Lost's crazy anti gil seller suggestion

[Lost]

Lost's Anti Gil Seller

First remove the option to trade with other players, directly. Instead the player uses a broker NPC, which puts the item into the database with a special tag that can be searched in the database. The item trade during weekly maintance is run through a check system for unusual activity. Any unusual activity , automatically goes into "suspended" status , until the GM looks into the activity and logs.

The NPC broker requires a note about the transaction, like "Trading this to Bob for a pile of bones".

Next make money untradable , an auction house and NPC broker will exchange goods for the player's money, then its delivered to the seller's warehouse. Money to money trades wont be possible , you can store coins for mules and twinks in a special slot of the bank.

Direct deposits into guild vault for expensives , keep / castle fees , and npcs. The money never touches another player , without going through a NPC, you can even apply a fee.

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Is this extreme? Well its war , its cheaper to process a database input than it is to hire GMs to hunt bots and gil sellers. You know both the john and the hooker in this , you can shoot them on site , solves the problem , let God sort out who was the sinner.

You use NPC merchants owned by the player to sell goods of crafters. This is one way to control the flow of coin and gil sellers.

[amz181]

Thats similar to runescapes new system. And it SUCKS!!!!!!

The whole system eradicates bartering and makes items super cheap, its not the way to solve gil sellers.

Not to mention the fact you really have to work hard trying to make money, and i find games like that really annoying.

[Lost]

Thats similar to runescapes new system. And it SUCKS!!!!!!

The whole system eradicates bartering and makes items super cheap, its not the way to solve gil sellers.

Not to mention the fact you really have to work hard trying to make money, and i find games like that really annoying.


It wouldnt effect player wealth , it would effect trading and selling among players. You can still put breastplate on a NPC vendor to be sold to players for 30k , the system would just be able to log each item better than trade interface.

You wouldnt have to work any harder to make money , the drops would be the same , if you want instant cash npc the item to a vendor. If want to trade with someone you just setup through the broker npc.

Gil sellers accounts would drop off pretty quickly if they had no way to sell gold , or loot without being tracked.

[amz181]

There is always a couple of player who sell items dirt cheap, you will nearly always be undercut and sometimes the value of a product goes sooo low, ive seen a 40k item go to 5k in a MMO that used a system like this.

I gain my wealth mainly by bartering, and the inclusion of that vendor system eliminates me totally, there is always some1 who is selling cheaper than you, and it just turns into a battle for the lowest price. I am really frustrated by games which make it really hard to make money, and i am most certainly frustrated about that system.

Edit:
Also, the likelyhood is that this game will be P2P, gil sellers will be banned for a duration, and that means that they'll be -10 in cash, so it will easily eliminate the gil population easily.

[Lost]

There is always a couple of player who sell items dirt cheap, you will nearly always be undercut and sometimes the value of a product goes sooo low, ive seen a 40k item go to 5k in a MMO that used a system like this.

I gain my wealth mainly by bartering, and the inclusion of that vendor system eliminates me totally, there is always some1 who is selling cheaper than you, and it just turns into a battle for the lowest price. I am really frustrated by games which make it really hard to make money, and i am most certainly frustrated about that system.

Edit:
Also, the likelyhood is that this game will be P2P, gil sellers will be banned for a duration, and that means that they'll be -10 in cash, so it will easily eliminate the gil population easily.

It cost alot of money to police gil sellers , and ban them. This way you got a database to check for unusual activity. Supply and demand would decise the price , same as other games. If the items so easy to get it goes down to 5k then it should be so.

Most items are overpriced anyhow in mmorpg , if this drives the supply and demand , reduces the chances for people getting ripped off then it ll be even better.

[amz181]

A healthy amount of moderators and a report abuse button will solve the problem.

Edit: Ripping off being an offense is only an offense in kids games, in my eyes its your fault for not having the knowledge, and is a useful tool in a merchants arsenal.

[Lost]

A healthy amount of moderators and a report abuse button will solve the problem

Looking at cost , time and energy, from a developer stand point. If you employee 30 GMs (as an example) and 25 are tracking down gil sellers/bots , then you got a problems.

If you got a database program , which tracks trends , unusual activity, and people generally breaking the rules which could be done by 5 or 6 people , then you have cheaper cost to enforce the rules.

