Online Gold... And the laws behind it?!

I have a idea, what if Anet sells gold on the online store BUT!!!!!
1) Can only purchuse a number amount in like a week or so.
2) Anet will make tons of money

Here is my second idea

Have Rental Merchents in game. Like, 1k for a mini kuurvang for a day. Loan gold (Money decreases in bank per like day) get 25k pay back 30k in a week etc. and if you don't, you get red gold, which can only go out of red if you store gold in you storage to get it out of negitives. So max armor you can get earily so you don't have to go through 1/2 the game till you get the money. Plus you get a title for more you loan, higher the title. The more you can loan, the less you have to pay back in a day.
~I hate seeing sins with 50 armor in missions
~A warrior with a purple sword that he got at northen shiverpecks (Weak) and is level 17
~a monk that needs a elite to test his build and needs to beg for a tome
~A elementalist with 8 fire magic becuase she/he can't afford a sup. fire rune

*These maybe bad examples but I seen them.*

Were you thinking clearly when you thought this one up? I hate to say it, but this idea is... well... just dumb. The income from vendor trash items is calibrated so that the casual player can afford basic armor and whatnot as s/he progressive through the game. You can't simply take away vendor trash without cutting everyone off at the knees. Nor can you take away vendor trash and replace it with questing because (a) there's a limited number of quests, after which a character would be just "finished," and (b) neither repeatable quests, nor early quests can have any sort of meaningful monetary rewards or they get botted, as we saw recently in Chebek Village. Trading is not a substitute for vendor trash either because (a) it redistributes gold instead of making it, (b) you need to have something worth trading in the first place, and (c) a lot of people, myself included, think trading in GW is about as fun as a root canal.

That distinction is certainly valid. I'm not quite sure it's helpful though. We need to look at net and not gross. A1 might make 1k per day (made-up numbers again), but A1 also sinks probably everything he nearly makes into 1k armor and the rune and dye traders' "profit" margins. His net effect is near zero. A2 may well generate five times as much gross gold, but he is probably also spending 5 times as much on gold sinks. A2 is buying 15k armor, FoW armor, etc. Except for the gold that he spends to buy rare weapons from other players (which is a reason I advocate for "15k" weapon crafters), he too sinks almost everything he makes. His net is also near zero. Both A1 and A2 are at least close to inflation-neutral because the amount of gold they put into the economy is not terribly much larger than the amount they sink out of it. The bot/third-world farmer is a different animal. They gross at least three times what A2 is likely to make, and at least fifteen times what A1 makes, and, more importantly, they sink nothing. All those bots/third-world farmers are running around in un-dyed, basic scar pattern armor with a quest item focus and a collector's weapon, or maybe a totem axe -- and that's it. That one set of cheap armor (plus the rune trader's margins on its runes and insignias) is all the gold they'll ever remove from the economy. The point is: regardless of how much gross gold they farm, most legit players tend to sink a very large proportion of it, but, not only do bots/third-world farmers make a lot more gross gold, but they do not sink any of it.

First, that is not a solution - it is a stopgap measure to reduce the amount of damage done, not a way to prevent or reverse the damage done.
Second, I don't have any problems with A2. I don't think he's doing anything wrong. I don't think anything should be done to hurt A2.
Third, we had a system like this. It was called "anti-farm code." It was vastly unpopular, due mostly to its inability to discriminate between real players and bots/third-world farmers. Since they were never able to do so before, I don't expect a-net to suddenly be able to overcome the technical hurdles that made the anti-farm code so unpalatable.
Fourth, that said, in principle, I have no objections to this measure. If a-net could work it out so that it discriminated properly (and mind you I don't think they can), then I would have no problem at all with it coming back. Though, I would certainly hope something more would be done, since limiting the damage, without more, will never solve the problem.

The idea was a direct response to the quote from you I put directly before it and bolded which I'll post again right here:

The idea is 'dumb' in no small part because it's based on your statement. You basically restated what you said last time when you attacked it but when faced with the reversal you flip-flopped the above statement from 'gold-farmers' to 'everybody'. If it's the case for everybody then it has absolutely no value for this topic.

With your flip-flop, what you said earlier is the equivalent of 'All gold-for-cash transactions involve gold in the game. That they want to trade for cash'. Deep. How about you add 'All gold farmers need to login'? Also true but who cares since it applies to EVERYBODY.

All pure speculation. You say A2 is fine because he spends almost all his gold on sinks. There's no basis for this statement, you just gave a hypothetical situation without reasons and I don't buy the statement that A2's 'net is also near zero'. You point out an exception with the weapons A2 buys like it's the only one. It's not just weapons. That's just a subset... anywhere A2 buys directly from another player gold is released into the economy and is a part of his net, whether it's a weapon or a run to droknars or ectos.

