I don't agree that there are dozens or hundreds of valid situations where a gold seller account is making transactions with innocent characters.
This is not what I said.
I said there are valid reasons for gold to transfer between characters.
This is the kind of comment that leads me to assume you are under the assumption that Intrepid will know gold seller accounts. Since you have said you do not make that assumption, you then need to understand that it isn't a case of them looking at gold seller accounts, it is a case of them looking at EVERY account. At EVERY transaction (over a certain threshold, no doubt).
This is the reason all of those scenarios need to be considered - Intrepid need to look at them and decide if they are legit or not, without knowing if either account belongs to a gold seller.
I mean, I also agree that there are very few legit reasons for a gold seller to hand off currency to an innocent players account, but that was never a situation I put forward. What I put forward was that there are times when an innocent player trades with another innocent player, and yet to Intrepid that looks literally no different to a gold seller selling to a buyer.
That is the issue. That is why your friend in WoW can get away with buying small amounts of gold (if it was delivered that quickly, it was a small amount). Transactions like that wouldn't even be flagged in WoW - there are thousands (or tens of thousands) of them a week, and only a single digit handful of them would be looked in to.
This is why making a policy of actively going after buyers is simply pointless.
Sure, take action against the buyers you come across - I have literally said this a half dozen times in this thread by now. However, when it comes to resources, any that you spend on trying to lessen gold selling in your game, that is not actually focused on gold sellers, is resources that are wasted.
In L2 gold was switching hands between friends and players all the time. "Got 3kk? I Need to buy those gloves for the set." /trade
Buying gold in L2 was somewhat rampant.
My guild at the time took on a whole group of players new to EQ2 after leaving L2, saying they had to leave because they couldn't afford how much it cost to buy enough gold to keep up. There was no real policing of it in that game, ass far as they could tell - much like WoW.
This was early to mid 2005 - I can't and won't speak to what it was like before or after that, as this is the only window in to gold buying in that game that I have - but it is not a great view.
Once again - just for you - the scenarios I talk about are valid to bring up in this discussion because this discussion is about gold sellers. You want to ban gold buyers and gold sellers, that's fine, you can want to do that.
However, in doing that, you need to be able to identify a legitimate transaction from a gold selling transaction. It is all well and good saying you want to ban the buyers, but before you do that, you need to find them.
I'm sure you agree with the basic notion that you can not ban a gold buyer until you have found a gold buyer. Since this is true, you need to be able to find gold buyers and distinguish them from people that have simply made transactions in the game.
That is why these scenarios are valid to bring up. Each of them will look exactly the same to Intrepid as a gold seller selling gold to a gold buyer - yet I can't see you throwing up any suggestions for how Intrepid can tell them apart.
Based on your enraged ranting, it would seem that you are perfectly fine with a 50% false positive ratio - where there is an innocent payer banned for every player that buys gold.
I personally don't even think a 5% ratio is acceptable. To that player that gets banned for a false positive, even one case of it is one case too many.
I have never said anything about what you're talking about. All I've been talking about are tracking systems based on infiltrating networks and identifying gold seller and farmer accounts, and thus, buyer accounts.
I don't think I've even see anyone in this thread talk about what you're talking about. If it's been talked about, I missed it.
But no one in this thread that I've seen has said anything about looking at every large transaction that takes place in the game and making banning decisions based solely on that. How can you even make any kind of decision on that alone?
By default, I think large transactions SHOULD be tracked. And patterns of transactions that don't make sense. I'd hope Intrepid has a system that flags things that don't exactly look right. Intrepid will know their metrics and what the economy should look like as the game evolves, and what individual players and guild's individual economies should look like, a range of what's normal at the given stage of the game. And so tracking big numbers like that, just keeping an eye on it occasionally could help reveal players engaged in duping, or gold buying. And if they felt strongly enough about numbers that just seemed wildly out of bounds, they could investigate further. It'd be a good tool.
But none of this has anything to do with what I've been talking about.
It's not hard to identify the majority of gold buyers. The only reason most games don't crack down on them is because they choose not to do so, nor to develop the tools necessary
If you get a large amount of gold or expensive item without gold or an item of equitable worth in trade from a person not in your guild/family group, both get to be auto-flagged as a gold buyer/seller, because they most likely are.
"But then the gold sellers will just join your guild/family to do the trade" some might say. I think that is awesome! The more deterrents and hoops they have to jump through the better! It's also easy enough to see through that. If either party joins shortly before, and leave shortly after, they are most likely gold buyers/sellers and should be flagged as such automatically. And for guilds especially, it's unlikely all the other officers/members are ok with that kind of thing happening.
Obviously the tool to catch that has to be coded into the game if it isn't already, but it's a trivial task that mainly involves querying the database depending on some triggers.
I an all cases a human being should review it before applying the bans, but in most cases there will be no reasonable doubt as to what happened.
Gold sales between long-term guildies are much harder to track and prove, and if they are careful, I don't see them being discovered. I also care much less about those. They are usually lone actors and not organized criminal companies like the big gold sellers, and they don't ruin the game to anywhere near the same degree.
Sure, some gold sellers/buyers might slip through the net, but it's unlikely to be enough to really matter if Intrepid is serious about stopping RMT and P2W in the game. Those unlikely fringe scenarios that have been brought up here aren't hard to solve by a GM with the tools they should have, if both parties cooperate. Players should also be wary of accepting large amounts of gold or expensive items from strangers in general.
There is still room for altruism. Someone gifting mounts to noobs at the starter portals is completely fine. It's easily identifiable and probably would be below the amount needed to flag the action. If a friend joins the game you can still give them a butt ton of gold, because chances are you'll be playing together from then on.
Holy fuckin shit man is that what you've been thinking I'm talking about this whole time?
No I mean, large transaction/pattern transaction tracking would be a tool. Like Nerror said, it should be flagged when weird looking shit happens, large transactions with nothing of equal value exchanged, repeated patterns of smaller transactions with nothing of equal value exchanged. So then you can look into that. One guy is a normal looking player on the server, and the guy who never takes anything of value in return in these transactions is a weird looking burner account looking guy. And you dig further, maybe you put an invisible GM tailing the likely gold seller account, maybe he does the same shit with other people. Ban them all. But only when the preponderance of evidence points that way.
You don't just look at a weird transaction and start banning. You'd have to investigate some. There's finite resources of course, but it would be a good tool to get some definite in's on networks. But that wasn't really what I've been talking about this whole time lol
Edit: I really haven't even thought about this much. If it's a level 3 burner looking account that is giving out a lot of money for nothing in return, you probably have a gold seller on your hands, and everyone he's giving to, a gold buyer. In some cases so egregious it probably wouldn't take much investigation at all, and others more investigation would be required. Just depends on the circumstances.
