Will the devs deal with gold spammers and bots before or only after release?

Nasa

Looking at the situation after many releases, it seems the devs only care about spammers and bots after release without have prepared anything beforehand. Sometimes it feels like they think that by some magic this can not happen to our game. I know you can not prepare for everything but some basic and minimum precautions should be at release.

I hope this next big release will be one that tries to deal with it before release. Else we must assume devs only want to learn the hard way.

This is not a game i am planing to play, but no players should be troubled with this in any game.

 

Kaladin

They are dealing with it how Tera started off with it.  Offering a way to get in game currency through the cash shop.  Although the market for how much in game money you get is a player driven economy.

It's called CREDD.  You can buy it from the cash shop, and then sell it on the auction house.  The buyer of CREDD gets a month of game time, and the seller gets in game currency.

It's FAR more controlled that way, and decreases the demand for the dangerous (and against ToS) service of gold farmers.

Will it get rid of gold sellers?  probably not, but it has helped other games that have tried it.

Kaladin

So to answer the question posed in the subject line.  That is how they are dealing with it pre-emptively.  Beta obviously hasn't seen any gold spam as there is no point.  After release....it remains to be seen, we don't even know how bad it will be.

DamonVile

I think this is more a situation where gamers think there is some magic that can stop them, not the devs.

If someone is going to make millions selling gold and power leveling in your game is banning a $60 account really going to even slow them down ? If your company was making a million+ a year and a $60 part broke would you shut everything down ?

As long as people are willing to pay for gold there will be people selling it. There is nothing the devs can to do stop this. Banning a gold spammer is about as effective and arresting a kid selling drugs on the corner. Tomorrow someone new will be standing in his place.

As long as your game has something of value that can be used to buy something from others there will be people telling that commodity and advertising their service. the fault here is 100% the people buying it. They give these items a real world value. They are the people the games should be banning.

 

LeGrosGamer

Like I posted on another thread earlier, where ever NCSoft is involved, trouble is always brewing. Don't expect much to be done towards botting / gold selling, especially from NCSoft.

Datawarlock

Originally posted by Nasa

Looking at the situation after many releases, it seems the devs only care about spammers and bots after release without have prepared anything beforehand. Sometimes it feels like they think that by some magic this can not happen to our game. I know you can not prepare for everything but some basic and minimum precautions should be at release.

I hope this next big release will be one that tries to deal with it before release. Else we must assume devs only want to learn the hard way.

This is not a game i am planing to play, but no players should be troubled with this in any game.

 

Umm.... devs main concern is building the GAME first. They have deadlines to meet and people telling them what to get done and when to have it done. Bots and spammers are a 99% customer service issue anyways. Do YOU know who's a bot or a spammer before the game is released? The devs don't, and it won't be the devs doing anything about them either as it all comes down to account management, not some magical macro that gets rid of them all lol.

Psistorm

Honestly, with the ability to trade currency vs game time, people who do want gold have a proper ingame avenue. That aside, the dynamic content and combat should make it reasonably hard to bot for as well. On top of that, iirc gaffney said they will come down hard on gold spammers and ban them quickly.

Krimzin

Gold Spammers and Botters are like Mosquitoes, You can spray them and trap them, but 10k more just show up.

They are an annoyance at worst.

If people didn't buy gold they wouldn't be here.

If you can honestly say without hesitation that you have never bought gold in any game, then you can gripe, if not then deal with it.

And for those of you who say you haven't.. Ya Right, we believe you...

BeansnBread

Originally posted by Krimzin

Gold Spammers and Botters are like Mosquitoes, You can spray them and trap them, but 10k more just show up.

They are an annoyance at worst.

If people didn't buy gold they wouldn't be here.

If you can honestly say without hesitation that you have never bought gold in any game, then you can gripe, if not then deal with it.

And for those of you who say you haven't.. Ya Right, we believe you...

Are you implying that you purchase gold from third parties?

Fdzzaigl

It's not like none of the other releases are trying to do something about it before launch you know.

But these guys are relentless, so you can be 100% sure that there will be goldspammers and exploiters in this game. The only thing that works in the long run is fast reaction speed by GM's and devs.

Heck, not all of the goldsellers even exploit in the traditional sense. You've got these leprechaun people who worked as traders or whatever IRL and manage to turn hilarious profits (admittedly, they usually bot or cheat when given the chance) by playing the metagame and start selling gold.

