Ideas on goldsellers and ban that feels?

Greetings all.
This post more adressed to the developers but can be interesting to read feedback from others.
I have been thinking of this for a long time and when I saw 'TheLazyPeon' video on banning I took the courage to type here.
If you havent seen that video it was mainly about if Intrepid Studios want to make this ultimate RPG MMO then it needs to be clean from gold selling and real consequences for those trying to cheat or break gamerules.
I can agree on this 100% when comes to not give like 2 weeks banning as a penalty because that wont stop anything.
What are your thoughts on this?
Also how will Intrepid prevent that different channels where you can type and chat wont be a non stop spamming on websites selling in game currency or items (not sure if they adressed it to be impossible to to this).
I have seen so many MMO's with just that spamming and it really takes away the fun of even using a general chat and with that takes away alot of this MMO aspect.

Another thing about economy. As I understand this will be a key element for the whole game and there will not be one auction house where people sit all day controlling the market. How will Intrepid prevent hic-ups when live so the economy wont be destroyed?
I will take one example. On numerous times things happened in a big MMO made by a huge company. Creative people "accidently" duplicated items or just some glitch made things happen for few lucky individuals. When it was discovered this it went offline but no real consequences happened to those who discovered it or "abused it". In game currency were not taken away from those and even items still there when it went online. As I understand some cases it wasnt really cheating so the company couldnt point on that.
If for example things like this would happen on a server with Ashes that could easily destroy the economy.
Would you call it fair to be banned for life if you discover something that the game itself do but wasnt really ethical?

I leave it at this and hope to get some input about this topic.

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Comments

nanfoodle

Ashes has if not the best but one of the best data gathering for their game. They use heat maps to monitor things. Everything is tracked. You kill a wolf, they will know who killed it, what skills you used and how much money you earned from it. Buying gold or items from gold sellers in this game will be very risky and most likely have you banned at some point. As soon as the heat map shows them account is a gold seller. Every transaction done will be in their hands and the buyers accounts will have action taken.

nanfoodle

Also an account that all of a sudden has a pile of gold may very well end up on a heat map as well.

SmileGurney

They need detection rules which detect bots and rules which monitor player accounts for sudden and unexpected changes in available resources.

Also the banning aspect...I really believe they should accept only limited number of credit card issuers and credit card types, and ban not the means of the payment, but the identity associated if that is possible. No pre-paid bs.

Legi

Firstly here is a short clip from Steven on their stance on gold sellers or more specific gold buyers.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HLDwGT5aHP4

Sadly TheLazyPeon wasnt informed well enough or didnt research well enough before posting his video with his concerns. I commented this below his video, but that seems to have gone under.

In general you have to squash the demand so the price wont be high, then the botters will move on to a more profitable game and to squash the demand you have to ban players that RMT.

What can be difficult is when real humans who lock parts of the maps or raidbosses start to sell kills or loot for real money. Even if a crafter sells their items for real money.. this will be incredibly hard to detect and I am not sure how Ashes can/will handle this. How do you decide if the crafter got paid in cash or maybe the other player did something for him or a friend of him, maybe he is a friend.. or its one of thousands of other reasons why he might give him an item or several items for free.

Craiken

I don't know how they plan to prevent RMT, but I fully support bans for buyers and sellers.

Zehlan

Legi wrote: »

Firstly here is a short clip from Steven on their stance on gold sellers or more specific gold buyers.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HLDwGT5aHP4

Sadly TheLazyPeon wasnt informed well enough or didnt research well enough before posting his video with his concerns. I commented this below his video, but that seems to have gone under.

In general you have to squash the demand so the price wont be high, then the botters will move on to a more profitable game and to squash the demand you have to ban players that RMT.

What can be difficult is when real humans who lock parts of the maps or raidbosses start to sell kills or loot for real money. Even if a crafter sells their items for real money.. this will be incredibly hard to detect and I am not sure how Ashes can/will handle this. How do you decide if the crafter got paid in cash or maybe the other player did something for him or a friend of him, maybe he is a friend.. or its one of thousands of other reasons why he might give him an item or several items for free.

I think if a crafter sells their product for real cash is really a waste of resources to go after because the loss of said item to the server is trivial. Now if guilds corner a rare component and sell that for cash this would be a serious problem but also would be easier to track. Other MMOs I have played had every item in game with it's own serial number so they could track items this probably could be implemented at least for rare coveted items.
I think Intrepid's idea of having paid GMs and volunteer GMs to be in game will make a huge difference and bans should be ip based not account based with an appeal system to help people who might have been banned wrongfully having a way to get back their account. Gold selling and gold buying should be permanent bans as well!

