Real Money Auction House RMAH for poe

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Tagek wrote:

What? You think GG should only make it tradeable by stuff you have to buy from them? What the fuck.

Why not? It's helluva simpler that way. Why SHOULD in-game item be traded in real money, and bring plethora of problems associated with it? By using game points, a lot of problems associated with trading items using real money are solved. For example, no more Chinese prisoners having to play games 12 hours a day, since such effort cannot be converted into real currency (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam).

Other examples:

http://www.rjkoehler.com/2011/08/07/are-the-online-games-lineage-and-dungeon-and-fighter-supporting-north-koreas-economy/

Using the game points is way more ethical than RMAH and I believe such model fits GGG's philosophy better, at the same time providing more profit to GGG.

If you disagree with me, please explain to me how GGG should operate RMAH. Any idea about fee structure, commission, payment method, security etc etc? Criticism without suggestion doesn't matter much.

After all, RMAH is probably one of the most unethical thing GGG can do to the community. The whole point of "Support Path of Exile" thingy was to make sure that PoE remains as ethical as possible by having development fund donated so that GGG won't have to look for the way to grab cash quickly (https://www.pathofexile.com/purchase/).

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In order to fund the development and continued expansion of Path of Exile, we offer a range of ethical microtransactions that allow you to distinguish yourself in the world of Wraeclast without receiving any gameplay advantage. We are completely opposed to the concept of “pay2win”.

Some may argue that setting up such trading is a thinly disguised pay to win system, but the thing is, like many do, I also believe that people will eventually do it anyway, so might as well do in the most ethical way possible at the same time supporting GGG.

Also the beauty of this system is that the game points are not "spent" but rather "transferred", thus will also keep the inflation relatively low. And using this system will reduce possibility of hacker attack, since what hackers have got are game points and items with no real monetary values.

Finally, I believe you have misunderstood my point. My point was that in addition of trading involving exchanging in-game items, players could also use game points instead of items for the exchange/trading.

For your chinese example.
That won't happen anymore.
The only reason that happened was because item shops had no real competitors, and thus they could ask very high prices.
With millions of people posting their items the prices will be much much lower, and this makes a business based on selling items very hard to do.

But honestly, I don't see how this would be an 'ethical' system at all. You'd pay heaps of money to GG, when you're not even buying the items from them? There's already tons of people complaining that blizzard takes a cut from the money in their RMAH, imagine the outrage over a system where the dev gets ALL the money. Also, at least in blizzard's system you can always retrieve your money by trading, or even come out with more than you ever spent.

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leeho730 wrote:

*stuff*

Most people who are against a RMAH could care less about the farmers. Mostly because the economics of the situation (supply and demand, free market competition, and so on...) do nothing to help them, and everything to hurt them.

Making MT points a tradable currency combines the worst part of a flat out Pay2Win system, with the worst parts of a RMAH system, leaving out almost all of the positives. Just because you can't "cash out" from GGG, doesn't mean the farmers can't cash out - in Magic (the Gathering) Online, they sell "event tickets" for $1USD each, and let players trade them - so they're the currency for trading/pricing. And there are always people on and off the game (despite it being completely against the TOS/etc) who are buying/selling/trading tickets for Poker site money, real money, and so on and so on.

They do it for, say, 95 cents on the dollar, undercutting the company (so no, the company doesn't make "all the profit".), run many of the same account theft or credit card fraud scams D2/PoE scammers did/will, and so on. GGG charges 10 cents a point, the farmers (if you make the points tradeable) will just offer 8.5 cents to buy and sell for 9.5 cents or whatever. This will kill GGG's revenue, because why buy 100 points for 10.00, when you can buy just the 30 points you need for that stash for 2.90 or whatever? By selling you 10.00 (or 25.00, or 1000.00...) points, GGG gets you to spend more (what else are you going to do with 70 points sitting on your account?), and gets more people to buy - 1 sale of 100 points, even if everything was on the level (which it won't be.) would buy 3 DIFFERENT people extra stash space or the (theoretically) new "Dead Baby" vanity pet.

So yeah. Sorry man, but that's the most terrible idea yet.

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Tagek wrote:

For your chinese example.
That won't happen anymore.
The only reason that happened was because item shops had no real competitors, and thus they could ask very high prices.
With millions of people posting their items the prices will be much much lower, and this makes a business based on selling items very hard to do.

But honestly, I don't see how this would be an 'ethical' system at all. You'd pay heaps of money to GG, when you're not even buying the items from them? There's already tons of people complaining that blizzard takes a cut from the money in their RMAH, imagine the outrage over a system where the dev gets ALL the money. Also, at least in blizzard's system you can always retrieve your money by trading, or even come out with more than you ever spent.

