Goblin Squad Member
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Now, something that has bugged a lot of MMOs is that sooner or later, through gold-buying or multi-boxing armies, a small cadre of players will create artificial choke-holds in crafting or leveling by harvesting all the materials or continously killing all types of a specific mob and listing the items for hideously overpriced amounts.
WoW, specifically Wyrmrest Accord, the server I play on, has six people who are known 'Auction House Players' who are very intelligent, albeit amoral, players whom have written their own macros and addons and spend all day every day camping the Auction Houses of Horde, Alliance and Neutral, sniping necessary crafting materials to help level a crafting profession and putting everything of specific brackets and much-needed items up at prices impossible for a new(er) player to reach, and even painfully expensive for longer term players.
2 of these players are already on their third 'batch' of accounts after being perma-banned for creating multi-boxing teams of 2 characters per tower, with one bragging about running 5 towers at once, with well-geared characters that would run off of 'slave' macros, meaning that a single player could sit back, have these characters run across specific maps and destroy everything in their path.
Each character would have two gathering skills, and other characters on the same accounts would have two crafting skills, enabling the multi-boxing player to effectively 'wipe out' a map.
The other problem is their 'usage' of the Auction House is borderline 'economic griefing', yet Blizzard does nothing except increase the amount of gold we recieve from Dailies, which merely prompts these 'Auction Players' to up their own prices.
So I put it to you, my fellow Forumites and our Soon-To-Be Goblinworks Overlords, how do we nip these aggravating sorts of situations in the bud?
Local 'Markets' Only? A sizeable guild, or even a Multi-Boxer with sufficient funds, can bypass this with ease, either using the multi-box system or an out-of-game solution like Skype to keep in touch.
Artificial Limit on maximum sale prices? Doable, and it makes sense, but it also has the problem of putting 'limits' on Players, and people hate that.
NPC Merchants? As much as I like a 'standard rate' from the NPCs, dedicated AH-Griefers will simply buy all the merchants' goods unless they somehow get flagged, and the Merchants won't sell to them. And then it's just getting a friend to buy the goods for them.
Now, multi-boxing teams of farm-toons can easily be sorted by roving Bandits, Game Master spawned Mobs or just irate bands of other players who decide that an alignment hit is worth it to send these bastard packing, but I fear the impact of these 'Players' who aim to cause economic havoc just for s~$$z'n'gigglez, as they put it.
How many of us here, honestly, just want to play an immersive fantasy game?
How many of us want to be part of an online sweatshop after spending anywhere from 6-14 hours working in real life?
Brainstorm with me here. How do we stop the Gold-Farmers, the Auction-House 'Players' and the Multi-Boxing Farmers from getting a cancerous toe-hold on our beloved Golarion?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well....
Gold-Farmers and Multi-Boxing Farmers are kind of the same thing and can be dealt with in the same way: Kill Them When You See Them
Auction-House Players can be dealt with in this way; Kill Their Goods Couriers When You See Them
Nobody will have such an advantage that they can't be killed.
As long as there are other players to gather and craft things it will be nearly impossible to "take over" the auction houses.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's what I'm hoping. One of the WoW Multi-Boxers bragged about his setup, and it hinged heavily on having a team of five Warlocks out in the field with slave-macros set up so that they would 'assist' the main target by firing off specific debuffs or spells depending upon what the 'primary' character did.
He'd then utilize two of the characters, who had learned Engineering, to drop a portable mailbox every 30 minutes (with a cooldown of one hour, this meant he was able to send all his goods via the instantaneous mail-system to his sixth character, deep in a allied city and right next to an auction-house) and send his goods away to safety, then use a portable repair bot (again, Engineering) to repair his characters' gear, vendor 'trash' items and then start again.
The wealth he has made through this system is staggering, and he turns it to buying out necessary trade-goods, forcing players out into the field to gather their own materials and crippling the flow of currency between the players. Anything that is put up for below his prices is snapped up on the spot, and then relisted at 'his' prices.
So to avoid this situation, that means NO instantaneous, non-stealable mail system for the players. If the Bot-Farmers and Multi-Boxers have to either carry their goods to market themselves or get a courier to carry it for them, it will hammer their profits significantly, especially when the others players start to identify who they are and actively target them.
Couriers will demand heavier and heavier prices for carrying such 'volatile' loot, mercenaries guarding the convoy will become leery of being 'tagged' with the same brush as the Multi-Boxers themselves.
But for the purpose of this brainstorming thread, how would YOU get around those situations, and in turn, how would you derail said work-arounds to destroy the Farmers before they can start to muck up the game's economy/economies?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also remember that this isnt wow. In wow you can take a character to max level in a couple of days, and you can max a craft/gathering skill in a day or two (or faster) if you an buy all the mats.
