Why current trade restrictions do not stop RMT, and a proposed alternative: the Market License system

[thebloodyaugust]

Time for phase 2, attempt to get topic on staffs radar.

@Staff_Julie @STAFF_John @STAFF_Ethan @STAFF_Shawn

Please read through this topic and take it into consideration.

[ridleyco]

Heh, I don’t usually resort to that. I do think most of them read most of these. Especially and obviously Julie. She’s been all over the place since she was brought on.

What the heck, though - time is short. I’ll try to summon the mysterious @GM_Erick, too. He’s an idea man.

Unrelated, whoa, 10 users, 10 likes? How long can I keep universal agreement going?

[SynysterOne]

Despite not having much to suggest myself, I’m going to poke holes in your suggestion.

• With the suggested system you are preventing low level players from selling potentially really valuable rare items at an appropriate price.

• The amount of movable silver would also have to be adjusted for inflation, and couldn’t be universal for every server.

• Players would also need a means of knowing what their current amount of movable silver is.

• Forcing players into any behavior is a no-no. Some people don’t like quests. Some don’t like grouping. Some don’t like dungeons.
  There are even players who legitimately like grinding and will sit in a single mob spawn for 10+ hours straight, and will do solely this to get to cap level.

You would have to set the requirement for any such system as something that EVERY player is going to reach, but will hinder bots/gold sellers. Perhaps something like 10,000 mobs, and 10 bosses killed to unlock the auction house. This gets bots out into the open, and requires that gold sellers even put work into their accounts that will sell items, while only mildly inconveniencing players.
Though this is altogether pointless if gold sellers/buyers aren’t caught and banned as no amount of work will stop them if they only have to do it once.

As far as 1:1 trading goes. Just restrict it to no silver trading.
Some people will balk at the idea, but players will find a way. If silver can’t be used to buy items, then a commonly used item will be. For example, potions.
If potions aren’t universally needed, then enhancement items.
The bottom line being, there IS something that can be substituted for silver.

However, I believe this all to be moot as IMC games real intent is likely just to monetize trading and tax gold sellers.
The only way that will change is if there is a huge communal outcry over it.

Ooops, I didn’t intend this to be such a large post.

[Daenerys]

I am going to poke holes in your holes.

With the suggested system you are preventing low level players from selling potentially really valuable rare items at an appropriate price.

While true, those low level players can simply save the rare item until they increase their silver trade cap. It is a mild inconvenience, but I wouldn’t say it completely ruins the idea.

The amount of movable silver would also have to be adjusted for inflation, and couldn’t be universal for every server.

The cap should be fairly high, @ridleyco’s numbers seem a bit too low to work. Although over time the numbers might need to be adjusted for inflation, hopefully that would only be at most one a year and should be easy for devs to do during a maintenance. There should also be no limit once you reach max silver cap. If a bot can reach that level, it will hurt like hell when they get banned.

Players would also need a means of knowing what their current amount of movable silver is.

This I completely agree with. It could be just as easy as adding that info to your inventory below your current silver

Forcing players into any behavior is a no-no. Some people don’t like quests. Some don’t like grouping. Some don’t like dungeons.There are even players who legitimately like grinding and will sit in a single mob spawn for 10+ hours straight, and will do solely this to get to cap level.

This is probably the only hole that I don’t think can be fixed. The game already tries to force you down a linear story line though… it would be nice if there was a way to fix this hole, but I can’t think of any.

As far as 1:1 trading goes. Just restrict it to no silver trading
Some people will balk at the idea, but players will find a way.
If silver can’t be used to buy items, then a commonly used item will be. For example, potions.
If potions aren’t universally needed, then enhancement items.
The bottom line being, there IS something that can be substituted for silver.

And what is to stop gold-sellers from selling potions instead? Restricting silver trading won’t solve that problem.

[thebloodyaugust]

potentially really valuable rare items at an appropriate price.

Where are they getting said rare items at a low lvl? the lowest item with any decent value i can remember is arde dagger.

The amount of movable silver would also have to be adjusted for inflation, and couldn’t be universal for every server.

