Protecting us from 3rd Party Loot Sales

[KO_Gilligan]

How is this crap prevented?

Because If I can buy a Tricked out Sovereign on eBay, I will cry.
I honestly hope a skill based system will let me blast the *******, and I can be a deterrent :D

Cryptic's AR forums were spammed into oblivion by WoW gold ads. Probably all harvested by bot assisted Chinese slave labor.

I imagine this might only be an issue of "paying for power" for some....
But all who worry about devaluing the Franchise and abusing the vision, ought to have a few words for 3rd party black marketeers.

[Exezer]

A skill based system should be in there since there wont be any levels involved (atleast i hope so)
A ship is a part of you so you should only be able to trade it in to get a new one and not sell it.

[KO_Gilligan]

A ship is a part of you so you should only be able to trade it in to get a new one and not sell it.

That does nothing for ranking up a character, equipping his ship and selling the account (I guess that might be hard to prevent, but maybe not). Then, most games have items that can be exchanged, what can be done for that?

[k.mpok]

If they go/went with a rank-to-ship type lvling system then you would not be able to use that Sovereign until you had obtained the proper rank.

Also I am of the opinion that we should not own the ships rather our government/faction owns them (thus no selling of ships between one another).

[KCHii]

That does nothing for ranking up a character, equipping his ship and selling the account (I guess that might be hard to prevent, but maybe not).

Have a system that automatically compares patterns in IP addresses, method of payment and usual play times. When significant variations occur in any 2 of these within a short period of time, the account is quietly flagged for mod investigation.

Then, most games have items that can be exchanged, what can be done for that?

Its unnecessarily time consuming to police sales of minor items, but items with significant game impact could be locked to a particular player. Starships should be non-transferable. Same would apply for rare items, e.g. the latest Borg transwarp drive you just captured.

Or, perhaps such items could only be transferred via official fleet channels. You transfer the item back to Star Fleet, which puts it in an open market for 'auction', and you can only bid on it using prestige, which itself can only be gained through missions and are non-transferable. The bid times should automatically be set according to how powerful the items are, and you can't set some kind of immediate sale price either. Everyone thus gets an equal chance to own the item and you can't rig the system to favour particular buyers.

If you think of it in RP terms, its like a captain capturing an item, then returning it to Star Fleet for analysis. While its being analysed, other captains hear of it and apply to Star Fleet for permission to use it. Star Fleet then gives it to the person it deems most qualified.

You can add even more security by applying 'clearance levels'. Even if some lowly lieutenant cheats and somehow gains a ton of prestige, he still can't bid for items deemed too sensitive for people of his rank to handle.

[WinterPark1701]

I don't know that you can in all reality stop gold farming. I mean no matter what you do how can you really keep someone from buying a new account, grinding it to a high level and saleing it on E-Bay?

[Vicelance]

I don't know that you can in all reality stop gold farming. I mean no matter what you do how can you really keep someone from buying a new account, grinding it to a high level and saleing it on E-Bay?

They could simply have someone check ebay reguarlly and check to see if accounts are being sold. Then automatically ban those accounts once they are. The harder part is people who set up their own websites to sell gold or accounts which have to be hunted down.

[Thibor]

They could simply have someone check ebay reguarlly and check to see if accounts are being sold. Then automatically ban those accounts once they are. The harder part is people who set up their own websites to sell gold or accounts which have to be hunted down.

While true that eBay, and now to a lesser extent Craig's List, have become havens for people wishing to do so, they are certainly not the only places.

I think targeting the big 2 or 3 would certainly curb a fairly large percentage of it and that may be the best fiscally we can ask of Cryptic.

As for items themselves, binding them to the avatar/account is a decent method, at least for the best items. A lot will depend if a part of the economy is going to be based on being able to sell off what you salvage.

As for the actual in-game currency, if it can be traded in any way, then gold sellers will find a way to take advantage of that system. They are like the radar detector manufacturers of the online gaming world. As soon as a new type of radar is out, within weeks they have a way around it.