Edit 2: In a way it is what I've been talking about this whole time, confirmed gold seller accounts. However you confirm it, with whatever tracking method or tool, when an account is confirmed to be a gold seller, it's very likely that whoever he's handing money to is a gold buyer, other than ridiculously rare scenarios.
No I mean, large transaction/pattern transaction tracking would be a tool. Like Nerror said, it should be flagged when weird looking shit happens, large transactions with nothing of equal value exchanged, repeated patterns of smaller transactions with nothing of equal value exchanged. So then you can look into that.
Yeah, this is what I am talking about, and what I outlined a few pages back when I said that even 15 years ago games had logs of every transaction in the game - and a simple combat parser was able to look through that to find what ever you wanted.
Every single scenario I have given you has been something that will trigger this that then requires further investigation.
The thing with this is that if we assume it, it means any discussion about a gold sellers account is irrelevant, because that is not something that is known. On the other hand, if Intrepid do indeed know who the gold selling accounts are (due to buying gold), they don't need this systemin the first place.
I don't agree that there are dozens or hundreds of valid situations where a gold seller account is making transactions with innocent characters. We've already talked about this. I just don't agree. If some idiot is that dumb that he's constantly interacting with gold seller accounts and not realizing it, and he has a valid sounding reason for that, he can be warned and educated to stop being so dumb.
Because I have never suggested what you are talking about here could happen. So, we have not talked about this at all - or at least, I have not.
Somewhere there, we had a mix up where you thought we were talking about this as a possibility, and I didn't.
Edit 2: In a way it is what I've been talking about this whole time, confirmed gold seller accounts. However you confirm it, with whatever tracking method or tool, when an account is confirmed to be a gold seller, it's very likely that whoever he's handing money to is a gold buyer, other than ridiculously rare scenarios.
While this is true, we have covered this already.
If you know someone is a gold seller, any account that gets gold off them is likely a gold buyer. However, that doesn't mean that the account in question is even worth the effort to ban - as it is likely a burner (assuming a game that is active in banning gold buyers and sellers). It isn't hard to set up a complex web of transactions that are difficult to unravel - even with tools - and almost impossible to determine who came out with the money.
While you may look at your friend in WoW that just had gold posted to him, you need to remember that this happened in a game that has tens of thousands of gold buyers a month, and only ever looks in to a half dozen or so. Gold buying in that game is so blasé in that game that people don't even care. This is the type of environment I am talking about when I say it is not suitable to just start banning gold buyers - it is the developers fault the game is in that situation, and while it may well be valid for them to opt to take a harsher stance, permanent bans for buying gold in that game is simply no longer appropriate, and never will be again - because of how much Blizzard have dropped the ball.
If a game has a harsher stance on gold selling, people like myself (though to be clear, not actually me) will find ways around it without too much trouble. Since there are - as we have discussed - legitimate reasons for players to transfer wealth from one account to another, all you need to do when buying gold is make the transaction appear to be one of those.
if I were as determined to buy gold in Ashes as I am to run a combat tracker, it would take Intrepid several dozen hours to unravel what I have done, and at the end of it all, they will have no idea which accounts profited from the situation at all.
This is why going after buyers is not a good use of resources. You have no idea how long it will take (admittedly it may only be a few minutes, but it may be days or weeks), and at best you can hope to catch out one person. Go after the seller, and you know you will spend days or weeks on it, but you also know you are pulling out a network.
Even without all of this, if gold sellers need to, they will find ways of transferring wealth to players that are not as easily tracked. Real estate is a fairly solid bet for this (was used in Archeage a bit), as the value of a house or freehold plot will be entirely determined by players, and will have nothing even close to a set value. If gold buyers buy a freehold that often sells for 10k gold, and then "decide" they can pay the tax on it so destroy it, lucky player that just so happens to be walking past at that exact moment, happens to be a citizen of that node and does not have a freehold on their account at all. They found a 10k gold piece of real estate, and they absolutely did so without buying 10k worth of gold from a gold seller!
That player could then keep that freehold, or sell it to someone for around 10k gold. Potentially even to an account from that gold sellers network.
The tool would just give leads. Intrepid buying gold would give a definite entry into a gold selling network. It'd be up to Intrepid how many resources they want to devote to investigating leads from the tool. More focus should be on the definite seller accounts found from buying gold.
But they should have the tool. It has use for tracking gold selling and other things. If possible they should have another tool that tracks the static wealth of players. Would be useful for catching dupers and gold selling motherlode accounts where larger amounts of gold may be stored. It's just up to them what thresholds in these tools would really trigger an investigation. But tools like these are necessary in my opinion, it's just windows and eyes into your game that you really should have.
I think we did have a couple mix ups in what we thought the other was talking about.
Any account that is caught cheating should be banned, I don't know what you mean by some accounts not being worth the ban. I mean it's up to Intrepid how strict they want to make enforcement, it's just my opinion it should be zero tolerance with fair warning ahead of time. (Other than some exceptions here and there for things I already talked about.)
I agree there's no need for Wow to start a stricter enforcement policy. There aren't really any victims from gold selling in Wow, it's not a competitive game like Ashes will be, and they've gone so long without enforcing anyway so who cares.
If a game has a harsher stance on gold selling, people like myself (though to be clear, not actually me) will find ways around it without too much trouble. Since there are - as we have discussed - legitimate reasons for players to transfer wealth from one account to another, all you need to do when buying gold is make the transaction appear to be one of those.
This and everything you say after are reasons you cite on why the game shouldn't have a harsh stance on gold selling. I view them as more reason to have a harsh stance on gold selling. Anything that makes gold selling and buying harder, take more time, have more steps, be more expensive, be riskier, exclude more people from doing it, and ultimately reduce the amount of gold selling that will happen, is good to me.
And that's where we just disagree. I mean we couldn't disagree more on this lol. Your reasons of why there shouldn't be a harsh stance are my reasons why there should, part of my reasons at least.
Anything that makes gold selling and buying harder, take more time, have more steps, be more expensive, be riskier, exclude more people from doing it, and ultimately reduce the amount of gold selling that will happen, is good to me.
See, here is the thing - I agree with you 100% here.
You know the best way to make buying gold riskier, more expensive, harder to get access to, which will ultimately reduce how often it happens?
Get rid of the larger gold selling companies.
Literally nothing else will have the same impact that doing this will have, and as such should be the primary focus of anything Intrepid does in regards to gold sellers.
Get rid of these companies and the only way that people will have left to buy gold will be if the occasional player decides to give it a go.
When a player decides to do this, they won't have the same expertise in hiding their activities that the larger companies do, making it riskier for players. They are most likely to only operate on the server they are playing on, making access to them harder for players.
Now, if you take everything I have said in this thread, and lay it all out in one go, I think you actually agree with what I am saying literally 100%.
