Goblin Squad Member
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I have played too many MMO's and watched the in game economy get completely thrashed due to online gold farmers and spam bots. Strict rules against selling in game currency for RL currency have proven to be innefective with other MMO's.
I wanted to start this thread to brainstorm some ideas that we could use to keep gold farmers out of PFO and keep the in game economy healthy and ever-flowing. I really like what this game is starting to look like and I really don't want the whole thing to go down because some people can't understand the concept of EARNING somthing as opposed to buying it.
Not to seem self-serving or anything, but it seems like the best defense against this type of an issue is other players. Perhaps some type of rewards system could be used to give incentive to players to report these individuals.
I know when I played WOW these guys would basically make a level 1 character run all the way into town... spam their marketing spiel and then logout and delete the character then start the process over again with a new one to keep themselves from being tracked. You could put a time lock on character slots you are allowed on a server to discourage this, but I can see how that would be not only annoying, but inconvenient.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1)The most valuable resources will be in the most dangerous areas.
2)Dungeons (maybe mob spawns) will be dynamic and irregular.
3)Open PvP
Gold Farmers are generally not a problem in such games!
1) Doesnt really applly... I dont know if you know exactly how gold farmers operate or not but generally speaking they have 1 or 2 characters that get leveled up and equipped with gear and goes into those "dangerous Areas" and does nothing but gather those resources so this really doesn't apply.
2) As far as this is concerned, sure perhaps making the dungeons irradic and random will help a little bit... but often times people don't even know that there is a "loot ninja" in the group until the guy runs off with the Epic +5 holy avenger that just dropped. But that is not the only way these guys farm gold anyway and it certainly isnt going to stop them from trying.
3) Open PVP may provide some incentive for these individuals to leave the game alone; however, as I said before you don't know who they are until they are gone with your stuff or they could just be farming and you would never know a gold farmer from a random player. Personally if another player is out minding his own business I am not going to go out and blindly attack him with no true reason... besides im pretty sure the alignment system being developed for the game would discourage such acts.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The only general solution to the 'problem' of people paying others for the time spent playing is to remove the grind; to have making coin be at least as fun as having it given to you.
Loot ninjas and other forms of thievery can be dealt with by a combination of alignment shifts and open PvP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only general solution to the 'problem' of people paying others for the time spent playing is to remove the grind; to have making coin be at least as fun as having it given to you.
Loot ninjas and other forms of thievery can be dealt with by a combination of alignment shifts and open PvP.
People who spend RL currency for in game currency generally end up buying in game currency because they are either impatient or lazy. Even if you remove the grind (no matter how fun it is) there will still be people that will get too bored with it or too lazy to bother doing the work.
I do like the assassination contracts because essentially you will be able to eliminate the "loot ninja" form of gold farming through its use. I like the idea of 50 players putting out a hit on the gold farmer... makes me happy, but unfortunately, being a "loot ninja" is not the only form of gold farming and since games like WoW have found ways to eliminate them as well (such as BoP items and different roll systems that decide loot rewards) Gold farmers have found other more intricate and lucrative ways to make money.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Player traded gold along the lines of ISK trading seems to work.
That combined with FFA PvP and small hand picked initial population should see that Gold Sellers don't really make that big an impact.
tying different monetary systems together from other games does help keep the in game currency stable, but essentially you are making gold farming legal (to a point). Personally I would like to see it done away with entirely because I don't like playing with impatient or lazy players and a system where the currency could not be bought no matter how much money you had IRL would mean people would be forced to actually PLAY the game instead of buying their way through it.
But I can see how this could prove to be a lucrative endeavor for GW and where there is money and a market... theres people looking to get a piece of it.
and again I think that the FFA PVP will undoubtably remedy a lot of the issues with gold farming, but if anything, i'm just worrying about this issue because I have seen it destroy other games.. and not all of them were destroyed in the same way. I just really dont want to see greedy people ruin this one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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^OP:
This accords with Simon Ludgate's "gold sellers commentary in this interesting article: The F-Words Of MMOs: Faucets
The bigger issue is when players would rather spend their time outside of the game. Picture it: someone wants something, but doesn't currently have the money for it and doesn't want to spend the time gathering the money for it. Why? Their time is limited. And when time is limited, it's worth a lot more.