Does that mean a game should have zero currency transfers?
Personally, I'd vote no on that. Being able to lend/give currency to a fellow player (especially friends/guildmates) is to me, a great social mechanic. I'm also one that if the game allows, runs usually lots of alts. And, being able to transfer funds to another of my characters to help them along here and there has been a big help.

Now, maybe allowing currency exchanges only within your own fleet might be an option ... that would mean a gold seller would actually have to get invited to your fleet to conduct their business. And, that would still allow transfers to alts and/or guildmates but, wouldn't account for being able to help out a friend(s) that aren't in your fleet.

[KO_Gilligan]

I can see my in-box now:
Join the Hong Kong Commodities Fleet
We got the Geet

[Hagon]

I know this subject gets some people real worked up, and I agree that it's a complete drag that it goes on, but realistically it has to come to a point where a company asks themselves just how much time, money, and resources it wants to spend combating these third parties. Since after all, this whole shadow industry is driven by the second party. That being we the gamers.

I'm all for them taking preemptive measures in their game design, combating the in-game spam, and taking steps to curtail the farmers in-game, but I don't know if I expect the company to go much beyond that.

[Jenshae]

No drop items and non transferable credits.

[r2data]

Does that mean a game should have zero currency transfers?
Personally, I'd vote no on that. Being able to lend/give currency to a fellow player (especially friends/guildmates) is to me, a great social mechanic. I'm also one that if the game allows, runs usually lots of alts. And, being able to transfer funds to another of my characters to help them along here and there has been a big help.

Now, maybe allowing currency exchanges only within your own fleet might be an option ... that would mean a gold seller would actually have to get invited to your fleet to conduct their business. And, that would still allow transfers to alts and/or guildmates but, wouldn't account for being able to help out a friend(s) that aren't in your fleet.

That won't actually work 'cause the end result would just be having a gold-farmer fleet...

[Syndica]

The only way you will ever stop these kinds of transactions is by teaching the player base that it is wrong. Most of the people that use these services don't see it as cheating. Sometimes, if they do see it as cheating, they just don't care. We have to deal with this scum, because players are willing to buy money and items from them.

We have to treat the cause of the disease before we can clear up the symptoms.

[Dumbarajko]

When you achieve something you should get some sort of a flag so that server knows what you have done and what not. And all items that you dont have a flag for should be only temporary, lets say you will have them until docking somewhere.

[Thibor]

That won't actually work 'cause the end result would just be having a gold-farmer fleet...

Good point.
However, if the currency transfers could only happen within a fleet, at least it would provide a means to investigate on the backend.
Query the database and see that fleet XYZ has had 300 people join and subsequently leave within 24hrs of joining this month.
Or see fleets with the same chars forming and disolving quick to try and hide the fleet name would be searchable as well I would think.

As I said though, if there's a form of currency exhange within the game, gold sellers will find away to take advantage of it, regardless of the methods the devs take.

Some of it wil depend on how item centric the game is and if any part of the best items will be able to be bought (whether from another player or vendors/shipyards/etc.)

TBH, no trading of currency/items that one person suggested above is too restrictive in my opinion. It punishes the normal person similar to how DRM does more to punish the non-criminal then it does in actually preventing the software/music/movie from being hacked and distributed.

[Azurian]

Well there was another thread that was talking about Gold Farmers, there are ways to deal with them. Like the Warden system in SWG.

For buying items, you can simply hardcode the money that you can't give money away.

Now with selling accounts, that gets tricky. Ever since it started with people selling their accounts in Everquest, some companies added a clause in their Terms of Agreement saying you can't sell your account and if doing so will open you to legal action and account closing. Unfortunately, that's more of a bluff because these companies don't have the resources to follow through.

So like above, the only thing they can do is have the account flagged if there is signifcant changes in the account.

[SovWell]

Federation ships being sold on ebay...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .=====. . . . . . _-_
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .__\_\____.---'----`---.______
.. . . . . . . . . . . . . \-------.___________.-------/
. _____________/__/__ . . . .`---'
. \___USS__Ebay_____|))


Actually its more instead of buying the ships ... its buying the in-game credits instead.