Gil sellers are like a virus , they break down the entire system. Case in point , 2003 , IGE release 400 billion into FFXI , resulting in them having to hire more people to solve the inflation , lost of players , lost of items and deleting gold from the system.

Its better in my opine to kill the gil seller at birth , then work through all the problems he could cause. Might be annoyance but its better than having mass inflation.

The system could also be used for datamining , for example let say

I found an easy way to beat a Golem that drops +4 Platemail , the datamine finds that I m selling 5 to 6 of these a day , too many. So they GM looks into my activity or watches me. Solve a major issue , player wins , I lose , and game developers win.

[amz181]

Im talking about player moderators...

Also, i'll agree with you that its effective at stopping cheats but as ive said before its not the way forward.

Moderators would be just as effective, and many new antihacker systems automatically search the database after the player has been reported for abuse and does random checks or looks into unusual track records. By the time this game releases they should be able to choose an anti-hack engine which works brilliantly.

[Lost]

Player moderators dont work , look at Everquest , Rappelz , and Aeria (the publisher) , all have had nothing but legal issues , corruption and problems. Its like asking the fox to watch the chickens , it wouldnt work out to well.

I m not aware of any anti-hacking systems , even Blizzard's rootkit doesnt stop gold farmers. If you need stuff like hackshield , those were made for internet cafes to prevent keyloggers and are very easy to defeat by changing a single line in their code.

[amz181]

Modern anti-hack software doesnt allow the game to be started if the code has been changed without the proper signature (to allow updates)

And as for player moderators, thats just bad use of them. A game thats really nailed it bang on is, once again, runescape :p They are picked from dedicated players never having been accused for cheating or nything of the sort and if they go to the DARK SIDE Sorry couldnt resist :D well if they do then its easily remidied by having a variation of the report button which allows you to report a moderator abusing his powers...

And you misunderstood me about banning, i wasnt meaning to allow the mods to ban people, they have limited powers that wont seriously demean the games outlook and they will all be timed, so things like muting and stuff. And if they see ban-worthy stuff as special mod-report which goes straight away, put the player under servailence (seeing as the mods can only do this the database wont crash) Then BAM! The players gone.

[Darthorious]

There is always a couple of player who sell items dirt cheap, you will nearly always be undercut and sometimes the value of a product goes sooo low, ive seen a 40k item go to 5k in a MMO that used a system like this.

I gain my wealth mainly by bartering, and the inclusion of that vendor system eliminates me totally, there is always some1 who is selling cheaper than you, and it just turns into a battle for the lowest price. I am really frustrated by games which make it really hard to make money, and i am most certainly frustrated about that system.

Edit:
Also, the likelyhood is that this game will be P2P, gil sellers will be banned for a duration, and that means that they'll be -10 in cash, so it will easily eliminate the gil population easily.

That's why you buy all the dirt cheap ones and re-place them with a jacked up price but still the lowest on the common market. It also works over time to raise the price of the item.

For example about a month ago I took an item the normally sold for 500k and bought everyone that was under 650k, then I placed them all up for 650k and continue to do this. Now that they reached 650K standard selling price I am now switching to 700k.

The trick is this. Make sure the item you do this with has no value to you. If it did u might raise the price of an item you need or have been saving for indirectly with this method. Then you can no longer afford it and have to start from square one again.

I made 60mil. profit in one night by doing this and gill sellers use this same technique. But they usually use it for items that are already too high to afford by the standard player forcing them to buy the gill.

By using this method in games I have never had to buy money in game.

[amz181]

How small was the game? because either you were loaded or there wasnt alot of players. This game is aiming for a massive playerbase

[Lost]

How small was the game? because either you were loaded or there wasnt alot of players. This game is aiming for a massive playerbase

You can control the auction house in FFXI , WoW , and Eq2 , with about 2 million. There is a bot/farmer group in WoW , which bought up all the 1 to 20 gear , and then resold it by 50% mark up , until it became the standard price.

In FFXI a gil seller group connected to Gamerlooter , controls the Shiva server's rate on two rings Woodsman and Sniper , they pooled together around 11 billion to take control of most of the grandfathered items.

FFXI even has an AH where bots go to see market eb and flow (and players too). In FFXI they allowed server moves for 25.00, a bot group bought up all these rings on a really bad server where prices where like 75% less and then moved to another server for 500% profit margin.

