Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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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.
Comments
Intrepid absolutely will not say what they plan to do to combat any form of cheating, as this would make it easier for would-be cheaters (and I include myself in this solely in the realm of trackers) to avoid detection.
It is true that some developers have egg on their face in regards to RMT, but many simply make the conscious decision to not do anything about them.
WoW is a great example here. They don't ban gold buyers or sellers. Their thinking is - why spend all that money doing something that will result in us making even less money?
instead, they ban chat spammers. This is far easier to do, costs Blizzard almost nothing (players do all the work), and lets Blizzard say "look, we banned the bad guys!".
The worst part of this is - most of WoW's player base believe them. They even have positive reinforcement. They reported a spammer last week, and that spammer hasn't been seen since! yay, we're fighting gold selling!
As to your last point - I assume you are accepting of the notion of scale. Real world things vs in game things.
You still had your freedom to do what you wanted in your life outside of those specific times, assuming you followed the rules. A player in game that has been banned no longer has the freedom to do what they want in game.
As such, if you scale the crime to the punishment, the gold buyer suffers a far, far greater punishment in relation to the crime.
That said, I'd be fine with people caught buying gold having an in game penalty like this. A counselling session and perhaps some GBA meetings in place of AA meetings.
Personally, I think this is even more lenient than a two week ban, but that's just me.
They can save the ip bans, hardware bans, credit card bans, calling your ISP bans, if any of that is even possible, for the second offense.
What have I done lol
It just makes no sense to even do this other than as something to show to others that you have done.
In the same way BDO, Archeage and L2 would make absolute rubbish PvE MMO's, Ashes will follow suit. This game will live or die as a PvP focused game, with a little bit of shitty PvE on the side.
I do agree that Intrepid are likely to be fairly soft on some cheaters though. In regards to gold selling, they are almost certain to go after the sellers.
The author chooses to legalize RMT, because RMT is inevitable. But he concludes that if we can promote an attitude of honourable gameplay, it helps decrease demand for RMT.
So.
Here's an extreme solution:
This means:
> Accountants will want to be the first to identify a network of suspicious transactions so that they get the biggest cut of the payout.
> Promotes a culture of self-maintenance within the community
> Money goes straight from gold-farmer's pockets to Accountant's pockets! (minus tax)
Other implications:
> feed this data into a neural net and it can learn to "recommend" transactions for players to mark.
> No need to wave the ban hammer
> Include a "credit rating" for each Accountant - accountants with a poor credit rating get reduced cuts
and the other black markets such as drugs - the connection that was made in the first 15 seconds of reading here. The literal premise of that post is that RMT = vice.
The issue I have always had with this is that he doesn't go in to any detail at all about what methods had been considered for dealing with RMT, it is basically just a step-by-step of the thought process used to legalize RMT (first party, I should clarify). he said you can't suppress it 100%, which I totally agree with. However, you can suppress it 90%, and that is worth doing.
As to your suggestion, I have to ask - what is the point?
Put this in game, and all players will do is make a legitimate trade immediately after purchasing gold, meaning it can not be recovered. This is the case for all RMT - you never keep the gold on the account you receive it on, you make an equal value trade with the character you want to use that gold on. In a game like Ashes, you buy an amount of resources at market value, so the character you want to use the coin on has it, and the alt has a bunch of raw materials. Then you kill that alt a few times to legitimately regain those raw materials.
This leaves intrepid in a position where they can perhaps see that the alt gained coin via RMT, yet they seem to have spent it on resources that they then lost in PvP. They can't really do much at that point.
Also forcing people to go about that process of killing an alt over-and-over will be legitimately time consuming, which decreseases demand for RMT too.
Also my other points still stand: it encourages self-maintenance in the community (which is the main goal of what this system is trying to do), and crowd sources a lot of data that you can feed into a neural net.
What other ways could you exploit such a system?
Killing an alt a few times isn't that big of a deal. it could even be done as a caravan if there is enough bulk - that would save a whole lot of time.
I mean, it is more of a hassle than not doing it, but people that buy gold (the ones that don't get caught) do this kind of thing anyway (which is why they don't get caught), so it really isn't a big deal.
The world is not black and white. Gold Buyers are not cheaters.
Someone who begs for gold and receives it from another player is not a cheater. Gold- or Item-Presents are are not cheating (on either side). But according to some of your postings these would also be "cheating".
