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FLS bans buyers and sellers of doubloon
Mithrandolir
Member UncommonPosts: 1,701
Kudos to them! I love it! Hit the buyers early, put a fear into them (need more than a 24 hour ban though) and you will see the sellers start to dwindle without a decent market here.
Below is reposted from VN
***********************************************
Last night, Flying Lab Software staff issued a series of permanent bans as a result of gold selling activities by players of Pirates of the Burning Sea. Additionally, 24-hour bans were issued on multiple accounts found to have participated in the transfer of this illicit gold.
In an announcement posted both on the front page of their official site as well as on their forums, FLS Community Relations Director Troy Hewitt, says,
Please understand that we will investigate all reports of illicit transactions and we will be following up with the appropriate disciplinary actions, which could include confiscation of the resources in question, and ultimately banning accounts that sell or buy these illicit resources.
In the future, if you are approached by someone seeking to sell you gold, you are asked to file a support ticket by typing /support in game, or by visiting our support site.
Customers are encouraged to share as much information as possible, including the character's name, the server where this occurred, the time of the incident and any links they may have shared with you during the solicitation.
Flying Lab Software has developed a host of resources to help us identify these illegal activities as they occur, and we will take swift and decisive action to protect and preserve the economic features of our game.
Posted from Pirates of the Burning Sea Vault
Comments
The gold farmers don't care. It's 0 loss to them. It does't put 'fear' into them. It's not even illegal what they do, they're just violating the EULA which means nothing outside of the game world.
They make accounts, pay for them with a credit card, once they get banned they tell the bank they've been wrongly charged and want a recharge. They do this every month, it costs them 0 $.
Unlike what you probably think, these plats farmers for US games (with the exception of WoW) aren't chinese, they're usually US based, colorado has the biggest share of farmers.
So yea, you can't stop them, it's the fault of the game design.
My friend used to farm gold like that, and sold toons, it makes a nice amount of money.
Last night I was approached by a gold seller playing PotBS. I type in /support and simply reported the seller. Didn't think much more about it. This morning I wake up and check my email and have (2) from FLS. The first is a standard computer generated response, acknowledging the support ticket.
This is the second.....notice the time stamp. I was contacted by a real person and thanked within 2 minutes of sending it........impressive.
http://www.straightdope.com/
And yeah, you can slow 'em down, if not stop 'em. IP traceback with a ddos attack works wonders.
Thanks for assuming what I "Probably" think, you are wrong. I never made any reference to "chinese". In fact, I never thought that.
It's the fault of the game design? And yet nobody has come up with a design to eliminate it... interesting. I never said it was putting the fear into the farmers. What i said was it's putting the fear into the buyers, and it absolutely is.
Put fear into the buyers and you'll slow down the sales of it. Slow down the sales of it and it becomes less profitable for the farming companies.
Also, nobody said it is illegal. It's like you are fighting with a voice in your own head now and not my post...
Ah, but now we come to the real argument. You support it (based on your final sentence). Your friend did it, and it was ok. Good for them! I am glad you hate this game and won't be playing it.
FLS is hitting them hard even in pre-boarding. This is all any company can do about it until a better idea is developed. At the moment, FLS deserves major kudos for handling it as quickly and as powerfully as they are. Although, buyers should get more than 24 hour bans if you ask me. In order to make the selling be "not worth it", they must eliminate a lot of the buyers.
Frankly, giving out 24 hour bans instead of perma-bans to accounts buying gold is less than what every other MMO I know of does.
I agree, the 24 hour ban is nowhere near enough. I am interested in seeing what the punishment becomes once the game launches. Right now a lot of folks are playing a game that cost them 5 dollars or 10 dollars and there's not much risk anyway. A 24 hour ban carries them almost into retail at this point, where they will have to pay for the game. Hopefully the penalty stiffens greatly once we arrive there, otherwise anything they (FLS) do is in vain...
I actually have to agree with much of what candygirl6 says actually.
I really don't see the issue with Gold Farmers per se.
A lot of gamers argue against Gold Farmers because of their spamming the chat channels - OK I agree with that.
But the issue is the Spamming, not the Gold Farming.
And banning these people is not a solution:
Exactly. EULAs actually mean nothing in this case. And as for this nonsense that the Developer owns everything in the game?
