Developers Corner

Hey guys,

I did a seach and found some helpful topics, but did not find exactly what I was looking for.

I'm currently designing a MMORPG and two issues popped up in my mind - two very serious issues:

#1: Gold/item farming

#2: Gold selling (from bots, etc etc)

The MMO what I am designing will not support an 'auto target' system, so making a bot will be difficult, however, how the combat system will be set up, it still will be possible to do so if they are creative enough.

So, my question still stands:

Without compromising gameplay for legit players, how does a developer stop gold/item farming and gold selling?

I have some ideas but I'd love to hear what ya'll have to say.

Thanks,

blessings,

I think by asking the question the way you did, you're setting yourself up for failure. People are always going to find a way to cheat. Your job as a developer is to minimize the effect of cheating.

Why do people cheat? They cheat because they want the reward without the effort. Make the reward meaningless, a title or an achievement or something simple (or even make it totally random), and don't advertise it. Reward people by surprise for doing an activity simply because they wanted to. Psychological studies show that people are more willing to perform an activity on their own (and enjoy it) if they are not offered a reward for doing it. Pretty soon they start to regard the activity as the reward itself and cheating doesn't matter anymore.

Of course, even then you will still have the occasional idiot who thinks cheating is cool or funny, but it will not be as nearly widespread as it is now.

Only way to decrease farming is to impose a limit based on level/skills or storage place how much allowed to earn a day which will reduce the farming quite a bit. Something like they had in diablo2 you have limit storage place for gold and thus need to get up in level to gain more but will never have unlimit space. The main problem is that gold or money doesn't take up any space at all. In a sci-fi game like EVE it would be understandable since they use "electronic cash" but here a limit of earning would decrease farming.

The thing is that in most developers of mmo's has not bothered to do much about it since people tend to find exploits no matter what.

Unfortunatly cheating in mmo is very common... a good chunck of people cheats and find exploits to achive soemthing they possible can't do with regular playing.. which is sad.

So your quest to get some control of farming you need to impose a limit to earnings or else people will farm like crazy.

Resource farming like ore is a  tougher one. in EVE you can just use drones to fix rats which is one of the easiest game out there to farm for resources.

Many cheaters uses extra programs just to make thing easier and have the game play while they're at work/school so a gaming time limit could also be a way but people won't like that very much.

the only thing you can do really is to put limits in different ways which won't ofcourse be very popular especially amongst cheaters/farmers which will be the 1st to complain about your game I'm sure.

If you cut out the possiblity to get gold from minor npc's and decide not to have a crafting system at all then farming should be minimal at least for resources and money.

Originally posted by MarleVVLL

Hey guys,

I did a seach and found some helpful topics, but did not find exactly what I was looking for.

I'm currently designing a MMORPG and two issues popped up in my mind - two very serious issues:

#1: Gold/item farming

#2: Gold selling (from bots, etc etc)

The MMO what I am designing will not support an 'auto target' system, so making a bot will be difficult, however, how the combat system will be set up, it still will be possible to do so if they are creative enough.

So, my question still stands:

Without compromising gameplay for legit players, how does a developer stop gold/item farming and gold selling?

I have some ideas but I'd love to hear what ya'll have to say.

Thanks,

blessings,

1.) A question first, is it a loot-based or craft-based economy?

if it's loot-based, then no matter what you do with combat, you get screwed by bot and farmer always (much more easier to get the items/loots and sell it...)

if it's craft-based econ, then it becomes a resources war (player vs player in gathering resources for items), this would offer some competition with bots and farmers with real players (and if these area are FFA combat, then players can gang up on farmers... the opposite will happen also though...)....

So stop using loot-based, and design teh craft-based econ cleverly would help the problem, but there will always ways to gain wealth through illegal means...

They could make a rule that when you sell gold you have to ship one of your balls as well - then they would only be able to sell gold 2 times!

The game will be 95% craft based. There will be nice drops here and there from mobs, but even NPCs will not be able to sell anything above the lowest teir. Nearly everything will be up to the players to supply the world with items.

The game will have open PvP to an extent.. the futher you travel from the city, outpost, settlement or castle, the lower the level difference is in order to attack without penalities. I never played RS when they had the 'wilderness' PvP system, but from the looks of it, our system will work 'similar'.

However, since the game is purely skill based, I use the term 'level' loosely. The level of the player will be rounded by the amount of skills the player has trained in the combatant area of the game.

