Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
Buying gold perpetuates buying gold. However, you aren't going to get ahead of that by taking on those that buy gold.
You get ahead of that perpetuation by taking on those that sell the gold.
As I said earlier in this thread, if Intrepid are going after gold sellers, and come across a gold buyer, they should take action on that account (suspension if it is a first offence, ban if it is a second). However, Intrepids efforts NEED to be on the sellers, not the buyers. As such, finding buyers will be incidental at best to the efforts Intrepid are putting in.
No one, in any capacity, on any scale, has ever slowed down a black market by punishing the buyers. It has not happened, will not happen and can not happen, yet the same result has happened by eliminating the sellers. As such, it is not even worth the effort, and anyone that thinks it is worth going after buyers is a fool.
It is a simple fact that if no one is selling, no one is buying. Make it so that no one is selling, and you eliminate the possibility of people buying.
If you eliminate the possibility of people buying, you have no need to ban or suspend anyone.
Ideally you could go with the strategy of banning both buyers and sellers, and be so good at banning the sellers that you barely have to ban any buyers. The chances of that are pretty low, unless Intrepid comes out with some kind of banger system to detect.
And even if you did ban them all or most, they're just going to keep coming back if there's still buyers. So the question is are they completing sales before they're banned again? If they are, what happens to that gold? Does Intrepid delete it from the buyers inventory? What if he's already passed it on to second and third parties? What if he's already used it to launch a siege on an enemy city? What if this, what if that? fuckfest of situations.
All of a sudden, any potential solutions begin to seem very imperfect.
You have got to nip this in the bud before these problems start. People need to be very afraid of cheating. Zero tolerance has the best chance of success.
People wouldnt be so at ease to try and cheat.
And since some of you made the mistake of making real life comparissons Ill throw these at you:
Nobody goes around shouting "I want to buy illegal stuff!!"
Know why? Because they are afraid of the consequences.
In sports if you are caught cheating you get what? Banned. It's easy and effective.
So they need to make it so if you try to buy or sell. You will always be operating at a net loss 100% of the time. Either one of these actions qualify as being such stupid actions to do in an MMO. That you should be permabanned on your first time even attempting to do either. No different than trying to run a hacked client on the server. Roughly about the same stupidity.
There is no real value to having these kinds of players in your game either. So having them quit might actually serve to ease the workload on the developers as well. These are generally the kinds of players that abuse every glitch in the game they find to get ahead. They teach these glitches to other players and it spreads like Covid. They also will be the players that actually do run hacked clients and maybe even succeed in cheating to that extent.
These players need to be hit with a unshakable planet sized wall that falls on them when they punch it or they will destroy this game like a disease.
U.S. East
Ban them all. Let the whole cheating community be in fear.
MUCH BETTER THAN DEMANDING NO DIRECT /TRADE BETWEEN PLAYERS TO TACKLE GOLD-SELLING OR BIND ON PICKUP.
It undermines the criminal system, because hardcore RMT'ers don't have to worry about gear loss, they can just buy replacement gear far easier than the average player. Say I'm a top 10 pvper on my server. And I wanna go full time red, so I do. But I fuck up sometimes and die, lose gear. I gotta get on an alt eventually, or go uncorrupt and grind out replacements. RMT'er who's also a top 10 pvper, he doesn't have to do any of that. It's like he's playing a completely different game than I am. He can just kill nonstop, only managing the stat dampening.
I could go on and on with examples of how toxic and corrosive RMT will be for this game. Hopefully the devs see it and take it serious.
The reason I don't think going after the buyer will work is because it never has.
You could be talking about "products" or "services" available on the dark web, you could be talking about the war on drugs that has been going on for 50 years, you could be talking about black market stalls in various Asian countries.
In all of these cases, actual law enforcement professionals have never had any success at all, ever, in slowing down these activities by punishing the buyers. Yet they have had success in slowing them down by targeting sellers. The war on drugs, as an example, has had over a trillion dollars spent on it, and was largely focused (especially in the early days) on going after end users. In that time, drug use went up, not down.
It just doesn't work.
To me, the view you take on this says whether you prefer a penal system where the punishment to the crime is more important, or where you prefer preventing or minimizing the crime happening in the first place.
Personally, I don't see any real over all benefit in punishment. Obviously you need to punish those you do come across, this does go without saying. However, if punishment alone isn't going to prevent the thing from happening, it should not be the focus of your efforts. You need to focus on stopping it happening, not focus on punishing those that do it.
If you want to stop it happening (or make it happen far, far less), then you put all your resources against the sellers, not the buyers.
If Intrepid participated in this, anyone that took them to court over it would win likely before it even went to trial. No EULA, no warning or agreement acceptance, nothing at all will protect Intrepid from losing every case bought against them if they do this.
On the other hand, if they pose as buyers, they can instead take this same tactic and turn it on the gold sellers, identifying their entire network of accounts, and banning them all at once.
This is similar to what I said earlier in this thread that I think Intrepid should do, the main difference is that I think Intrepid should pose as sellers selling gold to these people (who advertise that they are buying gold, thus not entrapment). Sell them some gold so that Intrepid makes money rather than loses it, and then work out the network and ban it all at once.
