Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

I am worried about Gold DKP Raids

    • 10 posts
    September 4, 2022 9:24 AM PDT

    I searched the forums to see if there was any information about Gold DKP. The closest one I could find was where Kilsin said, "Selling anything within our IP would be a direct violation of our ToS and appropriate action would be taken. If you sell raid spots with our own in-game currency, that is a different story altogether. "

    I am worried about the last part, which will allow people to host and organize gold DKP raids. Gold DKP raids are ruining the fun atm in classic wow. There are more gold DKP raids / gold DKP discord channels than real guilds, and it's increasing rapidly. Many people there are farming gold by selling boosts or buying gold from RMT websites to buy loot from Gold DK Raids, which has caused some guilds to disband or be hard to recruit since it's a faster and easier way to get loot. People behind them get rich in the game or sell gold for real money.

    I played EQ/P99 and WOW Vanilla Private Server and never saw that before, or not as heavy as it is now in classic WOW. I hope I don't see it in Pantheon and VR does something about it if it happens.

    • 134 posts
    September 4, 2022 10:03 AM PDT

    It's a tough subject because if a guild wants to sell a spot or two on a raid (and flexible raid sizes will make that easier) why should you stop them?

    Sometimes a crafter, for instance, has a lot of money because they found a good niche, but not the time to dedicate to a full time raid schedule. Why shouldn't they be able to buy a spot on a raid so they can experience raiding if it is available to them?

    In my experience, most raid guilds don't want to sell items/spots because it could lead to equipping your future competition. WoW classic is probably having an issue because of the ease of acquiring gear in general and there are two years between expansions meaning towards the end of the cycle, raid guilds probably don't see any issue selling spots/gear.

    However, you are correct that RMT is a huge issue and the more RMT you see in a game the more you see the behavior you're describing. VR has stated they are not at all tolerant of RMT in their game, so perhaps instead they should keep an eye out for any guilds who are suddenly selling anything and everything. It will be partly up to the community to report this behavior and partly on VR to actually follow through.

    • 10 posts
    September 4, 2022 10:40 AM PDT

    Byproducts said:

    It's a tough subject because if a guild wants to sell a spot or two on a raid (and flexible raid sizes will make that easier) why should you stop them?

    I am not talking about selling one or two raid spots in a guild raid run . The Gold DKP Raid is in a different league level, which disrupts the game's community, economy, and experience for many players.

    It's usually Pug, which uses gold to bid on items . Everything that drops is open for sale.

    I don't think you are seeing the whole picture, which I am trying to make clear .

    1. The GDKP raid encourages gold farming, boosting, or using RMT, which results in more gold injection into the game economy and faster infulation, as well as lower game currency value.

    2. It introduces a new form of pay to win within the game community.

    3. A new player who joins the game late will find out the only way to catch up to the current content is by joining a gold DKP raid.


    This post was edited by Eggz at September 4, 2022 11:11 AM PDT
    • 9115 posts
    September 4, 2022 2:51 PM PDT

    I wouldn't worry, Eggz. If anything like this starts happening, we can put a stop to it very quickly, especially if we see it affect the balance of the game in economy or power or has a negative impact on the community.

    • 3852 posts
    September 5, 2022 3:46 AM PDT

    I haven't seen this and you have - so by definition you know more than I do. Which makes me reluctant to disagree - so I won't.

    But it isn't clear to me that some of the things you mention are bad things. 

    If gold farming involves getting things in the game by spending a lot of time, and selling them to other players, this doesn't hurt the economy. Not in any direct way at least. It just moves gold from one player to another without adding gold. If it involves extensive botting - that is a separate and much discussed topic. Either Pantheon will, or will not, have a botting problem but that may depend more on what rules it establishes and whether it has the will, and the ability to enforce them. If it involves spamming the sale of gold for real world money that will probably violate the rules and, again, much depends on VR's will and ability to enforce same. Some games have highly efficient filters that keep goldspam under fairly effective control.

    Is there something wrong merely with the idea that, in effect, someone sells for in-game currency, their ability to organize and run a raid and provide a base of characters good enough to carry others? I assume that is how these raids work - if they are just normal PUGs then people that prefer to roll for loot instead of bidding for loot can simply join other PUGs that do it that way. Or is the issue that the organizers of these things aggressively monopolize raids and make it hard for anyone else to do them? My perspective is that of more of a questor and crafter than a raider - also as someone that doesn't think Pantheon needs to focus on raids at all or to have raids give better rewards than difficult single-group content but that is a separate issue.

