I never said it shouldn’t be unattended and/or it wasn’t an issue, just saying there is a lot bigger matters at stake that needs to be handled that also solves this trivial matter. Instead of putting the blame and catching the little fry, go for the root of the problem and it solves everything with it.
In this matter, if you control the illegitimate ways of how gold is coming into the server (exploits, cheats, bots, etc.), RMT would matter, the least bit, at least at the current state.
If a legitmimate surplus of gold is coming in, its fine and good. It keeps the player base higher without the means of illegally surplus of gold. Better gold sinks is needed too.
I strongly disagree. You call EHG enablers, putting blame on them. They are victims, too.
The blame lies on the people breaking the rules.
This game has 2 design features: grind and trade.
Whenever these come together, you enable and give incentive for RMT in one way or another, because some people want to throw money at the issue to take a shortcut.
You can’t reliably prevent bot-play, thus farming “wealth” without the need of manual labour. Even if all dupes are removed - bots still work.
I think the trade system could be reworked to be less suitable for RMT, but it would come with more hurdles and disadvantages to legit players.
That still doesn’t, at any level, justifies the use of RMT at all. I see a bigger picture than just LE, you know. Dealing with RMT in LE enables RMT in other games as well, because it is the same circle of individuals doing it.
Of course it doesn’t justify the use of RMT or anything but there will always be a problem for everything as long as there are those rules are in place. Enabling it and giving incentive for RMT is a trade off. You either have the feature or not. And its shown in MMO games, this feature works and favors very well. The more players, the better it serves its purposes.
The bigger picture is to find and work on the root of the problem and to minimize it as much as possible. Like I’ve mentioned, even if all the gold were legitimately farmed, and if were RMT, that wouldn’t be nearly as big of a problem where it ruins the game unless there is a strong competition factor in game. Annoying and unfair? Absolutely but not in a state where it effectively ruins the market. People want to spend their money on virtual items just makes me laugh.
In this case, it’s root problem is the influx of gold through illegitimate ways. If you can fix that, you can slow down everything else to a point where it doesnt completely disrupts and kills the game. Example: D2 market, at it’s prime, RMT was always strong there but the game went on with it stronger than ever. All they did was actively fought and banned botters. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Not even close but minimizing it was enough to keep the game in check with the issue to keep players. Of course now, the whole game is just openly botted and is dead as they had given up on the game.
Are these rules in place always right or wrong? Absolutely not. Look at the bail reform law, It’s an absolute joke.
Do I agree with RMT? Absolutely not but if all the gold was legitmately farmed and RMT that way, it would not be near a problem or even a problem at all, at the current state of the game.
This is what I mean. Reworked to less suitable for RMT, yes, now we are talking on page measures. The moment they find a way to do that, it would be fine. It’s impossible to clearly wipe of RMT/Cheats/etc. unless you trade off from either completely removal on/off of it…
That’s the issue, money is involved, so there are all kinds of incentives to not acquire the stuff they sell legitimately, so you’ll always have account theft, botting, money-laundering, and so on. Even when going through a real-money auction house.
And the alternative, pay to win, is simply a huge incentive for the devs to make the game worse to sell more stuff.
I’m not sure what could possibly stop RMT, though, as just a few big spenders are sufficient to make the practice profitable. As both of you say, we can try to make it less profitable or less attractive through intelligent trading design, but the practice will still be there.
