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Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
How to stop RMT
Meryen
Member
I played a single MMO for 12 years, this game was open source and every single person could create a server and modify it. After playing like 300 different servers, I kinda saw everything that is possible. Now, that's what can stop RMT.
1. In order to be able to use the "Trade" function you have to reach level 15 and complete a certain quest that will grant you this right
2. The amount of gold that can be traded is limited to 500 gold, in this way you can keep trading certain items/materials , let's say you give me 5 orc ears and I will give you 200 gold and 20 grand metals
3. The amount of "free" gold that you can hold in your inventory is limited, let's say that the maximum is 1k, once you reach that 1k the game will transform 500 gold into a gold bar, gold bars are not tradeable
4. In order to use that gold bar you have to go to an NPC (like a bank) that will exchange your gold bars into AoC Gold which is also not tradeable using the Trade function, besides that, the bank will take a 1% commission for that transaction, and that 1% will go the the node.
5. The auction house will function only with AoC gold, while other stuff like weapon stores, item evolution fees etc, will function with both AoC gold and normal gold.(1 gold= 1 AoC gold)
6. Assign an AoC gold value to every item in-game, edit: if the economy is too volatile it can be done by calculating the value of similar/identical items and making an average. Let's say there are 30 item X on the market from different people, but one item is listed at a 20x higher price than the average, and somebody bought that item, not only that, but the same account has bought multiple items at a very high price compared with the average value of that type of item.
7. Flag an account that has bought multiple items from the same person by paying 5-6x+ the value of that items, for example somebody has bought 10 Great Swords with an assigned value of 2k AoC gold each, but they paid 30-40k for each. The game will automatically flag that account with RMT and a GM will have to review this transactions. If the RMT is clear, both, the one that sold the items and the account that has bought those items should be banned.
By making the AoC gold non tradeable, the bots won't be able to move gold from one account to another without using the auction house, and if they buy multiple items at a 5-6-7x greater value the game will flag them again with RMT.
Thoughts on this and how it can be improved?
1. In order to be able to use the "Trade" function you have to reach level 15 and complete a certain quest that will grant you this right
2. The amount of gold that can be traded is limited to 500 gold, in this way you can keep trading certain items/materials , let's say you give me 5 orc ears and I will give you 200 gold and 20 grand metals
3. The amount of "free" gold that you can hold in your inventory is limited, let's say that the maximum is 1k, once you reach that 1k the game will transform 500 gold into a gold bar, gold bars are not tradeable
4. In order to use that gold bar you have to go to an NPC (like a bank) that will exchange your gold bars into AoC Gold which is also not tradeable using the Trade function, besides that, the bank will take a 1% commission for that transaction, and that 1% will go the the node.
5. The auction house will function only with AoC gold, while other stuff like weapon stores, item evolution fees etc, will function with both AoC gold and normal gold.(1 gold= 1 AoC gold)
6. Assign an AoC gold value to every item in-game, edit: if the economy is too volatile it can be done by calculating the value of similar/identical items and making an average. Let's say there are 30 item X on the market from different people, but one item is listed at a 20x higher price than the average, and somebody bought that item, not only that, but the same account has bought multiple items at a very high price compared with the average value of that type of item.
7. Flag an account that has bought multiple items from the same person by paying 5-6x+ the value of that items, for example somebody has bought 10 Great Swords with an assigned value of 2k AoC gold each, but they paid 30-40k for each. The game will automatically flag that account with RMT and a GM will have to review this transactions. If the RMT is clear, both, the one that sold the items and the account that has bought those items should be banned.
By making the AoC gold non tradeable, the bots won't be able to move gold from one account to another without using the auction house, and if they buy multiple items at a 5-6-7x greater value the game will flag them again with RMT.
Thoughts on this and how it can be improved?
1
Comments
How about calculating the value of similar/identical items and making an average? Let's say there are 30 item X on the market from different people, but one item is listed at a 20x higher price than the average, and somebody bought that item, not only that , but the same account has bought multiple items at a very high price compared with the average value of that type of item.
Interesting.
Is there a reason why this has to go through AH? (is it impossible to flag p2p trade?)
Also: "a GM will have to review this transactions"
I have a feeling this is not feasible. Probs need to train an AI to handle the bulk of the work and have GM's do random spot checks. (but how to generate the data for training? RIP)
I think that this suggestion is too nuanced for me to have an 'analytical' perspective on it...
But I hate BDO's system, and I hate the economy type it creates.
Well, here's a simple problem with this to consider then.
Games tend to be more social and have stronger economies (which is one of the goals of Ashes) when players can pay each other directly for Services, not just items, and also when they can just gift items to friends.
