Can this solve the Guild Wars Gold Selling for Real Money

EDIT FOR UPDATE: Please proceed to read post number 34 on page 2 as this first idea has been smashed to smithering and I've since rework the idea. However, if anyone can come up with a good idea of using experience points as trade points, please lay out your ideas. tyvm.

I think this may work or not.

but i'm just a simple person with simple thoughts. so this is just something I thought of while looking at all the people trying to cut corners post.

No more gold in game will solve the problem.

instead players will use their experience points like gold. and these experience points are non-transferable, either you play the game or you don't. want something, play the game.

There will still be drops and loots that you can exchange for points etc, but no gold. your experience points can be transfers and exchange for "letter or recomendation" and "contract" to exchange for things in the game. all customised to you.

There will also be points NPCs for you to make these transfers.
one for weapons points - these npcs will let you trade in your drops for weapon points for making elite weapons (much like how the faction transfer works. trade for faction to raise guild reputation, trade for a "xx" contract (imperial letter/monastery contract) for making elite weapons, say X amount of contract can get you an elite axe, etc)
one for armor points - these npcs will let you trade in your drops for armor points for making elite armors (same same)
etc NPCs as needed

green weapons will have to go on barter system. (or if anyone can think of something better please do so and share your thoughts, i'll have to think about this one)
ie: want to trade the time eater for the pain eater

Okay, you need the "central trransfer chamber" (CTC*) for transfering stuffs. put your green or special weapon drops or anything up for sale, and specify what type of payment you want for it, wheather X amount of reputation to your character, or X amount of "contract" (see above) for making armors/weapons, if you choose reputation points it will be added to your reputation points for use to trade stuffs with, if you choose "contract" then the players who's paying for this will have to trade in their reputation points and the CTC or central transfer chamber will do the transfering.

Nothing will change hands between players. All transaction will be done through the CTC, hence end of money selling.

*CTC is a name I borrow from the game, since dwarf are well know for their "money making skills" I suppose that would be a good place to do your transfering.

eh..... ppl would just substitute beer for currency, and you'd just get ppl selling red bean cakes (or if you must, your so called "drops", or whatever you trade in your exp for)for $25USD/stack! instead.

unless, you wanna kill trade altogether?(which would be quite a colossally stupid idea)

If you want get rid of ppl wanting to purchase gold for IRL money, or you want ppl to earn gold by "playing the game", then, I think the smartest thing to do would be to make "playing the game" fun.

fidn this concept someho nice, I don#t say its perfect, but the thought behind it sounds good to me.

And the game would become more fun, alone of the fact, that earning money would become easier, also especially for casual gamers and that can be only good, because the intial concept of Guild Wars was called, that casual gamers should not be in disadvantage over players which have more time to play.
Making money easier to gain would decrease this disadvantage, hardcore gamers surely would still make more money over time, but casual ones at least would earn also enough money quick to get things of their need fast enough...

Make for example a quest, that earns you 15000 Exp and get for those exp then 7,5 Plat ^^ woot would that be nice, still 5 Plat would be cool. At least this kind of money rewardign would not be so ridiculous, like anything from the campaigns and EotN made it only slightly better with dungeons 1,5-2,75P

Vanguishing is way to unrewarding, gold rewards need like a x5 Buff .

When players can earn easier money, than there will be also no need to buy gold from farm botting gold sellers. THATS THE POINT. People buy only from gold selers, because its the ost easiest and quickest cheating way to get quick on huge amounts of god damn gold, which is ingame absolutely too slow earned.


When monsters drop gold, then the dropped gold should count for al members of the team the same and not, that the gold gets splitted up to a joke amount between all members of the party. Ok, this is naturally unrealistic, but alot better for the gameplay of GW to let the game make more fun. Also it would kill the reason to solo and this stupid lootscaling coul get removed then for gold coins.


earning easier money would also reduce the stupid unhuman amount of grind from titles like wisdom, treasure hunter, sweettoth, drunkard and party animal, the 6 total ridiculous grind titels, which require 0 Skill, but only 100% time and being uber rich >.>

Also to reduce the grind, the game should receive some places, where monsters drop alcoholic drinks, sweets and party stuff


Any Dwarven Enemies should drop Dwarven Ale, Aged Dwarven Ale, Hunter Ale, Eggnog, Spiked Eggnog

Corsairs & Kournians should drop Vaabian Wine and Juniberry Gin

Luxons/Kurzicks, Am Fah/Jade Brotherhood, Outcasts should drop Rice Wine
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same with sweets:

Dwarfs could drop : Fruitcake,Honey Comb, Creme Brulee

Canthan mentioned stuff: Red bean Cakes, Creme Brulee

Elonian Stuff: Mandragor Root Cake (from mandragors naturally), Fruitcake, Creme Brulee
---------

Party stuff: all items should be able to drop randomly from any foes with exception of tonics, snowman sumoners and crates.

