They keep telling us to trust the Bank of Zaonce with our hard-earned credits. How about it? I think the ability to do a bank transfer (whilst docked) sounds like an excellent idea.
P2P transfers could even work within sensible limits. You could be restricted to transfers to pilots with clean records, and/or who are not marked as hostile at the time of the transfer. Amounts beyond a certain credit threshold could be flagged as "suspicious" and be held pending the payer's verification once docked. We could even do P2P item sales/auctions without getting the authorities involved.
P2P transfers could even work within sensible limits. You could be restricted to transfers to pilots with clean records, and/or who are not marked as hostile at the time of the transfer. Amounts beyond a certain credit threshold could be flagged as "suspicious" and be held pending the payer's verification once docked. We could even do P2P item sales/auctions without getting the authorities involved.
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If we consider that, by and large the credit transfers only need to be small, for paying contracts and whatnot, so say a 250,000Cr limit per player, per day then you make gold selling difficult.
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.
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.
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daan2002
Banned
wow..... just because it might get you a ban hammer does not stop ppl from buying it........... or they be no gold selling in world of warcraft star trek online and so on .......
As I mentioned earlier, this effectively breaks piracy, since they're not going to want cargo anymore.
Ideas Man
Banned
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.
I'm fully awake. Gold sellers are not an issue for a pro active game company that does not rely on a subscription based game/income model.
If your income is monthly subscriptions you have a harder time banning your paying customers for buying gold or credits or isk or whatever...
If your customers pay upfront for the game and you have solid T&Cs and Eula and whatever it is that regulates such behaviour, you can just ban gold buyers and treat the problem at the source of the demand...
No demand ... no gold sellers...
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Why is the notion of pirates ransoming you for credits such a bad idea... it's more efficient for both parties involved in the long run...
Deleted member 56127
D
Lots of good discussion here from all sides. Keep the talks going strong.
So currently what I do business wise, in the game, is I will dock usually in Azeban City waiting for a pilot to come through. I will strike up a friendly conversation and entice them with wealth. Fast forward. The pilot assembles a crew and the Captain of that crew obtains the work order from me. I meet said Captain at a location and abandon an agreed upon sum of rare cargo to cover fuel/repair expenses for the crew. The Captain then departs with his crew to said system that I want them to flip or balance out. Their work is closely tracked to ensure it is completed. When the work is done, the Captain meets with me and collects full payment in the sum of rare commodity plus bonuses for the others. This has been an excellent way for me to gain influence in some systems, turn systems, and get favors done for me. The problem is that the Independent crew I employ is growing larger to suit my needs, that makes things a bit more difficult when it comes to paying out in large tonnage of rares. This is why I would like the credit system to be thoroughly looked as a way for us to possibly send payment to other players. But in a refined, balanced manner that works for everybody.
So currently what I do business wise, in the game, is I will dock usually in Azeban City waiting for a pilot to come through. I will strike up a friendly conversation and entice them with wealth. Fast forward. The pilot assembles a crew and the Captain of that crew obtains the work order from me. I meet said Captain at a location and abandon an agreed upon sum of rare cargo to cover fuel/repair expenses for the crew. The Captain then departs with his crew to said system that I want them to flip or balance out. Their work is closely tracked to ensure it is completed. When the work is done, the Captain meets with me and collects full payment in the sum of rare commodity plus bonuses for the others. This has been an excellent way for me to gain influence in some systems, turn systems, and get favors done for me. The problem is that the Independent crew I employ is growing larger to suit my needs, that makes things a bit more difficult when it comes to paying out in large tonnage of rares. This is why I would like the credit system to be thoroughly looked as a way for us to possibly send payment to other players. But in a refined, balanced manner that works for everybody.
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Ideas Man
Banned
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
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
Deleted member 56127
D
Lets bring things back on topic. This is not a thread on gold farming. This is a thread on brainstorming a system that works for everybody.
It may exist. But how that fact really impacts others who play the game properly and following the rules is debatable. I find that gold sellers become an issue if they somehow suck income away from the game designer's pocket... otherwise they hardly represent a major problem that needs addressing aggressively... Just ban the buyers... the problem will go away without a decent demand...
How does that break piracy? Pirates are after the money.
1. People don't pay attention to Eula and don't think about consequences (hows arresting drug users working out?)
2. Some people don't even care about the consequences (got banned? Buy another account, buy more gold, eventually you will not get caught and keep it)
3. You'll need to hire people to actually judge who's a gold seller/buyer because banning is a serious punishment.
4. Those game mods WILL make mistakes and ban innocent people, that's a PR nightmare.
5. It still doesn't make scammers (send me any amount and I'll send back double!) or hackers go away.
As long as gold farmers aren't spamming up the Trade chat....
Hmm, good points.
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.
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In a word: NO!
Lazy pirate talk. Work that cargo scoop!