Let us send other player credits.

  • Thread starter Deleted member 56127
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The problem is it does potentially open up a market for gold selling which does carry very real IRL consequences, especially for the farmers who work 24 / 7 in bad conditions a lot of the time.

The wider issue is what causes the need for gold sellers? 'Other games' address the root causes but because Elite is fundamentally a huge money and time sink I feel it would be an impossible situation to address in this game via changing game mechanics, so you'd have to look at one of the other, many ways other games handle it.

You probably shouldn't try claiming "consequences" for underprivileged third world workers into this, considering that most of the Western economy is based in part off those same workers being exploited for all sorts of things. Shoes, clothes, chemicals, minerals, home entertainment devices, etc. So drawing a line at gold farming in a game....seems a bit silly as the reason why people shouldn't do it. To put it another way, if you are so worried about the plight of abused workers overseas with regards to gold farming, you should probably get rid of your phone, your computer, your television, your car, your clothing, and probably most of your household appliances. Virtually all of it has, at some stage of production, those same workers behind it.

The wider issue is that games give you an option of spending time to get the various perks via credits. People who don't have (or don't want to spend) that time therefore exchange money to bypass that particular sink. Game companies don't view this as a problem at all actually, if they are the ones making the money off of people exchanging that money for time. The real issue is that games have problems with other companies essentially taking profit away from them in their own game. The issue has a lot of different resolutions to it, not simply banning the exchange of goods and money between players. There are numerous safeguards that other games that have equivalent grinds where credits are the be all and end all have introduced that work fine.
 
Gold farming/selling WILL be a problem, doesn't matter how popular Elite is, or how hard you get banned if you get caught (just about every MMO will ban you, the trick is catching you without banning innocents).

Ok, with that said, here's some serious countermeasures:

- Limit transfer of money to players who have NOT been on your friend's list for at least 1 week to a very small amount (< 1 million TOTAL, per week, all players).
- For friends, limit weekly combined transfer amount to 50 million per account (or however much you can make using the fastest method, in 10 hours).
- Deduct 5% convenience fee from transfers.

This is nonsense... all the points you suggest if implemented openly can be dealt with by either taking into account the fee you describe as part of the real world cost and simply delaying the transfer by the amount of time required in game to become an accepted friend...

All you need to do is treat the problem at source. With the buyers of credits...not the sellers.

Make credit transfers only doable between parties that have established an in-game contract that describes the reason for the credit transfer.

Example... credit transfer for an escort mission...

You write a simple in game contract [yes I appreciate the devs will have to build this facility in game ...oh dear] that stipulates the route (or at least the start and end point) the player is meant to follow the trader he is escorting...

such as...

Protection service.

Player [a] to pay player 25,000cr per one way trip from UZSAA system to LAVE system that player escorts player [a].

End of contract...

If ever the validity of any ingame cr transfer between player [a] and player is questioned, you just need to check game logs to see if such trips happened.

If this is not the case ban both players involved.

I cannot imagine that this is not easily doable from a coding point of view.

All you then need to do is crack down on the initial smart bunnies who think they can game the system and ban them appropriately... in order to set a precedent.
 

Ideas Man

Banned
You probably shouldn't try claiming "consequences" for underprivileged third world workers into this, considering that most of the Western economy is based in part off those same workers being exploited for all sorts of things. Shoes, clothes, chemicals, minerals, home entertainment devices, etc. So drawing a line at gold farming in a game....seems a bit silly as the reason why people shouldn't do it. To put it another way, if you are so worried about the plight of abused workers overseas with regards to gold farming, you should probably get rid of your phone, your computer, your television, your car, your clothing, and probably most of your household appliances. Virtually all of it has, at some stage of production, those same workers behind it.
Other things being bad doesn't mean you can't point out that another separate thing is bad, it's a terrible strawman to pull out.

How dare people talk about immigration when there are people dying of AIDS?????
 
A determined crew of gold sellers won't find cargo transfers a hindrance to their business, not at all.

A pirate ransoming a trader for credits is a *good* thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't traders already making gazillions of credits and pirates only a fraction of that?

Credit transfer should be in. You can already exchange wealth in unconventional means, and I'm sure the OP is not the only one doing this. There is an obvious need for credit transfer between players, and as it is now, sounds like the game makes the task harder than it has to be.
 
Yeah, really, wow. OK, I'll make this a bit simpler. The original question was; what is the problem if someone sells credits. I'm well aware it's typically against the rules in games like this and the risk of banning exist for those engaging in it. But that's only a problem for those involved in buying or selling credits. What is the problem for everyone else?

