Curse

ascension1223 · Jan 21, 2009, 10:03 PM // 22:03

Well I want to begin this rather long-winded article/idea post with a bit about myself. I am a finance major and recently picked my old GW obsession back up following a year + hiatus from the game. Coming back I felt a little displaced but things seemed largely consistent with how I left, with a few exceptions. I must make a confession here and I accept your judgment but you need to read all I have to say on the matter, upon coming back I decided to "jumpstart" my return with an investment in gold through real money, an investment which is 1) Against the ToS of GW, 2) unsafe and 3) I would not recommend to anyone. See I had fallen under the presumption that my investment would be a victimless crime, if a crime at all, and that I would be able to buy all that pretty equipment for my heros, get my vigor runes etc. Upon my prompt suspension I was relayed to an article put up by the GW staff concerning the various problems in association with the industry of selling digital gold. Many of the darker sides to this concept had eluded me prior to my decision, but are now very clear.

So I began to do some research on how many players like me had made such decisions, their motives, their providers etc. I stumbled upon this article: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=75915, as well as others, which detailed many players' frustrations regarding the gathering of gold and the increasing and difficultly closed gap between new players and established ones. I also witnessed an incredible backlash amongst said established players and those claiming a need for such systems. Further, I saw hundreds of sites, with curiously similar designs, all selling GW gold with no risk, no suspension plastered all over the place, and very poor english. This lends further credence to the risks one takes when conducting such a transaction, and I would urge any to avoid such a decision.

Considering all these factors I came up with this scenario:
A gaming production team with a product they must defend both out of principal and legal issues from gold farmers.
A populace of established gamers with vested time and effort in the game who cannot be expected to allow their hard work to be diminished.
Another group of new, inexperienced or otherwise of people who want to compete at the higher levels faster
An economy which functions in large parts as an oligarchy in regards to the most desirable of objects
And an ocean of internet companies praying on all the above, hurting security and the economy as a whole.

I started to consider what GW could do to stamp out this problem. Their current system, of banning sellers and punishing buyers, is barely effective, anyone who understands the psychological nature of coercive actions, will understand punishment works only while the punished maintains he is being actively watched by the power holder. Further, the shame, feeling of exclusion, as well as financial loss incurred could push new players away (although an argument can be said it won't hurt to have such players removed, I still feel business is at its core about getting as many clients as possible happy). And lastly, no matter how advanced said systems become, the populace will inevitably grow, and more and more schemes will develop to get around it. The trouble, is treating the source, while maintaining a sense of fairness to all. My first solution was simply to offer gold through guildwars's online store, but I immediately realized that this would punish players who didn't purchase the gold, as inflation would push them to relative financial impotence. My second idea was to sell the desired items themselves at the store, but diminish them in some way, say making all items customized to one character and not appearing in the monuments, or changing the skins of the uniques so players will recognize that this was a different object. Intuitively though, it still did not click, as new players would still have the burden of increased financial involvement and old players objects may become unneccesary if people accepted these alternatives more readily. After some frustration I realized my problem was more philosophical, all this time I was trying to solve the real-world problems with money and external solutions, but at it's core, this is about a digital economy, ideally entirely separate from out own. It should have no correlation to the outside world whatsoever, so I thought about how could the economy be improved, and how could it behoove new players as well as old. I am very proud to say I came up with, what I feel, is a great idea.

All real world economies have this idea, so should GW, a bank. Now let me be very explicit in how this could work to benefit everyone. Players can interact with this bank to deposit funds into an interest bearing loan account for other players, especially new ones. Further, the more money you put in, the interest rate exponentially decays, making it impossible for rich players to compound their money into infinity, and allowing new players to gather their funds faster.

