Goals:
- Reduce long-term f2p restrictions, removing “forced”/p2w Token sub.
- Allow Token sponsorship, thus trading between new players.
Both cover major player concerns that can be seen in numerous steam reviews. I hope this will improve both game rating and quality of life for players.
Now in details,
- First goal:
Reduce restrictions for players who spend N amount of money or buy X amount of Tokens. This includes (unlimited) trading between players, somewhat reduced market tax and additional market slot(s).
Reasons: Current restrictions are too severe and botters will not spend more money or silver than needed on a single Token because they will most likely be banned during those 30 Token days. Thus this proposition will reduce restrictions for legit players only.
- Second goal:
Allow sponsorship by gifting Tokens (with reduced bonuses) to other players to allow trading and cooperation with new players.
Reasons:
Because removing character to character trade limits will promote botting, making a way to allow trading with new characters via sponsorship is required. Reduced bonuses will include (new, I hope) f2p trading restrictions, but will not touch anything that improves character leveling.Gifting Tokens is made to promote cooperation and helping new players, not to allow gifting full Token benefits.
Detailed wall-of-text
- First goal:
Tokens were made to fight bots and earn dosh. Because f2p players can buy Tokens with silver they both maintain healthy Token market and fully enjoy gameplay but that creates a problem, both f2p and p2p players have to buy Tokens to enjoy gameplay, otherwise they’ll be at severe disadvantage due to market and trading restriction which were made to fight bots. This creates the “forced”/p2w feel that repels players.
Differentiating bots and legit players is required to lift restriction from legit players only. Because botter accounts are disposable, they won’t need more than 1 or few Tokens to make their deals before their account gets banned. Thus only legit players will benefit from this system.
Because less Tokens will be needed (for players who are fine with less restricted f2p benefits), paying players will move to trading other cash shop items thus balancing the price of Tokens rather than creating constant demand and p2w level prices. This will also create a healthy TP <-> silver exchange market and retain the playerbase.
Because 30 trade limit is again there to fight bots, it can be removed for those legit players. It might require additional Tokens bought or a bit more money spent but it’s a nice bonus which will be too inefficient and unprofitable for a botter to get.
- Second goal:
Allowing players to trade between each other without investing time or money will create unlimited bot (works) chains that making buyer and seller (and hoarder) accounts harder to track and ban.
So what if someone, who can spend cash or buy a Token with silver wants to help his friend? Gifting Tokens. By allowing that you can help your new player friend to get into the game faster (thus increasing the conversion rate) and because full market trading bonuses (and maybe some others) will be limited so it will be much less useful for late-game players to get those “gifts” thus will not be used as one of the goods by botters.
For botters themselves it’s risky to gift Tokens to characters who yet to bot their silver (that they can use to get Token themselves) as they can be banned sooner so that they might lose investment and go negative.
p.s. Remove p2w Token bonuses (movespeed and buffcount) from PvP and GvG.
p.p.s. I assume both buyers and sellers gets banned for RMT stuff…