Playing the ah is big business. eq2 exchange server has a guild as old as the original server that plays it like the stock market.

[Mister Matt]

Playing the ah is big business.

QFT. I had 185g in WoW by level 20 and made myself into a 29 twink that destroyed everything.

[amz181]

You can control the auction house in FFXI , WoW , and Eq2 , with about 2 million. There is a bot/farmer group in WoW , which bought up all the 1 to 20 gear , and then resold it by 50% mark up , until it became the standard price.

In FFXI a gil seller group connected to Gamerlooter , controls the Shiva server's rate on two rings Woodsman and Sniper , they pooled together around 11 billion to take control of most of the grandfathered items.

FFXI even has an AH where bots go to see market eb and flow (and players too). In FFXI they allowed server moves for 25.00, a bot group bought up all these rings on a really bad server where prices where like 75% less and then moved to another server for 500% profit margin.

Playing the ah is big business. eq2 exchange server has a guild as old as the original server that plays it like the stock market.

Those are examples of bad economies which could have been avoided. No group of people (unless numbered in the thousands) should be able to gain control of any item, its idiocy to allow it.

Either way, my opinion (which is obviously perfect in every way) is that controlled selling and buying destroys the economy, and makes it extremely hard for new players to make money after the game is thriving.

[Lost]

Those are examples of bad economies which could have been avoided. No group of people (unless numbered in the thousands) should be able to gain control of any item, its idiocy to allow it.

Either way, my opinion (which is obviously perfect in every way) is that controlled selling and buying destroys the economy, and makes it extremely hard for new players to make money after the game is thriving.



Currently there is no way to make new players "to make enough money to survive" , the reason is inflation , theft/scamming/ and hording , are all contain factors which make it next to impossible for newbies to gain items which were once "common".

Most times prices are driven up not by supply and demand , but fake value put on them by veteran players who control the source of the item (like NM in FFXI or dungeon contain in WOW which can be soloed by high lvls and still get the drop.)

The key to making the game "possible to thrive in" , would be 1) quest armor for each benchmark level (10 , 15 , 20 etc) 2) A way to farm money/resources while offline 3) price control (either with high tax on items over a certain profit margain , like:

Sword of Doom retails from a npc for 20,000 gil , the player could post the Sword of Doom for upto 20% above the npc price, anything past 20% profit would be taxed 90%. This would prevent people from using the abusing the auction house/consignment merchant.

The other way is to place a value on the item, and not allow you to go over that value. Like for example :

Sword of Doom has a value of 8 , it can go for 1k to 25k , but no more and no less. The value would drop based on the number of Swords of Doom within the game (if 50 Sword of Doom where in market , then you see a value of 7).

Like wise if there is few of a Sword of Doom in the market , then the value would increase.

[Darthorious]

How small was the game? because either you were loaded or there wasnt alot of players. This game is aiming for a massive playerbase

The game I'm playing now is 175,000 on my server as of now, most people miss the obvious profit potential off low levels. They go for the big sales of big items.

My friends and I have always gone for lower costing items that not only mark up and sell at a much higher percentage rate. But also because of the low cost to buy it creates non-stop purchases because everyone wants or needs the cheap item that is bought by both low and high levels alike. Example would be consumables like food/potions etc.

How ever at certain times (weekends usually) certain big profit items sell out and at other times (weekdays) these items are up for sale at 1/2 the cost of normal. Hence easy money. My record is making 61mil in 6 minutes using this technique. Obviously they were not high items but were items mid to high level players use.

This weekend I text'd a guy I work with when the server sold out. We both went up (in diffrent area's of course) and both sold out fast. I'm mid level and can easily make a 50mil profit while I'm asleep. On weekends I'm limited to how much can be crafted, bought and procured during the week days.

[Darthorious]

Currently there is no way to make new players "to make enough money to survive" , the reason is inflation , theft/scamming/ and hording , are all contain factors which make it next to impossible for newbies to gain items which were once "common".

Most times prices are driven up not by supply and demand , but fake value put on them by veteran players who control the source of the item (like NM in FFXI or dungeon contain in WOW which can be soloed by high lvls and still get the drop.)