Because this is beneath minipets the most biggest thing, those 3 titels, why people buy gold from gold sellers, because these titles are way too insane grindfests, where you work alone on them for an eternity. only with help of others have especially casual gamers maybe a lsight chance to maxe these titles, before gw2 comes out, especially drunkard...

Replacing gold with some non-tradeable point as a currency, why haven't I thought of that?

Your idea was kinda "ok" until you start trying to make sure trading between people can still occur. You're not really fixing anything that way. As long as you have currency (commendation you say?), people can sell it for real money. Even if it's non-transferable, account selling can still occur.

Don't even let me go through the whole programming nightmare this whole thing might lead to. Let's face it, Anet can't even give us a good trading system. Hell, they even resort to giving us old hat now. How can you have the nerve to ask for such innovative AND complicated system is beyond me.

Case closed.

what happens to all the gold in the system eh?

I really hope this dosen't happen.

I kind of like the idea of getting rid of gold altogether. I have to agree with Cacheelma, though, any sort of currency would leave us where we're at now. However, I like being able to trade with players, so no trading would be a bummer. Maybe players could trade a green for a green?

One idea I had while reading this was to have an area for people with less time to play could go to once or twice every weekend or so that would give a significant boost in experience earned. An area to "catch up", so to speak, with there friends. They could use it if they'd like to or skip it one week to go dungeon delving, work on a title, etc. Of course this buff zone would be closed off to people that have been recorded to be playing more hours, say 10+ hours of that week for example.

But, like you, I'm a simple person. I don't know how such things could be implemented.

Trading items and Powerselling are 50% of the fun in GW as far as I'm concerned, so I'm against any idea that reduces or eliminates trade as is. There will always be people trying to cut every corner possible, mainly due to them being to lazy to get things the hard way, you won't ever stop that - not and have a still recognizable game. As far as I'm concerned if someone says they can't spend the time playing GW that other ppl can so they are "behind" and should get some special aid or benefit because of that... that's not fair or realistic. Like in real life the more you spend time on something the more you get out of it. Changing that would be a slap in the face to those who have "worked" hard and long in GW to get what they have. XD

This would just mean establishing a barter economy, wouldn't it?

Well, I've seen one up close in Diablo II, and I'm not interested...

This would just mean establishing a barter economy, wouldn't it?

Well, I've seen one up close in Diablo II, and I'm not interested...

Wouldn't this just make people who have a good amount of gold rage quit the game?

To be honest, Anet is already trying their best to crackdown those gold-selling companies. Do we really need all these extra ideas?

It's an interesting alternative. What's so bad about extra ORIGINAL ideas?

I stopped reading at 3rd paragraph.

Bad idea imo. There are better ways to deal with it.

- Ganni

And then people would buy objects online instead of gold...

Hey thanks for all the feedbacks,

I think Cacheelma is correct, and i've come up with some kind of graphic thing to illustrate the thing.



this way, trading is still active, you just don't trade with gold anymore.

and all your gold in the game will be coverted to trading points depending on what are the rates of convertion. could be 1 to 1 or whatever decided by anet if they so wishes to use this idea.

first bar shows how many experience points you have not converted into trade points, that are available for converstion later.

second bars show how many trade points you have left that can be use to trade with (not the total of experience points converted)

third bar show the amout of incoming trade points. okay, this bar is just to tell you how much you have receive from the CTC. But your actual tradable points is still bar number 2.

the rest of the game are the same, except when you buy things and sells stuffs the trading unit will be added to or minus from your trading points bar.

wu-is-me is also correct, therefore trading between players can only happens with the condition that one side of the offer must be tradable points.


edited, because don't know why, was disconnected from the forum. it hates me!!

That's exactly how Diablo II worked. Gold was plentiful and mostly useless, so botters sold a variety of the best items instead of gold. Also, one particular item (stone of jordan) became a kind of trading currency too.

What you'd have to remove from the game is not gold, but trading... including the ability for other players to pick up your dropped items.

Also earning experiance to buy things with goes against anets...skill over...time..

/bleh

why do I even bother anymore....no-ones buying it

What about those that have no problem dealing with money?