He mentioned those are adjustable place holder values previously

Players would also need a means of knowing what their current amount of movable silver is.

Not so much a hole but a quality of life change, that would require a display of some sort i guess?

Forcing players into any behavior is a no-no. Some people don’t like quests. Some don’t like grouping. Some don’t like dungeons.

Players already have to do the story quests to access certain things so, its not really changing that.

Perhaps something like 10,000 mobs, and 10 bosses killed to unlock the auction house.

This is easier for bots to obtain these then players. Quests is a better option to exclude bots and the players already need to do the story quests.

[ridleyco]

I was wondering how long that’d last. Okay, I’ll try these on!

1. There are actually a few of these. Those vubbe fighter gauntlets spring to mind. This is probably the lowest level thing I’d call so valuable it might break this system. Of course, they could simply wait to sell it, if they didn’t like the prices they’d get when it first dropped for them. It’s not that bad.

2. This is an extremely good point. So good I’m putting it in the OP.

3. I agree, and figured it basically went without saying it would have to be integrated in the interface, probably with a tooltip explaining what the restriction was and how to increase their market limits.

4. Unfortunately, players who only play like bots must definitely be collateral damage for this to work. I couldn’t think of any means of saving them from the agony of having to experience each important story quest (not all of the world’s fetch quests - just the important plot stuff everyone has to go through) and dungeon once. I’d suggest nordiccrayon’s hidden license quests, but to stop bots those would have to contain party-based requirements and other things your hypothetical human bots would also hate.

Considering the severity of the problem, I’d say their frustration is an acceptable loss, compared to the frustration absolutely everyone is shackled with now.

[SynysterOne]

I’m not hypothetical!
I love grinding, which is a large part of my excitement for this game.
However I do quest and group with people!

I think you all are severely underestimating the amount of work keeping up with the inflation could be.

If Story quests are truly unavoidable ‘checkpoints’ then it would indeed be better than a set number of kills.

P.S
If gold sellers start selling potions, we’ve won the war.

[lemaitre_dulotus]

Clever idea.
Still, it shouldn’t be an excuse to prohibit 1:1 trades, so I’m totally supporting @nordiccrayon.

Anyway, all this anti-goldselling/botting topics are flying over my head.
In my opinion, theses limits are only here to sell tokens. Fighthing against goldselling is only an excuse. You (I) could even go farther and say that the token is like a licence for gold selling… “You’re doing many trades a months ? So you’re a gold seller ? Okay, then you have to buy my tokens.”

[Derael]

The idea is great, especially taking into account that silver sellers who will get lvl 280 would be punished really hard if they are confirmed as silver sellers (by account deletion). So several months of raising the character would be wasted.

Also the system should punish silver buyers equally (with account deletion), with probably the single way to get their account back with paying the “bill”, like buying the most expensive TP pack in the shop.(one time offer though, if someone makes the same mistake twice => account deletion).

This will make the game almost free of bots.

---

My another suggestion is about 1:1 trading and inter account trading. If matket license will be implemented, then 1:1 trading and interaccount trading should be allowed, at least to some extent.

Any silver buyers will most probably have token bought if they don’t want to lose too much on taxes. So restricting 1:1 trading becomes for tokens only becomes kind of pointless. Yet silver shouldn’t be traded for sure, and orange/luxury items from the list should be possible to trade only if players are members of the same guild. While logs for trading luxury items inside guilds should be visible to Guild Masters so they can find out silver traders by themselves and report about them to admins. This will encourage new players to join guilds ans bring a new life to guilds system.

Talking about interaccount trading:

Updated FAQ on the Latest Announcement

Actually there is one way, though it's taxed hard. You can buy very expensive item from the market, transfer it to your alt and then sell at a lower price. This way you'll lose like 40% of the money but eventually transfer it to your character. Though I've posted a suggestion about enabling limited silver transfer (like 10000 at level 1 + 2000*1.01^lvl per level, up to level 200) but restricting AH trading for lower level(below 200) characters instead, so they won't be able to sell items highe…

It will help to support your lower level characters a bit, but avoid excessive “overfeeding”.