Gold SELLING may be against the REGULATIONS of a game, but even if so, there will be an "underground" Market, as long as there is demand and positive numbers in the payout in RL for the Sellers. I would rather see a market that is transparent, than underground hush hush Marketplaces. There are players that dont have the time to play as much as some of you and may be very happy to spend RL Money to get some Items, that MAY help them. Still the plaxer that plays more often, has more experience and will therefore be the better player.
Why do so many of you always think of something like "Just ban them", "Permaban", "Off with their Heads"?. Isnt the Goal to have fun. For some the Fun is to play 50 hours or more and die of dehydration (sorry for the exaggeration, but something like this has happend in the past), for others it is fun to enjoy a good fight, without the need (or chance) to have that many hours in the game. As already said, a Player, that invests a lot of time, will be better than one that has bought his stuff. (As a sidenote, I belive that the best Items should not be sellable, although craftable, whereas players may provide bound Material for the crafter, that they can get in Dungeons or other activities they have to do themselves)
Also just if it is not worthwile selling Gold, then there will be not many that would sell Gold for profit. Sell Gold in an official Market, to an extend that you can control. Make it hard for ingame Gold Advertising and warn (and maybe even ban for some time with the time going up for each time) those spammers. Restrict free accounts (probably there will be some in the future) , so they cant have a lot of money and or Items, and only to only one char. Create daily reports about strange and large transactions. Write Reports that report accounts that only loggin for some few operations like receiving something and sending something (though there are people that keep an extra Charakter for tradeing). Have PEOPLE look at this and take care of such things PERSONALLY rather than automatic. Search for contact of those that pop up. It will cost more to have humans do that, but it will be much appreciated by the community. A good personal and not fully automated service is something great. This game is not only about making money, but to provide fun to the community, right?
In my opinion (perma)baning Accounts for buying Gold is way out of line anyway. Indeed I am pro the possibility to buy Gold leagally. And everyone who yells "This is Pay to win", please think that you probably are someone that spends a lot of time in the game, where others cant. If you are one of those people who spend their time ingame, for one you will need some people to bash (inexperienced Players with good Items), you will have much better Items anyway (though the gap is a bit closer) plus those people buying gold may spend a lot of time working. This is something to keep power in your hands rather than set stages more equally.
Also people buying gold usually tend to buy ressources to get on with crafting. This is always a win win situation for everyone. Better competition, more Crafters, more possible ressource sales. The money is always going back to the community.
What really sucks is the gold Advertisement, the people who have companies, that make children work for almost nothing so they run around in the game and farm ressources and exploit this situation in Real life. Or that there are Bots and automated PCs.
Fenloh
The main problem with gold farming is that it crashes the ingame economy. Eventually you can buy billions of gold for 1 dollar
Why is it ok for players to introduce P2W but Intrepid isn't allowed?
Of course they are. RMT is against the game rules, and breaking that is cheating. It's also super bad for the game.
I understand you want it legalized. They'd have to redesign the entire economy if you can just P2W through the game though.
About the argument about some not being able to play as much, well, too bad so sad, that goes for most things in life. Some people can dedicate more time than others to a game. That is no reason to change the rules of a friggin' game. Like what? You want to be able to buy back lost pieces in chess too because you have less time to practice than others? Pretty much the same thing as buying gold/items in Ashes.
No man, ban the cheaters. Let games be fair and not affected by people's RL finances as much as possible. It's the only way they'll be fun over time.
Unfortunately IP addresses don't mean too much if the people trying to break the rules to make money know what they're doing.
Maybe HWID could be more useful to track individuals over multiple accounts and IP addresses, but it's also possible to circumvent that although a bit harder.
If something is against the ToS of an online game, people who break those terms can be called "cheaters". I agree, however, that "cheating" might not be the best word to describe people that take part in RMT, similarly to when people use the word "hacker" to describe children using cheats in online games.
I believe that sometimes people might use the word "cheater" when they simply meant "rule breakers" since they aren't necessarily using any software to cheat.
In any case, nomenclature issues aside, if something is against ToS and people agree to those terms when they create their accounts, breaking those terms will get them banned. It's not up to anyone except Intrepid to decide that.
Very black and white to me.
Like maouw said, if Intrepid introduced any kind of option to buy currency in the shop, the outcry would be legendary. But as far as gold sellers, it's kind of ho hum. Some people are very for it, some people are like herp derp I dunno it's whatever, and some people are very against it. And it makes no sense. Actually it does. The times we live in.
