Gold Inflation: Botters and You

Gold Inflation: Botters and You

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Posted by: Destruction.3429

Destruction.3429

Q:

I posted this in General.. but it evidently is not the place to post this. So I pose this question here since it has directly to do with the Economy.

Gold Sellers Sell Gold at: 40cents Per 1 gold.
Arena Net Sells Gems at 4000 for 50.00

Gem Conversion is Currently: 10gold for 1200 Gems.

Simple Math
__________
40gold = 4800 Gems
40gold = 16 dollars

4800 Gems from Arena Net is 60+ dollars.
4800 Gems if you buy gold from an illicit site is 16 dollars

This Negatively Affects Us And You(ANET).

Watching Prices on Pre Legendary go up 400% in 3 weeks is absurd from any economist point of view. You could say Supply and Demand.. but the truth is that inflation on a major scale is happening.

This is not a botting question because I already know you are doing nothing but stall tactics to drive off angry customers…..

This is a question asking what is being done to curb inflation to keep prices in line?

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Posted by: Flyfunner.2093

Flyfunner.2093

Nope, they would rather release a patch for lame haloween skis instead of fixing hacks that allow botters to get away with inflating prices

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Posted by: VendettaDFA.9368

VendettaDFA.9368

Sorry but comparing an Illegal sites gold pricing to ANET’s right to set their price on the game and contents within the game is a weak WEAK attempt to legitimize the goldsellers price only to try and validate your thought that ANET is overcharging for gems. If you think ANET has the price too high then say so.

Goldsellers are illegal scum …period. Of course someone with no operational overhead can undercut the price. They don’t have a company full of employees on a payroll depending on the legitimate income from their work to support them.

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Posted by: Destruction.3429

Destruction.3429

If they are depending on legitimate income for their work, why are they not doing more to stop people from stealing it?

I don’t buy this excuse my friend. I rather buy from Arena Net to support the game. Hard to look past the 75% cost reduction for going around them though. I also have a hard time supporting someone who doesn’t care to take care of themselves.

So still I pose the question.. What is going to be done about the economy?

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Posted by: oZii.2864

oZii.2864

Sorry but comparing an Illegal sites gold pricing to ANET’s right to set their price on the game and contents within the game is a weak WEAK attempt to legitimize the goldsellers price only to try and validate your thought that ANET is overcharging for gems. If you think ANET has the price too high then say so.

Goldsellers are illegal scum …period. Of course someone with no operational overhead can undercut the price. They don’t have a company full of employees on a payroll depending on the legitimate income from their work to support them.

This 100%

Ill use example I used before.

3rd party seller= Risk/Possible suspension/Termination of account/Scammed/Hacked

Anet Gem store = Legit no risk

Official Automotive dealer = Legit

Chop Shop = Risk/Possible scam/ Jail time/ or could be worse depending/

Corner Drug dealer = Risk/Scam/ Jailtime and many other things

Prescription Doctor = Legit

Go tell a judge that it was to expensive to go the legit route see how far that get you.

The examples are kind of extreme but same rule applies.

You are not meant to obtain gold through a 3rd party as per TOS. Let Anet handle that I am sure they will. Then you can jump on high horse and say I told you so and watch as it wont matter at all 2 years later but at least you had your moment I guess.

[Good Fights]Sinndicate{Ele}Sinactic{Engineer}
Sinnastor{Warrior}Sinnacle{Mesmer}Sintacs
{Thief}

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Posted by: tooslow.7801

tooslow.7801

Economics will sort this out. Right now 16 bucks may well buy enough gold to buy the equivalent of 60 dollars worth of Gems, but the way the Gem inflation is going that won’t be the case forever. Unless the farmers keep lowering the price of gold, eventually you hit a point where Gems are going to cost so much gold that there’s little difference between buying officially and buying from a farmer – and which would you choose?

This is why I rate Gems as a great investment if you have lots of spare gold. There are your numbers: $16 vs $60 – so once parity hits and allowing for the 30% tax you’ll be almost tripling your gold, passively.

