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EVE Online's Fight Against Currency Farmers
Massively has a writeup discussing the way CCP Games is battling ISK-farmers in EVE Online (ISK is the game's currency). The developers felt that merely banning sellers whenever they could was not enough, so they introduced a system where players could purchase game-time codes that could then be sold within the game to other players. Since players are unlikely to give up buying ISK voluntarily, CCP's thought is that they can at least keep the money and currency distributed among the real players. Some of the player-base has been critical of the plan, but it's becoming more and more popular as time goes on — and the old ISK-sellers aren't pleased.
I often see the annoying spam from ISK sellers, and their stuff is more expensive than the current cost and return of game time cards. I hope they die from this game soon. I know a lot of people who spend extra time making money so they can play for free (supplying the ISK in exchange for the GTCs). It creates a nice exchange system.
... inflation.
A 2 month GTC will cost you around 600-650M isk. With a proper setup and the right skills you can easily make this within 12-15 hours (2-3 days of semi casual playing.) - The way I look at it is that basically you're working for 12-15 hours and the pay you get is $30, which isn't exactly impressive if you compare it with other jobs (i.e. if you take a weekend job every other week and use that money to buy play time.)
Still, if you don't have the money and you do want to play the game, it's a nice way to keep your account(s) running. I definitely think that the GTC trade has made things less interesting for gold miners and that's a good thing. The Eve economy is good, in fact better than most other MMORPGs I've been playing.
Taiwan has recently been hit with a devastating typhoon. Some of the pictures show devastation similar to New Orleans after Katrina.
So, yeah, I'm glad I live here where I can worry about some schmuck in his basement spending his allowance on Eve Online and not over there where landslides are causing whole towns to disappear.
There was a supernova in NGC 1559 just a few days ago. Whole towns disappear? Try whole planets.
It's a big world, you know? Worrying about things that happen a thousand miles or a million light years away is just as much a luxury as spending your time playing some game.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This sounds a lot like what Puzzle Pirates did with "doubloons": a second in-game currency, used to buy game badges (i.e. subscriptions), which you can purchase with real money or trade on a market for the main in-game currency (pieces of eight). Players with more money than time can buy doubloons and sell them for POE; players with more time than money can collect POE and trade for doubloons to extend their subscriptions.
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Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant.
But trepidation of the spheres,
though greater far, are innocent.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Well, yeah... but that point could be made of just about any aspect of life, so is kind of moot. To say we shouldn't be concerned about X because of Y is a popular logical fallacy, or just subtle trolling :P
People get pretty pissed when you cheat in multiplayer - this includes RL games as well. If you actually publish a MMO, you would be pretty bloody concerned about it too. If the impression that your game was wide open to abuse spread, you would find yourself without players. For a one-trick pony like CCP that would be the end of the story.
CCP have successfully structured the "rules" of the "game" to make traditional gold farming uncompetitive. This is interesting from a sociological point of view as much as from the perspective of a gamer.
I think alot of farmers heavily exploited the duplicate bug with POS silo's.
After CCP closed the exploit (and pwned the players who abused it), ISK prices went up to 3-5 times the standard rate.
From about 12USD per 500mio ISK, to about 40 USD now.
It makes GTC worth it now, and i think it was CCP's plan all along (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Every (successful) MOG that I know of has this problem, and most of them go rampaging off down the wrong track: waggling their banstick at anyone who does things that actual humans will inevitably do.
Prohibiting real world trades is both laughable futile, and self destructive. Companies that do it are punishing their paying players and themselves: it's truly lose-lose. I'm glad to see that CCP have finally figured this out, and stopped punching themselves in the balls.
The question that I have is: why did it take them so long to get smart, and why wasn't this designed in from the start?
It's not a trite question. So many MOG developers seem to plan to fail, by assuming that they can control how their (paying) playerbase chooses to play the game and interact with each other. News flash: if your game is actually successful, then you'll have so many players that you will not be able to police them manually. That is a good thing, and a situation that you should aim to reach.
This covers security and exploits, account trading and sharing, and real world transactions. If your game has enough players to pay your salary, it has enough players that someone will exploit or explore any mechanism that you provide, and they will come up with their own alternatives to any mechanism that you don't provide.
If they get hurt through real world trading, then there's no point in you whinging that it's prohibited. It was going to happen, and it will continue to happen until you suck it up and give them a better alternative.
You can either design on this basis - i.e. plan for success - or you can play catch up, paying money to patch the game while losing subscriptions across your entire playerbase as you go - from those who hate the "exploits" that you left in, and those who hate having their "exploits" taken away as you remove them one at a time.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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That can't be helped unless they figure out a way to stop someone from hiring their nephew to grind the isk and train the skills, What they did is made it more difficult for professionals to be employed and make money from it.
What utter nonsense. Expensive toys are not mandatory, and in the vast majority of cases only represent a marginal improvement in capability over MUCH cheaper alternatives. Sure, if you consider the 'point' of EVE to fly a Titan, then you're right, but ... you'd be missing the point of the game entirely.
