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Could this stop gold buyers?
Kolepech
Member Posts: 14
I was talking to a friend of mine last night about gold buying and selling in MMO's... He doesn't play them, and didn't understand how some people buying gold could affect how others enjoy the game.
I explained that people buying gold in WOW have more money to pay for Auction House items. The item sellers then raise the prices since thier auctions sold at the old price... the Gold buyers end up raising the price for those that actually work (in game) for thier money...
My friends suggestion was this:
Make it so you can't give money or items. Everything has to be traded or bought. Items all have a set vendor price.
Give every item a base trade value, and a percentage of variance based on the item rarity.
Silk cloth could have a vendor value of 5 copper. The trade value could be 25 copper with a 20% varience since its common. Silk cloth could be sold in the AH for 20 to 30 copper per piece...
This means that for a player to "buy" 10K in WOW Gold, you would have to give the person items of equivilent value. It could be cured ham steaks if you want, but something HAS to change hands...
Thoughts or comments?
Comments
There are many ways to eliminate gold sellers by limitations within the game, unfortunately they all seem to have a negative impact on the preceived freedom of normal players.
Whether the more strict game designs to counter RMT activity would work or not doesn't really matter if everyone boycotts your game because they feel you're restricting their freedom.
Both gold buyers and sellers are sets of subscribers who would likely not play if you actually stopped them. Those gold farms have to pay for several subscriptions, and lazy people who want gold NOW keep playing. I think that the games need to act like they are against the practice, close down a few accounts, but let it happen anyway.
that's what runescape forced on their players. very amusing concept, nothing like punishing those that do nothing wrong.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
RMT will show up regardless of whatever tactic you use to remove it. You cannot stop people trying to trade money for time. The impulse is deeply embedded.
All the barriers made to stop it merely act as impediments to all players.
Agreed, although the OP is only suggesting they remove the free trade of gold. Runescape took it a step further, and removed ALL free trade, unless it's within 5% of the total value of all items (or a 3k cap, whichever comes first.) It's restricted the game to an unreasonable level, to the point where I can't even give a spare potion to my wife.
EDIT: It's also worth mentioning, as has been brought up repeatedly on the Runescape forums, that this did NOT stop RWT. It's only made them change venues. Now, instead of trading gold or items directly to an account, they level an account FOR YOU, and conveniently place whatever items you like on it. So the answer to the OP's question is a resounding "no." At this point, I really don't think RWT can be stopped at all, except by making a game where money and skills mean nothing. I seriously doubt any of the current MMO-gamers population would play such a game, though, and those who would have probably already found one.
Game econmies are like real world economies only with out the built in restraints. There is really no way to stop gold selling but if a game has a more complex economy I think it would blunt some of this. I remember when I played AC years ago you didn't need gold sellers becasue you could turn 1M pyreals in a little over an hour. It was so bad that pyreals were not the main source of trade it was a thing called a sturdy iron key that would open random chest with high end items.
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
I played some, just have a hard time remembering which ones they were cause they were just beta's or had korean names.
Your friend's idea isn't viable since it restricts other people's play style. Many folks love the economic side of a game, and would hate such a system.
There are other ways to reduce gold buying/selling, if the game developers really want to. That's the key you see. But to really enforce it they are have to go to war against their customer base. That's hard to do.
I'd guesstimate that anywhere from 30-50% of the WOW adult playerbase has purchased gold. In my own personal experience, of the people I know (from ages 14-60) the ratio is actually much higher, more like 60 or 70%. (Gold buyers tend to share the info only with those they won't feel condemnation from, so you'd be suprised who you know that probably has bought some) In my own case, I freely admit it in game hence I hear about it a lot more than most folks.
But lets say its lower than any of my estimates, say 20%. WOW has what, 4.5 million monthly subscribers in US/EU right? Based on US monthly fee of 14.99/mo (I know exchhange rates mean EU customers are paying more) that equates to over $67 million dollars a month in gross revenue. Were they to ban the 20% who buy/sell gold, they would lose about $13.5 million dollars a month. Yeah right, like that's ever going to happen.
So they take a different approach. They go to war against the buyers, which works to their favor because they can freely ban them and they'll keep purchasing new accounts and coming back. (gotta love those reoccurring new sub fees, pads up the sub numbers too, win-win for sure). Then they go out and ban only the most flagrent of buyers, and make a big show about it. Look how tough we are. Meanwhile 99.99% of all gold buyers go along their merry way and are never impacted.