Krimzin

Yes I have.

Why lie about it.

It wouldnt be a multi-million dollar Industry if I were the only one.

Kaladin

Just because you do, doesn't mean everybody else does.  I would dare to say that you are in an extremely small minority when compared to the overall population of gamers.

Covet78

I love how many people are blindly replying without actual research. Easy to give an opinion I suppose. 

 

As what a couple posters said. There are in game avenue's to get gold. Botting for the purpose of gold spamming will probably be minimal. Botting for the purpose of personal botting to level a character will always exist. Games like eve online and Tera have next to no gold spammers at all. Everyone can buy gold legally and safely in those games. Gold spammers have no customers in those games. 

WIldstar will be the same. No market for gold from spammers. People buy gold with a credit card, directly from ncsoft website. It's an item that goes into their inventory. They sell it on the auction house. Someone buys it, that person now has a month of gametime.

 

Krimzin

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Originally posted by Kaladin
Just because you do, doesn't mean everybody else does.  I would dare to say that you are in an extremely small minority when compared to the overall population of gamers.

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Your right.. It must be a small number.

Oh Wait..Here I found this...

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While reliable figures for gold farming are hard to come by,[11] there are some estimates of the market for in-game currency.[12]

In 2005 The New York Times stated that there were over 100,000 full-time gold farmers in China alone.[5] And in 2006 sales of such virtual goods were thought to amount to somewhere between 200[13] and 900 million USD.[4]

Another estimate, drawn from 2005/2006 data, valued the market at not less than USD200 million per year[14] and suggested that over 150,000 people were employed as gold farmers with average monthly earnings of USD145.[14] This same report estimated that 80% of all gold farmers were from China[11] a fact which has led to prejudice towards Chinese players.[15] 2008 figures from China valued the Chinese trade in virtual currency at over several billion yuan, or nearly USD300 million.[16]

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300 Million a year.

Either there are some extremely wealthy players buying all the in game currency or there are A LOT OF PEOPLE BUYING IT...

Krimzin

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Originally posted by Kaladin
Just because you do, doesn't mean everybody else does.  I would dare to say that you are in an extremely small minority when compared to the overall population of gamers.

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I get it.

You want to believe that people are good and no one buys gold.

The Reality is that its a HUGE number of players do it.
If you asked 10 of the closest people you game with 3-4 of them have done it.

Kaladin

Originally posted by Covet78

I love how many people are blindly replying without actual research. Easy to give an opinion I suppose. 

 

As what a couple posters said. There are in game avenue's to get gold. Botting for the purpose of gold spamming will probably be minimal. Botting for the purpose of personal botting to level a character will always exist. Games like eve online and Tera have next to no gold spammers at all. Everyone can buy gold legally and safely in those games. Gold spammers have no customers in those games. 

WIldstar will be the same. No market for gold from spammers. People buy gold with a credit card, directly from ncsoft website. It's an item that goes into their inventory. They sell it on the auction house. Someone buys it, that person now has a month of gametime.

 

Exactly this.

 

The farmers will not participate in a game if the margin is too small.  Tera, and Eve's systems have eliminated that margin to such a degree that spammers are almost eradicated.  Luckily Carbine took note and are mimicking those systems.

Krimzin

With the Ability to Sell Credds in game for Gold, I dont think its going to be that bad.

Loke666

Dunno about this game but common practice seems to be to start on that a month after release and succeeding about 2 months after that.

Usually the devs finds critical issues with the game just after release and fix them first.

DamonVile

Originally posted by Krimzin

 

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Originally posted by Kaladin
Just because you do, doesn't mean everybody else does.  I would dare to say that you are in an extremely small minority when compared to the overall population of gamers.

---

 

I get it.

You want to believe that people are good and no one buys gold.

The Reality is that its a HUGE number of players do it.
If you asked 10 of the closest people you game with 3-4 of them have done it.

No they haven't.

Just because it's a huge market doesn't mean EVERYONE does it. It's a type of person that does it not everyone. They tend to be the type of people who don't get enjoyment out of earning things in a game. They have money and they want something right away.

Those types of people tend not to play with people who do want to earn things so while 3-4 of your friends probably have done it, I don't want to game with people who just buy everything and think the activities required in earning it are boring.