I am saying that if a game does such a bad job with gold selling that it just becomes normal, they can't really ban players for buying gold. WoW is the example here, and you have agreed that they shouldn't bother.
I am saying that the first thing Intrepid should do in terms of fighting gold selling is going after the larger companies, hard and fast. Hurt them, cost them money, make them not want to touch Ashes at all. During this time, if you happen upon a buyer, then sure, through some sort of punishment their way, but keep in mind that it is not the focus.
Then, once these companies have left the game due to no profits (and potentially actual losses), start a policy of banning accounts caught buying gold. At this point, all you have left selling gold are amateurs, so Intrepids job from this point on will be easier, and thus cheaper and more effective.
So, each and every part of that you have agreed with - yet you are still arguing against it.
Literally nothing else will have the same impact that doing this will have, and as such should be the primary focus of anything Intrepid does in regards to gold sellers.
I've already talked about this. If Intrepid has a plan that wipes out gold sellers in a timely enough fashion, this whole argument has been moot anyway. The problem is solved. I am not convinced they will be able to do that fast enough or fully enough. I would love nothing more than to see it happen though. But I see it more as an ongoing war, especially with Ashes low entry cost to get into the game.
I am saying that if a game does such a bad job with gold selling that it just becomes normal, they can't really ban players for buying gold. WoW is the example here, and you have agreed that they shouldn't bother.
They absolutely can and in a sense should enforce their TOS against people that break it, regardless of anything else. If they went with a strategy of tracking seller accounts, then only banning the buyers, and just leaving the seller accounts they caught unbanned, that would be very weird and make no sense. But even with a dumb strategy like that, the game would still be better for it. In Wow at this point in it's life cycle and history, if it was my game, no I don't think I'd put much effort into it. Honestly I never would have let it get to the point it's gotten to so it's really hard for me to even comment on it at all. But it's so far gone, it's just like what you gonna do. If the devs don't care and enough of the players either don't know or don't care, who's left to care? The silver lining is that it just doesn't matter as much in Wow as it does in other more competitive games. Still matters though, enough that I would have never let my game get into such a state. New launches like Wow classic I would have tried to stop gold selling. But then I'd be stuck in a double standard with retail Wow, just what an incompetent disaster. It has no bearing on what I'd do in regards to Ashes.
I am saying that the first thing Intrepid should do in terms of fighting gold selling is going after the larger companies, hard and fast. Hurt them, cost them money, make them not want to touch Ashes at all. During this time, if you happen upon a buyer, then sure, through some sort of punishment their way, but keep in mind that it is not the focus.
Mostly agree with this. The absolute first thing they should do is infiltrate seller networks, starting day 1 if possible. As soon as a website has a button that you can click to buy gold in Ashes, they should have someone clicking it and setting up the sting ops. Buyers and sellers and farmers identified should be banned.
Then, once these companies have left the game due to no profits (and potentially actual losses), start a policy of banning accounts caught buying gold. At this point, all you have left selling gold are amateurs, so Intrepids job from this point on will be easier, and thus cheaper and more effective.
I think this is the main area of disagreement, which I've explained myself on several times now. As much as I would love it to be the case that sellers are just obliterated so fast and so permanently that nothing else matters, I don't think it will be the case.(A critical point is that it doesn't matter what I or anyone thinks will work. It only matters what we know. And no one knows what exactly will work, it's impossible.) By devoting some resources to going after buyers from the start, at the very least going after the low hanging fruit, you just increase the chance that the strategy of going after sellers eliminates them quickly and more permanently. They're hit on multiple fronts. They're just starved of that much more income, because a number of potential buyers immediately decide against buying because of a stated zero tolerance policy. Buyers who would be repeat buyers during this time frame are potentially banned, that revenue is gone. And the sellers are still being squeezed in every way they would be. It's up to Intrepid to do a cost/benefit analysis of how many resources should go to one or the other. I think the majority of resources should go towards sellers/farmers. But in that process, they will find buyers by default. And they should be banned lol.
We're just going in circles here man. It's kind of silly and pointless. It's been interesting, I think you've raised some interesting points, so have others. But you're just not going to get me to agree to things I disagree with.
I think this is the main area of disagreement, which I've explained myself on several times now. As much as I would love it to be the case that sellers are just obliterated so fast and so permanently that nothing else matters, I don't think it will be the case.
Where you are right is that it isn't guaranteed to work.
However, it is guaranteed to not work if you don't put the effort in.
If Intrepid dedicate the first 6 months of the game being live to dealing with gold sellers rather than gold buyers, there is a chance that it will have a massive impact on the game from then on, or that it will have about the same impact as doing what every other game has done.
There isn't really a possibility of it being less effective.
So, if they did it for the first 6 months and it doesn't work, they have the space to be able to change direction with it.
On the other hand, if they let gold sellers get established in that first 6 months due to not targeting them, then it is too late to make an attempt to do so.
At the end of the day, you are basically arguing that Intrepid do what Blizzard have done in WoW, in the same thread you explain how bad things are in WoW.
At the end of the day, you are basically arguing that Intrepid do what Blizzard have done in WoW, in the same thread you explain how bad things are in WoW.
No that's exactly not what I'm saying. You can reference page 1, 8th post from the bottom where I say, "Too many companies get away with not policing their game properly. They actively sweep game breaking issues under the rug. They make the business decision that even cheater accounts are still money in the bank for them. And getting rid of them not only loses that money but costs them more in labor costs. I hope Steven changes the game. I think he and Ashes will be rewarded financially for taking a hard line against cheaters."
Or you can reference this page, post 9 from the top where in regards to Wow enforcement I say, "and they've gone so long without enforcing anyway so who cares."
And there's probably other posts in these 8 pages indicating my belief that most companies don't actually try to tackle these issues. And even when they do temporarily because of PR blowback, they eventually stop enforcing to cut costs and because the PR fuss has died down, or because the culture of their shit game actually accepts gold selling now.
You're just making shit up now. I think this conversation has pretty much run its course. We disagree on some things. What a surprise lol. There's some things we agree on though, that's cool.
You'll never get rid of the big gold seller companies unless you also decrease demand. There is simply too much money in it for them if the buyers are lining up risk free. It's easily a billion dollar industry, and they are not going away. You can only hope to make it too unprofitable for them so they focus on other games.
A part of that is game design, and a part of that is sending a clear message to gold buyers that they will be banned. Less demand, less profit for the gold sellers. You don't find the sellers without also finding the buyers and vice versa. Ignoring those buyers seems stupid, because it is. Those "finite resources" give much better bang for the buck when banning both. It's a really simple concept. All Intrepid need to do is not chicken out like so many other companies have done and keep their promises.
At the end of the day, you are basically arguing that Intrepid do what Blizzard have done in WoW, in the same thread you explain how bad things are in WoW.
No that's exactly not what I'm saying.
