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+--- Thread: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT (/showthread.php?tid=63787)
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Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - maplefreak26 - 2013-04-15
http://maplestory.nexon.net/support/game-download or http://maplestory.nexon.com/MapleStory/Page/Gnx.aspx?URL=Resource/Download
Surprisingly, the game runs on DirectX 9.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - Seanny - 2013-04-15
Fiel Wrote:This is ridiculous. Even casinos don't have to show the odds of winning something. They only show you what they pay. Nexon is doing exactly that.
Unless, of course, you're comparing gachapon to the lottery or keno. But then the correlation doesn't work. Not everyone is a winner with lottery/keno, but everyone "wins" with gachapon.
You're fair in pointing out casinos don't have to do such things... on the other hand though; Casinos aren't actually legally accessible to kids. This is the main reason why I'd be comfortable with some sort of extra strictness by comparison due to the gamble-like nature.
Edit: Also, its not as rediculous as what the article itself proposed they'd motion to do, which is remove the game element altogether.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - Polantaris - 2013-04-15
Fiel Wrote:Software has bugs? A piece of software of this magnitude has bugs and crashes? Martha, quick, get the car, we need to get to the police station!Bugs and crashes that go unhandled, uncared about, for months, even hitting years. When you try to mention them to the developers, your tickets/posts just get ignored. That's horrible, and a clear reason for people to not want to play. There are bugs that have existed since the content that has them was added, and was never even acknowledged after tons of reports and complaints from players.
Sarcasm aside, Vista was notorious for breaking compatibility, so obviously Nexon didn't want to upgrade to that. And then you have a huge upgrade to Windows 7. Nexon runs EVERYTHING on their stack on Windows. Can you imagine the huge backend and frontend upgrade costs that would be? Yeah, I wouldn't switch if I didn't have to either.
Then there's things that aren't bugs, but just massive flaws in the gameplay. For example, we have the Root Abyss bosses which are decent concepts and attempts to make the gameplay more modernized and less "hold down a key," yet there's all kinds of issues with them. The biggest, for me, is where you have to pay attention to everything Von Bon does, yet he's layed incorrectly and falls behind every single other animation in the entire game. How can you possibly watch him when there's two clock animations infront of him, completely blocking any view you have of him? How are you supposed to deal damage if you can't watch him because your attack animations cover him up? It's such a silly thing, and if the game has a layering system it's pretty easy to fix (make his layer top priority on drawing so he always appears in the front). Even outside of that, his animations break all the time and death balls come from no where, you can get hit from his entire map attack that can be dodged by jumping, but you don't know its coming because he never actually began the animation for it. All kinds of stupid, silly issues that shouldn't even exist, but now that they do they could be fixed and aren't. Now granted, RA is new so there's potential for it to be fixed, but this is just the most recent example in problems that they introduce and potentially never do anything about.
It's not a problem when bugs exist. Every program has bugs(serious or otherwise), I'm not an idiot, I know this. It's a problem when they sit around for months upon months without even the slightest attempt to fix them, or not even an acknowledgement that the problem exists and they are trying to do something about them.
Fiel Wrote:I'd agree with you if they were still on 800 x 600. But take into consideration that back then all maps were made for 8x6, and now they're moving into widescreen. I think they're trying to update the game for more recent technology. And I think the game runs on DirectX 8. But what would they need anything better than DX8 for, really?I won't pretend to be the most knowledgeable about DX, to be honest, but I have to imagine that it has multiple new features and what not to make things easier, especially on the end PC. I don't see any reason why MapleStory should be taking 2+ GB of system memory when it used to take a fifth of that. Yes, I get that features get added and things change, but to that extent with no major revamp to the engine and design? That seems off to me.
