Gold sellers—did ESO accomplish the impossible?

Nerouyn · November 2014

Flynch wrote: »

Not sure I quite agree with this - considering you can create 10 characters fom the offset (8 basic, then deleting 3 of those, you get another 3 characters)

That's still a lot of characters for a newcomer in their first day. They you get a fresh delete every 24 hours.

No that's not how it works in practice.

For starters this is a feature that's unique to ESO and not well advertised. After installing I did what I normally do when I start any MMO. I come up with names I like for different characters I have ideas for, create a temporary character hoping that name is available or keep trying until I get one I like, and then proceed.

Especially in a game with a single megaserver, unique names, and several months after launch, that's a priority.

So that's 8 characters created straight off the bat without really getting into the character creator. Then you delete the first one you want to try seriously and go through the character creator properly. And if you don't like how that one looks you delete, try again, delete try again and.... that's it you're done.

Then you pay a subscription to once a day have access to the character creator to try again.

Murmeltier · November 2014

jeevin wrote: »

Murmeltier wrote: »

Hi,
You always need Gold in this Game, for a Horse (not everyone has a Delxuxe Edition), epic Recipes (the Goldsellers wasnt there, in the Times that these epic Recipes cost a lot ), for epic/legendary Equip-Upgrades (some People have more than one Set), for Epic/legendary Motifs (always expensive, now even more), to buy Mats (not everyone have the Time/Fun to search them), to buy Equip (some of the Equip you will buy, like the Warlockjewels for an Example) etc etc.
!

All of these things you can buy with gold that is easily farmed from public dungeon drops or motif farming. I do a round of motif farming when I log on and before I log off(around six or seven times a week)and I find at least two rare motifs a week, which at current prices around $75-80k profit. The recipes are ridiculously easy to find now so no need to buy them. I have 3 maxed horses and 170 bank space and really have nothing more to spend gold on other than tempers for crafting or a respec if I feel like a change. Thats it.

Edit: I'm in no way poo pooing Zeni's work at ridding the farmers from the game. It's just In my (extremely)humble opinion there is very little need to buy gold for ESO.

You said all of this Things can be paid with Gold from easy farming Motifs and puplic Dungeons. Sure it is not heavy but it cost al lot of Time.

And it is often something new and rare/expensive in Teso. Epic Recipes at the Start (a Long Time), later the Nirncrux Research and in the Future the new Dwemer Style or the Spellcraft-Tablets.

Some Players dont have the Time, some dont want to have the Time for this Way, but they have Money.

At the End we dont know exactly why the Goldsellers arent here anymore. The only Fact we have is, they are vanished at the Moment and that Zenimax, and all the other People who reported them again and again, worked hard for it.

zaria · November 2014

Flynch wrote: »

Nerouyn wrote: »

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

The measures zeni has taken to combat gold sellers are not harsh in any way compared to other games.

The measures are very harsh on real, new players. The character delete limit is by far the most annoying MMO design feature I've hit in my ten years of playing.

It may have achieved the goal of reducing spam but it's an enormous pain in the rear for new players. ZO just hasn't seen how bad yet because they introduced it after the bulk of their players were well established and not making new characters.

Normally I spend my first week trying out different races, classes, factions, appearances etc. until I settle on one I like. It's even worse in ESO cos how you look in the character creator doesn't always match what you see out in the gameworld.

Five weeks, still going, and growing more bored with the process and the game every day. At this stage I may just cancel my sub and wait until they fix it.

Not sure I quite agree with this - considering you can create 10 characters fom the offset (8 basic, then deleting 3 of those, you get another 3 characters)

That's still a lot of characters for a newcomer in their first day. They you get a fresh delete every 24 hours.

Yes, the only reason to get past the limit if you are an perfectionist and want to repeatably test your character out of the creation menu. Still require that you do this over an over again.

Yes the other way to fix it would be to not let you skip coldharbor and the starting island, or other restrictions.

Kypho · November 2014

This crap is not even worth for goldsellers. They know something.

zaria · November 2014

Nox_Aeterna wrote: »

david271749 wrote: »

Losing enough customers for even gold sellers to realize it's not a profitable venture is not what I would call an accomplishment.

