QUOTE (Falaris @ Sep 19 2016, 12:18 AM)
Oh boy, it's been so long since I've done this with you, Captain Strawman. Anyway,
Got to stop you right there.
Strawman arguments are a response that argues something that wasn't advanced in the first place.
The subject of both your arguments and my responses revolved around the fairness of Engrave.
Your original arguments were,
1. Merchants used to have no hunting power so making ridiculous amounts of money from Engrave is justified compensation for this injustice.
To which I pointed out that Merchants now have hunting power so the reverse should be true; Engrave is not justified due to Merchant hunting power as it is at present.
That's not a strawman argument. It's pointing out the very rational fact that if Engrave's economic power is justified based on Merchant PvE deficiencies then it is no longer justified when those deficiencies no longer exist.
2. You argued that Engrave is a reward for the amount of work needed to become a Merchant guide.
I responded by pointing out that becoming a Guide is not a uniform process; it's not like performing a quest in the game with strict requirements. It is an arbitrary decision made by a single person -- the Elder of a path -- based on whatever subjective criteria they have at the time.
Again, this is not a strawman argument; I only pointed out errors of logic in your underlying presumptions.
3. You argued that Engrave is justified because of the Merchant roleplay.
I pointed out that justifying a largely effortless ability to generate millions of gold while providing a service that is monopolized by a handful of people while 99.9% of the game playerbase cannot compete with this service because they have no way of accessing the ability to Engrave, is stretching the definitions of roleplaying.
Roleplaying is really just flavor text laid upon the game ruleset. "Roleplaying" is not a game mechanic, and roleplaying must always be subservient to the mechanics of the game in order for fairness to exist in the ruleset.
For example, just because I want my character to be an unkillable god doesn't mean other players should have to play against my god character. That's not how roleplaying works in a game. The mechanics must always be balanced. You cannot use the argument of "roleplaying" to justify the intentional implementation of unfairness in a ruleset.
So again, this is not a strawman argument either. Although I was brief in my original one-sentence reply to your argument it was still correct.
4. You argued that the Engrave spell is justified because "at many times in the spell's history" the Guides have had to donate a portion of the money earned to various charitable causes.
I mocked this, but I think my mocking is warranted. "At many times" is not all the time, and a portion is not all of the money. This means by your own admittance many of the times a Merchant Guide performs an Engrave they keep all of the money for themselves, and even on those occasions where they donate they still retain a portion for themselves.
I mocked this argument with the idea the Merchants only do this because of the vast wealth Engrave brings in necessities a need to get rid of excess gold that is accumulated through Engrave, and I don't think this argument is entirely mistaken as it tends to be people in the Merchant path that hit the gold cap.
5. Your last argument was that 500K isn't even that much by current inflation standards.
This may be a true statement but, as I pointed out, when you need to consider the balance of the game ruleset to create fairness, being able to generate millions of coins with a monopolized ability makes Merchant Guides largely immune to the effects of inflation in the market, is not fair.
When you have certain market players who possess immunity to the market inflation the market is difficult for new players to enter because they need resources they may not be able to obtain. In this case, gold coins necessary for purchasing one-time event items from other players that are nearly necessary for optimal play and without which a player of say Warrior and Rogue path may not be able to output enough damage for a Poet / Mage to tolerate hunting with them.
A hypothetical new player to NexusTK would need to invest many hundreds of hours into amber hunting and gemcutting skill leveling in order to acquire 500K which a Merchant Guide need only perform a spell to obtain while otherwise camping AFK for the rest of their play. While you may try to argue that to become a Merchant Guide requires hundreds of hours of work, the fact is Guideship can be and often has been awarded based on nepotism.
A new player might also be able to get 500K in donations from veteran players who take pity on them, but outside of the Merchant Elder, no one can grant an ability to acquire millions of coins for little to no time investment. Wealthy non-Merchant Guide players must still invest more time into wealth acquisition than a Merchant Guide with Engrave needs to.
So....once more, I didn't make a strawman argument either. As I always do I respond directly to the arguments you advance.