I'm not convinced there's a problem that can't be easily managed by decent design or, by-and-large ignored by the player base. So WoW, EVE and STO has gold sellers. Remind me how long those games have been running for. I don't think we're talking about something that's going to wreck the game here.


Would rather not have this problem and not have FD devote any resources on it, than make it easier for people to transfer money.

You can already meet up and swap palladium, what is wrong with this? You can easily write IOUs and swap cargo later if you really want to pay someone. Making life easier for the few people who do this vs adding all these problems to be "managed," not worth it.
 
Credit transfer should be a feature in the game, but it should be limited to a station activity. Both players must be in the same station to be able to complete the trade. If you want to give your friends money in real life, you meet up and give it to them. You shouldn't have to buy a TV, then have them resell it. It's redundant and tedious.
 

Ideas Man

Banned
This is nonsense...
You have to consider though that gold selling is usually done out of game completely and the parties never even meet in a lot of cases, this is how it works usually...

You go to www.pretendgoldsellingsitename.com and plonk down £30 via paypal to them for x amount of currency.

A couple of hours later the gold is in your in game mailbox, usually sent by a character that already no longer exists in game as it has been deleted.

So my guess would be in this game that they would have a Master account that is a permanent player and then a disposable Mule account, you buy credits off their site, the Master account sends it to the mule, the mule sends it you then gets deleted and another created for the next order.
 
I agree with you but the issue with this game is the source for demand is literally the whole point of the game to a lot of people, we can preach all day and all night about how the 'journey is better than the destination' and that the game shouldn't be a grind to get ships and modules, but while there are top tier ships for multi millions of credits you will have a demand for credits and FD can't (and shouldn't) change the very fundamentals of the game just to remove the source issue and then be able to allow credit sending, imho

The point is that credit sending as you call it is the basis for contracts between players which is essential to developing a network of interacting players that create and drive the player driven content FD is so keen to market ED with !

If you don't have realistic mechanisms for sending credits between players you can't have contracts...and contracts are the basis of what is need to cement a player driven ecosystem and player driven content in game...
 
In and of itself I don't think this is a bad thing. See a rookie CMDR and bung them over a few thousand credits to help them out. Or pirate asks for cash not cargo (through some form of an escrow). But - as has been discussed at length, it's open to abuse. I personally believe progression through the game shouldn't be governed by simple cash, but rather through a form of rank or experience. If someone starts the game, they shouldn't be able to jump straight into an Anaconda just because their buddy is a billionaire - they need to put in the stick hours. So yes, exchange credit, but throttle progression through another means.
 

Ideas Man

Banned
The point is that credit sending as you call it is the basis for contracts between players which is essential to developing a network of interacting players that create and drive the player driven content FD is so keen to market ED with !

If you don't have realistic mechanisms for sending credits between players you can't have contracts...and contracts are the basis of what is need to cement a player driven ecosystem and player driven content in game...
Yeah I like your idea, however I just posted above as well on it, your idea works well in a lot of ways
 

Deleted member 56127

D
Hello everybody. This thread isn't about gold selling. Please read the original OP. If you guys want to argue about gold selling/farming make your own thread for it. Rather argue, use that creative energy to come up with a system that works for EVERYBODY minus the nitpicking.
 
Again: AREN'T YOU ALREADY ABLE TO TRADE WITH OTHERS IN DOCKING STATIONS, IF BOTH ARE DOCKED, KINDA LIKE CLICKING ON THIS NAME AND SELECT TRADE?

Didn't test it yet, though, but that's somehow a widespread rumor between my friends.

Do any of your friends actually play the game ? or are you asking us to help you devise a gold selling strategy for a game you don't have a clue about ? Just asking of course !
 
Transferring credits allows for players to hire mercenaries, and escorts (ala Wings). If I have to pay escorts in cargo, that's gonna be some significant . It also allows for scamming, bribing, blackmail. The more interaction that can happen between players, the better off the game is.
 
It's way too complicated to justify the 2$/hour guys paid to do this so the group behind it can make money on the real life transaction involved in selling the virtual ED credits...

There are real life economics behind gold sellers... Not just the paranoia of gamers

It's at least as efficient as the trading required to grind out the credits which are the source of the transaction... presumably also staffed by the same $2/hour guys.

My point is not to be paranoid about this happening, but that if there was demand or a market for farmed credits in E: D we would be there already.
 
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