    • 273 posts
    September 5, 2022 5:22 AM PDT

    My original WoW guild was the only fully progressed guild on our server, and we sold gear out of the final raids all the time. There isn't anything inherently wrong with GDKPs or selling gear, at least when the game is properly balanced and managed. The situation is Classic WoW is more or less a really bad situation in which;

    1. We have these megaservers with 30,000+ players, which the game was never designed for (a "large" server when WoW was new was 5,000-6,000 players), making resources more scarce than they were intended to be.

    2. Normalization of RMT.

    3. Rampant botting.

    All of which are either Blizzard's doing (megaservers), or they put minimal effort to fixing (botting/RMT). GDKPs in Classic WoW started as a way for the top guilds to launder their purchased gold that they were using to buy crafting materials and consumables for raids. It has become so pervasive now because Blizzard has done essentially nothing to punish players that are buying gold, and they put minimal effort into banning the bots and RMT operations that generate it.

    All VR has to do to prevent a situation like what is going on in Classic WoW now is make it clear that RMT is against TOS, and punish those that are found buying currency for real money, and put real effort into catching and banning bots and exploiters.

    Admin Edit: Profanity replaced; next time, the post will be deleted without warning or explanation. Please review the guidelines if you're unsure.


    This post was edited by VR-Mod1 at September 6, 2022 2:18 AM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    September 5, 2022 8:16 AM PDT

    Of course something like this will happen so long as two players can engage in trades, exchanging one thing for another.  I have gold, you have an item i want so I give you my money for your item.  There is no difference between two players trading for an item than a player buying items off a raid. Neither is demonstrably worse than the other, only the apparent amount of money involved makes one appear worse than the other.

    Players will farm gold because players want to be rich. Having more money is always better than having less. That is a fact and nothing VR can do will stop that.  It isn't just true with repsect to money but everything:  More hitpoints are better than fewer, high resists are better than lower. Running faster is better than running slower.  Having more mana is better than having less.

    I hold that people who complain about players being too rich are people who can't figure out how to be rich themselves.  So instead of becoming better players and figuring out means by which they can become rich they want to penalize those people who can do what it takes to be rich. 

    • 1921 posts
    September 5, 2022 9:41 AM PDT

    IMO:

    If the game permits it, people will do it.  Up to and including 24x7, continuously, exactly to the moment the game doesn't permit it.
    Does the game permit trading gold, between players?  Then this will happen.  if desired, 24x7, continuously, right up to the moment players can't do it.

    This has been the case with many persistent online games since persistent online games have existed.

    Some companies have integrity and care about the reputation of their intellectual property.  Some don't. 
    Some companies completely embrace RMT.  Some don't.
    When customers play the game the way it's possible to play, and/or intended to play, from the perspective of the game company, AND at the same time, are able to derive real life income (via USD fiat currency) from that game play?  They will.  Krono in EQ1 has proven that continuously since its been tradeable on the official servers, TLP or not.

    In my mind, the real question is: Post launch, will Visionary Realms demonstrate with integrity that they care about the reputation of their intellectual property? :)
    The economic public design goals demonstrated and outlined to date will facilitate many of the bad things that have been possible in many persistent online games, in Pantheon.
    To me, that seems ... hm.. inefficient?  When faced with the better option of simply not faciliting many of those bad things.

    If your expectation Eggz, is that imperfect humans will, for some inexplicable reason, not take advantage of RMT (and the consequential gold/services/loot/raid-spots/epic-quests/whatever buying, selling, trading) in Pantheon, I think you will be disappointed. 

    • 810 posts
    September 5, 2022 9:52 AM PDT
    I have sold my services before to lead and MT raids before. It's easy money training guilds. This sounds like an upgrade of that. A solid core group raiding even though they don't need anything is a product of farmable raids.

