Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Player "fear" doesn't prevent RMT.
All it does is make it so that *you* don't see it as much - it still happens.
If developers ban gold sellers as they are detected, that means gold sellers immediately know which behavior patterns the developers can identify, and associate with selling gold. If you have 6 accounts all doing things a slightly different way, and one account gets banned and the rest don't, you now have 5 methods to do what you are doing that you know are safe.
If developers then ban another account a little while later, you know they have updated their detection, but you already know what they are now looking for. With this scenario, gold sellers are able to stay one step ahead of the developers.
This agressive approach also means gold sellers are never going to risk losing their network - only ever the accounts thst are doing the selling.
This is why developers don't do this. Developers identify gold sellers, gold buyers, storage accounts, botters, those selling gold to gold sellers - all of it. Then they come up with ways to detect their behavior easier, then they ban them all at once.
This way, every 3 - 6 months the gold sellers lose basically all of their accounts, but have no actual idea what action was detected. This puts the gold sellers constantly at a disadvantage, they are on the back foot.
Okay I see what you mean. Yes I do agree, but the problem is they can do a lot of damage in 3 to 6 months. IF those gains were made through botting. Most gold sells will come from gold generated by bots. With the game being so competitive it'll drive people to buy gold(or materials) more than a game like WoW. Those who don't will be at a massive disadvantage, and will either be forced to buy, or get their pp's stomp which will lead to the familiar death spiral we've seen time and time again. I think Ashes will reach that dead mark faster because it's competitive nature.
Yeah, but they are going to be there regardless.
The only thing you gain by banning them as soon as you see them is a faster turnaround of new accounts that the gold sellers use. In return, you are losing the ability to really hurt their operation later on.
And most gold for sale does not come from botting, it comes from large guilds who sell gold to gold sellers, or from indovidual players that have found a unique exploit (I know two people that have purchased houses using gold generating exploits in different games). Bots make up a very small percentage of gold generation, and of gold going to gold sellers.
Ashes design will indeed drive more people to RMT than most other games, that is why it is in everyone's best interest right now that Intrepid use the current opportunity to learn as much as they can about gold sellers - which specifically requires them to not ban accounts until they have an idea of the larger picture (ie, don't ban the chat spam accounts until you know who is selling the gold, and don't ban the sellers until you know who the bank is, etc).
I can agree with most of that. Mostly, that now is the right time to gather as much info as they can. There are plenty of videos out there of WoW gold farms, and they use bots to generate the gold. It's fairly easy to do and ban waves only happen every 3 to 9 months. Plenty of time to see a nice ROI. It's a lot easier to match a bug in the code to fix the gold exploit (once they know of it) but a lot harder to prevent botters. I don't know which is worse, I just assume the bots. I personally find them worse because it's so easy to do and actually make real money from it. Also see bots in a game really kills the vibe in the game. If botting is viable in Ashes I won't play it. If it was PvE I'd still play, but I'm not going to compete in a bot race to compete in pvp that'd be too much like actual work.
The reason WoW specifically has a lot of bots is because that games player base has proven to its developers time and time again that when it comes down to it, they don't care. There are virtually no people canceling WoW subscriptions due to bots, and there are no jumps in subscriptions after ban waves.
Thus, Blizzard has rightly worked out that banning bots means they are spending their money on an activity with the sole output of reducing their own income. They see it is an actual loss. This didn't used to be the case, but it is now.
This is why I have always said (you could probably bring up a dozen or so posts of mine where I say this) the most powerful tool players have to prevent bots in a game is the cancel subscription button (along with giving the reason). If no one uses it, developers have no incentive to ban subscription paying accounts.
However, even in WoW, botters make up a fraction of the gold that third party RMT websites sell. It is a higher fraction than in most other games, but you need to take jn to account that it isn't those websites running the bots, it is still other players who then sell that gold to the gold selling websites.
Another thing to keep in mind that so many people fail to realize, those websites (at least the 4 largest companies behind them) are not Chinese. 2 of the biggest are American, one is Brazilian and one is European. They don't run the gold farming sweatshops that people think - they buy gold from others (whom may or may not be running gold generating sweatshops) and sell it.
