Guild Wars 2

The following is a way to greatly hinder gold sellers and buyers while not hindering guilds. Though this idea does hinder gold sellers by slowing their ability to transfer money, it will not stop ability to sell or transfer gold, but does allow ANet to track their sales with more ease.

- Convert money account wide. No more separate coin counts per character. All money is account wide and each character can spend that gold and all money earned is put to this total.

There really is no reason to have money restricted to each character. I do not see any player buying Bank Access Express items from the BLTC just to transfer gold between their characters when they can just recall to town and do it at one of the bank NPCs. This “feature” really serves no purpose in a modern MMOs where every character is tied to a single account name accessible to any player.

- Money can not be sent through the mail. No more mailing money to players. You are still able to put money into the guild bank and others can withdraw that money, but players can no longer mail money to each other.

Note: Players can join more than one guild at a time and can switch between guilds anytime they wish.

By only allowing money to be transferred between characters through a guild bank, ANet gains more control over the ability to transfer gold and can more readily track and ban accounts that purchase gold from gold sellers.

This slows gold sellers down because now there are multiple steps to transfer money.

First a guild has to be created (costs money). Then a guild has to wait through the progression period so guild banks can be accessed (costs money and takes time). Then the gold sellers have to wait for the gold purchaser to get online, invite them to a guild, transfer the money to the guild bank and make sure only that person can access the gold so no other player can take it. This is a huge inconvenience to both the gold sellers and players that purchase gold.

Restricting gold transfers to only guild banks also allows ANet to track these guilds and bank transfers and ban any accounts which have access and retrieved gold from those accounts.

Arguments against the restriction of mailing money:

• I like mailing money to friends for crafting or so they can purchase items off the venders. You can send them the items directly or have them join your guild and using the guild bank allow them to withdraw as much gold as needed.

• I want to purchase an item from a player without going through the Trade Post. You can still do this, have them temporarily join your guild and using the guild bank allow them to withdraw a specified amount of gold. They can still mail the item directly to you.

• I do not have a guild or access to a guild bank. I would suggest creating one, and if you can not afford to create one then you can not afford to send your friend money to begin with.

Why do I care so much about gold sellers and gold buyers? Because they hinder the economy for legitimate players.

Do I want to purchase gold and convert that gold to gems and gain four times my value versus going through ANet? Yes, but I will not because it does not support ANet.

Do I want to convert the gold I have now to gems? Sometimes, but due to the low value I won’t. Why is the value so low? Because there are so many people purchasing gold from illegal sites and converting those to gems that again, legitimate players are being put at a disadvantage.

I dislike gold sellers, they have a negative impact on every part of our economy, and if giving up the ability to freely mail money to other players will help stop them, I am willing to sacrifice a small freedom which can easily be bypassed by using a guild bank.

They have access to all gold transfers in the mail database.

If they wanted to stop it, they’d at least threaten to ban buyers.

It’s really really crummy game design to put in things that hamper legit play in attempt to slow the rule-breakers.

Gold sellers in your model would just invite you to their guild, put your order of gold in the guild bank, then kick you when you have it. Maybe you slow them down a little, but now there’s not as easy ways to track it.

mulch.2586:

They have access to all gold transfers in the mail database.

If they wanted to stop it, they’d at least threaten to ban buyers.

It’s really really crummy game design to put in things that hamper legit play in attempt to slow the rule-breakers.

Gold sellers in your model would just invite you to their guild, put your order of gold in the guild bank, then kick you when you have it. Maybe you slow them down a little, but now there’s not as easy ways to track it.

I’m sure (or at least hope) that there are guild bank logs being kept. Those logs should be easy to track.

As of now, legitimate players are being hindered by gold sellers every time they access the economy. And talking to people in /m I have not really ran into a lot players that have a reason to transfer money via mail except to purchase items directly from other players.

In other games the inability to freely transfer money via mail has greatly slowed down gold sellers.

My guild uses mail to send gold a lot, actually. We’ve purchased a few commander books so far.

It’s not secure to put it in the guild bank, cuz any member can take it out.

I really think you’ve said everything that should convince you ANet doesn’t care to combat the buyers. If it’s true that players don’t transfer money by mail, why wouldn’t/don’t they monitor that, identify the buyers and ban them? They are frying different fish.

mulch.2586:

My guild uses mail to send gold a lot, actually. We’ve purchased a few commander books so far.

It’s not secure to put it in the guild bank, cuz any member can take it out.

I really think you’ve said everything that should convince you ANet doesn’t care to combat the buyers. If it’s true that players don’t transfer money by mail, why wouldn’t/don’t they monitor that, identify the buyers and ban them? They are frying different fish.

It maybe true that ANet does not even care about banning accounts that purchase gold. I have not seen anyone complaining on the unofficial forums about being banned for such an action.

If that is true than ANet has no reason to change the way things currently work.

no sending money in the mail? no thank you.

Quote “- Convert money account wide. No more separate coin counts per character. All money is account wide and each character can spend that gold and all money earned is put to this total.”

You can already do this. In your bank you can deposit your cash from one character and collect it from any character on that account. No need.
Use your account bank.

god no.

i hate mixing the money of my characters. each character should be self suficient, and no one is buying stuff on the other’s expense.

and not mailing money? really? that’s really absurd. so i can’t just borrow some money from a friend anymore, because it would kitten gold sellers.

why don’t we do away with being able to sell your drops, and DE rewards? that would hinder them too.

there’s a thin line between fighting bots and harming players, and you just ran past it without ever looking back.

This would only create a minor annoyance and cause the sellers to transfer gold 1 player per guild at a time. Even if you made it so they had to jump through 100 hoops to sell gold, they’d still do it. Don’t underestimate the gold sellers. Even if you made it impossible to transfer gold, they’d just switch and deal in either vendorable or highly traded items.

Only being able to transfer gold through guild banks hinders a small group of friends more than it does the sellers. A small guild could take a few weeks to get access to a guild bank whereas the sellers most likely has access to 100 bots on the server, all of which could be gaining the guild influence. Through those 100 bots, they could make hundreds of throwaway guilds.

As for tracking, tracking mailed money would be just as easy as tracking the guild bank.

I’m sorry, but as much as I hate bots and goldsellers; removing the ability to send ingame money to others would do more harm than good to the entire community.

Take WvW for example. A lot of upgrades and schematics cost a lot of money. As a result the commanders sometimes ask for donations to help the ‘war effort’ in order to set up new upgrades or buy those siege schematics in order to storm an enemy keep.

I would be completely opposed to no sending money through mail. I’ve gotten pretty used to depositing most (not all) of my money into the bank, leaving a little left over just in case. But sometimes I unexpectedly go into WvW or a dungeon with some friends. And then my armor breaks… and I don’t have enough to repair. They’ll quickly mail me the money so I can pay them back later and then I can just keep playing. This would be a bad idea.

Hinder gold buyers/sellers?

hah … yeah right.

let me tell you something , do you actually believe anyone send gold via mail? Ofc not , people send items , items you sell on the TP , yeah even with the 15%.

Really … sending brute gold … maybe some clumsy gold seller.

I have to disagree with almost all of it. The shared bank across one character is not something that I am would enjoy. I occasionally start alts to recapture that “green” feeling. I seldom send him bags or coin, earning my way back up. It is the strife that makes it worthwhile.

-Hate

This seems like it would open the way for rampant theft in guilds then dissolving them later.