None of this is bad. It’s evidence of a functioning economy developing. Something that was worrying me for a while. Kinda crazy that the gold farmers are shaping that economy to their own detriment.

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Posted by: Ghoest.3945

Ghoest.3945

Gold is the primary currency.
Currency doesnt inflate.
The economy inflates or deflates with respect to currency.

Dont use economic terms if you dont understand them

Get a clue.

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Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

To get a new kidney in a western country in a hospital = wait for a long time for a compatible donor and then... pay $200,000* or more.

To get a new kidney somewhere in a back alley in Uzbekistan* where they do a custom search for a suitable donor for you and extract a kidney = $50,000*

Clearly hospitals need to change their prices!

No. There just is no comparing the "right" and legal way with the criminal alternative. Of course they’re more attractive financially! They *have* to be, to make you discount the risks and ignore the harm they inflicted on their victims, be it in stolen kidneys or accounts.
To say the original has to compete with the illegal alternative on price is saying that any legal or moral grounds are irrelevant to you.

* completely made up figures and random faraway country used

(edited by Cyrus.8261)

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Posted by: tooslow.7801

tooslow.7801

Ghoest – I try not to snit, but inflation commonly refers to a rise in prices. However much you may rail against the way words change meaning, it will still happen. You’ll be happier and appear less foolish if you simply accept that. Since gold can be bought for Gems it is not just a currency, it is a commodity in a separate Gem economy and absolutely subject to inflation.

You might consider a course in good manners before giving us the benefit of what you learned from your introductory course in economic theory.

Hmm. Turns out I snit pretty gud.

(edited by tooslow.7801)

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Posted by: Hippocampus.8470

Hippocampus.8470

Watching Prices on Pre Legendary go up 400% in 3 weeks is absurd from any economist point of view.

Which three weeks are you talking about, exactly? Because it’s certainly not the past three, when most precursors have evened out and seem to have reached some kind of equilibrium.

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Posted by: Tallis.5607

Tallis.5607

Go tell a judge that it was to expensive to go the legit route see how far that get you.

Well, to be honest, it would get you pretty far, if you needed life-saving medication that drug companies only seel at a very inflated price.

But in game-terms, you are 100% right. Botters are cheaters. People that buy from botters are cheaters too. I even consider players that do not report bots to be cheaters as well.

They need to step up their game to stop botters, before it is too late and too much gold is in the game.

Even today I reported 7 botters (including 4 naked level 30s in an level 80 area, lol).

Tallis – Perpetual newbie – Tarnished Coast.
Always carries a towel – Never panics – Eats cookies.

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Posted by: oZii.2864

oZii.2864

Go tell a judge that it was to expensive to go the legit route see how far that get you.

Well, to be honest, it would get you pretty far, if you needed life-saving medication that drug companies only seel at a very inflated price.

But in game-terms, you are 100% right. Botters are cheaters. People that buy from botters are cheaters too. I even consider players that do not report bots to be cheaters as well.

They need to step up their game to stop botters, before it is too late and too much gold is in the game.

Even today I reported 7 botters (including 4 naked level 30s in an level 80 area, lol).

In what world do you live in again?

[Good Fights]Sinndicate{Ele}Sinactic{Engineer}
Sinnastor{Warrior}Sinnacle{Mesmer}Sintacs
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Posted by: Hippocampus.8470

Hippocampus.8470

Sure, you might get sympathy with some judges or juries if we’re talking about lifesaving medicine. If you’re talking about Viagra or something, on the other hand, it will get you nowhere. And if you’re talking about a stolen car or counterfeit Rolex or pretty much any other situation where you’re knowingly supporting illegal activities for any reason other than saving your own life, you won’t get sympathy.

And since I’m pretty sure no one needs GW2 gold in order to live, we’re not talking about the lifesaving drugs analogy.

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Posted by: Yukishiro.8792

Yukishiro.8792

Illegal gold sellers charge that price because 75% of their clientele are certifiable morons who use the same login and password to buy gold as they do on their account. Meaning the gold sellers just steal their account a few weeks later and sell that gold to some other sucker.

It’s a pretty good gig. Dependent only on a constant supply of morons. And there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of those.