So Eve has an extended downtime tonight. Just so happens this old argument about isk farmers shows up on /. tonight. Coincidence? I think rather not. Did you see those dorks over there whining about how much isk/hour they make? hahaha. That's eve!
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
What if it's light years away, that belt of Omber had my name on it.. and now it's gone..
at least on a somewhat slow 'net connection in Australia. First one still works though.
I read TFA, I read the comments, I'm still clueless as to what it means. Game time? How does this relate to mitigating currency? Isn't EVE a subscription model?
I record my sleeptalking
I've rarely read so much bullcrap in only 2 lines.
First, yes, those new, spiffy, T3, superspecialawesome, too-cool-to-mention, top-of-the-line, never-been-seen ships cost a fortune and a half. Newsflash: They're not meant to be bought and owned by you! They are supposed to be bought by a whole corporation or even alliance, as a means to support their fleet. Look at their stats, 99% of what they can do deal with boosting other ships. Billions and billions of ISK also won't buy those ships. Why? Because nobody is selling them!
Even if they eventually enter the "end user market" and are no longer top-shelf-alliance-only goods, you won't buy one. Why? Because they're worthless for you as a single player. I do have an Orca (no, far from a T3 superspecialawesome ship), but I would not fly it alone. Because it's worthless for solo play and costing half a billion also a wee bit too expensive to lose to the next effing rat coming along. Hell, even in a group of less than 5 it's better I go out with a Hulk and mine myself!
Most PvP these days is skirmish warfare. Yes, yes, you always get to hear about those huuuuuuge battles where carriers with battleships orbiting them like some moons around Jupiter clash in a system, when you see the starlanes close because CCP has to redirect processing power to the system where 500 vs 500 ships crash together, where 100mil ISK are wasted per second... Know what? I've been playing for 5 years now. I've never even SEEN such a battle. Been in one? Dream on. They don't happen!
If you're aiming to "own" such a 1.5 bil ship right from the start, you're doing something wrong. EvE is not about endgame as so many other MMOs out there that don't really start until you hit maxlevel and start the grind for your ultimate armor (ultimate 'til next patch, of course). Know what I fly into the big battles, a 5 year old player with somewhere between 40 and 50 Mil SP and a purse of a few billion ISK? A standard issue T1 Battlecruiser. If I get cocky and feel rich, and the group I fly with warrants and needs it, I might consider pondering flying my Command ship. Why? Because I don't want to go broke, duh!
Because you don't need to fly anything else to participate in PvP in a meaningful way. I've seen people with less than 6 months of play time participate in big, intense PvP battles in frigates and blow up way more than they're "worth". What you can do is not determined by the time you have been playing, more often than not it's a matter of what you're up against. You can take apart a lone T2 Battleship in a handful of T1 Frigates. Because the BS cannot hit them! At the very least the Frigs have the speed to lock and web the BS 'til the heavy guns can come and lock.
There is no such thing as "you have to play X amount of time and have Y money to do something in PvP" in EvE. Separate yourself from the thinking of other, traditional MMOs. Yes, you will not fly that carrier after 2 months of playtime. But I've seen it more than just once that that "little" 2 months player made the difference because his EW fitted frig could lock&web an opponent to keep him from escaping the trap.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First, training in EvE is entirely and only time dependent. You start the skill, it will be done in 2 days, 4 hours, 2 minutes, 50 seconds. Nothing you do in game, whether you shoot anything, mine something or are logged in altogether can change that. I also doubt the wisdom to hand your ship to your nephew (or anyone) and have him grind for you. On average, a ship costs what it could generate in about 40 hours of game time (speaking PvE, PvP is a different matter, albeit much more dangerous), I don't think it's wise to have anyone who doesn't know how to play the game well grind money for you in a ship that has to survive at least 40 hours of grinding to get back the money it costed you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are they doing this on the ISS ? I was just wondering about the "space" tag on this article.
Agree; the alliance I'm in hardly uses any Tech 3 strategic cruisers but we have downed a number of them... and they seem to be as easy to take down as anyother ship if you have your wits about you.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Don't shed a tear, Omber ain't worth jack anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
an interesting solution which essentially allows CCP to snag some profit from the farmers. in the new PLEX model you have users who want to use real money to buy ISK so the purchase a PLEX, you have ISK farmers who have loads of cash offering above market price for players PLEX, then reselling the PLEX at a lower real life cost essentially lowering the price of the monthly subscription for the farmers customers.
PlayerA gets his ISK for RLM, PlayerB saves some money each month the Farmer gets some cash for his time and CCP got in on the action.
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Wow. Have you even played EVE? This has got to be a troll.
First off, T3 ships are not alliance tools, they're solo ships if anything. Sure, they can fit Warfare Links, but so can battlecruisers and command ships. Battlecruisers do it far cheaper, command ships do it better (much stronger tanks, can fit 3 at once) and still a little cheaper. And that's just one of many possible configurations of a T3 ship. They also make nearly invincible scouts (bubble immunity + covops cloak), or could be set up for an amazing tank, drones, whatever. You also apparently haven't checked the prices on them recently--you could fully fit one now for 5-600m. You'd be an absolute fool to bring one to a fleet fight though--even doomsday-tanked battleships get practically alpha'd.
