Tree of Savior Forum

Posible Solution against RMT

Suggestions
#1

We are all aware that the courrent plague in ToS are RMTers and I’ve seen before a game with a system to fight fire with fire, I’ve mentioned it before in a couple threads, allowing silver vs TP trade among players on a special market.

Here’s how it works:

Scenario #1:
Player A has 0 silver, but has a lot of money in his bank account IRL, he wants some silver.

Player B has 3kk silver he farmed by endlessly repeating dungeons and questing non-stop, but he has an empty bank account, and wants a costume from the TP shop.

Player A goes to the special market, were after purchasing 1000TP from IMC can register that TP in stacks of 100TP for 150k silver each.

Player B then goes to that market and sees the 100TP for 150k silver, so he purchases 2 stacks, now he has 200TP on his account, and player A now has 300k silver, so player B can now afford the costume from the TP shop, player A has the silver he wanted, and IMC profited out of it because player A purchased some TP, that player B is now able to spend.

Scenario #2:

Player A has 200k silver laying around on his character and he wants some TP for his new hairstyle.

Player B just realized he’s 200k short to enhance his weapon, and he has 200TP on his account he previously purchased from IMC.

Player A goes to the special Market and places his 200k silver and prices it at 200TP, so player B goes to that market and sees that there’s 200k silver being sold for 200TP, so he purchases it.

Player B now has the 200k silver he needed, player A now has enough TP to get his new hairstyle, and IMC made a profit out of that transaction.

TL;DR

Since there’s virtually no way to completely stop RMTers then, why not allow players to trade in-game currency and cash currency in game? that way players are encouraged to purchase silver from LEGIT in-game sellers while IMC makes a profit out of it aswell.

At the same time, bot-powered silver sells plummet because there’s a LEGITIMATE way to purchase in game currency with real cash, in-game courrency that was farmed with REAL effort, without using bots, so the economy isn’t harmed.

Any thoughts?

#2

I see one problem though, RMTers could just use bot to reach higher level and then sell acc.

I might be wrong but…

#3

The economy would still be harmed if botting continues because even if your said scenario between Silver <-> TP does happen, all the bots who farmed silvers non-stop can just buy high amounts of TP using silvers and sell said TP through typical RMT methods with a cheaper Real cash price which further expands their profit. One way though is if the TP stack becomes untradable if it was gained through auction house/trade which limits it’s usage to only on that character. If IMC can implement something like a specific portion of total TP is untradable then this might just work.

#4

it’s not that hard really, once you register your TP on that market it becomes an item like this: http://www.tosbase.com/database/items/490031/
and you can still use event TP to get things from the TP shop, and you can’t register event TP on the market.

#5

Yeah so after using the event TP then you can go register the same amount of TP to the market and it will become an even TP token again? That wouldn’t really work xD

Like I said, IMC has yet to implement something that enforces how much Silver/TP that a character has are untradable which makes it impossible for the bots to transfer silver to RMT’s main account and sell the silver gained from bots because it would be very time consuming to log unto every single bot and do the transaction. Once we get a ban/report feature, botting will be much harder on their end.

Well that is, if IMC really does manage to implement something like that by which I hope they can and will D:

#6

This is what I mean:
http://imgur.com/7ivo6y8

and things like a token, that can be placed on the regular market, won’t be purchasable with event TP, but we agree that IMC needs to do something against bots cause that’s going to rain on everyone’s parade.

1 Like
#7

Oh I see now seems I didn’t really see that separate section for event TP
Your idea might just work out well indeed xD

#8

The problem is that RMTs can get their silver with less effort than a “real” player, because they use bots and stuff… So they will just continue to offer their RMT “services” out of the game because they can sell cheaper than ppl sell it ingame.

The maybe most famous example here is EVE online, even here you will see websites that sell game time cards cheaper then CCP does… Guess where that price gap comes from?

#9

Pay 2 Win?

Pay 2 Win?

This system works on Guild Wars 2 but there the differences matter alot, you cant spend money to increase attributes of skills or even get that super rare recipe or weapon. Most of the items there are cosmetic ones. i like the idea but is Pay 2 Win as it gets.

