Gold Selling

So continue the conversation of gold selling on its own thread, how does the community think of people selling gold for money?

And bowen I am continuing this here.

 

I think to keep things in context you need to draw a distinction between simply selling gold for cash.. and those who do it professionally. It is the latter which can really cause problems. It's not quite the same as "I'm leaving the game I may as well get some money out of it" or someone who occasionally offloads their excess.. which would probably be more of an inflation problem. Ideally you don't want people to have more than they feel they can spend just from normal gameplay.

 

not exactly what I am talking about. I am talking about the person who manipulates the game to produce gold in game for re sale (Real money) either through a third party or on his own.

 

Would that not be those who sell gold 'professionally' for profit?

I see this as a "two birds with one stone" scenario. The ability to farm gold in an exploitive manner both enables gold sellers and drives up inflation. Solving this problem tackles both issues.

Speaking of manipulation though.. that's getting to a more interesting area as there are potentially other means of doing that that doesn't involve farming. I think that's a matter of proper design and execution of vendors. Though I admit I'm not familiar with tricks that have been used in the past in other games.. but I do know that vendors with unlimited cash is a bad thing.

 

I think its maybe a moot point to discuss when Portalarium has micro-transactions, like buying in-game houses. Those are going to be worth a lot of in-game gold.

Ultimately, I think Bowen is right. The best thing to do is tackle it from the other end; which is to say that if its so easy to extract gold out of the game, then there's probably something else wrong with the game. Like, a sense of challenge.

 

the problem is accumulation, in the real world there is a finite amount of gold, theoretically you could acquire all of it, in such settings as this not so, you will never be able to have all of the gold as its the opposite, infinite .....

 

Just in theory. It depends on how they set up the economy which hasn't happened yet. You're assuming a standard sinks and faucet model but different ideas for a closed/finite economy are also possible.

Either way I have to disagree somewhat. Accumulation as a problem is a symptom, not a cause. It is what happens when players don't have anything they want to spend their money on. Regardless of what type of economy model is put into place, you need money to flow. If you're not spending money but playing normally, your input exceeds output.

I would say there's nothing wrong with accumulation in of itself. It is in our nature to save up and horde wealth. The problem is when there's no where for that wealth to go.

 

In many ways collecting and selling gold is no different than collecting and selling reagents. Gold is just one more collectible item in game. Gold gets singled out because it is the common currency that allows for the liquidity of all other items. That gold is a convenience as the common currency that makes it possible to liquidate anything for it, may be the design issue. It might be too convenient. It might be interesting if there was no gold in game at all to trade, and things had to be bought/sold/traded based on some measure of their own intrinsic value otherwise. Would this lead to people hoarding something like pigs to trade for swords?

 

Here are my observations:

1. A game that uses in-game currency; that can be substituted for a real cash digital item, subscription, cosmetic goods promotes gold sellers

2. Lack of "appropriate" market prices do to lack of competition increase inflationary pressures

3. Poor understanding of pricing by players

4.Players manipulating both need and supply

5. Launch period is the most vulnerable time for economy damaging strategies to be implemented (and every release there after)

6. Is your game design about "making money" or "adventuring"?

7. Do you need to make money to have a meaningful gameplay experience?

8. Does a company care where their revenue is coming from?

I have my personal answers to these but I'm opting out of this discussion - but I think that as a player of a crowd funded project; it may be harder to take if a game was produced that facilitated gold selling and the company did not get a substantial cut; specially if gold selling undermines the gaming pleasure/experience/enjoyment of the product; and additionally hinders the market value for the production of the 2nd year product. I can go on and on but I'll stop here; I'm simply working from the premise of keeping the game as a "game".

 

gold needs to be a means to an end, not an end

 

I agree with your disagreeance, as its a very good point, I distictly remember forgetting about gold completely in ultima beyond a certain point, not only could I afford what ever I wanted but there was nothing I wanted. I simply played the game to have fun.

 

It would seem that gold farmers would always find a way to infiltrate, no matter what measures are taken to prevent them.

Would it not be up to community to resist buying the gold from a farmer? If there is little to no demand, there's no profit to be made. Which is why they operate in the first place.

 

True enough, but what incentive can be offered to players to not buy in-game currency? If the money is transferred out of game then there's no way for Portalarium to tell the difference between someone who paid cash and someone just making a normal in-game trade of some kind.

How does one eliminate the demand for currency in such a way that doesn't kill the game economy?

I honestly don't see any way to control demand.. but there are plenty of ways to regulate supply.

 

Maybe only allow gold to be traded in very small amounts between players...this will discourage gold farmers from setting up deals ( Ex. 100000 gold for $30 @ their websites ). Won't be any use if they can

can only trade 2 gold pieces with you in game with one of their gold mule toons lol.

 

Then you kill high level transactions between players.. or they switch to other things like pink diamonds. Limiting the value of transactions is an economy killer. Imagine what it would do to the rare items market among other things.

 

Im not sure what they could do to prevent this then, unless they allow NPC's in game to be the only methods
of bartering, buying and selling items with. Don't allow trading of anything of value between players Coin, Gems, Etc. If player has anything of value they take it to an NPC in game.

 

Only real solution is to not worry about it. Create a fixed amount of gold in the game world and leave it at that. The whole idea of an infinite spigot of gold is silly. Notice that NPC vendors let us barter with real goods, not just gold. Let the market set the price and value of gold (limited supply) and let things run. No way you will EVER control this.

 

As I got dragged into this the other I shall throw in my tuppence worth.

• I have no problems with players buying/selling outside of game mechanics using real currency as the exchange. May the buyer beware when it comes down to buying pixels off a person or a company that has nothing to do with Portalarium.

For me that is the bottom line.

Now when it comes down to someone exploiting by use of automated systems to farm......that is different and I would hope that Portalarium would do everything they can to detect bots.

I have little interest if someone 'profits' from online gaming, they are using their own time and their own resources to do it. Other may simply choose to go to work, wait to receive their pay and then just buy something from the store.

The player economy will always respond to reflect how much wealth is within the game.

Players will always buy/sell offline where trading is available in an MMO. If you restrict the trade you will destroy the game.

 

one good thing is that there hopefully will not be a global auction house and vendors hopefully will be region specific and pricing can be maintained some what that way.

 

While they keep telling us nothing is set in stone.. the last word on global auction houses is that there won't be any. Nor should there be.