Fiel Wrote:An MMO is a time sink. It's no surprise that people would have to spend thousands of hours on it. Dollars? Maybe. If you want to. You don't have to spend money, but you have to spend time. Your argument could be used against any F2P MMO, really.MMOs are a time sink. That's fine. That's the point of an MMO really, to be a time sink. To be able to completely alleviate that by spending money defeats the purpose of an MMO, and overall makes people feel cheated. The worst part of it in Maple's case is that only a few people (in comparison to the amount of players) can possibly spend the time necessary to keep up with the ever increasing power gap. The rest have to spend so much money that they could buy and move into a house if they saved it all. I've lurked random potential threads(here and otherwise) and have seen people mention how much they've spent on the game (in Cube or Dollar value) and I've seen it as an absolutely, absurdly, stupidly high amount more than just a few times. To even consider the fact that anyone willingly pays the amounts mentioned gives me a headache.
Whatever, I'm done here. I've said what I want to say. I'm not going to get into another pointless argument, I see a ton of them on these forums (whether I'm involved or not) and I'm just plain sick of them. It's not like anything I say will ever change what anyone thinks, or how Nexon will act, anyway, so I don't know why I bother anymore.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - MrTehPocky - 2013-04-15
"The group explained: "In particular, the OFT is looking into whether these games include 'direct exhortations' to children - a strong encouragement to make a purchase, or to do something that will necessitate making a purchase, or to persuade their parents or other adults to make a purchase for them."
Well, Nexon's screwed.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - icephoenix21 - 2013-04-15
Polantaris Wrote:Money should not equal power. Ever.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, that will never be the case, whether it be in regards to the gaming world, or the real world.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - Malthe - 2013-04-15
icephoenix21 Wrote:While I wholeheartedly agree with you, that will never be the case, whether it be in regards to the gaming world, or the real world.
Maybe not for maple, but plenty of games handles being F2P without having the paid content affect gameplay.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - icephoenix21 - 2013-04-15
Malthe Wrote:Maybe not for maple, but plenty of games handles being F2P without having the paid content affect gameplay.
I suppose I can't speak for all games, but there are plenty of MMOs in which you can buy gears and such with $. Whether it's legal or not is a different subject altogether :I I would count that as playing into money is power.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - Satellite - 2013-04-20
It's not the fault of who asks but who pays. It's the responsibility of parents to make sure their kid doesn't spend 200 bucks a month on virtual stats. I haven't spent 1$ on MS myself and have managed somehow for over 6 years. I have 90k-100k in range with buffs so I can definitely solo HT and could solo many others IF Aran wouldn't have such a poor survivability at bosses.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - Flonne - 2013-04-20
Fiel Wrote:Software has bugs? A piece of software of this magnitude has bugs and crashes? Martha, quick, get the car, we need to get to the police station!
Since you mentioned LT, I'd like to bring up the fact that, in the 3 years I played it, there was only one single person found botting/hacking across all versions, and he was caught and removed and the exploit patched within 2 hours. jLT and kLT were very popular, so it's not a "low population" issue; our version was the only version with a bit of terrible coding, because MMO companies are notoriously lax about leaving network infrastructure the same for us as it was for much smaller countries. Even if since I left the game it has devolved into a hacker cesspool, that's still 3 years without any botters on a moderately popular game, and that's insane.
Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT - Sardines - 2013-04-28
CPUTR 2008
CPUTR 2008 Wrote:28. Including in an advertisement a direct exhortation to children to buy advertised products or persuade their parents or other adults to buy advertised products for them.
This is a reach.
MrTehPocky Wrote:"The group explained: "In particular, the OFT is looking into whether these games include 'direct exhortations' to children - a strong encouragement to make a purchase, or to do something that will necessitate making a purchase, or to persuade their parents or other adults to make a purchase for them." Well, Nexon's screwed.
How so? I haven't seen a Nexon ad that appeals specifically to children to buy NX items. I have seen Nexon advertisements focus on students in school. However the company is not blatant as to which age demographic they are appealing to with such advertisements. If an advertisement could be seen as applying to a college demographic, then that denies that the advertisement was a 'direct exhortation' to children.
Wikipedia Wrote:The OFT has been criticized for being ineffective and for many of its investigations leading to no action, in contrast to the more vigorous approach of US (United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division) and European Union (DG COMP of the European Commission)[5] regulators.
They have to be ineffective if they are pursuing MMOs instead of 'rogue trades, scams, and cartels.'