I think the OP was more curious about how to stop RMT beyond just "banning" it and the few people that happen to get caught here and there.
To be fair, I'm sure solutions exist that would nearly eliminate RMT, but the problem is the solutions would be so privacy invasive or cumbersome that people wouldn't like them.
That's my opinion anyways.
As for talking about a topic more than once, if you don't like the topic or have nothing to add, I'd personally just avoid a thread. It's the nature of forums for people to discuss the same topic multiple times.
It's not "wrong" to post a thread without searching through a pile of old threads for the perfect one to bump, and then you'd likely get called out for resurrecting an old thread anyways.
I think the OP was more curious about how to stop RMT beyond just "banning" it and the few people that happen to get caught here and there.
To be fair, I'm sure solutions exist that would nearly eliminate RMT, but the problem is the solutions would be so privacy invasive or cumbersome that people wouldn't like them.
That's my opinion anyways.
As for talking about a topic more than once, if you don't like the topic or have nothing to add, I'd personally just avoid a thread. It's the nature of forums for people to discuss the same topic multiple times.
It's not "wrong" to post a thread without searching through a pile of old threads for the perfect one to bump, and then you'd likely get called out for resurrecting an old thread anyways.
Its not so much discussing RMT's again that is frustrating. Its the acting like the concept of RMT's makes intrepid's "no pay to win" advertisment fraudulent. This is literally purposely miss-defining pay to win. And a very very pointless argument. If you want to discuss RMT's and their risk, get over this crappy argument, and actually discuss RMT's
But that's the thing though. At which point does a definition become completely false? If any form of rmt is considered p2w, then even getting another account for the game would be p2w because it allows you to do more stuff than someone who only has their own account (that's if we don't even consider having the game in the first place as p2w, cause some people can't afford it and "lose" as the result). Do we now have to forbid having more than one account?
P2W has always meant "devs are officially selling smth that gives you an in-game advantage". And rmt has always been "an illegal trade of real money for in-game smth". But somehow those two are now equal? To me that sounds a bit crazy.
pay to win
NOUN
UNCOUNTABLE
/ˌpeɪ tə ˈwɪn/
DEFINITIONS1
1
in online gaming, the practice of buying in-game items that give a player a very big advantage over others.
Ok - focusing on RMT, and ignoring the P2W assertion;
I imagine you could monitor trades for currency exchanges, and set an algorithm to flag identifiable patterns that would indicate the selling / buying of gold. I’m not sure if this is similar to basic monitoring on wire transfers for fraudulent activity, but it seems likely. So you could look at transaction rates, amounts, and locations - but would need a way to unwind these types of transactions from Artisan trades.
Once you flag those accounts (both sides), suspension / banning seems like the only way to stop the bleeding.
Idk - I’m not a security expert, but I’d venture Intrepid would be identifying the latest best practices in game management and maybe other industries that have applicable practices.
I could argue that while RMT is always going to exist to some degree, BUT that it could be more of a detrimental impact in AoC than in previous MMOs
Intrepid has said that crafters will be the ones making THE BEST SHIT, not random dungeon drops. So if I have a lot of gold from RMT I can buy all the materials in the world I want or need to make all the best gear in the world... Therefore P2W.
Unlike a game like wow where it doesn't matter how much gold I have I still can't buy a certain drop from a raid boss.
I could argue that while RMT is always going to exist to some degree, BUT that it could be more of a detrimental impact in AoC than in previous MMOs
Intrepid has said that crafters will be the ones making THE BEST SHIT, not random dungeon drops. So if I have a lot of gold from RMT I can buy all the materials in the world I want or need to make all the best gear in the world... Therefore P2W.
Unlike a game like wow where it doesn't matter how much gold I have I still can't buy a certain drop from a raid boss.
you are correct. If you had gold in ashes, you could buy gear with that gold.
Now, answer me this.... are RMT's allowed in ashes of creation?
And after someone answers that for me ill ask, is p2w in ashes of creation?
And can we move forward from this rediculous argument?
This argument has already been refuted so many times it's like beating a dead horse, but nonetheless I enjoy chuckling at the mental gymnastics people do to argue that P2W is the same as something that's literally against ToS and will get you permanently banned if you get caught.
It must be interesting not to have a basic understanding of logic, life must be so much simpler.
