Devs and GMs, why not remove gold trading?

They bring in a much larget F2P market by giving a means to people who just dont want to spend IRL cash. Those people then still consume Boutique items & shop at the Boutique by buying gold from the AH. Thus people who are willing to pay, often pay even more to sell gold to those that dont so they can make easy in game coin. PWE was actually very smart to allow gold selling as it increases their zen sales.

If only this would change the absurd coin sinks and other ultra-expensive things in this game... then I'd give it a consideration...

...unfortunately not, so terrible idea.

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I am beginning to think Yulik polishes his trolling skills more then playing the game.....b:chuckleb:victory

Michael_dark - Lost City wrote: »

I think you may be on to something. b:chuckle

Agreed. Fun to watch though.

nahhhh thats a load of rubbish OP

Yulk - Heavens Tear wrote: »

If you really want to make money, remove gold trading then. Sure a lot of people here won't agree with me. But go look at other mmorpgs yourselves. There was no gold trading, but people still bought cash shopped items with real money and there wasn't really complains about cash shop. But keep the cash shop items trade-able so. Not everyone like the idea but its really worth it.

Let the gears gained from ingame instead, crafting skills, etc

First you advise all classes to wear LA to PK and now this. Where do you get those crappy ideas from? Do you randomly decide that you're gonna post a crappy idea one day or what?

Yulk - Heavens Tear wrote: »

If you really want to make money, remove gold trading then. Sure a lot of people here won't agree with me. But go look at other mmorpgs yourselves. There was no gold trading, but people still bought cash shopped items with real money and there wasn't really complains about cash shop. But keep the cash shop items trade-able so. Not everyone like the idea but its really worth it.

Let the gears gained from ingame instead, crafting skills, etc

Because that's when the Cash shoppers TRULY control the game, and that's how to doom your game.


Look, people on these forums complain about PW being cash shop-dependent all the time, and honestly, I laugh at them. This game is NOTHING compared to other MMO's when it comes to cash shop dependency.
No gold would mean it'd be harder to get a hold of CS items, which means we'd have more CS users, yes. However, that also gives the CS users themselves a much better chance to exploit their CS position. Gold is so general and flexible that anyone can buy it and viola, they can purchase the item they want themselves.
Now, what happens when non-CS users lose that freedom and that ability to choose how their gold is spent. Well, then the CS-users are deciding how gold is spent. All CS items raise in price because they're more exclusive/harder to come by, this creates a gap between CS users and non-CS users, a couple people pick up on the fact that selling CS items is incredibly profitable and regularly supply the server with whatever CS item they choose, and soon the server has a dependency on the elite-few who CS a ton.


As it is now, I and everyone else can invest in gold, we can obtain the CS item we want via the gold house and don't have to depend on some guy buying it and selling it in his cat shop. It may sound like something small, but it's a big difference. If all CS items are harder to find, then people are willing to spend more when they actually DO find the item; the result is that CS users can jack up the price without much punishment. If gold is no longer available to all, then those that CS regularly develop a monopoly; again, they can jack up the price and there's no real punishment when they do so.



The gold house makes CS much easier to trade and purchase, and it REALLY helps those of us that don't CS. Removing it may be tempting if the company is greedy, but it would only hurt them in the long run. Eventually a monopoly develops among the CSers and they can single-handedly run a server into the ground.

Longknife - Harshlands wrote: »

]This game is NOTHING compared to other MMO's when it comes to cash shop dependency.

golden thief bug
b:avoid
grants the power to become 100% immune to an entire class.
._.'

Nah not really QQing... just commenting on the quote I used and to show how greedy are PWE compared to other companies lol

Longknife - Harshlands wrote: »

Wall of text

Do you ever type short responses, Longie?

Asheera - Raging Tide wrote: »

Nah not really QQing... just commenting on the quote I used and to show how greedy are PWE compared to other companies lol

Um.. how is endgame +12 gear being hard to get greedy...? I don't want it to be so easily accessible that every single player runs around with it...

Asheera - Raging Tide wrote: »

Ehh... I don't think you get it...

It's not hard to get, it's only very expensive in terms of RL cash. Since D.Orbs don't drop from anywhere in game, every +12 weapon you see can only be a result of $2800 spent on the game by people... doesn't matter how that person got all the D.Orbs, he/she could even receive them as gift for all I care. Thing is it's just $2800 spent and nothing else.

This is different than stuff like Nirvana which is hard to get and that's from playing the game, actual farming etc. Or Warsoul, if you farm all the mats needed for it. Those two are really end game stuff "hard to get", as it should be, not +12. That one is just greediness on PWE's part. Hope you see the difference.

& you can't farm the same Nirvana for cash to later convert at the gold trader for GOLD at the boutique... & you know.... buy the orbs... Or buy the orbs from merchants with the money you saved in game...

VlLKASS - Sanctuary wrote: »

& you can't farm the same Nirvana for cash to later convert at the gold trader for GOLD at the boutique... & you know.... buy the orbs... Or buy the orbs from merchants with the money you saved in game...

Yes I know what you mean, for a f2p it is hard to get +12 and I agree with that, I'm not saying wrong.