    I hope Pantheon leans more into difficult contested raids with slow loot progression. Can't sell carries if two or three guilds are all struggling for the kill.
    • 2756 posts
    September 5, 2022 9:59 AM PDT

    I'm a little confused about the terminology. DKP = Dragon Kill Points, no? A system raid goers use to assign loot? Are we suggesting guilds are taking gold instead? Hmm. It's up to the guild I suppose, though it seems a bad 'message' and will have obvious bad influences. I would imagine the main problem is this would not be used for guild members, but for a rotation of rich outsiders to go as a paying 'passenger'.

    If we are talking about guilds getting rich by effectively circumventing "no drop" or "bind on loot" restrictions, the whole point of which is to stop proliferation of high end gear, then yes, it's a problem.

    If we are talking about guilds monopolising and blocking raids so that they can better sell spots on those raids, then yes, it's a problem.

    If we are talking about ignoring ways players might be 'laundering' huge amounts of RMT gold, then yes, it's a problem.

    If we are talking about bots and RMTing not being stopped and game economies being ruined because the developers don't care as long as the baddies are paying a sub, then yes, it's a problem.

    It's not an issue of players getting rich as they become a powerful adventurer and then spending it how they want, it is an issue of players gamifying or even exploiting the fantasy world in some way that will ruin the economy in some depressing reflection of real world greed.

    It's not an issue of have-nots being jealous of the haves, it's about not wanting the fantasy game world to be a sad reproduction of the real one with all the greed related taint that often entails.

    "Gosh! That sword is amazing! Is it from the fabled Gold Dragon Raid? What tactics did you use to reach the end?! How many times did your guild try before succeeding?"

    "Oh, this? Easy. Just pay UberGuild 1000 gold and sit in the corner for an hour until they are done and you can loot it. It won't be special long, they are doing the raid every 2 hours"

    "Oh... Still, getting 1000 gold together must have taken your whole gaming life for weeks!"

    "Um, no. Go to www.pantheongold.com"

    But there are hopefully lots of ways that VR can stop botting, RMT gold sales, 'looting rights' sale, etc...

    • 888 posts
    September 5, 2022 11:56 AM PDT

    If the free trial version of the game is limited enough,  RMT accounts will need to be paid, which will help reduce the Whack-a-Mole nature of combating it.  Good, automated auditing will catch many and make it far less economical to avoid detection. 

    Create a report which looks for various facets of suspicious behavior and  flags accounts when their risk score gets above a certain threshold.  Rusk criteria could include things like these:

    1. Disproportionate value trades 
    2. Frequent disproportionate trades
    3. Excessive play time
    4. Repetitive behavior in high farm activities 
    5. Absence of normal player behaviors

    High risk accounts could then be flagged to track trade history. If that's suspicious,  then a  human can step in and review.  A GM could trigger an in-game captcha  (when the character is active) or spawn in as a dangerous NPC 'on patrol' to see how the flagged character reacts.

    VR could also announce publicly they will anonymously buy gold, then audit the accounts and ban sellers plus suspend anyone else who received a large enough disproportionate trade from the banned accounts.   The goal isn't to stop all RMT, but rather to make it so it isn't economically attractive.  If free accounts are limited to low value and low frequency trades, RMT will require paid mule accounts. And if the trades can be tracked back to the farming source, it because difficult for RMT to fly under the radar without a lot of paid accounts. 

    Consider using 2FA for all accounts and require it be to a mobile number. This further adds to the economic burden on RMT.


    This post was edited by Counterfleche at September 5, 2022 12:07 PM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    September 5, 2022 2:19 PM PDT

    Counterfleche said:

    1. Disproportionate value trades 
    2. Frequent disproportionate trades
    3. Excessive play time
    4. Repetitive behavior in high farm activities 
    5. Absence of normal player behaviors

    Disproportinate, frequent, excessive, repetitive...all highly subjective and open to interpretation.  Who is to say what one player is willing to pay for some item compared to another?  How frequent is too frequent?  What if an entire guild uses one character as a banker/trader?  Quite innocent trades would look overly suspicious for no reason at all.  Then we get to excessive...by who's standards?  Yours?  Mine?  How excessive is too excessive?  If I choose to leave a character logged in 24/7 I should be allowed to do so and thus its playtime would appear excessive.