[SovWell]

SovWell shall build a massive fleet and put it on Ebay for the highest bidder. J/K'ing :D

. . . . . . ======== . . . . . . . . . . . . . _-_
. . . . . . .|______\\__________.--'------`---.
.. . . . . . |_______---------------._______O/
. . . . . . . /_____/
. . . . . . /_____/____
. . . . . . \_________|))

[ianobs]

No drop items and non transferable credits.

imo that seems to be the only way to completely eliminate it. anything you need to buy or sell is done from npc's.

and make resources plentiful to all. that was one of the major downfalls of swg. resources were never meant to be horded like they were.

[SovWell]

Yes... Horded they were :D

... my old guild spent several days just putting up mining machines everywhere... before a basic player had 1 or 2


But it would be fun to hold down the fort and build up defenses around the mining asteroid and claim the planet and defend it.

[Ayradyss]

I know this subject gets some people real worked up, and I agree that it's a complete drag that it goes on, but realistically it has to come to a point where a company asks themselves just how much time, money, and resources it wants to spend combating these third parties. Since after all, this whole shadow industry is driven by the second party. That being we the gamers.

I'm all for them taking preemptive measures in their game design, combating the in-game spam, and taking steps to curtail the farmers in-game, but I don't know if I expect the company to go much beyond that.

A very realistic and well-stated view, IMO. That's basically what I've seen in other games, and a good expectation to have for STO.

While making money and everything 'worthwhile' non-tradable will certainly stave off the farmers, it also means no 'player-driven economy.' Just speaking for myself, I likely wouldn't even mind that. I am generally most happy when a game -doesn't- have a player-driven economy. But that's just me. I know there is a group of folks who'd be up in arms without said player-driven economy, so you're not serving them very well in that.

If people would just stop buying stuff from the 'gold farmers' they'd have to quit. But again, how do you achieve that? Obviously there are people out there who, given the opportunity, would prefer to just buy their 'goodies' with cash rather than spend the time and actually play the game. I don't understand it. I pay money (monthly fee) so that I can play the game. Why would I then pay more money to have someone else play it for me? But the success of the gold-farmers shows there are folks who don't see it that way. Sad, but true.

[Trekkie]

Anything that the developers can do to prevent third-party vendors is a good idea, in my opinion.

[SovWell]

As an example, I can see some punk with a bunch of computers getting a bunch of accounts, and coning his or her younger sibling and all their friends to come and play and mine. Yes ... grind grind grind....and giving them maybe a quarter or nothing at all, and then he turns it into real cash. Would that really pay off? I mean after all... he or she had to pay for the accounts. Now I know there was something like this in the news... from a foreign country that was doing just that. Turning mined gold for cash.

[WinterPark1701]

They could simply have someone check ebay reguarlly and check to see if accounts are being sold. Then automatically ban those accounts once they are. The harder part is people who set up their own websites to sell gold or accounts which have to be hunted down.

That seems like an aweful lot of work to stop something which, to me isn't really that big of deal any way.

[ianobs]

That seems like an aweful lot of work to stop something which, to me isn't really that big of deal any way.

i think it goes beyond being any sort of "big deal" or not. it the fact that people feel its necessary to break the rules and cheat. it's usual the same people who exploit things in the game. and the kind of people that buy the really great "exceptional" items, and basically buy their way out of a fair fight.

[USS_Parallax]

It's impossible simply put.

The only way to make it impossible to sell money or items would be to make them un-tradable which is unlikely. And stopping the selling of an account is just plain impossible.

There's nothing Cryptic can do besides having an armed Cryptic guard come with every game that does everything in their power to protect the account from illegal activities. However that would just result in tons of deaths.

[WinterPark1701]

I don't know if you can stop Gold Farming with out going psudo-fascist and greatly taking away from game play. Its just a fact of life with MMO's.

[r2data]

Here's an idea to stop gold farming... taxation.