Now to the loan part, this is where I found a lot of difficulty, but I am taking this idea, in part, from a game called capitalism II where you can borrow, roughly exactly what amount of money you currently have in your possession. So, assuming a new player has 3000 gold, he could borrow 3000 gold from this loan fund. But how can he pay it back and pay it back to a degree enough to earn what loaners invested? By withholding gold dropped in the same way the government withholds FICA taxes. So said player borrows 3000 gold, as he plays, loot is dropped, and out of his share a % is deducted until he has recovered his loan, which could be say, 3500 gold, based on the amount he borrowed, and how long it took for him to repay it. This system would need a maximum borrowing cap, say 10k, to prevent abuse of the system, and no new loans should be allowed to be taken while a current one is in effect. This helps new players to get an early infusion of cash to buy what they need to complete the game efficiently and to their liking, and it also gives players with more money a method by which to earn some extra coin. As to the explicit interest rates, I would say somewhere around 30%, which would be compounded monthly, as guildwars if a much faster paced world than the real one, and this would yield a monthly APR of 2.5% on loaned gold, and this could reduce to 10%, or .0833% for players loaning much more gold. The loaners would likely also need to be capped at the maximum amount loanable, say 50K. This system would need to be on an account, not character basis as well. I hope you guys can follow all this, and it gets some support and reaches the eyes of some GW developers. I also hope my contribution can atone for my mistake. Thanks, Matt

Sora267 · Jan 21, 2009, 10:24 PM // 22:24

I skimmed it and it seems interesting, though it'll probably be met with "Well, back in my day..." complaints. I personally don't think that new players should be spoonfed like this from the beginning and should instead work for their money from the start.

Inari · Jan 21, 2009, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Problem is money in GW doesn't buy you better, only prettier, which kinda destroys the point in having multiple reqs for items and such. At least in my opinion. I hope this will change in one way or another with GW2. Nothing to be done with GW as it stands.

cognophile · Jan 21, 2009, 11:40 PM // 23:40

My experience is that a new character can typically earn enough gold to be effective by simply playing the game, so I don't really understand the complaint about not having enough money right away. (On the other hand, I don't understand why some people want to be run through the game before they even learn how to play either.)

So, if I have 3000 gold, I can borrow another 3000, right? Now I have 6000 gold, so I can borrow 3000 more, ok? Hmm, now at 9000, so I can borrow 3k more ... When done borrowing, I open a second account, transfer my gold to that account, and it can start borrowing ...

It appears the loan function could easily be abused.

ascension1223 · Jan 22, 2009, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by cognophile

My experience is that a new character can typically earn enough gold to be effective by simply playing the game, so I don't really understand the complaint about not having enough money right away. (On the other hand, I don't understand why some people want to be run through the game before they even learn how to play either.)

So, if I have 3000 gold, I can borrow another 3000, right? Now I have 6000 gold, so I can borrow 3000 more, ok? Hmm, now at 9000, so I can borrow 3k more ... When done borrowing, I open a second account, transfer my gold to that account, and it can start borrowing ...

It appears the loan function could easily be abused.

Well I had said a second loan could not be removed until the first was paid, but you raise a good point about transfers, I suppose you would have to freeze a portion of the players could = to the amount remaining on the loan, until they pay it back. E.g., 3000 loan, total owed = 3500, get it down to 2000 and you have 4500 on your person. only 2500 of that could be traded. A beginning player (who the loan is made for) shouldn't be trading, but focused on buying from merchants, further, this would prevent an early loan to make a trade on the hope of turning a bigger trade profit faster.

Boneyard Spleeneater · Jan 22, 2009, 02:08 AM // 02:08

Nice post. I dunno if your idea is feasible, but it would be nice if my money was working for me during the week and between holidays.

I have never purchased gold, but I am not opposed to it philosophically (sweatshops aside). Ultimately what it comes down to is that I have more money than time (thanks to a college education), and so I would rather get to the fun part of the game that doesn't require grinding/farming. If I could pay someone $20 for a chunk of gold to buy the required stuff to get my drunkard/sweet tooth/party animal titles, where is the harm in that? I make $20 in less than an hour, but it would take me many more than that of grinding the same area, which doesn't prove I am skilled, and isn't any fun.

