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Broken shop items and gold farming.
blognorg
Member UncommonPosts: 643
[mod edit - do not post or refer to info under NDA]
Gold farmers
This is an issue in every MMO. There is a lot of talk about whether or not it will be a problem in GW2; the main argument being that gems and gold can be traded. The bottom line: will there be gold farmers in GW2? Yes. Will it destroy the game? No. I don't think that anything, short of the developer being omnipotent, will stop RMT. However, there are a few factors that will help. For one, being able to exchange money for gems (which are purchased with real money) sets a standard that gold farmers can't exceed, lest they won't see a profit. Two, GW2 has a different mantra than most other MMOs. It's not just a power grab; the point of the game is the adventure and having fun with the content as you level. Obviously some people will still want to buy gold, but I think the overall motivation is less so than other games. Lastly, the box costs money; we're not talking about a F2P game here. Every time a gold farmer's account gets banned, that sets them back $60... and they will get banned.
What I think ArenaNet should do on top of the regular methods of gold trading prevention is to turn the players, themselves, into watchdogs. Offer a reward for turning in a gold trader, or if a player is caught buying gold, offer them amnesty for names of gold farmers/traders. It would be a touch market to sell gold in if the whole communtiy is turned into police, not to mention that the gold traders would have to worry about every costomer turning them in after the transactions is complete.
Comments
1 thing i want to point out about your post. The fallacy that being banned causes gold farmers grief. This just isnt true. Maybe it was true back when MMOs began but not today.
Gold farmers buy very very few accounts and those accounts are insulated so heavily that no one not even the game company knows who they are. Most accounts you see gold farming activity on are free, paid for with stolen credit cards or just plain hacked. These are throw away accounts and the gold farmers know this.
I'll farm gold from time to time, for sure. Dont care about people doing it all the time.
It's true; that stuff does happen, but that it is merely an effect of the cause (the RMT). I just put up a suggest; I'm sure there are many, better ways to go about it. I suppose another thing that could be done is to make gold not directly tradable from player to player. That way, if someone wants to buy gold, he would have to put something up in the marktet that is grossly overpriced for the transaction to be made. That would cause suspicion of both the buyer and the seller, making them as easy mark for investigation. Not only that, but it take more effort, which may unmotivate people to buy gold in the first place. I guess my point is that if the motivation for people to buy gold in the first place is diminished, then it would tackle the problem at its source.
he speaks the truth. My question and no one seems to coment on it but HOW on earth would a bot even work in GW2.. it wouldn't and even if the farmers had to go back to actually playing... how does it hurt us as fellow players? The only way I could see them hurting other players is by mass attendance at events and just standing there.. but then the event would fail and they would get nothing. The game itself is nearly botproof.. challenging fighting system with not much reward for grinding random mobs, as well as a changing world.
If you just go there and do nothing like what bots normally do you won't get no credit period.
Unless someone has a bot that can fight and participate, for example if people complete the event your in but all your doing is standing there you won't get nothing at all.
Maybe there are more advance bots.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
unless they hack the game I think it will be very difficult for bots to operate in this game
yes but wont it make the event think there are more people fighting? I am saying like say 5 players and 5 standing around farmers or ineffective bots .. will this make the event scale to 10 and make it very hard for the 5 players?
It's actually really quite easy for devs (decent ones anyway) to catch players using macro's and other such "hacks" to automate gold farming.
Just look at the stuff Bioware/TOR showed/shows us - "heat maps" of where players are, what they are doing, how long they are playing and what they are doing etc. etc.
It's another thing entirely to figure out who is just simply a dedicated grinder.
I'd go as far as to say that most of the gold that is traded illegally comes from hacked accounts.
And probably most of the hackers/true gold farmers accounts are stolen accounts from hacks.
It is quite viscious.
Throw in credit card theft due to stolen accounts, identity theft (credit card info + account info usually = name, address, date of birth etc.)
I saw the "Boosts" the OP originally referred to and I gotta say: I'm not impressed.
They're NOTHING LIKE the the "Pay 2 Win" Boosts you'll see in most "F2P" games.
Regarding Gold traders... They're simply not a threat. The most they can hope to do is "skim a little off the top" of Gold/Gem prices while hoping they don't trade so many of them that they get flagged by Anet's automated GM tools. People who buy gems with Gold and then try to resell them RMT-style will be in the same boat as people who try to resell MannCo keys. A Much Biggger threat currently is going to be the Auction Speculators, IE: the guys who "flip" items by buying them low and selling them higher. ...this might even include Gems themselves. (but it would be extremely easy to fix, all Anet has to do is limit the number of Auction slots a computer's MAC ADDRESS has access to)
The problem with Flippers is not technically that they cause inflation, but rather that they cause DISPARITY. Inflation simply means the price of EVERYTHING goes up. While Disparity means that only the prices of high-demand items goes up. In nearly all case in MMO's (including Gw1), those items with the manipulated demand also had higher Rarity and the game had no built in systems to automatically counteract market manipulation. We see this most directly with Ectos, Diamonds, Granite, Rubies/Saphs, and a few other commodities that were used most often in HOM rewards. Failures in the Supply Metrics within the game (and a lack of a REAL crafting system) made this a constant issue throughout GW1's lifetime and put most new players at a huge Disadvantage to players who had niche Farming builds&guilds.
About the only material that was Over-Valued yet easy to farm quckly, was Feathers.
