5523249
story
Comments: 208 +- Games: EVE Online's Fight Against Currency Farmers on Wednesday August 12, @03:14AM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicspace.gif); width:73px; height:59px;
space
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicmoney.gif); width:84px; height:74px;
money
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicentertainment.gif); width:62px; height:44px;
entertainment
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicgames.gif); width:68px; height:77px;
games
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.
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together ...
-- Carl Zwanzig
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.
GTC are cheaper (Score:2, Informative)
Re:GTC are cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, pretty much they made a system better than ISK farmers could do. They win the fight :)
Unfortunately they still bring their servers down in the middle of aussie prime time every night, so won't be collecting my money.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it can. There are a few timezones that nothing but a few remote islands are in - way out in the ocean.
Re:GTC are cheaper (Score:5, Funny)
Like Australia ?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They could always make servers specific to parts of the globe...
Server1 - Pacific
Server2 - Atlantic
Set the reboots to 12 hours from each other and the people will choose the one that doesn't have a reboot during their play time. If you get popular enough, split them into 6 hour blocks.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They could always make servers specific to parts of the globe...
One of the unique selling points of EVE is that there is only one collosal server.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah right. I forgot about that... must not have been on the top of my list of demands when I played.
They need... (Score:2)
Re:They need... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? So new players could never possibly catch up?
One of the things that kept EvE stable was that inflation was nominal, if existant. It's the only MMO I know where prices remained almost rock solid stable over the course of its existance.
One of the key reasons why MMOs eventually crumble was always inflation and the problem associated with it for new players. You wanted to have X. X costs 2000 $money when you start. So you start hacking and playing and finally you have 2000 $money. By that time it costs 4000. You continue the grind, you have 4000. It costs 8000 by now. Will you continue? Or notice that you'll NEVER have the money to buy it and play with the "big boys"?
Inflation has never hurt gold sellers. Quite the opposite, inflation drove people to them because they noticed they couldn't get the money they need with normal means (i.e. farming themselves), they pretty much had to buy money from goldsellers to get whatever they wanted to have.
Parent
It's a question of what your time is worth. (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
$30 isn't much to you or I, but for a currently unemployed someone in a poverty sticken nation who happens to have cheap/free access to a 'net connection and the game by some means, it might be a worthwhile investment of time otherwise spent doing nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
$30 isn't much to you or I, but for a 13 year old in a rich world country who happens to have cheap/free access to a 'net connection and the game by some means, it might be a worthwhile investment of time otherwise spent doing nothing.
CCP doesn't invent the isk from nowhere and sell it, they only facilitate trade. So, in effect, they provide a method to get money INTO the system, but no way to get money OUT of the system. So the cheap labour doing the ISK farming shifts from being leeching, annoying, out-of
Re: (Score:2)
The argument is that:
* Finding a weekend job could be difficult in the exact amount desired
* You can play EVE whenever
* You enjoy playing more than you would enjoy working.
Me, I prefer to contribute to the economy, but to each his own.
Re: (Score:2)
k, but 12-15 hours in 2-3 days (4-7 hrs/day) is not semi-casual. That's pretty heavy playing, especially if all you do is farm isk.
Re: (Score:2)
Very interested in this proper setup of yours that makes 650M ISK in 15 hours - can you post more details please?
I also want to be able to purchase game time with my ISK.
Re: (Score:2)
You're ignoring something so many people ignore, even in real life business: Risk. How much is that Golem? How likely is it that you lose it in that endeavour (don't tell me you're SO good that you can overcome a sudden lagspike or discon, that you are somehow magically able to still tell your ship to warp to safety after your connection has been lost)?
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, maybe trade-alt is the way to go, then - my Empire standings don't really allow me to do any high-sec missioning (nor would I want to). Losing a Golem to CONCORD or militia NPCs would suck and skilling an alt to fly it is just...not that effective ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Two years? Nah... maybe six months if you picked the right race and plot your skills carefully.
And that's running missions. The most profitable thing you can do with your time in EVE is market arbitrage, which doesn't take that much in the way of skills. I don't do it myself because it's too much like real work, but I know people who regularly make a billion ISK in a couple full days of fiddling with market orders.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, sure, but it depends on what you consider "work". When I get home from my real (progr
Puzzle Pirates did it (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Well, it's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but you need to maintain the illusion of being against it, or the tax officers may pay you a visit.
Still, as the market teaches us, if they are providing cheaper rate for the currency than the one that may be offered from traders, the traders will simply vanish in a puff of smoke. We'll see how the inflation will respond to this heaps of moneys being injected.
