IF the game company is able to sell the game currency at a LOWER price than it is profitable for a botter to run the opperation...then you've effectively undercut the gold farmer and removed the opprotunity for them to be in the market.
Remember botters use in-game features to earn gold , they farm resources , kill mobs ,etc bots are operating for multiple hours doing only this. So in order to make it not profitable you would have to sell gold INSANELY cheaply.
That will make inflation enormous. Inflation mean = gathered , crafted ,etc things you can program bot to do will sell for higher price. If they sell for higher price gold sellers bots are profitable again.
Not to mention such high inflation will make insane QQ from players that will whine that there is not enough gold dropping from monsters. Result see above.
IF the game company is able to sell the game currency at a LOWER price than it is profitable for a botter to run the opperation...then you've effectively undercut the gold farmer and removed the opprotunity for them to be in the market.
Remember botters use in-game features to earn gold , they farm resources , kill mobs ,etc bots are operating for multiple hours doing only this. So in order to make it not profitable you would have to sell gold INSANELY cheaply.
That will make inflation enormous. Inflation mean = gathered , crafted ,etc things you can program bot to do will sell for higher price. If they sell for higher price gold sellers bots are profitable again.
Not to mention such high inflation will make insane QQ from players that will whine that there is not enough gold dropping from monsters. Result see above.
Economy 101.
I never said it was my prefered method of handling gold farmers.
And yes, everything you said is accurate.
My way of tackling gold farmers is to just remove much of the demand. If Gold is HARD to get, a market for people who would rather spend real life dollars instead of spending real life hours will be born.....and gold farmers will fill the void.
Remove much of the dependency on items in game (thereby lowering their value) and increase gold drops on monsters in a balanced way that it doesn't not create inflation.....but doesn't ever really present a real challenge of getting gold.
I think a certian group of MMO gamers will always apply a dollar value to their time in effort to justify RMTs. But I think you can keep a vast majority of normal regular MMORPG players from dipping their toe into the RMT black market by relaxing the gold sinks a bit.
IF the game company is able to sell the game currency at a LOWER price than it is profitable for a botter to run the opperation...then you've effectively undercut the gold farmer and removed the opprotunity for them to be in the market.
Remember botters use in-game features to earn gold , they farm resources , kill mobs ,etc bots are operating for multiple hours doing only this. So in order to make it not profitable you would have to sell gold INSANELY cheaply.
That will make inflation enormous. Inflation mean = gathered , crafted ,etc things you can program bot to do will sell for higher price. If they sell for higher price gold sellers bots are profitable again.
Not to mention such high inflation will make insane QQ from players that will whine that there is not enough gold dropping from monsters. Result see above.
Economy 101.
I never said it was my prefered method of handling gold farmers.
And yes, everything you said is accurate.
My way of tackling gold farmers is to just remove much of the demand. If Gold is HARD to get, a market for people who would rather spend real life dollars instead of spending real life hours will be born.....and gold farmers will fill the void.
Remove much of the dependency on items in game (thereby lowering their value) and increase gold drops on monsters in a balanced way that it doesn't not create inflation.....but doesn't ever really present a real challenge of getting gold.
I think a certian group of MMO gamers will always apply a dollar value to their time in effort to justify RMTs. But I think you can keep a vast majority of normal regular MMORPG players from dipping their toe into the RMT black market by relaxing the gold sinks a bit.
My previous post was just about that game companies selling gold themselves DON'T help with gold sellers. It just don't work for reasons in previous posts. Only permament way to get rid of gold sellers is to get rid of player driven economy completly ,no crafting , no resources ,no trading items between players. Well effective but horrid idea.
Add CC and vertifcation to your account name and CC.
If your caught selling or buying goldfarmer.. they will ban u and record that name so cant use that name to register again. So better ask your mommy for her CC and her name for new accout....
Tax and welfare is a much better idea. The more gold you have, the more you are taxed. (Nothing more that 40 %) And if you are poor you will get part of that money.
Unfortunately, you cannot stop gold farming without stoping non-gold farmers from having fun. Full stop.
IF the game company is able to sell the game currency at a LOWER price than it is profitable for a botter to run the opperation...then you've effectively undercut the gold farmer and removed the opprotunity for them to be in the market.