    • 888 posts
    September 5, 2022 4:15 PM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    Counterfleche said:

    1. Disproportionate value trades 
    2. Frequent disproportionate trades
    3. Excessive play time
    4. Repetitive behavior in high farm activities 
    5. Absence of normal player behaviors

    Disproportinate, frequent, excessive, repetitive...all highly subjective and open to interpretation.  Who is to say what one player is willing to pay for some item compared to another?  How frequent is too frequent?  What if an entire guild uses one character as a banker/trader?  Quite innocent trades would look overly suspicious for no reason at all.  Then we get to excessive...by who's standards?  Yours?  Mine?  How excessive is too excessive?  If I choose to leave a character logged in 24/7 I should be allowed to do so and thus its playtime would appear excessive.

    The values would be determined by data mining to determine what the outlier values are.. And it's all just to create a risk value score. If the score is high enough, then trades by the flagged account will automatically track key data for auditing should that be necessary. There would still be no repercussions yet, it's just a way to find accounts that should then be reviewed by a real person.

    I fully agree that some mundane behavior could look suspicious. The risk value is just a way to try to analyze data . I believe mostl RMT activity can be found and I wanted to suggest some ideas that might work (or inspire other ideas that might work).

    • 2756 posts
    September 6, 2022 2:08 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    Counterfleche said:

    1. Disproportionate value trades 
    2. Frequent disproportionate trades
    3. Excessive play time
    4. Repetitive behavior in high farm activities 
    5. Absence of normal player behaviors

    Disproportinate, frequent, excessive, repetitive...all highly subjective and open to interpretation.  Who is to say what one player is willing to pay for some item compared to another?  How frequent is too frequent?  What if an entire guild uses one character as a banker/trader?  Quite innocent trades would look overly suspicious for no reason at all.  Then we get to excessive...by who's standards?  Yours?  Mine?  How excessive is too excessive?  If I choose to leave a character logged in 24/7 I should be allowed to do so and thus its playtime would appear excessive.

    Not subjective, no, since it wouldn't be a matter of feelings or opinions, it would require queries, calculations and threshholds to trigger investigation. Those threshholds - the 'standard' - will be set by VR, obviously.

    I really doubt it would be complicated to work out that someone is a guild banker or logged in all day or whatever other situation causes an outlier.

    I would hope for all sorts of reasons, including quality control and ongoing self-testing and improvement, there will be all manner of data re. our activities stored and queryable.

    If some little time is wasted investigating innocent outliers, that is more than fine as long as bots and RMTers are identified.

    As for "What if an entire guild uses one character as a banker/trader? Quite innocent trades would look overly suspicious for no reason at all", well, related to the OP, that is exactly the point. A guild banker might be performing what would look like 'innocent' trades, but they are actually, when viewed as a statistical trend, a flag for the guild perhaps 'laundering' RMT gold or at least 'selling' spots on raids.

    One is obviously worse, but neither are strictly against the rules and both are something VR would perhaps want to address in some way, as the circumventing of the spirit of the game's "no drop" or "bind on loot" rewards is hardly desirable.

    So I doubt any outlier is truly "suspicious for no reason at all" because it would be interesting to VR whether strictly against the rules or whether more innocent but still perhaps destructive to the game.

    At the end of the day, I would much prefer VR taking an active monitoring and investigating stance than just giving into chaos and/or mob rule because policing is tricky.


    This post was edited by disposalist at September 6, 2022 2:10 AM PDT
    • 10 posts
    September 6, 2022 6:05 AM PDT

    Kilsin said:

    I wouldn't worry, Eggz. If anything like this starts happening, we can put a stop to it very quickly, especially if we see it affect the balance of the game in economy or power or has a negative impact on the community.

    Thanks Kilsin , I am happy to hear that .

    disposalist said:

    I'm a little confused about the terminology. DKP = Dragon Kill Points, no? A system raid goers use to assign loot? Are we suggesting guilds are taking gold instead? Hmm. It's up to the guild I suppose, though it seems a bad 'message' and will have obvious bad influences. I would imagine the main problem is this would not be used for guild members, but for a rotation of rich outsiders to go as a paying 'passenger'.

