Direct player to player trades. Why is this missing?

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

I always thought the idea of this game was to play within it rather than to allow players to act outside it with no penalties or repercussions.
The game isn't designed to work in this way. One player, one ship.
Wings were given so friends / family can play together but the design of the game wasn't changed to accommodate that. It was about the social aspects and not game changing in its mechanics.
If certain areas where designated and focused to wing play then I wouldn't mind that but I would like it to be flagged in some way as a danger zone to a player(like SSS). Another example would be if a CG is running, it's on Galnet, so Open players who aren't about the PvP can avoid it. Information is very effective this way.
Same should be for PP Control Systems / Anarchy's as just a general players understanding of the game. Some systems should just be avoided as there's a greater chance there may be other, and probably more hostile players lurking (both NPC and Human).
This works both ways, for those looking for a fight and those wanting to avoid one.
The information is already there in the Galaxy / System map if players choose to look...except very random encounters which can be avoided very quickly.
I'd usually say "hi" first but that's just me.

Player to player trading allows players to act outside the game mechanics...and that's why it doesn't exist.
And, if exploited, could make it an unofficial or even official P2W scenario which they've always been against.
So, it's really unlikely to happen beyond what currently exists.

If you don't think humans will exploit any given opportunity then you haven't lived long enough and there's enough recent evidence to seal that particular case.

This is a game you need to learn how to play, shortcuts will only devalue your experience and make you make threads about things like grinding and very one dimensional topics focused on only one element of the game when the game has so much more to offer, especially when fleshed out by player participation. Arguments are won / lost all the time but a lot of good ideas always come up from many different people. This should continue.
Sadly, as the game is a work in progress, it becomes a target for such things as they add things, only to have to remove them until they are fixed because humans always find a way to take advantage. Long range smuggling being one but they brought it back in a good, challenging way which was cool.

So yeah, P2P trading I'm pretty much against. Humans can't be trusted and should never be given too much Power outside of the game.
I don't mind the cargo drops, it teaches players an element of the game and takes time.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Ok,
So I read your (OP) whole post (you've got a good writing style btw).

*** I am very annoyed that I can't give my noobie friends a quick boost through a cred transfer ***

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with you. Adding ANY sort of real money mechanic into the game, at all, will absolutely ruin it for me. If FD can come up with a brilliant work-around that doesn't require real world transactions then more power to them. Right now ED is a game that stands apart in a world of games where "Pay x to get y! It isn't game breaking, it's just for fun!" No. No. No no no no no.
HELL no. I don't want this dream of a game to lose it's personality to this most horrible of concepts that has poisoned gaming for the last decade.

Yes, you can pay real money for paint jobs. Cool. I can get with that. I've bought several. That literally changes nothing in game other than cosmetics.

In order to keep the game free of the horrible real world transaction cesspool, I am willing to deal with some minor annoyances.

You missed the mark by a running mile, and you're still going. There was no mentioning of real money anywhere in the OP except in reference to the possibility that third parties would illegally do it without Frontier's permission.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

I always thought the idea of this game was to play within it rather than to allow players to act outside it with no penalties or repercussions.
The game isn't designed to work in this way. One player, one ship.
Wings were given so friends / family can play together but the design of the game wasn't changed to accommodate that. It was about the social aspects and not game changing in its mechanics.
If certain areas where designated and focused to wing play then I wouldn't mind that but I would like it to be flagged in some way as a danger zone to a player(like SSS). Another example would be if a CG is running, it's on Galnet, so Open players who aren't about the PvP can avoid it. Information is very effective this way.
Same should be for PP Control Systems / Anarchy's as just a general players understanding of the game. Some systems should just be avoided as there's a greater chance there may be other, and probably more hostile players lurking (both NPC and Human).
This works both ways, for those looking for a fight and those wanting to avoid one.
The information is already there in the Galaxy / System map if players choose to look...except very random encounters which can be avoided very quickly.
I'd usually say "hi" first but that's just me.

Player to player trading allows players to act outside the game mechanics...and that's why it doesn't exist.
And, if exploited, could make it an unofficial or even official P2W scenario which they've always been against.
So, it's really unlikely to happen beyond what currently exists.

If you don't think humans will exploit any given opportunity then you haven't lived long enough and there's enough recent evidence to seal that particular case.

This is a game you need to learn how to play, shortcuts will only devalue your experience and make you make threads about things like grinding and very one dimensional topics focused on only one element of the game when the game has so much more to offer, especially when fleshed out by player participation. Arguments are won / lost all the time but a lot of good ideas always come up from many different people. This should continue.
Sadly, as the game is a work in progress, it becomes a target for such things as they add things, only to have to remove them until they are fixed because humans always find a way to take advantage. Long range smuggling being one but they brought it back in a good, challenging way which was cool.

So yeah, P2P trading I'm pretty much against. Humans can't be trusted and should never be given too much Power.

Everything about the game changed, from the ground up, the moment that it was decided it would be multiplayer instead of a single player title exclusively.

Them's the breaks, kiddo.

Just because you can play alone without noticing the multiplayer aspect of the game doesn't mean that your ship isn't different thanks to multiplayer, that the stations aren't different because of multiplayer, that locations like RES sites, POI's, USS's, Nav Beacons, etc.... aren't different due to multiplayer. Every single aspect of the game is directly influenced by the fact that more than one player can be in that location at any given time.

