Solution to bots and gold sellers

This idea is not only profoundly stupid, it is also quite old. It's been suggested and rejected many times before. Use the search, read up on why it's a dumb idea. End of story.

You can get more than 3k for a rare material. Bots will get same.
You can get more than 10k form a Elite tome. Bots will get same.
You can get around 500g from a normal tome. Bots will get same.
You can get more than 100k from a gold weapon. Bot will get same.
You can get 10g..5k from dyes, bot will get same.
You can get 25g...3k from armors with runes, bots will get same.

Guess what ... bots are smarter than just merchanting everyting

- They can (and do) keep gold items for resale to identifier. They also can, and do, indentify really good drops.
- They can know what tomes are and resell them for their market price.
- Ditto rare materials

If you didnt get it, 7 unidentified golds for X-k are botts. They usually also advertize rare itmes, tome and other similar things.

Bot creator would have to be nuts to throw away much bigger income.

- Also, guess what, bots can identify stuff.

hate to be a spolier but more often then not there actually people, yes people gold sellers employ people! Sure there running a few accounts on several computers and employ macros, but there still people. depends on the game and amount of players but mostly rural china, don't think there out-sourcing to Inda yet. lol

I got a better Idea to rid GW of bots. DON'T BUY GOLD ONLINE! Earn it like the rest of us. Actually accomplish something and not look for the easy, instant gradification route.

No Demand = No Profit for Bots = No Bots
simple

On top of buying gold at gw.com we should be able to buy fame, and rank, and titles also!

You can indirectly buy fame, rank, and titles now. And to Healers Whisper, we can buy things and skip the whole "earn them" part, care of ANet.

Try PvP packs at the GW in-game store.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Buying gold and the PvP packs are not the same IMO. The PvP packs lefvel the playing field on the PvP side leaving player to only have to unlock elite skills to play effectively. It also hardly has an effect on the PvE side which is where economic effects are felt. A true PvP only char can really care less about the cost of ectos and such.

Buying gold on the otherhand does directly effect the economy. Specially if it is from ANET itself. This would cause infaltion to be worse then anything bots can do, because they are limited to ingame resource drops. Imagine how the US economy would be if you only needed to buy paper to print ur own money. Come on this idea is rediculous and undermines the whole reason to play a game.

Title that can be easily gained through money doesnt have that big of an effect in game. Really how much stock do you put into Lucky/unlucky, drunkard and Sweet tooth which only say you are rich. True accomplishment title are the protector, Vanquisher and such. those you at least have to work for (or someone does if all you do is pay for runners)

Except that you would need 200k once the economy went through the floor because people would by gold. Horrible, poorly thought out idea.

The real solution would be for Anet to use these so called super duper uber logs they have and actually start banning the accounts.

@Darksun - for the sake of argument, let us assume that your 200K statement was accurate, even though it most certainly is not. This would only be true if you participate in the player to player economy. A skill was 1 plat when Sup Vigs were 95K. It is still 1 plat now that they are under 10K. Fixed cost items are where casual players live, not the "100 plat + 20 Ectos" rare items. Come down from the rarefied heights, man, its lonely up there.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Edit:

@Wisper - I forgot about you. Your analogy with real money is not quite correct, as the idea of buying paper to make your own money is not precisely duplicable in the GW economy, as you need to spend RL cash to get the virtual currency. A better analogy would be to say that you can farm in GW, and redeem it for as much RL cash as you want.

A virtual game does not have scarcity, which we deal with in RL. If you gave everyone FoW, then Milk would still be in your fridge tomorrow morning.

It is not as simple as everyone is making it out to be, and if you want to refute the "time is money" argument used here, then ANet has hamstrung you by offering PvP packs, which BTW unlock all skills including Elites.

Thx!
TS

Actually the game does have scarcity. It is programmed into the code. Other wise there would not be leet items or rare items. This is the Basis of the GW economy. Endless gold would drive inflation up, Much like my analogy of endless paper money in real life. The reason for this is that rare items that hold demand now for 100K + ectos will be more affordable but no more abundant. Therefor demand goes up and drop rate stay the same (or possibly drop due to less farming. cause god knows farming is the most fun aspect of this game and people with endless money wil want to continue that monotiny.) which causes the item to now be worth more. See if I have $5 and get 200K gold and you have $50 that becomes 2.000K gold you can outbid me. so the game becomes more about your RL disposable income and not about your ingame skill. Last I checked this was supposed to be about ingame skill, or did I miss the train where 35YO single troll with no life and a high paying job gets everything he wants for his lvl 1 perma-pre char?