Pretty much.

If there was a profitable market they would be here , that is a fact.

3 things now enter in this factor:

1) The overall amount of players in the game , which is the market in the first place.
2) The fact that in this game average players really dont need that much gold anyway.
3) Zen made things that make selling cost increase.

You can still buy ESO gold, google is your friend.

i even found a $/ gold over time graph, don't want to link it here as its a gold seller site. Price for 100k gold started at $30, dropped to $10 in May, then started climbing and was back to $30 in June, climbed to 40 in August, did a jump up to 60 in end of august and is now back to 45.

Pretty much the opposite of the expected in an supply and demand situation.
We all know that ESO has huge up front gold sinks in horses, bank and inventory space. After this you don't need much gold unless you have too much money.

However the prices are far higher than they should be if it was lots of gold the sellers wanted to get rid of fast.

My guess is that they went after the bot networks where you have plenty of bots farming with an combination of other methods like behavior mapping.
Probably also ways of making it harder to use stolen credit cards.
The max three deletions was probably more to stop player from exploiting than the gold farmers as they had other methods.

End result, ESO gold farming is hard, so hard the prices are high.
Face it, if you could buy gold in the ESO store, you would not buy 100k gold for $45 even as new player
marked is also too small for large scale operations then the large scale operation has an huge chance of getting shut down.

Nidwin · November 2014

Facepalm

Gold sellers are still here and active. Sites get updated and prices products added, changed, removed and so on and so on.

The only thing that has been taken care off is gold spammers who aren't the usual trustworthy sources to buy gold, accounts or PL ranking services.

Valymer · November 2014

I always figured those green trash items on guild traders listed for like 150k were people just transferring sold gold. Either that or some people just need to put down the pipe a little more often.

zaria · November 2014

Nidwin wrote: »

Facepalm

Gold sellers are still here and active. Sites get updated and prices products added, changed, removed and so on and so on.

The only thing that has been taken care off is gold spammers who aren't the usual trustworthy sources to buy gold, accounts or PL ranking services.

Lots of sites selling gold, I even listed price development.
Zone and mail spammer was solved long before the bots went away.
And the bots are gone, yes they might be hidden however its not lots of them or gold prices would be lower.

Nidwin · November 2014

@zaria‌

Gold sellers don't use bots, at least not the trustworthy ones. They buy up accounts, equipment and in game gold to sell afterwards. They also have players that work for them in game couple of hours a day, week, month in exchange for a payed account. And so on and so on.

It's very hard to get rid of the real ones.

MJ said there will be no concessions and he will hunt them all down. We'll see if he'll be able too and we're talking about someone who has a huge knowledge of the gold selling in mmorpg market.

Ohioastro · November 2014

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

david271749 wrote: »

Losing enough customers for even gold sellers to realize it's not a profitable venture is not what I would call an accomplishment.

I wouldn't have put it as harshly, but this is basically it. The measures zeni has taken to combat gold sellers are not harsh in any way compared to other games. If gold sellers have stopped advertising it's rather because they stopped caring really.

This is an utter fallacy. Gold sellers are in it to make money, and there are (by any account) hundreds of thousands of people playing this game. If there was a feasible way for them to tap that market they would.

People who hate the game or who have a chip on their shoulder can't give the designers credit for anything. So they complain endlessly about gold spam, and when it stops they announce that the company gets zero credit.

A simpler and more accurate description is that companies need some time to figure out the patterns that define spammers and cheaters. Once they have the patterns locked down, they put in changes that raise the hassle level for the sellers so much that they lose money trying.

We saw gold spam drop to zero over the course of one patch. Your theory is that every single gold spammer decided to quit at once. My theory is that they figured out how to stop them. I think that mine is a lot more plausible.

zaria · November 2014

Nidwin wrote: »

@zaria‌

Gold sellers don't use bots, at least not the trustworthy ones. They buy up accounts, equipment and in game gold to sell afterwards. They also have players that work for them in game couple of hours a day, week, month in exchange for a payed account. And so on and so on.

It's very hard to get rid of the real ones.

MJ said there will be no concessions and he will hunt them all down. We'll see if he'll be able too and we're talking about someone who has a huge knowledge of the gold selling in mmorpg market.