@Fenloh
I write provocatively to provoke discussion and passion from people, from all sides. I do it on purpose. There's always nuance behind the scenes that maybe gets lost in the way I write. I had a friend in WoW classic that bought gold so that he could buy his level 60 mount. I thought nothing of it. It is of course against the rules, and it is "technically" cheating. But there really are no victims. WoW is not a competitive game. It pretty much doesn't matter that my friend bought gold in WoW, it affects next to nothing. So any number of situations like that, in any number of other games, my fire and brimstone CHEATERRR doesn't really apply to them.
It's still not fair though and it should be stopped if possible. It's not fair that he could circumvent the system and use real life money to get his mount faster and easier than other players who aren't in as good as a financial position as him. But again, there really aren't any victims.
In Ashes there will be victims. In any competitive game there are victims from it. The game itself is a victim of it.
This quote right here encapsulates the exact culture in gaming that needs to change. It is so wrong on its face. While it may seem innocent, it isn't. Yes there are people who have more time and desire to play than others. This creates an inequality. There is nothing you can do about that besides enforcing play time restrictions on every player based on which player has the least amount of time to play, lets say an hour a week. So everyone can only play an hour a week, to keep it fair. And we see that this isn't a solution at all and should never have even been brought up, much less accepted.
So your solution is for players who can't play as much to be able to buy gold. On it's face, it sounds great. Except it's not. Not everyone has the money to spend on gold. Not everyone wants to buy from third parties that they don't even know if they can trust. Not everyone wants to risk getting caught. Even if everyone had the money to spend on buying gold, not everyone has equal amounts of money. There is nothing to stop the people who play 60 hours a week and already make a ton of gold in game, to also themselves buy more gold, to further increase their advantage over others.
You feel like you're "catching up" to the players that can play more than you. But in reality, you're getting an unfair advantage against everyone else who is unable or unwilling to spend extra money paying to win. And you aren't catching up to the players who play 80 hours a week plus spend thousands of dollars on RMT anyway. You're falling more behind, so is everyone else.
It is entirely an unfair and inadequate solution that only makes the original problem, the fact that some people can play more than others, even worse.
tldr: Your money should buy you the game and the ability to play in it, not advantages in the game.
I have been thinking about your explanation of how the gold market works in games. Given some of the differences between the features in AOC and other games like L2 and WoW, I am wondering what your thoughts are on the impact of these features in restricting the gold market. For example:
- No server wide auction houses (limited auction houses in high level trading nodes). This will prevent transfers by 'selling' a common item for large sums. Of course, such transfers can be accomplished by having the toons at the same location, but that brings up the next feature...
- No fast travel (except for 'families'). This will prevent either the buyer or the seller from delivering/picking up the gold quickly. It will require one or both parties to take time to meet somewhere. True, this only slows the transaction somewhat, but time is money and travel will entail some risk...particularly if the delivery toon is named cvbn321.
- The prevalence of crafted items over dropped items. While we are unsure about how common high quality drops will be, if most items are crafted then there might be less 'super' weapons on the market to purchase. With few items on the market there are less opportunities for buyers to need gold, though prices will rise. I am not sure that this will be an issue or not.
- The game philosophy of 'No PTW' which might have an impact on player outlook. Might a higher level of player disgust with gold buying coupled with (hopefully) efficient GM efforts and other game features make a substantial difference?
- What other AOC features might also discourage gold selling, or at least make it more difficult?
Thanks.
I'm sort of half way between these two perspectives.
To me, there absolutely are people that have.more money than time, and whom would happily spend money on a game to skip parts of it they enjoy less
To me, this is perfectly valid, and they should be able to do this.
However, there is a major caveat with that.
While these people absolutely should be able to do this, that in no way means every MMO should allow for it. As true as the above is, it is equally true that people that don't want others to be able to buy progress or convenience in the MMO they play should be able to play an MMO where this is the case.
Again though, as is the case with people wanting to be able to purchase convenience or progression, not every game needs to offer players a game where there is no RMT.
This is exactly the same as players that want spaceships in their MMO. If that it what you want, play an MMO with spaceships. If you do not want spaceships, play an MMO that does not have them.
If a gamer wants RMT in their game, they are, in my mind, absolutely welcome to that. There are a good number of games out there that have this as a feature, and I wish them well playing those games.
If a gamer doesn't want RMT in their game (sanctioned RMT, at least), then they are absolutely welcome to play a game that does not have it, and all the best to them, as well.
What no one should be doing though, is looking at a game that either does or does not have RMT, and trying to change that decision.
TL;DR.
Some people play games with RMT because that is what they want. Some people play games without RMT because that is what they want. Pick your game based on what you want.
Indeed.
