Guild Wars 2

pdavis.8031:

I wasn’t aware the loot tables have been changed, or modified in farming spots. I have a few that I visit occassionally and haven’t noticed anything amiss. But unless there is documentation that loot tables have been tampered with, I am going to assume that it is more a cognitive bias more than anything, and thus not really reliable.

My point with the farming spots was an example to a larger issue I see as a player:
I am tired of general player concerns taking forever to address and implement but when it has to do with ArenaNet’s bottom line, immediate action is taken. I am not ArenaNet. What I am is a paying customer that wants security holes for the players to be fixed. I am proactive in reporting bots and gold sellers and yet at any time, I could be hacked and stripped of all my wealth at any time and said hacker could send off all my wealth in no time flat. That doesn’t strike you as a flaw in their plan?

I don’t want the fix in the form of limiting how much a player can send. All that does is harm players who play the game within the rules like myself. I want a password protected bank because I am a partner with ArenaNet in being proactive about keeping my account and real money —->gems —-> gold which in turn means my gold is real money protected by a secure, long term solution in the form of a password protected bank in which I can store said real money.

You can agree with that or not. I really honestly flat out don’t care whether you do or not. I am asking for a measure of security that should have been implemented ages ago if player accounts are really of paramount importance. The proposed solution by ArenaNet goes too far by limiting honest players without going far enough to actually give honest, proactive players the security they deserve.

Commenting on farming spots that have had their loot dimished is missing the main thrust of my point. I get that you don’t agree. There are plenty of places that bots used to frequent that nobody farms like they used to because the loot just isn’t as good as it used to be. Trolls and Grawl in FS. Murellows as well. ArenaNet completely diminished the population of Skelk in Southsun as well. Sure, some of the water farms are still viable, but on the whole after hours and hours of farming at different times, the loot for the land based skelk are dropping way less and the populations aren’t what they once were….It’s partially my fault. I reported all of the bots I saw there, including bots that farmed sharks and would teleport in and out of the area with great frequency. But what message is ArenaNet sending me by being honest? The message I am getting loud and clear is, “We are going to eliminate the bots and nerf the amount of loot they drop and when said bots are no more, we won’t change the loot tables back to pre-bot levels.” Believe me or not. I don’t care. I can only go off of what my own eyes show me.

The main point is that this so-called fix has holes in it that can still be exploited. Real account security takes players and devs to accomplish. For ArenaNet to ban bots and gold sellers it takes players reporting said bots and gold sellers. The way they are setting this up isn’t a good long term solution. I know they aren’t surprised that people are taking umbrage with it. It’s flawed.

I don’t see what the connection is between loot tables, bots and account security is. They are all very different subjects that aren’t really connected.
I can kind of see a connection between bots and account security, but its weak. How many bots are hacked accounts? How many bots are legit accounts that people have automated? I’ve had a couple of conversations with people, outside of guildwars, that were considering writing bots if/when they purchased the game. Of course I tried my best to shut them down.

As far as limiting how much gold can be recieved via mail per week is a good solution. And a good long term one at that. If this makes it more difficult for gold sellers to send their “wares” it’s not going to be as profitable, or worthwhile, for them to do it. Why would I want to buy gold from a gold seller if its going to take 3 weeks for me to get my gold? (Of course anyone buying gold from a gold seller is making a terrible decision anyway, and their judgement shouldn’t be trusted in any case.)

But yes account security should be Anets and players top priority. Thats why they included mobile authentification, thats why they enourage unique passwords, and online security practices. However, Anet can only do so much if they players don’t follow their recommendations. Anet strongly suggests not using the same password for GW2 as your email. But if players are dumb enough to do just that, then they put themselves at risk. Putting in a pin or password wouldn’t really help much, cause it could very well be the exact same password as their email/game login. So those who are more security minded will appreciate that extra step, but those who aren’t/don’t care, will find it a bother and just do the bare minimum required so they don’t have to worry about it.

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

pdavis.8031:

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

I agree. Being a proactive player, I want added measures. Many people have been saying in here that “people won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good. It still needs to be implemented for people that will use it. ArenaNet can supply the tools and players can decide if they want to use them. That way, if players choose not to use them, the fault is their own for not employing said measures.

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

I agree. Being a proactive player, I want added measures. Many people have been saying in here that “people won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good. It still needs to be implemented for people that will use it. ArenaNet can supply the tools and players can decide if they want to use them. That way, if players choose not to use them, the fault is their own for not employing said measures.

So why not implement this, as well as the gold cap?
That way people can feel snug by having an extra password, and sellers will still be curtailed? Just having a password doesn’t limit gold seller activities, which is what this is supposed to do.

pdavis.8031:

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

I agree. Being a proactive player, I want added measures. Many people have been saying in here that “people won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good. It still needs to be implemented for people that will use it. ArenaNet can supply the tools and players can decide if they want to use them. That way, if players choose not to use them, the fault is their own for not employing said measures.