But Blizzard put a LOT of resources in to fighting it - they just put them in the wrong place.
They go after the largest, most suspicious transactions - basically as you suggest.
Their issue is not one of not throwing resources at the problem.
The thing is, from the perspective of one player buying a moderate amount of gold, it appears as if they are not throwing resources at it, and so that is what people think. Buy $2,500 worth of gold though, and watch Blizzard jump straight in.
This is a factor of finite resources, as we have said. When you have finite resources, it appears to many as if you are doing nothing, as those finite resources are not directed in their direction. You simply can't attend to every situation you want to attend to.
They go after the largest, most suspicious transactions - basically as you suggest.
And you're just making stuff up again. That's not what I suggested. That strat would probably be used some, along with other strategies.
To be clear, that isn't all that WoW do, but it is the bulk of it. In terms of this discussion (at least right now), where those resources are spent is immaterial.
I'm just checking. You agree WoW is in the state it is in because so many people know someone that buys gold and gets away with it. Correct?
Based on this, the key to your plan working has to be for that to not happen in Ashes. Correct?
What percent of gold buyers being caught do you think would cause this change?
Just because some people are yelling out louder and more often than others, does not make them right or wrong. You are really invested in this. While I can understand that, it is also quite annoying at this point. You are running in Circles, without any new arguments. You are not changing your views. Maybe you should agree to disagree and step back a few steps.
Writing texts (and understanding them as they are intended) is much harder, than to talk directly to each other. Maybe you should consider to meet up in Discord or another Voice Chat. But then again, if you do that, maybe emotions cook up even more than they are doing already, or maybe you start understanding that nothing is black and white.
Well, in the end it is going to be how the Developers want it to be, and either you (and I) can live with how it is going to be, or not. If not, then anyone will have to decide to play or not to play. I am pretty sure that the Developers take what was said into cosideration without you repeating it over and over again.
Sadly I think this Post though well intentioned has turned into just another one of those forum posts were everyone debates it without any real anything.
I saw an interview with a steamer asking this very question and Stephen had a good answer, It they follow through with what they say all we can do it assist them with screen captures and reporting.
I don't have an actual plan Noaani. I'm not being paid to come up with a plan. It's not my game. I don't have any access to any required information about what kind of systems and tools the dev team will have. I know there will be GM's, but I don't know how many.
It's not my job. It's Intrepid's job. They need to do their job. Everything being talked about here by us forum users is mostly just theory and opinion.
I can't tell you how many times over my 25 years of playing mmos that I've heard first hand, second hand, on forums, though guildies etc, "yeah they banned me for 24 hours but they didn't even confiscate the gold! LOL." For many games, that's called "enforcement." lol. If they even do anything at all, which many really don't in any meaningful way.
I agree with Fenloh. This conversation has gotten ridiculous and is going in circles. Also agree with Noaani, just don't read it then. But I'm definitely pretty much done here myself.
Evorith's comment actually made me check the wiki for the first time during this entire thread.
"Security systems will be in place to combat cheating, exploiting, botting, gold selling, item duplication and other things that affect the economy starting from Alpha-0.[22][23][24]
These systems collect user data and flag abnormal activities for inspection. This combined with player reporting functions generates a live "heat map" that draws attention to unusual behavior.[24]
Players caught cheating will be banned.[24]"
Well that all sounds great, sounds like things other games have said too, hopefully it works. I don't think it will catch everything, nothing will. But most importantly, hopefully they actually enforce it.
This is also said:
Following a standard approach to an escalation system where certain infractions are immediate and automatic bans and some infractions provide a path forward where action is taken that might ban the account or strip the account or provide some chat bans or the ability to play over a week or so... If you buy gold and depending on the the seriousness of the infraction you could go anywhere from being stripped and to being banned for a period of time to being permanently banned.[21] – Steven Sharif
So It doesn't look like there will be definite perma bans in all cases, but there will be perma bans. Confiscating the gold, even sending a player into a negative gold balance, is critical, and it looks like they'll be doing that.
And this issue is so very important because of this quote, also on the same page:
Money will play a big part in the in-game. However, with that being said, there are organizational specific currencies that can't be traded. So there is like a general gold that will be very important end-game, but then there's also your progression within certain religions, societies, or nodes will also have... there will be progression-based currencies as well.[2] – Steven Sharif
This quote gives me hope:
The direction that I'm taking Intrepid as a company in is that a significant portion of the revenue created by the game goes into not only creating additional content and updates for the game but also goes into I think caretaking, as I like to call it; and that caretaking is multiple things: It's having active and present GM's on servers. It's having a an interacting community team that is always present and on-call for participating in forum discussions and streams and updates.[21] – Steven Sharif
That's what I like to see. Some of the money being made by the game (a significant amount) is designated for anti-cheating, not all just for company profits or pumping out new cheater riddled content. This will pay dividends for them going forward.
I don't have an actual plan Noaani. I'm not being paid to come up with a plan. It's not my game. I don't have any access to any required information about what kind of systems and tools the dev team will have. I know there will be GM's, but I don't know how many.
And yet you are absolutely adamant that what I have suggested wouldn't work, and advocate for Intrepid doing something that is essentially the same as every other game ever.
The only developers I have known to take action on accounts for buying gold, yet don't confiscate that gold, are companies that are afraid of legal action if they did that. I don't believe any situation like this has been taken to court yet, but I do know threats for doing exactly that have been made in the past.
Situations like this don't just happen without a reason.
This is just one more of the aspects that developers/publishers need to keep in mind with gold sellers in their game, and is just one more reason why I strongly believe the best action to take is any action that has a chance to make gold selling companies not want to operate in your game.
I'm all for Intrepid spending money on enforcing the rules, but the other thing to keep in mind with that is that every dollar spent on enforcing these rules is a dollar that is not spent on new content for the game. As such, taking the cheapest path to arrive at an acceptable position is the best option here - which again is attempting to make those companies not want to operate in the game. Not needing to enforce a rule because it is not being broken (or needing to enforce is 90% less because you got rid of 90% of the opportunities to break it) will always be the cheapest option.
I honestly don't see any angle where taking a reasonable shot at getting rid of these companies is not the best option - other than the angle of wanting people to actually be able to buy gold easily in the game.
I've stated my opinions, one of which is that Intrepid should actually enforce, as opposed to many other games. Not just enforce, but enforce continuously, also as opposed to many other games, in my opinion. And against anyone and everyone they find, buyers, sellers and farmers.
lol to gold buyers taking companies to court because their TOS breaking gold was confiscated. And any competent TOS would shield the company from liability against any unwarranted seizure of in game gold. The companies authority in their own game would be near absolute.
You know what some companies need to be taken to court for? Not fulfilling their responsibility to provide the cheat free experience their customers reasonably expect. But even that case would be dubious at best.
