Guild Wars 2

Remove the ability to mail items/gold.

Require XX,XXX amount of influence be earned by a member of a guild before they can use the guild bank.

Result: no way for gold sellers to get gold to customers = no more spam and way less bots.

We have a trading post for item transfers. We dont “NEED” to mail items and gold.

Problem solved with way less effort than monitoring/coding/reporting etc etc etc

I am not even going to go into how terrible this idea is.

What about just removing the ability to send money, not items?

I suppose then they would just sell ectos/some other expensive item to people.

@maeglin

You must buy gold.

Don’t hold your breath.
And not because what you suggest would really hurt the game, it would help it..agreed.
it’s because the vast majority of MMO developers purposely design their games to have freely obtainable(gather, trade, loot etc..the typical methods) incentives or highly sought after items. When they do this, they create an artificial market with supply and demand. Then come the gold sellers.

Some games have avoided this pretty well … but clearly it’s obvious when development teams want gold sellers around..it’s a dirty underhanded two way business.

When they talk about gold spam prevention, you can believe it’s through lying eyes and a fake smile.

If not, then why do they design the games this way?

…. .. . ;crickets;

Promega.7628:

@maeglin

You must buy gold.

No but I send a lot of food and items to my friends. What you suggested ruins all of that.

I think it’s a bad idea.

For instance, when I’m WvWing with pickup groups and there are no major guilds around doing upgrades, I’ll basically ask for a “collection” to get a WP or wall upgrade up. Ask in team chat for anyone who wants the upgrade to go up to send me, say 10s, and at least partially subsidize my cost of putting it up… since 1.5g for a keep upgrade hurts as a solo player.

I often swap dyes & items with friends, I don’t want to put those things on the TP. Sometimes we lend each other money.

Also only officers can remove from our gbank, sooo we sort of need mail there too.

Hollywood.2407:

Don’t hold your breath.
And not because what you suggest would really hurt the game, it would help it..agreed.
it’s because the vast majority of MMO developers purposely design their games to have freely obtainable(gather, trade, loot etc..the typical methods) incentives or highly sought after items. When they do this, they create an artificial market with supply and demand. Then come the gold sellers.

Some games have avoided this pretty well … but clearly it’s obvious when development teams want gold sellers around..it’s a dirty underhanded two way business.

When they talk about gold spam prevention, you can believe it’s through lying eyes and a fake smile.

If not, then why do they design the games this way?

…. .. . ;crickets;

How do game devs design games this way? I’m curious to hear from your expertise how they utilize this two way business to their advantage.

This would cause more issues than it would prevent.

Revenant.2691:

I think it’s a bad idea.

For instance, when I’m WvWing with pickup groups and there are no major guilds around doing upgrades, I’ll basically ask for a “collection” to get a WP or wall upgrade up. Ask in team chat for anyone who wants the upgrade to go up to send me, say 10s, and at least partially subsidize my cost of putting it up… since 1.5g for a keep upgrade hurts as a solo player.

Its not a 100% complete solution bit a model from which to get started. So start a wvw collection mechanic so people can chip in for upgrades. Id rather that then a broken game due to 3rd party gold selling.

Ohh it seems my 2 copper trinket I listed for 60 gold has sold yay me /wink

Someone suggested in another thread to limit the in game mail system to just people you have on your friends list and guildies. That would work much better than not allowing gold/ items sent altogether. Plus you can always update your friends list to include new people as needed.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

Someone suggested in another thread to limit the in game mail system to just people you have on your friends list and guildies. That would work much better than not allowing gold/ items sent altogether. Plus you can always update your friends list to include new people as needed.

I can see it now: gold seller emails gold buyer, “ad character xxxx to your friends list” transactions proceed as normal.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

Someone suggested in another thread to limit the in game mail system to just people you have on your friends list and guildies. That would work much better than not allowing gold/ items sent altogether. Plus you can always update your friends list to include new people as needed.

Great idea, and would love to see this in game. I only want to see email from people on my friends list, and people in my guild.
Make it opt-out, (default is enabled when you start, you can turn it off) and you have an awesome solution. Or make it opt-in, but I see that as less useful if the overall goal is to stop gold sellers.

This solution would also be a major improvement for account security. Why would anyone hack into peoples accounts if you can’t pillage their riches?

They don’t hack into the account for your ‘riches’ that’s just a bonus.

Hollywood.2407:
Don’t hold your breath.
And not because what you suggest would really hurt the game, it would help it..agreed.
it’s because the vast majority of MMO developers purposely design their games to have freely obtainable(gather, trade, loot etc..the typical methods) incentives or highly sought after items. When they do this, they create an artificial market with supply and demand. Then come the gold sellers.
Some games have avoided this pretty well … but clearly it’s obvious when development teams want gold sellers around..it’s a dirty underhanded two way business.
When they talk about gold spam prevention, you can believe it’s through lying eyes and a fake smile.
If not, then why do they design the games this way?
…. .. . ;crickets;

No what causes this issue is people trying to cheat a system. Any player can effectively buy gold straight from Anet. I applaud the BLTC gem/gold system. Exchanging money for time is basic economics. This is handled in game, secure, safe, and without supporting any negative behavior. Attempting to circumvent this system for personal gain is the issue. Gold Buyers trying to get a better deal, and Gold Sellers trying to make money by playing a game.

Removing the in game mail system is terrible, but making it an optional white list is an excellent idea.

Negatively impacting legitimate play, which is what this would do, is not a sound solution.

- Add mail filters (why this wasn’t done at the outset, I dunno). This largely renders email an ineffective means for RMTers to reach players.
- Use various methods (a level req, for example) to “funnel” chat spam into a particular channel.
- Remove most BLTP merchants from the world and make remote BLTP access generally easier for players (and stop trying to make an indirect profit from that access… yuck).
- Remove/adjust some currency-sinks. The game has a real issue with deflation right now, which is making buying from RMT a lot more attractive.

The above steps would force RMTers to come out of the shadows to advertise, and to do so in specific places with a specific channel. This would make them much easier to spot and dispense with. The above steps would also make it easier for players to accrue and utilize their own wealth, making RMT a less attractive proposition.

As long as there’s a market, there will be RMT. It can’t be done away with entirely. However, its footprint on the game can be significantly minimized, making it all but invisible to regular players. I think this is the direction ANet has to go in.

The gem store was implemented in part to take away RMT’s thunder. It doesn’t appear to be doing that. It’s not doing that in part because it can be perceived to be a pain to use. Make it easier to use.