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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Item discussion we need to have which worries me
Hi everyone, something has been on my mind and I wanted to have a discussion on this. Perhaps I am not seeing the whole picture but this seems like a possible Issue. We know that pretty much all items are BOE, meaning they can easily be traded from one player to another. AoC promises to be a non-pay-to-win game, however what stop the average Joe, who hardly has any time to play...from taking 100$ real life money and buying tons of currency from a farming website...then using that currency to buy the best tiered armor and weapons on the merchant shop?
Sure AoC won't have P2W items in their own store...but what about the issue of buying currency and just simply buying the items? A possible solution to this is make it a multi-layered system to be able to actually wear items.
One example is you need to be a citizen of a metropolis to wear the highest tiered armor...ith citizenship being something that needs to be worked on it prevents the average Joe of being able to simply buy armor.
Any other ideas?
Sure AoC won't have P2W items in their own store...but what about the issue of buying currency and just simply buying the items? A possible solution to this is make it a multi-layered system to be able to actually wear items.
One example is you need to be a citizen of a metropolis to wear the highest tiered armor...ith citizenship being something that needs to be worked on it prevents the average Joe of being able to simply buy armor.
Any other ideas?
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Comments
But Wraeven, how will they know who is buying? People will be sneaky about it!
Yes, yes they will! So let Interpid be sneaky too.
Every game is going to have gold sellers.. so let intrepid mix their own gold sellers in.
Nobody will know which gold seller is for real, and which one is a sting.
If interpid bans anyone who tries to buy gold from their fake seller, that could get the point across pretty quickly.
I understand your point but it's still different. A game is P2W due to how the devs made their game and its relation with the cash shop.
Gold sellers are people trying (and most of the time succeeding from what I've seen) to find some way to generate gold/currency at a fast pace so that they can be competitive between them. The way they do it isn't clear for me, but the use of bots might be one of them.
So, are you going to say that X game is P2W because some mf are trying to find some loopholes to farm gold? And then sell it to others? If yes, then there is that thing called mail block and exchange limits.
Mail blocking means that you can't send gold via mail. So your alts can fak off.
Exchange limit means that you're restricted to a set number of direct exchange per day/week = tons of fun too.
In short, talking about them isn't effective, finding some 'perfect' solution like 'make the game clean of bots' is very unlikely but possible. And even then, they will still find a way. And what are you going to do about it? Hire some guys to log in and stay at every hot spot and try to find some weirdos with a strange name and see if they do nothing but connecting/dcing after meeting up with someone? Gl.
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Second: I think you can't stop people from buying gear, or power. You can only make sure it's not as easily bought. In the end if you lock gear behind dungeons, or progression, you'll still have people buying boosts to get the gear.
They'll just have to have an active GM staff, to detect and ban boosts. They'll also need a way to detect large unreasonable gold trades to stop gold sellers. Then the ban policy must be harsh, so people think twice before throwing away their accounts.
To me , as long as you could get the same item without spending cash is not p2w. He used cash while you use time. You can't avoid that.
And also to think the other way round it will also be a benefit for hardcores, they can earn gold through ppl like this from the market. That makes your hard work pays off . Imagine the crafting you made , you can sell to ppl like this because they have loads of gold to spent. They are just using cash to reduce in game time while you are using time to for ingame money.
My only concern is if they can handle bots in game.
And that is why I love p2p games because it reduce bots/ cheaters .
Aside from that, most everything comes with a downside, how someone else got to his gear should be non of your concern tho. The gear already exists and how it changes hands is pretty much unimportant. An average Joe in the best armor will still be just an average Joe.
That's like telling me I can't equip a twink with the support of my raid to jump start or exchanging unneeded items in my guild for something I can use. Is it unfair now that I have built or joined an active and helpful community while someone else hasn't even tho I only play that character on the side and am basically an average Joe with it?
I still don't like the term ... " Tier Level Gear " ... its something i've been seeing quite a bit now. Why can't gear not be characterized by level ? Because then everyone is going to try to get that particular gear.
( then everyone might like identical to one another too ~.~ )
So why not have all gear have some " negative-effects "
- Example ...Chest-Piece Grants +342 STR & +439 DEF ... but what if it decreases Water Resistance by -274 ( Water-based Attacks deals more damage ).
(Naturally the same for other types depending on Gear-Type )Because usually - from what I've seen - gear is characterized by increasing a specific role ( i.e. Tank, DPS or Heals ) Which kinda makes the Gear Stale.
This way, the Gear won't have a Set-Tier. Instead, all gear could potentially be useful, but Dependent on the Artisan that Player has chosen. And if ALL Artisans ( Crafting ) , can affect ANY Gear ( including some other non-gear items/ Trinkets ) ...
then every gear you get can be used regardless of ... " Tier Level "
( its really hard to imagine the term ... " Tier Level " in this idea because it honestly doesn't fit - its more flexible )
EDIT: This could also put further Encouragement of testing other
Archetype-Blends ; incentivizing that choosing a " Pure-Archetype-Blend "
( via Tank/ Tank , Cleric/ Cleric, Mage/ Mage , etc ... )
isn't always the " best " ... but feel free to choose it nonetheless
( Both Archetype-Blends & Pure-Archetype Blends BOTH being viable)
They're still showing up for me
Please, stop with the mindless hate. You cannot buy top ilvl gear on the ah.
How to combat BOTs?
Simple, make gold income not obtainable by raw grinding in open world, for example by killing mobs or grinding mineral veins (things that BOTs can easily do).
Make gold obtainable through dungeon runs, through crafting, and make crafting mechanics function in such a way that BOTs cant automate it.
By significantly reducing / eliminating ability of BOTs to grind gold, you have already significantly reduced the amount of gold that is available on gold sellers market.
Real player farmers will still be able to grind, but (since they are flesh and blood) not nearly as much as BOTs could.
Then by further combating gold selling, and being active in banning the gold sellers, AND the gold purchasers the amount of pay to win can be reduced to minimum, and then even those small numbers of players that chose to engage it, will always have a great risk they will be found and lose all that money they threw, and their accounts.
There shouldnt be a extra limit to the limits we know already exist in games.
Yes there are people that gonna buy items or gold. But it wont be the most powerfull items. Cause if a noob that nobody knows offers a dude in the server that has the best sword a lot of gold. Everybody will ask how?
They should just make a system that checks above a cetrain gold amount in difference when a trade happens like bank systems do irl. Also keep a eye on repetitive payments. Lets say someone gets 10 times 1000 gold.
It will be alot of data but probbaly the best way to fight agianst them. Also IP gold sellers and thier account.
and those npcs had a limited supply and would only be interested in trading for certain items of certain quality.
unless this brand new world has a brand new currency that happens to be carried by every tom, dick and anglerfish , it makes much more sense for any currency to exist only because it also travelled through the portals with the pioneering people and/or npcs
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/12/technology/future/elon-musk-ai-dota-2/index.html
Intrepid have chosen the approach to use the same kind of advanced technologies to detect behavioral signatures of bots and gold farmers.
And ... gold from a goldseller doesn't mean that it's farmed with bots. That could be the real problem :I A player who focuses on economy will have millions of gold, which he can sell for money.
As a crafter you can have ambiguous feelings when you put up an item for a ridiculous amount and someone buys it, especially when it's shortly after gamelaunch and you know the possibility of one guy having that much money is very low... You get one hell of a boost over the other crafters, but at the same time you feel defiled. It's like robbing a bank, you know it's the right thing to do but you regret scaring the receptionist.