Why is artwork exempt from real world trading rules?

Personally I see artwork created as a part of the game in a rather abstract sense. Genuine time spent within a community, whether it's chatting to people on discord, planning events for guildmates, or even drawing art with the subject being MapleLegends is time spent playing the game if the sense of gametime becomes less restrictive to include everything that makes the game a hobby. If the scope of what you are doing keeps both the buyer and seller within the realm of the community of MapleLegends I don't think there's an issue with what is happening. If the energy put forth into doing some act is for the sake of MapleLegends as an idea, like creating character art, then I don't really feel like there is much of an issue.

There is some nuance to what can be considered MapleLegends though. Like is it wrong to sell artwork of something that isn't related to MapleLegends? Let's say you want a picture of Thanos with a nice juicy booty. The time and effort of the artist isn't working on something within the scope of MapleLegends, so would that be wrong? That's where I feel a line should be drawn and say that it's RWT. The artwork wouldn't be a part of the scope of the hobby and exists independent of it.

Then there's some ML financial advice I sought just today before making a purchase. I didn't really get an answer I liked regarding a large purchase until I put a 5mil offer up for advice and some price history so I knew whether or not buying an item was the right call. Could that be considered RWT? It's not something I really considered as I made the offer because to me, it fell within the realm of MapleLegends within my head. I was purchasing ML advice for mesos, but advice is a rather abstract concept and isn't really considered to be a part of the game, it's a human interaction.

If I wanted real world financial advice, like what investments are smart to make, things would be drastically different. It's when one part of the transaction falls outside of the scope of MapleLegends that I see issues arising. Personally I find that creating art referencing a game is in it's own way time spent playing the game. Time spent giving advice in the forums or on discord is also time spent within the framework of the hobby. I'm not a fan of monetizing such aspects but to each his own. If there's money to be made someone will figure it out.

The idea of selling a probability calculator does raise some interesting points though. It has some interesting differences, like how once the work is finished on it all that is left to do is sell it, which can be done any number of times. With artwork each piece is unique, and each one takes time to create. The scope of a calculator is also broader than ML, it is consistently useful for any old-school private server. I don't really have anything against selling the calculator, but it does look like an odd one out compared to many other services.

Personally I could see using the calculator to sell statistical scrolling advice. It's rather easy to look at a lot of numbers, but it takes a fair amount of skill and knowledge to interpret those numbers in a meaningful way to create solid advice. It would also feel a lot more organic compared to just selling the calculator outright.

 

This still doesn't fix the inherent problem of artists getting unfair advantage from making art. And then there is effort required to implement this system as well as balancing and maintaining it. If it doesn't even fix the core issue, I don't see this being implemented anytime soon.

 

How not? The reward doesnt effect the game in any way..
Where do you see the advantage?

 

Let me emphasize that any kind of reward is segregating between artists and other users. Hence why I said it doesn't fix the inherent problem.

Getting featured on website and some nx item sound cool, but that doesn't really award artists anything. Some people might still draw, but there will be significantly less reason to do so. This is basically same thing as asking artists to do work for free. No.

 

In my opinion, anything that's in-game shouldn't be traded for anything that's out-of-game. The Anti-RWT rule shouldn't have any exceptions.
Mesos and items are in-game, so it's fine to trade those. Real world currency and art are out-of-game, so it's fine to trade those. But it shouldn't be ok to trade art for mesos. Artists should accept payments through paypal or some other real world currency trading platform.

What's to stop a Legends player from outsourcing artwork creation to a third party that they'd pay in real world currency? This player would essentially be buying mesos with real world currency.

However, it's always easiest to make these decisions at the beginning of a server's life. If you remove the art exception, you will turn away artists from the server. But if you keep it, you will turn away players who care about the fairest possible game play. Maybe the art friendly culture is too important of a "server feature" to give up for fairness and "make things right" (by my logic) since this would make the server less attractive compared to other existing and upcoming servers?