So why not implement this, as well as the gold cap?
That way people can feel snug by having an extra password, and sellers will still be curtailed? Just having a password doesn’t limit gold seller activities, which is what this is supposed to do.

Actually, why not give the option to password the guild banks and make that the exception to the gold limit? Players who use guild banks as personal storage can be inured against the limit while saving up for expensive purchases, and guilds don’t have to have their raffles/gifts curtailed.

Only issue I see is a guild being used by a goldseller to let people into their gold stash, instead of mailing. But even then, there can certainly be heuristics to alert the security team:
Goldseller puts advertised amount into guild bank.
Goldseller invites Payer to guild.
Payer withdraws specified amount with guild bank code.
Goldseller gkicks Payer.
Goldseller changes bank code for next customer.
Goldseller spams whispers. Repeat.

At that point, you can even use the transaction pattern to catch buyers AND sellers for equal punishment. Or the goldsellers just start selling 499g at a time. >_>

I don’t know if loot at commonly botted areas was nerfed or not. It would take many hours of research to determine. If it is true, and Anet did restore the loot table, the bots would just return. Banning a bot is just getting rid of that account, not the person/bot behind it.

As for the skelk in Southsun, I don’t recall encountering bots farming there. I was farming that area at the time it was changed, as were a few friends. Doesn’t mean they weren’t there, but I just saw none of it myself. Other common bot spots usually had at least a couple of them around at any time.

And, as I’d mentioned previously, the issue with bank PINs compared to the mailing limit is the scale of protection. A PIN is great, but it only protects the people that choose to use it properly. It does nothing to curb RMT sellers from cleaning out inactive accounts, or most accounts in general. The players that would use it properly are most likely a tiny minority.

That tiny minority is also the group that need it the least. The players that already practice good password habits, and are far less likely to lose their accounts to a thief. The careless players that are most likely to lose their accounts will continue being careless with their PIN, either not using the feature, or using a common/easily guessed PIN. Bank PINs are obviously a better, more secure option than this limit. But they just wouldn’t have a broad effect on curbing RMT sellers.

I’m a fairly security-conscious person, and I would probably not use a PIN if it was implemented. If my account were compromised, it’s almost certainly going to be through some means that will have already rendered a short PIN meaningless to the thief. Something that have given them access to my system (keylogger,etc) or having accessed/bypassed Anet’s login authentication. If they were able to somehow get my password (a long, complex, unique password; brute force should not be an option), they’re probably going to be able to get the PIN along with it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

There is still the 3 day period in which an account, newly invited to a guild, cannot take anything out or put anything in. Any gold buyer will still need to wait for the three days before he can get his gold out of the gold seller’s guild bank.

Both of my alt accounts had to wait the full 3 days even though I set them to Leader with full privileges on day one of joining the guild.

Ah, informative. Thanks.

But that helps the point along a bit. Goldsellers can’t even promise fast delivery by using guilds as a work-around, which means they’re limited to the 500g cap.

So, yeah, I’m increasingly becoming a fan of passcode secure guild banks.

Iason Evan.3806:

I don’t want the fix in the form of limiting how much a player can send.

It doesnt limit the gold you sent ….

You can send me 1.000 gold
But i can get 500 gold per week
Then an other 500 the next week

If you look closly , you have already answered the problem that are trying to solve :

That’s really interesting. Let me get this straight, someone hacks your account(you have 3000g) and they have like 10 accounts. They can send 500g to 6 of those accounts and still have 4 other accounts on which to use to hack other accounts and repeat the process and they can send as much gold out as they want? I didn’t even know that. That is really disconcerting.

By hacking 1 ACCOUNT to get the gold
> the foolish gold sellers will expose 6-10 other hacked accounts to transfer all the money and split among them

Rather than using 1v1 ( 1 account hack vs 1 gold seller account) trassing + banning , they will do the job more easily and faster .

Otherwise in ‘’normal 1v1 sutioation’’ the hacker will earn less money

Risk vs Reward …

Rauderi.8706:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

There is still the 3 day period in which an account, newly invited to a guild, cannot take anything out or put anything in. Any gold buyer will still need to wait for the three days before he can get his gold out of the gold seller’s guild bank.

Both of my alt accounts had to wait the full 3 days even though I set them to Leader with full privileges on day one of joining the guild.

Ah, informative. Thanks.

But that helps the point along a bit. Goldsellers can’t even promise fast delivery by using guilds as a work-around, which means they’re limited to the 500g cap.

So, yeah, I’m increasingly becoming a fan of passcode secure guild banks.

I deleted that post because it occurred to me the reason was those accounts were only a few minutes old, so I went into game on my main account and left one of my 2 storage guilds then reinvited with an alt account. My main now is locked out of that storage account even though it is a leader again and there is a message that says, “You must be in this guild for 3 days before gaining access to the guild bank.”