On the scale of a single transaction, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to determine which one of those two things has happened, versus 'this is an RMT arrangement'. For example, lots of games have 'powerleveling' options where one player simply does the fighting and another is allowed to tag along and just receive XP, and this is a paid service.
Ashes is definitely a game where RMT would easily function on both sides of this service. Some accounts with the job of 'raising the levels of others' (which you could pay for with Real Money) and others who 'pay large amounts of ingame gold for this service' (but are really just giving the money that the other player bought via RMT).
Fighting RMT is complicated in a game where social interaction freedom and economic incentives are supposed to be interconnected. Using the methods you described tend to go against that, without making the game better.
It is my opinion that 'RMT problems' shouldn't be targeted at this level, there are other, better 'points in the chain' to target, and for at least one (if not two) of those target points, making the changes suggested actively makes it harder to do.
I don't really think that those who aren't PVP fans will care about RMT that much, if you just want a game to play , do role playing or stuff like that, yeah, who cares about the guys who are buying tons of gold, also the corruption thing is pretty hardcore, and I believe this thing will stop those PVP fans from killing green players. Personally I'm a PVP fan, and when I play a MMO, I want to be the best when it comes to PVP, I don't want to kill random people, but I would like to duel a lot, and I'm not the only one, like Steven said, if you want to be the best, you have to do what others are doing in order to keep up with the game(even he said that he used RMT as well), and having this P2P trading freedom just invites the whales to engage in such activities, I used to do the same, why would I waste my time farming months when I can just drop some money and get it. I also agree with your main point, the game didn't reach the point where this type of things are a problem, they have other things to worry about ,but yeah, is nice to have a few discussions here and there.
Edit: I agree with you when it comes to the goal of AoC as a game, I find this concept really beautiful, having a lot of freedom, doing a lot of trades , paying for services, helping friends and stuff like that,but they really have to think about the PVP side as well.
The 'other type' of player that cares about RMT is the 'Merchant' player. You could consider it 'the player who does PvP but only for economics' (I am partially this but I prefer to 'PvP in both', I guess I am 'True PvX' moreso though).
Just pointing out that, even if I am rare, I care a LOT about RMT, but if a game solves RMT by removing the 'Merchant PvP' then I literally can't 'play it for the same purpose' and I'll look for a game that provides that (because I play other games for PvP anyway).
I don't know if 'stopping RMT affecting PvP-focused players' is worth 'dumbing down the economy' in Ashes' case, I only know that if it happens, I probably wouldn't see a point in playing the game then.
Have a algorithm just like steven has said that auto detects abnormal trades / AH / mail activity and investigate those accounts.
"limiting players to gold caps", your gold is still there, you can use it for everything still, the main thing is that you cannot trade big amounts of gold through the P2P trading system, you can still buy items, materials and so on through the AH, you can still trade items through the P2P system. I agree that this thing hurts MMOs somehow, and I really hope that they will find a solution. What Steven said is cheap talk, every single game said the absolute same thing about bots and RMT and guess what, you can't stop it with such things. I haven't played a single game in the last 5 years , I just saw AoC on a random youtube video and I was like WOW, this thing sounds amazing, I think I will come back to playing MMOs , so, I am not a hater at all, I hope AoC becomes the best game ever but I would like AoC to implement something that will actually work.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Economy
PvE players in Ashes will care as much about RMT as PvP players will.
That said, in my experience, PvP players seem to consider the acronym "RMT" to be little more than a valid insult to throw out any time they lose in PvP.
If I had a hundred dollars for every time I heard a variation of "you suck at PvP, you only beat me because of your gear, if I RMT'd like you, you wouldn't stand a chance" in games, I'd have enough to make my own MMO.
Which MMO? And you definitely did not kinda see everything that is possible.
Respectfully, your ideas are mostly awful.
TL;DR: if you think of something to combat RMT which hurts the game and/or legit players as collateral damage, then it's a dogshit idea.
There's been plenty of discussions in these forums regarding RMT and many ideas on how to combat it, much better than yours let me tell you that, have been shared. I trust Steven won't destroy his game by limiting gameplay to combat RMT like some games did in the past. Instead, Intrepid will hopefully invest time and money to create software that detects suspicious activity quickly and have dozens of people working exclusively on investigating said activity.
Last but not least, if you make it extra hard for people who got banned to create new accounts, that's extremely effective. In this day and age, there's many ways of detecting if the same person (or the same PC, really) is playing the game after getting banned, even if you use a MAC spoofer, VPN or VMs. Hopefully Intrepid has some devs with the skill to help implement some quite interesting techniques to detect if the same PC is still being used after an account got banned for RMT and automatically flag the new accounts to be investigated sooner rather than later.
At the end of the day, things like cheats and RMT will never stop, it'll always happen. You just gotta make sure that people who do it regret it a lot, or else they'll never stop and move on to a different game where it's easier to do it.