In PfO its different. Sure they might be able to do some of that but the chance of it getting that bad is small. So lets say they do some shady stuff and get banned. Well it could be 1,2,2.5 years until they have a single character back at the point where they can make good T2 or T3 items.
So in this game the consequences of getting banned are higher as you cannot turn around start another character and be back where you were in a week.
On the other hand you need to take a look at the other side. What happens if a merchant group does corner the market? Is them putting forth the effort not a valid way to play? I would say that as long as they are not using add ons/programs to do instant deals then its fine.
Seperate auction houses would go a long way to preventing this and also allowing for risk/reward (pinewood only grows near settlement a and b, so a merchant can make some money buying it low at A and caravaning it to sell at settlement G). So someone has to have their character go to each settlement. If we get rid of insta mail (which i hope they do) then the only way to move those goods is to carry them yourself or caravan.
Well well known merchants are going to be targeted by bandits, thats just going to happen.
So hopefully what ends up happening is that due to the large time requirement to train characters getting banned and such will mean more (i mean if it takes 2 years to get to the point where you were) and that they cannot turn around and be right back where they were in a week with another account.
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Goblin Squad Member
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True, but this also allows the slow build-up of a handful of Charters/Guilds/Companies into a single all-powerful economic juggernaught, able to buy out any 'rebels' or throw endless assassins at them till they quit the game or submit.
How do we STOP this sort of behavior? Obviously, gamers being gamers, somebody will figure out a way to get around any ruling on Goblinwork's behalf, but let's start with the obvious ones that already exist in most MMOs to-date.
Kill 'Em!: While viscerally pleasing to see some greasy farm-bot's head blunting the edge of your sword, as the game stands, you're going to take at least an alignment hit from the act, let alone the locals who might get antsy at you killing a 'merchant' or 'gatherer' for, to them, no good reason.
Of course, as the situation progresses and said Farm-Bot's antics become more noticeable, they might find fewer and fewer people are willing to come to their aid ...
One Market to Rule them All ..... : While this method fragments the market, it also, as Leperkhaun pointed out, allows for greater prices the further from the source you're willing to go, but also creates an ever-widening opening for bandits and brigands to pilfer your produce.
On the other hand, sufficiently advanced 'Farm-Bot' consortiums will be able to 'seed' players or even low-level multi-box accounts within various cities and settlements to keep an eye on the markets and raise prices accordingly across various Hexes in a 'cartel' method, ensuring that nobody can sell for lower than they do, and that they are the only 'legitimate' seller of necessary goods.
Time to take another alignment beating and hire a few Assassin Guilds ...
Welcome to my Little Black Book: Inevitably, players actively working the markets to try and destabilize Settlements, or worst case scenario, the entire Game Economy, will be ejected at sword-point (or worse) from civilized territories and blacklisted, if not banned, from entering said Hexes.
This isn't foolproof, as they might end up working with willing partners to go back into the settlement on behalf of the now-exiled character and continue on as planned, albeit now it's with split profits, so their final payout is lower, often much lower than is profitable.
Settlements might solve this by ensuring anyone under a certain amount of time-in-game or level has to sell their goods through another, trusted player of the Controlling Faction, who gives them a set rate and sells the goods at another, higher set rate, ensuring that the Controlling Faction can keep inflation to a level they feel is comfortable/necessary to their own goals.
Once players reach a certain threshold of not only skill, but trust, the controlling faction might allow them to sell direct with the understanding that cartel-like actions or rampant price-gouging will not be tolerated, and the Farm-Bots lose their avenue in that Settlement, being forced to move on to another slice of civilisation and hoping their reputation hasn't preceeded them.
The mailman might ring twice, but the Bandit demands only once: Whether shipped by NPCs or Players, cargo, mail and other goods are vulnerable to Bandits, Monsters, Seasonal Hazards and worst of all, other Players.
While annoying, this also gives players looking to derail up-and-coming Market Cartels and known Bot-Farmers by isolating and attacking caravans and merchants carrying their goods specifically. A few days of getting every single shipment hit and stolen will set back anyone.
This method, however, also has a tendency to come back and bite everyone in the long-term as more and more people come to realise that Banditry pays a lot better than woodcarving or farming ....
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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If someone wants to buy up all of the raw materials at a given price and resell them at a higher price, my solution will be to accommodate him. By producing a lot of raw materials and listing them at prices higher than fair, but closer the price he is reselling at.
As his resale price approaches fair, my price will as well. In the meantime I have profited more than he has from his market manipulation, because for his plan to work he needs to buy everything that everyone puts on the market below his resale price.
