Curse

Brimstonez · Mar 01, 2008, 12:55 AM // 00:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I would support that. It's a form of democratic GM, like GWG's moderators. Of course impossible in GW1 without significant effort that Anet won't make, but may be in GW2?

(I'd even introduce meta-moderators to moderate moderators, as is done on Slashdot.org, it would be necessary at first to make sure that this police squad would agree on rules, since Anet can't really fix the rules of something so subjective); Slashdot.org karma system would work great too, by ensuring that this police squad is not always made up of the same people)

I've seen to many cases of game policing in the past. It sounds great, and even works for a short period of time, but dies in the ass too fast. Where there is power, there is corruption, it's human nature. The only way they (A.Net) could ensure a safe environment for all, is to employ people to monitor each server (making this their sole purpose)

Chthon · Mar 01, 2008, 01:49 AM // 01:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

These "barriers" are too hypothetical. How on earth should this work without ruining the game for players as well.

Well, it was a hypothetical after all, so what do you expect?
But seriously though, the sort of barriers that raise gold-seller prices without affecting legit players are barriers that raise the gold-sellers' overhead -- better bot detection and banning, better anti-farm/loot scaling scheme, better gold spam blocking and banning, and perhaps better legal action (if not against gold sellers directly, then against the US domain name registrars and online-payment services that enable their business).

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Originally Posted by X Ice Man X

So your saying then in short. That if it cost $100 to buy 1k and people were willing to pay that then nobody would sell it to them?

You answer your own question:

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Sure, selling gold at that amount would greatly reduce the amount of people willing to buy it.

At that price level, there would not be enough customers to support an organized business like we have now. You'd sell 50k for $5000 one week, then not make another penny for a month because customers would be too rare. You couldn't keep the lights on. There might still be individuals who occasionally sold a high-value account on e-bay when they quit, but organized gold-selling would be dead.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

The inflation thing is also something you have to prove. It does not exist,

This is kinda like asking me to prove gravity. You increase the money supply, you increase inflation -- simple as that. The change in money supply over a given period is always going to equal the summation across all accounts of the gold generated from monster-killing minus the gold sunk at NPCs for that period. "Legit" players, particularly farmers, tend to cause a bit of inflation, because they generate more than they sink, but we forgive them for it because they are "playing the game the way it's meant to be played." Bots and sweatshop farmers cause much more inflation per capita than legit players (even hardcore farmers) because they generate much more gold than a normal player and sink pretty much none of it. A-net conjuring gold out of thin air would have the same effect -- only worse because gold would probably be generated even faster than bots generate it now.

Another way to "prove" inflation is to point to you some current item prices. No matter how hardcore a farmer you are, presuming that you don't bot or buy gold yourself, and that you've never gotten a windfall by selling something to someone who did, I doubt you're in a position to be buying those 100k+Xecto/armbrace items. And no one else is either. The only way anyone ever got the kind of money to offer 100k+Xecto/armbrace for anything was from the gold sellers -- either directly by purchasing gold, or indirectly by selling something to someone who had purchased gold and was able to pay an inflated price because of it. Without the gold-sellers, nothing would be up i nthe 100k+Xecto/armbrace price range simply because no one could afford it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RavagerOfDreams

problem is prices are dropping not rising. I.E. armbrace is now down to 100k+15e so your inflation theory can't be true ;P

The falling price of armbraces is a red herring. Other factors aside from gold-seller-induced inflation are acting on the price of armbraces -- most notably the fact that there's still so many duped armbraces out there that armbraces probably outnumber bog skale fins.

enter_the_zone · Mar 01, 2008, 02:41 AM // 02:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

While rhetorically appealing, this is dead wrong. People only buy gold because it is cheap enough that they can get an amount that yields a substantial in-game benefit for a trivial portion of their disposable assets. If gold prices rose above such "pocket change" levels, demand for it would plummet. Certainly there would be a few wealthy people who would still like to buy, but there would not be a big enough clientèle to support an organized gold-selling business.

In short, imagine what would happen if a-net were able to impose barriers that raised the cost of gold to $100 per 1k, and you can see why the claim that "as long as there is people who will buy the gold..." is false.

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@ Legalization.