Using a trader for anything also adds around 80% of the price to his net effect, only 20% of the price is a gold sink for anything of significant value. This includes runes and dyes. You're talking like these are a 100% wash and are forgetting the fact that somebody else is getting paid when they sell the runes and dyes to the trader.

If A2 spends five times as much on sinks as A1, it's reasonable to assume he spends five times as much on player to player transactions and traders also. So A2's net is five times that of A1 and they are NOT equal.

This is useless information because at the heart of it you don't care. If bots/third-world farmers had cool armor would you change your stance and be OK with them? No... so this doesn't matter.

You also keep slipping bots back into this conversation. Who is arguing for bots? The topic is 'Online gold and the laws behind it'. If gold farmers did all the work manually without bots would you change your stance and be OK with gold farmers and selling gold online? If not, this is also not relevant to the topic at hand.

The logical error you make here is that you compare purchases made by A2 against the GOLD FARMER. To compare purchases the correct comparison is between A2 and the PEOPLE WHO BUY THE GOLD. People who buy gold online can and likely do spend their gold on the exact same things. They both can buy armor and they both can bid up items in player to player sales.

You also jumped from 'net' to 'proportion'. They are completely different. Net is a specific number like 20000 gold a day after sinks. Proportion is a percentage like 70%. Proportion is a percentage of GROSS and is irrelevant to this discussion. Like you said above, we need to look at net.

I suspect you are arguing earlier that A1 and A2 spend the same 'proportion' on gold sinks and this could be true. But only 'net' affects inflation and I don't buy that the 'net' of A1 = A2. So A2 also contributes to in-game inflation for A1 the same way a gold farmer does.

Your arguments for why the game is hurt keep coming from 'inflation is bad'. If that's your real reason then it's either bad for the game ALL THE TIME or NONE OF THE TIME. You can't keep jumping over the fence. You say inflation is bad, then I point out another way inflation enters the game and you say, 'no, that's ok'. Case in point...

If A2 spends all his money on player to player items and none on gold sinks, he's guilty of ALL the problems you blame on buying gold. Yet you still 'don't think anything should be done'...

If somebody who bought gold online spent it all on gold sinks then he would be guilty of NONE of the problems you blame on buying gold. You don't say, but I highly suspect you would still have a problem with this person.

See the contradictions here? Here's the question of the day: If there was a way buying/selling online gold wouldn't inflate the in-game economy, would you still have a problem with it?

If that answer is yes then don't argue inflation any more and please give the real reasons you're against it.

Because it turns Guild Wars into Credit Card wars, and that's honestly just stupid.

That's what I've been thinking Anet should do too.

Just make ALL drops customized to the player they dropped
for. That way there would be a complete end to buying and
selling between players period. ZAP! No more need for gold
in any significant amounts.... no reason for botters to bother.

You either get your gear from drops while playing the game,
from in game merchants and crafters, from in game collectors,
or you don't get it at all.

Maybe as a compromise, make customized items account
based rather than character based to ease the pain a little.

It's in the EULA, it's in the rules.

Rules must be followed if you want to play.

No more reason are needed.

now this i would agree with or if u go to page 4 of this thread and look at post 65 that guys reply sounds good also.

The only thing that u could buy would be the runes, dyes, crafting material, and the merchant stuff if everything was customized for u

Kill bots by offering Gold legally and at a decent price? Thus reducing the ugly wacky named freakily moving critters that run the same paths everywhere monks. Hummmmmmmmmmm Buy Character slot $9.99 Buy 100K Gold 9.99 Hummmmmmm. I am cheap I will farm it for myself but I would not be bothered by it at all.

If you offer gold forn a prices, bottes will ofer more gold for less money. That won't fix anything.

Sure it will. The profit for the effort will not be worth it for bot-bosses. However, cheap gold inserted into the economy would destroy the beneficial effects of loot-scaling and Hard-mode, devaluing gold to the point that things will become ridiculously expensive again and require buying gold to afford.

You also would be buying from a “sound” source which is a perk for some people. Paranoid persons like me Go to A-net and buy gold or go to Flashyfreddiesgoldforless.com . No getting screwed in gold transfer just a code to type in. IMO would not be too bad.

i remember meeting some guy that told me he bought $500 worth of gold back when botters were selling 1 million for around $30.

credit card wars ftw!

It is a problem, but i understand why people do it, not everyone would like to spend hours farming gold to buy 15k armor.