P2P trading doesn't allow players to act outside the game's mechanics. Once you add it in, it IS a game mechanic. That's what you made it by adding it to the game. By your logic, we need to remove players being able to eject and scoop cargo because that's acting outside the game's mechanics also.

"If Exploited" Applies to everything else about the game. If anything else in the game is exploited, it's also bad for the game. Go figure.

P2P trading has nothing to do with shortcuts. It's about options for the players AND the developers. P2P transactions gives the devs the option to go crazy with crafting and make it it's own profession. People will be able to gather, buy and sell goods and make just as many credits as any other profession. It gives the player the option to liquidate assets Would me selling a crafted laser I don't need anymore for 30% off to another player be game-breaking? Nope. Li Yong Rui already put paid to that notion.

The fear that the only thing it'll be used for is to give new players money for ships is easily solved when you have something other than ships to buy. Where do we get these things? Well gee, looting and crafting is right around the corner, and after that the devs can just go wild.

 

[Robert Maynard]

This is pure, blind speculation. The simpler answer is that they didn't want it being exploited for credit transferring when they decided they weren't putting credit transfers in.

Just because it is speculation does not necessarily mean that it is an incorrect interpretation.

I have an optimistic attitude towards it because I've seen it implemented in games where players have a far less congenial attitude than ED. Games that I played for years, and I never saw it used to harass people.

In other words.... I may just be speaking from experience.

I think you need to go back and read what I said about that scenario in Eve and make sure you aren't misunderstanding anything.

Your scenario implies that affluent players can cause new players to panic "just for the lulz" with no consequence. Regardless of the outcome due to the relative worth of the new player's ship and the value of the bounty meaning that, in EvE, the bounty would be unlikely to be collected (some players may choose to pop a player just because they have a bounty in the first place), the action was designed to provoke an emotional reaction in the other player - with no consequence for the player placing the bounty. Bounties in this game have no relation to the ship flown at the time of destruction - so there would be no low ship cost saving grace for the new player.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

So let's either get rid of Cutters or make them the same cost as a Hauler, because they're features that're only usable by wealthy players in their current state.

Is that what you're getting at?

No, of course it's not. But you dodging the point is telling.

A Cutter is not a feature. It's an asset.

What if I call it game mechanic? Would that help things along?

 

[Malryc]

You missed the mark by a running mile, and you're still going. There was no mentioning of real money anywhere in the OP except in reference to the possibility that third parties would illegally do it without Frontier's permission.

Now, this is where the magic happens. Rather than waiting for players to make their own trading sites and setting their own values on your game's credits, you as the devs/game producers make these yourself! You set the prices/values. You control the ebb and flow. This could be as simple as a secure trading web site or as in depth as an in-game money market section.

Maybe you could even offer a special membership (one time fee or annual, whatever) that gives currency traders and credit farmers incentives or discounts. Again making your company more profit! Yay! If you wanted to be a little more strict with your currency traders and credit farmers you could make this a mandatory purchase for those wanting to pursue this, forcing them to seriously consider that as their Elite career path. A small but understandable barrier to entry (helps to avoid those nasty sales bots).

Want to add anything there, chapp?

 

[Kristov]

Per David Braben in multiple interviews/livestreams, gold farmers, pure and simple.

Because people wrongfully fear that it'll somehow open up gold farming in the game, which has been proven as an unfounded paranoia every time this topic has come up, but persists because the forum dwellers fear change.

You really don't play anything online do you, I mean, you've literally just proven that without a single doubt. I've seen gold farmers in every single MMO I've played, hells I've seen them in the ALPHA and BETA testing phases! What do you mean, it's unfounded paranoia? SW:TOR, closed alpha testing, we had gold farmers spamming the ingame chat with offers, STO, close alpha testing, we had gold farmers spamming ingame chat with offers. That was during closed alpha testing, it continued through the open beta and on into Live. You will immediately respond with 'but those are big name titles, that's why!', which is a bogus statement, but since you obviously haven't touched an online game in decades, I'll explain why.

Dungeons and Dragons Online, years ago, before it was F2P, when the cap was 10th level, before they added the ability to trade with other players, not a single gold farmer to be found on any of the servers. The DAY they added trading between players we had gold farmers spamming ingame chat with offers. They would immediately be banned when reported, no recourse offered, Turbine's policy, which they continue to this day. That didn't stop the gold farmers, didn't even slow them down, they still exist in DDO. Mind you, when they first showed up in DDO it had less than 100k players total, most of us ignored the warnings about personal trading bringing in gold farmers, as did Turbine, after all, it's such a niche game with such a small population, why would they show up? Welp, guess what, they showed up as soon as they could do those personal trades because, and this is the kicker, the ONE thing you totally ignore, people will ALWAYS pay for convenience.

We have someone in this very thread saying he'd pay real money for ingame coin, you dismiss it out of hand because we can't do that RIGHT NOW, therefore it would never happen if we could do personal trades ingame. Excuse me, WHAT? This is usually where I would ask the person who made a statement like that just what color the sky was in their world, and how long before they come down.

And Windscreen, people have automated making credits in Elite Dangerous months and months ago, sitting in CZs with turreted ships, the highest reported on the hack site was a few billion overnight, which got FD's attention, so they limit themselves and suggest all others limit themselves as well, to 1 billion per day. Yeah, they use a hack, so what, you think the gold farmers are going to be people of high moral standing and NOT use hacks to make credits fast and easy? It's peach isn't it....the sky....must be peach...