This is where gold farming comes in. Gold farming is the ultimate faucet: you pay someone real money for them to spend their time getting you gold. At least, that's how it works in theory. When it comes to gold farming, there are two basic facts:
1. Players and game makers alike suffer from gold farmers.
2. Players and game makers alike don't suffer from gold buyers.That players suffer from gold farmers is undeniable. The spam alone is horrible in many online games. Gold farmers also try to find exploits they can abuse, many of which disrupt the game for other players. Gold farmers can also have a deeply disruptive effect on the in-game economy if they can get money from other players more easily than from the game world. They also hack into players' accounts, stripping them of everything of worth in order to more quickly fill their coffers with more gold to sell.
Game developers and publishers also suffer from gold farmers. "If you're talking about what different kinds of fraud exist in the world, the ones that for us as a developer and a publisher, the kinds of fraud that concern us the most, are the actual credit card frauds," says Scott Hartsman, executive producer of Rift at Trion Worlds. "Where you go buy gold from a disreputable gold site, and they say 'thank you' and deliver your gold, and sell your credit card number, or start registering accounts with your credit card.
"It's those kinds of things where people laugh and go, 'Oh, that never happens.' No. It happens. It happens a s%%@load. To the point where, over the last three or four years, I would dare anybody to ask an exec at a gaming company how much they've had to pay in Master Card and Visa fines, because of fraud. It happens a lot. Those fines are money that should be going into making games better, and instead they're going into fighting the fact that people are jerks in the world."
So it's clear that gold farmers are bad. What about gold buyers? Is it bad that they receive big chunks of gold they don't work for? I don't think it's a problem.
...
So, if gold "receiving" is okay but gold "selling" is bad, what's the solution? It's quite simple: MMO makers should just sell their money. And this, my friends, is where we finally get into the economic nitty-gritty.
& pg.4:
The randomness of these goods already makes them extremely volatile in price. Gold farmers frequently snatch them up when they show up on the Auction House and relist them for unattainably high prices; the only way to actually buy them is to buy the gold from the gold farmer. It's a viciously effective cycle for converting what people really want -- the shiny epic, not the gold -- into real money.
The way to fix faucets and drains is to wean developers away from the notion of equipment as a means of progression in MMORPGs. Instead, treat equipment like equipment: something to be used and replaced. Bring back item degradation, item loss. Make items something that players expect to buy on a regular basis. Make them affordable and common.
All of this can be done with improvements to one of the greatest shortcomings in modern MMORPGs: the crafting system.
EVE Online's powerful and stable economy is arguably strong not only because of its economic foundations but because of its crafting system. Everything in EVE is crafted; everything in EVE can be blown up and lost and need to be replaced.
And this article referenced in the above (eg ISK in EvE):
In my previous blog entry, I described how adding PLEX to EVE Online failed to stem RMT in CCP's MMO. I concluded that the game operator would simply be better off selling in-game currency directly to its own players because they would not only be able to beat RMT at their own game, but would monetize the demand for their in-game curreny.
So why don't they? Well, it might infuriate players who think the practice is unfair or that it will destabilize the market or that it might just be plain evil. I'm in no place to psychoanalyze perceptions. What I can do, at any rate, is explain the effects selling currency would have on the in-game player-driven market.
The author has some interesting discussion/background reading.
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Goblin Squad Member
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stuff
From the sound of it, it sounds like he's promoting that developers should sell in-game currency.
And I hate it, I tried playing Maplestory again, and then noticed the economy was a nightmare: Everything was marked up 1000% around the time the developers sold in-game currency for real cash. And as someone who has bad luck with random drops, it made trying to find good items a nightmare, and I promptly quit.
I would not even bother playing PFO if they did do this. I hate games where it is practically Pay2Win, which is what developer-ok'd gold selling is. And that would be a crying shame since I'm very excited for PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1) Doesnt really applly... I dont know if you know exactly how gold farmers operate or not but generally speaking they have 1 or 2 characters that get leveled up and equipped with gear and goes into those "dangerous Areas" and does nothing but gather those resources so this really doesn't apply.
