Its time to talk seriously about a Real-money store to combat bots

kewl

Bolo_Bob

no.

i agree with most of the points made in the "no posts" if not all of them, but i didnt read them all.

besides it is just silly to have in a game where there already is a subscription.
that is just my opinion by the way.

rfpalmerb16_ESO

madfeldoreb17_ESO wrote: »

Hi, I will say few things and sorry if I quote all the things here and only comment on few.

I do not like your post because you used things like: "Let's not be children". Well, there you already made a kid of yourself - that is - in my opinion.
To really think that selling gold is even one of the options is silly - in my opinion and listen, I do not call you a kid or anything like that. You have an idea that ZOS should sell gold instead?
I have no words for you more because I don't call people by names. I think everyone can have an opinion and you had yours but using so many bad words towards others, too much for me:)
I put this short, I disagree with you.

Cheers...

First, "Lets not be children" is an idiom (combination of words which have a figurative meaning) which is intended to convey the larger statement "Lets not act in a manner or have opinions such as one would find in a child being either impulsive, reactive, naive and/or without due consideration" It is not calling someone a child. It is intended focus the reader into carefully considering the following points.

Second,
I do believe that ZOS should be selling things via a RMS (Real Money Store) that have real gold value. Given the intelligent arguments some people have made here I am leaning away from actual gold selling, but towards bound tokens to pay for high-cost items in game. I would happily pay $2, 3, 4 or even 5 for a full respec. of a character. I believe the best way to combat bots is to reduce the rewards from being a bot farmer.

Maverick827

rfpalmerb16_ESO wrote: »

So, I guess the best 2 ideas we have are:

1. Emulate Eve's selling game time.
2. offer a RMT that sells tokens for things that consume a lot of money, like respecs and horses as well as selling little jewel items like pets.

Still, anything that dents a farmer's bottom line IMHO is good for the game.

Its a bit off-putting to find all the people who just say 'NO' rather than try to think of a way to actually do something that they would be OK with.

Actually, the best idea doesn't involve a cash shop. They can just flat out reduce the cost of or offer alternative means of getting things like respecs and fast horses. They've already reduced the cost of repairing, which was the worst of all the gold sinks.

Achievements should give mount rewards for free. Reward time playing, not time farming.

Respecs should start cheap and increass with additional use, and then lower over time of non-use. The final bosses in dungeons should drop unique tokens for free respecs. Reward time playing, not time farming.

Etc.

Phantorang

Everyone wants to get rid of bots.
But nobody wants to pay the price.

We will never be rid of bots if we are going to wait for the gaming industry to fix botting problems without impacting gameplay at all.

Demanding a fix doesnt help either. Sacrifices has to be made, if that means ZOS selling gold, so be it.

rfpalmerb16_ESO

Phantorang wrote: »

Everyone wants to get rid of bots.
But nobody wants to pay the price.

We will never be rid of bots if we are going to wait for the gaming industry to fix botting problems without impacting gameplay at all.

Demanding a fix doesnt help either. Sacrifices has to be made, if that means ZOS selling gold, so be it.

If I could click the awesome button an infinite number of times i would.

Tootall2186

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

Yeah it worked wonders for guild wars 2. They didn't have to nerf the end game it launched with into the ground because of bots or anything... Oh wait yes it did... Holding it up as an example as a success of selling in game gold to reduce bots seems mostly stupid.

Exactly. Gw2 still has a boat load of bots. And the way that arena net kept/keeps nerfing the way players can acquire gold in game it makes them want to turn to the botters for gold even more. You can buy 800 gems for like $20 bucks but that will only net you maybe 75 gold or something ridiculously low like that. Or you can spend $20 bucks on a gold site and get like 500 gold or what not. I don't know the exact numbers but.

Things like a gem store are nice in concept. But when buying gems or gold becomes the only viable and efficient way to get gold in game, that's a problem. Making gold harder to acquire thus making items harder to acquire and the cycle goes on and on.

Botters will be in every game. There is no tried and true way to get rid of them. The only thing they can do is fight them by banning their accounts and keeping up on the latest exploits they're using. There are ways to make it harder in game for botters. Like having zone and quest level requirements and things like that to make it so they cannot constantly rinse and repeat a level 45 quest with a level 3 toon. Etc.

kasain

Lol this thread is pathetic. If they put a shop in game before console release they will lose sales. Talking about a shop before a game is six mobths or a year old is saying its so bad its time to morph it into ftp.

Cash shop can work but not with su b s. Right now eso is a sub par game, not worthy of a 15 dollar a month price. Ffxiv 2m+ subs no in game shop. I dont know about wow and eq, but pretty sure they are 500k subs and no in game shop for real money.