And that was some annoying logging in and out for that because I couldn’t find it in wiki. Lol

And I would love the option for the guild bank to have a passcode to access. I store a lot of valuables in mine even though I know it’s not secure.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Iason Evan.3806:

I don’t want the fix in the form of limiting how much a player can send.

It doesnt limit the gold you sent ….

You can send me 1.000 gold
But i can get 500 gold per week
Then an other 500 the next week

If you look closly , you have already answered the problem that are trying to solve :

That’s really interesting. Let me get this straight, someone hacks your account(you have 3000g) and they have like 10 accounts. They can send 500g to 6 of those accounts and still have 4 other accounts on which to use to hack other accounts and repeat the process and they can send as much gold out as they want? I didn’t even know that. That is really disconcerting.

By hacking 1 ACCOUNT to get the gold
> the foolish gold sellers will expose 6-10 other hacked accounts to transfer all the money and split among them

Rather than using 1v1 ( 1 account hack vs 1 gold seller account) trassing + banning , they will do the job more easily and faster .

Otherwise in ‘’normal 1v1 sutioation’’ the hacker will earn less money

Risk vs Reward …

i realize it doesn’t limit amount sent. I am saying that I don’t want to see legitimate players hurt if they decide to put limits on how much can be sent. If it is so easy to see which accounts are sending gold out to numerous accounts, and the numbers are as small as arenanet says they are, then why not do all of this by hand?

Gaile:
How much of a percentage of gold seller activity reduction do you anticipate with this change?
Based on the data you have available, will this also have an effect on the number of accounts being hacked?

Thanks!

pdavis.8031:

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

I agree. Being a proactive player, I want added measures. Many people have been saying in here that “people won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good. It still needs to be implemented for people that will use it. ArenaNet can supply the tools and players can decide if they want to use them. That way, if players choose not to use them, the fault is their own for not employing said measures.

So why not implement this, as well as the gold cap?
That way people can feel snug by having an extra password, and sellers will still be curtailed? Just having a password doesn’t limit gold seller activities, which is what this is supposed to do.

Sure, I would concede that if a few things happened.

1.) If someone is on your friends list for more than a month you should be able to trade freely with them. If my brother wants a few hundred gold, I should be able to send him that amount as many times as I wish.

2.) Optional Password protected Banks with ability to store gold in them. The password would have to be different than the account password.

3.) Password protected guild banks with more administration options for guild leaders. Heck, guild administration options have been terrible. The “Represent Button” which a player has to press every time they want to get in their personal guild bank guild is right next to the “Leave Guild” button. It’s awful design.

I can’t think of any more off the top of my head at the moment. If that stuff was implemented, it would show me that my interests were being looked out for as well as ArenaNets.

Iason Evan.3806:

and the numbers are as small as arenanet says they are, then why not do all of this by hand?

Hacked Accounts
Check the ppl that have been reported for using hacks in WvWvW if they are true
Check for ppl that are verbally harashing other players in PvE+PvP and punish them
If the reports for ’’bot’’ is true

I dont have a clue about anything else

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

I agree. Being a proactive player, I want added measures. Many people have been saying in here that “people won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good. It still needs to be implemented for people that will use it. ArenaNet can supply the tools and players can decide if they want to use them. That way, if players choose not to use them, the fault is their own for not employing said measures.

So why not implement this, as well as the gold cap?
That way people can feel snug by having an extra password, and sellers will still be curtailed? Just having a password doesn’t limit gold seller activities, which is what this is supposed to do.

Sure, I would concede that if a few things happened.

1.) If someone is on your friends list for more than a month you should be able to trade freely with them. If my brother wants a few hundred gold, I should be able to send him that amount as many times as I wish.

2.) Optional Password protected Banks with ability to store gold in them. The password would have to be different than the account password.

3.) Password protected guild banks with more administration options for guild leaders. Heck, guild administration options have been terrible. The “Represent Button” which a player has to press every time they want to get in their personal guild bank guild is right next to the “Leave Guild” button. It’s awful design.

I can’t think of any more off the top of my head at the moment. If that stuff was implemented, it would show me that my interests were being looked out for as well as ArenaNets.

Just on point 1.).
You already can send him as much gold as you want. There is no limit on how much gold you can send. The only restriction for sending gold is limited to 500g per mail. You can still send multiple mails.

pdavis.8031:

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

Iason Evan.3806:

pdavis.8031:

You can set up 15 different layers of passwords, but if players don’t practice best online security practices, then it’s not going to make it more difficult to hack. It will just take a bit longer.

I agree. Being a proactive player, I want added measures. Many people have been saying in here that “people won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good. It still needs to be implemented for people that will use it. ArenaNet can supply the tools and players can decide if they want to use them. That way, if players choose not to use them, the fault is their own for not employing said measures.

So why not implement this, as well as the gold cap?
That way people can feel snug by having an extra password, and sellers will still be curtailed? Just having a password doesn’t limit gold seller activities, which is what this is supposed to do.

