Has anyone actually sent gold to anyone? Seriously though?
Just take it out of the game.
There is an easy bottleneck you can catch every RMT with. If someone either gets mailed a bunch of gold or buys a garbage accessory/gem for waaaay too much. Build a system to judge accessories actual value (honestly not that hard to setup) then ban someone if they spend 100x as much to buy it.
Then make a post saying anyone that buys or sells any crap T1-T3 accessories or gems for extreme amounts will be insta banned. If there is some valid reason to buy these things then only allow it from the same account to the same account (like transferring gold from one server to another)?
It would be simple to setup. Just insta ban someone that buys a earring with expertise for over 20000g. Any T1 or T2 accessory over 5k is an instant ban (maybe 10k for necklacess). Any T1-T2 gem that sells for 10x the cheapest same level gem is an insta ban. Set it up so literally not a single legit player would ever get banned.
This is the only spot they are able to transfer the gold. You can track every transfer happening.
Plus if you remove trading gold from the game then the RMTers will need to like send small bits of gold from a million bots to one RMTer or pool a bunch of gold selling low lvl garbage to stack the gold on one account to sent it to a RMTer all at once. Then you can detect all the tiny bits of gold being pooled on one person and insta ban them before they can make the sale.
My friend sent me 9K to help me get back on my feet 2 months ago. Without that external investment I would still be rolling around 2-3k at best with the Honing cost. Now I can maintain an average of 20K gold because I received some help back then.
So no matter whats your point, yes it can be used and is actually being used for it’s real purpose. Why do you think bots use AH for trading high amount of Gold ? Because the amount sent isn’t around near the same at all. 100K through mail is sketchier than through AH. So yea I don’t really believe this solution to be a good one
They could add in some system to see if people have been friends for weeks or over a month, have done raids/content together, sent each other whispers over the course of weeks, other tests to check these 2 ppl know each other. Then if they pass those tests let them send up to 10k to their friend one time.
The system needs to be pretty locked down. Even if we just didn’t allow your friend to send you the 9k maybe it is a price worth paying to fix the state of the game. In the long run 9k is like nothing to be honest ><. it’s nice to get but it really doesn’t get you that far.
Of course 9K took alone is nothing I completely agree
My point is that my gameplay would have been seriously impacted in the long run if it wasn’t of that little 9K ^^ (or a RNG God tier drop)
The ways of making gold for real players have already been impacted more than enough. It’s time that we develop solution that target precisely the elephant in the room.
The kind of solution that you propose is cost free with a little to medium expected impact for the short term.
Im more about Amazon and SG finally deciding to open their pocket and invest where it needs to so they can effectively work against these bots. Restraining player to player interaction is not a good idea in an MMO.
I play this game so I can play with you, and if you need help, I want to be able to help you.
I kinda feel u man. But also. Somethings gotta be done. The botting and RMT ruining the economy is very bad for the game.
I don’t think it is possible to make systems to detect and ban the bots faster than the bots can change their programs to bypass anything in their way. They need to do QA and bug testing anytime they change the game to detect bots. Botters don’t need to do that they just set it loose instantly. The only way to stop them forever is to bottleneck it at the gold exchange (which is 100% trackable) and implement rules to make it impossible to do b/c they will just ban anyone that does a trade that makes no sense.
tldr; Removing the ability to mail mats and gold to other players is worth the problems it causes to end the RMT problem imo.
