Gold farmers - getting rid of them

Keep in mind that gold farmers will start infesting the game eventually, when it goes live.

Just giving the developers a heads-up, coming up with some type of innovative functionality to prevent these annoying gold farmers from spamming and hassling legit players...

 

The thing is, you cannot really ever stop them, because you cannot have automatic systems that can tell if its a 'bot' or a genuin player selling items / advertising items.

However, selective multiplayer opens up ways to not see them as much as just aint there in normal MMO's... But that in itself have other drawbacks.

Oh. Well

 

You're not going to stop gold farming as an activity because it's simply playing the game with a certain purpose in mind. However, I DO hope that there will be ways to limit or eliminate the Seller Spam in the chat system.

 

I've been a gold farmer in every online game I've played. Please don't ban me.


(Note: there is a difference between a gold farmer and a botter)

And yes, between selective multi-player and no scene-wide chat system we probably wont be seeing spam that way. mailboxes or whispers are another story though.

 

Oh I'll also mention they have "plans" for farmers/botters... But they aren't revealing much about it.. The more they reveal the easier it is to circumvent.

 

This keeps coming up.

People find some grinding relaxing, so there's nothing wrong with allowing people to do some mindless stuff and feel like it improves their character.

That said, the game shouldn't be grind to win. As in, someone playing 1000 hours vs 50 shouldn't have a noticeably stronger character. It can look cool. It have have lots of achievements or other cosmetic titles and such, but it shouldn't be statistically stronger.

Someone playing 1000 hours will be stronger because they've figured stuff out and made friends. Not because they've gotten gold and acquired statistically better gear.

As long as the grind to win mechanic isn't in the game, I don't worry about farmers or most pay to win scenarios. Because you're really not short circuiting much of anything if you don't actually know how to play or gain an reputation making friends.

 

If they have a official way to buy and sell gold in game; not sure the ill effects of gold farming will be much of an issue. Or at least more within their realm to control by not allowing massive transactions. In the end, if 2 people can exchange items there is no way to stop this behaviour. They will just be spending a lot of money trying to police it. Better they make money off the activity instead IMHO.

Not a fan of this, but sometimes its the lesser of 2 evils that has the least impact.

 

Well if we are crafting the best stuff, just make everything in the shop Bound to account. If its still part of the game design that no better weapons, armour etc from in game MOB drops.

And selling gold would be a gift for some, not all profiteers are gold farmers, If you can buy the gold on day 1 and they buy the plots for sale with in game gold they have control of the economy.
If you make all Land plots bound to account they have nothing anyone will need to buy gold for.

If I were a wealthy designer and I read most game designers really suck. I would buy up all the lots and sit on them if they sell gold in the shop even better, I could buy the gold to pay the rent from RG.
Sit back and watch it get sucked into the Abyss.

 

I can tell you one thing for sure, I wont be trading off any of my founder rewards till the year 2020

(6 years into MMOs seems to be their peak, if they last that long, held true for UO/WOW/EQ)

 

Most wealthy and famous people understand how sensationalized the media industry is and how easy it is to be misquoted to get headlines. That is an old story.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/27127/Garriott-Rebuts-Game-Designers-Suck-Quote

 

Want to deter gold farmers? Here's a way: don't trade with them! If people didn't buy gold from gold farmers, they wouldn't have a business. The only way they can do this is because people are willing to trade with them.

And if someone does buy up all the lots and sell them back to people for real cash...well, I guess I'm sleeping under the stars!

Because I'll tell you now: I will never pay real money to anyone, other than the game developers themselves, for in-game items.

 

While you can't stop them, why not make it less of an issue? In medieval society there was a lot of class restrictions on what you can or cannot own based on your class and relationship with the nobility. This would make reputation (something that cannot be transfered normally) a second thing that needs to be worried about. Gold would still be useful but it would not be all of the total wealth equation. It might make gold farming less necessary.