Trade is essential concept of MMORPGs. Look at WoW, it has solved that problem completely. There's AH that allows everyone to earn money, there's soulbinding, there's bind on pickup.

This allows everyone to become rich fast, but epic items are still epic only for the hard-core. There's no way to obtain them.

And even if someone eBays millions - they're not getting epics.

There have been debates in the virtual world design communities about this topic. Final conclusion has been, restricting players in any way has huge negative impact on community development.

Suma summarum - free, player-based trade must be core of MMORPG economy. Any attempt at regulated systems has proven to be too trivially bypassed.

Those that have problem with money concept, you're playing the wrong game. People don't want to work at McDonalds and get hourly fee. They want to work in a stock exchange, where their wit and skill can earn them thousands of times more money.

The concept described already exists in game. It's called farming. It's the slowest, yet very reliable way to earn trade points. To obsidian, you need to grind for 500 hours. To get 15k armor, for 50 hours. And so on. Meanwhile, some of us prefer smarter ways to get gold, such as power trading. It's also more humane, since it doesn't require mindless grind for some points.

Oh, and eBay - it's a non-issue. If people want to do that, let them. It doesn't affect gameplay in any way whatsoever. What good is a wammo with eBayed obsidian and crystaline when they go cast mending. They just make a joke of themselves. Yet RMT allows some people to simplify their gaming. There's a population that earns more than minimum wage, and investing $200 per month into eBay gold is a negligible expense that is part of their gaming way. In GW, of all games, money doesn't buy anything.

People willl start using ecto's as their currency ?

This idea would make me so rich,- do you have any idea how much XP you get from Raptor Farming? - My Ele is at 20 mil.
I also have more than a 1000 skill points (and Leg. Skill Hunter)

Tbh, just no. If you replace gold with a new currency, say currency X. Then Currency X is now the official new "currency" and so the gold sellers will sell this instead. It doesn't matter what it is, they'll still sell it. Until you understand the concept, there's not much point debating it.

well then good for you because you play the game.

Yeah, as many people said before, your idea (it's very nice to try!) wouldn't work (I'm also amazed at the ease to create XPs thanks to our raptor friends...which could well become an endagered species! ). Any economic system relies on trading, whatever the currency is. The problem of RMT is not economic (not per se, because there'd be an obvious explanation if people couldn't afford stuff) but rather: 1) ethical (lazyness, fairness, doing business on Anet's back, cheap labour in Asia); and of course 2) legal (it's almost legal in Asia, while in western countrie only Blizzard can really fight against RMT atm). Not to mention the fact that you gain an advantage in virtual-life from your real-life wealth, which kinds of defeat the purpose of a virtual world.

IMHO Anet is doing a great job and the future is in unifying all the MMO companies in this fight (which does not mean that gold could not be sold legally, in micro-transaction payments). It's a much bigger problem than we think, a virtual black market that even has ties to the professional hacking community (which itself it tied to mafia/underground/traffic).

This is not to stop player from trading or to spoil the ingame economy, or to spoil anyone's fun of playing the game, its to prevent anything from being tradable for real money outside of the game.

if its not using experience, gold drops can be collected and when you exit the map or area you are playing in, you'll get a summation, saying x amount of gold has been debited into your tradable points. you just don't get anything that's tradable outside of game is all.

Can't you still farm for tradeable points and sell them to people for real-money?

Removing the gold won't do.
People will use other items to trade.
And completely preventing trade would be a mistake.
And making a xunlai Market be the only way to trade won't do either, people wold use super high prices in trades to give gold and such.
And what about guildies helping?

Nah.

The key to remove gold sellers is making bots useless compared to human playing, and making party farming better than solo farming.

Bad idea.

If you can't see why it's a bad idea, then there really is no hope for you.

If you want to fix ebaying, make 'leetest of leet' items unobtainable by player trade, only by achievement of player.

It works somewhat nice in WoW which has economy AND best stuff soulbound on obtaining it.

Is it really that big of a problem to screw the trade system over for? Who really cares if you have fow and the new "epic" weapon skin, I mean you're still only as good as a newly made pvp toon...

IGE (one of the biggest RMT that Blizzard got nailed in court, more here) started with tons of real-world farmers, in Asian sweatshops (see this article). Bots are more efficient, but if they're too easily detectable, they'll revert to good, cheap Asian farmers.

Re. solo/group farming, I guess it's only one more obstacle they'll jump over. These guys adapt and any serious company will counter by changing enough of its game to make their work harder than the reward. But in the end, it's a bigger game than any individual MMO company can play, even Blizzard. In the end, it's about what's acceptable from a legal and ethical standpoint. The technics, including game mechanics, is an arms race that no one can win in the current situation of PCs and ISPs.