Intrepid has said that crafters will be the ones making THE BEST SHIT, not random dungeon drops. So if I have a lot of gold from RMT I can buy all the materials in the world I want or need to make all the best gear in the world... Therefore P2W.
All that Intrepid need to is track repetitive player activity in the same region with relation to the amount of certificates/materials on the character's person. Flag anyone who spends too much time farming the same mobs or gathering the same mats (if that's gonna be even possible) and then have a GM check that player for "botness".
Mobs won't be dropping gold and instead will drop certificates that must be traded for gold in a node. You just track any big amounts of certs exchanges (on top of tracking big amounts on players), flag the player who made the exchange and then look at his trading logs before and after the exchange. And this way you'll most likely catch quite a few bot networks (including the final buyers).
There's a few ways of going around that kind of process, but at least the ones I can come up with would require a ton of accounts, a ton of manual labor and a ton of risk on top of all that. All of which would increase the price of rmt gold drastically, which would already cut down the amount of potential rmters in the game. And if you then track sudden changes in gold amounts on players, you'd make all the buyers work way harder to "launder" the money properly, which kinda defeats the point of "I pay money and I get what I want".
Alternatively rmters could go down the route of trading pure pieces of gear for real money, but this could be tracked by linking market prices of gear to that gear's value and then tracking sudden changes in character evaluations (i.e. got too much expensive gear out of nowhere).
In other words, you just need a proper AI algorithm and active GMs that have great tools. Obviously you won't stop 100% of rmt, but you'll decrease it by so damn much that it'll just be unnoticeable.
The language we use affects the way we think about the world. Paying to win does not mean in game cash shop and it never has. The words are evident at face value. Real money trading doesn't have to refer to video games at all and neither does paying to win. If everyone understands the marketing for what it is, then that is fine, but at face value paying to win in a game with real money would be real money trading, no matter how that is accomplished. You could pay someone to throw a guild war, or give you their guild bank, or any matter of bribery with other players. It doesn't have to involve bots and gold sellers, but you are conditioned to think this way.
When Steven uses the tag-line "no pay to win" to market the game, this doesn't just mean no in-game cash shop to a reasonable person, it means no pay to win.
I don't think we have a good way to separate a virtual economy from our real life economy entirely (at least yet). I did get linked to the security section of the wiki which has a quote from 2 years ago regarding the most reasonable expectation: data analysis and investigation into anomalies. This still isn't a solution for a game with no pay to win, but it is at least acknowledgement of the challenges to move more in that direction.
I mean a perfect example of being willing to discuss things is right there in taaku's thread. Discussing nearly the exact same issues. Its just taaku is willing to forgo ignorant stances to actually accept useful information.
The thread seemed to devolve quickly about semantics of RMT and P2W.
The first few responses to the OP called gold selling not a big deal, and then the OP got upset because they do not like gold selling.
I mean, if the community at large feels gold selling is just a way of life, then I can see this MMO ending up in the same place as all other MMOs, no matter how well designed the systems.
I'm done talking in this thread now because the "argument" has been won and P2W is now defined by the victors.
I learned much about the attitudes of the AoC community from this discussion though.
Real money trading (RMT) or buying in game currency with real world money is going to be available to anyone with expendable income.
If you have a legal way to stop people in real life making deals with their own money that affect the game please post below.
How do you prove that a trade in-game was legit or the result of RMT?
Is there a tenable solution that the community would find acceptable?
I read one post that talked about how the Chinese tie their social security numbers to their accounts (crazy).
So, it seems to me that you are asking if any of us have a way to stop third party RMT in an MMORPG.
All I will say is that any way to actually stop it would be an idea that is literally worth millions of dollars to the right people. If I had an idea that I thought could achieve this, I wouldn't be posting about it here.
There is no way OP isn't trolling, i refuse to believe OP is trying to push a fallacy of false equivalence between RMT and P2W as being equals or even directly related to disregard Intrepid's compromise of no-P2W as a main core aspect of their game.
The language we use affects the way we think about the world. Paying to win does not mean in game cash shop and it never has. The words are evident at face value. Real money trading doesn't have to refer to video games at all and neither does paying to win. If everyone understands the marketing for what it is, then that is fine, but at face value paying to win in a game with real money would be real money trading, no matter how that is accomplished. You could pay someone to throw a guild war, or give you their guild bank, or any matter of bribery with other players. It doesn't have to involve bots and gold sellers, but you are conditioned to think this way.