I think that the reference case is just exploiting very inefficient market conditions in WoW, since anyone else is free to just barely undercut him; ideally undercut him by less than the listing fee, so that he loses money if he buys and resells.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So to effectively 'flood' him with product to the point he can't buy anymore, and then put more onto the market for far less that what the Farm-Bot has put his own goods up for? Interesting theory.
Especially if resources have a slow 'respawn' rate, this can 'starve' a potential Cartel or Farm-Bot Charter of gold as people refuse to buy the resources they are offering at the inflated price, and since most, if not all, of their gold is tied up in the attempted sale, by the time other merchants come into town to sell their own goods at much lower costs, all the Cartel has accomplished is to tarnish their names, irritate the locals and give the new-comers a chance to get the jump on them in sales.
Economics ftw
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sell directly to your clientele. Cut the AH out of it all together and you no longer need to worry about its manipulation. If your clients know you will always cut them a deal (cheaper prices in exchange for their continued business), then they come to you before looking on the AH. If we promote player interaction, make friends of our customers and suppliers, it's no longer only about the bottom line, but the favors you do for one another that will cut out the dregs who are only looking out for themselves and their own pocket book.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On the other hand you need to take a look at the other side. What happens if a merchant group does corner the market? Is them putting forth the effort not a valid way to play? I would say that as long as they are not using add ons/programs to do instant deals then its fine.
This is the other thing I worry about. I'm looking at the EvE system right now, and while I'm really just scratching the surface, I see a market where everyone can buy and sell at 'baseline' prices with a few % up and down, depending upon proximity to the harvesting sites and the like, but overall, I've yet to see anyone being able to 'choke' the market like what happens with WoW.
The bigger ships and more exotic components, skill books, ships and implants aren't horrifically expensive, although their locations are often shady, as I found to my horror when I went to pick up my Procurer the other night. Lost my little Fighter getting to the station where my Mining Barge was available for purchase, and only made it out of the 0.4 sector thanks to the ludicrously strong shields and hull of the vessel.
Ideally, so long as nobody is 'cheating' using addons that allow them to circumvent the game's 'rules' or, and this is what really concerns me, to 'troll' or hurt other players, I can't see anyone having any real complaints against a group of individuals or a Guild who chooses to go this route.
It's the players who actively want to cause economic mayhem just to harass and drive players away from the game, to break up the social interaction that Pathfinder Online is going to need to become truly successful, that I worry about.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sell directly to your clientele.
This. This right here. I see the Auction House not as your 'go to' place to buy things, but a place where you can put items up for sale while you're away from the game.
Auction Houses come with nasty things like inbuilt taxes, broker's fees and Settlement Fees for useage.
Selling in a real-time market not only allows other players to see, and inspect, your goods up close and personal, but also increases player interaction and allows for buyers to move from seller to seller, identifying people who might be willing to haggle or barter, and those who might be willing to throw in additional deals, or give them an insiders eye-view of a specific market.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The way to stop it is for the publisher to stop the abusive behavior, not jury-rig a bandaid game mechanic. Why Blizzard chooses not to do this is beyond me,
Here's a classic story. Graffiti on subway cars used to be a huge problem in New York. As soon as a car was freshly painted, a crew would find it, wait until it was idled and then tag it up. Often this work took hours, required the crew to run some risks, and the paint and other supplies was not cheap.
The NYC transit authority got tired of re-painting cars and tired of complaints about the images, language and gang affiliations of the tags, and frankly the risk that a tagger and/or crew would get themselves killed, leading to a massive lawsuit against the city.
So they took direct action. They put white-washed cars into the system, left them idle and get tagged up. IMMEDIATELY they'd recycle the cars, white-washing them back to blank. Nobody EVER saw the tagged cars. The tagging crews realized they'd been putting hours of work into a waste of time. After a few go-rounds, they became so dispirited that the crews broke up and the vandalism stopped.
Parto of the intrinsic reason to tag was to brag as a car passed by. Without the ability to brag, with the "art" wiped out without ever seeing an audience, the value was destroyed.
The team messing with the auction house on your WOW server isn't doing it for the money. They're doing what they're doing to demonstrate CONTROL over the virtual world. Remove that control, make it so nobody ever sees the results of thier efforts, and they're spirits will break and they'll quit. People like this have a very limited tolerance for failure and inactivity. Break them for a week and they'll rage quit forever.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was reading a blog MMOfail about the neverwinter online problems and apart from the sums made it did seem to be the control the players were able to find; particularly after the devs had batted the "ball" back into the players' court with their so-called fixes - still the players had the upper hand and/or found new exploits to share (eg code, instructions etc).
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Goblin Squad Member
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HalfOrc,
I also think part of the issue, at least from the seller's stand point, is convenience and immediacy. Auction Houses are convenient and immediate. Searching individually owned player vendors is less so. Waiting until your favorite merchant/crafter friend is in-game, potentially even less.