    Explaining the gold DKP run 

    A GDKP raid is one where any raid member (usually PUG) can bid (in gold) for drops. And at the end of the raid the total bid is split between all raid members after the raid's organizer/leader takes his cut usually 20% to 30% and sometimes there cuts for tanks / healers 

    Heres the concept in a nutshell:
    – GDKP stands for “Gold-DKP”
    – It was a Korean concept brought to WoW
    – Items which drop in your run are auctioned off in raid chat. The highest bidder receives the item and the gold they pay is added to “The Pot”
    – Profession Patterns, BOE’s, Crusader Orbs etc are all auctioned off in this manner as well. Everything that drops.
    – The pot keeps growing in value until the end of the run
    – The pot is split evenly at the end of the run to all split between all raid members after the raid's organizer/leader takes his cut usually 20% to 30% when the final boss dies.
    – There is no mainspec > offspec priority, its gold which determines who gets items

    Before wow classic came out I played vanilla wow in Privite server and Gold DKP raids were bannd, it was much better environment then current wow classic is.


    This post was edited by Eggz at September 6, 2022 10:46 AM PDT
    • 122 posts
    September 6, 2022 8:08 AM PDT

    I have never heard of GDKP before; however, as soon as you said that, I knew exactly the crazy things that could be done with this.

     

    How will you stop a guild from selling a spot in a raid? 

    How do you stop a guild from having you pay gold on drops?

    You pay so much gold for the spot and have to prove you have a certain amount for what the raid boss drops.

     

    This is a total workaround for RMT, and it's almost genius to a rotten degree. Think about it instead of the low-level farmers, you have a guild, and you take people along on the raid, and when things drop, you bid for it in gold. Now, if the people in the raid honestly made the gold, it is clean. Does that mean these high-end guilds could be a part of the RMT problem?

     

    How do you tell a guild, hey, you can't sell spots into the raid and then not let them auction off the drops? Wow, I see this as a huge potential problem...

     

    Whatever happened to wanting to play a game, enjoy it, and relax with friends? This is yet another reason why leveling needs to be slow, and the adventures should enjoy the journey instead of having someone max level in one to four months. People seem to have so many ways to ruin what could be a great experience for many people. It is a shame that people are like this.

     

    Let me just add this here too. This GDKP and other things make me wonder if the days of a boss or raid boss being in an open world for everyone to go after is done.  Having things instanced means everyone can have a go at it, but usually, there are more items in the world. I do not know now what is a better way anymore. I still say when people in this game want to raid for the sparkling item from a raid boss, and they cannot get to it because four to five power guilds want that same item, it will cause problems. I would imagine most gamers today will not even get to try for the raid boss; people will be like, why bother playing? 

     

    These problems seem to compound off of each other... Where do even begin to stop any of this?


    This post was edited by Nytman at September 6, 2022 8:47 AM PDT
    • 1921 posts
    September 6, 2022 5:01 PM PDT

    Nytman said: ... These problems seem to compound off of each other... Where do even begin to stop any of this?

    IMO:

    A way to detect it, among many, would be a few potential features;

    1) Increasing backoff/cooldown timers and/or costs in player character organization membership transfer.  Either for the individual, or for the organization, or both.  Tracked by either the individual, the organization, or both together.

    2) You must be in the guild at the time of the guild perk activation/spawning/widget creation (raid/instance/epic/quest/special-group/multi-group content) to gain rewards (ever) from that perk event.

    3) You must be in the guild for a fair amount of time before rewards from guild perk activations/events/encounters can be allocated to you, a minimum of more than 24 hours.  This timer can increase with repeats for either the individual, or the organization, or both, to prevent abuse.  It could be set to a very inconvenient number to prevent abuse, and not affect regular guild members at all.

    4) You must be present and contribute to the success of that temporally-unique perk event or encounter to (ever) obtain or recieve any rewards from it.  Ideally they would simply be no-drop, but this covers and includes that, as well, if necessary.

    So, what does that do? It limits the abuse to a very specific use case:  Players willing to, with planning and forethought, transfer to a different guild or join a guild specifically in order to gain a reward they can't otherwise get unguilded or with their own guild.  It doesn't affect someone joining a guild for the first time, provided they're willing to wait to get their loot.  They join a raid, join the guild, maybe both, and eventually, they get their reward.  They stay with the guild?  They get all their rewards instantly, in the future.

    But, this also presumes a few things about guilds and guild perks, which may or may not be the case in Pantheon.  In particular, that perk encounter/event rewards can both be sent to and retrieved/assigned from the guild bank for all participants at a later time/date.