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Posted by: Radiodread.8469

Radiodread.8469

Wait, you can get 40g for $60? I bought $35 worth of gems last week and only ended up with about 12g or so. Somewhere in that ballpark.

Radiodread, Guardian [Os] NSP
AKA: Darkshines, Schroedingers Mesmer

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Posted by: Nerelith.7360

Nerelith.7360

Illegal gold sellers charge that price because 75% of their clientele are certifiable morons who use the same login and password to buy gold as they do on their account. Meaning the gold sellers just steal their account a few weeks later and sell that gold to some other sucker.

It’s a pretty good gig. Dependent only on a constant supply of morons. And there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of those.

One Born every minute.

The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

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Posted by: Destruction.3429

Destruction.3429

75% of the people on this earth are “morons”. People who buy from gold sellers are the same people around you. Statistics are the same, but some of the people are smart enough to get the 75% discount.

If you are not one of those who is getting the discount.. then you are one of the 75%.

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Posted by: NinjaKnight.1340

NinjaKnight.1340

Simple Math
__________
40gold = 4800 Gems
40gold = 16 dollars

4800 Gems from Arena Net is 60+ dollars.
4800 Gems if you buy gold from an illicit site is 16 dollars

This Negatively Affects Us And You(ANET).

Watching Prices on Pre Legendary go up 400% in 3 weeks is absurd from any economist point of view. You could say Supply and Demand.. but the truth is that inflation on a major scale is happening.

This is not a botting question because I already know you are doing nothing but stall tactics to drive off angry customers…..

This is a question asking what is being done to curb inflation to keep prices in line?

Simple common sense:
4800 Gems from illicit site =$16+$60 = $76 when they permaban you.

Inflation should be measured by overall pricing. Most items have dropped in price to vendor value. That offsets the few rares.

I would argue that there is actually deflation.

I won’t argue that Anet was caught with their pants down on the Gold farming issue. I personally didn’t realize how big a business it was until I did some research – multi-BILLION. There are hundreds of highly sophisticated companies that do it full time across all MMOs of note. They are 2 steps ahead of anything Anet can do, ATM.

Heck do a search and you can find incredibly sophisticated bots for sale by one man crack programmers. Can you imagine what a well financed farming company can do?

Note that I will caution you NOT to use any of these methods because, sellers use hacked accounts for the transaction and don’t care if the account is eventually shut down, but you will be tracked down eventually and permabanned.

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Posted by: Narkosys.5173

Narkosys.5173

I really wish anet would get a handle on this but it is far too late and botters have built up enough inventory to keep going for a while (suspicions).
Right now things are out of control and my solution is to legalize it plain and simple. Tax and sell it – remove the market above all else.
Or Turn the price of gems over to us the players not set by anet.
I have heard 40% of the pop bot which is astounding but also makes sense since inflation has taken off and the only way to afford stuff other than real $.
The short answer is they are doing nothing at all – if they cared about the economy there would have been drastic measures taken. All that happened were nerfs for the legit farmers.

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Posted by: Redrumickey.9672

Redrumickey.9672

WOW ! this thread is still up but not for long . I agree with 100% having bots in any game s***s but I can deal with it because Anet made it so that you don’t need to spend 300 gold on a dusk to play .All level 80 weapons rare or above have close to the same stats. Its for show after that. I was into standing in town for 6 hours showing my dusk or full kramma I would be bum but I rather be playing so its all good.

What I don’t like is this .I play a RPG to escape from all the stress and kittens out there in real life and to have some fun doing it but throw bots into into the mix everything that you were looking to get away from is now right there in the game Rude greedy kittens who don’t care if they’re ruining that fantasy and in GW2 there just to many of them in to many key location .I love the GW2 but rpg part is going down quick and thats why I play.

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Posted by: John Smith.4610

John Smith.4610

Goldsellers are illegal scum …period.

Supporting gold sellers doesn’t just damage the game, it supports an industry that lives off of stealing from gamers and ruining communities.

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Posted by: Destruction.3429

Destruction.3429

Goldsellers are illegal scum …period.