It's China, where human rights lawyer had to escape just three days ago (http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/18162). Don't bet on it.

Between the two players, the currency is simply "transferred" rather than "spent", so the total economy remains relatively stable.

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even come out with more than you ever spent.

There lies the evil of modern online gaming that allows trading. That's basically why some people do gold farming. In no way ethical.

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AgentDave wrote:

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leeho730 wrote:

*stuff*

Most people who are against a RMAH could care less about the farmers. Mostly because the economics of the situation (supply and demand, free market competition, and so on...) do nothing to help them, and everything to hurt them.

Making MT points a tradable currency combines the worst part of a flat out Pay2Win system, with the worst parts of a RMAH system, leaving out almost all of the positives. Just because you can't "cash out" from GGG, doesn't mean the farmers can't cash out - in Magic (the Gathering) Online, they sell "event tickets" for $1USD each, and let players trade them - so they're the currency for trading/pricing. And there are always people on and off the game (despite it being completely against the TOS/etc) who are buying/selling/trading tickets for Poker site money, real money, and so on and so on.

They do it for, say, 95 cents on the dollar, undercutting the company (so no, the company doesn't make "all the profit".), run many of the same account theft or credit card fraud scams D2/PoE scammers did/will, and so on. GGG charges 10 cents a point, the farmers (if you make the points tradeable) will just offer 8.5 cents to buy and sell for 9.5 cents or whatever. This will kill GGG's revenue, because why buy 100 points for 10.00, when you can buy just the 30 points you need for that stash for 2.90 or whatever? By selling you 10.00 (or 25.00, or 1000.00...) points, GGG gets you to spend more (what else are you going to do with 70 points sitting on your account?), and gets more people to buy - 1 sale of 100 points, even if everything was on the level (which it won't be.) would buy 3 DIFFERENT people extra stash space or the (theoretically) new "Dead Baby" vanity pet.

So yeah. Sorry man, but that's the most terrible idea yet.

So where do people buy game points for such a cheap price? Black market? Will it be that profittable? Where do those players buy for it at such a cutthroat prices? And will any Pocket site accept GGG game points? How do such sites access GGG game accounts and transfer GGG game points from players' account to their website account so that players can play pocker games using
GGG game points? And won't GGG be able to catch that, seeing that several hundreds and even thousands of points have simply evaporated?


I mean, the thing is, players are effectively "losing" the money by selling GGG game points on the black market.

I mean, sure, someone has 2,000 points that he bought for 200 dollars and suddenly he desperately needs to sell game points to raise some cash for whatever means so he might sell 1,000 for maybe 80 dollars? Yeah, highly profitable, I can see black market thriving.

But I can see a potential that hackers may hack into GGG server and artificially increase or decrease the game points.

Yeah, although I believe trading using game points is the lesser of the two evils, but it still is.

You really don't understand what he meant.
'Chinese' can farm items, sell them for points, and sell those points to real players, or any other combination of that, but the point is : People will sell the points.
You might as well make them interchangeable from the start, like blizzard does, and again, that sparks way less outrage than people having to pay all their money to the company in the first place. (A system where you pay money to a company directly only ever happens if you also buy the items from the company. This is not the case, as you buy items from players.)

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Tagek wrote:

You really don't understand what he meant.
'Chinese' can farm items, sell them for points, and sell those points to real players, or any other combination of that, but the point is : People will sell the points.
You might as well make them interchangeable from the start, like blizzard does, and again, that sparks way less outrage than people having to pay all their money to the company in the first place. (A system where you pay money to a company directly only ever happens if you also buy the items from the company. This is not the case, as you buy items from players.)

Yes people may sell the points but they will have to sell for less than what they bought. Otherwise who's going to buy? Yes, I can see black market thriving.

Bought? Goldfarmers will never buy the points, that's the whole point. (lol)

They'll for example farm items, trade those for points and then sell those points to players through websites.
(For less than what the devs sell them for)

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leeho730 wrote:

So where do people buy game points for such a cheap price? Black market? Will it be that profittable? Where do those players buy for it at such a cutthroat prices? And will any Pocket site accept GGG game points? How do such sites access GGG game accounts and transfer GGG game points from players' account to their website account so that players can play pocker games using
GGG game points? And won't GGG be able to catch that, seeing that several hundreds and even thousands of points have simply evaporated?


I mean, the thing is, players are effectively "losing" the money by selling GGG game points on the black market.

I mean, sure, someone has 2,000 points that he bought for 200 dollars and suddenly he desperately needs to sell game points to raise some cash for whatever means so he might sell 1,000 for maybe 80 dollars? Yeah, highly profitable, I can see black market thriving.

Yes, the black market absolutely will be profitable, and allowing trading of points makes that easier and moreso, not harder and less so.