They win all the way around. People against gold buying continue to play, thinking Blizzard is actively looking out for their interests. People who do buy gold are also happy and continue to play since they too are enjoying the game. Blizz can't lose on this deal.
Finally, despite all the gloom and doom, Blizzards protections against undue influence from gold buying in WOW work pretty well. Game is going on almost 3.5 years now, and I've yet to hear of a single server where the playerbase bitterly complained about a ruined economy.
In many ways players who don't gold buy still benefit from gold buyers. Hey, when you sell that great drop you got, or those materials you farmed, you're being paid by gold buyers at the inflated price, right? And gold farmers also sell all their drops/materials on the market, which actually increases their availability and pushes the price down. Its been said by some in Lineage 2 that farmers provided actually provide the bulk of raw materials needed to craft armor/weapons, as the players are adverse to doing it.
But I'll stop now, because that's a discussion for another thread.
Who the hell are you, and why should I care?
Congrats! You are a victim of Trollstar!
Would anyone play a MMO with out an economy? What if the only way to get items, any item, was thru crafting or drops and there was no currency and players could not give items to each other. Would this stop gold selling? Would anyone play it?
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
Game economics have a lot of problems. Gold sellers are one of the more disasterous. One approach is the "if you cannot beat them, join them' approach. The company itself sells gold and thus sets the value. It has ben done on several games already to varying success
HOwever, the other is the fact that there is not enough removal of currency from the game. PLayers bauk at item deterioration and repair, but this and other player expenses should be available.
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
It would stop gold trading but it would be highly unenjoyable and probably no one will play it.
Couple of points:
1) There is a reason currency (gold in virtual world, money in real world) and trading exists. It is all about making allocation of resources (and virtual stuff that give "value") more efficient. You can do away with it but it will make the system highly inefficient. And inefficient allocation of "value" (translate into power in game) will decrease enjoyment.
2) Players are spending resources (their time) in game. It is only natural to try to substitute one source (money) for another (time). You cannot really stop this unless you monitor everyone 24/7 and that is not feasible.
3) Game company should *join* the practice instead trying to stop it. Why? First, you can't stop it anyway and whatever you do is more likely to add inconvenience or punish the good players. Second, if you do it yourself, you can control the exchange rate and economy better. This is like acting like Fed Reserve. If inflation is an issue, there are known policy fixes for that. You also have all the data necessarily to do the adjustment. Right now, you have no data on the black market.
People wanting to cheat or trying to take illegal advantage over others will always find a way. There will always be someone offering this cheats in exchange of money. The problem is not the system, the problem is the player base.
But as an idea, yeah it could work.
Every step taken to tackle the gold farming/selling "problem" cripples the enjoyment of MMOs that much more. Now we have bind on pickup and commodity economies, all thanks to you blathering idiots who complain about gold selling/buying. You guys ruin MMOs more then any gold seller or gold buyer. I've never once had my play disrupted by a gold seller, but my game play is ALWAYS disrupted by the anti-RMT crowd. You guys are a bane to this gaming genre.
If they REALLY want to tackle a genuine issue in-game, they should find a way to restrict people who buy EVERY item on the AH of a certain type then re-list it at ridiculous prices. Monopolizing hurts WoW's economy more than gold farmers. when I have to pay 5 gold for a level 10 item or go without, the economy is catering ONLY to gold buyers, which makes more people willing to buy it.
My opinion is that to stop the gold sellers in a game is not to target the goldsellers, but the buyers. A gold seller will always sell gold if there is a profit in it. If they get banned, then they just open up another account. To be able to not be profting the GMs need to close down alot of accounts, and almost before the transaction has been performed.
If they do target the buyers, they often "loose" more if they get banned. Not just the gold they bought, but also their levels and items. If the GM's punish the buyers with perm ban, and it get well known in the game that they do that often, i.e. making it a higher risk buying gold, it will help (not remove). Its all about risk vs reward.
--
Leemeg.
That won't work. Gold sellers will just trade in the equivalent items... duh?
EVE Online has one of the most hardcore campaigns against gold sellers, because they want to be the exclusive source of subscribers buying gold. They still haven't successfully stomped it out.