It kind of does apply. Themepark games suffer from rampant farming as it is both accessible and profitable. The populations are large and they can easily make the gold. Sandboxes, specifically those featuring open pvp (in my experience), have never suffered from gold farming. I wasn't refering to the area being dangerous for any other reason than you're more than likely going to get gangbanged by player killers...
Sure gold sites existed for Eve Online, Ultima Online, Darkfall, but you cannot stop the wealthiest people from selling currency and this happens on a much smaller scale than your conventional gold farming in themeparks.
2) As far as this is concerned, sure perhaps making the dungeons irradic and random will help a little bit... but often times people don't even know that there is a "loot ninja" in the group until the guy runs off with the Epic +5 holy avenger that just dropped. But that is not the only way these guys farm gold anyway and it certainly isnt going to stop them from trying.
This will actually help a lot. Gold farmers pay people to farm gold. Gold farmers enjoy that which is most efficient, most reliable and most profitable. Randomizing their access to gold will make a difference.
3) Open PVP may provide some incentive for these individuals to leave the game alone; however, as I said before you don't know who they are until they are gone with your stuff or they could just be farming and you would never know a gold farmer from a random player. Personally if another player is out minding his own business I am not going to go out and blindly attack him with no true reason... besides im pretty sure the alignment system being developed for the game would discourage such acts.
The most valuable or most plentiful resources which generate the most wealth will be highly sort after. Gold farmers utilise the quickest way to safely make the most amount of gold; so do players. People die over these resources. Despite penalties for being a playerkiller, people will make a living off of killing people either collecting valuable resources or killing monsters who drop valuable resource. It's a career to many people, and has been to me in the past
All this is irrelevant anyway. If you try buy ISK in Eve, their system immediately logs the transaction and the money is subsequently removed from your account and your account given a formal warning. It's not the 90's anymore; buying gold is easily preventable if the company wishes it so (COUGH NCSoft COUGH).
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Goblin Squad Member
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stuffFrom the sound of it, it sounds like he's promoting that developers should sell in-game currency.
Looking at the Goblin Works Blog:
Stored Value and MTX; When Worlds Collide
Definitely GW should sell ""some things"" to players : ) . I guess the question is how far should that go? Maybe selling currency direct IS a step too far.
Perhaps GW has more or less balanced solution??:
When Worlds Collide
We are planning on allowing one item from the Skymetal Bit store to also be sold in–game for coin: skill training packages. This has two important consequences:
First, players who want to spend money on the game can use Skymetal Bits to buy skill training, and then sell that training, via the in–game market, for coin. In essence, they'll be able to "buy" coin with real money.
Second, players who don't want to spend money on the game will be able to continue training their characters essentially for free, as long as they're generating enough coin in the game to buy that skill training.
This is a win/win for both groups of players, and reduces the scope and effort so–called "gold farmers" will waste trying to compete for your business—which is also good for Goblinworks, as those people are sources of constant problems for MMO companies, including fraud and identify theft.
I like the above, more and more now (trading in-game time potential?). I still think account creation is part of the (multi-step) solution and the staggered approach to community is conducive as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I may be so bold?
Given the nature of the game, how difficult would it be for people whom are known Loot-Ninjas and Gold-Farmers to have 'accidents' out in the field, thanks to the GM's spawning powerful monsters nearby and 'siccing' them onto the Player in question.
You lose all your loot if you don't run back to your corpse in time, remember.
How long would it take for the Gold Farmers to go out of business if there's an Adult Red Dragon flying around strafing them and making life difficult? Could even become a zone-quest, with the Gold-Farmers having to pay people to protect them, diminishing their profits heavily (because anyone who is capable of taking on and dispatching a Dragon isn't going to work for a handful of copper coins) as they are forced to rely upon other players to support them.
And if they fail to pay up ... well, that means they have broken their 'contract' and are now vulnerable to people putting out bounties or, in the case of the Grey Knights/Bandits factions, Assassination contracts.
Hell, if I find a Gold Farmer, guess who is going to get assassination contracts out on them until either A) they go back to spamming WoW or B) I run out of gold.
That's the beauty of the Sandbox game we've got going here, the Mods can quite litterally lurk behind the scenes and tweak the game on the fly to do whatever they need to do to keep the game fun and interesting for the majority of their players.
