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Suggestion to fix gold farming and selling...

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Simple, make energy credits non transferable. OK, ok, wait a second - there is more.

First, make banks share across and account so you can load items and cash in and access on an alt. Second, make money transfer (i.e. trade window) only accessible to Lt Commander and above, this way vets could help out noobs giving them some cash, or alts, or friends but gold farmers would be SOL since they would have to level their mules to Lt Commander to be able to sell making the race to catch and ban much easier for Cryptic. I think you can leave fleet banks working as they do now, just add the same restriction on withdrawing cash so that prior to Lt. Commander you cannot withdraw from a fleet bank - legitimate fleet transfers could simply be done manually with a Lt. Commander or above member trading the cash to the lowbie. Point being here is to make the gold farmers have to use a Lt. Commander to pass out their gold - something that requires more time to get and therefore is more hurtful to have get banned rather than the throwaway noobs they run around with now handing out the cash that people buy. At a minimum I think this should make their job much harder, and make it easier to quash them a bit.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I think having the servers always Undergoing Maintenance is doing a fine job of curtailing those gold farmers.....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Everytime you see a gold farmer right click and hit report spam. Do this for X ammount of time and it will decrease.

    Thats my idea
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Theres gold in them hills!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    OGBigninja wrote:
    Everytime you see a gold farmer right click and hit report spam. Do this for X ammount of time and it will decrease.

    Thats my idea

    Not really...all they do is make another random handle and continue onward. It would be much better if I had the ability to "whitelist" my mailbox. That is, only Friends, Fleet Members, Exchange Notifications, and GM Responses could send things to my e-mail.

    After all what random stranger is going to e-mail you anyway?

    With "whitelisting" all the spammers would get are error messages telling them their e-mail is un-deliverable.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    OGBigninja wrote:
    Everytime you see a gold farmer right click and hit report spam. Do this for X ammount of time and it will decrease.

    Thats my idea

    That is the point of my suggestion, it is too easy for them to make mules for spamming chat and mail and handing over the bought credits. However, if they have to do that with a character that takes several hours to level to the point that they can trade the cash away then the eventual ban sets them back quite a bit and makes it harder. The more time they have to invest in the characters they have to use to do the dirty transactions the more costly the bans become, and that drives up the cost in real money of the in game credits and makes it harder to do profitably.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Not really...all they do is make another random handle and continue onward. It would be much better if I had the ability to "whitelist" my mailbox. That is, only Friends, Fleet Members, Exchange Notifications, and GM Responses could send things to my e-mail.

    After all what random stranger is going to e-mail you anyway?

    With "whitelisting" all the spammers would get are error messages telling them their e-mail is un-deliverable.

    Now that is a Stellar Idea! Seriously, I don't care if some fool wants to buy Energy Credits with real money, I just don't want to emails and tells soliciting the stuff.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    The biggest annoyance is not the emails but the tells and general chat spamming and a whitelist on email, while not a bad idea, doesn't help with those things. And keep in mind, there are in game consequences to everyone when gold farming is rampant - in game play is harmed by the farmers themselves and auction prices driven up by the inflation of people with bought money.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    How about the playerbase decides to not buy from them, eh?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    FreyarH wrote: »
    How about the playerbase decides to not buy from them, eh?

    Well, we know that doesn't work because they exist in the first place, but it is a nice thought. All they need to do to at least slow them down or make it more difficult is to not allow money to be traded from a Lieutenant to anyone else. If they do that then the farmers have to invest a good amount of time in their mules and when Cryptic finds and bans them it will hurt them quite a bit more than whatever they are doing now.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    If there was a GM monitoring zone chat they could instaban a gold seller. Also, if they had the ability to review our ingame mail, they could instaban clear solicitation.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    gHz wrote:
    The biggest annoyance is not the emails but the tells and general chat spamming and a whitelist on email, while not a bad idea, doesn't help with those things. And keep in mind, there are in game consequences to everyone when gold farming is rampant - in game play is harmed by the farmers themselves and auction prices driven up by the inflation of people with bought money.

    Yes...but if they are spamming ingame that means they have an active (read: paid) account. Once those start getting banned, it can start to get expensive to have to buy a new sub at $50 a pop. Spammers "in-game" should be reported quickly to get a GM"s attention to the problem. With direct tells you can ignore that entire account since all characters on an account share the same handle.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    True of course, but the banned account thing is obviously not a deterrent as they are freely spamming mail and chat without worry even knowing there is a built in report function. So yes, Cryptic acting on those reports and banning is important, but it is not a solution by any means - you will not keep gold farmers at bay by ban - any time in any MMO makes this obvious. The games that are successful though at keeping it at bay are ones that make issue the bans and make them work to get back in business, i.e. having to re level to Lt. Commander each time they get caught and banned. Mind you, restricting trading away energy credits to Lt. Commander characters and above won't alone solve the problem but it will add a good bite to the bans because it will mean they have to do a lot more work (time in game) to get in business after suffering a ban.
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