Sure, I would concede that if a few things happened.

1.) If someone is on your friends list for more than a month you should be able to trade freely with them. If my brother wants a few hundred gold, I should be able to send him that amount as many times as I wish.

2.) Optional Password protected Banks with ability to store gold in them. The password would have to be different than the account password.

3.) Password protected guild banks with more administration options for guild leaders. Heck, guild administration options have been terrible. The “Represent Button” which a player has to press every time they want to get in their personal guild bank guild is right next to the “Leave Guild” button. It’s awful design.

I can’t think of any more off the top of my head at the moment. If that stuff was implemented, it would show me that my interests were being looked out for as well as ArenaNets.

Just on point 1.).
You already can send him as much gold as you want. There is no limit on how much gold you can send. The only restriction for sending gold is limited to 500g per mail. You can still send multiple mails.

my bad. i thought you were saying they should limit how much you could send with your gold cap statement. i misunderstood.

Iason Evan.3806:

my bad. i thought you were saying they should limit how much you could send with your gold cap statement. i misunderstood.

It’s ok, nobodys perfect. And I’m nobody so…..
Just don’t let it happen again!! :P

pdavis.8031:

Iason Evan.3806:

my bad. i thought you were saying they should limit how much you could send with your gold cap statement. i misunderstood.

It’s ok, nobodys perfect. And I’m nobody so…..
Just don’t let it happen again!! :P

Is this where we say “this is too confusing” and either:

1. Integrate it into the NPE or
2. Revamp it so it’s less confounding?

A low cap on people not on your friends list for a certain amount of time would probably be the strongest game-wide protection. Just a couple weeks would allow time to catch an active account being stolen and lock it down, but not cause too much delay for contests/giveaways.

The remaining issue would be buying items on the TP, and sending those instead. I don’t know how many people would be effected by having the same limit applied to sending items. It’s been a very long time since I’ve sent anything to someone that wasn’t on my friends list, so I don’t think it would effect me much at all.

These methods don’t actually prevent any legitimate activity, but they do inconvenience them. It’s extremely difficult to increase security without creating some sort of inconvenience for at least some people. In my opinion, when it comes to security measures that benefit the game and community as a whole, people need to just learn to deal with a minor inconvenience. It’s not like many real life security issues, where there are concerns such as privacy. It’s only a temporary inconvenience.

mrstealth.6701:

A low cap on people not on your friends list for a certain amount of time would probably be the strongest game-wide protection. Just a couple weeks would allow time to catch an active account being stolen and lock it down, but not cause too much delay for contests/giveaways.

The remaining issue would be buying items on the TP, and sending those instead. I don’t know how many people would be effected by having the same limit applied to sending items. It’s been a very long time since I’ve sent anything to someone that wasn’t on my friends list, so I don’t think it would effect me much at all.

These methods don’t actually prevent any legitimate activity, but they do inconvenience them. It’s extremely difficult to increase security without creating some sort of inconvenience for at least some people. In my opinion, when it comes to security measures that benefit the game and community as a whole, people need to just learn to deal with a minor inconvenience. It’s not like many real life security issues, where there are concerns such as privacy. It’s only a temporary inconvenience.

This right here.
Devs, can you please take a look at this suggestion and make it fit the security paradigm you need to stall goldsellers?

Rauderi.8706:

mrstealth.6701:

A low cap on people not on your friends list for a certain amount of time would probably be the strongest game-wide protection. Just a couple weeks would allow time to catch an active account being stolen and lock it down, but not cause too much delay for contests/giveaways.

The remaining issue would be buying items on the TP, and sending those instead. I don’t know how many people would be effected by having the same limit applied to sending items. It’s been a very long time since I’ve sent anything to someone that wasn’t on my friends list, so I don’t think it would effect me much at all.

These methods don’t actually prevent any legitimate activity, but they do inconvenience them. It’s extremely difficult to increase security without creating some sort of inconvenience for at least some people. In my opinion, when it comes to security measures that benefit the game and community as a whole, people need to just learn to deal with a minor inconvenience. It’s not like many real life security issues, where there are concerns such as privacy. It’s only a temporary inconvenience.

This right here.
Devs, can you please take a look at this suggestion and make it fit the security paradigm you need to stall goldsellers?

I’m going to put my cynical hat back on and postulate that while squeezing the RMT crowd was certainly one of the benefits of this policy, the implementation makes me believe it is not the only and possibly not even the primary reason for this change.

One factor in RMT is certainly the inverse relationship between account familiarity and account generosity. We may lend our guild mate, cousin or our good friend a large sum of gold but in most cases, that in game relationship will be established and on going.

I suspect it would be quite simple to gate transfers according to relationships based on a 10/30/90/180 day tier.