People will pay for convenience and it's so easy to make credits hand over fist in Elite Dangerous WITHOUT using hacks or exploits, the new meta-alloys make it even easier now, so if anyone honestly thinks that allowing personal trading between players wouldn't flood us with gold farmers, you have obviously not touched a single MMO style game in decades now. At least one account for Elite Dangerous has been listed on E-Bay, and that's just one site, there are actually MMO account selling sites out there since E-bay stopped allowing that, again, some of you have obviously not been doing online games for decades, if ever.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Just because it is speculation does not necessarily mean that it is an incorrect interpretation.



Your scenario implies that affluent players can cause new players to panic "just for the lulz" with no consequence. Regardless of the outcome due to the relative worth of the new player's ship and the value of the bounty meaning that, in EvE, the bounty would be unlikely to be collected (some players may choose to pop a player just because they have a bounty in the first place), the action was designed to provoke an emotional reaction in the other player - with no consequence for the player placing the bounty. Bounties in this game have no relation to the ship flown at the time of destruction - so there would be no low ship cost saving grace for the new player.

You know what else I can do for the Lulz to cause a new player to wet their pants? I can interdict their Sidewinder in my Anaconda and vaporize their shields in a single shot, then high wake out.

Of all of the things you're worried about Vet players doing to harass new players, you pick the one that costs them their hard earned credits.

Like I said, your reasoning is borderline hysterics.

No, of course it's not. But you dodging the point is telling.

A Cutter is not a feature. It's an asset.

What if I call it game mechanic? Would that help things along?

"30 playable ships" is most definitely a feature. Unless the Cutter is now a Duck. In which case it's a glitch and a bug report should be submitted.

All "assets" within the game are features, because features are synonymous with assets. The words mean the same thing, they are both a property of something or someone.

But language lessons never solve arguments.

If we're talking game mechanics, then the same logic behind eliminating player bounties because they're a rich kid only game mechanic says that we should distribute all credits in a global pool, because if one player has access to more credits than another they could use that as an advantage to buy more assets than other players, any of which could be used to harass someone with less advantageous assets. Or, likewise, we should make all assets the same.

Now let's take the complicated route and assume that you want to keep currency and progression in the game while eliminating any potential advantage a rich player could use to harass a new player. To do this we could just change the P2P instancing so that players are separated by wealth brackets. Or maybe we could make it so that any player who jumps in an instance with a player with a larger ship or wallet instantly gains a carbon copy of their ship and credits while they are in the same instance, that way no one has any perceived advantage over another player.

All as equally valid as your suggestion

Want to add anything there, chapp?

Yeah, I glossed over that because I've been on the forums so long that I didn't think I would ever see someone mention this again. There was a mentioning that FD might do this during the kickstarter, until they realized that the community was unanimously against it during the Alpha, Premium Beta and Beta. The subject was killed, buried in concrete, and shot into the center of the sun never to be seen again. Frontier knows that if they even take a step in this direction there are going to be a lot of problems. I should've realized that new players might be uninformed.

My apologies. It's been so long since I've seen the topic come up I didn't think it would ever again and my brain didn't register it.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Per David Braben in multiple interviews/livestreams, gold farmers, pure and simple.



You really don't play anything online do you, I mean, you've literally just proven that without a single doubt. I've seen gold farmers in every single MMO I've played, hells I've seen them in the ALPHA and BETA testing phases! What do you mean, it's unfounded paranoia? SW:TOR, closed alpha testing, we had gold farmers spamming the ingame chat with offers, STO, close alpha testing, we had gold farmers spamming ingame chat with offers. That was during closed alpha testing, it continued through the open beta and on into Live. You will immediately respond with 'but those are big name titles, that's why!', which is a bogus statement, but since you obviously haven't touched an online game in decades, I'll explain why.

Dungeons and Dragons Online, years ago, before it was F2P, when the cap was 10th level, before they added the ability to trade with other players, not a single gold farmer to be found on any of the servers. The DAY they added trading between players we had gold farmers spamming ingame chat with offers. They would immediately be banned when reported, no recourse offered, Turbine's policy, which they continue to this day. That didn't stop the gold farmers, didn't even slow them down, they still exist in DDO. Mind you, when they first showed up in DDO it had less than 100k players total, most of us ignored the warnings about personal trading bringing in gold farmers, as did Turbine, after all, it's such a niche game with such a small population, why would they show up? Welp, guess what, they showed up as soon as they could do those personal trades because, and this is the kicker, the ONE thing you totally ignore, people will ALWAYS pay for convenience.

We have someone in this very thread saying he'd pay real money for ingame coin, you dismiss it out of hand because we can't do that RIGHT NOW, therefore it would never happen if we could do personal trades ingame. Excuse me, WHAT? This is usually where I would ask the person who made a statement like that just what color the sky was in their world, and how long before they come down.

And Windscreen, people have automated making credits in Elite Dangerous months and months ago, sitting in CZs with turreted ships, the highest reported on the hack site was a few billion overnight, which got FD's attention, so they limit themselves and suggest all others limit themselves as well, to 1 billion per day. Yeah, they use a hack, so what, you think the gold farmers are going to be people of high moral standing and NOT use hacks to make credits fast and easy? It's peach isn't it....the sky....must be peach...

People will pay for convenience and it's so easy to make credits hand over fist in Elite Dangerous WITHOUT using hacks or exploits, the new meta-alloys make it even easier now, so if anyone honestly thinks that allowing personal trading between players wouldn't flood us with gold farmers, you have obviously not touched a single MMO style game in decades now. At least one account for Elite Dangerous has been listed on E-Bay, and that's just one site, there are actually MMO account selling sites out there since E-bay stopped allowing that, again, some of you have obviously not been doing online games for decades, if ever.