Killergaming

Buying gold or currency to boost yourself is a risky choice that should come with a ban as much as selling it.
The tricky part will be acting on the much talked about heat maps and statistics without also affecting players who are farming in areas to earn currency or tradeable items legitimately for themselves.
It should come as no surprise that there will be people who will be cutting logs and skinning wolves all day long to push crafting mats into the economy while earning coin legitimately. I'll be one of the dedicated grinders, so I'm hoping for some finesse in the policing of the TOS not just automatic bans based on some poorly thought out algorithm.

How do you think gold selling and boosting should be dealt with. Perma-bans or suspensions?

Kyskei

personally I think gold sellers should be both account perma-banned and hardware perma-banned.

gold Buyers should get get a month long ban the first time as a warning and the second offence should mirror the punishment of a gold seller.

Noaani

Kyskei wrote: »

personally I think gold sellers should be both account perma-banned and hardware perma-banned.

They generally are - but these things are trivial to work around.

A bigger issue than what form the punishment should take is - how do you know it was gold buying/selling?

wakkytabbaky

Noaani wrote: »

Kyskei wrote: »

personally I think gold sellers should be both account perma-banned and hardware perma-banned.

They generally are - but these things are trivial to work around.

A bigger issue than what form the punishment should take is - how do you know it was gold buying/selling?

lets say for instance the anti cheat flags any character for suddenly gaining X amount of gold / glint suddenly ( ridiculous HIdden number), the GM can look at the log of the trade see who gave the gold and then check trade logs of that person etc and investigate down the rabbit hole. once a potential buyer / seller is flagged with all the data and logs GM's have access to they will be able to see if its a RMT situation or just a guildie / friend giving you a bunch of money. Logs are everything

nanfoodle

This always ends up being a counter move situation. Ever prevention the staff makes, the rule breakers find counters. People are creative and the gold sellers and the IS staff will be creative in the endeavors. This will go on for the life of the game. Ashes already has some tools other MMOs don't have. So they have the advantage.

Legi

Noaani wrote: »

Kyskei wrote: »

personally I think gold sellers should be both account perma-banned and hardware perma-banned.

They generally are - but these things are trivial to work around.

A bigger issue than what form the punishment should take is - how do you know it was gold buying/selling?

Hardware bans shouldnt be IP bans, they should be MAC bans. IP bans just need a reboot of the router.

Sure you can still get around those with spoofing, but thats nothing your average joe will know how to do. Especially when they dont announce it how/why they are banned.

People were basically never punished for buying gold in games. Only very extreme cases were banned. In Ashes this will be different and Ashes will be different because you wont rush to max in a day or a week. Losing your account through a ban because you wanted to RMT is and should be a huge gamble which generally isnt worth it.

Noaani

Legi wrote: »

Sure you can still get around those with spoofing, but thats nothing your average joe will know how to do.

Your average Joe isn't a gold seller.

Rather, gold sellers are *generally* medium sized companies with dozens of employees, including a dedicated IT department.

Getting around a MAC address ban is trivial to a gold selling operation.

Noaani

wakkytabbaky wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Kyskei wrote: »

personally I think gold sellers should be both account perma-banned and hardware perma-banned.

They generally are - but these things are trivial to work around.

A bigger issue than what form the punishment should take is - how do you know it was gold buying/selling?

lets say for instance the anti cheat flags any character for suddenly gaining X amount of gold / glint suddenly ( ridiculous HIdden number), the GM can look at the log of the trade see who gave the gold and then check trade logs of that person etc and investigate down the rabbit hole. once a potential buyer / seller is flagged with all the data and logs GM's have access to they will be able to see if its a RMT situation or just a guildie / friend giving you a bunch of money. Logs are everything

Sure.

But what about when I am giving someone a donation for their run at being Mayor of an economic node?

What about when I am handing someone coin for caravan protection?

What about when I am purchasing some information a node/guild?

What if I am bribing someone to betray their guild/node?

These are all things that are encouraged based on the games design, yet the discussion around them will mostly happen on Discord meaning the in game activity will look exactly the same as a gold transaction.

I'm just saying, it is VASTLY more complicated than you appear to be thinking.

Yoh

I think one of the best ways to curb gold selling, is trolling. I am not kidding.
Yes, ban gold sellers and buyers, duh.

But the best way is empower you own player base to take them down, as there are a hell of a lot more players then devs. In order to get the gold to sell, gold sellers use bots, loads and loads bots. And normally, as another player you can't to dick for shit about them, besides report them. But in Ashes, you can actually kill the bastards, anywhere at anytime.