As for large battles, they don't happen? What? They happen so frequently I got bored of them. Like, every single day in a large alliance with an active war. Cynojammer takedowns, capship fights, you name it, it's happening all the time.
Honestly it sounds like you've spent your entire EVE career in empire. Too bad man, there's an entire game you're missing.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
There's a new trend in WoW of price-fixing. People go to the Auction House, buy up all the valuable items, and put them back on at massive-inflated prices. It's been happening more and more in the last few months, and now it's almost constant. The only time you can buy affordable, useful gear on the AH is when you beat the price-fixers to it. I don't know if it's people looking for gold or gold farmers, but it increases the demand for buying gold offsite because it's nearly impossible to afford the gear you need.
That and spelling out gold farmer's domain names in dead bodies across popular areas - it's a constant battle to keep up with all the ways people will try to make money off of a MMO
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This has been done by Eve for as long as I have known about it. How is this suddenly news? It is an old game and GTCs have been talked about before. Bizarre reading about this now.
In a related story, World of Warcraft now allows you to have paid server transfers. Also, Lord of the Ring online has hobbits.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
And haven't yet hacked out huge, popular parts of their game to combat RWT. Like Jagex did with Runescape.
Don't shed a tear, Omber ain't worth jack anyway.
Indeed, mine veldspar.
Use fault tolerant and high availability software techniques and construct servers that can be updated while hot. And a network that can allow the removal of individual servers without impacting users.
It's not the same, but we never see sites like Amazon.com go down for maintenance. They run a massive website that probably costs them millions in lost sales for every hour they are down. Now HTTP has some advantages when it comes to distribution and load balancing, mostly the advantages are that the problems with scaling that protocol have already been solved and you can buy special hardware to help construct a cluster of webservers that are transparently accessed as one.
Now a specialized protocol for a massively multiplayer game could still be designed in a way to allow you to migrate player state to different parts of a server cluster and also designed so that rolling updates could be applied to many systems simultaneously without interruption. It's some high tech stuff, but if it makes the players happy and keeps them as paying customers it's worth it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I have 4 accounts to play Eve online. I was involved with a friend that participated in trading items and accounts for real money. I had no idea it was going on and because of my close workings with him within our corporation, my accounts were banned and CCP has not taken the time to listen to my side of the story.
I still have 3 petitions opened and one has been responded to with a senior GM stating the one account will remain permanently banned.
They have become rabid in their persuit of stopping the RL money issues and innocent people are being harmed. I consider Eve one of my hobbies and after 3.5 years they arbatrairly destroyed that work.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
I'm the same way. I make very good money in the real world. If I spend what I make in one hour on in-game money, I'm good for about 18 months of play (depending on how suicidal I'm feeling, where the alliance is based, etc). It would take me about 60 hours to make that same money in-game. So the issue is a no-brainer for me.
Beyond that, the ISK grind is beyond boring to me. The thought of having to haul stuff around, hassle with market orders for hours on end, grind missions, or fuel a POS every other week is a sure-fire way for me to not log on. I just can't handle the boredom of any of those activities. I only get a limited number of hours a week to "waste" on an online game, so I don't want them to be wasted on carebear nonsense. Buying a GTC every year and a half solves that nicely.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
This isn't about some gamers buying their way to the top ranks of a game. This is about a business finding ways to stay profitable. People are willing to pay money to play a game because it's fun. If players can buy their way to the top is no longer becomes fun for those that can't or won't pay to compete with them. If a game is no longer fun the the players won't pay any more and leave. And there you go. A business destroyed because a few people need to be at the top to gloat even if they needed to pay to get there.
It's no different than if I had my own alt for mining or industry or trading, which I used to generate cash to fund my other character's activities. Except that if I've been playing long enough where I no longer enjoy the grind of mining, or building, or trading, I can pay for another player's subscription for his alt through a GTC sale, and gain much the same thing without the grind.
Either way, there was going to be a money-making alt on the server, which did nothing but grind for cash.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I always wanted them to find a way for you to report macro-miners. CCP could check it out, and if found to be macro-miners, have them permanently PvP flagged.
Problem would solve itself (usually the macro-miners are horrible combat pilots, even though they can afford very expensive ships).
If the PLEX isn't resellable what the hell is the story about?
Quote: "A PLEX is essentially an in-game item that represents 30 days of game time. They can be traded or given to other players, bought and resold. Once an EVE Online player has a PLEX in his or her possession, all they need to do is right click and credit those 30 days to their account."
What they did is made it more difficult for professionals to be employed and make money from it.
It's a game. Why should it be a job, let alone a money-making one? I know... professional sports, yadda yadda... but what about just enjoying the game?
... and then they built the supercollider.