Non issue. You have your opinions, I have mine. I'm done arguing about it.
lol to gold buyers taking companies to court because their TOS breaking gold was confiscated. And any competent TOS would shield the company from liability against any unwarranted seizure of in game gold. The companies authority in their own game would be near absolute.
The thing with most ToS/ EULA is that they do not trump laws. Ever.
Anything you have a legal right to do in your country, an EULA can not take that right away from you.
Even when they have a clause that says any legal action must be under a specific jurisdiction isn't legally enforceable.
This is why no MMO company to date has had their EULA/ToS challenged in court.
I mean, I agree that the notion is amusing. Doesn't mean it isn't potentially legally sound.
I get what you are saying about why developers should be taken to court - but I have to assume you are aware that they have no legal obligation to ensure their game is cheat free.
VirtekMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'll say this, @Marzzo :
I appreciate your effort in thinking through the problems and solutions.
I do, however, think that simply "Intrepid should just sell gold" is not truly the best solution.
If, as you say, 50% of the population (monthly sub losing 50% profit = 50% population lost, yeah?) would leave because they cannot cheat (buy or sell gold), then the in-game economy has LONG been destroyed.
PLENTY of games had a very long life without selling gold themselves. WOW is a horrendous example because they are built on greed. Their strategy was based on making more money, not keeping people happy or eliminating gold sellers. People still sell gold and get away with it in the game. I've seen it. Reported it. Nothing happened.
If they do not let it get out of control in the beginning, then nobody will miss the option. Take a hard stance from the beginning, let the expectation be known, and announce a weekly list of shame when accounts are banned. If someone cries because "they didn't know," have mercy and allow them to create a brand new level 1 account. Install a semi-permanent scanner to the account that continually monitors their gold intake/output.
Scanner could flag them for manual review if they have a one-week burst of income/outflow that is more than 150% of server average.
I guarantee you that there will be VERY minimal RMT buying/selling of gold at that point.
Add to that a robust system that does not allow the use of known third-party VPNs, a system that encrypts data in transit so that a VPN is not needed for security, a reporting system that results in a manual review of accounts, and a keyword scanner that has the intelligence to analyze the related context in the conversation....and I think it would keep a good lid on the situation.
Crazy rough draft of ideas above, but the main concept is sound.
Don't let it become a problem, and nobody will rage quit when the solution is implemented.
Comments
I was reading through your post and I hit this sentence. This is not what I said.
I said there are valid reasons for gold to transfer between characters.
This is the kind of comment that leads me to assume you are under the assumption that Intrepid will know gold seller accounts. Since you have said you do not make that assumption, you then need to understand that it isn't a case of them looking at gold seller accounts, it is a case of them looking at EVERY account. At EVERY transaction (over a certain threshold, no doubt).
This is the reason all of those scenarios need to be considered - Intrepid need to look at them and decide if they are legit or not, without knowing if either account belongs to a gold seller.
I mean, I also agree that there are very few legit reasons for a gold seller to hand off currency to an innocent players account, but that was never a situation I put forward. What I put forward was that there are times when an innocent player trades with another innocent player, and yet to Intrepid that looks literally no different to a gold seller selling to a buyer.
That is the issue. That is why your friend in WoW can get away with buying small amounts of gold (if it was delivered that quickly, it was a small amount). Transactions like that wouldn't even be flagged in WoW - there are thousands (or tens of thousands) of them a week, and only a single digit handful of them would be looked in to.
This is why making a policy of actively going after buyers is simply pointless.
Sure, take action against the buyers you come across - I have literally said this a half dozen times in this thread by now. However, when it comes to resources, any that you spend on trying to lessen gold selling in your game, that is not actually focused on gold sellers, is resources that are wasted.
My guild at the time took on a whole group of players new to EQ2 after leaving L2, saying they had to leave because they couldn't afford how much it cost to buy enough gold to keep up. There was no real policing of it in that game, ass far as they could tell - much like WoW.
This was early to mid 2005 - I can't and won't speak to what it was like before or after that, as this is the only window in to gold buying in that game that I have - but it is not a great view.
Once again - just for you - the scenarios I talk about are valid to bring up in this discussion because this discussion is about gold sellers. You want to ban gold buyers and gold sellers, that's fine, you can want to do that.
However, in doing that, you need to be able to identify a legitimate transaction from a gold selling transaction. It is all well and good saying you want to ban the buyers, but before you do that, you need to find them.
I'm sure you agree with the basic notion that you can not ban a gold buyer until you have found a gold buyer. Since this is true, you need to be able to find gold buyers and distinguish them from people that have simply made transactions in the game.
That is why these scenarios are valid to bring up. Each of them will look exactly the same to Intrepid as a gold seller selling gold to a gold buyer - yet I can't see you throwing up any suggestions for how Intrepid can tell them apart.
Based on your enraged ranting, it would seem that you are perfectly fine with a 50% false positive ratio - where there is an innocent payer banned for every player that buys gold.
I personally don't even think a 5% ratio is acceptable. To that player that gets banned for a false positive, even one case of it is one case too many.
I don't think I've even see anyone in this thread talk about what you're talking about. If it's been talked about, I missed it.
But no one in this thread that I've seen has said anything about looking at every large transaction that takes place in the game and making banning decisions based solely on that. How can you even make any kind of decision on that alone?
By default, I think large transactions SHOULD be tracked. And patterns of transactions that don't make sense. I'd hope Intrepid has a system that flags things that don't exactly look right. Intrepid will know their metrics and what the economy should look like as the game evolves, and what individual players and guild's individual economies should look like, a range of what's normal at the given stage of the game. And so tracking big numbers like that, just keeping an eye on it occasionally could help reveal players engaged in duping, or gold buying. And if they felt strongly enough about numbers that just seemed wildly out of bounds, they could investigate further. It'd be a good tool.
But none of this has anything to do with what I've been talking about.
If you get a large amount of gold or expensive item without gold or an item of equitable worth in trade from a person not in your guild/family group, both get to be auto-flagged as a gold buyer/seller, because they most likely are.
"But then the gold sellers will just join your guild/family to do the trade" some might say. I think that is awesome! The more deterrents and hoops they have to jump through the better! It's also easy enough to see through that. If either party joins shortly before, and leave shortly after, they are most likely gold buyers/sellers and should be flagged as such automatically. And for guilds especially, it's unlikely all the other officers/members are ok with that kind of thing happening.
Obviously the tool to catch that has to be coded into the game if it isn't already, but it's a trivial task that mainly involves querying the database depending on some triggers.
I an all cases a human being should review it before applying the bans, but in most cases there will be no reasonable doubt as to what happened.
Gold sales between long-term guildies are much harder to track and prove, and if they are careful, I don't see them being discovered. I also care much less about those. They are usually lone actors and not organized criminal companies like the big gold sellers, and they don't ruin the game to anywhere near the same degree.