Basically, gold farmers remove the boring, skilless parts of games. www.ironycentral.com has an article that the author published on the topic (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/711/711593p1.html). I don't buy gold, but I completely understand why someone would, and if I was paying a monthly fee for GW, I would probably buy it in order to get my money's worth of gaming time.

Daisuko · Jan 22, 2009, 02:13 AM // 02:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by ascension1223

Well I had said a second loan could not be removed until the first was paid, but you raise a good point about transfers, I suppose you would have to freeze a portion of the players could = to the amount remaining on the loan, until they pay it back. E.g., 3000 loan, total owed = 3500, get it down to 2000 and you have 4500 on your person. only 2500 of that could be traded. A beginning player (who the loan is made for) shouldn't be trading, but focused on buying from merchants, further, this would prevent an early loan to make a trade on the hope of turning a bigger trade profit faster.

Heh, well it'd have to be account-based or I could just borrow 50k, stash in storage, delete the character, and do it again. But even still, many players have an extra account for storage or whatnot, and you could easily get a free 50k+ by borrowing with no intent on ever paying it back, and no way it could harm your real account. Now, if they prevented trading that would absolve this, however that would also be a moot point as you wouldn't need the gold anymore, anyway.

dasmitchies · Jan 22, 2009, 03:50 AM // 03:50

/neversigned The GW economy is contracting due to declining player interest. Truth is, there simply isn't enough new players to worry about. Besides, there are allready lending institutions in place: your guild.

ascension1223 · Jan 22, 2009, 03:59 AM // 03:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasmitchies

/neversigned The GW economy is contracting due to declining player interest. Truth is, there simply isn't enough new players to worry about. Besides, there are allready lending institutions in place: your guild.

Couple of things, I would never ask my guildies for a loan, maybe this is because I am a relative new comer, but asking for gold in any form, to me is a disconcerting relationship, as you put them in an awkward place, and potentially you could default/be very late and this could easily create discord in a guild. That's my view.

And second, a change like this, and something to put GW back into the light of public, could encourage new players, bring back older ones who left, and help keep them there. Further, this suggestion could be retitled "Bank Idea for GW2" Which could implement it there.

P.S. I'm dying for info on GW2, guess I'll have to focus my excitement on Diablo III

Onion Guy · Jan 22, 2009, 05:40 AM // 05:40

With the bank Anet may have better control over the economy. They could change interest rates and things if it is needed and it could make a hole for all that extra gold to go. (Just my opinion, i didn't take advanced economics or anything, I'm better at physics).

mrvrod · Jan 22, 2009, 07:52 AM // 07:52

While I agree the idea is interesting, I don't see it solving anything. As more players take loans to afford more expensive items, the demand for those items will go up and, as a result, the cost for said item will go up thereby pricing lower income buyers back out of the market.

Look at the U.S economy, how many different 'stimulus' ideas have been tried? Raise minimum wage so lower income people can afford more things, you add more cost to production of those items, and that cost is added to the price of the item.

Those attempts always end up as feel-good solutions that change nothing.

Keep trying though. If you ever do stumble on the magic solution, run for office, I'll vote for you!

pumpkin pie · Jan 22, 2009, 08:07 AM // 08:07

summary: OP wants guild wars in game to have a bank that can loan gold to your character with an interest rate and all your loot will disappear as you play until you pay off the loan.

^^ i think thats it.

/not signed
Reason: i'll take out a loan buy everything and then not play the game, and then flashes all the stuff i buy using the loan gold upon creation of a new level 1 character. YAY.

advise: PLAY THE GAME, don't listen to forums QQ That getting gold is hard, they are QQ, no more, when I really play the game, not farming okay, i seldom do that except during festivals, casually play the game, like capping elite skills, help guildies with quests and missions my inventory filled up fast and gold too.

question: how does someone see hundreds of gold seller ads and website if they did not go looking for it?

FengShuiDove · Jan 22, 2009, 08:15 AM // 08:15

And what happens when a new player borrows 10k and can't/doesn't repay? We gonna foreclose on their computer? Take their garbage beginner items in storage and transfer them?