Remember botters use in-game features to earn gold , they farm resources , kill mobs ,etc bots are operating for multiple hours doing only this. So in order to make it not profitable you would have to sell gold INSANELY cheaply.
That will make inflation enormous. Inflation mean = gathered , crafted ,etc things you can program bot to do will sell for higher price. If they sell for higher price gold sellers bots are profitable again.
Not to mention such high inflation will make insane QQ from players that will whine that there is not enough gold dropping from monsters. Result see above.
Economy 101.
I never said it was my prefered method of handling gold farmers.
And yes, everything you said is accurate.
My way of tackling gold farmers is to just remove much of the demand. If Gold is HARD to get, a market for people who would rather spend real life dollars instead of spending real life hours will be born.....and gold farmers will fill the void.
Remove much of the dependency on items in game (thereby lowering their value) and increase gold drops on monsters in a balanced way that it doesn't not create inflation.....but doesn't ever really present a real challenge of getting gold.
I think a certian group of MMO gamers will always apply a dollar value to their time in effort to justify RMTs. But I think you can keep a vast majority of normal regular MMORPG players from dipping their toe into the RMT black market by relaxing the gold sinks a bit.
My previous post was just about that game companies selling gold themselves DON'T help with gold sellers. It just don't work for reasons in previous posts. Only permament way to get rid of gold sellers is to get rid of player driven economy completly ,no crafting , no resources ,no trading items between players. Well effective but horrid idea.
I agree with gold sinks though.
Well I've not been very interested in mmorpg economies until recently so cannot argue from experience, but I suspect actually if devs sell in-game gold, that WILL HELP reduce gold-sellers problem in virtual economies.
Simply make it part of the game, in an accessible, secure and sensibly priced format in combination with other factors *not mentioned* and I think that will dampen gold-sellers profits notably?
Well I've not been very interested in mmorpg economies until recently so cannot argue from experience, but I suspect actually if devs sell in-game gold, that WILL HELP reduce gold-sellers problem in virtual economies.
Simply make it part of the game, in an accessible, secure and sensibly priced format in combination with other factors *not mentioned* and I think that will dampen gold-sellers profits notably?
It WILL HELP game companies have bigger revenue and profit. There is afaik ONE game that is not f2p and that sells in game currency for RL. That game is EVE Online. You can do it for YEARS , yet there is TONS on websites you can buy 'illegal' Eve gold from , there is alot ads on forums and alot of auctions in auction system(sort like ebay) in my country.
Only other games I see so many websites , forums ads ,etc is WoW and Rift.
There will be always alot of ppl wanting to buy gold cheaper than game company sell it. Sure some of guys which previously bought gold from gold sellers will go buy it at company. Same thing will happen in other way though. Many players which started to buy in game gold because game company started selling it after they get used to it will realize that they can do it cheaper at gold sellers.
I really cannot understand. You have example of a game that gold selling didnt help with gold sellers. It is also LOGICAL why it will never help eradicate gold sellers , which was explained in many posts before. It WON'T help.
It actually might HELP gold sellers. If mmorpg community as a whole get used to buying in game gold , some percentage will look for cheaper alternatives.
Remember even though buying gold is thriving business and even though it might be common amongst certain types of players , still majority don't buy gold. I've been in many mmorpg games and in many guilds. + had many friends in rl playing mmos not to mention people I knew in game or from variuous forums. Hundreds of players and almsot all of them were spending alot of time in game to earn gold not buying it.
Sure even relatively small % of players playing mmorpg's is millions of buyers. Plenty to sustain all those farmers.
Still it is not majority of people playing mmorpg's.
I think you don't realize how big impact would have selling in game gold/currencies as new standard in mmorpg's. That would make crafting even more pointless that it is now. Would have impact on content , economy well alot.
It is similar to applying full fledged f2p item shop on top of p2p game. Horrid just horrid.
Tempting for game companies though. Alot of money aquired by investing very little money. Every accountant and investor would approve.
Many people buy gold, it is no small minority issue. Now we all know it hurts games, but what we should not ignore is: the massive existence of gold buying is proof than something in the system of MMOs just went wrong.