I also put up my hand to a 'Reverse' Auction House where, rather than being able to put things up for ludicrous amounts, people post what they need, and the amount they are willing to pay, and then the orders are filled, or are ignored if the amount offered is nigglingly small.
Alternatively, Items have a % tax on them. A +1 Sword being sold for 1000 gold coins has a (for example) 20% tax on it. Same sword, being sold for 5000 gold coins, would have an increasingly painful tax threshold put on it.
Ie, there's a limit to profitability vs power of the item. A +2 Sword is worth roughly around 5000, give or take some special materials, so again, the tax resets to the base-line 20%, modified by the base value of the item and the various enchantments, materials and modifications involved in the finished product.
I don't think anybody objects to Players making a profit. But if you were to go to Wyrmrest Accord, there's six players, Horde Side, who have effectively locked up the Auction House and have screwed everyone who isn't sitting on tens of thousands of gold from getting gear or materials off the AH.
One of these players, whom I was talking to after he tried to purchase a rare old-world pattern off me, claimed he wasn't doing anything wrong, it was his $15 a month, and if people were so butthurt they could go install multi-boxing capabilities in their towers and farm their own stuff.
That's the problem that we will (hopefully) not face with Pathfinder Online, at least at first, because the limited slots will prevent people from creating 'Multi-Box Guilds' and just running content mechanically until they have enough gold to 'lock up' specific resources being put into the Auction House system and block other players who do not have that much free time or Real Life Money to spend on super-hardcore machines.
Can I just put in a quick Yaaaaaaaghhh!!! NO!! NO!! for open PvP. Unless it means something other than 'in open PvP you can't opt out of being attacked by a higher level character who for whatever reason (whether spite, loot or boredome) decides to attack you'. This would surely just create another means of gold farming anyway - build your character up to L50, then hang around in the L30 zone and kill people coming back from quests.
In LOTRO the main gold farming was literally farming. Characters would move around middle earth mining the iron (or whatever) then sell them by the stack. The gold generated would then (presumably) be sold for real money outside the game. Alternatively, you could put a day or two in doing the same thing if you needed gold for that special shiny thing you wanted. I didn't get any sense that this broke the game economy in any real way - even the shiniest of shinies weren't orders of magnitude better than the stuff you picked up while questing and the end of quest rewards were the best things out there, and I'm pretty sure that these couldn't be sold or transferred.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Elinor Knutsdottir: they (Goblinworks) came up with the 'contract' system which would allow players to hire other players to kill griefers and contract-breachers.
Solution? Hire a L50 character of your own, go out farming with your Mercenary a decent way away, wait for the Serial Killer to show up and start beating on you .... bang, over runs your cohort, and together you tear the Griefer/Player Killer a new one and teabag their corpse, take their stuff and wait for them to respawn.
Unforunately, we're dealing with Humans here, and if there is one thing Humanity is good at, it's coming up with ingenious ways to make the lives of other Humans miserable.
Hence my feverent hopes and prayers for the 'behind the scenes' GMs who aren't adverse to stepping in when the situation is completely hopeless and unleashing the Randy Giant or something equally deadly and humiliating on the Griefers/Gold Farmers/Annoyances.
*Mental image of a Lieutenant Colonel Virtue screaming around in the sky, laughing as he sets fire to 'Annoyances'*
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Goblin Squad Member
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Can I just put in a quick Yaaaaaaaghhh!!! NO!! NO!! for open PvP. Unless it means something other than 'in open PvP you can't opt out of being attacked by a higher level character who for whatever reason (whether spite, loot or boredome) decides to attack you'.
Too late. Its a confirmed feature.
Also this game does not have a traditional MMO leveling system. It's more EVE style.
So, its a game that doesnt use the pathfinder system AND you're forced have pvp permanently on?
Include me out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Player run kingdoms will have different rules for the realm. I think potentially these Hexes will have player rules and that might be conducive to crowd-sourced control of griefers/gold-spammers in those areas? At least I hope this is possible at this level.