 

Its definitely a hazy flawed rule. Its not clean, and it creates a lot of contradictions, if you look at it from a logical point of view.

But, practically speaking, if people selling artwork benefits the server overall, could you allow people selling something else that also benefited the server overall?

For example, say, video editing services for a maple legends based video. Like would it be acceptable to pay someone mesos to edit a boss run recording that you have and make it into a cool, entertaining you-tube video?

Also, we could turn this argument on its head if we decide that maplelegends artwork is in fact a part of maplelegends and say that paying ANYTHING BUT mesos for it would be real world trade.

Personally, I don't care whether this remains allowed or disallowed, but I definitely do see why some people have a problem with it.

 

In my opinion this reward is more atractive to artist. How many ppl take part in the art events you do?
But anyway, there might be other ideas to reward them for their work.

If staff dont think any other reward will get artists to work, or/and they prefer this pay to win method over not having art, than i dont see how we can change their minds..

 

The problem is besides buying art with mesos, there is absolutely nothing that we can offer in return. Your idea isn't feasible. For the sake of getting your art drawn by the wonderful artists we have here, we have to code something that is completely new and possibly flawed. Fame itself isn't rewarding enough; many people didn't care for fame. I do get that this is one of the idea you think might work but the truth is mesos are directly from buyers. It is straight forward, fuss free, and rewarding (to the artists).

Regarding whether it is a contribution to the community or not, like I mentioned previously we have someone very talented already contributing plenty in the aesthetic department to promote our server without asking anything in return. In all honesty, there isn't much to change or implement seeing that this has been around for so long. If you switch it up to whatever new system (fame, completion of quest etc), artists will simply lose interest and this art culture will definitely be less appealing.

If anybody think it's unfair to pay mesos in exchange for an art piece of their own ML character, by all means, do not buy. I've not heard a single person complaining and thrashing someone else's art thread saying his/her is ridiculously expensive. If you don't like the style and don't have the funds, then don't buy it, as simple as that. The art community and culture has been growing and it has been really pleasing to watch, we see more new artists coming out now and then. This is the only way we can encourage them to keep going, to produce something for the community to enjoy. And not coming up with something completely not rewarding at all and ruin the system that has been going on for a couple of years.

Unless artists themselves have something in mind to suggest, this rule will not be changed.

 

i thoght that maybe it will not attract new artist, but those who been here for a long time might want this. to show their work and contribution to the server on the home page forever. the hall of fame in maplelegends.
also i feel its more fair to donate to high level players because the mesos they get wont change to much(they are alredy able to get this amount of mesos in less time). the main problem i see is new players that might exploit it.

might also be good idea to put art show in main page regardless. maybe in the community tab or something..

how will this help the problem? other people will still buy and artist will still get unfair advantage. or you just say it in general cuz i didnt see anyone complain about the prices here.
also it will be interesting to know how many artist are on the server and how many took part in the artists events if you know.

 

Exactly like I said, there is simply no solution to this! This is a matter of rational vs emotion reasoning where 2 parties don't see eye to eye with the reasoning laid out here. While I see your concern, it still doesn't provide any immediate solution without ruining the dynamics we have now. From pov as a art buyer, I don't see a problem donating a small amount of mesos to reward them for their effort. And we have another group of people who find this idea extremely abusive and vile, and think it is unfair. So what can we do then? I feel that this entire thread has been going in circles and from the start I already get a feeling this will lead to another shitpost.

Let us all agree to disagree at this point, and since we still haven't gotten any valid solution to implement this, thread is now close.

PS: Since this thread and "issue" has been raised, moving forward we will monitor closely on the art community. As much as I hate to say this but if this thread somehow raised too many concerns and create too much negativity, we have no choice but to disallow art all together. Is this what you guys want? You decide. If you are still unhappy with such arrangement, feel free to approach any GMs privately regarding this matter.