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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Military Nodes/pvp
Therealdo
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Since this month's live stream is pvp it got me thinking. What if we have a pvp Arena with a points system that you can bet on/participate in and if you do well you get random loot with a chance at getting a very rare item. Every week you get 100 (of whatever currency) and as you win you can buy those boxes for a set amount. I think it would add a lot more immersion plus make the Military nodes worth getting. Just think the title "Champion of the Arena" would mean something. Anyways can't wait to play and enjoy this wonderful world you all created.
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Comments
I dont see how this leads to people throwing battles when there is free trade within the game?
But even outside the binding system, if the points matter in any way - people will be throwing battles to give certain players certain amounts of points, to make the item farming easier. L2's arena system had points and entire guilds would pour points from one char to another to get higher placements at the end of the season.
Military node mayors are elected based on trial by combat. During the election week the node will enter an open-PvP battleground state for hour-long periods where candidates (and their citizen supporters) compete to gain points by securing objectives. The highest point winner at the end of the week will win.[6][7]
Novice leage: 0% drop
Junior league: 50% drop
Master league: 100% drop
Gambling and violence!
I agree! the big guilds come in to see who is Biggus Dickus and we get to spectate and bet on the "games". Would make the node worth it. Anyways a man can dream.
However, I feel like tying rewards to this brings along too many issues that could be exploited. I'd rather it just be a public testing ground for people to engage in PvP and maybe player run tournaments or something.
It's the same picture.
You could do that with blocked entries and gated access only by participants.
Throwing your match should have a very negative effect then, so you don't consider it.
If you just stand around, don't use skills, have a minimum apm etc. it's a throw.
- 2 or 3 times a day would deny your access to more fights until the end of the "season".
- You would loose money, big entry fee and a penalty on breaking the rules or for being weak.
- Loosing a lot of times could also revoke your citizenship because which military leader needs bad fighters... xD
Haha yes! But only the highest gear you put on over the last 30 days...
Albion Online has duels with unlimited wagering. They also have an arena system with rewards including gold, tokens, skins, rankings. It's fun and it works great. Nothing wrong with rewarding players in whatever gameplay layer they choose to participate in.
I think it would be awesome to have Arena POIs scattered throughout the world for duels, system driven tournaments, player run tournaments and wagering. You could have a range of tournament rulesets that are set by the creator. Free entry or paid entry, class and level restriction, team size, rewards, etc.
More than anything, it is used by RMT sellers to buy wealth off of other players to then onsell.
With a trade window, a developer can very easily flag one sided trades. If I trade you 10,000 gold and get nothing in return, that will undoubtidly trigger a look at the circumstance from someone at Intrepid. Maybe it's legit, maybe it isn't - but at least it gets looked at. Even if you put something in the trade window that is worth 100, or even 1000 gold, it is still a one sided trade that can be flagged. On the other hand, if you put so much in to the trade that it isn't overly one sided, it is a fairly poor RMT exchange.
On the other hand, if I bet 10,000 gold in a duel with you and lose, that doesn't trigger that same flag. It will literally go undetected by Intrepid, because it is the system functioning as the system should function.
Now, someone may want to say "just look at the people that are losing large amounts of coin all the time" - but there is an issue with this.
If I am selling gold on a website, I am buying it from players that have more than they need. WIth this system in place, I'd be using it to buy gold off of other players by beating them in a duel by arraingment for a set amount of coin. Then I would make the same arraingment with gold buyers hours, days or weeks later where we duel for a pre-determined amount, and they win.
To Intrepid, this looks exactly like someone that won a duel, then lost a duel. There is nothing to flag here, and thus nothing at all to look in to.
You are absolutely right that it is on developers to prevent RMT. However, one of the key things they do to prevent it (those that care, at least) is they avoid putting in systems that allow for unfettered RMT such as this.
Now, If Intrepid came out and said they think they have a system that could detect RMT with a system like this, great, have at it. However, I doubt that this is possible.
Bans and such probably would stop it - or slow it down at least.
The problem is, the first step in the sequence of events you are talking about is an automation system that flags suspect transactions. Bans happen after Intrepid CS have looked in to a given situation, but they look in to those situations usually due to transactions being flagged.
Thus, any system in the game with the potential to transfer wealth from one account to another needs to be able to have a system in place to flag anything that could be an RMT transaction. With a duel betting system, that would essentially need to be every bet (or every bet ovee a goven amount of value).
That isnt viable for Intrepid to review.
it's a messed up system. I got flagged for the same thing too but i could still go post in other thread just as much if not more... lol.
May as well just get twitch chat bots to mod the forums at this rate.
Don't take this the wrong way, but this post suggests a complete lack of understanding of RMT in MMO's.
Most RMT transactions are about what an average player could earn in three days. This is an amount average players absolutely would be happy to gamble. More top tier players would happily gamble 10 times that, which is why average RMT transactions can be easily hidden in such systems.
The other thing to keep in mind (and this happens A LOT in Albion from what I have been told) is that people will buy coin specifically just to gamble in this manner. This means you can't even just follow a specific pile of coin, as there would be no way to know who in the chain of bets bought and sold it, and who won legitimately.