#10

thing is, RMTers will be there no matter what, and I don’t really see it as pay 2 win since you are not getting anything a f2p player can’t get, as a matter of fact, f2p players are getting TP so they can get the things that IMC doesn’t let them now, and as someone said at the begning you could already do it by selling tokens from the market, yet this system will discourage silver sellers…

#11

As mentioned earlier, other companies have tried to remove RMT by competing with them directly and offering in-game currency for real money as well. This was done in Guild War 2 and to some extent with Diablo 3. Both systems are considered failures.

RMT Store case study (Guild Wars 2)

Guild War 2 also sold Gold on their own cash shop but could not stop RMTs. Instead RMTs started offering gold at lower prices than the store. In the end, the dependance of the system on gold completely destroyed the game economy, causing massive price inflations and a focus on efficiently grinding gold rather than learning and clearing content (which universally favors and promotes botting). In the end, the auctions actually became a RMT hub with cases where the team couldn’t easily tell normal Users apart from RMT traders because the two were so interconnected.

RMT Auction case study (Diablo 3)

Diablo 3 had 2 auction markets: 1 that traded items for in-game currency, and 1 that traded items for real-world currency. People ofc flocked to the real-world currency market and completely ignored the in-game currency. This was largely because there was no reason not to auction an item off, but it completely destroyed the economy and the long-term engagement with the game, ultimately damaging the life of the game.

Anyway, the following section details my underlying assumptions of the problems that have to be addressed. It’s not based on how to stop bots and RMT, but on how the current economy can be exploited by anyone.

1. Everything is based on Silver.

Everything in the game can ultimately be bought with the in-game currency, Silver. This means that Silver becomes the best and easiest way to obtain anything in the game. Consequently, player activity will focus on efficiently obtaining Silver; and I will admit it is very hard to be much more efficient than to have an automated program earning Silver for you 24/7.

So I would really like to decouple a portion of the economy from Silver. It doesn’t have to be a large portion: it may simply be a few rare upgrade/crafting mats or the very rare Legendary (Purple and Red items) tier of items.

The point is that Silver has a very limited role in what it can actually obtain for you in-game. In some ways, it lets you buy more pots, reduces downtime, and may let you avoid grinding X Mob for Y Drop. The point is that extra Silver, like a cash shop, becomes a convenience instead of a “win” button.

2. Provide multiple ways to get the same items

A lot of items can only be obtained by killing monsters and obtaining a random drop. While I know they’ve included other forms of progression like crafting, these are still dependent on the requisite Recipes dropping from monsters.

In this case, it becomes an additional quest you gain after an Item Drop to complete the item. It’s still a Drop and consequently can most efficiently be gathered by an automated program.

Instead, I would like to separate recipes from the Drop economy. Maybe you earn Pages for every raid boss you kill, or for every dungeon you complete. The point is that you can trade (or RP-wise, piece together) those Pages for an appropriately leveled recipe at one point. This way, players don’t all start at the same point: “Kill X Enemy until it drops that one Mad Loot Item”.

It also will cause players to spread out to more remote maps (like dungeons and instanced maps) as they might find one area too crowded for their taste and instead have an option to build out their character in another way. It provides players with a clear indicator of progress instead of an all-or-nothing mentality, which is like gamification 101 nowadays.

Whole recipes may still drop from monsters, but the point is that a large portion of items can be obtained through alternate means that are not Silver or Killing, but rather by completing game content.

Admittedly, this second idea only works with instanced content. There is a potential for players to afk or bots to just stay in the boss room and hit the boss once to get “credit” and farm up the game tokens that way.

TLDR

Official RMTs don’t work to remove RMT or bots. Focus on creating a Progression Economy instead of a Silver Economy. This will move Bots away from leveling areas, so they don’t interfere with the gameplay experience.

#12

Check this out and tell me what you think.

#13

I somehow doubt anyone would whana buy a level 600 character account whose character and team name is “sdasdfl sodfjoaijsd”

1 Like
#14

You can sell an account with a little TP on and then say to buyer change it, money makes money.

#15

True, you can change Team Name. But can’t change your Character’s name