When Steven uses the tag-line "no pay to win" to market the game, this doesn't just mean no in-game cash shop to a reasonable person, it means no pay to win.
I don't think we have a good way to separate a virtual economy from our real life economy entirely (at least yet). I did get linked to the security section of the wiki which has a quote from 2 years ago regarding the most reasonable expectation: data analysis and investigation into anomalies. This still isn't a solution for a game with no pay to win, but it is at least acknowledgement of the challenges to move more in that direction.
I mean if you're going to dig into it that hard, then all MMOs are pay to win.
People who can play more often or more consistently will get more and better stuff.
If we say that money = time
We can then operate under the assumption that someone who is a millionaire and didn't have to go to work, and could pay for people to do everything else for them (cook, clean, etc.)
Then they could devote all of their free time to the game and get all the best stuff to win...
So sure, there's that if you want to think that way.
Or we can just hear "no P2W in ashes" and take it as there won't be a cash shop to buy gold, exp boosts, or anything else like that. Which would be the sane thing to do.
I think the OP was more curious about how to stop RMT beyond just "banning" it and the few people that happen to get caught here and there.
From reading their drivel, I think they're actually more curious about how it works so that they can take part in it themselves. For anyone not interested in taking part in gold-buying/selling, the specific counters and techniques are irrelevant. You only need to know the exact specifics if you're going to be trying to break a way around them.
At some point I have to believe that this is some sort of concentrated effort to have at a ton of threads about the same thing, with no one bothering to read any of the information on the other threads, wiki, or any videos.
So hey, the game's not out. STFU about RMT. Let's focus on actually having a game worth the sub and which would be good enough for RMTs to even consider investing time and resources on it.
Comments
To be fair, I'm sure solutions exist that would nearly eliminate RMT, but the problem is the solutions would be so privacy invasive or cumbersome that people wouldn't like them.
That's my opinion anyways.
As for talking about a topic more than once, if you don't like the topic or have nothing to add, I'd personally just avoid a thread. It's the nature of forums for people to discuss the same topic multiple times.
It's not "wrong" to post a thread without searching through a pile of old threads for the perfect one to bump, and then you'd likely get called out for resurrecting an old thread anyways.
You don't need blockchain to have a database.
No one can modify the data unless Intrepid literally got fully hacked.
I have it on good authority that blockchain and NFTs are the future of MMO's.
You better start building a mining server cluster so you can crypto-game, or you'll be left in the dust.
The future is now.
Its not so much discussing RMT's again that is frustrating. Its the acting like the concept of RMT's makes intrepid's "no pay to win" advertisment fraudulent. This is literally purposely miss-defining pay to win. And a very very pointless argument. If you want to discuss RMT's and their risk, get over this crappy argument, and actually discuss RMT's
Everyone has a different definition of P2W.
I don't think being unable to fully stop RMT makes a game P2W, but the OP apparently does if I'm reading their posts correctly?
Minimizing RMT is about the best any MMO can do.
P2W has always meant "devs are officially selling smth that gives you an in-game advantage". And rmt has always been "an illegal trade of real money for in-game smth". But somehow those two are now equal? To me that sounds a bit crazy.
Its just a flawed argument, that the guy wont step away from. And a discussion cant even happen until they move on from that point.
I found this:
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/pay-to-win#:~:text=pay to win Definitions,the desire to play anymore
pay to win
NOUN
UNCOUNTABLE
/ˌpeɪ tə ˈwɪn/
DEFINITIONS1
1
in online gaming, the practice of buying in-game items that give a player a very big advantage over others.
I imagine you could monitor trades for currency exchanges, and set an algorithm to flag identifiable patterns that would indicate the selling / buying of gold. I’m not sure if this is similar to basic monitoring on wire transfers for fraudulent activity, but it seems likely. So you could look at transaction rates, amounts, and locations - but would need a way to unwind these types of transactions from Artisan trades.
Once you flag those accounts (both sides), suspension / banning seems like the only way to stop the bleeding.
Idk - I’m not a security expert, but I’d venture Intrepid would be identifying the latest best practices in game management and maybe other industries that have applicable practices.
I think this is the generally agreed upon gamer definition of P2W.
Intrepid has said that crafters will be the ones making THE BEST SHIT, not random dungeon drops. So if I have a lot of gold from RMT I can buy all the materials in the world I want or need to make all the best gear in the world... Therefore P2W.
