Foundational Principle - Gold Sellers Suck

Lore84

"As the developer of CU, it must be my choice to decide whether gold sellers and other such folks are allowed to farm gold, sell gold, power level, etc. and I choose, once again, to take a strong stance on this topic as I have for more than a decade." - Mark Jacobs

http://citystateentertainment.com/2013/02/foundational-principle-5-gold-sellers-still-suck/

 

Personally, I couldn't be happier with the stance. Most MMO's that I have played over the years eventually get plagued by them, some sooner than others. However, I ask you to speculate; how do you think they plan on tackling this issue? Also, how would you like to see it done?

Discuss!

muffins89

i like the aproach Path of Exile took,  eliminate gold.

Raagnarz

Originally posted by muffins89
i like the aproach Path of Exile took,  eliminate gold.

That was the first thing on my mind. If you're innnovative you can discourage it. Path of Exile's currency system I love. Its a bartering system where nothing really has a set value. Trades happen with what both people think are fair a lot of time. But I don't think this game will have to worry as much about farmers as others.The fact that it sounds like there will be nothing easily farmed, ie pve, means they'll have a lot less to worry about. They won't be able to set macros to mostly afk farm people in rvr the way they do mobs in pve.

 

SyrixII

Originally posted by Raagnarz

Originally posted by muffins89
i like the aproach Path of Exile took,  eliminate gold.

That was the first thing on my mind. If you're innnovative you can discourage it. Path of Exile's currency system I love. Its a bartering system where nothing really has a set value. Trades happen with what both people think are fair a lot of time. But I don't think this game will have to worry as much about farmers as others.The fact that it sounds like there will be nothing easily farmed, ie pve, means they'll have a lot less to worry about. They won't be able to set macros to mostly afk farm people in rvr the way they do mobs in pve.

 

I currently play PoE but they didn't really solve anything. I know they tried, but all they did was convert copper to scrolls of wisdom, silver to orbs of transmutation, etc... All the gold sellers would do in that situation is farm those scrolls and sell them so people can trade them for what they want. Obviously the lesser ones are useless but the higher end more sought after orbs will be the equivelant of gold. Look at Diablo 2. It had gold but it was useless, so people used Stone of Jordan as a currency. Gold sellers found duped and sold Stones of Jordans.

 

It doesn't matter what you "eliminate" from the game, something else will takes it's place as a currency. You still need to deal with the problem head on. Don't think you can just eliminate it by taking something out of the game. In fact, that just makes it more difficult on the legitimate players as they have to keep up with an unorthodox currency.

Rthuth434

the question is will he stick to his guns longer than TRION, SOE and Bioware? 

muffins89

Originally posted by SyrixII

Originally posted by Raagnarz

Originally posted by muffins89
i like the aproach Path of Exile took,  eliminate gold.

That was the first thing on my mind. If you're innnovative you can discourage it. Path of Exile's currency system I love. Its a bartering system where nothing really has a set value. Trades happen with what both people think are fair a lot of time. But I don't think this game will have to worry as much about farmers as others.The fact that it sounds like there will be nothing easily farmed, ie pve, means they'll have a lot less to worry about. They won't be able to set macros to mostly afk farm people in rvr the way they do mobs in pve.

 

I currently play PoE but they didn't really solve anything. I know they tried, but all they did was convert copper to scrolls of wisdom, silver to orbs of transmutation, etc... All the gold sellers would do in that situation is farm those scrolls and sell them so people can trade them for what they want. Obviously the lesser ones are useless but the higher end more sought after orbs will be the equivelant of gold. Look at Diablo 2. It had gold but it was useless, so people used Stone of Jordan as a currency. Gold sellers found duped and sold Stones of Jordans.

 

It doesn't matter what you "eliminate" from the game, something else will takes it's place as a currency. You still need to deal with the problem head on. Don't think you can just eliminate it by taking something out of the game. In fact, that just makes it more difficult on the legitimate players as they have to keep up with an unorthodox currency.

i agree it's not a perfect solution.  but i think it is a step in the right direction. 

Mdpats

I think something like a credit system wouldn't be a bad idea. Currency in the form of credit that is bop, can only be used for purchases on goods, or transferred between accounts. Might need some fine tuning but it's something different

Lore84

Yeah, i don't think removing it would curbthe issue, as there will need to be some form of currency and we already know it won't be tokens. I

MarkJacobs

Originally posted by Rthuth434
the question is will he stick to his guns longer than TRION, SOE and Bioware? 

I did with Mythic, even though it meant Mythic lost a lot of acounts (and cash), I had to pay to defend a lawsuit, also it cost me personally since I was offered "a piece of the action"  and as well with Warhammer and EA (try explaining to your boss why you thought it necessary to ban lots paying customers, not fun).