Understand, and yes this is hard to track down at least if they spread out the gold transfers so it don't show up in statistic.
Also makes sense the old well known gold seller sites has been around for a decade, that would be hard if you was much involved in real criminality like stolen credit cards.

However who was running the huge bot network in the start and why did the gold to $ price drop so fast?
My guess is the subcontractors who sold gold to the sellers.
And yes it was plenty of player run bots to.

tordr86b16_ESO · November 2014

if someone wants gold or crafting items then they will simply find a site that sells it...

zaria · November 2014

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

if someone wants gold or crafting items then they will simply find a site that sells it...

Obviously, more so because the spammers had to use stolen credit cards or hacked accounts, no way that could go break even with bought accounts, would you buy stuff from then using your credit card

its also pretty easy to identify spammes who use new accounts. New players will explore, do quests or kill things.
They will not send pretty much same message in zone all the time or send mail to thousands.

Was pretty pathetic how desperate they became once the filters started blocking their web sites. Bots was an harder nut to crack.
You don't want to hit players after all even players doing weird / questionable things.

Flynch · November 2014

Nerouyn wrote: »

Flynch wrote: »

Not sure I quite agree with this - considering you can create 10 characters fom the offset (8 basic, then deleting 3 of those, you get another 3 characters)

That's still a lot of characters for a newcomer in their first day. They you get a fresh delete every 24 hours.

No that's not how it works in practice.

For starters this is a feature that's unique to ESO and not well advertised. After installing I did what I normally do when I start any MMO. I come up with names I like for different characters I have ideas for, create a temporary character hoping that name is available or keep trying until I get one I like, and then proceed.

Especially in a game with a single megaserver, unique names, and several months after launch, that's a priority.

So that's 8 characters created straight off the bat without really getting into the character creator. Then you delete the first one you want to try seriously and go through the character creator properly. And if you don't like how that one looks you delete, try again, delete try again and.... that's it you're done.

Then you pay a subscription to once a day have access to the character creator to try again.

Could it be a better advertised mechanic? Of course.

Does it have a wide-spread affect on all players, new and old? Not really - not even those of us who are serious altaholics.

Would you prefer gallons of chat and mail spam, that does affect all players, as soon as you log in? Of course not.

I'm big on alts too - and the character creation could certainly use more tools to directly portray how your character would look in the game world.

But there's no way i'd sacrifice the character delete limit for having crazy amounts of botting and goldspam.

edit: typo

Nerouyn · November 2014

Flynch wrote: »

Could it be a better advertised mechanic? Of course.

Does it have a wide-spread affect on all players, new and old? Not really - not even those of us who are serious altaholics.

That's the problem. This mechanic was introduced after most of the population was well established. So it's had bugger all negative impact on them.

But MMOs need to draw in and retain new players to grow or even just survive. This is a HUGE obstacle to that.

I am not an altaholic. I just want to play one character. That's always been a big draw of the single player ES games. One character can do everything. Not quite in ESO with classes but that's a different story.

But because of this deletion limit instead of getting this done in my first week of play, I'm still doing it after five.

Flynch wrote: »

Would you prefer gallons of chat and mail spam, that does affect all players, as soon as you log in? Of course not.

Actually yes I would.

I hate spam. I've said as much in other posts on this topic. But I've paid good money to play this game and am not getting good value for it.

Five in weeks I shouldn't still be trying to create a character. I should have settled on one, be VR, and most importantly joined a guild and getting into the game.

The most I've managed to achieve is to level a few crafting alts and unlock some dyes.

Flynch wrote: »

But there's no way i'd sacrifice the character delete limit for having crazy amounts of botting and goldspam.

You're being silly.

It's not a matter of only being able to have one or the other. There are obvious and easy tweaks ZO could apply so this mechanic affects gold spammers but not real players and there are bad interactions with existing game features (or lack thereof) which can also easily be fixed.

Eg. add the ability to alter your appearance in-game post creation. Voila! 80% of this problem is solved without even having to touch the character delete limit.