Sure, some gold sellers/buyers might slip through the net, but it's unlikely to be enough to really matter if Intrepid is serious about stopping RMT and P2W in the game. Those unlikely fringe scenarios that have been brought up here aren't hard to solve by a GM with the tools they should have, if both parties cooperate. Players should also be wary of accepting large amounts of gold or expensive items from strangers in general.
There is still room for altruism. Someone gifting mounts to noobs at the starter portals is completely fine. It's easily identifiable and probably would be below the amount needed to flag the action. If a friend joins the game you can still give them a butt ton of gold, because chances are you'll be playing together from then on.
No I mean, large transaction/pattern transaction tracking would be a tool. Like Nerror said, it should be flagged when weird looking shit happens, large transactions with nothing of equal value exchanged, repeated patterns of smaller transactions with nothing of equal value exchanged. So then you can look into that. One guy is a normal looking player on the server, and the guy who never takes anything of value in return in these transactions is a weird looking burner account looking guy. And you dig further, maybe you put an invisible GM tailing the likely gold seller account, maybe he does the same shit with other people. Ban them all. But only when the preponderance of evidence points that way.
You don't just look at a weird transaction and start banning. You'd have to investigate some. There's finite resources of course, but it would be a good tool to get some definite in's on networks. But that wasn't really what I've been talking about this whole time lol
Edit: I really haven't even thought about this much. If it's a level 3 burner looking account that is giving out a lot of money for nothing in return, you probably have a gold seller on your hands, and everyone he's giving to, a gold buyer. In some cases so egregious it probably wouldn't take much investigation at all, and others more investigation would be required. Just depends on the circumstances.
Edit 2: In a way it is what I've been talking about this whole time, confirmed gold seller accounts. However you confirm it, with whatever tracking method or tool, when an account is confirmed to be a gold seller, it's very likely that whoever he's handing money to is a gold buyer, other than ridiculously rare scenarios.
It's not culture in gaming, it's culture in general. And it seems like it's getting worse by the day.
Thankfully, ignorance is bliss.
That's 100% correct.
Every single scenario I have given you has been something that will trigger this that then requires further investigation.
The thing with this is that if we assume it, it means any discussion about a gold sellers account is irrelevant, because that is not something that is known. On the other hand, if Intrepid do indeed know who the gold selling accounts are (due to buying gold), they don't need this systemin the first place.
I still don't understand your line of
Because I have never suggested what you are talking about here could happen. So, we have not talked about this at all - or at least, I have not.
Somewhere there, we had a mix up where you thought we were talking about this as a possibility, and I didn't.
While this is true, we have covered this already.
If you know someone is a gold seller, any account that gets gold off them is likely a gold buyer. However, that doesn't mean that the account in question is even worth the effort to ban - as it is likely a burner (assuming a game that is active in banning gold buyers and sellers). It isn't hard to set up a complex web of transactions that are difficult to unravel - even with tools - and almost impossible to determine who came out with the money.
While you may look at your friend in WoW that just had gold posted to him, you need to remember that this happened in a game that has tens of thousands of gold buyers a month, and only ever looks in to a half dozen or so. Gold buying in that game is so blasé in that game that people don't even care. This is the type of environment I am talking about when I say it is not suitable to just start banning gold buyers - it is the developers fault the game is in that situation, and while it may well be valid for them to opt to take a harsher stance, permanent bans for buying gold in that game is simply no longer appropriate, and never will be again - because of how much Blizzard have dropped the ball.
If a game has a harsher stance on gold selling, people like myself (though to be clear, not actually me) will find ways around it without too much trouble. Since there are - as we have discussed - legitimate reasons for players to transfer wealth from one account to another, all you need to do when buying gold is make the transaction appear to be one of those.
if I were as determined to buy gold in Ashes as I am to run a combat tracker, it would take Intrepid several dozen hours to unravel what I have done, and at the end of it all, they will have no idea which accounts profited from the situation at all.
This is why going after buyers is not a good use of resources. You have no idea how long it will take (admittedly it may only be a few minutes, but it may be days or weeks), and at best you can hope to catch out one person. Go after the seller, and you know you will spend days or weeks on it, but you also know you are pulling out a network.
Even without all of this, if gold sellers need to, they will find ways of transferring wealth to players that are not as easily tracked. Real estate is a fairly solid bet for this (was used in Archeage a bit), as the value of a house or freehold plot will be entirely determined by players, and will have nothing even close to a set value. If gold buyers buy a freehold that often sells for 10k gold, and then "decide" they can pay the tax on it so destroy it, lucky player that just so happens to be walking past at that exact moment, happens to be a citizen of that node and does not have a freehold on their account at all. They found a 10k gold piece of real estate, and they absolutely did so without buying 10k worth of gold from a gold seller!
That player could then keep that freehold, or sell it to someone for around 10k gold. Potentially even to an account from that gold sellers network.
But they should have the tool. It has use for tracking gold selling and other things. If possible they should have another tool that tracks the static wealth of players. Would be useful for catching dupers and gold selling motherlode accounts where larger amounts of gold may be stored. It's just up to them what thresholds in these tools would really trigger an investigation. But tools like these are necessary in my opinion, it's just windows and eyes into your game that you really should have.
I think we did have a couple mix ups in what we thought the other was talking about.
Any account that is caught cheating should be banned, I don't know what you mean by some accounts not being worth the ban. I mean it's up to Intrepid how strict they want to make enforcement, it's just my opinion it should be zero tolerance with fair warning ahead of time. (Other than some exceptions here and there for things I already talked about.)
I agree there's no need for Wow to start a stricter enforcement policy. There aren't really any victims from gold selling in Wow, it's not a competitive game like Ashes will be, and they've gone so long without enforcing anyway so who cares.
This and everything you say after are reasons you cite on why the game shouldn't have a harsh stance on gold selling. I view them as more reason to have a harsh stance on gold selling. Anything that makes gold selling and buying harder, take more time, have more steps, be more expensive, be riskier, exclude more people from doing it, and ultimately reduce the amount of gold selling that will happen, is good to me.
And that's where we just disagree. I mean we couldn't disagree more on this lol. Your reasons of why there shouldn't be a harsh stance are my reasons why there should, part of my reasons at least.
You know the best way to make buying gold riskier, more expensive, harder to get access to, which will ultimately reduce how often it happens?
Get rid of the larger gold selling companies.
Literally nothing else will have the same impact that doing this will have, and as such should be the primary focus of anything Intrepid does in regards to gold sellers.
Get rid of these companies and the only way that people will have left to buy gold will be if the occasional player decides to give it a go.
When a player decides to do this, they won't have the same expertise in hiding their activities that the larger companies do, making it riskier for players. They are most likely to only operate on the server they are playing on, making access to them harder for players.