In SWG in the old days I don't recall there was massive gold buying. And the reason was twofold: first you did not have such a highly goal oriented MMO, as today we have in the WOW era, where people are socialized always to grind for higher tier gear and higher stuff to compare themselves too. People were happy with what they were. But these WOW models put people into a greed and envy spiral, and suddenly the simple happyness of the adventure wasn't enough because the new type of MMOs incite peoples greed. Second, the full crafting system and the ability to just rent your lots gave everyone plenty of money to buy cool stuff. But in a controlled pseudo-socialis economy as in the themepark MMOs, people have only very few methods to legally make money. Adventuring usually pays piss poor, and only the mindless WOW-crafting remains, which just isn't everyone's thing.
Everyone who has played Ultima Online will know what I speak of when I talk of an open and creative economy. Sure, some will always chose the easy way to buy gold. But when there are fun and entertaining ways to get some money I am sure it would dry out a lot of gold buying desire. But in these narrowed MMOs like WOW, Rift and whatever, the entire economy sector is so greatly reduced, simplified and controlled, it leaves people few ways to make some ingame coin. And that is what is just wrong with MMOs these days and for what Gold Buying is just a symptom.
I think this is a good analysis, even though you left out the impact of economic incitement for gold farmers, which became larger with the huge increase of "MMO-users" since WoW, compared to the days of games such as UO.
Makes me wonder if we already have crossed the point of no return when it comes to gold selling.
Essentially it leaves us with three alternatives
a) make super drastic penalities
b) return to full economy MMOs a la SWG & UO
c) take gold selling as official business into the developers hand
While some may call of option (a) I feel that is more a populistic outrage rather than a solution. It reminds me a bit of the penality system of the Old Orient, when a food thief was hacked off his hands. It sure is effective but entirely ignores the causes and reasons for the problem, and thus does not solve anything in the long run. (B) is probably the ideal solution, but alas I fear something we won't see. What I expect will happen is however that sooner or later the companies themselves will take the gold selling into their own hands, either directly or (more likely) by making big Ingame Shops where you can buy everything for dollars.
Not a very satisfying outlook, I know, but sometimes you just have to make realpolitik.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
so... in this system, i suppose everyone would be rolling around in mediocre gears that everyone can get in few days. or maybe you could have a max lv +10 elite sword and have 0 gold/armor LOL. this would completely ruin end game pve
No. Everyone can get, if they choose, the max gear. Or they can get mediocre gear.
What you cannot get, is the max gear. AND 1 million gold in the bank, 1,000 gems worth 1,000 gold each in the bank, or 10 suits of max gear in the bank.
why cant i collect every set of gear in the game?
i want to have a max gear of every race in my bank since my style of gaming is a collector.
OR
what if i want to have different armor sets for specific things, my pvp armor won't be the same armor for PVE and wont be the same armor for raiding, on top of that i need the rarest flying mount AND the rarest ground mount, on top of my high speed mount and my combat mount not to mention that the sword i use for pvp is not the same one i use for PvE, and i need to have 2 sets in case something happens to the first set like it gets damaged beyond repair or something... i would also like to have enough to insure all my items when i die, also i wont want to corpse run so i would have to pay the guy every time i die,(oh and i die very often cuz i use it as a fast way back to town, not to mention i like to respec quite often.
your cap must be pretty damned high cuz there is no way to make that much gold on regular basis for a big spender
the best way to beat farming, is for the publisher company to sell official gold. the way eve does it so it doesnt add or remove money from the server. and keeps a stable economy. then again we are talking about eve where its a player run economy with significat money sinks.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
the gold is not already in the game, the game ads +1 to the code every time someone loots a new spawn.
now you have botter gettin incredible ammounts of gold generated by the game. and for 2$ you can get 1 billion gold.
now merchants see that people have lots of money to spend! they are buying it (because they do buy it else gold farming would not be a problem) so they raise their prices for their wares. so now a basic rookie pistol is worth 100 000 gold. now a newbie starts the game with a stick and goes out to do quests and missions... alright, first mission payout 20 gold.... that will be a long road to get that BASIC weapon for 100 000$ but by the time he will get to NEED the next tier weapon, it now costs him 2 million gold. ... at some point he will have A to buy his 2 billion gold from the farmer to het his basic weapon or go play another game because he cant go forward without a new weapon and he will definitively not do 20 000 times the same quest for 20 gold a pop.