Re: (Score:2)
How so? What are the tax ramifications of CCP's current set up?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Personally, I never understood why someone would want to buy money in an MMO...
But your logic makes it sound like the person in charge should just suck it up and stop trying to prevent people from doing what they want. If I apply that to real life, I should be able to massacre everyone in a square mile of myself so I can have peace and quiet... and the government should provide me the tools to do so.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I never understood why someone would want to buy money in an MMO...
I've bought MMO money, and did it because I have already spent way too much of my life farming cash in meatspace for it ever to be fun in a game.
The absolutely last thing I want to do when I finally get some computer-based relaxation time is a pretend job. My gaming time is limited and I want to cut straight to the fun parts.
Re:Well, it's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
So I have a secondary income stream, to finance combat activity - I do industry, and go ratting/missioning to make some isks, to buy new toys, to get back on the front line, which is where I'm have most fun.
However, 'going missioning' takes me time in game, and it's somewhat fun, but I enjoy getting into combat more. So for me, dropping about an hour of overtime pay on 60d GTC for resale, netting me 600mil isks, is equivalent to _not_ spending 20 hours running missions, and instead going and killing pigdogs.
I don't _like_ the real money for in game cash particularly - I think it's somewhat unfair. But none the less, as the option exists, I'll use it. EVE is one of the few games that is 'self balancing' there though - a bad pilot cannot buy the kind of advantage to stop them being a bad pilot. More, they get a bit of an edge, and someone else gets a nice killmail and a pile of valuable loot.
Now, if I were to lose my job, and end up with more EVE time, and less payscale, I'd probably change my mind about it - going the other way and 'playing for free'.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I hate PVP combat, which is part of the reason I stopped playing Eve, but I can see your point. I just don't see the point in killing each other when personal time, cash, and such things are involved. I have no problem with FPS game type PVP because you can pretty easily get power-ups and weapons by learning the levels, but when it involves days/weeks/months of work to get an item and someone is going to kill you in 5 minutes for no good reason... I lose interest.
I guess if it were me, I'd petition to hav
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
PVPing has to be a net negative, otherwise you have an exploit with friends killing each other and looting more than they lose in total.
The more rewarding (in terms of loot) you make PVPing the more incentive you provide for that "someone is going to kill you in 5 minutes" thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't get the wrong idea here. Trading ISK for cash outside the GTC system will still get you banned. This system h
Re: (Score:2)
It won't be this way for long. With EBay being more expensive, people will go buy GTCs to sell them. The increased supply of GTCs will make their price drop, soon making EBay ISK cheaper again.
Re: (Score:2)
To combat goldsellers by selling it yourself, you have to be cheaper than the goldseller or at the very least cheap enough that players don't want to risk the banstick. That's tricky, to say the least.
Simply selling money will inevitably drive inflation. You can't just go and simply undercut goldsellers over and over because you will make your in game currency a joke and people will start looking for alternative means to conduct player-player trade. Think Diablo II. Gold was basically worthless, what happen
Second link in summary is 404 for me (Score:2)
Can someone explain PLEX? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
EvE is, like many MMOs, selling game time cards (GTCs), so people who do not want to give out their CC numbers or don't have one can play. It's like a prepaid card for cellphones. You buy a card, you get a serial key, you enter the key at their homepage and your account gets credited with 60 days of time.
You may now also go to their homepage and sell those 60 days of time. To do this, buy a GTC and instead of activating it for your account, you go to their page and enter the serial number you got into their
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What you describe is the old system.
In the new system, every 30 days of GTC time is converted into a PLEX, an in-game item. The in-game item can be sold on the regular in-game market. When it's used, it adds 30 days to your account.
Currency farming in space ? (Score:3)
Are they doing this on the ISS ? I was just wondering about the "space" tag on this article.
Re:How lucky we are to bother ourselves with this (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [harvard.edu] 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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't shed a tear, Omber ain't worth jack anyway.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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 CC
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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 nobod
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know that much about WoW, but this sort of market manipulation happens in EvE as well. But it's usually not as big a deal, because the economy is so decentralized. If someone's relisted all of the red widgets in a system, there's a few thousand other systems I can look in. Plus because players have so much control over the production of most items in game, producers will notice the relisting, and will increase their production of that particular item. It self-corrects pretty well.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The limitation that markets are only region wide means that there are a few dozen markets within hi-sec. Plus goods have to be physically moved, which means that goods can gain/lost value solely on distance.
Where EVE Online gets it wrong is the 0.01 ISK undercutting due to region-wide buy orders.
(Buy orders should change offered price based on distance from the buy order actual location. Even for region-wide buy orders. This would allow more compe