But that's one of the main changes I hope to see in PFO - that people slow down a bit and have time to interact with one another, time to build meaningful, lasting community ties that lead to mutual respect for your fellow players, whether they are the buyer or the seller. Theme park games, with their race to the top mentality, have become a frenzied dash to get to max level, earn the very best gear, find the quickest way to clear a dungeon, etc. Once you have accomplished these...then what? As Ryan has pointed out, the answer is usually either sit in the present game and complain about how long it's been since new content was released, or quit their current game and repeat the same manic play-style in the next game they find.
I fully agree that people who manipulate the system do it for the control. In the end, manipulating the markets is simply a means to manipulate and control the other players. However, if you build a working relationship with your clients/supplier, if you trust each other, if you foster a positive buyer/seller rapport, you build a community where people won't tolerate manipulative behavior. There will always be a need for the fast sale that costs more - the player who needs it right now or needs that much of something that they'll bite the bullet and pay the higher asking price - but hopefully, that should be the exception, not the norm. Hopefully, we can slow down enough to rediscover the benefits of customer loyalty and customer service.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wonder would it ameliorate the problem were the auction house actually the vendor? If the AH sets the price of goods according to availability/scarcity relative to a norm determined by population and supply while limiting the quantity purchasable and adjusting prices at each transaction then it is regulating the exchange rate. This prevents the player trying to buy everything up from buying it all at the low price because if he can only buy ten units at a time, and between lot purchases the price of the lot increases with the reduction in availability the avarice of the player should become self-limiting.
What it would look like to the resource gatherer is that he sells it to the AH at 'the going rate'. If he sells much he can sell only in lots of, say, ten units. Each lot he sells returns an adjusted going rate. To the purchaser of resources each lot increases in price unless a resource gatherer is supplying more at an equal rate to his buying it in which case it stays roughly the same.
@Being
Just no....no artificial limitations on pricing. Free markets run best in this sort of game by a long shot. PfO is not going to be wow or another theme park game and there are many routes not available in those for players to intervene to prevent market cornering.
If I want to sell my goods cheap or expensive should be up to me and me alone. You can always go buy off someone else or commission something
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Goblin Squad Member
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Zen where are you coming from with the suggestion that the regulation of the market is anything like WoW or reminiscent in any way of WoW? Why make such an allusion?
The sanctity of the free market I understand is a sacred cow and unquestionable for some, perhaps many. That doesn't mean a free market is best for the game. May be it is but maybe it isn't. I think that sacred cow could stand some questioning.
I referred to wow due to other people raising concerns over auction house goods cornering via bots in wow and other theme park games. Should have made that clear
My response to you was in regard of your suggestion of the system setting prices. The system setting prices will more or less cut out the professions of merchant from the game frankly. All the system setting prices does is take another thing out of the hands of players and make the game even less of a sandbox.
As I understand it they intend to very much model the system on that used in eve as a base. This is a free market system and it works extremely well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Okay. I was focused on the problem of elite market players enslaving the ostensibly 'free' market by artificial manipulation, something that also happens in the RL 'free' market. For historical reference see Hedge Funds & Oil, 2008 (sending a barrel of oil to $147).
The real life market is not free though, there are many barriers to entry in real life to prevent someone coming into an established market. This is why large corporations such as AT&T are happy with more rather than less regulations. They can easily cope with the extra overhead whereas a new entrant to the market has to find a way to fund all the extra red tape.
To give an example that people are familiar with
Taxi's (from a uk perspective)
Originally if you had a car you could hire yourself out as a taxi. Barrier to entry price of car and driving license
Then you had to have a safety certificate for the vehicle (over and above the normal roadworthiness certs for a private car) barrier to entry as above + 1000 per year
Then they asked for passenger liability insurance
Then they required criminal records checks
Then they required you bought a taxi driver license which they limited to a certain number per area
etc...
Now if you want to start a new one man taxi in the uk the estimated cost over and above owning a car is estimated to be about 25000.
The existing taxi firms are happy because people can't just say the prices they charge are a rip off and do something about it by starting their own taxi firm and undercutting.
This is how the so called free markets of the real world are unfortunately. Highly regulated and therefore not free
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Goblin Squad Member
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The 'ceiling' on prices only undercuts merchants so long as the NPCs have a limitless supply of goods.
If all goods are grown, scavenged or stolen by the players, then the choice of which merchants you choose to move the stock onwards becomes vitally important.
An Example:
A settlement finds that a cartel of players is buying obscene amounts of in-game currency via a PLEX-like system, direct from Goblinworks. They reach the 'maximum' amount they can purchase within the six-month 'cooldown' period and then proceed to buy up all goods of a specific type and sit on them, not using them or putting them up for sale.