Also keep in mind that the purpose of gem store promotions is to drive the sale of new gems. A spike in gem store demand does three things:

1. It encourages new gem sales
2. It makes it less economical to convert gold to gems
3. It makes it more economical to convert gems to gold (which encourages gem sales)

I suspect that a significant number of people borrowed gold from friends to buy the black wings. This does a few things:

1. It most obviously reduces the motivation to buy new gems (which is why we get regular content and sales)
2. It severely distorts the gem to gold ratio (which is good for some players, bad for others, but overall, I think wild swings are not ideal)

By gating the ability of players to lend out money during gem store events, players who lack gems or significant gold reserves now also lack the ability to borrow gold in any significant quantity and will now have a much stronger incentive to buy gems with cash.

That’s a good thing overall for the long term health of the game, but it’s much harder to message that than it is to say “look! more security – for you!”.

Another idea if we needed more security on top of it would be something like Rift has with the coin lock system.

Here’s the info on that in case you don’t know what that is.
https://support.trionworlds.com/hc/en-us/articles/204435667-RIFT-Coin-Lock-Overview

It would still mean that you need to keep your personal email account safe so if you’re hacked they don’t have access to that. But it might help.

Overall though I like the changes that we’re getting and think it’s a good first step to getting rid of many of the gold sellers.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Rauderi.8706:

mrstealth.6701:

A low cap on people not on your friends list for a certain amount of time would probably be the strongest game-wide protection. Just a couple weeks would allow time to catch an active account being stolen and lock it down, but not cause too much delay for contests/giveaways.

The remaining issue would be buying items on the TP, and sending those instead. I don’t know how many people would be effected by having the same limit applied to sending items. It’s been a very long time since I’ve sent anything to someone that wasn’t on my friends list, so I don’t think it would effect me much at all.

These methods don’t actually prevent any legitimate activity, but they do inconvenience them. It’s extremely difficult to increase security without creating some sort of inconvenience for at least some people. In my opinion, when it comes to security measures that benefit the game and community as a whole, people need to just learn to deal with a minor inconvenience. It’s not like many real life security issues, where there are concerns such as privacy. It’s only a temporary inconvenience.

This right here.
Devs, can you please take a look at this suggestion and make it fit the security paradigm you need to stall goldsellers?

I’m going to put my cynical hat back on and postulate that while squeezing the RMT crowd was certainly one of the benefits of this policy, the implementation makes me believe it is not the only and possibly not even the primary reason for this change.

One factor in RMT is certainly the inverse relationship between account familiarity and account generosity. We may lend our guild mate, cousin or our good friend a large sum of gold but in most cases, that in game relationship will be established and on going.

I suspect it would be quite simple to gate transfers according to relationships based on a 10/30/90/180 day tier.

Also keep in mind that the purpose of gem store promotions is to drive the sale of new gems. A spike in gem store demand does three things:

1. It encourages new gem sales
2. It makes it less economical to convert gold to gems
3. It makes it more economical to convert gems to gold (which encourages gem sales)

I suspect that a significant number of people borrowed gold from friends to buy the black wings. This does a few things:

1. It most obviously reduces the motivation to buy new gems (which is why we get regular content and sales)
2. It severely distorts the gem to gold ratio (which is good for some players, bad for others, but overall, I think wild swings are not ideal)

By gating the ability of players to lend out money during gem store events, players who lack gems or significant gold reserves now also lack the ability to borrow gold in any significant quantity and will now have a much stronger incentive to buy gems with cash.

That’s a good thing overall for the long term health of the game, but it’s much harder to message that than it is to say “look! more security – for you!”.

What the heck does this have to do with gems or the gem shop? That part of your post seems totally out of place in this discussion.

This change only affects the amount of gold you can withdraw from Guild banks and pull from your mail. Someone can still send you 2000 gold, it’s just you can only pull 500 gold a week from that mail.

Behellagh.1468:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Rauderi.8706:

mrstealth.6701:

A low cap on people not on your friends list for a certain amount of time would probably be the strongest game-wide protection. Just a couple weeks would allow time to catch an active account being stolen and lock it down, but not cause too much delay for contests/giveaways.

The remaining issue would be buying items on the TP, and sending those instead. I don’t know how many people would be effected by having the same limit applied to sending items. It’s been a very long time since I’ve sent anything to someone that wasn’t on my friends list, so I don’t think it would effect me much at all.

These methods don’t actually prevent any legitimate activity, but they do inconvenience them. It’s extremely difficult to increase security without creating some sort of inconvenience for at least some people. In my opinion, when it comes to security measures that benefit the game and community as a whole, people need to just learn to deal with a minor inconvenience. It’s not like many real life security issues, where there are concerns such as privacy. It’s only a temporary inconvenience.

This right here.
Devs, can you please take a look at this suggestion and make it fit the security paradigm you need to stall goldsellers?

I’m going to put my cynical hat back on and postulate that while squeezing the RMT crowd was certainly one of the benefits of this policy, the implementation makes me believe it is not the only and possibly not even the primary reason for this change.

One factor in RMT is certainly the inverse relationship between account familiarity and account generosity. We may lend our guild mate, cousin or our good friend a large sum of gold but in most cases, that in game relationship will be established and on going.