The key to making the game "possible to thrive in" , would be 1) quest armor for each benchmark level (10 , 15 , 20 etc) 2) A way to farm money/resources while offline 3) price control (either with high tax on items over a certain profit margain , like:

Sword of Doom retails from a npc for 20,000 gil , the player could post the Sword of Doom for upto 20% above the npc price, anything past 20% profit would be taxed 90%. This would prevent people from using the abusing the auction house/consignment merchant.

The other way is to place a value on the item, and not allow you to go over that value. Like for example :

Sword of Doom has a value of 8 , it can go for 1k to 25k , but no more and no less. The value would drop based on the number of Swords of Doom within the game (if 50 Sword of Doom where in market , then you see a value of 7).

Like wise if there is few of a Sword of Doom in the market , then the value would increase.

Here's one example of an item I sell.

Standard going price for item is 750,000
On weekdays there is a surplus and the item dips to 500,000 I assume because the kiddys are in school (not for long darn)
I then buy around 100-200 of the item during the week and there is still tons more that could be bought.
On weekends the price goes up to 1mil each and every weekend are sold out by Saturday night.
Saturday night my items then go up for 650K and within an hour I can unload all of what I bought usually it's about 10minutes but did take an hour once.

[amz181]

we cud argue forever but u cannot deny the fact that these things destroy a games economy

[Lost]

we cud argue forever but u cannot deny the fact that these things destroy a games economy


I m not an economy major , but I ve been watching and playing mmorpgs since 1999. And muds before that , there has to be a way to control inflations , and stop bots/gil sellers.

Money sinks arent working , why? there are some players who farm / produce items faster than the server can remove them. Even with durability there are too many items.

A control system would be a good idea , something they could tweak.

[Darthorious]

we cud argue forever but u cannot deny the fact that these things destroy a games economy

Actually if you do nothing then yes it does destroy the game economy.


The only rule to remember when playing the market is this...

If you can force an items value to increase you better be able to lower the value also otherwise you shoot yourself in the foot. By controlling and being able to decrease the value you decrease the amount the RMT takes in and reduce the economy inflation.

You raise a price on something RMT like to use. They don't mind untill....

You then drasticly lower the market value of that item. Which also lowers the value of the items used to craft it dramaticly. At this time the RMT has spent more money to make the item than it is selling for.

If you can keep this up they will then lose a large amount of money in the process because they craft/buy in bulk. This is the same method they use to control the market and if a number of guilds are smart and know how to control the market, well fight fire with fire.

Of course they will at first undercut the item big time in hopes it's just 1 or 2 people doing this and quickly try to drive them out (all the while losing even more money). However when you have multiple guilds co-operating you will drive them to a separate part of the market.

Oh and you know your doing a good job when everyone in your guild starts getting death threats from the RMT or they start mocking your family members (I guess that's some kind of insult or something, they always go for the grandparents lol)

[Lost]

Well right now , player run systems arent working too well. Take Eve for example , it begun with developer money given to a player group to kick start it. Even with all the money sinks , the average player who has been there for more than 2 years has almost infinite money. They ve begun to sell game time for in game money , which is making the bots happy.

The US government among others , controls thier market , I think the developers should do the same. The developers is the mmorpg government and god , they be proactive , instead of reactive.

Being reactive does nothing for inflation , killing off bots , or gil seller/buyers. If you put into place a system to control the value all items in game , then you could effective take out 90% of the RMT players.

[amz181]

This dicussion is making my head hurt now :p i just cant be bothered anymore.

I'll just say the one thing that none of you can dispute.

I HATE CONTROLLED SELLING

now if you'll excuse me im w8ing for Damons reply on the user guinea pig thread.

[Darthorious]

This dicussion is making my head hurt now :p i just cant be bothered anymore.

I'll just say the one thing that none of you can dispute.

I HATE CONTROLLED SELLING

now if you'll excuse me im w8ing for Damons reply on the user guinea pig thread.

Ya have to agree unless the selling is dropping the total market price of everything. But welcome to real life.

My food alone went up about 30% this year while my wages went up 2% lol...

and ya my head is about ready to burst tired of thinking about money lol

[amz181]

and ya my head is about ready to burst tired of thinking about money lol

what did it for me was the word inflation, as soon as some1 mentions that work my mind goes blank :p