People are hurting, but there's still gathering crews running around getting enough for the Settlement to get by.
Months later, they do it again, and now the Settlement is getting annoyed. The Cartel is sitting upon a treasure-trove of stone, wood and metal that the Settlement could really use to expand their defenses, but the Cartel is asking for obscene amounts of coin for the stock.
The Settlement then contacts it's inhabitants and informs them that under new 'laws' passed, all stone, wood and ore will be sold through the NPC Merchants, and anyone found selling directly or indirectly to the Cartel will be fined and their goods confiscated.
Then the Cartel are given 'black marks' by the controlling Charter/Company/Guild, which effectively ensures the NPCs within the Settlement won't trade with them or have anything but the bare minimum to do with them.
Suddenly, they're sitting on all these goods that are worthless in this Hex, so they have to move it out of the Hex and across a couple of Wilderness Hexes to make it to the next Settlement.
That leaves them open to vindictive locals who are willing to take an Alignment beating, Bandits who may get multiple tip-offs, that's assuming they already have Wagons, at which point they either have to make multiple trips on foot, which is a disaster waiting to happen, or pay exhorbitant sums to the local wagon-maker to produce the desired vehicles, 'thieves' going after their stock while it languishes in the warehouse, random monsters, and on top of all that ... there's no guarantee that the next Hex will even want their goods, or that word of their attempts to commit 'economic extortion' hasn't gone ahead of them, and the nearby Settlements haven't pre-emptively slapped more 'Black Marks' against their characters.
This game should really have no npc merchants beyond some basic equipment vendors in the starter towns. Apart from that everything should be player bought and sold. I see no advantage whatsoever to NPC vendors.
I do however see a big negative to NPC vendors. If you can sell goods to an NPC vendor those goods are directly converted into coin. This is a coin fountain spewing money forth into the game and therefore a source of inflation. It also amounts to the system setting a base price for goods below which they would never drop. If someone has mined a million units of iron ore when the total needed volume of iron ore needed is only 100,000 per month they should not be rewarded by being still able to sell at a system set base price for their own idiocy they should find the bottom falling out of the iron ore market.
The sort of move you describe has been tried in Eve it has never yet worked to any real degree because as the good in question becomes harder to get and more expensive more people run off to gather it to take advantage of the high price, even Goonswarm tried it with Gallente Ice and frankly despite their claims didn't really make any impact except for a few panic buyers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, that's assuming the NPCs can in turn sell your items! Since they are selling at a rate set by the controlling Faction of the Hex, your payoff may be quite low when you consider selling it yourself or through another player acting as a Broker.
That said, selling through an NPC might improve development Indexes by allowing currency to flow through the NPCs.
Again, you might unload ten thousand units of Ore to the Merchant ... but there's no guarantee they'll give you a good price, or that they may even have the desire to buy that much.
I see NPC 'Vendors' as less 'don't want to haggle with other players' and more as a method for actual Player-Merchants to see the 'base-level' cost and then adjust their prices accordingly, as well as giving the Controlling Faction of a Settlement the ability to forcibly wrangle inflation down to a level they feel comfortable with.
Cartel is trying to drive costs up? Inflate your NPC Merchants to a level you can sustain that's attractive to the other players, send out messages that you're now increasing the pay-off from NPC merchants.
After a month or so of you choking them, the Cartel will have to come deal with you personally, leave the Hex or drop their prices to a level you find acceptable. And that's assuming assassinations aren't going on in the background or other attempts at economic espionage from all comers.
I am working under the assumption that coin and goods are NOT infinite. If there's 10,000 units of a product in circulation, that 10,000 units will remain in circulation until destroyed, used up, 'disappear' with the item decay function or leave the hex to be used elsewhere.
WoW's market fails because there's literally unlimited resources out there. Wait 3 minutes and the Nodes will respawn, the Mobs will be back, etc etc. If Pathfinder adopts a slower respawn rate, like a node reappearing after several days or places like Mines, Quarries, Lumber Mills and Farms producing a slow but steady stream of resources, then the ability to flood a market is diminished, and combined with Item Decay, it also means that only specific markets will be open to the sort of Cartel Action that can harm a game's economy.
@Halforc
I am very confused now. You talk about if the npc merchant is able to sell your goods? In that case what you are talking about is an auction house.
Perhaps you can give us an example now as I am not sure anymore what you are suggesting
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Goblin Squad Member
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When I talk about an NPC Merchant, I'm talking about an NPC controlled by the controlling Faction of the Settlement.
They set the 'Merchant' to only buy a specific material, X amount of material per week, and give it a limited budget.