I suspect it would be quite simple to gate transfers according to relationships based on a 10/30/90/180 day tier.

Also keep in mind that the purpose of gem store promotions is to drive the sale of new gems. A spike in gem store demand does three things:

1. It encourages new gem sales
2. It makes it less economical to convert gold to gems
3. It makes it more economical to convert gems to gold (which encourages gem sales)

I suspect that a significant number of people borrowed gold from friends to buy the black wings. This does a few things:

1. It most obviously reduces the motivation to buy new gems (which is why we get regular content and sales)
2. It severely distorts the gem to gold ratio (which is good for some players, bad for others, but overall, I think wild swings are not ideal)

By gating the ability of players to lend out money during gem store events, players who lack gems or significant gold reserves now also lack the ability to borrow gold in any significant quantity and will now have a much stronger incentive to buy gems with cash.

That’s a good thing overall for the long term health of the game, but it’s much harder to message that than it is to say “look! more security – for you!”.

What the heck does this have to do with gems or the gem shop? That part of your post seems totally out of place in this discussion.

This change only affects the amount of gold you can withdraw from Guild banks and pull from your mail. Someone can still send you 2000 gold, it’s just you can only pull 500 gold a week from that mail.

After looking at the exchange rate, 500g should be enough to buy just about any cosmetic item in the gem store – even if the exchange rate doubled.

I concede that my theory not valid.

I’d like to kick this thread off by saying this is by far the most inconvenient system I’ve seen come into play by ArenaNet. I haven’t even finished the first week with this change in place without running into gold cap from my members. I run 2 lotteries (weekly and legendary), I get donations, I get premium fees, I get funding for seasonal giveaways… I am the 1% crippled by this new process.

I don’t know how this is going to stop anyone, but now it’s going to force me to rewrite my systems to use items as currencies instead (which introduces issues like 15% TP taxes for resale, fluctuating prices, etc).

ANet, you had time to think about how this was going to affect the “1%” before integrating this into your routines. its been over 2.5 years and all of a sudden you integrate this system without having a plan for exceptions?

http://i.imgur.com/XBDX7mL.jpg

They need to get rid if this nonsense or have a validation process to bypass this silly change.

Once again they put a change in for the greater good but lack downstream vision on its impact on its legitimate user base.

Is the inconvenience of 1% more valuable than the security of 100%?

And it won’t really work with exceptions either, because then the whole system can just be bypassed by becoming one of those exceptions.

they know very well that it will impact 1%. If it impacted noone it wouldn’t matter to gold sellers either. Yes, you have to re-think your system. But it’s quite pointless complaining about it.

For example why instead of sending gold directly to you can’t your guildies add it to the guild bank as that one runs off a separate withdraw for 500 gold?

And ANet’s top priority should be 1% of the users.. why? Obviously they did this for a good reason, or they wouldn’t have done it. If your crazy lottery is inhibited by it, that’s a shame, but anybody throwing their money away on the pretense of a lottery should expect they’re being scammed anyway. This change does not affect normal operation of the game at all, so I fail to see why it’s any of ArenaNet’s concern.

Fear not! soon the forums moral arbitrators will come and teach you a lesson to be patient and understanding as part of the 1%. They will help you learn to stop complaining and embrace that as the rich you must face annoyances. They will also probably make generalizations about you as if theyre bringing real world biases into a game

Im not really affected by the system but i think its stupid. 500g cap is very low, i dont know why anyone would risk paying a gold seller to get just 500g. Also i dont think there are that many gold sellers in the game…I havent seen anyone who used their services and i dont think anyone would. Its easy getting gold in the game so its kind of pointless. From my anecdotal experience i would say there are probably less gold sellers than there are people who have over 3 thousand gold saved up.

Guess what im saying is you can either spend the time to hurt the gold sellers (even though there may be other ways of doing this and the cap should be increased) or you can accept gold sellers and make the system easier on the real players. I prefer the latter, unless i saw evidence of a large amount of gold selling and a real reason to curb it.

Andred.1087:

And ANet’s top priority should be 1% of the users.. why? Obviously they did this for a good reason, or they wouldn’t have done it. If your crazy lottery is inhibited by it, that’s a shame, but anybody throwing their money away on the pretense of a lottery should expect they’re being scammed anyway. This change does not affect normal operation of the game at all, so I fail to see why it’s any of ArenaNet’s concern.

It’s easy to defend the opposing side of an argument when you are not affected by it whatsoever :P

Change your lottery to 1 ecto per ticket. It’s a silly, silly cap that perhaps yes, doesn’t affect the majority, but for something as innocuous as running a fun activity like a lottery, there should be some sort of way to bypass the arbitrary cap using a validation system. Until then, trade in items that have a relatively stable value. I only mention ectos because that’s how we got around it in GW1. I’d rather see the ecto market crash or inflate to crazy levels just to point out the absurdity of the cap than to do away with legitimate game activities altogether.