Now, if you take everything I have said in this thread, and lay it all out in one go, I think you actually agree with what I am saying literally 100%.
I am saying that if a game does such a bad job with gold selling that it just becomes normal, they can't really ban players for buying gold. WoW is the example here, and you have agreed that they shouldn't bother.
I am saying that the first thing Intrepid should do in terms of fighting gold selling is going after the larger companies, hard and fast. Hurt them, cost them money, make them not want to touch Ashes at all. During this time, if you happen upon a buyer, then sure, through some sort of punishment their way, but keep in mind that it is not the focus.
Then, once these companies have left the game due to no profits (and potentially actual losses), start a policy of banning accounts caught buying gold. At this point, all you have left selling gold are amateurs, so Intrepids job from this point on will be easier, and thus cheaper and more effective.
So, each and every part of that you have agreed with - yet you are still arguing against it.
Why?
I've already talked about this. If Intrepid has a plan that wipes out gold sellers in a timely enough fashion, this whole argument has been moot anyway. The problem is solved. I am not convinced they will be able to do that fast enough or fully enough. I would love nothing more than to see it happen though. But I see it more as an ongoing war, especially with Ashes low entry cost to get into the game.
I think we agree on more than what it might appear based on this multi page argument. But not 100% lol.
They absolutely can and in a sense should enforce their TOS against people that break it, regardless of anything else. If they went with a strategy of tracking seller accounts, then only banning the buyers, and just leaving the seller accounts they caught unbanned, that would be very weird and make no sense. But even with a dumb strategy like that, the game would still be better for it. In Wow at this point in it's life cycle and history, if it was my game, no I don't think I'd put much effort into it. Honestly I never would have let it get to the point it's gotten to so it's really hard for me to even comment on it at all. But it's so far gone, it's just like what you gonna do. If the devs don't care and enough of the players either don't know or don't care, who's left to care? The silver lining is that it just doesn't matter as much in Wow as it does in other more competitive games. Still matters though, enough that I would have never let my game get into such a state. New launches like Wow classic I would have tried to stop gold selling. But then I'd be stuck in a double standard with retail Wow, just what an incompetent disaster. It has no bearing on what I'd do in regards to Ashes.
Mostly agree with this. The absolute first thing they should do is infiltrate seller networks, starting day 1 if possible. As soon as a website has a button that you can click to buy gold in Ashes, they should have someone clicking it and setting up the sting ops. Buyers and sellers and farmers identified should be banned.
I think this is the main area of disagreement, which I've explained myself on several times now. As much as I would love it to be the case that sellers are just obliterated so fast and so permanently that nothing else matters, I don't think it will be the case.(A critical point is that it doesn't matter what I or anyone thinks will work. It only matters what we know. And no one knows what exactly will work, it's impossible.) By devoting some resources to going after buyers from the start, at the very least going after the low hanging fruit, you just increase the chance that the strategy of going after sellers eliminates them quickly and more permanently. They're hit on multiple fronts. They're just starved of that much more income, because a number of potential buyers immediately decide against buying because of a stated zero tolerance policy. Buyers who would be repeat buyers during this time frame are potentially banned, that revenue is gone. And the sellers are still being squeezed in every way they would be. It's up to Intrepid to do a cost/benefit analysis of how many resources should go to one or the other. I think the majority of resources should go towards sellers/farmers. But in that process, they will find buyers by default. And they should be banned lol.
We're just going in circles here man. It's kind of silly and pointless. It's been interesting, I think you've raised some interesting points, so have others. But you're just not going to get me to agree to things I disagree with.
However, it is guaranteed to not work if you don't put the effort in.
If Intrepid dedicate the first 6 months of the game being live to dealing with gold sellers rather than gold buyers, there is a chance that it will have a massive impact on the game from then on, or that it will have about the same impact as doing what every other game has done.
There isn't really a possibility of it being less effective.
So, if they did it for the first 6 months and it doesn't work, they have the space to be able to change direction with it.
On the other hand, if they let gold sellers get established in that first 6 months due to not targeting them, then it is too late to make an attempt to do so.
At the end of the day, you are basically arguing that Intrepid do what Blizzard have done in WoW, in the same thread you explain how bad things are in WoW.
No that's exactly not what I'm saying. You can reference page 1, 8th post from the bottom where I say, "Too many companies get away with not policing their game properly. They actively sweep game breaking issues under the rug. They make the business decision that even cheater accounts are still money in the bank for them. And getting rid of them not only loses that money but costs them more in labor costs. I hope Steven changes the game. I think he and Ashes will be rewarded financially for taking a hard line against cheaters."
Or you can reference this page, post 9 from the top where in regards to Wow enforcement I say, "and they've gone so long without enforcing anyway so who cares."
And there's probably other posts in these 8 pages indicating my belief that most companies don't actually try to tackle these issues. And even when they do temporarily because of PR blowback, they eventually stop enforcing to cut costs and because the PR fuss has died down, or because the culture of their shit game actually accepts gold selling now.
You're just making shit up now. I think this conversation has pretty much run its course. We disagree on some things. What a surprise lol. There's some things we agree on though, that's cool.
A part of that is game design, and a part of that is sending a clear message to gold buyers that they will be banned. Less demand, less profit for the gold sellers. You don't find the sellers without also finding the buyers and vice versa. Ignoring those buyers seems stupid, because it is. Those "finite resources" give much better bang for the buck when banning both. It's a really simple concept. All Intrepid need to do is not chicken out like so many other companies have done and keep their promises.
But Blizzard put a LOT of resources in to fighting it - they just put them in the wrong place.
They go after the largest, most suspicious transactions - basically as you suggest.
Their issue is not one of not throwing resources at the problem.
The thing is, from the perspective of one player buying a moderate amount of gold, it appears as if they are not throwing resources at it, and so that is what people think. Buy $2,500 worth of gold though, and watch Blizzard jump straight in.
This is a factor of finite resources, as we have said. When you have finite resources, it appears to many as if you are doing nothing, as those finite resources are not directed in their direction. You simply can't attend to every situation you want to attend to.
And you're just making stuff up again. That's not what I suggested. That strat would probably be used some, along with other strategies.
To be clear, that isn't all that WoW do, but it is the bulk of it. In terms of this discussion (at least right now), where those resources are spent is immaterial.
I'm just checking. You agree WoW is in the state it is in because so many people know someone that buys gold and gets away with it. Correct?
Based on this, the key to your plan working has to be for that to not happen in Ashes. Correct?
What percent of gold buyers being caught do you think would cause this change?
Writing texts (and understanding them as they are intended) is much harder, than to talk directly to each other. Maybe you should consider to meet up in Discord or another Voice Chat. But then again, if you do that, maybe emotions cook up even more than they are doing already, or maybe you start understanding that nothing is black and white.