And I see them in Elite: Dangerous. What's your point?

They don't need credit transfers to sell credits, they already do better without them than they can with them, which is to say they're starving.

Yes ED's been hacked. Because of this we should put the game under lockdown and prevent any possible feature that could be used by the hackers?

No.

It's there for a reason. Frontier need to start using it.


So excluding hacks, what's your easy way to make credits cheaply enough and fast enough to make it profitable selling them in ED over any other game? Because the people who're selling them right now, the fastest and easiest way possible even if credit transactions were added, are having a hell of a time. They could use your advice.

 

[Kristov]

And I see them in Elite: Dangerous. What's your point?

They don't need credit transfers to sell credits, they already do better without them than they can with them, which is to say they're starving.

Yes ED's been hacked. Because of this we should put the game under lockdown and prevent any possible feature that could be used by the hackers?

No.

http://i.imgur.com/QlSsrZ0.png

It's there for a reason. Frontier need to start using it.


So excluding hacks, what's your easy way to make credits cheaply enough and fast enough to make it profitable selling them in ED over any other game? Because the people who're selling them right now, the fastest and easiest way possible even if credit transactions were added, are having a hell of a time. They could use your advice.

FD does use it, you need to go look up the hack to understand why it was working, as it ceased to work after the 1.5/2.0 updates. I even mentioned that FD contacted the hack user when they turned in 2 billion worth of vouchers, since they see when those were all earned. They see a lot of things, but there's so many players, it's hard to really find the less obvious hack users, and the hack website tells you how to remain less obvious when using it, which I mentioned as well.

As for making money easy without a hack, well, I'm making over 6m a hour running a single A-B trade route part of the time. And I did mention meta-alloys, pretty easy to farm the hell out of those, most places in the bubble paying over 90k a ton, Cutter can hold 700 tons, my Annie can hold over 300 tons with a fuel scoop so I can reach the Pleiades, if Obsidian had Outfitting, that would be 400 easy, Python 200 tons, T9 well over 300 tons, shall I continue? You have actually played the game recently right? Or you at least know the cargo capacity of some of the bigger trade ships right? I farmed 100 tons of meta-alloys over the weekend myself, almost 10m for that, which wasn't even half my cargo capacity. A few hours, 20-30m, easy to do. Traders are supposedly averaging 10m/hr, at least that's the number I see repeatedly used to explain why Trading is so imbalanced compared to all the other professions after all. So yeah, it's not hard to make money in the game, it's pretty easy.

And considering there are credit for money services as well as Combat/Trade/Exploration services that you pay real money for, your argument that they wouldn't show up if we had personal trading is beyond wrong. Yes, those services exist and people have used them, you really should take a few minutes to try that new thing called google....

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

FD does use it, you need to go look up the hack to understand why it was working, as it ceased to work after the 1.5/2.0 updates. I even mentioned that FD contacted the hack user when they turned in 2 billion worth of vouchers, since they see when those were all earned. They see a lot of things, but there's so many players, it's hard to really find the less obvious hack users, and the hack website tells you how to remain less obvious when using it, which I mentioned as well.

As for making money easy without a hack, well, I'm making over 6m a hour running a single A-B trade route part of the time. And I did mention meta-alloys, pretty easy to farm the hell out of those, most places in the bubble paying over 90k a ton, Cutter can hold 700 tons, my Annie can hold over 300 tons with a fuel scoop so I can reach the Pleiades, if Obsidian had Outfitting, that would be 400 easy, Python 200 tons, T9 well over 300 tons, shall I continue? You have actually played the game recently right? Or you at least know the cargo capacity of some of the bigger trade ships right? I farmed 100 tons of meta-alloys over the weekend myself, almost 10m for that, which wasn't even half my cargo capacity. A few hours, 20-30m, easy to do. Traders are supposedly averaging 10m/hr, at least that's the number I see repeatedly used to explain why Trading is so imbalanced compared to all the other professions after all. So yeah, it's not hard to make money in the game, it's pretty easy.

And considering there are credit for money services as well as Combat/Trade/Exploration services that you pay real money for, your argument that they wouldn't show up if we had personal trading is beyond wrong. Yes, those services exist and people have used them, you really should take a few minutes to try that new thing called google....

I have looked up the hack. They even have a nice little wiki written on it explaining everything Frontier needs to know about it.

Get to work FD.

10mil an hour can be easily made by the average player. That means that if you want to sell credits, you've got to provide them value for the price. Last I checked the average price being offered for credits was $1 for 1 million credits.

So.... Any takers wanna pay $10 for an hour's worth of trading?

 

[StuF]

And I see them in Elite: Dangerous. What's your point?

They don't need credit transfers to sell credits, they already do better without them than they can with them, which is to say they're starving.

Yes ED's been hacked. Because of this we should put the game under lockdown and prevent any possible feature that could be used by the hackers?

No.

http://i.imgur.com/QlSsrZ0.png

It's there for a reason. Frontier need to start using it.


So excluding hacks, what's your easy way to make credits cheaply enough and fast enough to make it profitable selling them in ED over any other game? Because the people who're selling them right now, the fastest and easiest way possible even if credit transactions were added, are having a hell of a time. They could use your advice.