Sigh... I get the impression that you've become more interested in "getting the better of me" than in presenting honest, well-thought-through comments, so I'm not sure this is worth trying to reply to, but we'll see...

1. My statement was not intended as a potential solution to the problem. My statement was intended to accurately describe one detail of the problem - which it did.
2. Nothing that increases understanding of a problem is "useless" for solving it.
3. Following from 2 - understanding that the gold in gold sales originates when white vendor trash is cashed in by farmers/bots does help in developing ways to fight the problem - such as loot scale.

The idea is "dumb" because it takes a sledgehammer approach without any regard for the (in this case, game-crippling) collateral damage it would cause.

Conversely, a narrowly tailored approach based on the same premise (that the gold in gold sales originates when white vendor trash is cashed in by farmers/bots) would be both effective and not-dumb -- see loot scale.

The statement is based on my experience, my impression of the collective experience of other posters, and the common-sense assumption that people generally do not farm gold (as opposed to questing or farming for specific items) unless they have a plan for what they are going to spend the gold on in mind. Without access to a-net's logs, that's the best basis for a factual claim I can have. And, it's the best basis you could have either.

I say that, to the best of my knowledge, most "real" players sink almost as much gold as the generate. You can take it or leave it.

That's true. I left out the others because (except perhaps ectos) they are trivial compared to weapons in price and volume. However, you are correct: anywhere A2 buys directly from another player gold is released into the economy.

1. At the bottom end, the trader charges 100 and pays 30. That's a "profit" margin/gold sink of 70%. (Again, to the best of my knowledge,) The volume of low-end sales at the trader far exceeds the volume of sales of things of "significant value." Thus, (to the best of my knowledge,) buying from the traders is usually a gold sink.
2. As for things of "significant value," I think you're right - the gold-transferred-to-another-player component outweighs the gold-sink component, so they're inflationary. I just think you overestimate how often these sales occur.

I never said they were equal. I merely said they were both "near zero." Whether A2 is causing 5 times as much as A1, or even tens times as much, it doesn't particularly matter because five times, or even ten times, almost nothing is still almost nothing.

Look, if A is causing 1% of the problem, and B is causing 5% of the problem, and C is causing 94% of the problem, where are you going to look for the solution?

Understand that "has cool armor" is shorthand for "sinks nearly all of the gold they generate on things like cool armor instead of dumping it into the money supply." Then, yes, if bots/third-world farmers "had cool armor," I would be OK with them.

If you manually farmed 75k and spent it all on 15k armor, I'd be fine with that.
If you used a bot to farm 75k and spent all of it on 15k armor, I'd think you were kinda pathetic, but I'd be fine with that. (Though I would fear that, once you got your armor, you would keep right on botting without engaging in any offsetting sinking, and that would be a problem.)
If some Chinese gold-farmer farmed 75k and spend it all on 15k armor, I'd be fine with that too. But I'd bet his boss would not be fine with that, because he was hired to do exactly the opposite, exactly the thing I am not OK with - generate lots of gold and sink none of it.

I use single phrase encompassing both bots and third-world farmers because they are pari materia; they are functionally equivalent. They both engage in exactly the same harmful economic activity. It does not matter where the inputs are coming from; what matters is that the account is causing economic harm. If I were trying to draw a distinction between the two, you'd be correct to criticize it as irrelevant. But I'm not. I'm treating them a unit. The correct obnoxious rhetorical question, which gives away the reason it is relevant, would be: "If a bot does exactly the same thing as a gold-farmer, why are you OK with the gold-farmer, but not the bot?"

This is just dead wrong. The proper comparison is net to net. It is also proper to make an itemized comparison between components of Person A's net to the same components of Person B's net, so long as you make a full comparison of all components. Subtracting Person B's sinkage from Person A's generation yields a useless figure.

I would leave it at that, if not for the fact that this sort of flawed reasoning has become very popular in the real world of late. If we can sell "carbon credits" in the real world, then why not "GW inflation credits"? Because aggregating the effects of multiple actors - this notion that if I do harm, and you do good, it balances out in the end - fails to take critical factors into account. Time's Michael Kinsley makes this point in his satirical essay on "child abuse credits" (you pay a habitual child abuser not to beat his kid for a night so that you can beat yours). The aggregation completely misses the moral component. It also misses the incentive component, which is the important component in this case. As I've said before, the harm only comes to pass because of the real-world monetary incentive involved. If a-net were capable of perfectly enforcing the ban on gold sales, neither the would-be-gold-seller nor the would-be-gold-buyer would be dumping gold into the money supply, thus causing inflation. The harm happens only because, and precisely because, this sort of transaction - with its perverse incentive - is available.