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PM me when an MMO as good as UO was comes out.
The economic control in World of Warcraft is in grey (below average) or white (average) items. Alas, nobody wants to be caught carrying a grey or white so they'll do whatever is possible to get the greens and blues. If Blizzard wanted to price control them, they'd increase the drop rate. If they want the price of them to go up, decrease the drop rate.
The main reason why WoW experienced inflation is due to the number of experienced players in the game. Since the game's release, may have been playing over the years. They have one or more high level characters that have a boatload of gold. What does a person do when they have a boatload of gold, all purple gear and are at the level cap? Make a new character, transfer gold, twink them to high heaven and run them up to level 70 too. For them, it IS easier to buy at the auctionhouse than to wait for the green drop. What we have then is a discouragement of new players getting greens and an encouragement of veteran players to spend lots of gold on fairly easy drops. This is good for the lower levels who have greens to sell. With the extra cash, the price of materials outside the auctionhouse and skills training is easier to purchase. It's probably better that way else the level 70's would be running around the level 20 zones whacking things for their twinks. See what I mean?
When we're asking the "why" questions, we should also asked "have they already thought of this?" Chances are, the answer is yes.
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
If you make a game where people actually like "playing" (I use the term loosely. Others might choose to say grinding, item farming, spawn camping, etc.) more than they like spending even pennies on in game items, then they wouldn't buy the gold.
Aww poor developers
"But Saik, it's sooooo haaard to make good games 
"
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PM me when an MMO as good as UO was comes out.
Ugh starting to sound like what jagex did to runescape.
no thanks. its not hard to stop gold sellers advertising in game, as for trading using other sites not much you can do without ruining the game alot more imo.
My blog:
AC did it right, and it hasn't been done the same way since. I miss the AC loot system. Hell I miss AC period. Too bad it's a ghost town.
Playing - Minecraft, 7 Days To Die, Darkfall:ROA, Path of Exile
Waiting for -
I think there should be a law made up for online cheats.
You know go to jail if caught.
Because a cheater is the lowest kind of poop there is hehe and they take my money i spend on a game and steal it more or less, because i cant beat a cheat.
Its not just a game to some ppl like me, its my life.
Its like saying its just a car to a car lover.
Life is where you spend all your time and try to be the best and if you got hacks out there that take you out of the winners circle then ppl like me get real real reall mad and want to do some crazy stuff to those that do this to them.
So remember if someone gets real mad someday and learns how to find you in real life dont be so stupid!
WWIIOnline The Real War!
And this is what gives gamers a bad name. Regardless of what you feel about your car or a game it's not acceptable to threaten them with real violence just because they do something that reduces your enjoyment of that game.
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
~Omar Khayyam
RMT will not ever go away.. The best thing for any economy based game is to simply inflate the WORLD currency depending on the avergage price of the total combined worth of items on the world wide broker or exchange.. That way even if players RMT and start spilling massive amounts of gold into the system and all prices go up, then SO would the amount people get for selling items to vendors and amounts found on creatures. That means the RMT'ers will be doing nothing but pushing everything higher for everyone.. Not really getting ahead by that much...
Another thing would be to put a SET amount of money in the game.. Im not sure how advanced this concept would be, bu7t they can make it so that only humanoids carry ANY gold at all, and not everyone can be millionairs.. It would take some real buiseness sense to gain that amount of money, meaning that you'd literally have to take money from everyone.. So in order to RMT, the sellers will have to be pioneers and find ways to get money from the rest of the population on the server..
AC did it right, and it hasn't been done the same way since. I miss the AC loot system. Hell I miss AC period. Too bad it's a ghost town.
That (sik's) and shard's. I remember standing at the bottom of whatever dungeon for hours trying get a couple drops. You could buy just about anything with a shard...The thing about AC is it didn't really have an economy. It had no real way for players to form one. No AH, no player selling options. You had to stand there and try to sell. All that did was promote botting. Which it did and the game was eventually over run with bots of all types because Turbine allowed it. Since money was so easy to come by it was almost valueless while items and later salvage, where the only real currencies. It was the only game I ever played that had a community created, working, barter system.
OP...nothing is going to "stop" the RMT market aside from removing economies altogether. Only the players can stop it and thats never going to happen.