Simply tax players for trading. Small amounts would be tax-free while larger amounts get taxed progressively higher and higher. I doubt gold-farmers would want to transfer credt by credit or ten....

[Jenshae]

Besides the no drop items, non transferable credits and the great idea of post 28 (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=198747&postcount=28) there is also the possibility of having a volunteer self governing group of player that would help other players with questions, problems and can watch for flagged events.

Simply put in a delayed credit tranfer service, the banks or governments would hold all the credits so they would need to take time to process the tranfers. Okay, in the future we like to hope this isn't very plausible but the Star Trek Enhancing Volunteers (STEVs) would be able to see the total transfer and how much it exceeds "acceptible" limits. Transfer records between two accounts would be cumulative, so if you tranfer 100 today, 100 tomorrow and so forth to slip under the radar by ten days you are trying to tranfer 1000 and will get flagged, then checks can be performed on chat log interaction, team and socialising before contacting them and asking about their activities.

Thus there would be a limit and with a delay, if I tranfered 500, waited until tomorrow to see if it was alright then tried 1000 then I would get flagged and they could take a look into it and if it was found that Mr Gold was selling to Miss Clueless then that 1000 could just disappear and they would both get warnings.

In the delay, relationships can be investigated, large transfers or huge cumulative ones have to be approved.

Now if a relationship is proven, they are real life friends on a close range of IP and there are chat logs to prove they know each other, then they could get a soft flag so that between the two of them they could make higher transfers helping each other out, this would only happen after being flagged a first time. How often would the STEVs like to keep having ot get all panicy and rush to see the same two acceptable friends swopping credits backward and forward.

Then there can be a flag on the % of someone's total credit balance in addition to the first one. How many people out of the goodness of their hearts would give away 100%, 90% or even 50% of their credits without some return in item, ship or being friends?

The way around this is multiple accounts but that would be very ineffective very quickly in cost and would be a nice little injection to STO. Thus we come to the third flag, how much has someone been given in credits in a short period of time?

To summarise the flags:

1) Flagging cumaltively the amount of credits transfered between two accounts.
2) Checking the cumaltive tranfers as a % against the giver's total balance from the time tranfers commenced and the average they have had.
3) Checking as a rate how much each account has received.

Edit: Best of all the majority of the work behind this idea is relatively easy to implement and would be automated.
As for account sales, IP logs and flags if someone jumps from talking Chinese in China or saying nothing at all to suddenly logging in the USA and talking in English without having prior ingame friends or not telling them of the move?

[Vicelance]

As an example, I can see some punk with a bunch of computers getting a bunch of accounts, and coning his or her younger sibling and all their friends to come and play and mine. Yes ... grind grind grind....and giving them maybe a quarter or nothing at all, and then he turns it into real cash. Would that really pay off? I mean after all... he or she had to pay for the accounts. Now I know there was something like this in the news... from a foreign country that was doing just that. Turning mined gold for cash.

It must pay off since people do it. Mostly from third world countries where you can probably make more money doing this than working 70 hours in a factory for slave wages. Also the people who do this don't pay for the accounts they have one account they pay for and make others by stealing credit card information. They use these accounts as much as they can before the stolen credit information is found out and transfer everything from these accounts to their real one. When credit card information is stolen guess who gets to pay for it? The owners of the game. Runescape was having such a problem with this they were losing money having to pay back for all the accounts that were created from stolen cards they made trading virtually impossible unless you traded small amounts or used their grand exchange system.

[WinterPark1701]

Here's an idea to stop gold farming... taxation.

Simply tax players for trading. Small amounts would be tax-free while larger amounts get taxed progressively higher and higher. I doubt gold-farmers would want to transfer credt by credit or ten....

Yikes, I'm not really a fan of in game taxation. And having someone who's full time job is to hunt down people on E-Bay? This is what I was talking about before in so far as what you would have to do to preven Gold Farming would take away from the game its self. You start imposeing taxes and you're going to start loseing players. Look, people are going to do this kind of stuff no matter what happens. 80% of players aren't going to get involved with Gold Farming or Gold Farmers so why punish 80% of the population for the actions of 20%?