With every purchase, this 'merchant' is taking gold FROM the controlling Faction's coffers. By necessity, the Controlling Faction is going to want to make sure that this Merchant isn't offering the best deal in town, but rather exists as a 'baseline' for the PC merchants to work their prices from.
To avoid the situation you pointed out, where somebody can flood a merchant with goods for the 'fountain of coin', having the merchants have a set limit of coin, only purchasing specific items and having a limit on how many they will purchase a week/month prevents the 'Fountain' from being profitable.
The NPC Merchant gives the lowest payout of any Merchants in the Settlement, won't haggle, won't do you deals, won't accept bribes and any attempt to 'force' it via intimidate or actual violence will bring down the wrath of the Controlling Faction upon your head.
But in the case of a Cartel attempting economic shenanigans, the Controlling Faction can then give the orders to their NPC Merchants to up their buying rates and payouts, which makes them very attractive, and suddenly the Cartel attempting to buy up as many goods as they can and selling them for inflated prices is no longer receiving new stock, is no longer selling the stock they currently possess and the Controlling Faction and Other Players have bypassed them.
After which point, it becomes a 'Cold War' waiting game between the Cartel and their decaying items and the Controlling Faction and their coffers.
Ok then I do not mind this so much as the coin doesn't get auto generated from thin air.
Next question then is how is this different (given we know that the game will include Eve style buy and sell orders) the controlling faction simply putting out a buy order? I really am not sure I am seeing the point of this. You also haven't explained how the Cartel got this power as there is nothing to stop you from ensuring they can't mine by force of arms if necessary or buying from else where
Frankly if you try and force anyone to sell only to this merchant it will be a fast way of ensuring no one at all sells to you. I will simply take my ore to another market, if necessary taking my mining operation over there to do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Gold-Farmers and Multi-Boxing Farmers are kind of the same thing and can be dealt with in the same way: Kill Them When You See Them
I would counsel you not to try to kill me just because you see I'm "multi-boxing" - even if I'm "farming" or "gold-farming".
All three of those things (multi-boxing, farming, gold-farming) are legitimate activities that normal players will frequently engage in. Repeatedly targeting players for doing those things might end up getting you banned.
It is exceedingly unlikely that you or anyone else will be able to differentiate between legitimate players doing these things and the illegitimate players that most people think of when they think of "gold farmers".
(( And no, I'm still not offended :) ))
Gold-Farmers and Multi-Boxing Farmers are kind of the same thing and can be dealt with in the same way: Kill Them When You See ThemI would counsel you not to try to kill me just because you see I'm "multi-boxing" - even if I'm "farming" or "gold-farming".
All three of those things (multi-boxing, farming, gold-farming) are legitimate activities that normal players will frequently engage in. Repeatedly targeting players for doing those things might end up getting you banned.
It is exceedingly unlikely that you or anyone else will be able to differentiate between legitimate players doing these things and the illegitimate players that most people think of when they think of "gold farmers".
(( And no, I'm still not offended :) ))
Going to pull you up on this one I think. Yes both are perfectly legitimate actions no dispute there. However if you are gold farming you are affecting me, if you are gathering you are affecting me*(see note) therefore those are perfectly legitimate reasons to attack and disrupt your operation from an in game perspective.
In a sandbox all your actions affect every other player in some way however small. If you are affecting other players it is legitimate for them to affect you by stopping you equally.
This game in some ways this will be even more true than in Eve for pve. Eve missions runners affect everyone by increasing the total isk and by increasing module supply. In PfO as I currently understand the Pve side you will have all of that plus the fact that the pve opportunities such as a dungeon or escalation will be unique. Therefore if you are your merry gang of multibox chars come into what I see as my territory to pve I have ample reason to come after you and to keep doing so until you leave my pve opportunities alone.
Killing with a legitimate reason in character can not be griefing
*I and me in the above are used generically rather than to indicate me in particular or my chars in particular.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
Why are you taking that post out of context? Since it was a reply to the OP's opening statement and question, should I have prefaced it with "If you see the nasty market cornering cartel gathering Kill Them"?
I don't think I took it out of context. My main point was:
It is exceedingly unlikely that you or anyone else will be able to differentiate between legitimate players doing these things and the illegitimate players that most people think of when they think of "gold farmers".
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Killing with a legitimate reason in character can not be griefing
Well, it can if Goblinworks decides that it is.
I totally agree with you on the general point that killing other players for harvesting in your sphere of influence is perfectly acceptable. However, following someone around because you see them multi-boxing and killing them repeatedly regardless of where they are probably would constitute "griefing".
I'm not at all suggesting that every incidence of killing someone for harvesting would be considered griefing. I tried to be clear, but I'll add emphasis:
Repeatedly targeting players for doing those things might end up getting you banned.