so yes, it hurts THE GAME, it hurts YOUR GAME and it hurts EVERYONE playing the game.
at some point in SWG ( a bit after the NGE) things where worth millions while the missions gave payouts of 5000-10 000
the only way to stop inflation problem is to increase the prices of NPCs and Missions according to the inflation on the server.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
the gold is not already in the game, the game ads +1 to the code every time someone loots a new spawn.
now you have botter gettin incredible ammounts of gold generated by the game. and for 2$ you can get 1 billion gold.
now merchants see that people have lots of money to spend! they are buying it (because they do buy it else gold farming would not be a problem) so they raise their prices for their wares. so now a basic rookie pistol is worth 100 000 gold. now a newbie starts the game with a stick and goes out to do quests and missions... alright, first mission payout 20 gold.... that will be a long road to get that BASIC weapon for 100 000$ but by the time he will get to NEED the next tier weapon, it now costs him 2 million gold. ... at some point he will have A to buy his 2 billion gold from the farmer to het his basic weapon or go play another game because he cant go forward without a new weapon and he will definitively not do 20 000 times the same quest for 20 gold a pop.
so yes, it hurts THE GAME, it hurts YOUR GAME and it hurts EVERYONE playing the game.
at some point in SWG ( a bit after the NGE) things where worth millions while the missions gave payouts of 5000-10 000
the only way to stop inflation problem is to increase the prices of NPCs and Missions according to the inflation on the server.
The longer the game is out, the cheaper things get, its like that in every game. The more people that play, does not make prices go up, it has the opposite affect.
The easiest way to get rid of or at least stem the tide of Gold Sellers is to limit their ability to both advertise, and complete the act of trading.
The first is so damn easy it amazes me that big companies like BLizzard cant solve it.
BadBay Anti-Spam addon for wow....that does what blizzard could NEEEEEEEVVVVEEERRRR do...why, becuse they done give a shit about gold farmers. I NEVER see spam in trade chat, i NEVER get random whispers advertising gold. NEVER NEVER NEVER from one simple addon that some guy made who does not even have the resources Blizzard has.
Second, why can level 1's, or heel even 1-5 talk in trade chat at all? There is no reason what so ever. First, if your a first time player you wont even be in a Capital city at level 5, you will be doing the quest progression. If its an Alt, you will have a higher level character to arrange any transaction you "might" need to do with a level 5...like there are a ton of armor/weapons you just NEED to have at level 5 right? These lowbies can use Guild chat if they want to talk for the first five levels. Sure farmers will just level to 5, but it will take a lot longer to level eash character they use to 5, just so they can run to say stormwind spam a few ads, get ingored by everyone and have to make a new character to do it again....a whole lot harder then level 1, run to SW spam, repeat.
Also with this, NO TRADING OR SENDING MAIL from a level 1-5. Recieve mail is fine, but what can a level 5 POSSIBLY "aquire" that they NEED to send to another character? Really...i bet the huge majority of mail/trades originating from a level 5or below is attributed to the Gold Selling market.
It's an interesting idea. It would depend on the other mechanics of the game as to whether or not it would work. I'm all for putting an end to gold-farming, but not at the cost of decreased options or versatility.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
the gold is not already in the game, the game ads +1 to the code every time someone loots a new spawn.
now you have botter gettin incredible ammounts of gold generated by the game. and for 2$ you can get 1 billion gold.
now merchants see that people have lots of money to spend! they are buying it (because they do buy it else gold farming would not be a problem) so they raise their prices for their wares. so now a basic rookie pistol is worth 100 000 gold. now a newbie starts the game with a stick and goes out to do quests and missions... alright, first mission payout 20 gold.... that will be a long road to get that BASIC weapon for 100 000$ but by the time he will get to NEED the next tier weapon, it now costs him 2 million gold. ... at some point he will have A to buy his 2 billion gold from the farmer to het his basic weapon or go play another game because he cant go forward without a new weapon and he will definitively not do 20 000 times the same quest for 20 gold a pop.
so yes, it hurts THE GAME, it hurts YOUR GAME and it hurts EVERYONE playing the game.
at some point in SWG ( a bit after the NGE) things where worth millions while the missions gave payouts of 5000-10 000
the only way to stop inflation problem is to increase the prices of NPCs and Missions according to the inflation on the server.
