Ok so how about removing the biggest gold sinks in game, to the point that gold stops being so important, when the time spent botting/farming doesn't equal at least a bit the return, gold sellers will have to move to a more profitable market.

I already feel like they've neutered the merchant economy for the average player. Everything feels so limited because of gold spammers. Can't kill a boss more than once. Can't loot to farm. Can't just sell stuff easily. I get people hate gold spammers. But some of us don't play every day for hours. We just want to relax a few times a week.

ez2k.stoobzzub17_ESO wrote: »

I think we can all agree that the Gold spammers/sellers are out of hand. Just a thought...what would happen if they just take gold out of the game completely? Make it so that all things must be crafted. This would mean that you could no longer buy anything. No gold=No gold sellers? Come to think of it...the only time, and I mean ONLY time I spend money is to fix my armor. Thoughts?

I'd sooner just disable gold/item trading between players rather than eliminate gold entirely. Anything I've ever wanted to sell to someone else I've done via my trading guilds. Would stop the trading spam in zone chat, as well.

If we didn't have gold, we couldn't argue about needing an auction house.

You make gold so it can not be traded except with NPCs and sell everything on NPC consignors. Yes the farmers will sell on the consignors and if their prices are absurd no one will buy from them. Most people wont stand for price gouging if they can't buy gold whenever they want. Then again, there is no reason for farmers to sell anything if they can't trade the gold. We might still get gold sellers power leveling for money...bottom line, make gold untradable.

I think this is an excellent idea. They need to look at the reasons the bots and gold sellers operate and work around them.

1. Gold is used to buy such things as horses, gear and mats. Remove gold from the game.
2. Institute a points system (call them what you will, bit like valor points and honor points in Wow) which you earn along with experience for questing, killing bosses, doing dungeons and raid, killing other players in pvp, earning achievements, exploration, whatever. Those points are untradeable but can be exchanged for things like horses, gear from special gear vendors, etc. Make anything bought from these vendors boa.
3. Allow the use of trades to repair gear and weapons, the better your trade, the better you repair.
4. Create a food made by players to feed their mounts.
5. You would need to address the issue of gear drops and things like recipes and motifs. Making them all boa would be one answer but it limits the ability to get them.
6
Im not sure how materials could be exchanged, perhaps in some sort of barter system within guilds, that would need to be considered. You do need to be able to get items you can't make yourself, but if you are in a guild there should be more attention paid to bartering. There is obviously room in this for cheating, for people accepting materials to make something and then not delivering, but again the game could institute checks of some sort and there is always report-and-ban for ninjas.

I realise instituting a points system means a degree of grinding, which many people don't like, but there is grinding anyhow, to gather mats etc, so it just alters the method to a gold-free style.

In this early stage of the game, the developers have the opportunity to make significant changes before it becomes too huge to do. They should be looking at major surgery rather than bandaid solutions that will never completely eradicate the problems.

gold is pretty much useless as is im not sure who would be dumb enough to buy it from gold spammers ..I hit v10 last week I spent nothing but a few 1000 getting there(besides repairs) I bought some legend mats (the few I didn't have ) I spent maybe 100k to trick out my pony I didn't farm anything or do much besides the crazy amount of quests I still have 554k gold left and im finished...gold is not worth buying ...you get plenty.

Wouldn't work. So long as things are bought and sold the bots will farm whatever it is and sell it. The problem is demand. So long as there are stupid people who give these parasites their money they will continue.

The real solution is to make 1 or 2 warnings that anyone caught in a transaction with these known gold sellers will be perma-banned and then just monitor these gold spammer accounts for anyone trading large sums of gold with them. Unlike bots and spammers..the players don't have unlimited stolen credit cards to buy more accounts and don't want to lose their characters. If it becomes clear that RMTs will get you switfly banned for life..the demand might go away or the buyers might just all get banned (which is fine by me).

I cannot believe some people think that getting rid of gold or the means to purchase items in game is a solution. Do you people think through these things before you post them?

The only viable solution outside of banning bot accounts is to flood the market with the commodity that is in demand. If everyone has enough gold, the motifs they want, the rare mats for crafting, then and only then will the desire for people to use RMT sites be removed.

Of course this 'wrecks' the economy but honestly, MMOs dont really need an economy. Just a means to obtain desired items a bit easier. Content should be what is important in an MMO. Whether that is PvP or PvE. THOSE items should be the focus of developers.

So I say, flood the market and damn the economy.

Don't understand why a non crafting merchant can fix my armor, but at 50 clothing and blacksmithing I can't make a repair kit to fix my own armor.

As for feeding horses you could set it out to graze, or find apples from an apple orchard, or provisioners could have a horse feed tree lol.

Bagspace, well clothers can make cloth and leather items why not bags?

That just really leaves bankspace as the only item you would need gold for, and motif's if you have bad luck in finding them. (Which I personally think should be random drops off mobs.)

ez2k.stoobzzub17_ESO wrote: »

jason.osage_ESO wrote: »

I cannot believe some people think that getting rid of gold or the means to purchase items in game is a solution. Do you people think through these things before you post them?

Did you read my original post before posting your comment?
No I didnt think it through. I posted a very open ended question. I simply wanted others feedback.

jason.osage_ESO wrote: »

The only viable solution .

