Idea to combat bots and RMT

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AetherSolace#2274 wrote:

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mikeab79#3627 wrote:

What happens to prices on PoETrade when the supply of tradable items is decimated? Maybe you can afford a 500 divine upgrade, but not everyone else can.

Most of us can't afford a 500 divine upgrade, more people would have to craft their own items. I feel as though there will always be a supply of tradeable items though, just maybe not at the tier you're thinking of outside of crafting which is what I do anyway.

It seems the solution will harm innocent players more than bots and rmt though.

For example, here is a way rmt is happening. 'Player' buys currency from website or seller using rmt, 'Player' posts a way overpriced junk item on PoETrade, 'Seller' buys way overpriced item.

Your suggestion wont even bother that type of trade.

Meanwhile, 'Player' finds good item for a friend but wont see them until the weekend. Item is locked before then.

I quit D3 when they went this route, as did many others and PoE1 was born from the mistakes they made. Let's not repeat the same design that gave the need for PoE to start with.

I would add it to trading as well. Reduce the timer on drops to 6-12hours and trades to 3 days. It won't stop it, but it will make the beginning of the league last longer.

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mikeab79#3627 wrote:

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AetherSolace#2274 wrote:

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mikeab79#3627 wrote:

What happens to prices on PoETrade when the supply of tradable items is decimated? Maybe you can afford a 500 divine upgrade, but not everyone else can.

Most of us can't afford a 500 divine upgrade, more people would have to craft their own items. I feel as though there will always be a supply of tradeable items though, just maybe not at the tier you're thinking of outside of crafting which is what I do anyway.

It seems the solution will harm innocent players more than bots and rmt though.

For example, here is a way rmt is happening. 'Player' buys currency from website or seller using rmt, 'Player' posts a way overpriced junk item on PoETrade, 'Seller' buys way overpriced item.

Your suggestion wont even bother that type of trade.

Meanwhile, 'Player' finds good item for a friend but wont see them until the weekend. Item is locked before then.

I quit D3 when they went this route, as did many others and PoE1 was born from the mistakes they made. Let's not repeat the same design that gave the need for PoE to start with.

Bots won't be able to trade with each other until later. It will add a delay on everything they do. It will also add a delay on players selling their currency to bots(unknowingly.)

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Ironhide75#7617 wrote:

Or you could understand what drives RMT and bots, and you know, address that.

And what is that, and what is your proposed solution.

I think anything that makes the beginning of the league last longer and feel better would be welcome. Not things that extend the grind persay, but get rid of the shortcuts propagated by RMT. If peak players stayed for half the league instead of the 2 weeks we have now it would be a lot more fun. A lot of my burnout comes from community becoming quiet and abandoning the league. Then you get things like the Settler ship droprate increases printing money when no one needs any just for the sake of it.

I was thinking maybe the solution to RMT and botting could be a currency.

Imagine if both the buyer and seller needed a currency that only drops from actively playing the game, let's call it "Trader's Tender" and it only drops from chests or something that requires some searching/interaction - something that would be pretty difficult to have a bot do.

It could be semi-common/uncommon and untradeable, and when the trade window opens, both the buyer and seller need to insert a Trader's Tender to finalize the trade.

This would create trade friction, make people more careful about what they trade and what they don't, probably to the point where you couldn't bot easily, and those trying to RMT would actually be forced to play the game in order to trade, on both the buyer and seller end.

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AetherSolace#2274 wrote:

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Ironhide75#7617 wrote:

Or you could understand what drives RMT and bots, and you know, address that.

And what is that, and what is your proposed solution.

a long time ago, my job was combatting bots and RMT in a couple of MMOs, so I have some experience, although its from 2011 --> 2015 ish, so take it with a grain of salt.

Generally You need a few things for RMT to be a thing. You need player friction that can be overcome with currency or items, you need players who have a lack of time (the one currency games charge us all we can never earn more of) but an excess of money.

That creates your market, people with no time to deal with the friction you introduce in your game, but the real world resources to trade to those who do have the time.

When you combine that with game mechanics that bias towards repetitive "grinding" game play, potentially (but not always) easily scriptable mechanics, insufficient automated and manual deterents / detections ... well you make it simple / easy for people to fill that markets needs.

You can crack down on bots, and people who sell to bots, but the botters are pretty damn relentless, they can create sophisticated trails etc to make it hard. its sometimes hard to tell the difference between a RMT botter, and someone just farming currency to craft an item etc.

So the better place to deal with it is to understand the market drivers, and do something to fix that.

what would I do in this game? I'd add Solo Self Found Softcore mode. Significantly more currency, smart drops etc. I'd make the characters deleted on end of league, not migrated, i'd remove all achievements, no "firsts" etc No trading. Hell you might even not include a trade channel, or a world chat. It'd be essentially a single player game at that point, and currency drops would not matter except for crafting. You'd negate the need to grind massive amounts of currency to craft and expand access to the content to more players. It'd have ZERO affect on the regular players.

That on its own wont make RMT go away, but it will majorly disrupt the market. They key with RMT, hell any kind of abuse in games or web sites, is to disrupt the adversaries business model, faster and more often than they can disrupt yours.

You can´t eradicate that Industry of RmT botters, you can just Punish the Buyers too. Other Games do that with a good Effect.

And tbh no one needs Whales except the Rmt botters...

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SplashKing#6352 wrote:

I was thinking maybe the solution to RMT and botting could be a currency.

Imagine if both the buyer and seller needed a currency that only drops from actively playing the game, let's call it "Trader's Tender" and it only drops from chests or something that requires some searching/interaction - something that would be pretty difficult to have a bot do.

It could be semi-common/uncommon and untradeable, and when the trade window opens, both the buyer and seller need to insert a Trader's Tender to finalize the trade.

This would create trade friction, make people more careful about what they trade and what they don't, probably to the point where you couldn't bot easily, and those trying to RMT would actually be forced to play the game in order to trade, on both the buyer and seller end.

Gold sort of fills that role already, but maybe some variation of using gold like I talked about locking currency in my initial post, where that tender is only good for X amount of time before you'd have to start playing the game again to earn more instead of sitting on your horde. It won't solve the issue entirely, but it would again slow down the speed at which they can horde and trade stuff due to the logistical nightmare it would cause for the mass trading they do.

This discussion seems to start with the questionable premise that this is something that the owners of the game want to do. I don't think this would be a discussion if it was.