Even more so, good luck finding a gamer who will bother getting off the chair to go through all that.
Same thing with all the dashcam owners here in Sydney that tell me "I got you on camera". Nobody wants to go through the process.
It is also true that 'If no one is buying, then no one is selling' is a reason to go after buyers just as strongly as going after sellers.
Ban them all. Ban the cheaters. This will attract many long term decent people to play AOC and I hope will lead to long term profits and solid player numbers.
Do you have any examples of companies actually going after the buyers, without going soft on them?
I haven't played all MMOs, but in none of the ones I have played or heard about has there been a concerted effort by the developers to crack down on buying gold/items. Aka, removing the market for the gold sellers.
RL examples like alcohol, drugs, prostitution etc. don't apply here, if that's what you are alluding to. It's a game, and one that only succeeds when people play within the rules, like all other games. Most people know and understand that at some level, even those who cheat. Cheat in poker? Yer out. Same goes for sports. Take performance enhancing drugs or sandpaper the baseball? Yer out.
I'd rather pay an extra dollar or two over the announced 15$ to have a more serious, larger and more active GM live team.
I think the vast majority of people would if you asked them ''do you want hackers, gold sellers, scammers, bots, etc or to pay an extra dollar or two in the sub?''.
Just my take on the matter.
This same notion of "it only works if we all follow the rules" applies to wider society just as it applies to a game.
Yet people still don't follow the rules.
The reason I bring up the war on drugs specifically is for the same reason there are no developers that have made a concerted effort to just go after gold buyers - developers know it won't work, because they have looked at real world examples of how to stop black market activity, most notably the 50 years of said war.
They see it not working, but they see other attempts at stopping black market activity having an effect (not outright preventing it from happening, but lessening it a significant amount - as opposed to the war on drugs that saw a several fold increase in drug use in the time the focus was on the end user).
So, developers have seen what does and does not work in other situations, and made decisions in the past based on that.
While some games (PoE and WoW - though to differing degrees) fail their player base in this regard, that is due to inaction, rather than due to taking the wrong action. Every game I have seen that had minimal third party RMT (EQ2, Archeage for the first 6 months, ESO from what I have seen though don't take my word for it) have gone almost exclusively against the sellers, only suspending accounts for buying gold when they happen upon them in the effort to find and catch sellers.
Finally, lets look over the real examples you have given us.
Cheat at poker and you get kicked out. Sure, but you are welcome to join the next competition.
Cheat at sport? Lets even use the example you gave, sand papering a baseball. Lets use Niekro, due purely to how blatant it was - he got a 10 game suspension. This basically amounts to a two week suspension - and we are talking about professional sportsmen cheating in a professional league - as opposed to some people that are just playing a computer game in their down time.
At the very least, I believe we should all agree that we should not hold MMO players playing an MMO to a higher standard of sportsmanship than we hold actual professional sportsmen.
I mean... seriously.
Yeah, the fact that it is still going is a sure sign that it doesn't work.
I mean, if it was working, it would have stopped - right?
Is the offence mentioned in the announce? If it's that frequent and keeps going on but the crime isn't mentioned the announcement is more or less pointless as a dissuasion tool.
Honestly they'd probably be better off putting limitations in place as a deterrent. Eg: limit all accounts from trading for x amount of days. Cant trade gold to people not on your friends list for x days.
No matter how good the gms are or the detection is. Gold selling will always be present in every online game. The only real way to stop it is to remove gold from the game entirely. But then they'll be selling gear or carries.
I'd say AoC should focus on crushing all possible exploits that could permanently destabilise gold in the game and ruin the economy.
No, the offense wasn't stated last time I saw. Hence why I said there are many reasons why someone gets banned. The ToS is quite clear and the majority of times it will be for RMT. Its not even clear if it is a RMT Network, RMT Buyers or RMT Sellers. The point is, the devs are extremely active with the ban hammer in BDO and BDO has no sub fee so it can be done with the right dedication.
Active, yet ineffective.
buying from the black market isn't something you just turn a blind eye to.
Yeah, it is ineffective because you can have multiple accounts or simply make a new account after you are banned because they ban via email and one can have as many emails and accounts as one wants.
Edit: I have also heard of some bans coming when people buy the cosmetics from the cosmetic store and then immediately dismantle the cosmetic for the stones inside, then boost their toons with the stones and then the devs will be even swifter at banning said person because they offer no refunds.
The devs seem to want people to buy the cosmetics, sell the cosmetics and buy the stones or buy the cosmetics from the Auction House for the stones but heaven forbid you buy a ton of cosmetics with real money for the stones inside. Considered RMT in most cases.
You don't turn a blind eye to it, but you don't actively peruse it, either.
Think of it like harvesting in an MMO. You want ore, but if you see some lumber on your way to the mountain where all the ore is, sure, get it.
However, you shouldn't spend your time in the forest, as you won't find any ore there.
Banning sellers is always going to net real gain in terms of the total amount of gold (or items) sold on a server. Banning a buyer won't.