How will GGG tell the difference between a player who plays alot and uses 3rd party (legitimate) forums to trade the crap he doesn't need for GGpoints (or w/e).), and a farmer? They won't. Not with 25 people or whatever. You need real people (not just computer algorythems, which are a great first step.) to evaluate each case and see if it's a 16 year old kid on summer break playing 14+ hours a day, a bot, or a farmer who is breaking the TOS/EULA/watever.

As Tagek said, it's not Joe buying 2000 points, and then deciding to sell 1000 of them at a loss. It's more like Joe buying 2000 points, using 1000 of them to trade in game for 10 regal orbs (or whatever.) from a farmer (Which he may or may not know), who resells them to Tom for 90% of what GG would have charged, who uses the points to buy 2 stash spaces and a Sword of Uberness from a legit player (Mark), when then turns around and sell the points to another farmer for 80% of value because his car breaks down, who sells the points back to Joe for 90% cost, but steals his CC info.

@Tagek: The gold farmers would be dumb not to buy points - they'd just lowball the offer. If they're the only way to turn GGpoints into real money, some percentage of the players will sell to them, then they can mark up the points and resell them. As I said, that's exactly how it works in Magic Online.

Edit: Oh, Tagek means "buy from GGG". Which, he's correct on, and that's precisely why it hurts GGG in the long run - if points are fluid, there's less people who NEED to buy from GGG (even if everything was completely legit, which it won't be.), because, as I mentioned before, people can get the points they need for the purchases they want, no more, instead of being limited to certain package sizes which will lead to GGG selling points which end up sitting around because Joe doesn't really need anything with the last 300 points he has left after spending 1700. (or 70 after buying that one character slot with a $10 pack, or whatever.)

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AgentDave wrote:

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leeho730 wrote:

So where do people buy game points for such a cheap price? Black market? Will it be that profittable? Where do those players buy for it at such a cutthroat prices? And will any Pocket site accept GGG game points? How do such sites access GGG game accounts and transfer GGG game points from players' account to their website account so that players can play pocker games using
GGG game points? And won't GGG be able to catch that, seeing that several hundreds and even thousands of points have simply evaporated?


I mean, the thing is, players are effectively "losing" the money by selling GGG game points on the black market.

I mean, sure, someone has 2,000 points that he bought for 200 dollars and suddenly he desperately needs to sell game points to raise some cash for whatever means so he might sell 1,000 for maybe 80 dollars? Yeah, highly profitable, I can see black market thriving.

Yes, the black market absolutely will be profitable, and allowing trading of points makes that easier and moreso, not harder and less so.

How will GGG tell the difference between a player who plays alot and uses 3rd party (legitimate) forums to trade the crap he doesn't need for GGpoints (or w/e).), and a farmer? They won't. Not with 25 people or whatever. You need real people (not just computer algorythems, which are a great first step.) to evaluate each case and see if it's a 16 year old kid on summer break playing 14+ hours a day, a bot, or a farmer who is breaking the TOS/EULA/watever.

As Tagek said, it's not Joe buying 2000 points, and then deciding to sell 1000 of them at a loss. It's more like Joe buying 2000 points, using 1000 of them to trade in game for 10 regal orbs (or whatever.) from a farmer (Which he may or may not know), who resells them to Tom for 90% of what GG would have charged, who uses the points to buy 2 stash spaces and a Sword of Uberness from a legit player (Mark), when then turns around and sell the points to another farmer for 80% of value because his car breaks down, who sells the points back to Joe for 90% cost, but steals his CC info.

@Tagek: The gold farmers would be dumb not to buy points - they'd just lowball the offer. If they're the only way to turn GGpoints into real money, some percentage of the players will sell to them, then they can mark up the points and resell them. As I said, that's exactly how it works in Magic Online.

Haha, I see, I can see where the confusion comes from.

Of course someone will sell the GGG points because they will desperately need money, but how often will it happen? And they are fully aware that they're making a loss.

And the beauty of this is, GGG wins :-)
The loss is generated by the player who has decided to sell the points for cheaper prices than he bought, and someone would sell it to someone else for a slight profit, say, 10%. No, I don't see someone earning millions of dollars a year or even $400 dollars per day. Because such "black market" depends on someone who're willing to make a loss in the first place. How thriving such black market will be!

Such thing may happen but know that GGG wins, because GGG sold 10 points per dollar. Someone might be happy he coud buy 10 points for 90 cents, but that means someone had to make a loss of 10-20 cents.

Stupidity, if you ask me.

I have a feeling you aren't really reading what dave said, or at least don't understand it.
What you're describing here couldn't be farther from reality.. (about GGG coming out ahead, that is)