@Nihimon
While I certainly wouldnt condone following someone around killing them because they are multiboxing. Repeatedly killing them until they leave the desired area I do not see a problem with and as totally legitimate tactically.
If Goblinworks decide otherwise then that is up to them, however I suspect they would be unlikely to do so otherwise you get in the situation where you are not able as a player to do anything about the stubborn player who insists on fishing in your pool so to speak.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is exceedingly unlikely that you or anyone else will be able to differentiate between legitimate players doing these things and the illegitimate players that most people think of when they think of "gold farmers".
It was taken out of context. I think that large gathering PVE enterprises for the purpose of "cornering markets" is unlikely to succeed, in any case. I do not think that they would be hard to figure out, on the other hand. I can agree to disagree with you about it, though.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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An Example:
A settlement finds that a cartel of players is buying obscene amounts of in-game currency via a PLEX-like system, direct from Goblinworks.
I have to point out a gross concept error, because that sentence is self-contradictory.
The way to convert Goblin Balls into coin is for other players who have coin and want GB to buy your GB for coin. It is entirely possible, although difficult, for people to boycott your GB sales if they think you are being abusive.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The way to stop it is for the publisher to stop the abusive behavior, not jury-rig a bandaid game mechanic. Why Blizzard chooses not to do this is beyond me,
That seems like you are taking the position that successful market manipulation or monopolizing a resource is abusive and that you would expect that it be stopped in PFO. Is that the case, or is the (possibly dickish) emergent economic system a feature?
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Goblin Squad Member
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An Example:
A settlement finds that a cartel of players is buying obscene amounts of in-game currency via a PLEX-like system, direct from Goblinworks.
I have to point out a gross concept error, because that sentence is self-contradictory.
The way to convert Goblin Balls into coin is for other players who have coin and want GB to buy your GB for coin. It is entirely possible, although difficult, for people to boycott your GB sales if they think you are being abusive.
Just to chime in on this, you are not buying gold from the cash shop. You cannot receive an arbitrary amount of gold from GW in exchange for cash. Ryan actually had a good post on this subject in another of the Pay to Win threads.
There's a huge difference between:
"I buy something on-demand from the cash shop, and it is immediately available to my character and instantly usable."
vs
"I buy something on demand from the cash shop. Then I put it up for sale on an in-game market, where I receive Coin in return at an exchange rate set by market demand not developer fiat. Then, I have to negotiate for and purchase the uber-cool stuff I want in game, which may, or may not, be available at the time & place of my choosing. I may have to buy it in one place and transport it to another place. I may have to travel to a very dangerous place to make the purchase, and then return from that very dangerous place to wherever I want to use that purchase.
In order to get full value from my purchases, I need to have trained certain skills, achieved certain merit badges, and have been awarded certain character abilities; the achievement of which may have required months (or years?) of real-time."
Realistically there are people who will say the two are both "Pay 2 Win". But the absolute iron-clad reality of the situation is that there will be people who organize to sell in-game equipment for real money the day the game opens to the public. Those people will never be stopped no matter how much we invest in trying to do so.
Therefore, we either let them do what they do (which results in a lots of bad activity), or we do something that blocks a part of the value they attempt to extract from our game which reduces that bad activity.
The "Plex" system pioneered by CCP has several advantages over 3rd party real-money vendors:
1: There's an offsetting positive contribution to the community for each purchase which is that someone is playing the game who might not otherwise play. We are effectively selling game time, not Gear.
2: The ability to conduct this business with us dramatically reduces the exposure our players have to fraud, identity theft and malware, which in turn reduces our customer service overhead and makes people less likely to experience problems they attribute to our software, helping us maintain a high reputation for quality.
3: We have an element of control over the entire process. We can change the price for the game time we sell to affect the amount of Coin it is going to generate when sold on the in-game market. This gives us a knob we can adjust if we think that there is too little, or too much game time going into the system, or of the price being paid for that time is too high or too low. It's an essential part of our "Central Bank" mentality of how to manage the economy and avoid classic degenerate spirals of inflation and deflation.
So assuming you're willing to invest an arbitrary amount of real cash in acquiring training time, you then have to turn around and find a market for that training time. Then if you want to corner the market on a good, you not only have to buy all that material in town, but likely in all of the nearby towns. The global auction house in many MMOs is more vulnerable to this, where damage can propagate more quickly. In a localized economy, the actions take longer to spread, and word can easily get ahead of you if you're making a particular nuisance of yourself. Then you have to have somewhere to store the goods, and some way to get the goods where your storage is. Players could certainly artificially spike scarcity for a short while, but I don't think you'll see many players with the ability to do so long term.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That seems like you are taking the position that successful market manipulation or monopolizing a resource is abusive and that you would expect that it be stopped in PFO. Is that the case, or is the (possibly dickish) emergent economic system a feature?The way to stop it is for the publisher to stop the abusive behavior, not jury-rig a bandaid game mechanic. Why Blizzard chooses not to do this is beyond me,
I suspect that (much like any other form of griefing) there isn't a hard and fast rule on "this is bad" and "this is good." It's very much based on human arbitration.