The thing I think some people need to understand is that Ashes is not an RMT game. The discussion here is all based on that fact, as you no doubt we'll know.
So, if RMT is your thing (a general you, not a specific one) then BDO or Archeage are both games that are broadly similar to Ashes that may be more to your liking.
The caravan system. Conceivably it could be very inefficient grinding mobs in a node and selling the mob certificates at that node. In order to make any substantial amounts of money in a timely enough fashion for gold selling, it could require running caravans to sell the certificates in bulk to a node that pays a higher price. Or it could require a farmer to have a pack mount, a donkey or whatever, in order to be efficient making money. Which could make them a bigger target for getting killed by a player and partially looted.
I don't think any of this would stop it. But it could slow down gold selling some.
Open world pvp that can't be turned off. Lack of instances. There are several things about Ashes that might make it harder for gold sellers to operate. Reason for hope, but we don't know enough about everything yet.
I don't think any of these will have much of an impact, honestly.
The combination of no server wide market and no fast travel is likely to mean gold sellers will just treat it as if there were several factions on each server, or require players to be present at a specific node.
Crafted items being more common than dropped I don't see having an impact on anything either. Archeage had most people wearing crafted gear (there were some drops that were better for some slots for some builds, but crafted was what most people went after). The market was always full of top end gear - or at least gear that was top end at the time.
It was also full of top end crafting materials.
The game outright stating it is not p2w isn't going to have an impact at all. All games put forward the idea that they don't want cheating or exploiting, yet cheating and exploiting exists in all games.
Buying gold is something players can do without anyone around them even knowing. If it were something we were able to actually ascertain, I would happily make a bet that any player that has spent 5+ years I MMO's being in moderate sized or larger guilds has had at least a half dozen guild members buy gold without them knowing.
People like to think "not me or my guild" but the reality is that perhaps not you, but definitely your guild.
If th(s game did have more of a name and shame culture than other games, it would just see people continue this activity in the shadows, as most that participate in it currently do.
There are two things that I think Ashes does that will make things harder for gold sellers.
The first thing is node system. It will make management of selling gold harder from an administration perspective.
In other games, gold sellers need to know one or two locations and can conduct all in game business from there. The people working for the company need not know any more about the game than the currency denominations and those locations. They can log on to a character on any server and are a trade.
The node system throws a spanner in the works there.
This isn't an insurmountable barrier to selling gold, it is simply an additional ongoing cost.
The second is PvP loss. Gold sellers often store their inventory in the form of commodity goods, anything that sells readily, and doesn't fluctuate in value too much.
This is because an account of low level characters that has a load of raw resources and is making many trades doesn't throw up the same red flags as an account that is just sending and receiving gold all the time.
The way PvP is in Ashes, gold sellers are not likely going to want to hold their wealth in this manner. They will need to find a means of doing so that isn't subject to loss in non-corrupt PvP, nor during or after a siege.
This is just another cost to the would be gold seller in Ashes.
These costs are the reason I think Ashes is uniquely positioned to be able to chase gold sellers out by further impacting their profit via he methods I have discussed previously in this thread and others.
This would make it far more devastating when a leveled up farmer account is caught and banned. They can't just relevel to 15 and already have access to grinding that efficiently makes money again.
That said, I think this would have some economic side effects that aren't intended or desirable.
This would be a viable thing to do to curtail gold selling if the gold sellers were the people generating the gold.
However, since they generally buy gold off of other players, mark it up and then resell it, it will have a limited effect.
The only time the people that sell gold to players generate their own gold is when they come across an exploit to generate it.
I just don't think I'd like the side effects of the steep money making curve though.
This is true, for sure.
Thing is, in the same way there will always be someone willing to buy gold, there will always be someone willing to sell it. Getting rid of one player that has more gold than they need isn't going to put a dent in things, just as getting rid of one player that buys gold when they don't have enough isn't going to put a dent in things.
This is why the gold sellers are the key. Players aren't generally going to go around hunting for people to sell coin to, that is clearly not a safe thing to do. The gold seller acts as a middleman making it possible for some players to sell gold, and for others to buy it.
You don't just get rid of one of them. You keep getting rid of them every time you catch them.
Yeah, they can.
These are the people I touched on earlier when I said that if you get rid of all of the larger companies, there will be the occasional smaller person step in to have a go.
As I said previously when talking about them, these operations will be far less complex than a professional gold seller, and so will be far easier for Intrepid to deal with.
It isn't mental gymnastics at all - I mentioned this earlier but didn't go in to detail, because detail want warranted at the time. The conversation just happens to have circled back to it now is all.