Sigh.
1. Proportion can be used to calculate net: gross * (1 - proportion) = net. It's also a very good shorthand for net when you don't have an actual figure or you want to talk about a number of individuals.
2. I did not mention proportion as a substitute for net. I mentioned proportion to explain why net is going to be near zero in those cases.

1. I never said net(A1) = net(A2), merely that they are both near zero, and therefore trivial.
2. Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. The gold-farmer's net is many, many times larger than that of either A1 or A2.

Inflation is bad, but:
1. Some sources are trivial, and some are not. You seem to be all in favor of gold-selling, which causes a huge amount of inflation, but, by gawd, you want to just stick it to the legit player who causes a tiny bit of inflation when he farms. That strikes me as, well, hypocritical.
2. An activity that causes inflation, which is bad, may also have other effects, which are good, and which outweigh the harm. By analogy, cutting people's flesh has some bad effects - it causes them pain; it makes them bleed; it may cause a scar; it may put their life in peril. But all that can be outweighed by a countervailing good effect - for example removing a cancerous tumor. Likewise, some activities that cause inflation in GW also have other good effects that outweigh the amount of inflation they cause. And some do not.

I contend that all "legitimate" players (that would be both A1 and A2) are having fun (the purpose of a game) playing the game as it was meant to be played, and maybe even helping others by developing and sharing new build concepts and discoveries about game mechanics, or by assisting others in PUGs, etc. I also repeat my assertion from above: the inflationary impact of their activities, even the hardcore farmer, is near zero. Finally, I conclude that the positive effects of their activities outweigh the negative economic effects.

Conversely, the bot/third-world farming activities have no redeeming other effects. At least none I give any credence to. I repeat my assertion from above that they have a huge inflationary impact. And I conclude that the harm these activities cause dramatically outweighs the (nonexistent) benefit.

In sum: Inflation is bad all of the time, but the same activity may also cause stronger good effects. The small harm of inflation caused by legit players activities is outweighed by those activities other positive effects. The large harm of inflation caused by bots/third-world farmers is not.

First of all, he doesn't. I haven't met a legit player yet who does.
Second of all, if he did, then yes, he should probably be left alone. In my book, "having fun playing the game the way it was meant to be played" is a strong enough positive to outweigh almost any negative economic effect from one's in-game actions. Perhaps if A2 were farming closer to 24 hours per day, like a bot or a third-world farmer (they have 2 12-hour shifts per account), in addition to sinking none of his gold, then maybe it might be time to look for ways to cap A2's gold-generating potential. Of course, that hypothetical is wandering even further from reality.

Yes, I would have a problem with this person, just not for the same reason. This buyer may not be causing economic harm himself, but he is subsidizing those who do. He pays their overhead and beefs up the profit margin that encourages them to continue or even expand the business that dumps gold into the money supply. It is very much the same reason as why we in the states punish the possession of child pornography -- the possessor may not be a child molester himself, but he does subsidize (or, if he doesn't pay, at least encourage) the worst forms of child abuse. (That statement was not, by any means, meant to trivialize the evils of child porn. Obviously, inflation in GW is a much less serious problem.)

Inflation is the major reason I'm opposed to gold-selling. If inflation were not a problem, then my objections would be much weaker, but I wold still object on other grounds:
1. "Credit Card Wars." I've seen what happens to other games with official gold-sales. It's not pretty. A very deep divide arises between the "legit" and the "store-bought." We already have a deep, rancorous divide between PvE and PvP, and one deep, rancorous divide is one more than we need.
2. Perverse dev incentive for microsales. Microsales of gold lead down the slippery slope to microsales of content. Then there's a danger of enticing the devs to devote more and more dev resources to "premium" content, at the expense of not putting as many dev resources into the game itself as they otherwise would.
3. Perverse dev incentive to make things impossibly expensive. If the devs stand to make real money whenever you buy in-game gold, there's a danger they will be tempted to make everything in-game cost so much you effectively have to spend real world money to get it.
4. In the case of third-world farming, I am opposed to the exploitation of the farmers by their employers, and therefore opposed to subsidizing it.

That is a debatable topic. I can speak for myself that if they sold gold, and I was a lottery winner and thought it worth the money, then I would not be buying gold items from other players, I would buy skills and runes and armor. I would not be affecting your bidding wars.

You can make the case that dedicated PvP players who see an advantage in buying gold to get r7 equipment will buy gold from ANet and drive prices up, but that will not affect me, or the percentage of GWs player base that doesnt know or give a rats patootie about some minor at best competitive advantage, because we do not have all out skills or runes for heroes yet!