IF a Gold Farmer ever chose to challenge this in court (which they wouldn't bother with - since it is quicker and easier to just create a new account) they could easily get around this by arguing that they are not selling the gold / loot / uber gear but selling their experience and their time, neither of which are owned by the game company.
Besides which, Gold Farmers are really only extending on what Developers are doing themselves. They are marketing to the "ME" generation that wants everything easy and wants it now. Game Developers want to take the "grind" out of MMOs? Isn't this exactly what Gold Farmers do? (They do the grind for you)
But okay, they may stuff up the economy?
I would have to question how? Particularly in PotBS?
An inexperianced player in a SoL is going to get PWNED - repeatedly. And surely that is nothing but a good thing for the crafters?
Could lead to inflation - but the simple solution is to make it possible to obtain SoL via gameplay - which I believe FLS has done with the Commendation system?
Wait and see on this - but it is a question of design.
And there is your solution too.
Gold Farmers are a business - and like any other business they will only stay if they can make a profit.
The simple solution then is to make sure that gold farming costs them more than they can make.
The monthly sub is $15? So DESIGN the game and the economy so that the amount of 'gold' you can make in a month is worth less than $15. And so the amount of time spent making that gold (for the Farmer) exceeds any amount of value he / she can recover. At that point it becomes a losing proposition and they leave.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Ok w/e really, you can't stop them because the game is at fault.
And there have been plenty of solutions to this problem.
The most common is to use a 'reasonable trade' policy. It means you can't trade "naked", (Naked trading means trading something for nothing in return) and you can only trade items that have a reasonable counter-offer. It just means items have a price range that can be freely adjusted by dev's at any time, they have a lvl. You can't trade outside of that range, and no naked gold trading can take place.
Gyrus mentions a good solution too.
There's others but they're more complicated.
A lot of games have found a solution to it and have completely eliminated gold sales.
Name three.
Posted from Pirates of the Burning Sea Vault
Actually, FLS should be commended for their aggressive stance. All companies could easily develop automated tools to help catch gold buyers and sellers, but most won't risk taking action against the buyers since that means going to war against the paying customers.
I think a 24 hour ban is an appropriate punishment, for a first offense. I'm going to bet a 2nd offense will draw a much stiffer penalty.
Its easy to say, lets permaban them, but from an economic standpoint, these firms need the revenue, so if a stern "warning" helps bring the player back in line with the EULA, I see no problem with it.
Hey, in the real world we generally don't execute folks for their first crime, not any real reason to do so in a game unless it involves some major form of hacking or similarly serious offense.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Name three.
Is there even one?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Name three.
Is there even one?
I have played every mainstream mmorpg to date minus WWIIO. I can't think of one who eliminated RMT. EQ2 probably did the most to diminish it by embracing it themselves and opening the RMT servers... but it still goes on over there too.
I may be overlooking something pretty obvious, wouldn;t be the first time and my wife is chiminh in to say it won't be the last either :P but I simply can't think of a way to totally eliminate this without making the profit be less than the cost to get there.
Name three.
Maybe if you put it a tad nicer I would name them, most are asian, I didn't invent the concept.
These are US games I know use a good system.
Runescape has them, myu online and a private L2 server I know uses it.
Another game that has almost eliminated the need for gold trades is Guild Wars because they put less importance on feeling 'elite' and everything is merchand buyable. Honestly, there's tons of games that have found a solution. You can't stop gold sellers unless the company makes a good design choice.
The thing is, the more importance you put on trading the more you will have to deal with gold sales. It is just design, nothing else.
Name three.
Maybe if you put it a tad nicer I would name them, most are asian, I didn't invent the concept.
These are US games I know use a good system.
Runescape has them, myu online and a private L2 server I know uses it.
Another game that has almost eliminated the need for gold trades is Guild Wars because they put less importance on feeling 'elite' and everything is merchand buyable. Honestly, there's tons of games that have found a solution. You can't stop gold sellers unless the company makes a good design choice.
I suggest you search "Runescape" on google and look at the first 20 entries...
I'm pretty sure you made up myu online. It's not listed as a game here and google doesn't find anything named that.
Your friends private server for a game doesn't qualify either.
sorry...you lose.
Ok, just don't cry when your games economy crashes because you fail to look up the 'fair trade' concept so many games use. Including so many other options games have.
I'm not a game designer, I didn't invent the concepts, and I'm not your puppet to link games.