The problem with a loan system here is that unlike in real life, if the borrower loses the ability to make minimum payments on interest or repay the loan, something of similar/equal value can't be confiscated, say a home. In this case, I'm sure you know, the bank makes money on the interest paid for the lifetime of the loan before foreclosure, then takes the home and can sell it so that between the sell value and the interest/payments made can turn a major profit. There's no way to ensure that your money will ever be coming back to you in any form but a non-max Shing Jea Island green that was bought for 3k on a loan from your generosity.

Could it work? Sure, this is how mortgages turn profit, but that's in the real world where collateral and credit history play a role in loan terms.

the_jos · Jan 22, 2009, 11:14 AM // 11:14

Quote:

You almost made me laugh there.
An increasing gap between new players and established ones?
I recently started playing more active on my second account and didn't have any problems obtaining all I needed. New character. Prophecies born which is still the worst chapter when looking at income. No usage of storage with one exception, some rare crafting material for max armor.
You know what annoyed me the most? Lack of available skills on my heroes.
I hardly play the account so I don't have my regular builds available.
However, to get those I need to unlock them, so I either need to play some PvP for faction or play relatively far into the game (Gate of Tornment, Ember Light Camp) to unlock them.

The only reason that makes people buy ingame gold from gold sellers is because they are greedy.
People nowadays seems to want everything they see at the moment they see it. And sure, it's a game, but still that does not justify obtaining everything.
Look, that nice Kurz elite armor on that monk is cool. I want that.
Mmmm, takes a lot of time to get the gold for the materials, and also a lot of time to get the gold for the armor. I don't want that, I just give someone some money and get some ingame gold in return. Because I'm awesome and deserve that armor.

You know what, those people high in corporations like Enron and more recently the financial sector also didn't feel they did anything wrong.
They 'deserved' those million dollar bonusses, even if their business didn't go so well.

It's easy. When you buy online gold you are doing something illegal.
You might have made a fair risk calculation (moving through a red traffic light is also illegal, but in the middle of the night with no traffic around, what's the risk) but if you get caught you pay the price.

Now if there were some GW bank in the game, would that solve the problem?
Mmmm, I have several e-mail adresses and can create dozens more. A copy of GW costs roughly 15 euro, maybe a secondhand less. I just get a new account, get a max 'bank loan', put that gold on my main character and forget about the other account. It has just become another form of online gold selling.
I don't see how this would work without being able to cheat the system.

And the general idea?
I don't see the need for it. If someone buys a copy of Nightfall and saves his gold, does the side quests and picks up loot he or she will be very close to afford 'basic' elite armor when the tormented areas are reached.
Sure, one has to avoid the gold sinks and be carefull with what to buy, but that's part of the game.

/notsigned

assassin shaun · Jan 22, 2009, 12:47 PM // 12:47

/not signed

people can play the game to get money for stuff they need

the rest they don't need - they want

that is why they buy gold online

this idea won't solve anything it'll just make way for more scams

ascension1223 · Jan 22, 2009, 02:11 PM // 14:11

Wow great responses! I think it is very interesting to read what you all have to say about this. So far however the most recent comments seem to have not read all the fine print, but that's fine. There will be naysayers in everything

But I do feel one point was correctly brought up, and thats the question as to the effectiveness of this idea as compared to a real world economic stimulus, which is not a fair comparison, as the real world economy is so much more complex! However, it does make me wonder about the the long-term results of this idea, and I honestly don't have an answer, I need to think about how such an addition would affect long term economic development. Thanks for bringing it up.

R.Shayne · Jan 22, 2009, 02:43 PM // 14:43

I feel you may be giving into the “Gime NOW!!!” kid in all of us with this one – I also hate credit and teaching children if you want something just borrow the money for it.

I also feel that you fail to identify the underlying problem and it is not the lack opportunity provided by the game to make gold, but the lack of knowledge needed to make gold.