The longer the game is out, the cheaper things get, its like that in every game. The more people that play, does not make prices go up, it has the opposite affect.
WRONG!
i bought my first T21 rifle in SWG for 20 000 credit (pre-cu) when NGE hit it was closer to 250k-300k for the same rifle with same stats. i have screenies somewhere on my old computer...
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
Wrong man wrong, the gold is not there. Currency has to be made by doing kills on creatures or questing. You can't say the gold is there already because it is not handed and distributed evenly to everyone when they enter game. You have to work for it.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
Wrong man wrong, the gold is not there. Currency has to be made by doing kills on creatures or questing. You can't say the gold is there already because it is not handed and distributed evenly to everyone when they enter game. You have to work for it.
So your saying if someone goes to a site and purchases gold, they have to wait for the seller to go out and kill things to get the gold before its handed over to the buyer? Wrong. The seller already has the gold, therefore it is already into the game
The easiest way to stop gold farming, is to simply stop it.
Why are you making gold in an MMORPG?
to buy things your character needs, right? Do you need more gold than that? No, you don't.
So simply put caps on player gold, jsut like you do with Mobs that are low level.
When you gain enough levels, in many games the lower level mobs go grey. They no longer give you xp or drop loot or gold.
Why is that?
To stop you from getting powerful, and just slaughtering low level Mobs with one hit to level all the way to the cap. The game makes you go on to more challenging content.
Why not do the same with gold?
When you have enough gold for the armor you need, repairs, expendables, then you stop getting gold. You can't horde it, and farm it.
You will start to make copper pieces, until you spend the gold you have, or begin to need more because you need to upgrade armor, etc.
You can easily build in enough reserve so you can hand over a few gold pieces here and there to help out guildmates, lower level players, etc.
What about saving up for a big purchase like a Mount, or a Castle?
Easy. You simply choose from a menu what you are going to purchase, and a certain amount of your gold goes towards that purchase till it's paid off.
You still can't horde it, and sell it.
How would this cause the normal player that isn't a gold farmer any problems?
Put all this in a Proper Paragraph, then we'll talk.
##Best SWTOR of 2011 Posted by I_Return - SWTOR - "Forget the UI the characters and all ofhe nitpicking bullshit" "Greatest MMO Ever Created"
##Fail Thread Title of 2011 Originally posted by daveospice "this game looks like crap?"
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
Wrong man wrong, the gold is not there. Currency has to be made by doing kills on creatures or questing. You can't say the gold is there already because it is not handed and distributed evenly to everyone when they enter game. You have to work for it.
So your saying if someone goes to a site and purchases gold, they have to wait for the seller to go out and kill things to get the gold before its handed over to the buyer? Wrong. The seller already has the gold, therefore it is already into the game
What are you saying? Gold farmers are farming the gold they hoard it, just because it is in game doesn't mean it is in circulation yet. People always raise prices on goods in game when they sell fast if they are the only ones selling a particular item, gold buyers help increase this inflation because they get large sums of gold fast instead of working for it themselves and being a slower process, instead gold farmers who farm 24/7 because people take turns will always over stimulate an economy vs. normal means. A player who works for it on his or her own time.
There is only one way to get rid of gold farming. Stop buying it. Anything else you do will take away from parts of the game people like. I tend to get rich in games. I enjoy just sploring and at the same time killing everything around. If i get some goods i sell them. I become rich after doing this after some time. I am set and never have to worry about funds for anything and tend to help out friends for items they really want for xmas birthdays etc. Its fun for me its fun for my friends. Take it away and you take away fun.
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
The easiest way to stop gold farming, is to simply stop it.
Why are you making gold in an MMORPG?
to buy things your character needs, right? Do you need more gold than that? No, you don't.