As such, you should always be on the lookout for the seller (the ore), but if you happen to see a buyer (lumber) while you are looking for a seller, grab it.
However, if you are in the forest - if you are actively hunting buyers - then you have given up looking for ore completely.
If a game developer/publisher decides they are not going to go after the gold sellers, but are going after the buyers, they have given up on trying to reduce RMT in their game, and are now just trying to save face with people that know no better.
If it is ok for me to buy an item from the store, and sell it on the marketplace for gold to other people who will break down for components, but it is not ok for me to buy that same item from the store and break it down myself, this is in no way clear.
I mean, I am not a fan of the game anyway, but this is just stupid.
You're right that the war on drugs hasn't worked out like people hoped it would. But it has worked to some extent. There are thousands if not millions of people alive and in better health today because of it. For every person sitting in jail for drug related offenses, when maybe there's a better enforcement or treatment that could be done for them, there's someone else who's alive who otherwise wouldn't be. All of the intoxicated driving deaths prevented, drug related homicide, overdoses...all prevented because for many people the deterrent of prison sentences and the illegality of drugs is enough to keep them from doing it. Just because that deterrent doesn't work on some people doesn't mean it didn't work on others.
The "problem" is that we live in a free society. Starting in the 60's and 70's, our culture took a collective dump on itself. All of a sudden, things that are objectively not cool, became cool and trendy. Rejecting authority, drug use, uninhibited, unprotected sex. These things lead to broken families, misery, disease and death. It has since gotten better in some ways, and worse in others. But even now, we have movie stars, music artists and sports stars, even politicians that glorify, endorse, almost encourage drug use. It's glorified in our music, movies, pop culture in general.
So that's the wave of resistance that enforcement goes up against in a free society who's culture is corrupted by the lowest IQ members of it's society. It appears to be a losing battle. Nevertheless, in more authoritarian societies, with even stricter drug enforcement, it works splendidly. China's policies work, and they're extremely strict. And there's a number of other countries the same.
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/drug-use/by-country/
That chart neither proves nor disproves either side of the argument, it just is. Based on the countries and their scores, there appears to be cases where strict enforcement doesn't work and lenient enforcement does, and vice versa.
I was arrested for possession of marijuana when I was 18. Not convicted, entered into a diversion program. Random drug tests, AA meetings and 1 on 1 meetings with a counselor. It worked for me. I didn't smoke weed again for 3 years. In that time, I started college. And I possibly avoided killing myself with a laced batch of weed, being robbed and killed by a drug dealer, driving while intoxicated and killing myself. Who knows. I did start smoking weed again here and there some years later, but never to the extent that I was prior to being arrested for it. It just wasn't as cool once I suffered consequences for it.
Anyway, cool story on all of that bro.
Ashes gets one launch. These people aren't getting high in their mom's basement. They're cheating in a video game, ruining the game, ruining other people's fun and what they paid money for. We're talking about people who are actively cheating, trying to get the upper hand on other players in a competitive game that is supposed to be fair, that the developers have an obligation to do everything they can to make fair. Ban the ever living shit out of them is my stance and nothing will change it.
So yeah I'm kinda just looking for Steven to do that against cheating. Have the balls. Change the game, revolutionize. Right the wrongs. Get it done. Please.
He can be as authoritarian about it as he wants. I don't mind. This isn't real life, it's a game with a bunch of cheaters that need to be controlled, like any game.
All I will add to what you have said is that literally every study or article on the matter in the last decade has considered it an abject failure. While there are some success stories on a micro level, you don't spend a trillion dollars to generate some feel good piece for the local news - you expect large scale improvements, and not only did these never materialize, but the situation got worse.
if it had have worked, you would never have had the opportunity to buy weed, and thus would never have even been in that situation in the first place. So even the success story here is a failure. You have a choice.
You can ban them, and others will take there place, or you can ban the people that enabled them, and no one will take their place.
That is how it works. That is how it has always worked.
So, what do you want? Is your end goal to have a game that bans cheaters but gets new cheaters as fast as they can ban them, or a game with the fewest people cheating as possible? That is my end goal (or what I think Intrepids end goal should be, more accurately), and the only path to that is to hunt out the gold sellers and ban their network.
My choice is ban them all, sellers and buyers. The people will learn. There are no addiction issues with cheating, no mental health issues that exist like with drugs. People cheat because they can and because they're allowed to.
First step, and I agree with you here, is everything possible should be done to make it impossible to cheat. Ban those who slip through the cracks, gleefully.
The US is very much alone in the approach it took in the early days.
Even places like Singapore - that is notoriously strict on these things - go after dealers far more than users.
It could be argued that it didn't work because of the culture, but that culture is one of putting the punishment of a crime ahead of preventing crime. That is the part where the US culture failed.
Generally, the drugs aren't even grown or produced here. So it's hard to stop what isn't produced here and comes through our wide open border. The border could have been secured decades ago and drug flow reduced, which would have saved millions of lives. But one party wants to import votes and the other wants to import cheap labor. And 70-100,000 Americans dying every year is a worthy sacrifice to them. In a just world, these "leaders" would have already been executed.