Supporting gold sellers doesn’t just damage the game, it supports an industry that lives off of stealing from gamers and ruining communities.

I totally 100% agree with you. Which is why I am dumbfounded that nothing is being done about the botters. I know they made a post blah blah.. but the truth is a month later… the bots are still there.

So if it is hurting ANet so much.. why isn’t anything being done about it.. if nothing is going to be done.. why has Anet not adjusted their prices to undercut the competition?

I feel for you guys I do. I have a great appreciation for this game and the company who designed it, I just can not fathom why I am now forced to make the decision to either buy gold so I can afford my legendary or give up entirely. 300g for a legendary is sickening. I am at 600k Karma and 40gold. I doubt I am going to get to 10x that when I finally hit 1mill karma.

This leaves me at an impass where I have to buy gold. Whether I buy from Arena Net Gems and convert or save 75% and buy from the cheaters. This is a pretty easy debate in my mind. Spend 400 bucks or spend 100 bucks.. Well times are tough laddy, some times decisions need to be made that are not the best, but they do the job.

While I do not advocate buying gold.. it is really hard to over look the 75% discount I would get from it. What we need to see is either make gold worth less in item terms… or crack down on bots… or ANET gold prices come into line with the competition.

Personally I rather support the company and the game I enjoy.. but not at a 400% increase in price. Especially not if they do not want to police their own game. Why pay money for something where they seem to not even care about the things going on in their game.

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(edited by Destruction.3429)

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Posted by: NinjaKnight.1340

NinjaKnight.1340

@ destruction

I guess you didn’t read my post. Anyway, I think they are doing something about it, I’ve seen gold spam e-mail/chat go away. Many botters which camped in one spot have disappeared.

Most likely they have moved on to more human like bots. Which they had lined up from the beginning.

These companies do it for a living 24/7 and have experience with botting on 100s of MMOs and all their attempts to stop them.

GW2 had many protections in place originally against hacking but I don’t think anyone expected that these companies had the EXACT password and login of people stolen from other sites. just waiting for GW2 launch,

Unless you know something I don’t, I bet you your so called saving will become a massive loss when all your soulbound items get lost when they track you down and permaban you. There is a trail, it is just that they probably have a big stack of illegal buyers they need to track down.

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Posted by: ubwcgm.2415

ubwcgm.2415

Watching Prices on Pre Legendary go up 400% in 3 weeks is absurd from any economist point of view. You could say Supply and Demand.. but the truth is that inflation on a major scale is happening.

Well, since the game is relatively new it would be difficult to judge what is absurd concerning the trend of item prices. Seems plausible to me that the amount of people hitting end game will increase at an increasing rate near the beginning of any mmo’s life cycle causing some weird shifts in prices in any player run marketplace until the honeymoon phase is over.

So if over the last few weeks more people have been entering endgame at an increasing rate then you have more people looking for legendary precursors at an increasing rate.

My concerns with inflation gw2 isn’t so much the botters as it is what gold sinks exist in the game. I haven’t spent a lot of time at 80 yet so I don’t know where all my gold will go once I get myself itemed out the way I want. If there is no more equipment that I can upgrade and I am self sufficient (So far no problem) with what few consumables exist in the game then where do I spend my gold? I would guess the gem store?

That being said, I love this game, I hate I missed the boat on cheap precursors, and I hate botters and scammers.

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Posted by: Destruction.3429

Destruction.3429

@ destruction

I guess you didn’t read my post. Anyway, I think they are doing something about it, I’ve seen gold spam e-mail/chat go away. Many botters which camped in one spot have disappeared.

Most likely they have moved on to more human like bots. Which they had lined up from the beginning.

These companies do it for a living 24/7 and have experience with botting on 100s of MMOs and all their attempts to stop them.

GW2 had many protections in place originally against hacking but I don’t think anyone expected that these companies had the EXACT password and login of people stolen from other sites. just waiting for GW2 launch,

Unless you know something I don’t, I bet you your so called saving will become a massive loss when all your soulbound items get lost when they track you down and permaban you. There is a trail, it is just that they probably have a big stack of illegal buyers they need to track down.