AfterXII.2761:

It’s easy to defend the opposing side of an argument when you are not affected by it whatsoever :P

in real life banks also have withdraw limits. I’m sure that it affects someone, but we put up with it for better security.

Anet stated in their post about this change that they knew ahead of time there were a small number of users who were going to be affected.

Let that one sink in folks, it’s how Anet operates. No matter what the situation, if they feel something should be changed, there is a threshold of some sort of “acceptable loss” when it comes to popularity.

We’re just numbers to them. :/

Mirta.5029:

AfterXII.2761:

It’s easy to defend the opposing side of an argument when you are not affected by it whatsoever :P

In real life banks also have withdraw limits. I’m sure that it affects someone, but we put up with it for better security.

This is irrelevant since the withdrawal limits in real life are in place for different reasons. IE. for cash reserves, limited atm funding, asset protection.

None of this is relevant to Guild Wars 2 since ANet did not put this system in place for these reasons.

But do you know why this is ridiculous ? Becoz the person who need security even don’t have 500g to take this “advantage”. ( And I believe it’s like 80% of population )

I believe the people who have more than 500g always take precaution. Like IRL rich people will have their own system of security to protect their money.

Also why you guys assume the hacker will always take gold? Now with this system they can buy anything from TP ( for ex : T6 mats that have stability prices ) and then send mail to their main account . It’s only lose 15% of original value.

If it’s about buying/selling gold? Smart people will send 500g from multiple account.

PS : You guys don’t have a guild to maintenance so you don’t know what AfterXII talking about.

The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few… Live long and prosper.

Remember to buy Heart of Thorns and get your friends to buy Heart of Thorns if this is how you and them would like ANet to continue to treat you.

lordkrall.7241:

Is the inconvenience of 1% more valuable than the security of 100%?

You are implying that 100% of players are significantly at-risk for having massive amounts of gold moved off their account, which is an absurd claim that, if true, would indicate much more severe security issues than a gold transfer cap would address.

Neural.1824:

Anet stated in their post about this change that they knew ahead of time there were a small number of users who were going to be affected.

Let that one sink in folks, it’s how Anet operates. No matter what the situation, if they feel something should be changed, there is a threshold of some sort of “acceptable loss” when it comes to popularity.

We’re just numbers to them. :/

There is always a threshold for “acceptable loss”, that just makes sense. You’re never going to please everyone.

The argument is sound, I’d argue though that the numbers are incorrect. Anet has claimed that it will only affect the 1% (or in the single digits). But this only takes into consideration the person on the receiving end.

In the OPs case, ANet has only counted the OP as a negatively affected party. In reality, it is the OP’s entire guild that is negatively affected. Any guild that holds lotteries, their entire guild population should be taken into account as this is an activity that cannot be reasonably accomplished and is thus affecting them.

This new gold system is basically Anet saying, “Hey we don’t care if you buy 499 gold. Just don’t buy more than that in one week.” They will never admit to it but are basically cutting their loses in an unwinnable war against gold sellers. If gems → gold were around the price of what pvpbank offered, we wouldn’t be in this position.

Gem price history: https://www.gw2tp.com/gems
Black Market price history: https://www.gw2tp.com/blackmarket

As someone else already suggested, be creative to find ways around it. Ask for ectos (or some other item that holds value to all players) instead of gold for buying tickets for your thing. Do the same thing for similar situations.

It may only prevent 1% of the users from accepting money, but it affects both, the sender and the receiver. In the case of a lage-scale lottery quite a lot of people are affected by the fact that the lottery no longer works, so the actual number of affected players is way over 1%.

Also the system doesn’t prevent anyone from removing gold from a hacked account. They’d simply send multiple mails, since the amount sent is not limited per week. This system doesn’t make the 5%(fictional number) of players that have over 500g any safer from having all their gold stolen at once. It only prevents the hacker from sending all the gold to a single account. Please read the announcement again if this point isn’t clear yet.

It only annoys the gold-buyers since they can no longer receive more than 500g at once. Since goldseller-sites also sell precursors and legendaries (and basically everything else you’d need more than 500g for) this doesn’t pose a big problem for the goldsellers.

Its bad enough players cant trade among themselves, I havent heard of any other big MMORPG do this to its players, not even GW1.
Secondly, lots of players, such as friends and guilds, do trade among themselves, whether it be exotic weapon skins like mjolnir, bulk crafting material trading, holding items, loans, permanent kits, and precursors.

And now a 500g/week limit? How are we supposed to trade among ourselves?

Lets face it, Arenanet imposes non-player trading on us so they can use the 15% TP tax as a blunt instrument to counter inflation, due to artificially pumping so much gold by in game gem conversions. And now, they are pursuing a tiny minority of players by affecting the vast majority of innocent players. Just because ‘most’ transactions are under 500g per week, doesnt mean we should be banned from doing more.

