Guild Wars 2

(RMT = Real Money Traders.)

So I like to think about solutions to problems of videogames and every single MMO has the same problem: RMTs (also called Gold Sellers). They sell gold (or whatever currency the game has) to the players in exchange of real money.

Logically, it seems impossible to stop them. As soon as the game has a tradable currency, gold sellers are there, selling gold to players, and polluting the game with hacking, botting and economy manipulation.

Well, I have been thinking a lot about this, and I think that I have figured out how a game could avoid all these problems without removing its currency ;

1. Disabling all direct trade between players (disabling mails to other players in GW2), that’s a logical step.

2. Here comes the real idea ; instead of letting player choose prices on Auction House (Trading Post in GW2), the game would decide prices for them. And prices would never change.

ex: You loot an item X (mini, mount, skin, whatever you want). You decide to sell that item on the Auction House. 500 gold. You didn’t decide ; the game tells you that this item worth 500 gold, so you can only sell it for that price.

As consequences,
- Gold Sellers cannot sell gold -> No spam.
- They have then no interest in farming gold -> No bots, no economy manipulation.
- They have then no interest in hacking people neither -> No hacks.
- Gold has still a value and allows you to buy good things. Even if you must get it yourself.

But also,
- You can’t give gold or items to your friends.
- You can’t decide your prices or make benefits via trading technics.

Also, if players are not happy with a constant price, you can also make the price change in function of supply/demand (like mats merchants in GW1). That way traders could still make some benefits.

Honestly, I don’t think at all that this can be implemented in GW2. ArenaNet chose to “fight RMTs” by selling gold, well RMTs are still there, as well as bots, hackers, market manipulation… It’s kinda “too late”.

If ever YOU want to make a MMO,
/makethis

disabling trade system in any MMO would kill the MMO regardless of gold sellers or not. we got used to trading in games and we take the botters and gold sellers for granted and hope the devs find a way to minimize it, what else.

Don’t be silly, punishing legit players to get a few that are breaking the rules is a bad idea.

Anet are doing a great job combatting the game-breaking aspects of rmt.

Read again, I didn’t say that I wanted to see this in GW2. The game is simply not made for it. ArenaNet would have to stop selling gold (since their “best excuse” to sell gold was about killing RMTs).

But a game thought at the very beginning to work with this, could be a very good game.

mcwurth.2081:

disabling trade system in any MMO would kill the MMO regardless of gold sellers or not. we got used to trading in games and we take the botters and gold sellers for granted and hope the devs find a way to minimize it, what else.

Runescape found that out the hard way when they ruined the wilderness and put a trade cap in the game. Bad example I know, but you’re right: it’s a bad idea to punish innocent players for what a small minority of idiots do.

there is one thing missing out of Gw3 and its the “competition factor” between players.

dont kill all thats left of it.
already so many players quit the game because there is no feeling of reward. (ex: wvwvw all you want, you still wont get reknown, pve all you want the only bragging right you have is your fractal level.)
some, a lot, of players need that competitive side to keep pushing/playing, and right now its not there.

Acewings.6872:

mcwurth.2081:

disabling trade system in any MMO would kill the MMO regardless of gold sellers or not. we got used to trading in games and we take the botters and gold sellers for granted and hope the devs find a way to minimize it, what else.

Runescape found that out the hard way when they ruined the wilderness and put a trade cap in the game. Bad example I know, but you’re right: it’s a bad idea to punish innocent players for what a small minority of idiots do.

RuneScape actually didn’t suffer that much. The game got a hit in player base at first but continued to exist quite fine. It actually showed it’s possible to have such harsh restrictions in a MMO.

Ugh… no. To try and eliminate gold selling you would remove the chance for people to help out friends or newbies by giving them stuff, and institute a locked-down command economy. Unfortunately, thanks to a little thing called the 20th century which some of us actually lived through (the latter part of), we have some pretty good evidence out there that command economies don’t work very well for the people living in them. Stuff that the ‘official’ price is set too low for (compared to what the freee market would result in) will sell out rapidly, creating shortages… ever seen those pictures of queues for bread in Moscow? Stuff that the official price is too high for just won’t sell as nobody wants to pay that price. And stuff that has the ‘official’ price set just right… well, I suppose that’ll happen occasionally, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

However, this still won’t actually eliminate RMT – if they can’t sell gold, they’ll sell power-levelling services. How are you goung to stop that – by banning players from grouping or cooperating in any way?