Kaladin

Originally posted by Krimzin

 

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Originally posted by Kaladin
Just because you do, doesn't mean everybody else does.  I would dare to say that you are in an extremely small minority when compared to the overall population of gamers.

---

 

I get it.

You want to believe that people are good and no one buys gold.

The Reality is that its a HUGE number of players do it.
If you asked 10 of the closest people you game with 3-4 of them have done it.

Do you have a source for that statistic?

"million dollar industry", well lets see, if everyone bought even $20 worth of currency, that would be 50,000 buyers.  Granted that's a minimum, but there aren't any numbers expressing how far into the millions the industry is.

Kaladin

Originally posted by Krimzin

With the Ability to Sell Credds in game for Gold, I dont think its going to be that bad.

Probably should have done the research on the game in question before going off.

DamonVile

Originally posted by Kaladin

Originally posted by Covet78

I love how many people are blindly replying without actual research. Easy to give an opinion I suppose. 

 

As what a couple posters said. There are in game avenue's to get gold. Botting for the purpose of gold spamming will probably be minimal. Botting for the purpose of personal botting to level a character will always exist. Games like eve online and Tera have next to no gold spammers at all. Everyone can buy gold legally and safely in those games. Gold spammers have no customers in those games. 

WIldstar will be the same. No market for gold from spammers. People buy gold with a credit card, directly from ncsoft website. It's an item that goes into their inventory. They sell it on the auction house. Someone buys it, that person now has a month of gametime.

 

Exactly this.

 

The farmers will not participate in a game if the margin is too small.  Tera, and Eve's systems have eliminated that margin to such a degree that spammers are almost eradicated.  Luckily Carbine took note and are mimicking those systems.

Doesn't GW2 have a system to buy "gold" ?

Tera doesn't have a creed/plex system ( the crono scrolls were removed when it went f2p ). They do have a small population which makes undercutting the game store not worth while though. Wildstar probably wont have that protection.

 

 

Shaigh

Give players the tools to report goldsellers easily and your customer will do half the job for you.

Volgore

Originally posted by Krimzin

With the Ability to Sell Credds in game for Gold, I dont think its going to be that bad.

The whole CREDD thing can easily backfire.

Some thoughts with some made up numbers:

CREDD cost $19,99 official price. It's direct value in ingame gold will be dictated by goldsellers.

If CREDDs go for say 10k gold on the AH and some company sells 10k gold for $10, it would be cheaper for a player to buy gold for CREDD than to have an actual subscription running. Also, if you get CREDD for $10 online gold, why would anyone buy it for $19,99 from Carbine in first place. So, this is not going to work.

On the other hand, to make people NOT buy online gold, you would have to raise the CREDDs price on the auction house to beyond the online gold prices. If you raise your CREDD price to 25k gold, it would translate into about $25 for 25k online gold, just given we'll get a discount on that amount. In this case buying gold for CREDD would actually be more expensive than running a 30 days sub for $12,99 or buy your own CREDD in Carbine's shop. But in fact in this case no one would buy your CREDD as it doesn't come at a cheap gold price.

In the end, CREDDs will come at $19,99, but go at how much online gold you can buy for $12,99 - as above or below wouldn't make sense to either the player or Carbine. And this disparity may not work in the long run.

So the price of online gold will directly translate into the ingame value of CREDD and people will buy gold for CREDD unless CREDD are so cheap that on the other hand they don't make sense for the selling player anymore.

I may have missed something here as i am not an expert in economy and there will also be grey areas like players who refuse to buy online gold and rather buy CREDD anyway etc.. but i guess there is a point.

Krimzin

I understand your point but doesnt it boil down to how difficult it is to earn gold.

fyerwall

It's all about supply and demand;

He who supplies it the cheapest will get the demand.

WS, like every game before it, will see a crap ton of spammers/sellers, regardless of 'CREDD'. Gold farmers fear not what the developers do and will adapt faster than a developer can add countermeasures. And that is because there are players out there who will buy gold. Sure CREDD is a great idea and all, but people will still buy gold from a seller if the price is better for the value vs the alternative. 

CREDD will be based of ingame player trends. It's either going to sell very low on the player markets to make it not worth for the seller or players will price it too high that buyers will feel they are going to end up spending more time farming than playing and not even bother. Either way gold sellers will still be there making money because people will be willing to buy it.

 

Devs can only do so much to combat gold sellers. It's the people you play with you should worry about as they are the ones who are giving the farmers their business.