Eso just needs better quest rewards. Lol I never seen armor repair kit off a boss. Not a modif book. Not a horse. Thse types of quest and rewards would go a long way.

They could even let people respec once every thirty days free. Part of monthly sub. Not that I ever done it.

This game needs to attract and retain players, not *** off or scare to try.

rfpalmerb16_ESO

No one has mentioned how LOTRO eliminated most of their bots by having a RMS.
And no, its not cause the game is 'dieing' last time I played D2, there were still bots and gold/items sellers on it and it died a very very very long time ago.

snowmanflvb14_ESO

So we should ruin a game by making it pay to win?

Nazon_Katts

To successfully battle bots - or gold sellers in general - with a cash shop, you have to offer all items of value in it eventually. Otherwise they will just focus on whatever is not available on the store. Rare and ultra rare items will be sought after, even more if people can just buy gold legally. And just because people could instantly afford any item, doesn't mean it's readily available thanks to it's scarcity. That's the niche professional farmers always will have.

And even when ZOS finally manages to handle crucial data strictly server side and even if they can stay ahead of the bots - there's human behavior mimicking one's out there - gold sellers will just switch to doing it old school and be actively farming, grinding and raiding 24/7. No game cash shop could survive a price war with them, since it would not only have to offer all the items, but at such low prices it'll become pointless playing the game.

So other than imposing draconian trade restrictions or not allowing trade at all, there's only the option to live with the grey market and accepting it's existence and then trying to find a way that it doesn't have an all too severe impact on your game. Designing your game so that menial and repetitive tasks don't offer access to highest value items would be a good first step. Making it easier on the player to earn gold and then providing a more convenient and reliable way to actually find and buy sought after goods should come next.

But currently the game is full of gold sinks, hindrance and restrictions, so it does make you want to spend extra to overcome them. And if all those obstacles would conveniently come with signs pointing towards an in-game cash shop, it would make perfectly sense. It's pretty standard F2P design, just that you can spend large sums of in game currency and the cash shop is run by third parties instead.

magickats242cub18_ESO

The only thing I do not agree with the OP is the selling of in game gold. Other then that, the other items are ok, they are just cosmetic and give no advantage to anyone.

Korah_Eaglecry

So youre arguement for a P2W mechanism is what you illogically consider a P2W scam, that is actually a means to drain your real life checking account, that already exists in the game.

Im not against Microtransactions regarding items that have nothing to do with the game mechanics. I do have a problem with selling people gold for real life money. This isnt a phone app game. And the moment the investors and execs realize theres more profit in MTs the quicker theyll be to dropping adding content in exhange for adding more crap to the MT Store. Before you know it. The games F2P, its not receiving the attention it needs and most of the companies efforts are towards selling you a 15 dollar horse/monkey/costume.

mcatchlovb16_ESO

I would buy gold, horses, horse armor etc.. for real money if I could.

madfeldoreb17_ESO

rfpalmerb16_ESO wrote: »

madfeldoreb17_ESO wrote: »

Hi, I will say few things and sorry if I quote all the things here and only comment on few.

I do not like your post because you used things like: "Let's not be children". Well, there you already made a kid of yourself - that is - in my opinion.
To really think that selling gold is even one of the options is silly - in my opinion and listen, I do not call you a kid or anything like that. You have an idea that ZOS should sell gold instead?
I have no words for you more because I don't call people by names. I think everyone can have an opinion and you had yours but using so many bad words towards others, too much for me:)
I put this short, I disagree with you.

Cheers...

First, "Lets not be children" is an idiom (combination of words which have a figurative meaning) which is intended to convey the larger statement "Lets not act in a manner or have opinions such as one would find in a child being either impulsive, reactive, naive and/or without due consideration" It is not calling someone a child. It is intended focus the reader into carefully considering the following points.

Second,
I do believe that ZOS should be selling things via a RMS (Real Money Store) that have real gold value. Given the intelligent arguments some people have made here I am leaning away from actual gold selling, but towards bound tokens to pay for high-cost items in game. I would happily pay $2, 3, 4 or even 5 for a full respec. of a character. I believe the best way to combat bots is to reduce the rewards from being a bot farmer.