So besides speeding on the freeway - whats the easiest way to exceed the speed limit on the road? Isnt that what you are asking?
Player to player credit transfers would let the gold sellers pool their accounts and have hundreds of billions available all through hacking and transferring credits between themselves
As for the P2P instancing preventing credit selling - utter nonsence, simple friend request, meet at a well know station, wing up and transfer away - would take a huge 20 mins to get billions

How to avoid this whole mess?

NO PLAYER TO PLAYER CREDIT TRANSFERS
NO PLAYER OWNED BASES/MARKETS/SYSTEMS

Simples

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

So besides speeding on the freeway - whats the easiest way to exceed the speed limit on the road? Isnt that what you are asking?
Player to player credit transfers would let the gold sellers pool their accounts and have hundreds of billions available all through hacking and transferring credits between themselves
As for the P2P instancing preventing credit selling - utter nonsence, simple friend request, meet at a well know station, wing up and transfer away - would take a huge 20 mins to get billions

How to avoid this whole mess?

NO PLAYER TO PLAYER CREDIT TRANSFERS
NO PLAYER OWNED BASES/MARKETS/SYSTEMS

Simples

All of which is easily traced and banned if Frontier would actually put someone on the job instead of ignoring the hackers, which is their current policy.

Great, they can pool their accounts, that just makes the game of whack-a-mole easier, you could even automate it. Now the hackers are banning themselves for you.

P2P doesn't stop people from transferring credits, it makes it unprofitable because you have no advertising platform. The spam bots in other games exist for a reason, farmers rely on that marketing to make any money at all.

 

[Kristov]

I have looked up the hack. They even have a nice little wiki written on it explaining everything Frontier needs to know about it.

Get to work FD.

10mil an hour can be easily made by the average player. That means that if you want to sell credits, you've got to provide them value for the price. Last I checked the average price being offered for credits was $1 for 1 million credits.

So.... Any takers wanna pay $10 for an hour's worth of trading?

There are takers for that price, in case you missed it. It's not a matter of value for the time, it's value for the lack of time, convenience is what people pay for, simple as that. THAT is what gold farmers count on, it's what makes them real cash. I had a friend in DDO who used the gold farmer services in a number of games he played, simply because he was a busy man in real life and didn't have more than a few hours a month to play anything, and he made a very good living, so, to him, paying someone a few hundred bucks to get his character to the level cap and outfitted, well worth the money, same with buying ingame coin for real world money, he considered it money well spent. Naturally he sucked at the games he played, didn't know how they worked or what to do or how to do it, but he was capped out and had all the best gear, so he didn't care. Personally, don't understand that mindset, what's the fun in having a game you never played but have beaten essentially? We always gave him flack about it but he was a funny guy and always kept us entertained, even if it was just by his dying to mobs that shouldn't have been able to touch him..if he had a clue how the game worked.

THAT is what people spend real money for Windscreen, convenience. I've seen many threads on these very forums where people complained that it takes too long to make any credits, they just want to fly the best ships NOW! Those are the very people who use those services, and I'll wager those posters got private messages from people offering those services and probably used them. They want everything NOW, they don't want to wait, they don't want to experience anything but what they consider the end game, flying a decked out T9, Anaconda, Cutter, Corvette, so they'll pay someone to make that happen for them.

Hell, there's Alpha Access accounts for sale, Beta Access accounts, accounts with billions of credits and ships galore, ranging from thousands to 30 bucks, convenience or bragging rights, people will buy those accounts for those reasons.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

There are takers for that price, in case you missed it. It's not a matter of value for the time, it's value for the lack of time, convenience is what people pay for, simple as that. THAT is what gold farmers count on, it's what makes them real cash. I had a friend in DDO who used the gold farmer services in a number of games he played, simply because he was a busy man in real life and didn't have more than a few hours a month to play anything, and he made a very good living, so, to him, paying someone a few hundred bucks to get his character to the level cap and outfitted, well worth the money, same with buying ingame coin for real world money, he considered it money well spent. Naturally he sucked at the games he played, didn't know how they worked or what to do or how to do it, but he was capped out and had all the best gear, so he didn't care. Personally, don't understand that mindset, what's the fun in having a game you never played but have beaten essentially? We always gave him flack about it but he was a funny guy and always kept us entertained, even if it was just by his dying to mobs that shouldn't have been able to touch him..if he had a clue how the game worked.

THAT is what people spend real money for Windscreen, convenience. I've seen many threads on these very forums where people complained that it takes too long to make any credits, they just want to fly the best ships NOW! Those are the very people who use those services, and I'll wager those posters got private messages from people offering those services and probably used them. They want everything NOW, they don't want to wait, they don't want to experience anything but what they consider the end game, flying a decked out T9, Anaconda, Cutter, Corvette, so they'll pay someone to make that happen for them.

Hell, there's Alpha Access accounts for sale, Beta Access accounts, accounts with billions of credits and ships galore, ranging from thousands to 30 bucks, convenience or bragging rights, people will buy those accounts for those reasons.

I didn't say there weren't takers. I was being narcissistic while highlighting just how few of them there would be.

Sorry, that's an incorrect phrase. How few of them there are. Like I said. Lack of credit transfers isn't stopping anything.

You have yet to explain to me anything I don't know, you just assumed that this is somehow mysterious to me. The only thing we disagree on is that you seem to think that the lack of credit transfers is holding people back, whereas I know that it isn't.

Out of sight out of mind. Because communication tools are crap in ED everyone has been kept blissfully ignorant of the presence of credit farmers, who happily carry out their tasks in Private group without a care in the world about possible retaliation from Frontier.