Well, in the end it is going to be how the Developers want it to be, and either you (and I) can live with how it is going to be, or not. If not, then anyone will have to decide to play or not to play. I am pretty sure that the Developers take what was said into cosideration without you repeating it over and over again.
Fenloh
Yes, text is harder to communicate complex thoughts and opinions with, which is why these things sometimes take several attempts at explaining.
Deal with it.
I saw an interview with a steamer asking this very question and Stephen had a good answer, It they follow through with what they say all we can do it assist them with screen captures and reporting.
It's not my job. It's Intrepid's job. They need to do their job. Everything being talked about here by us forum users is mostly just theory and opinion.
I can't tell you how many times over my 25 years of playing mmos that I've heard first hand, second hand, on forums, though guildies etc, "yeah they banned me for 24 hours but they didn't even confiscate the gold! LOL." For many games, that's called "enforcement." lol. If they even do anything at all, which many really don't in any meaningful way.
I agree with Fenloh. This conversation has gotten ridiculous and is going in circles. Also agree with Noaani, just don't read it then. But I'm definitely pretty much done here myself.
Evorith's comment actually made me check the wiki for the first time during this entire thread.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Currency
Scroll down to Game masters and Security systems, and that's what we've been told so far.
"Security systems will be in place to combat cheating, exploiting, botting, gold selling, item duplication and other things that affect the economy starting from Alpha-0.[22][23][24]
These systems collect user data and flag abnormal activities for inspection. This combined with player reporting functions generates a live "heat map" that draws attention to unusual behavior.[24]
Players caught cheating will be banned.[24]"
Well that all sounds great, sounds like things other games have said too, hopefully it works. I don't think it will catch everything, nothing will. But most importantly, hopefully they actually enforce it.
This is also said:
Following a standard approach to an escalation system where certain infractions are immediate and automatic bans and some infractions provide a path forward where action is taken that might ban the account or strip the account or provide some chat bans or the ability to play over a week or so... If you buy gold and depending on the the seriousness of the infraction you could go anywhere from being stripped and to being banned for a period of time to being permanently banned.[21] – Steven Sharif
So It doesn't look like there will be definite perma bans in all cases, but there will be perma bans. Confiscating the gold, even sending a player into a negative gold balance, is critical, and it looks like they'll be doing that.
And this issue is so very important because of this quote, also on the same page:
Money will play a big part in the in-game. However, with that being said, there are organizational specific currencies that can't be traded. So there is like a general gold that will be very important end-game, but then there's also your progression within certain religions, societies, or nodes will also have... there will be progression-based currencies as well.[2] – Steven Sharif
This quote gives me hope:
The direction that I'm taking Intrepid as a company in is that a significant portion of the revenue created by the game goes into not only creating additional content and updates for the game but also goes into I think caretaking, as I like to call it; and that caretaking is multiple things: It's having active and present GM's on servers. It's having a an interacting community team that is always present and on-call for participating in forum discussions and streams and updates.[21] – Steven Sharif
That's what I like to see. Some of the money being made by the game (a significant amount) is designated for anti-cheating, not all just for company profits or pumping out new cheater riddled content. This will pay dividends for them going forward.
The only developers I have known to take action on accounts for buying gold, yet don't confiscate that gold, are companies that are afraid of legal action if they did that. I don't believe any situation like this has been taken to court yet, but I do know threats for doing exactly that have been made in the past.
Situations like this don't just happen without a reason.
This is just one more of the aspects that developers/publishers need to keep in mind with gold sellers in their game, and is just one more reason why I strongly believe the best action to take is any action that has a chance to make gold selling companies not want to operate in your game.
I'm all for Intrepid spending money on enforcing the rules, but the other thing to keep in mind with that is that every dollar spent on enforcing these rules is a dollar that is not spent on new content for the game. As such, taking the cheapest path to arrive at an acceptable position is the best option here - which again is attempting to make those companies not want to operate in the game. Not needing to enforce a rule because it is not being broken (or needing to enforce is 90% less because you got rid of 90% of the opportunities to break it) will always be the cheapest option.
I honestly don't see any angle where taking a reasonable shot at getting rid of these companies is not the best option - other than the angle of wanting people to actually be able to buy gold easily in the game.
lol to gold buyers taking companies to court because their TOS breaking gold was confiscated. And any competent TOS would shield the company from liability against any unwarranted seizure of in game gold. The companies authority in their own game would be near absolute.
You know what some companies need to be taken to court for? Not fulfilling their responsibility to provide the cheat free experience their customers reasonably expect. But even that case would be dubious at best.
Non issue. You have your opinions, I have mine. I'm done arguing about it.
Anything you have a legal right to do in your country, an EULA can not take that right away from you.
Even when they have a clause that says any legal action must be under a specific jurisdiction isn't legally enforceable.
This is why no MMO company to date has had their EULA/ToS challenged in court.
I mean, I agree that the notion is amusing. Doesn't mean it isn't potentially legally sound.
I get what you are saying about why developers should be taken to court - but I have to assume you are aware that they have no legal obligation to ensure their game is cheat free.
Clearly. They would have been sued a long time ago.
Nah, I enjoy my current career.
If I were going to do something like this, it would have to be something I am actually interested in.
The right to use my computer as I wish (aka, combat trackers) is far more interesting, to me.
lol I'm JK I don't care about them too much one way or the other
What about 87?
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45612/dps-meter-megathread/p87
I appreciate your effort in thinking through the problems and solutions.
I do, however, think that simply "Intrepid should just sell gold" is not truly the best solution.
If, as you say, 50% of the population (monthly sub losing 50% profit = 50% population lost, yeah?) would leave because they cannot cheat (buy or sell gold), then the in-game economy has LONG been destroyed.
PLENTY of games had a very long life without selling gold themselves. WOW is a horrendous example because they are built on greed. Their strategy was based on making more money, not keeping people happy or eliminating gold sellers. People still sell gold and get away with it in the game. I've seen it. Reported it. Nothing happened.
If they do not let it get out of control in the beginning, then nobody will miss the option. Take a hard stance from the beginning, let the expectation be known, and announce a weekly list of shame when accounts are banned. If someone cries because "they didn't know," have mercy and allow them to create a brand new level 1 account. Install a semi-permanent scanner to the account that continually monitors their gold intake/output.
Scanner could flag them for manual review if they have a one-week burst of income/outflow that is more than 150% of server average.
I guarantee you that there will be VERY minimal RMT buying/selling of gold at that point.
Add to that a robust system that does not allow the use of known third-party VPNs, a system that encrypts data in transit so that a VPN is not needed for security, a reporting system that results in a manual review of accounts, and a keyword scanner that has the intelligence to analyze the related context in the conversation....and I think it would keep a good lid on the situation.
Crazy rough draft of ideas above, but the main concept is sound.
Don't let it become a problem, and nobody will rage quit when the solution is implemented.