vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

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Ok I'll bite. Tell me, what is unknown in this mythical land of magical cash shops? Have we never seen cash shops before? There is really nothing left unknown about them. But there is plenty of reason to be afraid of them.

Honestly the longer this thread goes on the more I get the feeling that some are just upset they can't use the console controls to give themselves unlimited gold, and don't want to take the chance on getting banned for being a cheater.

Again I ask:
How is the game going to be impacted because Bobby just purchased 2,000,000 gold on is daddies credit card and used the money to max out his inventory, buy all the horses, purchase every motif and respec'd each of his alts. Then proceeded to get a vamp bite for each of his alts Game breaking? OMG now little Bobby is gunna WTFPWN in Cyrodill and the Vet content.

WAIT!!! Did he just walk buy with a custom mud-crab pet? OH NOs! We are doomed! Abandon Cyrodill all is lost!

This MMO is NOT like the other MMOs. Its economy is substantially different. Its game mechanics are substantially different. Damage and effectiveness is more based on what limited skills you use and how you use them -- not on having a "+1 sword of chopping things up into bitties". No matter how much gold you buy, you can't make your character substantially more effective.

BTW how is someone buying gold going to change the prices of the largest money sinks in the game: respecing, repairing and horses?

Maverick827 wrote: »

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."

How is competition from ZOS going to stop third party gold sellers? I see no logical conclusion that will result in third party gold sellers closing their business simply because there is a little competition. There are already multiple third party sellers competing with each other. One more player in the market isn't going to change anything. All it will do is force them to lower their price to stay competitive.

Even if ZOS turns it into a price war, the third party sellers won't stop. All this would do is hasten the impact gold selling has upon the game economy and cause inflation to be out of control.

Assuming RMT with third party gold sellers will stop simply because the game offers RMT for gold is rather naive if you ask me.

You think the mass botters lose money over subscription costs? haha. They use stolen credit cards, their operating costs are minimal compared to their incomes.

Just no. the bots are hacking big time and that probably has to do with the open code and API that was released. No bot should be flying through the air, thats a hack and a leak in the code that apparently is harder to fix then anyone here would understand.

A money cash store will not combat botters period.

I have a very novel idea -- why not let us "combat" bots, literally? Open world PvP would easily solve the bot issue.

Cash shop for gold sounds good. I would support it. I need gold only for my bags and bank upgrades. If people buy gold from ZOS instead of gold sellers I would be more than happy. And people will. Why to risk ban for buying gold from some riddiculous gold seller rather than from ZOS?

It won't ruin the economy. It won't ruin anything.

Gold would become completely worthless because they would almost have to give it away to compete with the prices that stolen accounts and rooms full of Chinese sweatshop gold farmers could sell it for. There is almost no cost to the gold spammers. They steal the accounts, they pay basically nothing to the people farming it.

kitsinni wrote: »

Gold would become completely worthless because they would almost have to give it away to compete with the prices that stolen accounts and rooms full of Chinese sweatshop gold farmers could sell it for. There is almost no cost to the gold spammers. They steal the accounts, they pay basically nothing to the people farming it.

Which is why, earlier I backed away from saying that maybe we should sell gold -- there were several people who made convincing arguments. Rather, use a real money store to sell tokens, bound to accounts, that lets people buy things like respec's horses, inventory space and bank space. In the RMS, sell things like pets, tokens for siege equipment or tokens that can be used to upgrade keeps. Just give people who are caught in a money pinch an option to get out of it rather than buy crap from a farmer. If someone needs a legendary crafting material, why not sell them a bound one at a RMS?

Bot-farmers are min-maxers and if the game they are currently farming in gives them a minimum return, they will move to somewhere else to maximize their revenue. Granted I know we WONT get rid of 100% of the bots -- even 80% would be a win.

Hmm, I tried to twists things in many ways, but I have to admit that the op is not completely wrong. The way things work in ESO already makes buying a bit pointless. It's not like you can make your equipment +20 and one shot everyone in this game; once you've got legendary stuff, all your bag upgrades and motifs, then all you can pretty much do is just PvP and farm AP points. The only other use for gold is skills reset really and stacking on mats for future upgrades.

That being said, I am against a legit cash shop that involves changing game mechanics or giving people an advantage over others who do it the hard way. It doesn't matter what you do, the bots will still be there and sell gold cheaper than the cash shop. I know the world isn't fair, and the e-world isn't fair...

Other than this, you have to take another variable into account. People bought the copy of the game, and are paying a subscription fee every month to have (or expect to have) a bug free, lag free, bot free gaming experience (perfect world, eh?). In my opinion, there are much better ways to fix the problem.

Seriously, with all the revenue a AAA title like TESO must make, you can't tell me that they can't afford to hire 2 people taking shifts just to ban people using bot programs and exploiting the game.

It is NOT tricky to find a bot or some flying character and it is NOT tricky to ban them. Game developers have a large array of tools working with the game that can help them check absolutely everything you do, including account names, timestamps, logs of any kinds (inventory, items, chat, drops...), etc. I'm not saying that it's possible to get rid of all bots and exploits, but with GMs in game banning everyday nonstop, the effects should immediately visible.

Contrary to popular belief, all farmers aren't from China and bot programs aren't all made by Chinese people. Some cheaters are obvious, others aren't.
Not all botters steal credit cards to buy their accounts. "companies" who own a website and sell gold on Ebay usually buy their own accounts and are able to survive any loss related to bans because of the insane amount of money they are making.

If the developers REALLY cared, the only non-absurd solution would be to hire people full time to ban bots. I mean, really, what is 30k dollars a year for each megaserver when you make so much more? Any other solution has drawbacks: legit cash shops, bound items, ip bans, country bans, you name it. Someone somewhere gets it in the a**.

Botting must clearly be beneficial to the global revenue of any MMO, as bans lead to more account purchase and more money. Ban too many people and they won't buy or sell gold no more. Now, why would you do that?

Don't look for a compromise... otherwise why are you paying for a AAA title?


In addition to all that, here's an idea:
Zenimax hires full time GMs. (costs them money)
Zenimax adds a cosmetic-only shop: including costumes, visual effects for all your weapons (glows, etc), visual FX changes for your skills (doesn't necessarily have a negative effect on skill morphs and I'm sure a LOT of people would spend money there, getting a return for the money spent on GMs).

Even though it is not a mmorpg, "Path of Exile" did this and I found it to be an extremely good feature and excellent idea from the devs, as it supports their game without giving anyone any advantage.