You hide behind words, in my opinion. I cannot follow that well because my native language is not english (not sure if it is yours either, but...) and I cannot understand some things - to be honest - what you are saying, when as said, you hide behind words. What that means what I just said or wrote? Well to me it means you just can't write things in a short way, you seem to have a need to write a lot even when the only thing you want to say is that you want ZOS to be selling gold themselves (instead the bot users), am I right or wrong?
To focus on your writing(s) or whatever you are trying to say there trying to want this topic to be more important than it actually is, is beyond my understanding (then again that's not hard to achieve:).
I never believe it is best to fight with the same weapons enemy uses. Not sure if I can explain it well. I just can't understand how it could work to have this go to so called f2p and then buy things from store with real money, other than cosmetics though.. Okay there you might have an idea, but still, to be honest, I don't that much like even selling cosmetics..

PS. Excuse my bad english, really. I still do not understand your point and I still disagree with you. I still, respect your own comment though, as we all should with eachothers. Said well huh? And as it is a necessary thing or no? I'm not even considering that you are a so called troll, whatever that means. And I hope others do no think the same either... *grin*

Cheers...

PS. Btw. I'm a finn that's why I try to write better than what I can... or, something.

Take care.

One "final" word, selling cosmetics, ok! Selling other things, which would give you like items, skill points, whatever actually giving you benefits = no! Again, my opinion.

DewiMorgan

The point of gold sinks is to remove the gold, to reduce inflation.

Why on earth would they kill that by providing a mazzive, firehose-style gold *source*?

There's just no good reason.

If they did that, they might as well just remove all gold sinks, and move directly to a pay-to-respec, pay-to-repair, pay-for-horse system, where players simply can't do those things for any amount of ingame gold.

Seems the OP's approaching this from a "discourage botting" point of view, not from an "encourage players to play" or "game balance" point of view - both of which, fortunately, have far higher precedence for most game designers.

madfeldoreb17_ESO

Nazon_Katts wrote: »

But currently the game is full of gold sinks, hindrance and restrictions, so it does make you want to spend extra to overcome them. And if all those obstacles would conveniently come with signs pointing towards an in-game cash shop, it would make perfectly sense. It's pretty standard F2P design, just that you can spend large sums of in game currency and the cash shop is run by third parties instead.

Yes, you have a point there, but what you mean by extra? Anyway I see this game not going to F2P and I fail to see why anyone would even want it to be so, or even thinking, it would be "set to be so".
Okay, let me give you an example "in general": There are people who are saying this game is so easy can run it through like in 2 days (yeah, I've heard that so called troll). They need no gold, or never needed (yeah sure).
Then there are people who say this game is too hard, cannot even level to 20, or when being on vet levels it is too hard and no gold for repairs...
There, gold... the magic word.. I leave it here but the final sentence:
I might be a fool but I see this game going on the same path it was supposed to go and what the devs thought, it would go, years and years. I trust, this game will never go f2p (see I did not use capitals;) and never going towards real money shops or whatever. The gold in the end, in my opinion, does not make it that difference , here on ESO. I like to have gold, but at least to me, it is not the reason why I play. If you play only for gold and items, you should play another game. But, that's my opinion:D
There, prove me wrong!

Take care,

Cheers...

seanolan

what, exactly, are these amazing and overpowered items people are buying with bot-obtained gold? Seriously. There are NO specific drops I know of that are more difficult to obtain than others. Everything is leveled, so you buy an item at VR1 and it's crap at VR3. You can't buy overpowered items; they literally don't exist. NOBODY has said "Nerf item X" because there are no item X's worthy of nerfage. So what the HELL do you imagine needing a real money store for? I have no idea what people are buying bot gold for, but it isn't making their character uber by any stretch of the imagination. Motifs, sure, some gold crafting materials, perhaps, and maybe bank space or horses...but those aren't going to make a real difference in character power. So WTF are you exactly whinging about? Your horse isn't as fast? Your armor isn't as pretty? You can carry 10 items less than the bot buyer? What are you whimpering about exactly?

the.dzeneralb16_ESO

Hell no. Essentially the argument is: I want to stop person A from selling gold for real money, by having person B selling gold for real money.

There are other ways to combat them, and they will be coming through eventually.

Maverick827

DewiMorgan wrote: »

The point of gold sinks is to remove the gold, to reduce inflation.

The point of gold sinks is to keep you playing and paying longer. Somewhere down the line, MMO developers got lazy and tried tacking gold onto everything. Since gold takes time to acquire, and time equals money, then throwing massive gold prices on everything seemed like a great idea.

Some MMO developers understand that time also equals time (shocking concept, I know) and put rewards behind things that aren't for sale, like BoP gear that's dropped from raids with lockout timers and mounts that come from character-specific achievements, and are rewarded with a relatively bot-free game.