But PWE being greedy with the prices is still valid. Whether a f2p player farmed the **** out of the game to get a +12 from CSers (because you can't get D.Orbs from farming no matter how much/what you farm... only way is to trade from other players), or a CSer bought thousands of $ for a +12... point still stands that there is $2800 spent on the game for every +12 item.

Some noob may spend $2800 on D.Orbs and make a typo and sell them for 6k each instead of 60k... someone else gets them and +12's the weapon... was that hard to get for this player? No. Expensive? Not for him, but for the other definitely. PWE made A LOT (and I mean A LOT for a game) of $$$ and thus greedy? Yep :P

Olba - Sanctuary wrote: »

And still, the biggest boutique lovers buy quite a few of their Raptures and Uncannies, either directly via catshopping or from the packs. The whole point of having the Rapture and Uncanny chests in the packs would be to attract those who got their end-game gear from the previous sales and now want even more.

QFT

This shows even more greed from PWE, when they added gear-related stuff in boutique with packs.

Borsuc - Raging Tide wrote: »

I think she meant, that the gold comes from PLAYERS. Whenever you buy gold with coins, someone charged zen. To get the Dragon Orbs for a single +12 you need like a couple thousand gold.

That couple thousand gold comes from people who charge. Not through hard work. So it's not "easily obtainable" or "hard to get", it's more like, needing a lot of gold (and thus charges) for ONE SINGLE ITEM to get to +12 for one single player.

I repeat, it doesn't matter if they gave the gold to you for free, for all I care. The point is, that the gold HAS to be charged initially. A lot of gold, mind you. Whether you paid a lot of coin for it is irrelevant.

I can understand a few hundred on this game, but thousands? LOL. b:surrender

b:chuckle you make the point much more clear than she does. I c, though you still could just use mirages to ref, lol those are obtainable in game. I know some that got +8 on 1/2nd tries... that's pretty rare though.

Aiolos_Star - Sanctuary wrote: »

I was astonished to open my lvl 50 stash with a perfect hammer only to find a coin box offering 1 million coins if I purchased another hammer? Now the GM's must realize that is not a gift!

no, it's a contribution. on your part, to the stability of the in-game economy. the chest of coins exists to ensure a minimum exchange rate of coins to gold; it works by there being absolutely bazillions of those chests out there. if gold ever got cheap enough to make it worth buying the hammers to open those chests, the market would be flooded with coins, shoring up the price of gold. (or, if you will, devaluing coin. same difference.)

by holding onto the chest, you're part of the security blanket for in-game gold prices; congratulations, you're making a (tiny) contribution towards keeping the game working the way the developers wanted it to.

i'm not entirely sure why PWE decided to set a floor on the gold price like that, or why they decided to set it where it is, but they did. the chests are much too deliberate a thing to be accidental, so i'm sure somebody worked out the economical math there. (they'd better have, is all i'm saying.)

I could buy more Zen and sell my gold for more coins than that!

yes, you could. and if that ever were not the case, thousands of players would be smashing open chests until it became the case again, and for whatever reason the developers want that to be so. i don't know their reasoning (i wouldn't mind hearing it), but i'm pretty sure they're not deliberately trying to kill their own game.

So I guess my issue is why even have gold trading!

lolwut?

the two issues are unrelated. gold trading can be a useful idea even if the minimum price for gold is fixed at a pre-set level. in fact, it's even possible that it's a more useful idea that way --- the fixed price floor is one measure of market stability in the game, a form of regulation keeping the gold market from going too far haywire in that one direction.

you could argue that the price floor is set at the wrong level, and if you had some good logic or numbers behind that argument, you could even be right. (the devels could adjust the price of the hammers, as needed or desired.) but arguing that the price floor makes the gold market pointless doesn't seem to make any sense, to me.

In my opinion it is a way for others to take advantage of the ones unable to purchase gold! Coins are getting harder to get everyday with the "bot" problem!

if the game has a bot problem, then that problem needs to be fixed. fixed QUICKLY and stomped on HARD, in my opinion, even. but eliminating gold trading would not necessarily help --- gold trading is a coin (and gold!) sink, meaning it helps mitigate the effects of botters and gold farmers. remember, the problem with botting is it exacerbates in-game inflation, flooding the game with coin.

besides, the gold trading house is THE obvious way your average botter would go about getting something useful out of their coin --- and it's COMPLETELY under PWE's control. they can adjust transaction fees to make botting less profitable, track who's making suspiciously large or frequent transactions (to try and identify botters), and generally both monitor and control the flow of the various in-game currencies between players. it'd be a hugely useful tool in controlling such problems, is all i'm saying. i'm not sure if they're actually using it that way, but i would be if i were them.

so i guess my answer to the question in your post title is, i don't know for sure, but i'd like to think they're too smart not to. it's a pretty obvious thing to keep an eye on, after all.

I really do not want to have to start paying real money just for armor repairs and skill upgrades! Put a cap on gold trading and make it fair for everyone!

i'm sorry, but i don't see how such a cap would help keep armor repairs and skill upgrades affordable. repair costs and skill prices are paid to NPCs, which means they're already set and fixed by PWE to begin with. they only go up if more advanced armors (that are more expensive to repair) become more commonly used in game, or if new (and more expensive) skills get added in expansions. messing with gold trading doesn't seem to have any very direct link to either of those.