The reason bots have been gone lately is due to all the patches and needing to update their offsets for the current patch. So don’t read too much into that one.

The gold selling spam is still in full effect. Just more of a loss for them because it is alot easier to report.

If I had bought gold then yes, it would a bummer to lose it, but that is what AMEX charge backs are for. They are good for that and that is why I use AMEX solely for online purchases.

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Posted by: kidhedera.7812

kidhedera.7812

I find a lot of the complaints about prices in the game pretty surprising. I am a casual player. I have a level 50 ele, and a level 20 gaurdian. Somehow I get by just fine. I could be wiser with my coin – buying mini’s off the TP is not a sound investment. But it is a game.
My characters get new armour when I feel like it, I hardly ever sell loot – I break it down cos I like crafting. I spent $20 on gems mostly cos I wanted to support anet, not cos I needed the coin. I’m not rich, I usually run around with about 20 silver on me. Why not just play the game instead of worrying so much about the economy? I don’t see any sign that anet don’t have things under controll.

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Posted by: NinjaKnight.1340

NinjaKnight.1340

@ destruction

I guess you didn’t read my post. Anyway, I think they are doing something about it, I’ve seen gold spam e-mail/chat go away. Many botters which camped in one spot have disappeared.

Most likely they have moved on to more human like bots. Which they had lined up from the beginning.

These companies do it for a living 24/7 and have experience with botting on 100s of MMOs and all their attempts to stop them.

GW2 had many protections in place originally against hacking but I don’t think anyone expected that these companies had the EXACT password and login of people stolen from other sites. just waiting for GW2 launch,

Unless you know something I don’t, I bet you your so called saving will become a massive loss when all your soulbound items get lost when they track you down and permaban you. There is a trail, it is just that they probably have a big stack of illegal buyers they need to track down.

The reason bots have been gone lately is due to all the patches and needing to update their offsets for the current patch. So don’t read too much into that one.

The gold selling spam is still in full effect. Just more of a loss for them because it is alot easier to report.

If I had bought gold then yes, it would a bummer to lose it, but that is what AMEX charge backs are for. They are good for that and that is why I use AMEX solely for online purchases.

Well I don’t see much map chat gold spam anymore on my server and I only seem to get mail spam once in a while if i engage in map chat, so i think they harvest names from that.

Yes Amex has a very decent return policy on small transactions but that doesn’t stop the fact that the character you spent hundreds of hours building is lost.

Bottom line is that it is a cat and mouse game and playing catch up.

I had mentioned a suggestion sometime ago that Anet should buy a gold selling company and turn them into agents for catching offenders, Who knows maybe they are doing something like that and the next time someone trys to buy illegal gold their account is flagged.

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Posted by: Ensign.2189

Ensign.2189

It’s likely that nothing is being done about all the bots because bot chasing is a labor intensive issue, which is normally supported by monthly fees, which are not present in this game. They simply do not have the GM base to aggressively hunt bots.

As far as damage to the game goes, that issue is always massively overblown. Beyond some sectoral imbalances from gutting the rewards from extraordinarily monotonous tasks, they should have a pretty minimal impact on the economy, perhaps even making it more efficient, depending on how much they use the auction house to move goods.

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Posted by: Gandalf The Green.3549

Gandalf The Green.3549

Nope, they would rather release a patch for lame haloween skis instead of fixing hacks that allow botters to get away with inflating prices

This is the same with almost all MMOs. The devs are so caught up in making sure what they THINK players would like is added (stupid holiday event stuff), when there are far bigger and more important things that could be added/changed.

If ANet spent less time talking to their financial department thinking about how to make more money (Black Lion items!), and more time reading the Suggestions forum, then this game could be far better.

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Posted by: NinjaKnight.1340

NinjaKnight.1340

Nope, they would rather release a patch for lame haloween skis instead of fixing hacks that allow botters to get away with inflating prices

This is the same with almost all MMOs. The devs are so caught up in making sure what they THINK players would like is added (stupid holiday event stuff), when there are far bigger and more important things that could be added/changed.