It's a very bad idea. You get the same inflation as with the illegal version, only it's worse because it draws in new gold-buyers because it's cheaper and risk-of-ban-free.

Thanks to max-stat collectors' items, at least GW wouldn't end up like other games where there's a serious power differential between those cough up cash for in-game benefits and those who don't:

(I think Bilateralope summed it up pretty well, but Penny Arcade is funnier.)

You are failing to count the cost of ruining their own in-game economy to do it.

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Indeed it is. It is a very good analogy and I'm frankly disturbed by some of the posts bashing it. When people fail to "get" an analogy that straightforward, I feel very bad about the quality of the education in logical reasoning available today...

This is absolutely correct.

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It certainly does. A-net would stand to make money by pushing the gold-sellers right to the brink of unprofitability by banning their bots and cashing in every time the gold-sellers bought a new account to replaced a banned one.
The questions are: (1) Could a-net make more money than they could in the above manner by eliminating the gold-sellers altogether and promoting a gold-seller-free game that drew in more legitimate customers? (2) Does a-net, out of principle or animus towards the gold-sellers, want to eliminate them even if symbiotic relationship would be more profitable?

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In which case a WoW-style informational campaign would be a good idea.

1. Your point about the EULA not being a law is correct; gold-selling qua EULA-vioaltion is "unlawful" not "illegal," and results only in a-net having a right to sue violators. (Even in jurisdictions where the EULA does not hold, there tends to be an underlying IP right that's getting violated and establishes a similar basis for a suit.)
2. Depending on a given jurisdiction's conceptions of intellectual property, gold-selling may qualify as plain old theft, and be criminally punishable.
3. Depending on how loosely drafted a given jurisdiction's computer crimes laws are, gold-selling may be criminally punishable as "hacking." (I consider this bad legal drafting, since it's not hacking by any common-sense definition and clearly not what was intended when such laws were written, but the result is the same regardless of my opinion on it.)

And you are assuming that it would lead to ruination of the IG economy. It very well could, if it was implemented badly. If you're talking about selling IG currency, the arguments posed here have brought me round to thinking that's a bad idea, as it could to easily destroy the economy.

However, I've since proposed an alternative whereby items are sold in the IG store for RL money. The items are customized, they can't be traded in game. Only a small percentage of players would choose to use the store for items, and all items would still be available from existing sources. How could that ruin the existing economy? By reducing the number of IG trades that are items for gold? We're talking about a minority of people who would effectively be removed from the IG economy.

The additional funds generated could be used to better the customer service and bug fixing. It's almost 4 months since the problem with the scrying pool was discovered...

Biostem · Mar 01, 2008, 03:21 AM // 03:21

The best way to keep RMTs to a minimum is to keep offering max equipment via collectors and as very affordable options from readily accessible merchants. When the time required to get max stuff goes beyond what your casual player would consider convenient, then RMTs become attractive.

I don't think you can truly quash RMTs outright - only reduce the demand for them.

hurdlebeast · Mar 01, 2008, 03:29 AM // 03:29

I dunno if anyone brought this up, but:

What about the taxes involved in RMT? I mean if i sit on my comp all day, farm with a few other people, and sell those things over the game for cash (not through an online site or anything, just straight up P2P) isn't that considered a source of income?

Just a thought...

Alex the Great · Mar 01, 2008, 03:30 AM // 03:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

QFT.

I sometimes wonder if legalization would be the solution. Many people would not like it, but I would say better ANet is selling the gold and cashing in than others...

quit wondering pls, we don't need anymore stupid ideas thank you.

that makes no sense whatsoever, it's like saying "lets sell hacks, if you have $150 you can use the gm only skill "Bammph for an instant kill"

stupid stupid stupid

Snow Bunny · Mar 01, 2008, 07:44 AM // 07:44

Whoever supports 'credit card wars' has put little serious/rational thought into their argument.

DarkWasp · Mar 01, 2008, 07:51 AM // 07:51

I saw we raise the penalty for selling AND buying to a real live death penalty.

Send me some addresses, devs, and i'll buy a gun.

Official disclaimer: This post may not be used against me in court, but I ALMOST mean what I said.

bilateralrope · Mar 01, 2008, 09:34 AM // 09:34

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Originally Posted by Longasc

You would like a guaranteed green every time from a dungeon chest, too?