[Fernos]

No drop items and non transferable credits.

Yep best way to go.

[r2data]

Yikes, I'm not really a fan of in game taxation. And having someone who's full time job is to hunt down people on E-Bay? This is what I was talking about before in so far as what you would have to do to preven Gold Farming would take away from the game its self. You start imposeing taxes and you're going to start loseing players. Look, people are going to do this kind of stuff no matter what happens. 80% of players aren't going to get involved with Gold Farming or Gold Farmers so why punish 80% of the population for the actions of 20%?

But that's the point. 80% of players aren't going to transfer huge amounts of credits to other players. The only ones who will do so are the gold-farmers. What I'm proposing by taxation is to make it nonviable for the gold-farmers to transfer their credits, this will cause them to either haemorrhage credits, as they'd have to transfer enormous amounts just to get a certain amount to a player, meaning that a lot more effort has to be put into the game for less benefit, or that they'll have to increase their prices so much that people will shy away from buying from them.

And the best part is, an in-game taxation system does not have to be actively maintained. There would be no need to go through the expense and hassle of having people to monitor and check up on every little suspicious niggling detail, like some of the other systems proposed.

[Azurian]

I could see that if there are Ferengi Bankers, charging you for their "services". :D

[Jenshae]

No comments for the three flags idea?

[Jenshae]

Ya or nay?

[Silverspar]

From the magazine article I read I don't see a need for it. For starters the ships are not something that are bought from the way it sounds but something you are upgraded into that you add new parts and swap out sections for. Thus the chance of seeing a Sovereign or Vor'Cha class on the market seem to be pretty slim at this point from all we know.

As far as trade skills go, I think the rest should be sellable, that is the point of trade skills. To craft things that others want to use. The problem with other games is that trade items ended up becoming junk too fast thus people didn't want to put in the effort for them. WoW fudged up their entire crafting system completely by making everything but two trades useless (no idea about jewelcraft). Hopefully, STO will be more like the original way UO was, and that a crafter would actually present a valuable resource to the community as a whole.

I know I would love to be able to craft again in a game and know that the items I make the people would want and buy.

[Sumdian]

Just make credits easy to get and there will be no need to buy them on line and it will make the farmers job a lot harder to sell them the higher rank you get the more you get payed and the fact you start of with a small ship and move up in ship size the higher you rank up will make it risky for spammers to farm and sell as they will need to lvl up just like everyone alse and use real payed accounts and spammers and gold farmers realy on trial accounts to spam from so dont have them

[WinterPark1701]

Just make credits easy to get and there will be no need to buy them on line and it will make the farmers job a lot harder to sell them the higher rank you get the more you get payed and the fact you start of with a small ship and move up in ship size the higher you rank up will make it risky for spammers to farm and sell as they will need to lvl up just like everyone alse and use real payed accounts and spammers and gold farmers realy on trial accounts to spam from so dont have them

No matter how common you make something people will always need more... all you're talking about doing is creating inflation. Thats why in economics it dosen't work to just print more money, Germany tried that in the 1920's and 1930's and thats why they ended up with hyper-inflation.

[Jenshae]

Zimbabwe is doing it still and they are up to notes for billions now.

[nzblustone]

Having played several MMO's my opinion is that high value/rare items/upgrades etc should be player bound, but to prevent certain areas of space being overcrowded by everyone trying to get that 'super awesome thingymabob' there shouldn't be just one BEST item, there should be a variety of such with slight visual/aesthetic differences that do not effect the quality of the item. Different people like how different things look and thus won't be drawn merely to the one super item. In my opinion MMO's don't usually promote enough variety, in most MMO's it isn't long before everyone knows what the best gear is and they all strive to get it. And no, simply changing the colour isn't good enough (IMO)

[Jenshae]

There can also be "best" items in different ways. One that increases the damage you can absorb, one for reflecting, one for dodging, one for stealth and make it so you can only own one at a time to block hot swopping. Then you can have different areas and very different items, then comes the biggest problem: Balance.