    Also, this does not prevent the abuse.  It narrows the use case so that all potential abusers are instantly verifiable, tracked, and logged.  There would be a very low false-positive rate on abusers within such a framework.  If you saw someone joining a guild a few minutes before a perk event activated, then leaving the guild one minute after they recieved their loot (a day+ later) from said perk event?  Once, ok.. maybe, coincidence, but twice or more?  Pattern of abuse.  Whether you choose to enforce the ToS/EULA or similar community guidelines will then be a policy issue, not a detection issue.

    What I mean by that is, maybe a certain amount of this is OK from your perspective.  Maybe it's not.  But at least, as a hypothetical game company, you would be tracking the emergent behavior for policy application, rather than remaining ignorant.

    ...

    Now, if you want to stop it?  You're talking about a fundamental change to the economic design of the game.  It's not.. hmm. logically? difficult.  But it is different, and that is challenging for some people to imagine.  All you really need to do is make it so all gear has to be processed before being equipped. (where processing can be or mean many many MANY different things)
    If you're willing to accept that one single premise, you can solve it all. 
    But, surprisingly, most people are unwilling to accept that one single premise. :)

    • 1273 posts
    September 8, 2022 10:45 AM PDT

    Gold is SO easy to come by in WoW though so it's not a great comparison.  My hope is that people aren't running around with millions of plat in this game with nothing to do with it other than buy raid spots.  If that is the case the economy was already broken.  With that said, I have no problem with a monetary value for in-game activities, players will just have to determind how much they're willing to pay for different things.  I can even imagine some guilds paying players to join their raid (paying mercenaries).  

    • 2419 posts
    September 8, 2022 2:22 PM PDT

    I honestly do not see a problem with a guild that sells, for in-game currency, spots on a raid or sells, for in-game currency, loot that drops during their raids that nobody at that raid can use. If people are willing to pay for such things, let them.  Fundamentally it is no different that someone selling loot rights to a drop they come across that they cannot use, or someone selling an item they looted on the market.  In each case, someone is offering in-game currency to another player for an in-game item.  That's how markets work.

    What quantity of money is considered 'too much' is a quantity nobody will ever agree on.  Ever.  Some percentage of the population will always think such a sum is too little while some other percentage will always think such a sum is too much.  How players choose to spend, trade or otherwise use their in-game currency in the game should not be curtailed.

    • 2756 posts
    September 8, 2022 3:00 PM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    I honestly do not see a problem with a guild that sells, for in-game currency, spots on a raid or sells, for in-game currency, loot that drops during their raids that nobody at that raid can use. If people are willing to pay for such things, let them.  Fundamentally it is no different that someone selling loot rights to a drop they come across that they cannot use, or someone selling an item they looted on the market.  In each case, someone is offering in-game currency to another player for an in-game item.  That's how markets work.

    Aren't the two things very different, though? Selling loot rights is not just like trading unwanted loot, it is an avoidance of "no drop" or "bind on loot" systems. It could even lead to folks outside a group outbidding folks in the group that defeated the encounter to earn the loot? If developers thought it was a good idea for those items to be sold, they would just have been tradeable in the first place and selling of loot rights wouldn't be a thing at all.

    Maybe it's tough to control, but I think it pretty obviously *is* an intended control that is being circumvented.

    Vandraad said:

    What quantity of money is considered 'too much' is a quantity nobody will ever agree on.  Ever.  Some percentage of the population will always think such a sum is too little while some other percentage will always think such a sum is too much.  How players choose to spend, trade or otherwise use their in-game currency in the game should not be curtailed.

    Not curtailed, maybe, no, but there sure is a point at which quantities or regularities or whatever are 'too much', or at least enough to be suspicious, and that is for VR to determine.

    Not as a limit they think players shouldn't exceed, but as an indicator that something dodgy may well be happening and investigation should be prompted.

    The further point is that not everything that is possible is a good thing for the game just because it is possible. Many things that 'can happen' are more than just 'not good' they are undesirable and a detriment to the game. Yes we want a sandboxy experience. No that doesn't mean we let destructive behaviours go unchallenged or unmitigated.