If ANet spent less time talking to their financial department thinking about how to make more money (Black Lion items!), and more time reading the Suggestions forum, then this game could be far better.

You do realize that the % of people coming to the gw2 forums and making suggestions is tiny compared to the player base?

Frankly I think they don’t spend enough time talking to their financial dept, or are under pressure from a shareholder. Which is the reason for the BLC fiasco.

I probably can’t list the name but just do a search and you may be very surprised at who the largest shareholder of Anets parent company is.

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Posted by: neon.4863

neon.4863

I don’t have experience developing something this massive, but I can tell you botting is tricky to deal with. Obvious bots are simple to catch and ban, but even then devs more often than not rely on player reports to find them. There are hundreds of thousands of players; filtering out bots is trickier than it seems.

Also, you can ban them, but making new ones is just as easy for the botters themselves. That’s why you keep seeing bots everywhere – they get banned, they just come back again. Even if you block a third party program or flag a specific behavior pattern, bot scripts can just be updated to circumvent it. Ever notice how anti-piracy measures for major games get cracked within hours? It’s very similar – you can get rid of botters quickly; they’ll figure out a way to come back just as quickly.

Sophisticated bots can be hard to catch, too, since their behavior can be very close to that of a legitimate player, and you may well end up banning someone wrongly.

It would be quite helpful to have in-game GMs who can handle bot suspicions immediately as they get reported, I’ll say that much. I’ve reported obvious bots before that were still there after several hours.

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Posted by: Cod Eye.1632

Cod Eye.1632

I don’t have experience developing something this massive, but I can tell you botting is tricky to deal with. Obvious bots are simple to catch and ban, but even then devs more often than not rely on player reports to find them. There are hundreds of thousands of players; filtering out bots is trickier than it seems.

Also, you can ban them, but making new ones is just as easy for the botters themselves. That’s why you keep seeing bots everywhere – they get banned, they just come back again. Even if you block a third party program or flag a specific behavior pattern, bot scripts can just be updated to circumvent it. Ever notice how anti-piracy measures for major games get cracked within hours? It’s very similar – you can get rid of botters quickly; they’ll figure out a way to come back just as quickly.

Sophisticated bots can be hard to catch, too, since their behavior can be very close to that of a legitimate player, and you may well end up banning someone wrongly.

It would be quite helpful to have in-game GMs who can handle bot suspicions immediately as they get reported, I’ll say that much. I’ve reported obvious bots before that were still there after several hours.

The Bots have been reported repeatedly by players including myself, the same bots are still running around the same places and have never been acted on for weeks. The need for GM’s to run around every map and server is not cost effective and is not needed when players are already reporting them. All that is needed is data on the characters that have been reported which would show the length of time online over a 24 hr period, the co-ordinates the character has logged over that period, the data of a paper trail on the items they collect. If the system can recognise chat spam then it should be able to recognise character movement and flagged up on to the system.

“Hey I swung a sword, Hey Hey I swung a sword again,”

“After several hours I’m still swinging this sword with1 lodestone drop”

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Posted by: NinjaKnight.1340

NinjaKnight.1340

The longer a reported bot is up the longer they can track all the transactions and find the big boss behind it as well as all the illegal gold buyers. Then Bam get them all at once.

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Posted by: Rennuh.9356

Rennuh.9356

As some have stated before me, it’s actually deflation you’re seeing not inflation. That is if you look at normal materials and weapons. Fine crafting materials are so cheap, that there is no point in farming them. The price of rare lvl 80s and ecto’s (for which the prices are more or less coupled) have gone down from 20 silver to 13-14 silver in the last couple of weeks.

Yes the precursor prices skyrocketed, but I think the price is quite fair now. Have you even tried obtaining one through the forge? I have and so far more than 1000 rare greatswords left me with zero precursors. They are very hard to get and the demand has only increased. Also at the time they only cost 70 gold, people were making far less money overall than they are doing now.

Anet will never be able to compete with bots, because doing so will ruin their own economy. Imagine what would happen if Anet lowered the real money prices on gems, the gold sellers would just lower their prices as well. In the end resulting in a lower income for Anet and even more gold in the economy.