The simple fact is, with any given duel - even just for 10 gold, Intrepid have no way of telling if it was an actual fight, or if it was half of an RMT transaction.
Literally no way of telling.
Games that have gambling systems like this simply do not monitor them for RMT - they cant. RMT sellers can very easily just mimic the patterns of legit players - it isnt at all hard to do.
You are mistaken if you think developers are unaware that systems like this open their game up to unfettered RMT.
The system isnt messed up, it is new.
Expect some teething issues with new systems.
That said, since you've used ignore to turn these forums in to an echo chamber of people that reinforce your ideas and opinions (and have complained that your eyes may be presented photons that don't), I think we all know you'll continue to complain.
Obviously I have a better understanding of it than you do. Doesn't matter how big or small the transactions are, a gold seller will have a long list regardless. They can track whether the duels were lost or won. The gold seller would have to be losing in order to transfer the gold to their customer. This can be compiled with other transactions to build a case including trade history, AH activity, reports, any other sort of transaction that could be abused for RMT within the game.
It's like drug dealing virtually. Sure, you can try and go after the infrequent buyer, but that will be much more difficult to identify, especially if they don't have a history of transactions with a known distributer. But the distributor will have a long track record of many frequent transactions with gold going out to players for little to nothing in return. If you are actually serious about stopping RMT, you go after the source, that would be the bots/gold farmers and sellers. Catching a buyer here and there barely does anything to prevent it. Once a seller is identified, you can then connect the dots to the buyers through the sellers transactions. Some level of undercover/ investigative work could be done by GMs in addition to this and that would give you a comprehensive anti-RMT effort.
What you fail to realize is it doesn't allow RMT any more than open trading, the AH, or any other sort of open transaction system between players. All of these systems can and will be abused if left unchecked. So in reality excluding this one system would do nothing.
Thinking of different ways to incorporate PvP and the ethos of battle or bloodthirst into the military nodes is an interesting topic to brainstorm on! What are different ways you'd like to see PvP be a part of military nodes?
I stopped reading your post right here, because you are making an argument here that I have already debunked. You even quoted me saying this - why are you making this argument when I have already pointed out why it is an invalid argument?
Again, this just shows a lack of understanding of how gold sellers actuay work. I'd even wager you think that people selling gold to players in MMO's arerunning bots or some such. The reality is they are gold traders, buying off players that have more gold than they need, and selling to others that want more gold than they have.
What this means is that RMT sellers would have a w\l ratio that is really close to 50\50. Win the fight to buy the gold off one player, lose a fight to sell it to another.
As for your comments on the number of transactions - with Ashes server population size, lack of fast travel and spread of population, I would imagine a gold seller would want a character per greater metropolis region they are servicing. With a population of perhaps a few thousand players total in that area, and with probably three or four active sellers, I would expect perhaps 2 or 3 sales a week per character.
If you think that number of fights will trigger anything on Intrepids end, then I'm not sure quite how to continue this discussion.
You are right in saying that it doesnt allow RMT any more than player to player trading does. However, my point has always been that player trading when does legitimately is fairly even and so one sided trades are very easy to find - while the inherent nature of betting on player actions is that one side will win, and players can decide which side that is. Thus, it makes RMT basically impossible to detect.
Your whole point about RMT being like a drug and needing to go after whoever is equally besides the point. In orderto go after an RMT seller, you need to be able to find them. How do you even start to look for one via this system when their w\l ratio is near 50\50, and they are coming out about even on profit from these fights? There is nothing in that for a system to flag, and if a system can't flag it, no one is looking at it.
That is why this isnt an issue with trades, there is always something to flag.
You haven't debunked a single thing I've said, not even close, but keep pretending like you RPers love to do. By your own admission you haven't been reading what I've said previously which is obvious, that's why you're now asking questions that were already answered in previous posts or even the same ones you quoted from 😆. There's no reasoning with someone who refuses to listen. I'm not going to waste my time with a parrot that keeps repeating the same lines, doesn't read, and then declares themselves the winner. That's clown behavior.
At least when I did it, I told you which part I had already addressed, and quoted my answer to that specific point you were making. Instead of doing the same, all you've done is made the claim that you have provided information about something, haven't even said what information it is, and havn't quoted yourself saying it.
Basically, you just did the forum version of an 8 year old saying "no you did".
Fact is, any system where players can gamble with each other on the outcome of a player activity opens up an untraceable avenue for unfettered RMT. It isn't about PvP at all, it is literally anything at all where player to player gambline on a player determined outcome is involved.
Your only real point at all seems to be that any avenue of player to player transaction will be abused if left unchecked. As I've said, you are correct in this (not "I agree with this", just you are outright correct as this is an objective fact). The thing you are missing is that player to player trade is easy to keep an eye on, where as this suggestion simply isn't. If put in to the game, this system would by necessity be left unchecked - which is why some developers put it in their game (the quite part out loud being some developers want an amount of RMT in their game, but will not admit it publically).