[ridleyco]

We’ll find out if they really are trying to use these restrictions as more than a cash grab by whether or not they do what it takes to make their restrictions actually work.

It’s definitely part cash grab, but it’s entirely possible that they’re trying to kill two birds with one stone. I’m not opposed to paying for a job well done.

[Anteiser]

You forgot the token and enhanced headgear.

[moises_andre12]

I like the fidelity system for gold trading.

Also, about the market cap prices.

I think it should be set at around something like: average selling price of item ± 25% +3% for every potential not spent +7% for every potential spent with success, -1% for every potential spent that failed. Or something like this, this would the market would balance itself, if no one is selling it you can simply set the market but if you set it up too high someone will come and lower the price very fast as if this gets implemented people would know the price they can put on their items.

Not sure if it’s easy to do in a developers point of view, but seems like a very solid market control mechanism. (Good for bots with sh*t for high prices with the intention of trading gold, as it would be impossible to do so if the item is in the market with a normal price already, this would also give potential more value and they would not use high-value items).

You could also put a system that makes it possible to set that if there’s no one selling the item currently, the system picks the last value it was being sold and lets the player put a value of last average ± 100%. So you can make it come back to the real value and even send a printscreen of the overtaxed price to staff, all by yourself. Also making it possible to double the item value if you don’t like it’s earlier price.

[alairkoraius]

I like it. I feel like this system, if it applied globally to market and 1 to 1 trading would be optimal, but I feel like this should be in place of the current restrictions, not in addition to them. I don’t want the game to feel like a trial version- as if I’m some sort of criminal for paying for the game once instead of every month. I am perfectly fine with there being restrictions on how much silver I can trade to people, but locking all 1 to 1 trading and most of your ability to perform legitimate market transactions behind a monthly paywall is way too strict.

Maybe as a way to keep free 1 to 1 trading viable, items could have their own value that draws from your silver cap when they’re traded. It could be based on the current market price, or just a percentage of the market cap price.

[Ishimaru]

i agree with this In Blade and Soul all bot have a ■■■■■■■ premium membership so basically bots can buy token then use it then player suffer for nothing

[mark_christjohn]

A thousand times yes, sure it’ll be a significant amount of extra work for the devs but it really is the better solution to the problem. I’d be willing to wait an extra month for release if I have to for them to make this happen and I’m sure anyone else who can understand the issue well enough would be willing to wait as well.
(Braindead people who don’t give a fuck should have no say on shit like this)

[iago_l]

It looks like a great idea but, what’s keeping the bots from selling accounts with Millions of silver?(Like how they’re doing in kTOS).

[ridleyco]

Nothing. Account sales in a game with a f2p option and open registration are impossible to stop. Even if botting itself was somehow magically defeated forever, there’d still be players selling their own accounts.

As I mentioned in my OP, account selling isn’t nearly as bad as RMT between accounts because there’s a far smaller customer base. Most people want silver and goods on their main account so they can use them without starting over.

Additionally, if a “level vs story quests/instanced dungeons completed” metric was implemented as I described, and it was flagging accounts that got to unusually high levels from grinding alone for a quick look by a GM to see if they’re a player or a bot, automated account sales would still be caught in that part of the net.

[Daenerys]

It looks like a great idea but, what’s keeping the bots from selling accounts with Millions of silver?(Like how they’re doing in kTOS).

Nothing. This suggestion does not try to fix that problem. It tries to come up with an alternative to the silver/market restrictions, and possibly the 1:1 trading restrictions.

The silver/market and 1:1 trading restrictions which do not prevent the selling of botted accounts either.

[Derael]

Also selling account is not that harmfulfor the game economics from the start, comparing to selling silver.

I’m not even sure why it’s prohibited. It was classic move in lots of MMOs to sell your account when you stop playing to compensate part of the time wasted on the game with money.

Also there are quite few players who are eager to buy an account, so the impact on the game will be insingnificant.

[iago_l]

Well, if it’s not stopping that, I don’t know how much of a difference there’d be for this game, considering how selling accounts with silver as a form of RMT is already how RMT is working in kTOS