Healers, there are a few misconceptions in your post that I'd like to clear up.

You are referring to artificial scarcity, that the programmers can manipulate as they see fit without restrictions.

You are buying into the idea that to solve inflation, we must lower income.

That is only one possible answer. And it is the most painful one, with decreased income across the board, cash becomes more valuable and the wealthy become wealthier. This is a no-brainer. Bad idea.

Let me show you a different answer. Lets talk about any company in the world, but Ford just for example. If Ford Motor Co saw increased demand for their products, what would they do? Increase production. You see, ANet can control the prices of goods by raising or lowering the drop rates much easier and faster than changing income. See the prices of greens on any "triple green drop" weekend. They fall by half, or more.

So of course you base your argument on the specious idea that everyone will immediately start buying gold. I have had more than 2 years of opportunity, and have not done that. I have not bought the PvP packs either. Why? It is not worth it to me. Maybe you do not grasp that concept, and I can see that it makes you scared and angry enough to make personal attacks, but get it through your skull - there are people who have better uses for their money than virtual items.

Green or gold perfect items do not put meat on my table, or get rid of disease and hunger in the world. They are not real, and worth only as much as a person is willing to pay for them. For me, that equals zero dollars. Again, get it through your head - none of it is real.

Heck, the case could be made (and has been said a hundred times on this forum) that gold does not equate to an advantage in-game. The FoW is equal to 1.5K. Green is not that much better than regular, in that green does not automatically confer victory, merely a slight advantage.

So the difference is? Player perception of themselves. Pride in what you have that others do not. Seriously, what if I told you that I could care less what armor you have? Remember, it is not real.

So if it comes down to pride, and that is your motive for being so tight-fisted about others getting more gold, in that it will diminish your accomplishments of farming for FoW or Tormented whatever or some other obscure in-game item that is not real, I do not agree with or sympathize with you.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

thats just as moronic or evenmoreso than the gold argument....

Something tells me there was a little bit of sarcasm when he said they should sell fame and titles in the shop.

As for bots, I've always suggested employing a bot-hunter but I don't know how reasonable/unreasonable a request that is. Said person would go to the bot-spots (Altrumm Ruinds, Granite Citadel, Hot Springs) and monitor behaviour and flag accounts accordingly.

Simple in theory but there are probably a million complications and drawbacks that I'm not seeing.

I'll quit and uninstall the game instantly if Anet really sell gold

So would I. But we have confort in knowing a-net isnt that stupid .

It would be incredibly dumb. The high end market would become dominated by those with jobs and have spare cash. Although it didnt stop some people buying silly amounts of gold previously and openly admitting it...

There's only one word to describe this suggestion:

Gold should be EARNED.... period.

Well after the GW:Collectors Edition they'll be releasing a GW: Hackz0r Edition (350$ and get everything already done for ya )

@ Thread Starter:

To tabascosauce;

First off I made no personal attacks at you or anyone. The troll comment was a gerneral comment intended to target people who life is based in MMO's. that is besides the point.

Secound, I dont give two S**ts what you or anyone thinks about my ingame acomplishments. I dont play this game to impress you, I play this game and put value on my rare armor and weapons because it means I accomplished one of two things: Either I farmed enough gold to buy it or I played a leet area enough for it to drop. I am the one who has to wake up and be ok with me, I dont need other telling me who I am.

Lastly on the issue at hand which is the effects of buying gold from the online store, for which I disagree, and I will use ford motor company as an example. Now the focus is mass produced here in the states. In California you can't drive a mile without seeing one. They are cheep and in demand and ford meets that demand fairly well. as a result the car doesn't hold it value and people mostly ignor the fact that they are there. Now if ford decided to mass produce the Salene Mustang to the same level as the focus, sold for the same price and people decided to buy at that rate so the are one of the most popular car on the road, what value would it have? None really. Its value comes from being rare.

This can be now taken into the game. we can use ecto if you like, a rare drop that is exempt form loot scaling and prices have plummeted. This is due I think largly to increased supply, not lack of money. also due to a decrease in demand as FoW armor sales have dropped. So I understand the "supply side" economic principals.

Increaing drop will not balance infinite money. Pick up any text book on economocs and you'll see this. there has to be some underlying scarcity in both good and Money for there to be economic value in your current market. Simple principal. Flooding the marked with goods or money = bad for economy, In game or real life.

Keep money how it is, and keep rares rare and actually work for something.

Wow - this is actually worse than that idea someone posted in Sardelac, which proposed that Elite skills should only be available to use if your region has favour.

