Selling SOTA Gold ? (Dev) Replied

I'm sick of Gold sellers, they ruin the economy of a game fast, for the casual player who is honest and kills 100 monsters to earn a meager few thousand gold only to find out the cheapest (good) sword of his rank costs 5,000,000 gold due to inflation.

What's the current/future policy on Gold sellers for SOTA? Thanks.

 

I have a feeling it will be in line with most other video games (not allowed), I don't think it is necessarily a moral decision it's a legal decision, if they condone RMT they would have to support it and possibly they could have some legal repercussions related scams, fraud, etc...

Problem is: Whether they allow it or not, it will still exist. The only way to stop it is good account security, and people not buying.

 

There is a difference between not allowed and a non-enforcement policy. Wallet warrior win button gamers will always buy and the Chinese gold farmers will always sell. Illegal or against rules, it won't matter.

I'd like to know, as Razimus, what the SotA team thinks first and foremost as they can probably tell us that straight away. I'd like to know down the track who will be running the economy, supply and demand from players, SotA team themselves, or gold farmers. If they wish it to be player driven, and they deem the practice unacceptable in the game then I'd like details on how they are going to put that into practice.

Of course that is probably a way away, but this topic is going to come up quite a bit.

 

Hopefully, being on one "shard" will help them be able to track this.

 

I think the problem is really the other way around. Most games don't have enough wealth leaving the economy compared to the wealth generated from playing the game. After time has passed, the veteran players have a mass of wealth, and new players are still killing goblins for 10 copper coins. Veterans start rolling alts, and use their main's wealth to big up the prices for crafted goods for their alts. New players can't compete, so they demand a way to catch up - enter the gold seller.

Gold farmers do generate more gold per hour than the average player for sure, but the problem is really that the economy is weak/nonexistent and inflation runs rampant regardless of the presence of gold farmers.

I think that RMTs should be part of the game, since its going to happen anyways it may as well be secured and free from scammers. If they use some of this kickstarter money to bring in an economist to set them in the right direction, it should be a better experience for everyone involved, veteran, newbie, gold seller, gold buyer.

 

Selective multiplayer should eliminate gold farmers, I think that's what Richard was saying. You have no reason to be friends with a gold farmer unless you're a gold farmer. There's very little chance of spam characters getting in your game, and it really is a low amount of money.

If two friends, on the other hand, want to trade in-game gold for money that's their business.

 

I disagree with the idea of RMT being a negative. A game that has a strong RMT market shows the true strength of that game in that players enjoy it so much that they are willing spend extra money on it. It is when there is no demand at all for RMT that a game should truly be worried.

RMT can and will never be stopped. Sure you can ban game accounts, but the cost of bannings will never be remotely close amount of profit made by a seller. It is simply the price of doing business.

On the flip side, it is also best a game company never get involved in the RMT market. As a player, I never want to feel like the game is being designed to create artificial demand for a in game item that I must buy from a game company. D3 is a great example of this. Just make a great game and let the players decide amongst themselves what is of value.

 

I'll add my support to RMT as well. The only problem with RMT comes from third party sites that use exploits to obtain the goods they sell to begin with which is more of a problem with exploits and exploiters than with RMT or use malware to hack players' accounts.

A healthy ingame economy that can sink gold as well as generate it should keep gold prices more in check than trying to eliminate RMT.

A well run RMT marketplace run by the game company can provide a safe and secure system for the players and an additional income stream for the company.

And for those who are adamantly against RMT, they always have the option to NOT USE IT.

 

Perhaps make the ingame gold Bitcoins. That way it is cashable as real world money.

 

RTM is indeed awesome no discussion.
Just need to invest some part of the projects budget to regulate it and make it secure. There are tons of ways to make it available and hire people specialized on developing the processes for it. It is more a matter of if they want to create it or not for this game, if it is within the Architecture scope of the project, if it is affordable by balancing the main project's indicators - Cost X Time X Scope. But truth be said, how could they prevent it from happening? People go to ebay or anywhere else, and sell the stuff they want. How could LB and his team possibly prevent this to occur? Besides all of that, this is something apart from the game, those are side activities. If people want to do it, then... Done.

 

I like the idea of adopting Bitcoins, but then the money ingame would be much more scarce.

I think the problem is not enough money-sinks, and lack of ingame option to trade gold or whatever so some people resort to gold-farmers.

 

When you /ignore a gold spammer they just log off and make a new character. It's always been strange that the games never add an /ignoreaccount command.

 

PK... Full loot, problem solved.

I'll start the first gold farming PKing guild. Who's in?

 

Full PvP/full loot would be a way to discourage gold farming...

 

LB talked to Iolo about selling some crossbows, in RL to gamers, so there will be items forsale, much like in kickstart.
There is only 1 online char per account, so if you ignore someone, they would have to delete char & make a new one to be able to talk to you again, If that's possible, since you can learn any skill, there is no need to re-roll for the sake of skill change, the only reason that comes to mind is name change or gender change & there could be a vendor name change at the town register after a quest. This is not you playing Conan or whatever, this is you playing You
There should be no global chat, only tile chat (public) & friend/guild global.
Multiple /ignorethisgoldseller along with server listening to them would turn the person 'Red' not welcome in any village/town/city & could be pked

 

As stated above, there is no stopping RMT. The best way to avoid abuse is for Potolarium to manage it. I know EVE Online has been mentioned several times here and there, but the way they handle it is A) crack down on bots B) selling a transferable item in the form of 30 days game time, that can either be sold in game for ISK or IRL for real cash.

 

Just allow open PVP with full loot and these gold farmers will be gone.

 

Yes, Owain, and it'd also discourage players, which would discourage more money going to the game, which would discourage the future of the game.


Felucca had its good sides, I suppose, but it's a relic, 13 years in the grave, let it sleep peacefully

 

We hate gold-sellers too, and have already begun discussion on ways we can combat it. So, hopefully, it will rarely if ever be a detriment to your gameplay experience.

 

I hope this is more towards the "companies" that use scripting, exploits, and spamming and less towards the single player who may end up selling an item here or there to another player in a private transaction.

I'm not an active RMT buyer or seller (though I would be more of a seller if given the opportunity) mainly because I don't see the need to buy something I can get by playing the game and on the selling side, for most games due to the exploit/script sellers the end result would be making a small fraction of minimum wage unless you somehow end up with some one-of-a-kind item. However, I'm a big proponent of a Free Market system when and where possible.