Liav said:It doesn't matter how aggressive you are. If you go after buyers instead of sellers, then you end up banning thousands of players and losing a ton of money. If you go after sellers, well, Hail Hydra.
I understand your point, But if the sellers were targeted agressivly I would hope that they would stop growing heads in Pantheon and head to greener pastures. It may just be one of the Labors that have to be endured to send them back to the lake they spawned from.
Skycaster said:With all of the smart people on this forum, somebody may yet come up with a ground breaking approach to help solve this issue. I also hate the idea of the token thing, but I hate the gold farmer / third party site sales worse
I'd like to requote this in hopes that people might post possible solutions.
Kronos type systems are such a small part of the actual issue that needs to be addressed. RMTs are the root of the problem.
I find that in some games, eventually at the high end, coin starts to devalue and meaningful transactions end up being mostly trades. This addresses the issue...but it takes awhile to get there.
It would be nice if there was a general shift in the perpective and mindset of gamers. I find it very pathetic when I hear that someone has resorted to buying gold. I have never once even considered it. It means you are bad at games but also, it is so much more than that. To me there is nothing worse you can do in a game. Ninja looting, KS'n, spamming, account stealing (that's right...account stealing. Not that it's good either but it doesn't have the same pathetic factor). All of those have nothing on buying in game currency. Buying in game currency for real money is just sad. It makes me question that persons competence in life. If everyone simply thought the same way it wouldn't even be offered as an option.
I know this type of proposal to change the thought process of others isn't realistic but...I just don't understand that mindset.
Maybe others can post better solutions like Skycaster mentioned.
Skycaster said:Liav said:It doesn't matter how aggressive you are. If you go after buyers instead of sellers, then you end up banning thousands of players and losing a ton of money. If you go after sellers, well, Hail Hydra.
I understand your point, But if the sellers were targeted agressivly I would hope that they would stop growing heads in Pantheon and head to greener pastures. It may just be one of the Labors that have to be endured to send them back to the lake they spawned from.
I've watched companies try to control RMT and fail for over a decade. I really don't know what to say other than that.
A large resounding no from me. Kronos (or similar currency) are a company sponsored form of PTW. I get that you won't be able to stop all RMT'ing, but like Sarim stated, giving up on the fight before even trying would be extremely disappointing.
I've discussed on these forums before, if the path necessary to obtain farmable items is long and hard, and reliant on others to be able to reach max level to make farming items profitable, banning players at that point will have much larger effect. The problem with most games today is it isn't difficult at all to reach max level, so being banned and creating a new account is still profitable. Once time becomes a much larger factor in the equation, I'd argue that we could place a much larger dent in the RMT market in Pantheon.
Hannar said:Kronos were a terrible idea in EQ, and basically invited and regulated RMT. I wouldn't want anything similar to be in game.
So it's better for people to get the same result through a third party than through the company itself?
People keep asserting that it's a terrible idea but they're not qualifying why they think that is. Saying it is doesn't make it so.
Maybe a smart trading interface that keeps track of the trades in each account, and if there are a lot of imbalanced trades then the account is flagged as a possible seller. Basically If you trade large sums of Plat or lots of nice items and get nothing of close or equal value in return and you do it over and over again then your account is banned from trading until reviewed. That along with some other simple, as yet thought of ideas could have an impact.
If RMT is comparable to war, then banning RMTers is comparable to genocide.
Or maybe it's just a false equivalence. Maybe RMT is its own issue with its own separate considerations and drawing comparisons between it and other things is completely invalid. Maybe mitigating RMT with things like Krono isn't synonymous with "embracing" it and is instead a practical countermeasure.
Liav said:So it's better for people to get the same result through a third party than through the company itself?
People keep asserting that it's a terrible idea but they're not qualifying why they think that is. Saying it is doesn't make it so.