Only if the only way to get the item is be doing that grind.

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We already have the dungeon chests, and they only sometimes guarantee an onyx or lockpick, but never a green item.

And all of these items are tradable, so I don't care that they aren't guaranteed drops.

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I deem it much better gameplay and more of an achievement and enjoyable to "grind" a whole dungeon over and over than to grind a farmspot and buy the item.

Doing an area to a certain standard the first time is an achievement. Repeating it to the point of bordem because the random number generator didn't throw the result you wanted the first time isn't.

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Which would bring GOLD you can buy into the equation.

I don't like bind on pickup, because all it does is limit the actions a player can chose between to get the item they want. So it makes the grind worse

And I'm guessing that a lot of the gold buyers are people who don't like the grind, so they buy gold to avoid it. I can't fault someone for avoiding the parts of the game they don't enjoy if their don't make things worse for other players, which is why I'd like to see a system that removes the problems from the gold selling groups (spam and inflation) without increasing the grind.

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Your assumption is this "inflation" you fear. People buy all the things you mentioned cheaper from players,

My assumption was that the gold buyers would buy from NPC's because it's quicker and they have enough gold so they don't care about the increased price.

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but I will agree on your point and say it does not cause inflation. I say this inflation would not exist anyways, though.

Even without the gold sellers, inflation would always exist. The gold sellers make it worse, along with bringing in lots of spam.

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Back to GW, this does not make this kind of gold buying better. It takes away from the grind achievement if you can buy titles. Gold buying has influence on them. It makes them even "cheaper" and even sillier than such grind titles are anyways.

I find grind titles pretty silly as a whole. In fact when I look at grind, I see a way for game developers to increase the time people spend playing a game without putting in much effort.

bilateralrope · Mar 01, 2008, 09:41 AM // 09:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by RavagerOfDreams

problem is prices are dropping not rising. I.E. armbrace is now down to 100k+15e so your inflation theory can't be true ;P

How many real economies measure inflation by just looking at the prices of one item ?

How many of those economies pick an item that most people only buy a few times before never buying a new one ?

Longasc · Mar 01, 2008, 11:09 AM // 11:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

This is kinda like asking me to prove gravity. You increase the money supply, you increase inflation -- simple as that. The change in money supply over a given period is always going to equal the summation across all accounts of the gold generated from monster-killing minus the gold sunk at NPCs for that period. "Legit" players, particularly farmers, tend to cause a bit of inflation, because they generate more than they sink, but we forgive them for it because they are "playing the game the way it's meant to be played." Bots and sweatshop farmers cause much more inflation per capita than legit players (even hardcore farmers) because they generate much more gold than a normal player and sink pretty much none of it. A-net conjuring gold out of thin air would have the same effect -- only worse because gold would probably be generated even faster than bots generate it now.

We generate gold from an unlimited pool, the only limiting factor is the time. This is not a real world economy (!), and even there your view how inflation works is not wrong, but very basic/shallow.

World of Warcraft must be in ruins because of gold sellers, the prices inflated like hell. But it did not happen.

Same for GW. We have dropping prices, everything loses value. Not only armbraces, which is caused by ursan groups and everyone and his brother making farm runs there. In fact such things, and the 55 HP monk, changed the economy more than gold selling ever did.

ANet cannot give you 1000 Platinum for 1 Dollar. This would make gold worthless.

1.) They would have to take their own economy in account, the time factor needed to get the ingame gold.
2.) Be competitive with gold sellers

Gold sellers would still exist if they are considerably cheaper than ANet gold. If they are not so much cheaper, people would not risk their account or wait for a delivery and all that. They would go to the store, boom, get money legally.

Money selling would work in GW1, but I do not really want it. They could leave it as it is and fight gold sellers and their customers once they get them, as they already do. The impact does not seem to be considerable, given the excessive gold spamming by always the same bot over days if not weeks. Or they join the gold seller market and cash in.

I wonder how much money ANet could have generated, maybe enough to make GW:EN a bit more than scraps of upcoming chapters pieced together.

Bottom line:
I hope for a system in GW2, I mentioned some examples in my discussion with bilateralrope, that makes gold less important. Really good stuff must be earned, not bought, is my idea behind it.