I hope they look at that right from the beggining.

[nzblustone]

I agree actually. Balance is the key.

But then I have not yet played a game that could successfully implement balance.
All too often one class/armour/weapon etc emerges as the one 'everyone has to have' to be competitive.

If Cryptic can truly implement a balanced variety that replicates the simplicity and efficiency of 'rock-paper-scissors' then it will truly be a MMO in a class of it's own.

[Jenshae]

Rock-paper-scissors is exactly what you don't want. This creates "nemesis" professions / ships. What you want is to balance them evenly, one on one, so that the full damage dealer can do enough to kill a repair ship but a repair ship at the same time could possibly out repair the damage and then out last and wear the damage dealer down. Equal chance of success.

Not a case of one DPS type can destroy a repair ship faster than it can revive every time, the repair ship can out last the lesser damage of the tank and thus beat it every time and the tank can absorb the damage of the DPS and do enough that the DPS can't repair to always beat it.

Another way to ensure they all don't have the same stuff is to lock it to what type of ship or crew member profession is going to use it.

[nzblustone]

Point taken, your right.
I would not enjoying being in a 'rock' ship then encountering a 'paper' ship that i know will slaughter me.

In my opinion in the end the space combat should come down to how you command your ship (where you divert extra power in each crucial moment, how you configure your shields and weapons for that particular battle etc)

[KO_Gilligan]

One thing that seems different about STO is Jack saying we won't have too serious of a consequence from death. Maybe the ranking system will let you keep your rank, and then having to acquire stuff isn't a big enough penalty for there to be a need to buy loot.

I then worry that Admiral K1smi@$$ will keep emerging under the control of a new punk, with no fair way to monitor accounts and ISPs.

Just a negative thought I guess :rolleyes:

[Silverspar]

One thing that seems different about STO is Jack saying we won't have too serious of a consequence from death. Maybe the ranking system will let you keep your rank, and then having to acquire stuff isn't a big enough penalty for there to be a need to buy loot.

I then worry that Admiral K1smi@$$ will keep emerging under the control of a new punk, with no fair way to monitor accounts and ISPs.

Just a negative thought I guess :rolleyes:

Game Informer article said something about NPC crew members being replaced if they die. So that sounds like the death penalty there. (Not your bridge crew, the red shirts on your ship,a s it were).

[Jenshae]

I hope there are penalties when you die, lots of them and I hope you can lose ships and have to struggle to get a new one or your rotting hulk fixed. I want challenge.

It is the brave that still fight when they have everything to risk.

[Silverspar]

I hope there are penalties when you die, lots of them and I hope you can lose ships and have to struggle to get a new one or your rotting hulk fixed. I want challenge.

It is the brave that still fight when they have everything to risk.

You are going to be bitterly disappointed then.

[Jenshae]

I know, MMOs are so carebear now.

They are made for people that would rather sit at a computer than go bungee jumping or skydiving or something.

[KO_Gilligan]

I know, MMOs are so carebear now.

WOW . You just gave me a great customization idea.
;)

[WinterPark1701]

It is the brave that still fight when they have everything to risk.

LoL.... MMO talk is funny.

[Jenshae]

Well gee, lol. It would go for you know, lol. Things like poker, lol. Where people laugh at the small games because they play high stakes, lol. So it goes for many things in life, lol.

[J.L.Picard]

you wont and shouldnt be able to. ships will be binded to your character you cant go around buying federation vessels and selling them on as you please

[Jenshae]

... and what of weapons and bridge crews? Ship upgrades and weapons?

[andrewprofit]

STO should include an ingame loot sale system with % commission for STO through PayPal. Items should be destroyable in game. So that they guy who spends 100 bucks for a tricked out ship and then gets it blown up loses his ship and his money.

[Sorbek]

If they could find a way to completely prevent it without punishing the honest player they would have done it already.

I don't like it but in a world where people who have the money to buy the items/cash will do it so they dont have to waste their time earning it.

I think it takes away from the feeling you get when you finally get that UBER item you have been after.