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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.
How to Deal with the Epidemic that is Gold Farmers
I wasn't sure whether to put this here or the designs portion so..... if it's in the wrong place too bad.
Let me specify that when I refer to "Gold Farmers" I mean those groups or individuals who would sell in game gold for actual money.
There have been many examples in the past of Gold Farmers ruining an otherwise awesome game, especially one where there is no legal cash to IGC conversion. I may have come up with a way to dispose of them properly while still utilizing the games lore and mechanics, specifically the bounty system and loot loss of death.
Through a combination of player reports (to a support inbox, not an automated system) and GM active participation, I think the Gold Farmers would actually be pretty easy to identify. What I am suggesting is that there was a specialty "tag" of sorts created that the GM's could issue to these accounts. Similar to the corruption and bounty systems, this tag would cause the character to drop all gold and items upon death.
This would allow (and give incentive) to the players to police themselves. This would also keep all that gold from leaving the server economy (due to the typical GM ban).
While I am fully aware that this kind of system would be very touchy and would need to be executed properly and monitored excessively to keep it from being abused but I do feel that the implementation of a system of this kind would be a creative and much more effective way to deal with Gold Farmers.
Please, what do you think?
Let me specify that when I refer to "Gold Farmers" I mean those groups or individuals who would sell in game gold for actual money.
There have been many examples in the past of Gold Farmers ruining an otherwise awesome game, especially one where there is no legal cash to IGC conversion. I may have come up with a way to dispose of them properly while still utilizing the games lore and mechanics, specifically the bounty system and loot loss of death.
Through a combination of player reports (to a support inbox, not an automated system) and GM active participation, I think the Gold Farmers would actually be pretty easy to identify. What I am suggesting is that there was a specialty "tag" of sorts created that the GM's could issue to these accounts. Similar to the corruption and bounty systems, this tag would cause the character to drop all gold and items upon death.
This would allow (and give incentive) to the players to police themselves. This would also keep all that gold from leaving the server economy (due to the typical GM ban).
While I am fully aware that this kind of system would be very touchy and would need to be executed properly and monitored excessively to keep it from being abused but I do feel that the implementation of a system of this kind would be a creative and much more effective way to deal with Gold Farmers.
Please, what do you think?
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Let me specify that when I refer to "Gold Farmers" I mean those groups or individuals who would sell in game gold for actual money.
There have been many examples in the past of Gold Farmers ruining an otherwise awesome game, especially one where there is no legal cash to IGC conversion. I may have come up with a way to dispose of them properly while still utilizing the games lore and mechanics, specifically the bounty system and loot loss of death.
Through a combination of player reports (to a support inbox, not an automated system) and GM active participation, I think the Gold Farmers would actually be pretty easy to identify. What I am suggesting is that there was a specialty "tag" of sorts created that the GM's could issue to these accounts. Similar to the corruption and bounty systems, this tag would cause the character to drop all gold and items upon death.
This would allow (and give incentive) to the players to police themselves. This would also keep all that gold from leaving the server economy (due to the typical GM ban).
While I am fully aware that this kind of system would be very touchy and would need to be executed properly and monitored excessively to keep it from being abused, I do feel that the implementation of a system of this kind would be a creative and much more effective way to deal with Gold Farmers.
Please, what do you think?
You can ban accounts left right and center...they will simply pop up under a new account.
If they have to pay 15$ every time they create a new account, and they can only make 5$ before they are caught and banned, then they are 10$ out of pocket each time.
Its a business at the end of the day with profit and loss.
Make the losses greater then the profits and they collapse like any business.
It may even be wise to charge 15$ per alt too. For exactly the same reason.
Controversial, but how often are people going to create alts considering how long it takes to level them and make them effective ?
I would wager not very often. So it would hurt the gold sellers far more than the actual players IMO.
Especially as many players dont thing twice about dropping 15$ on a skin.
Shall I look for the stocks or will you point me in the right direction ?
Having them be able to run around with the money longer just has no benefit and them dropping it and creating an inflation is has no benefit either. That gold should mostly not have existed in the first place. Plain and simple remove it.