BoP, Token systems, quest/pre-quest requirements and stuff like that. You would not be able to buy everything.

Take a look at WoW, it works, despite being the biggest gold seller market known to westerners.

Longasc · Mar 01, 2008, 11:15 AM // 11:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex the Great

that makes no sense whatsoever, it's like saying "lets sell hacks, if you have $150 you can use the gm only skill "Bammph for an instant kill"

stupid stupid stupid

Makes as much sense as you do. Nobody would pay 150 dollars to kill you, maybe you are the extra stupid one here.

enter_the_zone · Mar 01, 2008, 11:23 AM // 11:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex the Great

quit wondering pls, we don't need anymore stupid ideas thank you.

that makes no sense whatsoever, it's like saying "lets sell hacks, if you have $150 you can use the gm only skill "Bammph for an instant kill"

stupid stupid stupid

Actually, if you had bothered to read the thread, you'd see that there are ways in which this can be done with little to no impact on the IG economy and effectively shutting down the goldsellers. Also, no one is seriously considering that Anet should sell gold anymore. We're discussing other forms of RTM and no one is suggesting that RM buyers should have access to buy uber-skills or weapons or armors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

Whoever supports 'credit card wars' has put little serious/rational thought into their argument.

Uh, actually serious and rational thought for a lot of pages back there. Just because you don't agree, don't insult people buy emo-dismissing their arguments without actually addressing them.

Cacheelma · Mar 01, 2008, 11:25 AM // 11:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

We generate gold from an unlimited pool, the only limiting factor is the time. This is not a real world economy (!), and even there your view how inflation works is not wrong, but very basic/shallow.

World of Warcraft must be in ruins because of gold sellers, the prices inflated like hell. But it did not happen.

WoW's economy isn't affected TOO MUCH by gold sellers, not because gold sellers don't affect in-game economy (like how you tried to conclude), but because THE WAY THINGS WORK IN WOW.

People buy gold in WoW mostly to get the epic mount training; a big money sink in WoW. Gold people get from gold sellers doesn't even enter the market; it comes into people's inventory and goes right out of the game through the money sink.

And even though some people use the money they've bought for some equipments in WoW, those equipments are mostly a one-way trade; you buy them, you lose the money with no way to get it back due to the fact that most equipments in WoW bind to you when used. The equipments go out of the market and don't have any monetary value left in them the moment they're used.

Compare that to GW; you buy a crystalline sword of whatever for 100k, you use it for years and then you can still sell THE SWORD to someone else with more or less the same price you paid to get it. The gold never really leaves you but only changes into a sword with its value in gold still intact (more or less).

I can't really make it any more clearer due to the limitation of my English language skill. But I hope some of you get my point and can explain it better. I'd really appreciate.

Longasc · Mar 01, 2008, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Cacheelma, we could make all weapons BIND ON EQUIP. Basically, if you use them, you can no longer trade them.

Would butthurt some people who never customize their weapons. ^^

Chthon · Mar 01, 2008, 07:00 PM // 19:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

We generate gold from an unlimited pool, the only limiting factor is the time.

Apparently I failed in simplifying my point without losing it. Let me try again:

Inflation over period, P, is proportional to Delta(Money Supply) over P. Delta(Money Supply) over P equals the rate that gold is generated at over P minus the rate that gold is permanently sunk out through NPC's over P. We care little about the absolute size of Money Supply, and nothing at all about where Money Supply comes from; what we do care about is the balance between these two rates.

Or, in short: The speed with which gold is generated is what matters.

If the designers balance their drop rates and gold sinks properly, "legit" players aren't a problem because, in the aggregate, they generate and sink gold at roughly the same rate.

Gold-sellers are a problem because they generate gold a faster rate than "legit" players, and don't sink at all. They're putting excess gold into the system that wouldn't otherwise be there, and that's going to have an inflationary effect.
(This can be dampened if the gold-buyers sink the gold instead of using it to buy things from other players, however they still increase the money supply by the amount that the gold-buyer generated during P and would have otherwise spent on the sink (eventually) and now has available for buying things from other players. The dampening effect arises out of the assumption that the gold-buyer generates gold slower than the gold -seller.)