Maslows hierarchy of needs - I am at the base of the pillar, and I can make the case that so is 90% of the rest of the GW players as well. You on the other hand, appear to be much higher, and have your viewpoint set accordingly. Try looking at it from the POV of us common folk - it wouldnt be so bad.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

To allow gold to be sold on the open market, would destroy the game as a whole. My explaination is this:

If money was unlimited, then all items in the game would not be out of reach. Players would get bored, quests would be ignored, and PvE would die.

With nothing to shoot for, who would want to play. The fact that gold is not avalable means that players need to grind, or do chest runs, or farm, or what ever needs to be done to gain the gold they need, and during that process they have fun and enjoy the game more.

You make a very valid point, as i have found in the last 12 months since my last purchase that it makes achieving items, or armour, or green weapons much more.... self actualizing. (for lack of a better discription )

Not to mention it makes me realize as well that there are way more oppurtunities to make in game money, such as elite tomes (as one poster mentioned), and end game weapons, or the items to attain end game items too.

Now im in the prosess of beating all three campaigns with all my characters!

This topic has both been an enjoyment to follow, and enlightening for me.

Thx

~ M. t. W.

The availability and success of third party online gold sales suggests that Guild Wars is Credit Card wars already for those who want it to be.

Gold is available right now. Has the game been destroyed? Also, gold is unlimited just by playing the game. The only changable factor here is TIME.

You assume that people only play the game to grind high level items. This isn't the only way to play the game.

You also assume that players grinding, doing chest runs, farming helps the game as a whole. I disagree. How does you doing any of these things contribute towards OTHER PLAYERS enjoying the game more?

If you're grinding or doing chest runs or farming by yourself, it contributes 0 towards somebody else enjoying the game. I'd say those three things are tedious for you too.

If you bought gold you could stop doing that stuff and PvE with me or PvP with or against me. That actually would make me enjoy the game more.

Long post again, my apologies.
The answer to your question is 'at the root of the problem'. That stops both b and c.

All of the above is an argument of scale, unfortunately in this case the scale slides. B is currently causing only 5% of the problem only because C exists. Take c out and we now have the case of A causing 1% of the problem and B causing 99% of the problem. A still has the same issue.
I would fear that the guy who manually farmed would also 'keep right on farming without engaging in any offsetting sinking, and that would be a problem'. I dont think there's a significant difference between the two cases.

I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that someone who farms for 8 hours will always spend his money on different things than someone who buys the equivalent amount of gold. Only 'legit' farmers buy high end armor? Only people who ebay gold buy high end weapons from players? I think this conclusion is unreasonable and your personal experience doesn't change that. 'The people you know' may have actually ebayed gold and just didn't tell you. I don't think you should use this as a basis for your argument.
I'd argue that you need a different means to combat a bot then you need to combat thirld world farming so it's valuable to distinguish between them. But lets continue because you say why you consider them functionally equivalent...
That's fine, I'll accept that. But here's where I add the third functional equivalent, someone who does hardcore farming. Everything you just said above applies:

They both engage in exactly the same harmful economic activity. It does not matter where the inputs are coming from; what matters is that the account is causing economic harm.

You can argue degree of harm, but in this you are just distinguishing bots against the other two. A bot causes more harm because it can farm 24/7.

But now, how is the paid farmer different from the hardcore farmer? He's more efficient now because he bots. If you take away the bots, the paid farmer is probably going to be less efficient then the hardcore farmer because he doesn't know how to play the game as well. If you are really arguing due to economic harm then the hardcore farmer is now probably worse.

Importantly, 'online gold sales' does not equal 'third world gold farmers'. Let me rephrase that, it does now specifically because of the EULA. It doesn't have to.
I'm against both. That doesn't make me against online gold sales.
I'll explain why I think it's right.

Your case:

A2 farms 10k gold in a day and spends 10k on armor - net 0

Farmer B farms 50k in a day. He sells that 50k to 5 people. - net 50k

My case:

A2 farms 10k gold in a day and spends 10k on armor - net 0

Farmer B farms 50k in a day. He sells that 50k to 5 people. The five people spend the 10k they bought on armor. - net 0

The guild wars economy consists of more people than A2 and Farmer B. Your case has the unspoken assumption that any gold Farmer B sells will never get sinked. It's the total gold in the system you care about and I'd argue that my case accounts for this better.
Here's where I suspect your real problem with online gold sales is. It offends your morality. This is the basis on why you distinguish between the third-world farmer and the hardcore farmer (A2).
The incentive component is getting cool stuff in the game. If the ban on gold sales happened, you would push the people who buy gold now to write or download a bot that they would run overnight to just get the stuff for free.