I'm reminded of the red mist phenomenon in Call of Duty. There's an allure for some to spend extra money on weapons after a game is released. Its a lovely experience to kill said people with the generic weapons lol.
The 'other type' of player that cares about RMT is the 'Merchant' player. You could consider it 'the player who does PvP but only for economics' (I am partially this but I prefer to 'PvP in both', I guess I am 'True PvX' moreso though).
Just pointing out that, even if I am rare, I care a LOT about RMT, but if a game solves RMT by removing the 'Merchant PvP' then I literally can't 'play it for the same purpose' and I'll look for a game that provides that (because I play other games for PvP anyway).
I don't know if 'stopping RMT affecting PvP-focused players' is worth 'dumbing down the economy' in Ashes' case, I only know that if it happens, I probably wouldn't see a point in playing the game then.[/quote]
Huh, at least have some respect for my time kid , I just gave an example, didn't shoot anyone, what makes you think that gold will be useless? If gold is a need for everything you do in game, how will it become useless? By not letting people trade 5 million gold using the P2P trading system? And wtf made you think that orc ears will become the new currency, will you be able to be a top player by having 100k orc ears?, how tf can a random material that is needed 10 times in the game became the new currency? it was just a random example of a trade. The idea was to make players use the AH more when selling/buying expensive materials/items, that's it. Anyway, at least you understood the pattern recognition idea. You have a disastrous deduction overall. Let's say you are a fkin RMT provider and you choose AoC, you have to pay for each account that you make, AoC is not free, second thing, you have to level up the bots, then the money that you make with that account, can't be moved easily, you can't just transfer to another bot account gold just like that, would you make a bot account that will farm gold and stop at 900, then transfer 500 to another account, and then make another 400 and transfer that to another account and so on? If gold is transformed into something that cannot be traded using the P2P trading system once your amount of gold from your inventory reaches a certain limit, how are the bots able to move that gold? By using the auction house, and here the pattern recognition can do its job. Why would they waste so much frikin time and money on different accounts and leveling them up and not being able to transfer big amounts of gold without having to use a system that is actually tracking them? I have read the RMT discussion and it's nothing good,maybe it sounds better to you, but it doesn't mean that will actually solve anything.
Holy shit, that wall of text was so annoying to read. I wonder how old you are by calling me a kid, maybe that was you trying to say that my answer was on point so now you need some good old ad hominem, who knows.
Regardless, your "examples" are quite thin, easy to refute with examples both from other games and from real life. My disastrous deductions were only enabled by your disastrous ideas, so I really don't mind especially because I could just say "I just gave an example, I didn't shoot anyone". It's all right though, none of your disastrous suggestions will be implemented anyway, and pattern recognition AI was going to happen regardless.
Speaking of pattern recognition and machine learning, it's a bit hilarious to see that you seem to think it needs to analyze only the AH/Marketplace. Don't get me wrong, detecting anomalies in the AH will be effective, but if you had a better understanding of how pattern recognition works you'd realize it's probably more effective to run it against P2P trades.
In any case, it's cute to see you saying that gold farmers, bots or not, would then have to move wealth using the AH. You either don't know how AHs will work in this game or you're extremely new/naïve to MMORPGs (apart from your 12 years of experience on your single MMO, which I would still like to know the name as I'm genuinely interested). I just remember and think about how many ways I've seen people transferring gold in many different games, for example during the times where P2P trade was extremely limited in RuneScape (news flash, it didn't work and RMT was rampant) but I digress, your plan is failproof.
TL;DR: if you suggest anything to combat RMT which hurts the game and/or legit players as collateral damage, then it's a dogshit idea.
Cheers
Only game I know of that fits the description - though I am unsure about 300 different servers.
If no Box Fee, then 60 days fee to start instead of 30.
The cost of an account is only relevant when a new account is needed. A new account is only really needed when an old account was banned. When an account is banned, the RMT seller loses thousands of dollars in product that the account is holding, or that is being held on easily identifiable ancillary accounts.
When an account can have thousands of dollars worth of product on it, an additional $15 to start said account isn't really a hurdle.
This is it. Basically once they start rolling the upfront fees have little to no impact on large scale, professional RMT. This only really impacts the small scale/solo players that cant generate enough farmed currency and sell it properly to fuel their operations.
So ultimately the best solutions to RMT will be those that can quickly identify it and remove it.
Past guild was anti-botting and RMT, it was a condition of joining the guild that you did not and should you be found to bot or undertake RMT you were booted from the clan.. and if it was deemed sufficiently bad, then it was followed with a good amount of pk`ing (de-levelling) and alliances with like mind would not pick up said player
Don`t need dev`s to help all the time!