Everybody know a bot when they see them. All we need is the to be empowered to kill them on sight.
Which is where Intrepid can step in, by flagging bots in such a way that they become corrupted, without the player controlling the bots even knowing it... well, until the bot is killed mercilessly over course.
Imagine the frustration of having your bots after spent hours farming materials, only to be killed and robbed of everything. All day, every day.

This is how you hurt the gold sellers. By wasting their god damn time and money.

Pham

Noaani wrote: »

Legi wrote: »

Sure you can still get around those with spoofing, but thats nothing your average joe will know how to do.

Your average Joe isn't a gold seller.

Rather, gold sellers are *generally* medium sized companies with dozens of employees, including a dedicated IT department.

Getting around a MAC address ban is trivial to a gold selling operation.

Agreed. MAC and HWID bans are largely ineffective against the majority of RMT organizations, in general. Even account bans are going to be less effective (compared to a box cost model) due to there not being an initial purchase cost other than the $15/mo sub fee. And it probably doesn't even need to be said, but IP bans are a complete waste of time in today's world.

Kilion

IMO and as said before the data gathering tool that Intrepid will use just for the purpose of Alpha 2 data gathering is also the perfect foundation to make an anti-RMT and anti-bot tool with.

How to train the anti-bot tool:

Identify real human players (e.g. from the NDA tests or participation during the recent livestream, where bots almost certainly aren't present)
train the tool with their behavior patterns to make a "human" model
make the tool send an alarm when a character does not act "human"
have a real GM investigate ingame & back office staff look into the account data

If RMT or botting is spotted I am 100% for the immediate deleting of the characters and banning the gold sellers every bank account from making any money transactions with Intrepid again. Not just the one that pays the subscription fees, all others, too. I guess this should be possible if players would have to consent to such actions in the Terms of Service then this should be enforcable.

Noaani

Kilion wrote: »

If RMT or botting is spotted I am 100% for the immediate deleting of the characters and banning the gold sellers every bank account from making any money transactions with Intrepid again.

The problem here is - doing this takes significantly more of Intrepids time than it does the gold sellers time.

Kilion

Noaani wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

If RMT or botting is spotted I am 100% for the immediate deleting of the characters and banning the gold sellers every bank account from making any money transactions with Intrepid again.

The problem here is - doing this takes significantly more of Intrepids time than it does the gold sellers time.

Dunno, possibly. I am not exactly sure how US banking services operate and how such penalty measurements are taken exactly, but I would think that this ban is something the financial institution (over which we transact with Intrepid) would be the one having to enforce the ban.
As for uncovering bannable offenses: The community can be, maybe even "should be", involved in this process, since we as players want to defend the functionality of the game. Intrepid might even consider paying a "head hunt" reward to those exposing gold sellers with embers or some additional play time.

With that being said: I am not too sure that the greater time expense on Intrepids side is actually an issue, live GMs are there for exactly such things to my understanding. Additionally a lot of the things I said strike me as automated procedures once triggered, which keeps work time to a managable/acceptable degree. And lastly to that point: The gold seller still needs to actually get their hand on the gold, which by no means is easy either.

Noaani

Kilion wrote: »

Dunno, possibly. I am not exactly sure how US banking services operate and how such penalty measurements are taken exactly, but I would think that this ban is something the financial institution (over which we transact with Intrepid) would be the one having to enforce the ban.

You are working on the assumption that gold sellers use a bank.

For the most part, they use single use, pre paid cards. Intrepid can go out of their way to ban the card, but that card was only ever going to be used on that one account anyway.

As for uncovering bannable offenses: The community can be, maybe even "should be", involved in this process, since we as players want to defend the functionality of the game. Intrepid might even consider paying a "head hunt" reward to those exposing gold sellers with embers or some additional play time.

The only way players will ever know a gold selling character is if they purchase gold from one.

Bots are different. Players can see bots, but bots are not gold sellers. Bots are much easier to deal with than gold sellers.

live GMs are there for exactly such things to my understanding.

Live GM's are so incredibly inefficient that this is simply not their reason for existing.

The nature of account bans in an MMORPG is that they happen infrequently, but with many at a time. This is the way it has to happen, for a number of reasons.

What live GM's do is they provide players with an amount of assurance that the developer is doing something in the middle of those ban waves.

In a game like WoW, live GM's ban an account at a time. The people out the back doing the real work ban tens of thousands of accounts at a time.

So yeah, a serious discussion about actually trying to keep cheating, botting or RMT out of an MMORPG really shouldn't be talking about live GM's - they are an ineffective tool that exit as a means of showing face.

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