If you killed bots too, you just switch the haves and the have-nots to my third functional equivalent above - the hard core farmer. You think this is better but your reason for why it's better goes back to your moral argument above. The casual farmer is still harmed.
Gold selling = huge amount of inflation isn't necessarily true, it depends on how you implement it.

Again, 'legit player' = moral argument. I don't want to stick it to anybody. I'm a proponent of the casual player. I also think that you and I don't have a right to say what a player can do with the money they acquire in game.

Going back to the 'legit player', why do you think they're better then somebody who buys gold? I'll argue down below that someone who buys gold contributes more to the game then someone spending all their time farming.
I don't think farming is fun. I think it's the direct opposite of fun.
Your opinion. Let people play the game how they want to play it.
They are doing none of these while they are farming. This argument works directly against your stance and actually strengthens the case for allowing gold sales. People buy gold and they can stop farming and do all the things you just mentioned.
This exists today, it's just not official.
Not sure what you mean by microsales so I can't talk to this one.
I agree that this would be bad and would harm the game. Realize that there's a current dev incentive to put any and all new changes into expansion packs you pay for. You pay either way if they want you to. They're kept in check either way because they lose the playerbase if they go crazy.

I don't think Anet just directly selling gold would be the optimal approach to this issue. Here I suggested something I think would be better. Please point out the flaws there if you see them.
This works against your argument. Leaving the sales blackmarket contributes to the viability of these companies that are exploiting people. An alternative approach is necessary to get rid of this.

I hope no one minds me sliding into this back-n-forth, here.

Actually, the question was worded incorrectly. It should read: "A is causing 1% of the inflation, B is causing 5% of the inflation, and C is 94%. If inflation is raising increasing too quickly, where do you look for the problem? Obviously, there isn't a problem if the inflation is raising at manageable rates, therefore if C is removed, you've caused a 94% decrease in the rate of inflation.

Inflation isn't a problem, it's a norm, it happens. Too much inflation is a problem.

But you're forgetting all the gold those 5 people made by playing the game also. Unless, of course, you're assuming they don't play and only buy their gold, which is doubtful because no one in their right mind would buy stuff for a game they don't play.


With gold selling, you'd be harming the casual poor. That's better how? Let's face it, any game where you get more over time will always favor the more hardcore somehow.


Same here. Luckily no one needs to farm to be useful in Guild Wars. Isn't that great?

Agreed. After all, some actually like to farm. I know, it surprises me too.

They also don't need thousands of plat to be able to do those things, either. The very way the game is designed favors those who want to have fun their way. Having to buy gold doesn't factor into it at all.

Exactly, it's a problem now, and will be an even bigger problem if it ever became "official".

Probably referring to selling individual items, such as "15^50 Chaos Axe only $19.99!". If gold selling is fine, why not that, too?

I agree with this. I doubt they would "go crazy with power", but then again, I doubt they would sell gold in the first place. I consider that "going crazy with power" in and of itself.

I also agree with this, unfortunately. It would be much like "de-criminalizing drugs". It's a messy solution, though. As it is, it's considered a "necessary evil", in that as long as there is player trading, there will be RMTs (real-money trades). I'd rather a solution that isn't breaking something else.

Not at all.
I'll concede your and Chthon's point that a magic bullet to kill C will lessen the problem. There will be less inflation overall which is good.

However, my fear is that 'lessening the problem' means that instead of A getting outbid on an item by 50k, he gets outbid on an item by 10k. He doesn't get the item either way.
Agreed, I assume they will play. However, switch 'play' with 'farm' above and I do make that assumption. I doubt that anyone who buys gold turns around and farms for the next 3 hours. They buy gold so they don't have to farm. I'll further say that if you killed gold sales then 1 or more of those 5 people WOULD INCREASE their farming activity because they couldn't buy it.

Right now buying gold is the path of least resistance. They are buying gold that they would farm anyway if that option wasn't avaliable. If you remove it then some people will still want the items enough to get the gold in a different way.
I agree with this, items you buy with lots of gold are fully optional. This is actually why I would be OK with online gold sales. If that extra gold bought you a weapon with an extra +10 damage I would reverse my stance. I don't feel like people are getting harmed since the difference is just looks.