I propose the following solution: raise the cap to 1k gold/week by having a minimum of 1,000 achievement points, or some other mechanic to raise the gold cap.

How about this for a better implementation? You can continue limiting gold received in the mail, but gold in the guild bank is a guild effort, and you would reasonably expect the leader to use it to fund guild activities (like a lottery). The amount of gold you can withdraw from a guild bank is a gradient:

500g
+ did the guild complete bounty this week? 100g
+ did the guild complete puzzle this week? 100g
+ did the guild complete challenge this week? 100g
+ number of active members this week * 1g each

if gold threshold > 850g, gold transfer threshold is unrestricted for the week.

This implies that a gold seller would need to maintain an active guild that has it’s members actively participating in in-game guild activities.

Having a hard limit like we have now, just encourages the gold sellers to trade in things like ectos.

Its lazy policing so they can make that little bit more money from in game gem conversions. Sorry, but they dont give a rats about you, and they arent going to change what they are doing.
They wont get rid of the 15% fees either, since they use their TP as a blunt instrument to counter inflation, from all the artificial gold they pump in via gem conversions.

AfterXII.2761:

I’d like to kick this thread off by saying this is by far the most inconvenient system I’ve seen come into play by ArenaNet. I haven’t even finished the first week with this change in place without running into gold cap from my members. I run 2 lotteries (weekly and legendary), I get donations, I get premium fees, I get funding for seasonal giveaways… I am the 1% crippled by this new process.

I don’t know how this is going to stop anyone, but now it’s going to force me to rewrite my systems to use items as currencies instead (which introduces issues like 15% TP taxes for resale, fluctuating prices, etc).

ANet, you had time to think about how this was going to affect the “1%” before integrating this into your routines. its been over 2.5 years and all of a sudden you integrate this system without having a plan for exceptions?

http://i.imgur.com/XBDX7mL.jpg

I fully agree with OP that this system creates artificial barriers on some of the most common activities undertaken by larger guilds, namely raffles and giveaways. Was gold selling really such a large problem that anet will allow such an inconvenience to affect thousands of its’ players? Or would it maybe be easier to detect suspicious gold transactions between players, without setting a limit on accounts that have been active for over two and a half years. Oh but that would require an actual live person to go over these transactions, silly me

They need to do something. Maybe even using the /age counter that has been in the game from day 1. Maybe use AP as the measuring stick. Anything other than the current catch-all system.

perhaps john smith wanted to push that 1% of transactions through the trading post to help shrink the gold supply, in addition to monkey wrenching gold sellers.

SicilianDragon.3071:

And now, they are pursuing a tiny minority of players by affecting the vast majority of innocent players. Just because ‘most’ transactions are under 500g per week, doesnt mean we should be banned from doing more.

They aren’t affecting the vast majority of players. Most players don’t send over 500g to other players in a week. They are affecting a limited minority, and chances are more often than that, when more than 500g is sent, it’s a hacker or goldseller.

I’ve been playing since Beta, and I’ve only ever had someone send me that much money once (and infact, I returned it, because I couldn’t accept such a huge amount of charity from a guildie, it would have made me feel bad).

However, my account was hacked once and I lost everything I had until an account restore. Thing is, I noticed as soon as it was happening, but due to response times from support I didn’t get to address it soon enough, and by the time they did everything I had was gone and I had to have an account restore.

Point in case, if this precaution had been in play then, I may not have had to use that once per-lifetime account restore, and may have been in a recoverable position still by the time ANet got back to me…so this change actually benefits the security of the majority of players, and it does only affect an innocent minority negatively.

I’m open to alternative solutions and limits, but honestly I can’t think of anything that would work aswell. As others mentiioned in other threads, real banks do this sort of thing too. And they’ve been around for centuries. If there was a better way, wouldn’t they have found it by now?

atsuru.6017:

How about this for a better implementation? You can continue limiting gold received in the mail, but gold in the guild bank is a guild effort, and you would reasonably expect the leader to use it to fund guild activities (like a lottery). The amount of gold you can withdraw from a guild bank is a gradient:

500g
+ did the guild complete bounty this week? 100g
+ did the guild complete puzzle this week? 100g
+ did the guild complete challenge this week? 100g
+ number of active members this week * 1g each

if gold threshold > 850g, gold transfer threshold is unrestricted for the week.

This implies that a gold seller would need to maintain an active guild that has it’s members actively participating in in-game guild activities.

Having a hard limit like we have now, just encourages the gold sellers to trade in things like ectos.

I like this idea and I think you’re definitely on the right track in asking for a better verification process. However, this does raise some issues… The seemingly most obvious issue is that many players that actively play the game may not care about guild missions. In particular this would include players that no longer need the commendations (though one could argue that it’s easy money), but also PvP focused players may opt out from missions.

But again a better verification process to identify an active player would be ideal.

So for those that have hit the limit already, how many of you did so on purpose so you’d have reason to complain?