My stand on gold sellers in these types of games is a long-standing one and isn't going to change. If I wanted to design a game to allow gold selling, even by my studio, that would be one thing but we are not going to do that so yes, I will stick to my guns once again.

Ice-Queen

Originally posted by MarkJacobs

Originally posted by Rthuth434
the question is will he stick to his guns longer than TRION, SOE and Bioware? 

I did with Mythic, even though it meant Mythic lost a lot of acounts (and cash), I had to pay to defend a lawsuit, also it cost me personally since I was offered "a piece of the action"  and as well with Warhammer and EA (try explaining to your boss why you thought it necessary to ban lots paying customers, not fun).

My stand on gold sellers in these types of games is a long-standing one and isn't going to change. If I wanted to design a game to allow gold selling, even by my studio, that would be one thing but we are not going to do that so yes, I will stick to my guns once again.

Thank you for sticking with your policy once again for gold sellers. I commend you, no one else has done it as well as you have and we appreciate it, knowing it does take away more money that you could be making by letting them slide by. I appreciate it, and have respect for you for doing so.

Raagnarz

Yeah he was ahead of his time doing it with mythic and was pretty active with cutting down on it. I have zero doubt if there is need for it, they'll do it here. Public shaming  global messages of gold sellers would be kind of awesome too lol.

Xthos

A lot of games say this, I'll believe it when I see it.  I have not seen any game do a good job of stopping people from macroing/hacking and people running gold farming/experience macros.

 

Even in games where you can kill them, they are just back at it in a different spot or where they were, very little fear of anything happening.

 

 

This is another reason why I like a sub game, not that they have done a good job of policing it, but having to buy something, and then pay a sub for it, is a little incentive to not cheat (if the company is willing to ban people, which they usually arent for the most part, unless they just go overboard crazy).  Free trials should be limited, with no ability to trade/mail/drop, so the character even if used to farm cannot unload the stuff. 

 

So I guess we will see what they do.

 

meddyck

Don't want gold sellers? Don't make your game be about uber rare gear drops that cost 100s of gold on the auction house. If there's nothing to buy with gold that costs way more than a player earns from his usual playing, people won't farm and sell or buy gold. It seems like CU will be an easy game to keep gold sellers out of based on what Mark has said about itemization so far. Let's just hope he doesn't repeat his mistakes from certain DAOC expansions.

MarkJacobs

Originally posted by meddyck
Don't want gold sellers? Don't make your game be about uber rare gear drops that cost 100s of gold on the auction house. If there's nothing to buy with gold that costs way more than a player earns from his usual playing, people won't farm and sell or buy gold. It seems like CU will be an easy game to keep gold sellers out of based on what Mark has said about itemization so far. Let's just hope he doesn't repeat his mistakes from certain DAOC expansions.

Hmm... Which ones would those be?

<ducks, covers and rolls>

Totally agree with you of course. Since CU isn't set up to be a game based on the whole rare drop thing, that will certainly be quit helpful. As to the repeating my mistakes, Iall  can promise is that I've learned a lot in the last few years and I'm doing everything I can not to repeat mistakes of my past. Some of them will be easy not to repeat (like the ones you mentioned). It's why so much of the design for CU is the way it is and why I want to start small and build from there, etc. Nobody's perfect but as always, time will tell.

 

Ice-Queen

Originally posted by Xthos

A lot of games say this, I'll believe it when I see it.  I have not seen any game do a good job of stopping people from macroing/hacking and people running gold farming/experience macros.

 

Even in games where you can kill them, they are just back at it in a different spot or where they were, very little fear of anything happening.

 

 

This is another reason why I like a sub game, not that they have done a good job of policing it, but having to buy something, and then pay a sub for it, is a little incentive to not cheat (if the company is willing to ban people, which they usually arent for the most part, unless they just go overboard crazy).  Free trials should be limited, with no ability to trade/mail/drop, so the character even if used to farm cannot unload the stuff. 

 

So I guess we will see what they do.

 

MJ did a great job of keeping gold farmers at bay in DAOC. I never saw gold farming spam, EVER, when I played. I did stop playing a year after ToA so I don't know how it is now with MJ not in charge anymore. If you'd ever played DAOC when he owned Mythic you'd know how great a job he did with gold farmers.

Other companies don't care about the gold farming as much because they are making profits from them playing their game.

Theely

Personally with the way games are now, I like gold farmers. I've purchased from them, not going to lie. I've felt that it was needed for me to have a good time when starting up in a game that has been around for a while. The newbie popluations are slim and groups are harder to find. The newbie equipment on the AHs is priced extremely high because people twink and will sell to twinkers. For the record, I LOVE twinking and dont feel it is an issue. Just the damn prices to a new player.

I haven't done a ton of research on CU yet, but I might start to see how they'll combat the "leet-lewts."