Eg. give players an alternative to the existing character delete limit. Let them create a character which is gagged - cannot say, whisper, chat - can't join a guild and can't trade with other players. They would have no ability to impact on the game's economy. If they end up not liking the character they can delete it and try again. If they do like it then they can convert to a normal ungagged character and their entire existing inventory becomes bound (to prevent potential farming abuse)... and then they're charged 1 character delete credit.

Simples.

Flynch · November 2014

I'll not quote the convo as it's getting a bit lengthy. But i'll simply summarise with this:

Character deletion limit is the most simple and effective recourse to goldselling chat and mail spam i've ever seen in an MMO. I hated it when I first slammed headfirst into my own delete limit. I've now grown to absolutely accept it as the current best viable solution.

Your idea in the last portion would work fine - except you'd be adding more obfuscation to the melting pot - swapping out one confusing mechanic with another, ie - New players would have to go through a primary mechanic to unlock their chat etc, then faced with the already obfuscated deletion limit.

So at this point, I do stand by my assertions of sacrifice.

The boat has sailed too far to start throwing other mechanics into the pot, when the current one has worked so effectively.

edit:

I will say this though - they absolutely should have implemented a character appearance modifier with the deletion limits. This would have had no impact on legitimate players and would have kept the spammers at bay.

Nerouyn · November 2014

Flynch wrote: »

The boat has sailed too far to start throwing other mechanics into the pot, when the current one has worked so effectively.

There's not even the tiniest shred of logic in that.

MMO's change stuff all the time. Just because some players have suffered as a result of this character delete limit, doesn't mean all players in future should.

The only parties who would benefit from leaving things as they are, are ESO's competitors.

Blade_07 · November 2014

lecarcajou_ESO wrote: »

I don't remember when I last saw gold selling spam in chat or mail, or toons acting suspiciously around the world. Could it be that between character deletion limits and the absence of an auction house, ESO has won the war? That'd be quite an achievement, considering that basically every single other MMO is crawling with these parasites like a hedgehog with fleas!

No they didnt. Not enough players around to make it worth their effort.

Flynch · November 2014

Nerouyn wrote: »

Flynch wrote: »

The boat has sailed too far to start throwing other mechanics into the pot, when the current one has worked so effectively.

There's not even the tiniest shred of logic in that.

MMO's change stuff all the time. Just because some players have suffered as a result of this character delete limit, doesn't mean all players in future should.

The only parties who would benefit from leaving things as they are, are ESO's competitors.

Except it's most likely the opposite. Most people haven't suffered from the limit, whereas everyone else already had and would have suffered from the spam. The argument is cyclical dependent on perspective.

nerevarine1138 · November 2014

Blade_07 wrote: »

lecarcajou_ESO wrote: »

I don't remember when I last saw gold selling spam in chat or mail, or toons acting suspiciously around the world. Could it be that between character deletion limits and the absence of an auction house, ESO has won the war? That'd be quite an achievement, considering that basically every single other MMO is crawling with these parasites like a hedgehog with fleas!

No they didnt. Not enough players around to make it worth their effort.

That would be ridiculous reasoning, even if subscription estimates weren't available to show how wrong it is.

There are still plenty of services offering gold for real-world money. They just don't advertise in-game because ZO has apparently figured out how to actually get rid of them.

Elsonso · November 2014

Simple answer is yes, they are still in the game. I don't look for them but I do happen across them from time to time.

I came across an old first or second generation one back in August. This was the basic soul shriven rags, level 3, head bang on the keyboard to get a name templar. The poor guy couldn't have been more conspicuous if he was glowing and had lightning bolts all around him. This was a "distribution" guy that was probably mailing out purchases to players. He was not actually doing anything wrong that I could detect, so I left him be.

The newer generation ones are more subtle but I saw one shortly after Update 4 rolled out. Unless they are doing something odd, I am not likely to see them.

With Update 5, I would guess that they are in the dwemer ruins right now.

Vizier · November 2014

I know I haven't been spammed in ages. Good show ESO

Ysne58 · November 2014

The are not gone. I found a consumate fishy sticks recipe yesterday. I went online to try to find out where I can find fatback. I found one site offering to sell the recipe for $79.00. I did report it via customer support using their email tool.