I go a step further and say it's not worthwhile having Anet spend time enforcing what a player does with the gold he has in his account. If they weren't doing this then the effort could be put into improving the game.
If you could still get the same Chaos Axe in game without spending real money, I'd say this is equivalent to Anet selling gold directly. I think both would be suboptimal solutions. One big problem with Anet just putting gold or items on the front page is that you have a fixed price which will be bad. Read the link I put in my response to Chthon with my idea. It would apply to both gold and items and in both cases it's players selling to players and the price isn't fixed but liquid.

Things like the items included in the CE edition are actually worse than what you suggest above because in those cases you can't get the same thing by just playing the game.

You arent threatened to loose account. In my old guild(allience) plenty of people said you werent. They have ebayed like 3-4 fow armor tormenteds. They were fools as to buy e gold.
You arent threathened.
I dont ebay cause I want to earn my fow myself.
But I got bored and quited the game

I'm not sure where the problem is with that. It happens. If it happens on a lower scale, closer to a balance with the gold sink items, then I'm fine with it. Would be similar to "bidding" on a set of 15k armor (75k), and being "outbid" by 10k. Luckily the armor crafters don't make us bid, but you get the idea.

This is where I think you are assuming too much. I have two friends who actually have purchased gold. I know them quite well, and I know they would not have spent their time farming any of it. They have both completed all three campaigns, like myself, and had enough gold to get by. However, when they decided "hey, I want this 15k set", their first thought wasn't farming, it was "I wonder how much 100k is on eBay".

If eBay wasn't an option, it's very possible they wouldn't even consider the 15k, or they would just continue doing what they were doing, and buy each piece as they could afford it. Either way, neither friend enjoys farming at all. They share my views on how boring and pointless it is. I understand the point of view entirely. I understand not wanting to "work" for a set of armor you want. I also understand that elite armor is not needed. I also understand that once you buy everything you need, what else are you going to do with all that money you get constantly just by playing normally?

The problem isn't so much inherent with vanity skins, though. If it was solely vanity, then you might have a point. There is also the fact that certain mods are expensive. As of now, they are somewhat reasonable, since the introduction of loot scaling has increased the value of gold, and hard mode has increased the amount of rare items, which include materials and mods. If inflation increased dramatically, (which I believe it would if Anet didn't buckle down on gold sales as much as they do, or even allow gold sales), gold would be saturated among the more privileged, driving the prices of materials and mods up.

While the elite armors are gold sinks, keep in mind, they also rely on materials. The more money in the market, even if used on gold sinks like armor, will still drive prices up for everyone. Those who do not purchase money will not only have a hard time affording the nice skinned weapons they would like to have, but also struggling to even afford simple 1k armor, insignias, runes, and mods - all of which are entirely controlled by the demands of the player market.

The current tweaks to the economy (hard mode/loot scaling) is not so much a counter to bots as it is to the gold saturation. It counters inflation, and pretty nicely, I think. The only current counter to bots is the manual and continuous bannings. Of course, if you can fin the gold sellers, you can usually (with the help of in-game logs) find the bots who supplied the funds in the first place. The entire operation has to be taken down, not just one side of it.

That is offset with the fact that you can't trade the items, either. They are collectibles, not wealth leverage.

Also gold sellers drive up economies to unrealistic levels. cause the need for more and more gold resellers and bot farmers to supply them. Legal or not Gold resellers to 1 thing and 1 thing ONLY to a game. they make it too expensive to play them unless you too cheat in some way. Which does nothing but create more business for the gold farmers and resellers that are operating illegally.

If Anet allows it and did it themselves it would have no change on the effect to the in game economies. it would still drive prices too high for things that anyone with half a brain cell can figure out is possible to get on their own just by playing...

The point Anet has always said in the past is its not about the goodies you use its about how you use what you got. Most high priced weapons (or skins really) have nearly free equivalents from Collectors or crafters NPCs for low cost is any at all.. Even more so the Purple 19% items are sometime just as good as a perfect 20% item really, so there is not much NEED to buy things for overinflated prices, Except the gold sellers want you to think you MUST have millions of gold to be good at this game. it just is not the case. a casual play can play this game very very well in groups or alone and get everything they need to equip themselves and heroes alike. trust me I'm now up to 192 equipt toons... soon to be 300 once the expansion comes out and there are 10 more heroes per character slot. I rarely have more then 60k at any time. my normal amount is more like around 15k. But I schedule out my Nightfall freebe chests to keep myself in some supply of weapons and gold for my equipping needs. All without a bot or ever buying gold from anyone... And I only play like 3 times a week for a few hours normally.

no offense *cough* but I love all the ignorants who immediately assume its his real IGN

I'm in no way 'doubting' its his IGN, however, you have to be short-sighted to even consider banning that account based on the name he put on his guru info.