 

[Kristov]

I didn't say there weren't takers. I was being narcissistic while highlighting just how few of them there would be.

Sorry, that's an incorrect phrase. How few of them there are. Like I said. Lack of credit transfers isn't stopping anything.

You have yet to explain to me anything I don't know, you just assumed that this is somehow mysterious to me. The only thing we disagree on is that you seem to think that the lack of credit transfers is holding people back, whereas I know that it isn't.

Out of sight out of mind. Because communication tools are crap in ED everyone has been kept blissfully ignorant of the presence of credit farmers, who happily carry out their tasks in Private group without a care in the world about possible retaliation from Frontier.

And you are just as wrong about that as you are the hack, someone is indeed blissfully unaware, but it's not FD....

The hack has been busted before by FD, many comments in their forums about the hack being stopped for a time with an update until the maker could get around what FD did to stop it working. Which is exactly how hacks and countering them works. Hack gets made, hack gets countered, hack gets updated, repeat ad nauseum. Tax man and computer security, those are some seriously secure jobs, you will NEVER lack for work. FD has also banned people caught using the hacks, they talk about that on the hack forums as well, which is why they give so many suggestions on what not to do when using the hack so as to not draw FD's attention that you are using it, because that not only gets you banned from the game, but it also prompts FD to again counter the hack which means the hack maker has to redo the hack so it works again. The hack currently only works in 32bit, which they just recently got working, still no 64bit version. FD has busted it multiple times, as I said, so where you get off saying they ignore it....you just don't like them do you? And I'll bet you dollars to donuts that FD were aware of the hack working again in 32bit within a few hours of it being put out, probably have a few accounts on that site themselves...you really don't know how this all works do you.

And if they allowed personal trading in Elite, we'd have gold farmers all over the place, spamming ingame chat around the starter areas at the very least. DDO had instances as well, not many people in them either, and the gold farmers were always there spamming their wares none the less. You really don't have a clue how they work, we have a few companies, and that's what those are offering the services currently, companies, who do it right now without any personal trading being allowed. Allow that and all the OTHER companies would be showing up, since most of them rely on personal trades to conduct their business, it's quicker, less messy, and more people are willing to deal with them when their account doesn't have to be given over. THAT is what will happen, it's been seen in too many other games, smaller than Elite, for anyone with an actual clue to doubt it.

 

[X-Terminator]

I only wish FD would address forums early on. If we the players ask for such simple methods (it's just a game - nothing to do with eBay sales LOL!) then they would provide us with a much better game instead of all the stuff we did NOT ask for. It IS the simple things that count.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

And you are just as wrong about that as you are the hack, someone is indeed blissfully unaware, but it's not FD....

The hack has been busted before by FD, many comments in their forums about the hack being stopped for a time with an update until the maker could get around what FD did to stop it working. Which is exactly how hacks and countering them works. Hack gets made, hack gets countered, hack gets updated, repeat ad nauseum. Tax man and computer security, those are some seriously secure jobs, you will NEVER lack for work. FD has also banned people caught using the hacks, they talk about that on the hack forums as well, which is why they give so many suggestions on what not to do when using the hack so as to not draw FD's attention that you are using it, because that not only gets you banned from the game, but it also prompts FD to again counter the hack which means the hack maker has to redo the hack so it works again. The hack currently only works in 32bit, which they just recently got working, still no 64bit version. FD has busted it multiple times, as I said, so where you get off saying they ignore it....you just don't like them do you? And I'll bet you dollars to donuts that FD were aware of the hack working again in 32bit within a few hours of it being put out, probably have a few accounts on that site themselves...you really don't know how this all works do you.

And if they allowed personal trading in Elite, we'd have gold farmers all over the place, spamming ingame chat around the starter areas at the very least. DDO had instances as well, not many people in them either, and the gold farmers were always there spamming their wares none the less. You really don't have a clue how they work, we have a few companies, and that's what those are offering the services currently, companies, who do it right now without any personal trading being allowed. Allow that and all the OTHER companies would be showing up, since most of them rely on personal trades to conduct their business, it's quicker, less messy, and more people are willing to deal with them when their account doesn't have to be given over. THAT is what will happen, it's been seen in too many other games, smaller than Elite, for anyone with an actual clue to doubt it.

Sorry, but FD are only reacting, they aren't acting. They keep telemetry on what all of the players are doing, after over 18 months they should have made monitoring filters for suspicious behavior that flags accounts with a temporary ban for later review. This shouldn't be a manual process for them.

Frontier is new to Multiplayer games though, sooo....

And I actually do know quite a bit how it works, let me help you with a few pieces of the puzzle you're missing.

First. A lot of devs tolerate gold farmers. NCSoft, Blizzard, ArenaNet, Turbine, etc.... These companies actually want gold farmers in their game. Gold farmers keep the big spenders playing. You said it yourself. People who buy gold do it for convenience. People who can afford to do that for convenience also have plenty of money to throw at the cash shop too. Gold farmers are an annoyance for the average player, but for the whales they're a lifeline, and MMO devs value the whales just as much as mobile devs.

Selling currency will get your game slandered in every corner of the internet, but if there are gold farmers that's just online gaming for you, can't be helped. These companies do regular bans, sweeps and patches, knowing very well the gold farmers will be back within hours because they never intended to get rid of them entirely in the first place. The bans and patches make the average players happy that something is being done. The big spenders are happy the gold farmers always come back, and the MMO dev profits.