Maverick827

the.dzeneralb16_ESO wrote: »

Hell no. Essentially the argument is: I want to stop person A from selling gold for real money, by having person B selling gold for real money.

There are other ways to combat them, and they will be coming through eventually.

Actually no, the argument is: "Person A and Person B can sell gold for real money. Person A needs to infest the game with bots to do so while Person B does not. I'd rather have Person B selling gold than Person A because that means less or no bots."

Arsenic_Touch

I was hoping to go a few more months without seeing any more ridiculous "ZoS should sell gold' suggestions that popped in up in the first week. /sigh

You would ruin this game with these suggestions. I bet that's your angle too, you want to ruin the game.

A RMT sanctioned by ZoS would accomplish absolutely nothing when it comes to bots.

Nazon_Katts

@madfeldoreb17_ESO

With 'extra' I meant that you do not have to spend gold, but to gain 10 more inventory slots, for example, you might be tempted to spend that 20k just for convenience. It's extra spending not necessarily needed to play the game.

I usually write abbreviations in capital letters, because that's how you do it; FBI, NSA, F2P or NPC. That's in no way meant to be emphasizing nor does it show any preferences I might or might not have. For the record, I loathe most F2P models and just don't like the rest.

I only noticed several design choices that you'd typically see in F2P games. Let's take the inventory slots for example again. In my opinion, in a sub game, this belongs into the hand of the players. Allow them to craft bags and crates, so they can use or sell them in order to increase storage and/or carrying capacity. In F2P games that's usually not the case, so it can be monetized and inventory expansions be sold to the players.

That's the setup you find here in ESO, just that you use in-game currency to buy them. And if you take a closer look, you'll find quite a few other mechanics similar to this. Now, I'm not saying ESO will go F2P, but the question remains, why it was designed in this specific way. My guess, it's a worked in plan B so that if it has to go F2P, the transition will be easier, since the groundwork is already in place.

I believe, as soon as we see player crafted bags, we can be more certain this stays a sub game. Currently, I wouldn't bet on it, however.

pysta

No cash shop please, thank you! We already are paying for the game and it will not stop the bots from existing. What need to be done is to ban website they use and continu to put effort and people in-game heck! I would gladly do it as a job every day myself!

Also my apologize but adding a cash shop to buy gold in-game is ridiculous the whole purpose of playing a game is to achieve a goal... giving you the reward/goal for your real money turn this into a business... a commerce... not a game.

Read the definition of a game: A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements.

Chris Crawford
Computer game designer Chris Crawford, founder of The Journal of Computer Game Design, has attempted to define the term game[7] using a series of dichotomies:

Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

Enjoy!

Loco_Mofo

This will not fix the problem, so no.

Gold spammers will simply drop their prices.

robacooperb16_ESO

No. No it is not time.

Easy solution: Regular GM "sweeps" in game, Account ban bots, Account ban sellers, and Account ban buyers.

As for the whole "but they buyers are subscribers" BS augments: don't care. The damage that they support and encourage deserves to see them treated exactly the same as the bots and sellers.

Other games have been able to combat these cancerous elements, I don't see why ESO can't do the same.

tanthil

Thats convenient isn't it. If zenimax does nothing to combat botters not only can they continue to collect the monthly subs from these botters but they can also use them as an excuse to open an in game store (in sub game lol)

Kudos

Loco_Mofo

tanthil wrote: »

Thats convenient isn't it. If zenimax does nothing to combat botters not only can they continue to collect the monthly subs from these botters but they can also use them as an excuse to open an in game store (in sub game lol)

Kudos

How do Zenimax benefit from botters exactly? Enlighten me.

BrassRazoo

I really like Cash Shops.
I think all games should have this as an option, and nearly all games these days have some sort of Cash Shop to buy items or upgrades or add-ons.
Pay to win is just an excuse used by people when they can't afford to use one or have their own motives for saying so, generally as they want the gold to go to them for the items that are sold in the shop.
You can always get what you want from the game without a cash shop, sometimes ONLY in game and NEVER in shop.
It is just another option that should be given to players.

rfpalmerb16_ESO

I do kinda think that some people are still stuck in the old mind-set that Items are power -- as was the case in almost every other MMO of the past. In this game your weapons and armor don't make a huge difference. The only reason for not selling weapons and armor in a RMS would be to protect crafters and keep the 'wow' factor at finding an epic item.

As for gold, how does the other player having a slightly faster horse, or with more saddle-bags really affect the game? How does them having 200 bank and inventory slots really affect the game? Once they own every motif why would they purchase more? I believe that fear of the unknown is limiting rational discourse.