So simply put caps on player gold, jsut like you do with Mobs that are low level.
When you gain enough levels, in many games the lower level mobs go grey. They no longer give you xp or drop loot or gold.
Why is that?
To stop you from getting powerful, and just slaughtering low level Mobs with one hit to level all the way to the cap. The game makes you go on to more challenging content.
Why not do the same with gold?
When you have enough gold for the armor you need, repairs, expendables, then you stop getting gold. You can't horde it, and farm it.
You will start to make copper pieces, until you spend the gold you have, or begin to need more because you need to upgrade armor, etc.
You can easily build in enough reserve so you can hand over a few gold pieces here and there to help out guildmates, lower level players, etc.
What about saving up for a big purchase like a Mount, or a Castle?
Easy. You simply choose from a menu what you are going to purchase, and a certain amount of your gold goes towards that purchase till it's paid off.
You still can't horde it, and sell it.
How would this cause the normal player that isn't a gold farmer any problems?
Put all this in a Proper Paragraph, then we'll talk.
Comments
Remember botters use in-game features to earn gold , they farm resources , kill mobs ,etc bots are operating for multiple hours doing only this. So in order to make it not profitable you would have to sell gold INSANELY cheaply.
That will make inflation enormous. Inflation mean = gathered , crafted ,etc things you can program bot to do will sell for higher price. If they sell for higher price gold sellers bots are profitable again.
Not to mention such high inflation will make insane QQ from players that will whine that there is not enough gold dropping from monsters. Result see above.
Economy 101.
I never said it was my prefered method of handling gold farmers.
And yes, everything you said is accurate.
My way of tackling gold farmers is to just remove much of the demand. If Gold is HARD to get, a market for people who would rather spend real life dollars instead of spending real life hours will be born.....and gold farmers will fill the void.
Remove much of the dependency on items in game (thereby lowering their value) and increase gold drops on monsters in a balanced way that it doesn't not create inflation.....but doesn't ever really present a real challenge of getting gold.
I think a certian group of MMO gamers will always apply a dollar value to their time in effort to justify RMTs. But I think you can keep a vast majority of normal regular MMORPG players from dipping their toe into the RMT black market by relaxing the gold sinks a bit.
My previous post was just about that game companies selling gold themselves DON'T help with gold sellers. It just don't work for reasons in previous posts. Only permament way to get rid of gold sellers is to get rid of player driven economy completly ,no crafting , no resources ,no trading items between players. Well effective but horrid idea.
I agree with gold sinks though.
Add CC and vertifcation to your account name and CC.
If your caught selling or buying goldfarmer.. they will ban u and record that name so cant use that name to register again. So better ask your mommy for her CC and her name for new accout....
Same as for spam bot too.
Kain_Dale
Tax and welfare is a much better idea. The more gold you have, the more you are taxed. (Nothing more that 40 %) And if you are poor you will get part of that money.
Unfortunately, you cannot stop gold farming without stoping non-gold farmers from having fun. Full stop.
FEEL THE FULL
FREE-TO-FLAME
FANTASY.
Well I've not been very interested in mmorpg economies until recently so cannot argue from experience, but I suspect actually if devs sell in-game gold, that WILL HELP reduce gold-sellers problem in virtual economies.
Simply make it part of the game, in an accessible, secure and sensibly priced format in combination with other factors *not mentioned* and I think that will dampen gold-sellers profits notably?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
It WILL HELP game companies have bigger revenue and profit. There is afaik ONE game that is not f2p and that sells in game currency for RL. That game is EVE Online. You can do it for YEARS , yet there is TONS on websites you can buy 'illegal' Eve gold from , there is alot ads on forums and alot of auctions in auction system(sort like ebay) in my country.
Only other games I see so many websites , forums ads ,etc is WoW and Rift.
There will be always alot of ppl wanting to buy gold cheaper than game company sell it. Sure some of guys which previously bought gold from gold sellers will go buy it at company. Same thing will happen in other way though. Many players which started to buy in game gold because game company started selling it after they get used to it will realize that they can do it cheaper at gold sellers.