Just know that banning a few people won't do squat when a game allows free trading.
Name three.
Maybe if you put it a tad nicer I would name them, most are asian, I didn't invent the concept.
These are US games I know use a good system.
Runescape has them, myu online and a private L2 server I know uses it.
Another game that has almost eliminated the need for gold trades is Guild Wars because they put less importance on feeling 'elite' and everything is merchand buyable. Honestly, there's tons of games that have found a solution. You can't stop gold sellers unless the company makes a good design choice.
The thing is, the more importance you put on trading the more you will have to deal with gold sales. It is just design, nothing else.
Look, I mean no offense by this... truly I don't, but those are about the weakest arguments I have ever heard. A private server??? Come on. myu? And guildwars "almost" eliminating it doesn't support your cause... it still happens in GW.
Runescape has a lot of RMT. It's not even hidden well so I am not sure where you thought they were doing well to stop it.
and I'm not your puppet to link games.
No, you aren't a puppet. You are just someone with an absolutely baseless argument who's getting defensive over the fact that you have been called out on it. Nothing wrong with that... I guess.
Honestly, you think I care, I already said the game sucked.
Have fun in...what was it?...Myu Online?
Nope. That is the solution.
*Attempts to drag thread bag on track*
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
If your game is remotely successful, you will have plat farmers/sellers. Just the way it is. You can put restrictions on trial accounts, communications, etc. and cut back on them and control it...but that's about it.
If your game suddenly has no plat sellers in it, I'd be more worried about it's survival than the convenience of them being gone.
The stance has to be made clear before they can advance in their effort to minimize it, and so far it looks good here imo
Honestly, you think I care, I already said the game sucked, we make money of the system.
If I see your avatar puppy or you I'm feeding it to my rottweiler.
Have fun, meow?
So, in other words, your "friend" isn't the only farmer you're trying to defend. Sad, very sad.
And you'll feed a puppy to a rottweiler? Now you're into the realm of just plain distrurbed. But, at least you're not resorting to your usual repertoire of calling everyone who doesn't like your argument "idiots", and since we all have higher post counts than you ( which seems to be another of your childish ways of attacking peoples' arguments, even when the people with few posts have been here years before you ever showed ), I guess you have to do the best you can.
Look No offense but if your arguing if it is "legal" or not well your hitting a wall. When you sign the Eula you sign a binding contract with that game, Also Games, if they wanted to, could go after after "Profits resulting from ingame content" If the gamming companies truly wanted to take someone to court and make sure they never did it again i am sure they could and win.
When you sign a EULA, read it once over, don;t skim but READ it. You will notice it has alot of in it about how they own everything and in some cases even state that they will place fishing software to see what kind of programs and websites you visit to "Better service our customers and anticipate their needs" Most games don;t but some do and it is growing. When you, the consumer click the "Accept" button, it is as good as signing a piece of paper and sayign you understand everything in there.
Look. All Game content is in fact Licenced and owned by the develepoers of the game. Plain and simple. That includes gold and other things.
And i skimmed over this thread but the before mentioned " the farmers just count the charge as fraudulent and get refunded method" May work wit One CC or 2, but that CC will notice that you contually tried to get the same company and why is it fruadulent?? Suddenly they investigate it and notice that you yourself are falsy reporting fraudlent charges?? Consider yourself in court or paying a hefty fine for a fals report cause the CC companies defend you, but if you screw around with they they bring the hammer down.
people will farm gold, its som ppls way to make money and other ppls way to save time, But in the end, The company that makes the game holds all of the cards and it all belongs to them. Remember that.
To put it in a frame of reference that everyone knows, the famed NFL line about " Any reprduction without the expressed written permission of the NFL is Blah Blah Blah" The Game developers have that in the EULA, And the NFL goes after people who Show the games without their knowledge because its a business and in business you have to be able to control your product. There will be more court cases dealign with the internet when the juctice system comes around and the rights of Ownership will be fought about, but in the end, if the game developers lose the In game content... There will be no more games. They will shut them down because the profit margins will not be worth it. So If these Gold farmers win, Everyone else loses... Remember that.
I'm curious what MMO you know has banned people, not threatned to ban, for buying gold. I'd like to see links, also. Not that I don't trust your word. T
he only one I've ever heard of was WoW, and it was probably just trolls that were banned for hacking.