Having a-net create gold out of thin air is going to have the same sort of effect -- the rate of gold generation gets increased while the rate of gold sinking stays constant. But it's going to be worse because it's going to have to be faster than the gold-sellers if they want to make it cheaper than the gold-sellers.
(The idea of counting your gold purchases against your drop rate so that your long-term gold generation rate doesn't change would work in theory. But I have a feeling that people would find it exceptionally un-fun when they played for weeks without a drop. (And, yes, you would have to be denied white drops too to make it work.))

As for making high-end items bind-on-drop, that would save those items from inflation (because they'd be out of the market), but it would increase the inflationary effect for everything that's not bind-on-drop, because there would be the same amount of cash and less goods to spend it on.

As for making items bind-on-equip, it would make matters worse because there would be the same amount of cash and less goods to spend it on. Moreover, it would royally "butthurt" those of us who like to equip an unknown skin for a moment to see what it looks like before deciding to merch it or transfer it to another char. I really don't want to have to wiki every time I find a skin I haven't seen before (or don't remember).

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World of Warcraft must be in ruins because of gold sellers, the prices inflated like hell. But it did not happen.

You are failing to consider that other countervailing factors could be (and are) at play in WoW, and so you end up drawing an incorrect conclusion from "the sky didn't fall in WoW" to "gold-sellers don't cause inflation." In fact, gold-sellers do cause inflation; other things in WoW mitigate that and/or cause deflation; and the net result is that the sky hasn't fallen.

Much like trying to stamp out gold-sellers (or drug dealers) would have a positive effect even without completely solving the problem, gold-selling (official or otherwise) would have a negative effect even if it doesn't completely ruin the economy.

Snow Bunny · Mar 01, 2008, 07:07 PM // 19:07

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Originally Posted by enter_the_zone

Uh, actually serious and rational thought for a lot of pages back there. Just because you don't agree, don't insult people buy emo-dismissing their arguments without actually addressing them.

All that credit card wars do is give an advantage to bored older players and adolescents with mum and dad shelling out notes to make their kid happy.

It automatically puts those with less disposable income at a disadvantage, which is a terrible idea to implement.

X Ice Man X · Mar 02, 2008, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

All that credit card wars do is give an advantage to bored older players and adolescents with mum and dad shelling out notes to make their kid happy.

It automatically puts those with less disposable income at a disadvantage, which is a terrible idea to implement.

Thats just wrong. You don't need to Grind anything to get max stats weapons and armour in Guild Wars. How would some rich kid have an advantage over you with his Tormented Weapons and FoW armour while you went around with a 1k Green and Droks armour all the same stats?

Gaile Gray · Mar 02, 2008, 01:22 AM // 01:22

Long, long ago, we published an interview with ArenaNet Co-Founder Mike O'Brien where he talked in some detail about the issues of real-money or real-world traders. You will find Mike's interview here.

We block members of gold-selling networks by the thousands, each and every week. I'm going to be starting a wiki page to show the numbers, because we think that would be a cool thing for you guys to see.

In the meantime, as we have always said, we have no issue with legitimate farmers, but we take great issue with real-money gold and item sellers, and will use every resource at our disposal to curtail their activities.

Biostem · Mar 02, 2008, 01:28 AM // 01:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Long, long ago, we published an interview with ArenaNet Co-Founder Mike O'Brien where he talked in some detail about the issues of real-money or real-world traders. You will find Mike's interview here.

We block members of gold-selling networks by the thousands, each and every week. I'm going to be starting a wiki page to show the numbers, because we think that would be a cool thing for you guys to see.

In the meantime, as we have always said, we have no issue with legitimate farmers, but we take great issue with real-money gold and item sellers, and will use every resource at our disposal to curtail their activities.

That would be interesting to see. I know you may not be able to give very specific information, but are you folks able to track the gold sellers to specific countries/regions? Are most coming from trial accounts or retail boxes?

One last suggestion I would like to make would be to remove the restriction on the report function that the person you're reporting has to be in the same district as you. There have been times where I've been looking for a team in a major town, and started to receive a flood of whispers for gold selling sites, but couldn't report a single one because they were in different districts...

On a more positive note, the fact that GW has collectors w/ max stuff makes any desire I have to buy gold vanish...