Large/dangerous mobs are attracted to mining operations in the wilderness is potentially positive too. Means a large party is potentially required for farming activities in areas for the greatest rewards without constant hastle of being interrupted. And if I decide to work as a bandit that will be an activity I'd be looking to profit from also. :)
@ Tigger_mk4: If you read up the Goblin Works blog: It should help you understand it's mostly importantly "good implementation" of pvp, not flawed which is perhaps what you are imply you do not accept? Go read, those blogs are awesome.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, its a game that doesnt use the pathfinder system AND you're forced have pvp permanently on?
Include me out.
]
Yes. They are not looking to make a DDO clone. They are looking to make a game that both gives players access to the Pathfinder Online universe, and also an original title that fills the massive gap in the MMO market of a great fantasy sandbox.
They have some really exciting ideas they have covered in their blog:
https://goblinworks.com/blog/
It's a pity you'll be missing out on it, but they can't please everyone.
Yup, they cant please everyone...
Pvp permanently on is, tbh, more of a turn off than the system. In fact its probably the ultimate no -no for me.
Spme days (most days) i dont want to be arsed with pvp . Not being able to turn it off woulld completely prevent me from playing those days.
My worry for the product (and i hope i'm wrong) is that it doesnt sound THAT different from every other fantasy mmo. By throwing away the system they're getting rid of one of the two thinfs that would make me try the product (system familiarity). Thats not to say their new syatem might work bwtter in an mmo environment of course.
with the existing success of WoW, and competitors, the competition for fantasy MMOs Is high (in addition to the slew of exisitng ones, Elder Scrolls online is on its way) ...
The sandbox ideas they have are nice, certainly.. And the building aspect looks intersting !
At the end of the day, I think the MMO genre needs a big overhaul ; the initial few had some great ideas, but alot of the current ones are only minor variations on the exisitng model... I think to be successful theyd need to do something a bit more innovate.
The problem with gold farmers is a good example. the iin game model (and expectation of gamers) makes gold farmers feasable at present.
Mind you, to counteract my own argument.... alot of ways yhats the d&d/pathfinder model.... Go out,fight,bring back loot... The more you do it the more loot you havd. More loot= success.... Thus goldfarming.
Still, i hope i'm wrong, and that its a raging success, and i wish them well...
Yup, they cant please everyone...
Pvp permanently on is, tbh, more of a turn off than the system. In fact its probably the ultimate no -no for me.
The pvp is being setup like Eve online , there will be areas in pathfinder that has security from npc marshels that spawn to kill griefing players, also griefing players have to deal other players as well. Its not going to be as bad as alot people assume, your not perfectly safe but if you stay out of lawless land on the friges of civilized areas, a pve player will rarely have to deal with pvp. The starting map is huge in size. Also one of the devs is a pure pve player and wants to make sure pve'rs have stuff to do in the high security areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't know how many of you guys have been reading the blog, but it sounds like GoblinWorks is actually doing something similar to what LOTRO did with turbine points with a twist. Basically subscribers will be getting what's called "skymetal bits" which they can use to buy in game rewards. most of the rewards from this system are going to be benign, with the exception of training packages. Training packages will be available for skymetal bits which players will be able to buy and then turn around and sell for coin, if they so choose, essentially allowing players the option to trade real money for in game currency.
Now as far as the PVP part of this conversation is concerned: The type of PVP that goblinworks is proposing is a revolutionary step in the right direction. Players these days are getting too spoiled with easily soloable MMO's that:
1) Have little to no incentive for people to interact with each other.
2) Often times death has been more of a minor annoyance than a real problem, which if you think back to the days of the original Everquest on the PVP servers, death was something that made the game more exciting and epic.. the fact that you might die when you round the next corner and find yourself fac-to-face with a PKer, only made the game more interesting and memorable.
3) and provide players with epic handouts that used to take other players months (in RL time) to aquire.
I applaud what Goblinworks is trying to do with PFO. They are creating a "have your cake and eat it too" scenario in which players will be able to choose a play style and suits them and run with it. If all you are going to want do is craft and getting killed by other players really isnt your thing. OK you need some muscle to get you through the forest of unspeakable evil, you make a concract for an escort through the forest. Maybe you like PvP and you want to make some quick coin... oh hey look some crafter needs to get through the forest! I'll protect him and make some quick loot.