Our justice will be swift, and arbitrary. Players will learn that they shouldn't try to figure out where the line is; there is no line. Bad behavior is in the eye of the beholder, and the eye is ours.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I read GW's official posts to date, There Will Not Be an Auction House in PFO. There will be markets in the style of EVE. Players will set prices. Other players will decide whether or not to pay those prices. Goods will only move from one settlement to another when carried by players. No instant goods delivery by mail, safe from interception. No bidding, unless a player runs a live auction in local chat or a voice communication program.
No Auction House. No AH. Separate markets, probably with the ability to compare prices between them (since players will figure out how to do that anyway), but no way to 100% safely move goods from one market to another.
In EVE, an alliance once set out to control the market for a particular good. They formed a cartel with other alliances, hunted down and killed independent gatherers whenever they could find them, and pretty successfully controlled the price of that good, for as long as they could a) hold the cartel together, and b) keep their own players interested in hunting independent gatherers.
To the best of my knowledge, CCP did not single out the cartel as griefers. They let the free market, alliance greed, and individual player boredom run their course.
Market manipulation will probably exist in PFO, but it will be very different than in WOW. We'll have to wait and see how GW will react. My guess is that they would warn, then ban, individual players violating the EULA, but not stop cartels from legitimately manipulating markets.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... CCP did not single out the cartel as griefers.
Ryan has repeatedly talked about CCP's conscious decision to allow and even reward anti-social behavior, and about how Goblinworks won't be as laissez-faire. I'm not suggesting GW would step in and stop the kind of thing you describe - I just don't know - but I think it's safe to say they might.
If the cartel you are referring to is the gallente ice interdiction which is the only attempt I can remember recently then you should also point out that they didn't succeed particularly in any case except for a few panic buyers. A lot of us only realised it had been happening after we read about it on blogs.
A very similar situation like the self proclaimed new order (miner bumpers) who if you believed the hype had shut down mining but in reality most don't even know they exist.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do not believe they have said so. They have said they do not intend to reward anti-social/anti-community behavior. I think what it comes down to is where you draw the line at abuse. One side will be fround upon, the other discouraged.
There is more than just the reference Nihimon is pointing at too, if memory serves. Ryan said they are most interested in the interests of their die hard fanatics than in plagues of cicadas and locusts, or words to that effect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sooooooo.... market PvP is considered unwelcome behavior by the design team?
I'm not sure who you're replying to, since you didn't quote anyone.
But on the chance you're replying to me, I'll say that was not at all my point. I was merely trying to point out that comparisons to the way CCP handled things in EVE won't necessarily hold.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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That seems like you are taking the position that successful market manipulation or monopolizing a resource is abusive and that you would expect that it be stopped in PFO. Is that the case, or is the (possibly dickish) emergent economic system a feature?
Yes, I would put a stop to it, especially in the beginning when such things might be much easier than they'll be later with tens of thousands of players and much more robust markets.
It's particularly egregious in World of Warcraft because they have a simulated (fake) economy and it is easy for the developers to see what is being done and by whom and to simply stop them from doing it.
In a fully developed virtual (real) economy, cornering a market is going to be exeedingly hard and we'll evaluate that case if it ever happens - but my intuition is that we'll break the corner for the good of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@HalfOrc:
1) Do you think it will be possible to distinguish multi-box and farm-toon scrip activities from formation combat?
2) Would anyone (except GW) be able to distinguish Apis Consortium style RP game activities from the activities of the "small cadre of players" to which you referred?
3) Do you expect this "small cadre of players" to ever have a company charter issued by an NPC(GW) controlled settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the cartel you are referring to is the gallente ice interdiction which is the only attempt I can remember recently then you should also point out that they didn't succeed particularly in any case except for a few panic buyers. A lot of us only realised it had been happening after we read about it on blogs.
A very similar situation like the self proclaimed new order (miner bumpers) who if you believed the hype had shut down mining but in reality most don't even know they exist.
Yes, I was referring to the Gallente ice interdiction. I saw some material claiming that it had been moderately successful, but that may very well have been propaganda.
@Karlbob
It is often difficult to sort the claims from reality on the Eve forums. If an event like that is a big deal you will hear loads of people in game talking about it is what I usually find, if I only hear about it on the forums I usually assume it is 90% propaganda frankly