Quite narrow minded to say there is only one solution to a problem.

jason.osage_ESO wrote: »

Content should be what is important in an MMO. Whether that is PvP or PvE. THOSE items should be the focus of developers.

So I say, flood the market and damn the economy.

So tell me again why you are defending game economy? Come to think of it, Im really not sure what your position is on this topic.

I am narrow minded? I am not the one stating get rid of gold or other items used for purchasing. Your idea is bad. End of story. There will never be a game where there is no form of currency. EVER...........EVER.

The OP has the right of it. Everyone here saying it's a dumb idea just can't comprehend an MMO without gold because they're as indoctrinated to what an MMO "should" be as the developers are.

When I started playing this game and saw gold sellers, I was actually shocked. I hadn't thought about needing gold in MMORPGs for a long time, because the last major thing I did was raid in WoW. As a WoW raider, I:

1. More than covered my repair and respec bills with gold earned from dailies that I was already doing for non-gold reasons, or even just from the gold bosses dropped depending on how well the night was going/if it was a progression night or a farm night.
2. Obtained gear that was almost 100% BoP. The rare exception would be a few crafted pieces, but the items needed to craft those dropped in raids so they were mostly dealt with in-house.
3. Crafted my own gems, enchantments, and consumables with relative ease.
4. Obtained all of my non-gear accomplishments (titles, pets, mounts, etc.) through achievements.

Meanwile, in ESO:

1. Repair and respec bills are ridiculous and are not nearly covered just by playing the game normally.
2. Most gear is not BoP or even BoE. The mats to make the best gear in the game come from a hireling you can get daily on a level 3 alt.
3. The best (only) way to level Enchanting is through buying other people's glyphs with (gasp!) gold.
4. Everything else you want is rare, expensive, and/or easily farmed by bots via looting furniture (42k horses, motifs, etc.).

This current line of combating bots is a losing battle. To really get rid of bots, you need to remove their customers.

1. Repairs should be done by crafters and respecs should cost BoP tokens obtained from dungeons, daily/weekly quests/PvP/whatever.

If you want to respec, you go to the Shrine of Stendarr and pick up a daily/weekly/repeatable quest that matches your level that asks you to kill one of the world bosses, defeat a dark anchor, or do some PvP objective. This would also get more people back in the world doing stuff at max levels where typically in these games they're just afk in town. When you turn in the quest, you get a Token of Stendarr, which is BoP, unique, and counts for 1 respec. You can keep the gold cost in place for people who don't want to do this.

I would say this would cut about 75% of the gold buyers.

2. I believe crafters are important to this game, and I don't believe there is a good way to both keep crafters happy and stop gold sellers entirely. But you can make it more inconvenient for the gold sellers while keeping things still pretty convenient for the crafters.

Make upgrade materials (green/blue/purple/gold) BoP, but increase the rate by which they are obtained from refining raw materials. When you craft an item, you give it an @AccountName and it becomes bound to that account (e.g., tradeable to only that person).

I suppose gold sellers could skill up crafting skills and sell end-game crafted gear, but it would be a lot more personal: they'd have to skill up crafting professions on each individual bot, take personal crafting requests, deliver each item in person, etc.

3. The best mounts in the game should come from boss drops, achievements, and/or quests and be BoP. Motifs should not come (solely) from rare books, but instead from some sort of deconstruct/research/quest system.

Imagine if you had to seek out master craftsmen from each race, and they gave you quests to create epic/legendary items, and completing the quest gave you the ability to craft with that style. Crafting in other styles might actually be a pretty rare thing, then, as opposed to now where I had all of the styles within the first few days of pre-launch.

ez2k.stoobzzub17_ESO wrote: »

Well, after reading 3 pages of comments, some of which pose some very good points, I have come to the conclusion that removing gold will not solve anything. You economy junkies, will just come up with some other form of currency to use just so that you don't have to craft. So that really only leaves one option. To remove trading all together. I know this would not be popular, especially with the old-school mmo crowd, but I personally would be totally fine with it.

So you say "then it will be just a single player game"

NO it wouldn't. Its not single player if there are other people there...dur.

I would love it if it were as close as possible to a single player Elder Scrolls game, that I can play with a friend. Take out the trading, take out guilds, screw game economy. What are you left with, a peaceful, no drama, fun gaming experience with a friend.

Go play a co-op game, evidently mmos aren't for you.

All these ideas to remove trading.. gold.. guilds.. it's just ridiculous.

Most gold mails are more about items than gold now anyway. Wont work unless they removed everything and then what would be the point of playing?

You need gold to respec, trade with other players, repair armor and increase the size of your bank and backpack. Now that you understand why we need gold in the game, we need to keep gold in the game.

This wouldn't get rid of botting; if anything, this would increase it. Any time you take something like say, provisioning or loot from dungeons and remove it from the game and make it worthless, players bot. That is what happens.

Real bots were even impacted anyway, but players? The odds of the fair player throwing in the towel and becoming a botter increase. "I can't get gold from anything I like doing in game anymore, time to buy gold..." and "I can't even acquire respectable gains with my armor always breaking and dungeons are so worthless... time to bot, screw it."

The whole entire point of botting is that you have rebelled against authority. You have declared the game as bad, and that the only way it can be fun is by cheating. Many normal non-botters are lured with temptation every day;

and ideas like yours just bring them closer to that.