Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I agree that there should be no player facing blockchain in the game (in any game), but they could developed as a server-side tracking tool (which seems to be the original intent of the suggestion).
So, to players, this would appear as if we just earned and spent gold in game as we do in every other MMO, but the developers have a blockchain system tracking each coin.
The main reason I don't see this as worthwhile is because it isn't coins that need to be tracked, it is only transactions.
If a system the way the suggestion was stated were implemented, the game would be a literal hot potato to see who ended up having the compromised coin on hand when the developers got around to dealing with it. Rather than punishing the players responsible, you are punishing the poor crafter that just had his products listed on the market, and happened to have the compromised coin on hand at the wrong time.
Exactly, which is what something like Postgres can easily handle without all of the headaches from block chain. It has fantastic horizontal and vertical integration, has been around forever, and does precisely what's needed. Plus without all the crap concerning verifications. God, imagine verifying every transaction at speed of a Bitcoin transaction across every single world. I know for a fact that Postgres can do the same thing but 100 times faster and without the need for some sort of bespoke implementation.
Funny enough, I work on software that use Postgres. A couple of these systems also implement blockchain strategies to keep track of certain valuable data and to make sure it isn't tampered with.
Postgres is excellent for its purposes, but I fail to understand why - or even how - it can "replace" blockchain's decentralized ledger like you seem to believe. Blockchain obviously originated with Bitcoin's whitepaper, but its usages are not limited to it or even to currencies.
I'm also intrigued by your statement "Postgres better handles (coins and/or transactions) without all the crap concerning verifications". How can Postgres be solely responsible for verifying transactions and only accept them when the network validates it, in a decentralized manner?
In the case of an online game, every block (gold coin) would have a hash associated to it and whenever any transaction is made, at least X nodes would have to validate each transaction, therefore every transaction would be tracked. Maybe you meant these transactions (verifications) are too complex and expensive, i.e. slow, since that's Bitcoin's case? Thankfully Taproot will help in that front, but regardless I must point out that there's a variety of blockchain examples within and outside digital currencies which manages to make verifications cheaper and faster.
Going back on topic:
I just wanted to clarify blockchain is only a technology. Ashes might even already implement a private blockchain for certain digital assets and nobody will ever know about it because it's not something that needs to be advertised. It doesn't matter if Ashes uses an object oriented database, a relational database or both, what matters is that the job is well done, like everything else.
Hopefully Intrepid will be able to come up with systems that will accurately detect RMT and they probably won't need a blockchain specifically for that, some modest artificial intelligence should suffice.
My original idea was a private centralized Blockchain, which might not be the best solution either. Any database could do what is needed here. Postgres being one of them.
What if the guilty player had legitimate and illegitimate trade during his ''career''?
Wouldn't this severely punish innocent third-parties as well?
Yep, it's not even a half-solution, is it.
I didn't quit New World because it's a dogshit game, which it is, even if it had no bugs or cheats. I didn't quit because none of the abilities do what they say they do. I quit because of the cheating and because I know Amazon can't catch and ban them all, and even if they did, all the duped items and gold in the game will not be caught either once they pass to second and third parties.
You need absolute savage, no holds barred enforcement from second 1 of the game launch. And it's very possible to do that. Most companies just don't want to spend the time and resources doing it.
I have all the faith in the world Steven and his team will do what is right and needed to enforce a good gaming enviroment. Steven is a Gamer first, that's why he made this and THAT'S why AoC will be head and shoulders above the rest because of the pure passion that is going into it.
By the way welcome to all the new people coming in, haven't been on in awhile.
Perma-ban? Time limited ban on first offence? Perma-ban if caught again? Character reset? All characters of the account reset?
Let them go free as if demand wasn't linked at all with offer?
This isn't WoW where you buy gold for whatever reasons they buy it for. Most of the best items in that game are BoP anyway. There is no real competition in that game other than parading around in your boss armor and who can clear dungeons fastest. Pretty trivial stuff.
In Ashes, cities will struggle and fall based on the strength and wealth of their enemies. Hundreds if not thousands of manhours will be lost in a single siege. Buying gold will be direct p2w in a game that is supposed to have no p2w. Having RMT bought resources will make 1 group of players a lot more powerful and enduring than another group of players. It is straight cheating in it's purest form.
Buying gold will directly tip the scales of the competitive environment. Left unchecked even the slightest bit, it will be exposed on reddit and other forums. Players will blame their losses on it and quit over it.
Or are we concerned about their rights as a gamer/consumer?
I will bet that banning a couple of buyers from a guild will prevent the rest of the guild from buying, and demand will decrease thus demotivating sellers. If people are too scared to buy, the sellers fizzle out.
Ban 'em all. Slap 'em down. Have a clean game decent folks can enjoy.
U.S. East
While these are both things that are good to expel from a game, neither of them will deter gold sellers.
Gold sellers usually run a dozen or more accounts on a server they are active on. They have several accounts they use exclusively to trade gold to people that are buying it, several accounts to receive gold that regular players wish to sell, and 6 or so accounts generally for storing their inventory of gold.
This is often broken down so that one buyer, two or three storage and one seller are kept in isolation, and this setup is repeated at least one more time. This is due to the fact that if a developer realizes either the buyer or seller account, a simple track of trades between characters will reveal the whole setup, so they keep multiple setups segregated from each other so that should one be found and banned, the other (or others) can still operate.