Having the company provide the service and benefit from it also legitimizes the practice. RMT is always going to be a problem so long as people assign value to the time we spend in these games, accuring virutal wealth and power, but anything that makes the process easier and takes it out of the shadows and removes the risks involved, in my mind, is a step in the wrong direction. I believe you would have less RMT impact via 3rd party than if you enabled it openly in game.
Hannar said:Having the company provide the service and benefit from it also legitimizes the practice. RMT is always going to be a problem so long as people assign value to the time we spend in these games, accuring virutal wealth and power, but anything that makes the process easier and takes it out of the shadows and removes the risks involved, in my mind, is a step in the wrong direction. I believe you would have less RMT impact via 3rd party than if you enabled it openly in game.
I don't think the practice of RMT is that big of a problem on its own. The issue is what you can acquire through RMT.
Accounts are obviously the most meta form of RMT. However, if platinum is pretty limited in what it can purchase it alleviates a lot of the negatives.
A lot of people cry about "pay to win" with regards to RMT. However, take a look at Phinigel. Nothing you can buy with platinum even remotely compares to the best things available in the game. You can't buy VT gear with platinum. It just doesn't happen.
I don't really care if people buy and sell accounts. I do it, and so do others. I don't really know why people care that much.
I would rather not see them. I did briefly come back to EQ for several months in 2014 and it had because like someone else said, a bunch of bots and people farming plat to be able to buy kronos, and on the other end of the spectrum people spending tons of RL money for plat. I don't know how prevelant it would be on the black market, but my instinct tells me it would be less, simply due to the fact that it's a bannable offense, you don't know who you are giving your money to, they could steal your payment info etc, they could rip you off etc etc.
Quintra said:I would rather not see them. I did briefly come back to EQ for several months in 2014 and it had because like someone else said, a bunch of bots and people farming plat to be able to buy kronos, and on the other end of the spectrum people spending tons of RL money for plat. I don't know how prevelant it would be on the black market, but my instinct tells me it would be less, simply due to the fact that it's a bannable offense, you don't know who you are giving your money to, they could steal your payment info etc, they could rip you off etc etc.
People have always farmed a ton. AFK bots are super easy to detect and ban, and AFK bots exist independently of RMT.
If plat has value in the game, people will farm it.
Liav said:
I don't really care if people buy and sell accounts. I do it, and so do others.
Wow...your credibility just went out the window afaic.
Liav said:I don't really care if people buy and sell accounts. I do it, and so do others. I don't really know why people care that much.
That pretty much covers anything anyone need know. You're just reaching for ways to justify ignoring rules, and personally profiting by any means necessary.
RMT is and always will exist in games, whether the company adds a direct method (tokens) or not. Banning won't fix anything either... the dedicated don't care, look at WoW.
If we don't like it as a community, then we shouldn't encourage that behavior, that's all.
This is one of the few things companies don't have control over.
Look at it this way.
A bad player buys a character. It doesn't matter, they're still bad.
A good player buys a character. It doesn't matter, they're still good.
At the end of the day, the demonization of practices like RMT does nothing but harm the industry. I'm as against "pay to win" as any of you. However, we all have very different definitions of what constitutes winning.
If a millionaire decide to play on Phinigel and buys 500 Kronos, they'll be pretty disappointed at how little they can achieve with that. I'm of the opinion that adding legitimate RMT options is a good thing.
Imagine if you could sell an unwanted character with some restrictions, for instance that all of the gear will be stripped in the process. The difference is that it's impossible to get ripped off because it's an officially sanctioned exchange, and it isn't really pay to win if the character doesn't have gear.
We're all paying real $ to play video games at the end of the day. Input devices, subscription fees, and the computers themselves all offer advantages in exchange for money. While some games take it too far and money is the only reasonable path to success, that's a problem with those games in particular and not the practice of RMT itself.
RMT is basically a buzzword that produces a negative visceral reaction in MMO players the same way that communism does in the average American due to years of propaganda. It'd be great if you could look at things with an open mind and see exactly how many millions of possible RMT implementations there are that address many of the concerns people repeatedly express with regards to it, but I digress.