Ugh you know Anet is a RMT company right? The only legit one in this game because they say so right?

Tremayne.6734:

Stuff that the official price is too high for just won’t sell as nobody wants to pay that price. And stuff that has the ‘official’ price set just right… well, I suppose that’ll happen occasionally, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

So the price right now are right? 400 gold for a precursor? 3 copper for some crafting mats?

Actually I think those things would adapt with a constant price ; no gold sellers, no reason to make gold sinks and drop rate nerfing… a precursor would be set at something like 30-50 gold… Well the economy wouldn’t suffer that much and the advantages are great.

Giving stuff and money to friends – is it fair? I mean, for other players? With my system everyone would have to earn things themselves, and, that’s not so bad.

And power leveling, ha, useless in GW2, the progression is so fast and fun.

But again, this system would require a lot of efforts from devs because it would require GW2 to adapt a lot to it. Not possible there. A suggestion for future MMOs…

Keiran.1896:

(RMT = Real Money Traders.)

So I like to think about solutions to problems of videogames and every single MMO has the same problem: RMTs (also called Gold Sellers). They sell gold (or whatever currency the game has) to the players in exchange of real money.

Logically, it seems impossible to stop them. As soon as the game has a tradable currency, gold sellers are there, selling gold to players, and polluting the game with hacking, botting and economy manipulation.

Well, I have been thinking a lot about this, and I think that I have figured out how a game could avoid all these problems without removing its currency ;

1. Disabling all direct trade between players (disabling mails to other players in GW2), that’s a logical step.

2. Here comes the real idea ; instead of letting player choose prices on Auction House (Trading Post in GW2), the game would decide prices for them. And prices would never change.

ex: You loot an item X (mini, mount, skin, whatever you want). You decide to sell that item on the Auction House. 500 gold. You didn’t decide ; the game tells you that this item worth 500 gold, so you can only sell it for that price.

As consequences,
- Gold Sellers cannot sell gold -> No spam.
- They have then no interest in farming gold -> No bots, no economy manipulation.
- They have then no interest in hacking people neither -> No hacks.
- Gold has still a value and allows you to buy good things. Even if you must get it yourself.

But also,
- You can’t give gold or items to your friends.
- You can’t decide your prices or make benefits via trading technics.

Also, if players are not happy with a constant price, you can also make the price change in function of supply/demand (like mats merchants in GW1). That way traders could still make some benefits.

Honestly, I don’t think at all that this can be implemented in GW2. ArenaNet chose to “fight RMTs” by selling gold, well RMTs are still there, as well as bots, hackers, market manipulation… It’s kinda “too late”.

If ever YOU want to make a MMO,
/makethis

I like the fixed prices in the TP thing, or at the very least a Cap because even some of the players are abusing the system by making armor etc too expensive which changes the pricing on everything down the line.

But one major thing that would completely change this system would be:

- have many things cost only karma.

I know revolutionary Idea but it would work.

See they have entirely too many things cost gold in this game. I know their focus was to bring the players to the conversion of gems to gold in the store but when too many things cost gold in the game it brings the greedy bots/gold farmers en masse and becomes an endless battle. They could easily get rid of the bots which would remove the need for DR by this one change alone.

Runes of holding, racial armor, adding a karma vendor for T6 mats all would destroy the market for gold farmers in a single swoop meanwhile keeping some of the basics for the store like bank tabs and character slots and the enhancements.

some of the players are abusing the system by making armor etc too expensive which changes the pricing on everything down the line.

Er, if someone is buying these armors keeping the armor at the higher price, then it is precisely not too expensive. Supply/Demand

Having fixed TP prices would destroy the economy and ruin a lot of good things about the game. Doing step 1 without having fixed TP prices would be pointless.

The only feasible solution to this debacle is to NOT have any input from real world currency. Stop having the ability to buy gems for real world money – this is a game for kitten sake!

Furthermore, exchange rate should be standardised and items bought for gems static. The TP is manipulated by both ends (players and ANet) and it’s like a seesaw that is getting out of control. IMO, this market WILL crash…eventually.