Idea for a possible solution to motif and recipe farming by botters/gold sellers

Mera_Luna · May 2014

WARNING LONG POST

I was reading the forums and had an idea for a possible solution to the farming and sale of motifs and recipes by botters/gold sellers.

The idea is fairly straight forward and I have tried to find loop holes in it that could be abused by the afore mentioned Botters/Gold Sellers. I am posting the idea to see if anyone else can see any loopholes that would allow the B/GSers to abuse or circumvent this.

Here is the idea.

Make recipes/motifs only sellable to NPCs.
Insert NPC Merchants that buy motifs/recipes and offer them for sale.
Allow the sale of motifs and recipes only to these merchants for a scaled price based upon the stock of that specific recipe the merchant has. This would not necessarily be 9G or 9kG the buying price would always be at least XX% below the selling price since a merchant would always be looking to maximize profit.
The merchant then offers the motifs/recipes for sale. This also would be a price scaled to the inventory however would always be XX% above the purchase price.

The way I see it, this would accomplish the following;

Provide ZOS a method of

Regulating supply and demand for recipes/motifs
Provide a(nother) gold sink for excess gold in the game economy
Make it much less profitable for botters/goldsellers to farm the motifs
Reduce the incentive for players to use the services of gold sellers by making the recipes/motifs affordable

at the same time it would provide players with a means of getting the recipes/motifs without having to continually search and farm in the hopes of finding the recipe they are missing. Naturally a player willing to still search and loot any and every container would still have the chance to find the recipe/motif without having to buy it. Excess recipes could then be sold to the merchant.

This idea could also eventually be a solution to other problems of supply and demand such as materials for crafting. I think the beauty of this idea is that it allows a much more precise control of the game economy, is much more realistic since if no players harvest the materials the purchase and sell prices climb providing players with a means of making gold in game, is easily regulated by ZOS allowing them a much easier means of responding to current trend by botters/gold sellers rather than having to change drop rates which aside from involving more coding work may also have unintended consequences as a result of the coding.

If ZOS determined that the evildoers are farming Motif X because the price is currently high they could simply inject some motif X into the merchants inventory to lower the purchase price. Even the profit margin of the merchant(AKA gold sink) would be adjustable and a minor change as far as coding goes.

Having said all this I am not certain how viable the idea is with the megaserver technology. I believe it is but that is just my opinion.

Sunrock · May 2014

Bad idea in general. The idea with motifs being rare was that not every one and there grandma would have every motif in the game with no to little effort.

And as I sad before gold farmers will only exist as long as players use there services. The problem is the gamers that pay real money to get an advantage in the game. In other words pay real money to cheat. If we can stop them from playing the game the gold farmers would go away. No game mechanic would ever solve the problem with gold farmers. The last 15 years of experimenting with different game mechanics in allot of different MMOs to deter gold farmers selling in game items for real money have all proven this.

Even if ZOS would start to sell this items for real money them self we would still have the same problem with gold farmers as they would just undercut ZOS as we can see in Eve Online for an example.

The only solution to this is for ZOS to be better at baning every one that does not follow the rules of there game. Right now its no to little risk of getting band for the players that buy stuff from them.

shiva7663 · May 2014

I'd be willing to pay skill points combined with level requirements for motifs.

Big_Bob · May 2014

I still say bound the motif to the person who found it and once used, said motifs wont show up anymore. Since you only ever need one of each racial styles.

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO · May 2014

It's not botters... it's active players that logged out and in over and over and over again in the same houses to get in a different phase of said house to reloot all the chests that get the drop rate nerfed.... Botters have way easier ways of getting money... logging all their accounts out and back in would take way to long and to much work...

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/87214/need-confirmation-is-motif-farming-a-bannable-offense

smosti · May 2014

Mera_Luna wrote: »

WARNING LONG POST

I was reading the forums and had an idea for a possible solution to the farming and sale of motifs and recipes by botters/gold sellers.

The idea is fairly straight forward and I have tried to find loop holes in it that could be abused by the afore mentioned Botters/Gold Sellers. I am posting the idea to see if anyone else can see any loopholes that would allow the B/GSers to abuse or circumvent this.

Here is the idea.
Make recipes/motifs only sellable to NPCs.

Insert NPC Merchants that buy motifs/recipes and offer them for sale.