These are the kinds of things that I look foreward to with PFO, I'm tired of playing games where the players are treated as the only person in the game.. if I wanted to play a single player action RPG I would go play Reckoning on Xbox 360 or WoW on my computer or even Diablo for that matter, but I don't. Its called a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game for a reason.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Additionally, I did read in the blog about how Goblinworks intends to control the flow of money into and out of the game which should allow them some control over the in-game economy and should help couteract gold farming activities or at least the large influx of currency that they drop on buying players.
You think about it though ... you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot in the longrun if you buy gold and the the supply of the money into the game automatically compensates for that influx. (depending entirely on how much gold you buy and the inflation rate of the currency of course)
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I like the idea of a skymetal economy, with skymetal bits being purchasable for cash and redeemable for cosmetic or metagame (training) rewards, or transferable to other players for coin or items. It doesn't create a faucet anywhere, and it doesn't add coin to the economy or create the incentive for someone to try to make money by gold farming (since skymetal cannot easily be turned back into money). At the same time, it handles some of the cash-for-coin demand, reducing the demand for illicit trades.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea of a skymetal economy, with skymetal bits being purchasable for cash and redeemable for cosmetic or metagame (training) rewards, or transferable to other players for coin or items. It doesn't create a faucet anywhere, and it doesn't add coin to the economy or create the incentive for someone to try to make money by gold farming (since skymetal cannot easily be turned back into money). At the same time, it handles some of the cash-for-coin demand, reducing the demand for illicit trades.
As do I.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yup, they cant please everyone...
Pvp permanently on is, tbh, more of a turn off than the system. In fact its probably the ultimate no -no for me.
Spme days (most days) i dont want to be arsed with pvp . Not being able to turn it off woulld completely prevent me from playing those days.
My worry for the product (and i hope i'm wrong) is that it doesnt sound THAT different from every other fantasy mmo. By throwing away the system they're getting rid of one of the two thinfs that would make me try the product (system familiarity). Thats not to say their new syatem might work bwtter in an mmo environment of course.
with the existing success of WoW, and competitors, the competition for fantasy MMOs Is high (in addition to the slew of exisitng ones, Elder Scrolls online is on its way) ...
The sandbox ideas they have are nice, certainly.. And the building aspect looks intersting !
At the end of the day, I think the MMO genre needs a big overhaul ; the initial few had some great ideas, but alot of the current ones are only minor variations on the exisitng model... I think to be successful theyd need to do something a bit more innovate.
The problem with gold farmers is a good example. the iin game model (and expectation of gamers) makes gold farmers feasable at present.
Mind you, to counteract my own argument.... alot of ways yhats the d&d/pathfinder model.... Go out,fight,bring back loot... The more you do it the more loot you havd. More loot= success.... Thus goldfarming.
Still, i hope i'm wrong, and that its a raging success, and i wish them well...
For some people like me open world PVP is one of the most major draws, and I consider myself an anti-griefer. I'm tired of the horde vs. alliance and you can only compete in X zones crap.
They are opening up prettymuch the entire map to PVP which has some major upsides that you can't have if PVP isn't "forced" on people. Economic warfare is a big thing. It is nice to be able to cut your opponent's means of production and halt their trade. In most MMOs I would find it one of the singular most effective ways to force a surrender.
Another effective way is to conquer your opponent's territory, taking from them their homes and either holding them for yourself, selling them to someone else, or ransoming them.
With optional PVP that is simply not possible. Real warfare is not possible.
We are being delivered a fantasy MMO with real warfare including the ability to not join a faction or create your own. We are being given sandbox content like the ability to build our own buildings and cities, and we are being given theme park content we can have some fun with when we aren't out changing the world.
That is a package not being delivered by anyone right now, and the closest things to it are being delivered by small underfunded basement companies.
A major MMO with these features is going to be a refreshing new face in the MMO market that caters to a niche that has long been ignored by major companies.
with the existing success of WoW, and competitors, the competition for fantasy MMOs Is high (in addition to the slew of exisitng ones, Elder Scrolls online is on its way) ...