I really cannot understand. You have example of a game that gold selling didnt help with gold sellers. It is also LOGICAL why it will never help eradicate gold sellers , which was explained in many posts before. It WON'T help.
It actually might HELP gold sellers. If mmorpg community as a whole get used to buying in game gold , some percentage will look for cheaper alternatives.
Remember even though buying gold is thriving business and even though it might be common amongst certain types of players , still majority don't buy gold. I've been in many mmorpg games and in many guilds. + had many friends in rl playing mmos not to mention people I knew in game or from variuous forums. Hundreds of players and almsot all of them were spending alot of time in game to earn gold not buying it.
Sure even relatively small % of players playing mmorpg's is millions of buyers. Plenty to sustain all those farmers.
Still it is not majority of people playing mmorpg's.
I think you don't realize how big impact would have selling in game gold/currencies as new standard in mmorpg's. That would make crafting even more pointless that it is now. Would have impact on content , economy well alot.
It is similar to applying full fledged f2p item shop on top of p2p game. Horrid just horrid.
Tempting for game companies though. Alot of money aquired by investing very little money. Every accountant and investor would approve.
Essentially it leaves us with three alternatives
a) make super drastic penalities
b) return to full economy MMOs a la SWG & UO
c) take gold selling as official business into the developers hand
While some may call of option (a) I feel that is more a populistic outrage rather than a solution. It reminds me a bit of the penality system of the Old Orient, when a food thief was hacked off his hands. It sure is effective but entirely ignores the causes and reasons for the problem, and thus does not solve anything in the long run. (B) is probably the ideal solution, but alas I fear something we won't see. What I expect will happen is however that sooner or later the companies themselves will take the gold selling into their own hands, either directly or (more likely) by making big Ingame Shops where you can buy everything for dollars.
Not a very satisfying outlook, I know, but sometimes you just have to make realpolitik.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Im tired of hearing about people bitch about gold farmers. Who cares. It doesnt hurt your game, and it doesnt hurt anyone else. You are just pissed because its something that you cant do. That gold is in the game regardless, so who cares if someone pays real money for it, or if they go out and farm for it themselves. You wouldnt know either way. The gold is already in the game, who cares how the person obtains it.
Not true at all about not hurting other players. It does hurt them, especially casuals because gold farmers usually set the economic rates, they inflate prices. Gold farmers are the reason the economies in games are sooo bad. They also hurt players by farming nodes more faster then real players who are doing it for their own advancement, not for hoarding to sell.
why cant i collect every set of gear in the game?
i want to have a max gear of every race in my bank since my style of gaming is a collector.
OR
what if i want to have different armor sets for specific things, my pvp armor won't be the same armor for PVE and wont be the same armor for raiding, on top of that i need the rarest flying mount AND the rarest ground mount, on top of my high speed mount and my combat mount not to mention that the sword i use for pvp is not the same one i use for PvE, and i need to have 2 sets in case something happens to the first set like it gets damaged beyond repair or something... i would also like to have enough to insure all my items when i die, also i wont want to corpse run so i would have to pay the guy every time i die,(oh and i die very often cuz i use it as a fast way back to town, not to mention i like to respec quite often.
your cap must be pretty damned high cuz there is no way to make that much gold on regular basis for a big spender
the best way to beat farming, is for the publisher company to sell official gold. the way eve does it so it doesnt add or remove money from the server. and keeps a stable economy. then again we are talking about eve where its a player run economy with significat money sinks.
The gold is already in the game, the gold is there.
the gold is not already in the game, the game ads +1 to the code every time someone loots a new spawn.
now you have botter gettin incredible ammounts of gold generated by the game. and for 2$ you can get 1 billion gold.
now merchants see that people have lots of money to spend! they are buying it (because they do buy it else gold farming would not be a problem) so they raise their prices for their wares. so now a basic rookie pistol is worth 100 000 gold. now a newbie starts the game with a stick and goes out to do quests and missions... alright, first mission payout 20 gold.... that will be a long road to get that BASIC weapon for 100 000$ but by the time he will get to NEED the next tier weapon, it now costs him 2 million gold. ... at some point he will have A to buy his 2 billion gold from the farmer to het his basic weapon or go play another game because he cant go forward without a new weapon and he will definitively not do 20 000 times the same quest for 20 gold a pop.
so yes, it hurts THE GAME, it hurts YOUR GAME and it hurts EVERYONE playing the game.
at some point in SWG ( a bit after the NGE) things where worth millions while the missions gave payouts of 5000-10 000
the only way to stop inflation problem is to increase the prices of NPCs and Missions according to the inflation on the server.