We are still considering if we want FULL open PvP or leave it the way we have it now.

Full on PvP would allow for players to semi-control the over farming/botting problem. However, Full PvP is a niche playstyle. Again, our PvP system works 'similar' to the RS 'wilderness'. I have never played in RS's wilderness, but from what I hear, our system is similar.. but with a more 'open' feel. That will also at least SOME policing from the gamers from within.

You guys have good ideas.. from which I'll learn from. Thanks!

We also have a evolving PvE system so that should allow just stand alone botters to have major problems... since spawns are not in the same place everytime, especially outdoors. Not to mention the mobs will be much harder than in traditional MMORPGs. If you 'consider' the mob, and you perceive that it similar in 'level', then when you fight it, you will be close to dead when finished, if not dead.

Groups will be highly encouraged.

Thanks again! More ideas are welcome!

This is probably a dumb idea, but here goes: Take gold out of the game completely and make it trade-based. Give items different values and allow people to trade itemX for itemY. For example: If someone picks up a staff with a value of 10, they can trade it for a sword of any value, depending on how good a sales person they are and how gullible the person they are trading with is.

Remove soul-bound items altogether.

Oh well, just a thought... I'll shut up now.

In DarkSpace v1.500, we are removing credits(gold) from the game.

Resources, which are necessary for player upgrades and ship customization, are provided by planets. These auto generate a number of resources each game cycle, depending on how players have developed the planets facilities.

In turn this central resource is used to pay for all planetary construction, all player ships, and all upgrade costs. The player themselves are effectively employed by the military body of the faction (or race) that they choose to play as, so this is how we justify the 'free' upgrades. If resources are running low in a given area, then players can help transport resources to where they are needed.

We do not have a conventional crafting system. Players are able to build and develop planets, which is a form of crafting, and they also have the option to build various types of deep space platforms. What you 'craft' helps to benefit your faction overall.

The direct benefit to the player is prestige (experience), which enables them to unlock access to higher tier ships.

The game is heavily PvP oriented. so the focus for us is not on player gear, but instead on player skill.

How would such a system translate into a more conventional MMO?

Imagine belonging to a guild, the guild provides your equipment and tools of the trade (depending on experience), in turn for your assistance in helping to keep the guild supplied with essential resources. Providing the guild has adequate resources stockpiled, the item you need can be 'crated' and supplied to you free of charge.

If your guild is running low on wool for bandages, then you go out and shear some sheep, or set up a sheep farm. Part of the challenge could be in defending such a farm from invading trolls or something.

Be creative and think out of the box.

Firstly 1 char per server.

Invest in a decent sized team to actually investigate and implement. To me this issue is much like shrinkage within a company and the extent is directly proportional to the effort put in to prevent it.

Exploiting & Hacking

Depending on the size of the playerbase, actually have the balls to ban those exploiting, most companies are more willing to let the exploiters stay and keep the subs than let them go and see the subs go with them. With this comes clarity and honesty to the community, let everyone know why and who just got dumped. This seemingly unwritten rule that you cant discuss this with other players is ass and causes devs so much hassle its stupid. There are no issues regarding defermation through inferance as you only ban the guilty

Of course to even go down this route you have make the rules very clear as to what exploiting is and what you will lose your account/char for.

Farming

Farming is specific to the actual mechanics of the game but in summary, imo farming can not and (in most cases) probably should not be stopped. The problem afterall is not the farming, it's just a means to an end. Stop the rmt and the farming takes care of itself.

Again, this is not difficult to spot (even moreso if there is only 1 char per account), as an internal auditor I would say a hell of a lot of this is preventable before it even takes place. But the key is obviously the willingness to lose the subs.

Conclusion

Without going into a daft amount of detail, this issue is very much a real world problem that all business' encounter. Seeing as how mmo's (despite the gamers' perception or desires) is just another business they will be prone to the same problems. There will always come a point where the effort and resources being expended are not benifial to the amount of rmt, etc that is being prevented.

Imo the problem has a solution (moreso than rl as it is set in a controllable environment), but it has to be decided to the extent the devs are willing to go. There are also many examples of how to reduce rmt by using game mechanics, all of these however are going to be compromises in some shape or another and in truth only makes things more difficult for gold sellers. Such an attempts to merely cull the activity is a cheap way of making it look like they have made effort, fundamentally it is only at the expense of the honest players.