Allow the sale of motifs and recipes only to these merchants for a scaled price based upon the stock of that specific recipe the merchant has. This would not necessarily be 9G or 9kG the buying price would always be at least XX% below the selling price since a merchant would always be looking to maximize profit.

The merchant then offers the motifs/recipes for sale. This also would be a price scaled to the inventory however would always be XX% above the purchase price.

The way I see it, this would accomplish the following;

Provide ZOS a method of
Regulating supply and demand for recipes/motifs

Provide a(nother) gold sink for excess gold in the game economy

Make it much less profitable for botters/goldsellers to farm the motifs

Reduce the incentive for players to use the services of gold sellers by making the recipes/motifs affordable

at the same time it would provide players with a means of getting the recipes/motifs without having to continually search and farm in the hopes of finding the recipe they are missing. Naturally a player willing to still search and loot any and every container would still have the chance to find the recipe/motif without having to buy it. Excess recipes could then be sold to the merchant.

This idea could also eventually be a solution to other problems of supply and demand such as materials for crafting. I think the beauty of this idea is that it allows a much more precise control of the game economy, is much more realistic since if no players harvest the materials the purchase and sell prices climb providing players with a means of making gold in game, is easily regulated by ZOS allowing them a much easier means of responding to current trend by botters/gold sellers rather than having to change drop rates which aside from involving more coding work may also have unintended consequences as a result of the coding.

If ZOS determined that the evildoers are farming Motif X because the price is currently high they could simply inject some motif X into the merchants inventory to lower the purchase price. Even the profit margin of the merchant(AKA gold sink) would be adjustable and a minor change as far as coding goes.

Having said all this I am not certain how viable the idea is with the megaserver technology. I believe it is but that is just my opinion.

Good idea in general but this doesn't really combat gold sellers and if anything, might even promote it.

player buys gold. Uses bought gold to buy motif. lol

Seriously though, can't ZOS take out a lawsuit against these gold/item selling sites? Or is it something which can't be done due to different laws in different countries and blah blah?

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO · May 2014

smosti wrote: »

Seriously though, can't ZOS take out a lawsuit against these gold/item selling sites? Or is it something which can't be done due to different laws in different countries and blah blah?

Indeed... there is no "The Law" that works universaly... Not to pick on any country or suggest all botters are of those country but if you try sueing a Chinese or Russian company... they'll pretty much laugh in your face.

Heck in Oukraine games stores openly sell copies of games and video stores openly sell downloaded movies burned on DVD's... A friend of mine lives there 6 months a year and he usualy gets the newest movies direct from stores... If the MPAA or RPAA can't sue them over there what luck do you think Zeni would have

KhajiitiLizard · May 2014

Big_Bob wrote: »

I still say bound the motif to the person who found it and once used, said motifs wont show up anymore. Since you only ever need one of each racial styles.

No, just no. (as someone who has found multiple copies of the same motif). Also, what about alts? People have more than one character, unless motif books unlock them for a player's entire account, bounding the books is a bad idea.

Mera_Luna · May 2014

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO wrote: »

It's not botters... it's active players that logged out and in over and over and over again in the same houses to get in a different phase of said house to reloot all the chests that get the drop rate nerfed.... Botters have way easier ways of getting money... logging all their accounts out and back in would take way to long and to much work...

I seriously doubt that the majority of botters personally log their account in and out by hand. They're botters so they more than likely have a script that does this. Just from the stupid in game spam that I get periodically from gold sellers/botters I can see that motifs are part of their stock, since they offer it for sale.

smosti wrote: »

Good idea in general but this doesn't really combat gold sellers and if anything, might even promote it.

player buys gold. Uses bought gold to buy motif. lol

Seriously though, can't ZOS take out a lawsuit against these gold/item selling sites? Or is it something which can't be done due to different laws in different countries and blah blah?

It does combat gold sellers by eliminating part of their stock that is salable namely recipes and motifs. Also it gives ZOS the ability to directly control the prices of motifs/recipes which also combats GS/B'ers by allowing ZOS to make said stock worthless to the aforementioned.

It actually reduces the likelihood of a player buying gold IMO because it would make the motifs/recipes affordable for most players without having to buy gold.

If expanded on intelligently the abilities and benefits can be expanded to any farm-able item within the game allowing targeted response to farming trends.