The longer the game is out, the cheaper things get, its like that in every game. The more people that play, does not make prices go up, it has the opposite affect.
The easiest way to get rid of or at least stem the tide of Gold Sellers is to limit their ability to both advertise, and complete the act of trading.
The first is so damn easy it amazes me that big companies like BLizzard cant solve it.
BadBay Anti-Spam addon for wow....that does what blizzard could NEEEEEEEVVVVEEERRRR do...why, becuse they done give a shit about gold farmers. I NEVER see spam in trade chat, i NEVER get random whispers advertising gold. NEVER NEVER NEVER from one simple addon that some guy made who does not even have the resources Blizzard has.
Second, why can level 1's, or heel even 1-5 talk in trade chat at all? There is no reason what so ever. First, if your a first time player you wont even be in a Capital city at level 5, you will be doing the quest progression. If its an Alt, you will have a higher level character to arrange any transaction you "might" need to do with a level 5...like there are a ton of armor/weapons you just NEED to have at level 5 right? These lowbies can use Guild chat if they want to talk for the first five levels. Sure farmers will just level to 5, but it will take a lot longer to level eash character they use to 5, just so they can run to say stormwind spam a few ads, get ingored by everyone and have to make a new character to do it again....a whole lot harder then level 1, run to SW spam, repeat.
Also with this, NO TRADING OR SENDING MAIL from a level 1-5. Recieve mail is fine, but what can a level 5 POSSIBLY "aquire" that they NEED to send to another character? Really...i bet the huge majority of mail/trades originating from a level 5or below is attributed to the Gold Selling market.
Fact is, companies dont give a shit...period.
It's an interesting idea. It would depend on the other mechanics of the game as to whether or not it would work. I'm all for putting an end to gold-farming, but not at the cost of decreased options or versatility.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
WRONG!
i bought my first T21 rifle in SWG for 20 000 credit (pre-cu) when NGE hit it was closer to 250k-300k for the same rifle with same stats. i have screenies somewhere on my old computer...
Wrong man wrong, the gold is not there. Currency has to be made by doing kills on creatures or questing. You can't say the gold is there already because it is not handed and distributed evenly to everyone when they enter game. You have to work for it.
So your saying if someone goes to a site and purchases gold, they have to wait for the seller to go out and kill things to get the gold before its handed over to the buyer? Wrong. The seller already has the gold, therefore it is already into the game
Put all this in a Proper Paragraph, then we'll talk.
##Best SWTOR of 2011
Posted by I_Return - SWTOR - "Forget the UI the characters and all ofhe nitpicking bullshit" "Greatest MMO Ever Created"
##Fail Thread Title of 2011
Originally posted by daveospice
"this game looks like crap?"
What are you saying? Gold farmers are farming the gold they hoard it, just because it is in game doesn't mean it is in circulation yet. People always raise prices on goods in game when they sell fast if they are the only ones selling a particular item, gold buyers help increase this inflation because they get large sums of gold fast instead of working for it themselves and being a slower process, instead gold farmers who farm 24/7 because people take turns will always over stimulate an economy vs. normal means. A player who works for it on his or her own time.
There is only one way to get rid of gold farming. Stop buying it. Anything else you do will take away from parts of the game people like. I tend to get rich in games. I enjoy just sploring and at the same time killing everything around. If i get some goods i sell them. I become rich after doing this after some time. I am set and never have to worry about funds for anything and tend to help out friends for items they really want for xmas birthdays etc. Its fun for me its fun for my friends. Take it away and you take away fun.
Usually when people sell items, they try to put the price the same, or slightly lower than the other person that is selling it, dropping the prices.
They dont say "Hey, hes selling that chest piece for 150, so im going to ask 175!"
It does hurt your game.
lol