They are very few people showing new players how to run farm builds and power traders don’t want to teach them (they just want to take advantage of them) so where would a new player gain this knowledge? These forums would help but a person working a forty hour week with family want to relax, not read forums, in his/her spare time. PvXwiki, yeah this works great, you can always identify these runners, they are the monks standing around in Doomlore with grey armor spamming “CoF HM [email protected] that you get to hear about not making it pass the first group. Guilds are only interested in the numbers.

To those who say they don’t care about new players, you fail to realize without a constant flow of new players the game really will die.

Example: Long part that can be skipped.
While in Doomlore I see someone asking where they can get better armor. He was getting the typical answer so I pm him and told him there is an armor guy in Boreal Station. After further discussion I asked to see his armor in trade, it was armor class 40 rangers with no runes or insignias. I would go on to explain rune traders, how to put them on armor and switched to my ranger to show him my armor as an example. I then asked him to ping his build (he basically had no skills unlocked). I politely told him that he needed to back to Ascalon and do all the skill quest in the game and buy/capture skills. I offered to accompany him on some of the quest and off we went.
While playing body guard for the guy I identified another problem, he did not pick up drops unless they were blue. At this point I told him, “Either pickup all drops and merch them or be prepared to be poor.” When his bags where full I showed him there was a merchant on the map.
The only time I got upset is when I noticed he was not only in a guild but a very large pve guild and no one in his guild had offered to help but I will rant about that later.

Rasaek · Jan 22, 2009, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by ascension1223

Well I had said a second loan could not be removed until the first was paid, but you raise a good point about transfers, I suppose you would have to freeze a portion of the players could = to the amount remaining on the loan, until they pay it back. E.g., 3000 loan, total owed = 3500, get it down to 2000 and you have 4500 on your person. only 2500 of that could be traded. A beginning player (who the loan is made for) shouldn't be trading, but focused on buying from merchants, further, this would prevent an early loan to make a trade on the hope of turning a bigger trade profit faster.

You could make the pay-out in form of a bank note, a non-tradable inventory item. This could be used like a credit card at merchants, with the caveat that everything you purchase from it is customized for the character who purchased it, at the time said item is aquired, and set to 0 value, to prevent the whole account-switching issue.

Personally, I think the idea could be brilliant. In this day and age of widely available credit, I do think this sort of thing might prove popular, and just might be able to put a nice damper on gold-sellers; this latter possibility being the primary reason I would support the idea, even though I think in itself, being able to take out loans would be pretty darn nifty.

/signed because I see no serious drawbacks if implemented thoughtfully, and some potential for good benefits to the game...

the_jos · Jan 23, 2009, 12:13 PM // 12:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by R.Shayne

I also feel that you fail to identify the underlying problem and it is not the lack opportunity provided by the game to make gold, but the lack of knowledge needed to make gold.

They are very few people showing new players how to run farm builds and power traders don’t want to teach them (they just want to take advantage of them) so where would a new player gain this knowledge? These forums would help but a person working a forty hour week with family want to relax, not read forums, in his/her spare time. PvXwiki, yeah this works great, you can always identify these runners, they are the monks standing around in Doomlore with grey armor spamming “CoF HM [email protected] that you get to hear about not making it pass the first group. Guilds are only interested in the numbers.

To those who say they don’t care about new players, you fail to realize without a constant flow of new players the game really will die.

While I understand and see your reasoning, gaining gold doesn't start with farming and powertrading.
It starts with matching your income and expenses.
That's where most people fail.
Farming comes later, when one knows how to save instead of spend.

Quote:

Originally Posted by R.Shayne

Example: Long part that can be skipped.
<Skip>

You are right but I have to admit that I stopped helping new players.
I tag along with them from time to time and give hints and tips, but not that much.
Why? Because several of those players became a true storm of whispers, asking help and advice on about everything.
That's not funny when you are mainly playing monk nowadays.

MithranArkanere · Jan 23, 2009, 04:57 PM // 16:57

What? What a game economy needs it's a lot of trades, trades! Available easily and fast for everyone.

No matter what you do with gold, if to spend it you have to waste hours spamming or leave the game in search for forums and auction sites, having gold it's no good.