It is precisely because of this that PFO's model is so good. It is unlike anything on the market or anything currently being released. Even Elder Scrolls Online is promising to limit PVP to three factions. That was all I needed to know that I wouldn't buy IT.
There is currently a great 3.5 based MMO out there that does not force PVP on players, has rich storytelling and awesome puzzles. It's called Dungeons and Dragons Online. If you think slapping the Pathfinder name on a new DDO is going to make an successful game I think you are over-estimating the amount of weight that name carries.
It carries weight, but not enough to make a boring unoriginal MMO a great success. Thankfully GoblinWorks holds itself to a higher standard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The reason people buy gold via RMT is that they have money and need gold, and there's no legit way for them to get what they want.
The downside of RMT from the publisher's perspective is much worse than game balance. RMT purveyers are known to be identity thieves. Getting your credit card numbers and/or installing viruses, rootkits, and keyloggers on your computers allows them to make more money selling your identity to other criminals than they're making selling you gold.
And who picks up the pieces? The publisher. Because we become your first line of tech support since it likely appears that the problem comes from something associated with our game. And when we tell you "sorry, can't help you, you've got a virus/rootkit/trojan/keylogger/etc" your reaction is predictably hostile towards our company. It's a lose, lose, lose situation.
Most players at this point in the evolution of the genre get this. So they'll avoid RMT if they are given a reasonable option that is legit. Kind of like how iTunes sells an amazing amount of music at $0.99/song, even though we all know that you could get that music easily for free.
With our Skymetal Bits system, you'll be able to trade Skill Training for Coin on the in-game markets. This is a closed system; what you're doing is enabling another person to play the game and train skills in exchange for that person giving you Coin. Since the fundamental exchange is more people playing the game the end result is on balance better for everyone.
Pricing the skill training packages so that they undercut the RMT vendors is a key. Priced too high, people will still do RMT because the perception will be that the in-game system is a poor value. Priced too low, and we'll end up with a lot of folks buying Skill Training and being unable to sell them (lack of buyers) and therefore being stuck with a good they don't want. So the price has to be monitored and adjusted constantly to find the right balance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Pricing the skill training packages so that they undercut the RMT vendors is a key. Priced too high, people will still do RMT because the perception will be that the in-game system is a poor value. Priced too low, and we'll end up with a lot of folks buying Skill Training and being unable to sell them (lack of buyers) and therefore being stuck with a good they don't want. So the price has to be monitored and adjusted constantly to find the right balance.
Pricing may prove difficult to do, especially if the skill training packages only provide a minute benefit. Balancing supply and demand is never a sure thing, if it was, then wall street would be more of a track than a roller coaster; However, it might be possible to have a simple exchange of skymetal bits for coin and cut out the market completely to eliminate the supply and demand and keep the exchange prices of SMB (sky metal bits) to coin at a desired ratio.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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You can only keep the ratio of Skymetal to coin higher than market value, unless you prohibit skymetal trading among players or allow making skymetal with coin.
If you allow skymetal to be a faucet, then you are explicitly allowing people to bypass the coin economy with the dollar economy. If skymetal is only tradable to players who themselves use the faucet, there is a finite effect on the game economy, the demand for RMT coin purchases is partially legitimized (driving away some of the illicit gold farmers), and there is no content which is accessible ONLY via direct paywall.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can only keep the ratio of Skymetal to coin higher than market value, unless you prohibit skymetal trading among players or allow making skymetal with coin.
If you allow skymetal to be a faucet, then you are explicitly allowing people to bypass the coin economy with the dollar economy. If skymetal is only tradable to players who themselves use the faucet, there is a finite effect on the game economy, the demand for RMT coin purchases is partially legitimized (driving away some of the illicit gold farmers), and there is no content which is accessible ONLY via direct paywall.
I think the main goal of the skymetal trading is to beat out gold farmers by out marketing them to players. If I had the choice of two different companies, and one company costs more than the other AND I have a chance to have my information stolen, then chances are I'm going to go with the other guy.
As far as faucets are concerned, such subtle changes to the economy can be adjusted via drains (i.e. the farmer NPC that wants 2g for that carrot you want.) The adjustments of drains and faucets should allow the developers to keep a relatively close eye on the economy of the game reguardless of how much coin comes in and goes out of the game. that being said, I dont believe that such exchanges will cause the uneccesary inflation you are suggesting.
