Guild Wars 2

Now, this might end up being a small solution which snowballs into bigger problems but I think it could be a good idea to deal with gold sellers.

They already have no qualms doing away with the person to person trade feature, apparently to combat scamming. Which is a bit redundant since there are people can still trade via mail, and that in itself is a scam risk, which still seems to get people these days.

A gold seller and a gold buyer will have no fear of in game scamming because any potential risk occurs outside the game already. Gold sellers will happily mail their gold away because it has already been purchased with real money.

Finally, the following change to the trading post can help in deal with gold sellers with little impact to actual players:

Players can only purchase the cheapest item on sale. Price listing must be within +/- 10% of the lowest or highest sale order. While this is not 100% foolproof, firstly you will do away with people selling 1 carrot for 50gold so that the gold seller can transfer the money to the buyer. The buyer would actually need to sell something ~50 gold to the seller. Secondly, this is actually a safety net. Arenanet can then easily trace any ‘strange’ transactions of items that seem to be way pricier than their worth.

All of this does end up costing the legit players something; no gold mailing.

TLDR Would you be upset if you can’t mail money?

edit : Commander compendium could be changed in such a way: It now costs 100 commander tokens, each token costs 1 gold, can be purchased from the same merchant, can be traded, cannot be resold in any way.

… they don’t need to transfer gold via mail. They’d just tell you to put up something stupid from some amount of gold and they’d buy it, covering the posting fee and such. They’d use this method to transfer money undetected in other games, even if you can just use mail. Also, they vary the transaction quantities for whatever tranfser methods used to avoid detection. There’s money to be made and they find ways.

IMO… they need to kill the gold making methods for bots, which they’re already doing.

Won’t work. High gold value items, like commander status, precursor weapons, gems, are easier to purchase when your friends are helping you. If you can’t send people gold, it just takes longer to get those kinds of items.

pandemos.3497:

… they don’t need to transfer gold via mail. They’d just tell you to put up something stupid from some amount of gold and they’d buy it, covering the posting fee and such. They’d use this method to transfer money undetected in other games, even if you can just use mail. Also, they vary the transaction quantities for whatever tranfser methods used to avoid detection. There’s money to be made and they find ways.

IMO… they need to kill the gold making methods for bots, which they’re already doing.

I covered what you said about the trading post in my OP.

TheUnNamedHero.4167:

Won’t work. High gold value items, like commander status, precursor weapons, gems, are easier to purchase when your friends are helping you. If you can’t send people gold, it just takes longer to get those kinds of items.

This is a valid point. I guess its a balance to see what the greater evil is. They could change the commander title to require 100 vendor tokens that can not be sold back though. Not soulbound obviously. Easy fix.

I like to play GW… I spend more time in high lvl areas than my wife does, or the rest of my family. Several of my friends / guild mates are not as far in the game as I am and are still working on leveling.

It’s not uncommon for me to email 1g or 50s to a spouse, friend, guild mate, etc because frankly, I don’t need the money as much as they do. I would rather they get the skill tome / crafting mat / random asura gizmo that they need to progress than tell them to grind it out themselves.

Yes, I could buy things for them, mail them things…. and I’ve mailed 20 different crafting items to a spouse or guild mate, clearing out what I’ve gathered that I don’t need. I’ve mailed enough things to friends and guildmates that I get the warning that I’m mailing too much…. it’s annoying. I’d rather send them $$ and let them get things that they need themself than try to figure out what they need (or have them tell me), have me buy it, and send them an item.

Besides, I can send gold from anywhere within the world, quickly and easily. If they need $$ for a better bow, and I don’t have one… while I could buy one off the TP, I would then have to go somewhere I could pick it up, mail it to them, walk back….

I get that stopping currancy movement via mail would make things harder on gold sellers… but it would hinder legitimate players more.

Yes, I would be upset. I couldn’t send my husband twink money for his alts. I couldn’t contribute to my guild mates for commander books, or crafting services.

Heck, I helped someone out with a jumping puzzle and they tipped me a silver which I thought was really nice of them.

The solution is to not take away useful services from players, the solution is to make it unprofitable for gold sellers by shutting down the exploits that allow them to generate gold with less effort than players. If you read the reddit I am a programmer for Guild Wars 2, AMAA, there’s good news on that front.

They’d just use the TP or a guild vault anyway. Thats most likely how they are doing the transfers right now because tracking gold transfers through mail is trivial for Anet to do. I wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking of these people as stupid just because you don’t like them.