So which games don't have gold farmers? The ones that sell currency.

Eve Online sells currency in a way. They sell game time. Buy a plex, you get an in-game item you can use to extend your subscription for 30 days. The item can be traded with other players who pay regular currency for it.

Nobody sells ISK in Eve Online because CCP has a deathgrip on their throats, and will even put their lawyers on the biggest offenders. You get occasional attempts at RMT's, but since everything in that game is recorded, every ISK transaction, every ship destruction, player movement, every player conversation, etc.... CCP hunts them down within minutes or hours and squashes it.

Eve Online has a right click menu in the chat. In that menu is they even have an option for "Report Isk Spammer" the players can use themselves to immediately flag isk farmers.

I played that game for 1500 hours and never had to use it once.

 

[Kristov]

Sorry, but FD are only reacting, they aren't acting. They keep telemetry on what all of the players are doing, after over 18 months they should have made monitoring filters for suspicious behavior that flags accounts with a temporary ban for later review. This shouldn't be a manual process for them.

Frontier is new to Multiplayer games though, sooo....

And I actually do know quite a bit how it works, let me help you with a few pieces of the puzzle you're missing.

First. A lot of devs tolerate gold farmers. NCSoft, Blizzard, ArenaNet, Turbine, etc.... These companies actually want gold farmers in their game. Gold farmers keep the big spenders playing. You said it yourself. People who buy gold do it for convenience. People who can afford to do that for convenience also have plenty of money to throw at the cash shop too. Gold farmers are an annoyance for the average player, but for the whales they're a lifeline, and MMO devs value the whales just as much as mobile devs.

Selling currency will get your game slandered in every corner of the internet, but if there are gold farmers that's just online gaming for you, can't be helped. These companies do regular bans, sweeps and patches, knowing very well the gold farmers will be back within hours because they never intended to get rid of them entirely in the first place. The bans and patches make the average players happy that something is being done. The big spenders are happy the gold farmers always come back, and the MMO dev profits.

So which games don't have gold farmers? The ones that sell currency.

Eve Online sells currency in a way. They sell game time. Buy a plex, you get an in-game item you can use to extend your subscription for 30 days. The item can be traded with other players who pay regular currency for it.

Nobody sells ISK in Eve Online because CCP has a deathgrip on their throats, and will even put their lawyers on the biggest offenders. You get occasional attempts at RMT's, but since everything in that game is recorded, every ISK transaction, every ship destruction, player movement, every player conversation, etc.... CCP hunts them down within minutes or hours and squashes it.

Eve Online has a right click menu in the chat. In that menu is they even have an option for "Report Isk Spammer" the players can use themselves to immediately flag isk farmers.

I played that game for 1500 hours and never had to use it once.

Yes, and that would be why Blizzard and other companies have actually gone after the gold sellers around the planet legally, because they want them in their games? That's why Turbine doesn't just ban your account but also blocks you from using the same credit card to create a new account when they ban your account? You are spouting one of the conspiracy plots about gold farms and developers working together, one that's been disproved multiple times but still keeps being bandied about.

EVE does actually have the same services as all the other games, including ISK and PLEX for sale for real cash, and not through CCP, you can buy skills, even accounts, it's all there for the money. And CCP themselves tried to combat that by selling it themselves, that was their solution to the problem, not lawyers, that they didn't do. They ban accounts for macros offering ISK and other service, but not the people who buy from them they simply take the bought ISK away. No lawyers are involved in the process and I can't find any indication that they ever have been.

CCP logs everything huh? Funny, so does FD, Blizzard, Turbine, Sony, EA, and so on, and some of them even record any voice communications using their ingame voice comms, like, well, all of the aforementioned companies. Legal purposes don't you know, seen em used personally too, my guild master in DDO was always getting temp bans for his language on the voice comms, GMs would listen after getting a report and slap him with the banhammer for a few days. He never typed in the game, only used voice comms, ingame and our own private TS server. Got to the point where he stopped using the ingame voice comms because of the temp bans. Industry standard to log everything on your servers, helps with hackers, shows up bugs, and helps with griefing/abuse/harassment/stalking issues, among other things.

And the games that sell currency have gold farmers, what are you talking about? EVE has a number of companies offering services, NOT the authorized companies either. So does WoW, DDO, LotRO, DCUO, MWO, hell just about any online game where you have to spend game time to acquire anything, you'll find the services offered by some company or companies. The most any developer/publisher can do is block them however they can, bans for offering the services, bans for using the services(CCP doesn't do that, the only one I'm aware of who doesn't ban the buyer as well as the seller). Offering to sell your own ingame coin doesn't stop the gold farmers from showing up, they'll simply sell it for less. WoW offers to let you buy to level up your character, companies offer to level up your character for less. Seriously, if you have to spend any time ingame to acquire something, someone will offer to do it for you for cash, and if the game offers those things for cash, they'll offer to do it for less than the game charges.

Just like with EVE.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Yes, and that would be why Blizzard and other companies have actually gone after the gold sellers around the planet legally, because they want them in their games? That's why Turbine doesn't just ban your account but also blocks you from using the same credit card to create a new account when they ban your account? You are spouting one of the conspiracy plots about gold farms and developers working together, one that's been disproved multiple times but still keeps being bandied about.

EVE does actually have the same services as all the other games, including ISK and PLEX for sale for real cash, and not through CCP, you can buy skills, even accounts, it's all there for the money. And CCP themselves tried to combat that by selling it themselves, that was their solution to the problem, not lawyers, that they didn't do. They ban accounts for macros offering ISK and other service, but not the people who buy from them they simply take the bought ISK away. No lawyers are involved in the process and I can't find any indication that they ever have been.

