
I agree with some points and disagree on others, but let me just say that if villager trading was an economy amiibos definitely ruined it.
I remember being on here back in 2014 and top tier villagers sold for 10's of millions of bells and hundreds of tbt.
now the villager trading plaza is a little bit dead by comparison and I don't see popular villagers go for anywhere near as much. (which is good imo)
I just wanted to add to the discussion