And yes Anet needs to do more about botting, I haven’t seen many myself but apparently there are more bots in WvW than risen in Orr if I may believe these forums. So Anet please update us more often on the status of the battle against the bots, I don’t need to know specifics of how you do it but maybe post the amount of bots banned in a week. And make more clear to people that when you buy from these gold sellers you’re basically hacking the accounts of fellow players or even your own friends.

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Posted by: NixZero.7540

NixZero.7540

If they are depending on legitimate income for their work, why are they not doing more to stop people from stealing it?

I don’t buy this excuse my friend. I rather buy from Arena Net to support the game. Hard to look past the 75% cost reduction for going around them though. I also have a hard time supporting someone who doesn’t care to take care of themselves.

So still I pose the question.. What is going to be done about the economy?

do you really think there’s a way to completely stop a crime?
they can curb it, keep it at bay at best they can, but there’s just no way to stop it, there always be criminals in this world.

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Posted by: Sondergaard.8469

Sondergaard.8469

When I was younger and more stupid, I used to buy gold for Guild Wars 1. It was easier, and cheaper than farming it all myself. It was actually so cheap that you could max out your bank storage for about $50. Which was more than enough money for the lifetime of the game and any characters you would have.

There were two reasons for my purchase. One, it was too hard to acquire gold through legitimate means, and two there was no legitimate way of purchasing gold.

ANet IMO has eliminated these two issues. While gold can be a challenge to acquire, it’s not so much of a grind that it feels impossible. It’s actually quite easy all things considered. Then there’s the fact that crafting professions are fairly easy to level as well, and some can make a decent chunk of change.

I’m not sure what ANet is planning to do about gold sellers, but I hope they do something soon. Personally I’ll never be buying through gold sellers, even if it costs me more to go through ANet because I want to support the company who’s made this totally awesome game, and because I find gold sellers business practices to be completely unethical. This was something I didn’t know about back in GW1

I can see the temptation for others though, and I can’t say I would fault them for succumbing to that. Times are rough, so ANet needs to get on the ball and eliminate the temptation, not punish the players for being tempted.

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Posted by: Jiminimokna.1270

Jiminimokna.1270

Typically of almost every MMO forum, something is causing the end of the world as we know it.

I am making enough gold to get by with, the trading post makes me plenty of gold, its just got to be used the way it was intended, its not an auction house.

If you see bots, report them. Alternatively, if you are a mesmer or know a mesmer, get them to come along and teleport them somewhere they are useless. The other day in Frostgorge there was a big bunch of bots on a hill overlooking a charr camp. A mesmer came along and teleported the bots down behind a tent, rendering them useless. The bots continued to auto-attack thin air for the next 10 minutes that I saw and probably kept at it all day.

ArenaNet are doing something about bots, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean they are not.

Go Rin No Sho – Gandara EU
PvE, PvP, WvWvW
www.gorinnosho.com

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Posted by: KodChim.5670

KodChim.5670

Watching Prices on Pre Legendary go up 400% in 3 weeks is absurd from any economist point of view. You could say Supply and Demand.. but the truth is that inflation on a major scale is happening.

That’s not inflation, that’s precursors finding their value. The price on a lot of things has actually dropped…

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Posted by: Jedson.2715

Jedson.2715

Goldsellers are illegal scum …period.

Supporting gold sellers doesn’t just damage the game, it supports an industry that lives off of stealing from gamers and ruining communities.

I completely understand what your saying here, but it seems to be a very two faced approach. I have reported the same botters day in and day out in the very same spots for over two weeks+ in a handful of locations. 50+ botters and yet, apparently the reports go unheard as they are still at it botting 24/7.

You say dont do it or else your get banned, but these botters seem to have a free pass. 2+ weeks no joking. Why do I even bother taking time to police the game, when the police never come?

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Posted by: Hippocampus.8470

Hippocampus.8470

How sure are you that they are all exactly the same bots? Do you write down all of their names or something?