So if I have a 55 Hardmode farmer I pretty much have it all? Becuase the exp really racks up fast

no you can't the points sticks to your characters

going back to drawing board keep the comments coming.

Even populationcontrol wouldn't of had an idea as bad as this, and god knows he was retarded.

Unfortunately, the only way to remove the gold sellers permanently is to remove the abilitly to make a profit from selling gold. GW could go into business for themselves and sell gold bundles of their own. It could work by selling it as an upgrade to the game (ie..., game char slots, weapons, skills) by offering the casual gamer the ability to avoid farming and hours of grind to just go buy whatever they want, hey came keep all money in house, then you only have to watch out for the item sellers.

Actually, People who says the points system won't work are correct to a certain point, it won't work very well because there are a lot of things that have to be taken into consideration and a lot of new things have to be created, but, thou it may not be such a good idea, I at least was trying. Instead of bashing other people with a one liner, come up with a constructive feedback would be more welcome and might actually achieve a no RMT mmorpg in the future.

Now, that aside, the gold stays, but, gold transfer will now be monitor and with limitations.

1) extremely large sums of gold that players wish to give to their own other account or their family and friends' account have to be send through the CTC*, sign a standard form and it will be process by arena net's staffs before it is delivered, by deploying half the staffs that is now monitoring illegal RMT activities to this side.

2) All other items have to be traded through the CTC. A place where player's items can be dispaly in lists of the same items that are up for sale, players are allow to set their own price, a dateline and it will stay there until another player buys it or the dateline lapses, this is for a one time sale service for a small sums of gold if the item is sold.

Players can also rent a space at the CTC paying a bigger sum of gold where they are allow to display X items for sale permanently until they are sold. This space is also a list, the only different is that it is permanant until sold, no dateline. Players will pay X amount for X spaces, and more if players wanted to display more items permanantly. After the item is sold, you will not retain the space.

3) Items that players wish to sell to the merchant NPCs will stay the same as before as it does not affect anything.

4) Small sums of gold transfers between 2 accounts is allowable up to X amount, X time in a day per account, for the convenience of "service provider" like runners and mission runners.

I did not say auction house because some players might be selling a piece of cloth for 100k to make illegal gold transfer. Therefore, prices for materials put up for sale at the CTC should not exceed what the materials merchant is selling.

*CTC = Central Transfer Chamber, just a name for a point where transfers can be made where Arena Net can monitor.

This will also get rid of the constant spamming of WTS and WTB in major towns. Players who wishes to actually play the game instead of standing in Kamadan selling weapons can now have more time playing. Let the CTC process everything.

How would you accumulate trade points not skill points I hope?

It's an interesting idea, but there are a couple of problems with it that I can see. Having to go through the CTC are cutting a lot of people off from trading. Anyone who doesn't have EotN wouldn't be able to. Anyone in presearing wouldn't be able to. Anyone who hasn't gotten that far into EotN wouldn't be able to. I think it'd be a better idea to have it somewhere on the Battle Isles, where everyone (except those in pre...) would have access to right from the start.

But you still have the problem with pre. I guess you could probably just allow normal trade, since I doubt that there'd be much demand for RMT in presearing. Also, what would happen to pre to post gold trading? It's a legitimate way to transfer gold from one presearing character to another who needs it (when I say legitimate, I mean that Anet knows about it, and hasn't been punishing people... except those that have been accidentally targeted as RMT because of the large sums of money being traded for seemingly nothing).

I like the idea I've always said a closed monetary system would stop a lot of the gold selling and even income from these bot farmers since gaining items to sell is a lot harder than just gaining mere gold. Plus it would be quite easy to transmute the gold people already have into experience points, but, would be nice just to have everyone start over at zero and we all work ourselves back up again using this new system. <grin> Course you'll have too many whine babies who wouldn't go for that or this. There's always whine babies.

Personally, I think this is a Horrible Idea. Great thinking though, but using EXP for money is just not right. Money will be easier to get but It's fun earning it. Right now I have only 11k and I need 17k for the Thing I want to buy but I'd rather do runs and stuff like that then spend my exp points for it. On my E/R alone that I don't even use i have 505,000 EXP on him, I'd have like every Item in the Game with that (exaggeration) but i'd still rather have my 11k of Hard earned Cash then 505,000 of easy made EXP money. GREAT THINKING THOUGH!

Sincerely,
Balthazars Ambasadr