The people exploiting bugs for profit are generally actual players, not gold sellers. These people should be banned as they are found, without a doubt but it will not have an impact on gold sellers.
Spam accounts are also not really a big deal to gold sellers. They are often purchased using credit card details from people that have bought gold, so while they do indeed need to be banned, it is not something that will impact gold sellers much at all either.
Here's my take on this.
If you are an MMO publisher, and you are banning people that are buying gold, you are essentially admitting that your game has a gold selling problem that is out of your hands.
The very presence of gold sellers will generate new buyers. That is simply the nature of things.
To me, the bulk of players that buy gold in a game do so because they see evidence of it all around them (some real evidence, some not so real). A player playing a game that has a lot of gold spam, as an example, is more likely to purchase gold, as it seems a bigger part of that game than it does a game where there is no spam.
Even though we all know it isn't a good thing to do, and is against the rules, I don't personally think a game developer should ban a player that buys gold (unless a repeat offender) in a game where that very same developer has done a poor job of removing gold sellers. That, to me, is the developer punishing the player for the developers failings leading to the player being tempted.
Rather, should the developer come across someone that has bought gold just once, they should introduce a temporary ban (two weeks, imo), confiscate all gold that was purchased (send the player in to negative gold if needed), and then apologize to said player for failing them in not removing gold sellers from the game (I don't actually expect this last bit).
There is a real world analogy to this, the war on drugs. Obviously I do not want to get in to a discussion on it, and there are some aspects that do not pass between the two (addiction, as one example), but the common thread between them is that targeting the end user is always going to be ineffective as the simple fact that the seller exists will mean a buyer will exist.
Here is my take on this:
Buying or selling ingame gold will result in account ban
Agree? Continue login
Disagree? No login
If a first offense perma ban was implemented, I think very loud and overt warning messages should be given to all players.
The war on drugs analogy has some parallels to it. But in that case we're talking about people, their lives, addiction, depression, mental issues, poverty, hopelessness, the desire to self harm, people who were molested, on and on and on. It's a very complicated issue. And yes it's kinda hard to put people in jail for things that our government openly allows into our country through our southern border.
In the case of gold selling/buying, we're talking about cheating. And that's about it.
Not like Behavior does for Dead by Daylight where they warn you about cheating then do absolutely nothing about it. xD
U.S. East
This is a developer admitting they either can't or won't do anything about gold sellers.
Why would anyone play such a game?
The developer just said "Buying or selling ingame gold will result in account ban"
No developer that is planning I dealing with gold sellers, let alone confident in their ability to do so, would put a step in the log in process like this.
It is the same thing as saying to your significant other "I have something to tell you, but first, you have to promise to not get mad"
Either what you are going to tell them won't make them made and so there is no need for this line, or it will make them mad regardless.
If developers are starting things out with your above line, they are doing so because they know buying gold in that game will be easy.
It's a unique take on it from you if that is not the conclusion you have drawn.
Even if this were to happen, as I said earlier, if there is active and obvious gold selling in a game, it becomes more accepted. If the developer allows gold selling to be rampant in their game and this tempts players in to Buying gold, that is equally on the hands of the three parties.
Yes, the player decided to buy, and that is on them. You won't see me argue against this, and this is why I think an account suspension is warranted. But if they only bought because it seems acceptable due to how rampant it is, that is 100% the developers fault, and they need to man up to that fact.
These scenarious are plaguing every game, dont be delusional. WoW, runescape, EsO, FF, New World, path of exiles, all these games were completly corrupted by gold farmers in 1-3 months. The economy is destroyed in all these games.
This quote does not depict my full conversation. It's taken out of context. Read everything, from the begining
Ban buyers and sellers by having active GMs. That is what the developer will do. It's their own game. No need to get in conversations that demand "admittance of problem", or apologies, or easing in cheaters to punishment or worry about their feelings.
You agreed to the terms and conditions. The game is safer from cheaters.
Dont come and complain if you got perma banned for buying gold.
The developers have the power to enforce bans in order to protect the game from CHEATERS and here we are listening to noannis paragraphs that would nerf the ban hammer.
The scenario that devs "dont do anything to adress the issue" or "the devs have to admit that they are powerless to adress the issue" is a scenario created by noanni turning a blind eye and going deaf when I say "active GMs, BAN buyers and sellers. Problem addressed."
No need to admit or alologize or enter any dialogue.
Noaani is arguing for leniency on first offenses. I get that. It makes sense, people deserve second chances in life.
But the issue we're talking about here is cheating. And it's cheating that perpetuates the cycle. The buyer buys the gold, keeping the seller in game and in business. And I just don't think that's the way. You have to obliterate these people and this culture. Warn them of the consequences first. I'm not a fan of SURPRISE YOURE BANNED type shit. It should be abundantly clear that cheating will be bannable on the first offense.
And buying gold IS cheating. It's akin to duping. Not the same severity due to its limitations, more so duping's lack of limitations. But people for whom money is not an object can essentially buy unlimited amounts of gold, which in effect is as if they duped.
Life isn't fair. It never has been and probably never will be. The beauty of games is that they CAN be fair, or mostly fair. People with money have enough advantages in real life. Get that shit out of my game.