    Direct monetisation of raid spots and raid loot rights sets a pretty crappy precedent. Greed as a direct motivation in group activities is unpleasant in real life. It's the kind of thing people come to vitual worlds to escape. Greed in group and guild activities - and the success of that greed over more healthily motivated groups and guilds - is depressing and would put players off, especially new players who have less money simply because they are new players.

    I'm not necessarily a big fan of the DKP system for guild raiding, but it's a whole lot better than a pure cash greed 'system', so I'm glad VR are building that system into the guild experience.

    And, of course, if participation in the most prestigeous parts of the game and getting the most prestigeous gear in the game is often directly related to in-game cash, then of course RMT is going to be much more tempting.

    • 724 posts
    September 8, 2022 5:01 PM PDT

    If I get on a ship headed to sea as a layman I take into consideration a few things. Is the Captain a professional, is the owner of the vessel solvent, is the crew made up of licensed mechanical personnel and AB seamen? 

    We have some insight into the personnel involved with this game development. I've witnessed able bodies putting this game together and knowing what lays before them at sea.  If we have a storm hit us in the dark empty ocean we trust the mates to handle it, they have able bodies. 

    If the weather turns nasty the crew can keep things afloat for their bodies are more than able. 

    If pirates give pursuit the captain can out maneuver them and halt the danger because yes,  he has an able body.

     

    All I'm saying is trust VR to handle the unknown, that's all I'm saying, get your head out of the gutter. 

     


    This post was edited by StoneFish at September 8, 2022 5:03 PM PDT
    • 888 posts
    September 9, 2022 2:14 AM PDT

    I like the idea of everyone bidding gold for drops and then all the gold from the winning bid getting evenly divided amongst all.  This makes sure everyone walks away with something. If done right, it seems like s better way than DKP since that's basically a pyramid scheme.  People who only occasionally get to raid will get something more valuable than made up points.

    • 2756 posts
    September 9, 2022 3:13 AM PDT

    Counterfleche said:

    I like the idea of everyone bidding gold for drops and then all the gold from the winning bid getting evenly divided amongst all.  This makes sure everyone walks away with something. If done right, it seems like s better way than DKP since that's basically a pyramid scheme.  People who only occasionally get to raid will get something more valuable than made up points.

    I see the appeal of it's simplicity, but it's effectively the same thing, no? DKPs are earned in raids - spread evenly amongst the participants - and then used to 'buy' raid loot at the end or in later raids.

    The difference is, gold can be obtained elsewhere, outside the guild raid environment, including via RMT, and cash rich folks that have never raided and 'earned' raid loot could buy into raids and outbid those that had been on the raid and 'earned' the items a million times over.

    DKP is effectively a guild-based raid currency, so earning in raids and spending on raid loot is as fair as it can be. The more you raid with a guild, the more raid loot you get. You move guilds, you start again.

    I never thought I would defend it, because I accept it is far from perfect, but DKP is surely *way* better than cash.

     


    This post was edited by disposalist at September 9, 2022 3:14 AM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    September 9, 2022 4:25 AM PDT

    I could make points both in favor of DKP (yes, disposalist that does hurt) and against it. Ditto for the concept of auctioning off raid drops.

    I could discuss whether in Pantheon it will really matter given that Pantheon is unlikely to be as focused on raids or on "endgame" as what we are all used to.

    But I would rather mention the perhaps critical importance of loot binding rules. If Pantheon drops are not bound - if they can be sold to anyone - the advantages to anyone who might run a gold auction raid go down - way down. Perhaps to zero. Since they can simply make sure they get enough loot to sell for plenty of gold if that is their goal. We do not yet know how the looting rules or the binding rules will work - and this is something that they can easily play around with all the way through beta unlike some of the very basic design decisions that hopefully will be locked it by alpha subject to tweaks.


    This post was edited by dorotea at September 9, 2022 4:26 AM PDT
    • 724 posts
    September 9, 2022 6:01 AM PDT

    What if raids gave no loot or gold?  You just get a little participation ribbon that is shown on you page and can be displayed at the raid headquarters.  You raid for the fun of the comradeship and challenge.  The best loot is from crafters.  Raids can also be marked on your weapons and gear. If you have a 'spoon of exquisite scooping' that has been used in a raid X amount of times it is indicated and thus that spoon goes up in value.