Also if it's verified all trades should be made invalid if people land in negative funds trough that well sucks to be them, or just ban them too, they are part of the problem after all
I remember reading years ago on eq2flames (a forum that is as it sounds) about someone that was considered a regular, top end player for years. Turns out, he had been making ridiculous coin in game and selling it to make a living, and was active on every server in the game. It wasn't what most people think of when they think of gold farming, he did it all via crafting.
Anyways, I did a bit of looking around, and it seems that very few actual gold sellers farm the coin themselves. Most of them buy coin from a few otherwise regular players, and simply on-sell it for a profit.
Based on this, the best way to hit a gold seller, is to strip their inventory. I mean, a gold seller isn't going to be upset if you ban the account he sold the coin on - he can get another for $15. However, if you banned the account he was holding $10,000 worth of stock, he would likely be somewhat upset.
Spam filters are a great way to make it seem to your players that you are doing something about gold sellers - but we all really know that if a player wants to buy gold, they don't need the spam to tell them where to get it.
The way to get at gold sellers for real is to attack their business and make it unprofitable. The problem is, players don't see this work going on, and developers are usually loathed to talk about it as they don't want their procedures to become general knowledge.
Gold spammers is a communal effort between players (not buying. repoting etc) and the Devs (taking active effort to find and ban) so that the community can create the proper air to gold sellers - "This is not your game, go elsewhere"
If I had to invest in my account for months to be able to transfer some gold to a guildie - so what. If a gold seller had to run that risk for months without earning any money and a constantly impoved chance to be found and account banned. I think this would deter them - not cost good players more money - and give the Dev's time to make lists to do weekly/monthly bans.
Just my 2 coppers worth
Chilly
Joint Strike Fighters
Most anti gold farmer actions will effect legit players ability to interact in the world. That and lack of endgame pve content is what killed BDO for me. I honestly think good detection, player reports and dev effort are the only real way to combat it. A lot of that means making sure they have a comprehensive way to track player activity in the game. I'm fairly confident giving the teams experience in the genre they're already working through ideas to limit the impact this has in their game.
Currency 1 is character bound. You can purchase npc stuff, it is used as tax for trades where items each have a trade cost, to beat inflation. Untradable.
Currency 2 is bought with real money. This is freely tradable between players. You get a rare item you don't need but someone else wants and is willing to pay cash because he/she has to work or school and can only play on weekends. Open wallet, buy Currency 2, pay player with it.
Currency 2 can be used in the RL money shop. Cosmetics and various other things that don't impact the game mechanics.
Also, it took me all of 1 search and click on first link to find 3rd party Warframe platinum vendors.
I agree with a lot of folks that it really depends on accounting and reporting. Allow players to report users for spam sales messages in chat or mail. Implement a spam filter to a channel that players can remove from their main chat window. Ban accounts proven to have participated in gold sales or purchases.
One benefit of Ashes: Players who witness the activity themselves can just outright kill the culprits. I’d accept some corruption if it meant I got to stab a gold seller in the face. We can report them to their neighbors or their mayor. If a whole node was engaged in the activity, your community could declare war against them.
2 factor authentication
Locking an account when it logs in from a different region until authorized via E-Mail.
Monitoring player mail for large amounts of gold sent
Banning all Chinese IPs
Chat and bot reporting or detection systems.
Gold sellers are serious problem also because they can have influence to in game economy and they can ruin players gaming experience that way. They can play with marketplace and with freeholds for example. In Albion Online gold sellers managed to over bid city plots from players and even from guilds, which led to mass quits by players/guilds whose game was basically ruined and real money also lost. I am sure they got money back, but good situation was never returned.
Also not to divert the topic but I was in one of those big Albion guilds and no we didn't get any money back.
Oh the real money was lost too, omg it was then badly handled by SBI. I thought devs at least tried to compansate that somehow. But anyway my point was, thats one of the worst scenarios what can happen if there is not good enough systems prevent gold selling and exploiting.
Like if an account is consistently trading expensive items/gold for far outside the normal bounds (a few standard deviations, or some such), they could be flagged for investigation, but this is something that you have to be really careful with, too many false positive bannings/suspensions can get a new game/company a really bad reputation.