If you are banning the bots, that does nothing to the gold sellers.
Unless you're an undercover plant, I don't think either of us really know which is generating more gold, bugs, bots, legit players selling to RMT market places.
Even though detecting bot behavior is easy if they don't ban for a while the ROI is already made. It'll just happen again, again, again. Business as usage and the same death as the rest of the games.
But yep, if players keep paying even if bots are in then why would they ban them? Vote with your feet and your wallet.
See, this isn't what I said.
As I have said several times in this thread, and dozens of times on these forums, gold sellers get their gold by purchasing it from other players.
Some of those players may be running bots, but that makes up a VERY small percentage. The vast majority of it (90%+ by my estimate) is not from this.
Botting really isn't that efficient as a means of generating gold. It is more effective as a means of leveling things that can be leveled in such a mundane manner, or farming materials that are likewise mundane to farm.
There is also a small amount of gold generated by people that have found some sort of exploit, but again, this is small in comparison to people that are just playing the game and selling the gold they have but don't need.
Banning every single bot that exists in the world will have no impact on gold sellers. Nerfing gold generation from regular play will, but it will also piss off the bulk of the playerbase that can't generate as much gold as they want.
My understanding of gold selling as an industry is based on the same basic notion as my understanding of the MMORPG development industry - I got to know people directly involved and talked to them about it. Many people are quite happy to talk about what they do if you show a genuine interest.
The people that own three of the four main gold selling companies (I have had no contact to the company in Brazil) in the world are, by all accounts, quite proud of the companies they have built up, and the stable jobs they provide their employees. Some people may think of them as scum, but they don't see it that way. They see their role as being one that keeps the games in question more popular - as many of both their suppliers and their clients are only playing the game due to the service they provide (and in truth, they may be correct - they may be keeping more people in games than are leaving due to gold sellers, but this is not a question anyone can accurately answer).
I for one know many people that only remained in games due to the secondary income they were making selling gold. I know a few people that were just breaking 4 figures a month (US$) with regular gameplay, and I know people that found exploits that allowed them to outright buy a house with cash. I also know people that were too busy in their life to keep up with their friends, and so purchased what they needed in order to keep playing the game - which kept the entire friend group in the game.
The notion that there aren't *some* positive aspects to third party RMT in games is inaccurate, which is why a number of games are a lot less aggressive against it. I'm not intending on sharing my opinion on how good or bad it is, as that doesn't do anything for the discussion - I am simply pointing out that there are *some* positive aspects, as I am more about fact than opinion in discussions like this.
In regards to the RoI on a bot account, in many games the RoI is actually a negative if you factor everything in. By the time you purchase the game, purchase a few months subscription, set up spoofed MAC and IP addresses, set up your actual botting software to run the spot you want to bot and then launder the gold generated, it usually ends up being less profitable than just playing the game.
This is likely not going to be the case in Ashes - as the entry point to the game will be cheaper. If Intrepid do run the standard bot sweep of 3 - 4 months then it will be probable that you could have a positive RoI on a bot account - unless they take another approach.
Note that RMT isn't about buying 'Gold', most of the time, it's about buying 'time'.
Gold is just the representation of that time.
So the answer for those companies in the past (idk if it changed) was not to change the price of the gold, but to change the amount you got for the price. (The bots that advertise in chat don't focus on this, for the same reason Nigerian Princes don't seem to be able to handle their finances).
So since the supply (of time spent which people are then willing to sell to other people) often doesn't change when you ban sources because you deflated the economy (which is a good thing, and I'm not arguing against bans at all) hasn't actually changed relative to the power of the purchased gold, it doesn't have a strong effect.
EDIT: To add, Ashes right now is actually full of 'holes' where RMT can happen without any gold being involved, and the perpetrators would have to be banned based on ... honestly I don't even know what, at this point.
Paying for 'friends' is baked into the game.
Even Steven has said they expect guilds to exist to - for example - run caravan protection.
However, there is nothing Intrepid can do to ensure the payment for those services happen inside the game as opposed to on PayPal.
This is something that has been discussed here for years - there is no reason to assume services in Ashes won't be offered for real currency as opposed to gold.