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Posted by: Gunzwei.5417

Gunzwei.5417

Goldsellers are illegal scum …period.

Supporting gold sellers doesn’t just damage the game, it supports an industry that lives off of stealing from gamers and ruining communities.

Then quit designing a game where item acquisition revolves around your wallet. You could ban every bot currently in game today and a week later they would all be back. By introducing even more items that require 100s of gold to create you’ve done nothing but create even more demand for a third party supplier.

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Posted by: CobraCanuck.9837

CobraCanuck.9837

I will always support ArenaNet, thank you for your great game!

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Posted by: alcopaul.2156

alcopaul.2156

even legit players who amassed large amounts of gold can be potentially a gold seller. so don’t confine gold selling to some illegal business operating overseas.

anyway, a.net doesn’t take note of the easiness of gold acquisition for certain people on their black lion gold to gem conversion rate. if prices of an item goes to 400 gold, that means gold can easily be acquired and inflation rate is high. bltc has to keep up with the market, being the current market which include the gold sellers. if bltc conversion rate goes high, that means gold farmers/hoarders/sellers have to keep up and for sure there is a certain ceiling that gold can be acquired for a given day. if this is so, bltc can actually compete with potential gold sellers and will bring them out of business.

don’t be dumb comparing the situation to real life. this is selling virtual money. the quality of virtual money sold by bltc and gold sellers are the same. so comparing it to a kidney donor from a 3rd world country and a donor by your favorite hospital is dumb,

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Posted by: MrQuillen.3014

MrQuillen.3014

How sure are you that they are all exactly the same bots? Do you write down all of their names or something?

Add Friend. Bam done, and takes less than a second. All you have to suffer is a 100+ friends list every day… every time of day…

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Posted by: VendettaDFA.9368

VendettaDFA.9368

How sure are you that they are all exactly the same bots? Do you write down all of their names or something?

screenshots do wonders … and btw what kind of post is that anyway?

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Posted by: VendettaDFA.9368

VendettaDFA.9368

even legit players who amassed large amounts of gold can be potentially a gold seller. so don’t confine gold selling to some illegal business operating overseas.

anyway, a.net doesn’t take note of the easiness of gold acquisition for certain people on their black lion gold to gem conversion rate. if prices of an item goes to 400 gold, that means gold can easily be acquired and inflation rate is high. bltc has to keep up with the market, being the current market which include the gold sellers. if bltc conversion rate goes high, that means gold farmers/hoarders/sellers have to keep up and for sure there is a certain ceiling that gold can be acquired for a given day. if this is so, bltc can actually compete with potential gold sellers and will bring them out of business.

don’t be dumb comparing the situation to real life. this is selling virtual money. the quality of virtual money sold by bltc and gold sellers are the same. so comparing it to a kidney donor from a 3rd world country and a donor by your favorite hospital is dumb,

Again … Goldsellers are illegal scum ….. period.

A legit player with a lot of gold is just that … legit. The rest of your post is closer to single digit IQ than the examples you attack.

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Posted by: alcopaul.2156

alcopaul.2156

A legit player with a lot of gold that decides to sell gold is an illegal scum too.

Gold sellers are part of the market. the gold sellers know the right price for the gold because they know the value based on their easiness/hardness of gold acquisition. a.net just set it arbitrarily. i would trust the gold sellers valuation of gold. they’re not undercutting. they know the right price.

(edited by alcopaul.2156)

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Posted by: alcopaul.2156

alcopaul.2156

i’m not pro botter. im just saying that a.net valuation of gold based on GEM→ GOLD ratio is low. Gold sellers know the right price because they know HOW GOLD ARE ACQUIRED IN GAME.

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Posted by: kitanas.3596

kitanas.3596

alcopaul

you do realize that players set the gem→gold ratio right?

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Posted by: Hippocampus.8470

Hippocampus.8470

They don’t set it directly, though, since you can’t pick a custom offer price like with TP items.

More likely it’s based on volume traded, and if gems cost an increasing amount of gold it’s because players are still buying them with gold more than real money. If the prices level out, it’ll likely be because the rates are about the same.