They said they'll have timers don't know if that'll help, but eventually those bots should die lol if that's the case, member no one can't tank and spank even outside dungeons, though that being said they might also make the events much more fun lol.
Challenging yet fun.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
If the moderator didn't edit out half of my post, you would have seen that it wasn't the boosts that I was talking about. I was referring to the resurrection orbs and the gear repair kits. No, I don't think that they breach P2W territory, however I feel that they contradict some of the core game mechanics.
If it would be so hard or innefficient to goldbot, then why do they have the gems for gold system? One reason given for it was to take the illegal transactions out of the game and make it easy to do it legal (while making money for Anet).
What core game mechanics do they contradict? I only see those items as a convenience.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
Well, the game is designed so that your gear can break, and that you have to go to an NPC to get it fixed. It acts as both a gold sink and as a death penalty. I can see something like this becoming the norm for dungeons, and people might actually be alienated from parties if they choose not to use them.
I think the resurrection orbs are worse though. One the game's main qualities is that every player can revive one another, and get rewarded for doing so. Being able to resurrect yourself contradicts the that philosophy of the game. Reductio ad absurdum: if everyone were to use them, it would be a totally different game, hence they alter the mechanics.
Mind you, I'm not saying that these items are P2W, or that they break the game. I just don't really like what they do, and I feel that they take away from what ArenaNet has established.
It depends on the game and their system.
GW had this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6bZSpQHxU
and I think as also hope GW2 will have the same system in it for just in case someone is dumb enough to throw their money out for a game they will get banned from in no time.
The why is fairly simple, by allowing player trade in cash-shop currency they sell more of the currency and thus generate more real income for the company. It's so obviously increases sales that you wonder why some cash-shop do not follow that model.
Jade Dynasty did for many years and still does very successfully.
The system works flawless and I never saw any Bots in the game advertising anything (except if I missed one somewhere).
I didn't visited the game recently but when I did a while ago it was still filled with players allover the place.
If that doesn't mean that such a system is working greatly, makes a game successfull and more appealing than others when it comes to item shops, then I don't know what does.
Being finacially succesful and treating your customers fairly are two very different things.
Actually Ariboersma seeing as no one has answered your question I will
Bots in gw2 can actually have a bigger impact on the game than most people think more so than in other games. I give you exhibit A. Remember when the devs mentioned that when you help a player kill an enemy you also get your own loot? Well imagine 3 bots running around attacking a mob all at the same time. Those bots now have a 3x the chance of scoring rare materials, gear (blues and whatnot), and more gold. All of which will be placed on the broker making said items cost less. Of course your thinking "cheaper mats sound good to me ^^" but it works both ways, once you farm some mats for gold your prices are reduced to compete with the bots.
Anyone for example remember winning that lucky roll for that expensive BoE Epic/eternal/legendary/ect only to run to the Broker and see 5 others posted? Now your item doesn't net you what it could. It all comes down to RMT/Bots take the player controlled economy out of the hands of the players where it belongs.
I really don't see gold bots becoming an issue.
Why?
Because bots require static triggers in order to run correctly and consecutively (emphasis on the AND part, because if you have to reprogram your bot each run, its basically worthless). With the Dynamic Events, you don't have those static triggers and consistently respawning mobs with the exception of the beginner areas where you earn the least gold.
Since bot farming mobs in the world is essentially stripped, that leaves farming dungeons. Dungeons are instanced which gives Anet a very easy method of monitoring for scripts/macros. If anyone tries it in volume, you can bet your gem-sack that Dhuum will show up in short order for some very public moderation.
Sure, people will still farm gold (by grinding manually like the rest of us) and possibly support RMT/gold sellers, but it won't be at the volume that has been seen in other games.
I'm not really sure how they would bot dungeons, either. The difficulty level is high, the Trinity doesn't work, reacting to the environment and mob/bot attacks are crucial and there are enough random elements and DEs in dungeons so that any given run is not entirely predictable.
There are serious game design barriers to botting and if Arenanet also offers tools for easily reporting suspected farmers and gold sellers, while acting quickly to investigate and apply appropriate bans, it going to be a very unfriendly environment for gold sellers. Not to mention the drastic discount they would have to offer vs. the gem for gold exchange rates.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I dunno, Stasi methods doesn't sound right to me.
I think that gold farmers wont be much of a problem, what might be a problem is people who hijack accounts to steal gold and gems.
Frankly have bots and farming gone down quite a bit the last few years, most gold sold today are stolen. Anet needs to have good security to stop this since stealing the jewels really is like stealing real money from you.
But it is not really something to worry about right now, hopefully will the security be good.
Bots will have no simple targetting mechanism, like you had in GW1 - and other games, they'll have to interpet the visual clues from the display, just as we do, and while it is a natural thing for us, it's hard to program. The combat system is a better bot-repellant then the cash-shop.
its not just hard to program if i remember correctly its impossible (currently at least) they cant even get a computer to consistantly tell the difference between a picture of a puppy and a kitten let alone something as complex as the situations and such going on in a game.
might get a good percentage of the picures right with the most advanced recognition programs there are but nowhere near as good as humans.
(not a programmer so anyone who actualy is would be welcome to correct any mistakes i may have made)
combat logs.
Great Boar starts casting thrust
*dodge*
just saying, bots don't need visual queues, only to hack the info of what mobs are doing
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."