Unlike a game like wow where it doesn't matter how much gold I have I still can't buy a certain drop from a raid boss.
you are correct. If you had gold in ashes, you could buy gear with that gold.
Now, answer me this.... are RMT's allowed in ashes of creation?
And after someone answers that for me ill ask, is p2w in ashes of creation?
And can we move forward from this rediculous argument?
It must be interesting not to have a basic understanding of logic, life must be so much simpler.
Mobs won't be dropping gold and instead will drop certificates that must be traded for gold in a node. You just track any big amounts of certs exchanges (on top of tracking big amounts on players), flag the player who made the exchange and then look at his trading logs before and after the exchange. And this way you'll most likely catch quite a few bot networks (including the final buyers).
There's a few ways of going around that kind of process, but at least the ones I can come up with would require a ton of accounts, a ton of manual labor and a ton of risk on top of all that. All of which would increase the price of rmt gold drastically, which would already cut down the amount of potential rmters in the game. And if you then track sudden changes in gold amounts on players, you'd make all the buyers work way harder to "launder" the money properly, which kinda defeats the point of "I pay money and I get what I want".
Alternatively rmters could go down the route of trading pure pieces of gear for real money, but this could be tracked by linking market prices of gear to that gear's value and then tracking sudden changes in character evaluations (i.e. got too much expensive gear out of nowhere).
In other words, you just need a proper AI algorithm and active GMs that have great tools. Obviously you won't stop 100% of rmt, but you'll decrease it by so damn much that it'll just be unnoticeable.
When Steven uses the tag-line "no pay to win" to market the game, this doesn't just mean no in-game cash shop to a reasonable person, it means no pay to win.
I don't think we have a good way to separate a virtual economy from our real life economy entirely (at least yet). I did get linked to the security section of the wiki which has a quote from 2 years ago regarding the most reasonable expectation: data analysis and investigation into anomalies. This still isn't a solution for a game with no pay to win, but it is at least acknowledgement of the challenges to move more in that direction.
... or offer substantive well-thought rationale for their "Pay-To-Win" claims (that's the thread title isn't it?).
Whether RMT meets the "definition" of P2W isn't the core issue people have with MMOs today.
The issue people have expressed is that people can and will be Paying money, through RMT, to Win advantage in MMOs.
The effectiveness of anti bot systems is what people care about, not chest thumping about some marketing gimmicks about a game being P2W or not P2W.
The first few responses to the OP called gold selling not a big deal, and then the OP got upset because they do not like gold selling.
I mean, if the community at large feels gold selling is just a way of life, then I can see this MMO ending up in the same place as all other MMOs, no matter how well designed the systems.
I'm done talking in this thread now because the "argument" has been won and P2W is now defined by the victors.
I learned much about the attitudes of the AoC community from this discussion though.
Take care.
So, it seems to me that you are asking if any of us have a way to stop third party RMT in an MMORPG.
All I will say is that any way to actually stop it would be an idea that is literally worth millions of dollars to the right people. If I had an idea that I thought could achieve this, I wouldn't be posting about it here.
Aren't we all sinners?
- Theres no magical "win" because a player bought gold or an item in game, a player still actually have to be good at the game to win anything.
- IS can set up blockchain technology to track everything in terms of gear and gold.
I mean if you're going to dig into it that hard, then all MMOs are pay to win.
People who can play more often or more consistently will get more and better stuff.
If we say that money = time
We can then operate under the assumption that someone who is a millionaire and didn't have to go to work, and could pay for people to do everything else for them (cook, clean, etc.)
Then they could devote all of their free time to the game and get all the best stuff to win...
So sure, there's that if you want to think that way.
Or we can just hear "no P2W in ashes" and take it as there won't be a cash shop to buy gold, exp boosts, or anything else like that. Which would be the sane thing to do.
From reading their drivel, I think they're actually more curious about how it works so that they can take part in it themselves. For anyone not interested in taking part in gold-buying/selling, the specific counters and techniques are irrelevant. You only need to know the exact specifics if you're going to be trying to break a way around them.
Shame on you, OP.
Shaaaaaaame.
So hey, the game's not out. STFU about RMT. Let's focus on actually having a game worth the sub and which would be good enough for RMTs to even consider investing time and resources on it.
/tinfoil hat
Im in a tinfoil suit right now, not just a hat.