Yep, this idea is worse than that one. Congratulations!

We agree - there has to be a money sink for the wealthy to put their money towards, but it does not exist as of now. There is another thread out there now titled "something beyond platinum" that talks about that exact problem.

The problem is the players who have 3 accounts with maxed out gold balances, not players like me who spend every plat on skills and runes. All my gold goes out of the economy back to ANet. Other players bid 100 plat and 20 ecto for that perfect sword, and it goes to another player, and stays in the economy and makes this nasty circle where the wealthy move their gold around to eachother, and it never leaves the game.

Back to your post, as far as money being bought, it happens right now, every day. The bot sellers still talk about "cheap gold www.cheapgold.com" in AC, LA, etc. ANet, for all I have seen, has not banned gold buyers, and is not going to aggressive pursue banning in the future either.

We are talking about an already existing problem - this is not a new thing. I get the impression from your post that you are completely disregarding the current problem, because it is easier to make your case when you do not consider it. That is just my impression, could be wrong.

As far as your RL example with the Mustang, the production costs of that vehicle prohibit it from being sold at the price of a Focus and making a profit. If they were virtual mustangs, as in Gran Turismo, then everyone having one makes them merely a preference, not a status symbol, since they have zero production cost beyond the initial 3D CAD expenditure.

What you are putting forward is a status symbol, and to have status symbols you must have an audience. The same with your Mustang Salene, it must be rare to have value. Not everyone can have one, else it would be as mentioned before a preference. That is not a vacuum, where you say you do not care what others think - you are contradicting yourself. Noone who owns one of those Mustangs in real life and waxes it every day will be able to honestly say "Yeah, I dont care what other people think of my car". He's lying - and we both know it. It sounds to me like you want others to appreciate your work in-game, and that if everyone could have it then your "sacrifice" of time and effort in GW would be.... meaningless?

Dood, it is not real. It is not curing cancer. It is, absolutely, totally, completely meaningless.

If your argument for being tight-fisted about others having gold or items is solely based on personal pride in an accomplishment in this game taking hours and hours to do, which not everyone has the time to spend, then I cannot support you or sympathize with your position.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

100k for 4$??? Thats a set of 15k! Gtfo you sweatshop farmer, I'm on to you!

ok I did not ignor the current problem in game. My first posts adreeses the problems of bots and such, where I said dont buy in game gold. No demenad = no profit for bots = no bots.

Then followed it up with an analogy of making it legal to print you own paper money in real life. Cause that is kinda what the OP said. Lets make counterfitting of gold (in game) legal. I disagree, counterfitting, or printing (distributing ) endless amount of currency in a economic system is bad. Increases inflation .....

Now for the guy who own a cool car and polishes it everyday, I belive he could careless about what people think about it. Otherwise I wouldnt spend 2 hours a week cleaning my focus. It certainly isn't a status symbol (if it is what does it say about my finances? nothing really to boast about) But I digress. It is possible to have personla pride in your belonging and accomplishments independant of others.

Now if a friend came over and said "hey thats a nice focus" would it be a compliment? yes. Do I need it to survive no. I am pretty sure if it was a saleen mustang I would feel the same, I just prob get the compliment more often

The ONLY solution is that we all QUIT the game...then ANet will get a clue about the ECONOMY system.

I don't see why we're still having problems in Iraq. Obviously we could just have Healers Wisper post on AlQaedaGuru.com and say.

ZOMG! EVERYBODY STOP COMMITTING TERRORIST ACTS AND/OR SHOOTING PEOPLE!

Nobody committing terrorist acts = No terrorism

Problem solved.

They will have extra time to count your money with the spare time from not having to support you. So this may actually be true.

I think the OP should be thrown into the Pit of Poison Monkeys!

While I agree that this mindset does match my statement kinda, I din't feel the need to expand my solutions for bots in this thread like I have before. OF course the Idea that the best way to get rid of something is for people to simply not do it or use it works. I was addressing the OP point of anet selling gold to get rid of bots, to which my responce is better to just not buy it.

Now I understand 2% of the population simply can't do that. Just like 2% of the world's population will be terrorists, criminals and other social devients. To those people I say, lock em up and remove them from a society that largely obeys the established rules and laws. ANET does that by banning bots, and I applaud them for it. In RL our Military and other policing agencies also do that, and I aplaud them also. Because I understand simply asking people to function within a society established rules and laws, will be seemingly to be imposible for approx 2% of any community.

But this thread is about ANET gold Selling, I still say no.