Yes players will be able to essentially trade skymetal currency for coin. I do not beleive that trading coin for skymetal should be allowed because then there is no reason to differentiate between the two currencies and it may cause GW to lose out on business. The only reason I can see from prohibiting players from trading skymetal bits between players is that it allows players to utalize that secondary currency for things other than the rewards that would be available only through the use of SMB, (I.E. "Hey ill give you this +3 flaming longsword for 3000 Skymetal bits.")
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think the main goal of the skymetal trading is to beat out gold farmers by out marketing them to players. If I had the choice of two different companies, and one company costs more than the other AND I have a chance to have my information stolen, then chances are I'm going to go with the other guy.As far as faucets are concerned, such subtle changes to the economy can be adjusted via drains (i.e. the farmer NPC that wants 2g for that carrot you want.) The adjustments of drains and faucets should allow the developers to keep a relatively close eye on the economy of the game reguardless of how much coin comes in and goes out of the game. that being said, I dont believe that such exchanges will cause the uneccesary inflation you are suggesting.
Yes players will be able to essentially trade skymetal currency for coin. I do not beleive that trading coin for skymetal should be allowed because then there is no reason to differentiate between the two currencies and it may cause GW to lose out on business. The only reason I can see from prohibiting players from trading skymetal bits between players is that it allows players to utalize that secondary currency for things other than the rewards that would be available only through the use of SMB, (I.E. "Hey ill give you this +3 flaming longsword for 3000 Skymetal bits.")
I'm not sure what your current position is: Do you think skymetal should be useable to 'make' coin, create coin directly from skymetal in the way that selling to NPC vendors makes coin? Or do you think that skymetal should be tradable for existing coin: put in on the market and allow players to purchase it with coin?
Either way, it means that skymetal can be used (directly or indirectly) to purchase anything which is available for coin. In the first case, it also means that the drains of coin must be able to account for players who choose to buy coin from the faucet. I haven't seen any proposal that I believe can balance buying coin with earning coin.
If trading skymetal for coin is the method used, then there is a self-limiting aspect: If someone purchases an arbitrarily high amount of skymetal, there is a hard limit to the amount of coin he can get for it, because there is a finite demand for skymetal in the game. As more skymetal is put on the market, the price per bit will drop until the market either clears or stabilizes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The thing with gold farming is that you cannot stop it, kind of like with the "war on drugs" in RL.
All you can try to do is put enough measures in place to make gold more expensive, so less players consider acquiring the in-game currency for real money.
What measures can you have in the game? Devs need to make tools to track inflow of cash and its sources, serializing loot to detect duping, randomizing mobs and resources, heavy limitations on what trial players can do in game, hardware authenticators making it hard for hackers to steal game accounts, staff to conduct investigations.
If bot farming becomes trivial, the MMO economy, player experience and subscriptions will suffer.
You could just tie currency to an actual commodity value and stop giving it out from random drops. This would require non-infinite natural resources. Give it value only from its use in commerce as a substitute for the goods it represents and fix or keep the supply within a certain value/player.
Or one could not make a fixed currency and allow it to develop organically from player-run banks/nations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The multi-targeted approach as mentioned seems best bet: Inconvenient; profiting is hard to scale up; risk of closure is high and the playerbase is educated to reduce in-game demand via fun gameplay/lack of grind/sinks or GW alterntives to what gold-sellers are dubiously offering. Then seems the biggest threat is large scale operations trying to affect the economy? I wonder if there will be a list of KOS names of gold farmers circulated with mission/rewards attached? :) Or I if player networks of alliances could vet other networks also in some form and ban from trading if suspect?
Also wondering if F2P a/c's will be a problem? Obviously good to allow players to try the game, but a low barrier to entry potentially.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Poizon, your comparison of the war against gold-farming to the war on drugs is actually quite apt. The worst aspects of both are direct results of the fact that the black market is the only market. Simply creating a legitimate market for either would have immediate and significant ameliorative effects. The first-order problems of drug use and buying gold would still remain, but the ability of those problems to impact the rest of the community would be minimized.