CCP logs everything huh? Funny, so does FD, Blizzard, Turbine, Sony, EA, and so on, and some of them even record any voice communications using their ingame voice comms, like, well, all of the aforementioned companies. Legal purposes don't you know, seen em used personally too, my guild master in DDO was always getting temp bans for his language on the voice comms, GMs would listen after getting a report and slap him with the banhammer for a few days. He never typed in the game, only used voice comms, ingame and our own private TS server. Got to the point where he stopped using the ingame voice comms because of the temp bans. Industry standard to log everything on your servers, helps with hackers, shows up bugs, and helps with griefing/abuse/harassment/stalking issues, among other things.

And the games that sell currency have gold farmers, what are you talking about? EVE has a number of companies offering services, NOT the authorized companies either. So does WoW, DDO, LotRO, DCUO, MWO, hell just about any online game where you have to spend game time to acquire anything, you'll find the services offered by some company or companies. The most any developer/publisher can do is block them however they can, bans for offering the services, bans for using the services(CCP doesn't do that, the only one I'm aware of who doesn't ban the buyer as well as the seller). Offering to sell your own ingame coin doesn't stop the gold farmers from showing up, they'll simply sell it for less. WoW offers to let you buy to level up your character, companies offer to level up your character for less. Seriously, if you have to spend any time ingame to acquire something, someone will offer to do it for you for cash, and if the game offers those things for cash, they'll offer to do it for less than the game charges.

Just like with EVE.

Blizzard? Oh, you mean this lawsuit they started in 2007 before they caught wind of where things were going?

http://massivelyop.com/2015/05/18/blizzard-loses-case-against-gold-seller/

Hmmm.... Blizzard sues a gold farmer for Diablo 2 in 2007. The case gets stalled for 8 years.... In the meantime Diablo 3 is released with a Real Money Auction House where players can buy gold for cash..... After Blizzard takes their percentage.

And oh boy did the gold farmers have fun in D3.



http://www.cnet.com/au/news/my-paypal-was-hacked-to-buy-dodgy-diablo-iii-gold/

[video=youtube;sxVM06owyuk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxVM06owyuk[/video]



Okay, maybe you were talking about the Lawsuit against Peons4hire that was settled in the beginning of 2008. Funny thing. In 2009 Blizzard added Microtransactions to WoW and there haven't been any lawsuits since.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/124353/Report_MMO_Gold_Farmers_Make_Up_85_Of_3B_Gaming_Services_Industry.php

It's a 3+ billion dollar industry and you think MMO Developers aren't finding a way to dip into that tidal wave of money?



Banning a credit card is the same thing as banning an IP. The gold farmers use stolen credit cards and gift cards more often than not, they don't care if you ban it. You're better off with hardware bans. Despite this method being available to every game dev, how many of them do we hear using it?

But wait. You know what's even better about banning credit cards from gold farmers, if you're a developer who doesn't really want to get rid of them? You save money as a developer, because you get less chargebacks. And that's why I mentioned gift cards. They're easier to steal, they get banned less, and developers get paid.

Sometimes the smaller devs get sloppy and get caught getting greedy.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-03-17-gameforges-links-with-goldfarming-compromise-frogster

There was also a nice article I can't find anymore where a smaller game developer just flat out said that gold farmers keep the population in their MMO up. Can't find it anywhere now. Oh well.


What it all boils down to is that around 2008 and 2009 you had a bunch of video game industry analysts saying "Game developers, you might as well accept that gold farming is a fact of life that will never go away". And surprisingly, developers have listened. They either acted obliquely and openly like CCP did with Plex, or they experimented with microtransactions and farmer population balance like Blizzard behind the scenes before finding a working model to settle on, which finally happened for WoW in 2013 when it's microtransaction shop went from an oddity to a mini-mall of hot commodities.

Tons of F2P games hit the market from 2010 to date. Funnily enough, many of these games originate in Asia where the gold farming is originating. These MMO developers can pretty much guarantee a huge initial player base in their local country as the various gold farmers duke it out for supremacy in the first few months, which draws in legitimate players along with the gold farming customers and floods the microtransaction shop with income. They then localize their game to North America and the EU where we all jump on the latest F2P game that happens to be trending. Whoever won the survival of the fittest competition in Asia gets to sell gold in the western market for much larger profits, and the F2P games with their notorious never-ending grinds just continue to rise in popularity because Western players aren't paying 3 billion dollars a year for marital advice on shady websites with bad grammar. They're buying gold.

Wildstar tried to curb gold farmers in the same way as Eve did. It worked. Many other problems arose, and the company screwed up at every possible opportunity, and they're not as successful as CCP, but they cut out a huge chunk of the problem.

Websites offer RMT's in Eve? Sure they do. They rarely deliver though. Remember that I said everything in Eve is tracked. Have a slideshow.

https://youtu.be/WBD7CL9oQqE

Enoy it for a while. As they go on they describe how accounts involved in RMT's are often hacked or the payment information stolen later, and they show the rates.

In other words the isk sellers in Eve aren't in the business of selling isk, they're in the business of identity theft.

Oh, and it's interesting to note that over a year they have a couple thousand accounts banned for selling isk. Other MMO's are claiming several thousand a day.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/22/trion-banning-5000-archeage-bots-per-day

Something seems to be working on CCP's end.