ROFL, its like me having "Gail Gray" as my SN and saying that I broke the EULA and need to be banned... gg nubs.

Apparently you have never heard of "logs", or you simply forgot they exist. I'll let you work out from there what information can be attained on Anet's end.

forgive me for not assuming anet and guru share IP's and would drastically go out of their way to give IP's look up this particular users information, research his accounts information for over an entire year, as he clained, and spend the time deliberating whether or not the limited information they have on that particular user was worth banning.

Not worth the $6 an hour they pay their employees kthxbai

OK, I'll spell it out for you. All they would need to do is check their logs for the screen name given, and see if they ever traded with any known gold sellers (which they should have databases and logs of as well). This should take no more than 5 minutes worth of waiting for their computers to search with the text string given. No IP addresses needed, no researching the entire account, any of that.

Clear enough?

Though I do agree, I doubt they would even waste the 5 minutes, considering it was supposedly last year. Just saying it wouldn't take much to verify the story, even if the SN is fake or spoofed.

So if a gold seller randomly came up and paid someone for a run to Droks, the runner gets banned :O hilarious.

You can't really be that dense. Obviously, a gold seller wouldn't be paying in lump sums of 100k a pop for a run to droks.

Oh so now you're automatically assuming that anet is only banning people who buy in lump sums of 100k?

What? What are you driving at? Use common sense. Pretend your job is to find gold sellers and ban them and those they sold gold to. What would you look for?

OK OK you two your gonna get this thread locked if you keep it up.. ;(

I know your point is the level of ease Anet would have in tracking a gold buyer down. However, I suspect that Anet either looks the other way or would give something light like a temporary ban for gold purchasing so it's a moot point. It's just not in Anet's best interest to ban a customer who may buy further upgrades even though they're breaking the EULA.

Oh yeah, totally agree with you. Buying gold is equivalent to speeding (in America). You get a couple slaps on the wrist for the first few offenses, but I'm sure do it enough and you get hit hard. Plus, if you just go up to a cop and say "hey, this one time last year I did 80 in a 45," the cop will probably just laugh.

But hey, banning in these cases is more a deterrent than a punishment. Thus the big message at log-in. I'm sure they are much more concerned with banning the gold sellers, anyway.

Kuunavang mini is to the tune of 100k + ectos.

Here's how I think our arguments differ.

You say:

[Gold farming (a)] CAUSES [unreasonable levels of gold entering the economy (b)] CAUSES [inflation of prices of items in game (c)]

Therefore we should stop (a) to stop (c).

Here's the problems I see:
1. (a) isn't the only cause of (b). So stopping (a) may reduce (c) but won't end it.
2. Stopping (b) directly would stop (c) more effectively. Your comments above are on the effectiveness of stopping (b).
3. Creating a fix to stop or slow (b) is actually easier than creating a fix to stop (a). This is because stopping (a) requires you to know a person's intentions on what they're going to do with the gold they acquire and (b) doesn't.

So I say instead that we should stop (b) to stop (c).

Here's the other thing I keep seeing...

Looking at this logically, the argument is that (a) must always cause (b). I don't agree with this. (a) causes (b) now but I'm not convinced that an alternative approach to (a) would necessarily cause (b).

Here's where it gets interesting. If (a) must always cause (b), then if you kill (b) then that action must by definition also kill (a). So stop the unreasonable amounts of gold entering the economy and if you're right then online gold sales have no way to exist.

If I'm right, online gold sales can still exist but they are now prevented from having an adverse effect on the economy and (c) is still stopped. If you're issue is really (c) then you should still be happy.

So worry about (b) and not (a).

double post, deleting.

Yeah, that is the one thing I am really against, minipets from outside sources. Agreed with that.

Bolded part added by me. That is what I say. The rest of your assumption falls because of that small missing part. I said specifically that inflation happens. You can't stop it without removing player trading, period. You can however control the rate at which it happens, which they have done and continue to do by adding loot scaling, hard mode, and removing gold sellers. That is all. That is my argument in a nutshell.

We're in agreement on this. Normal levels of inflation happen and aren't what we are looking to stop.

The bolded part was bolded by you but look above and see that 'unreasonable' was in there originally and was intended. This is a slippery slope argument. I think you can stop unreasonable influx of gold from a single account without something so drastic as removing player trading.

Loot scaling, hard mode and removing gold sellers reduce the issue but the issue still remains. As an example, a person could still run a bot overnight and cause (b) even with the changes you mention. Other additional changes could curb it further.