A solution to Gold Farmers? It has long been the plague of all MMOs. Both for the company who runs the game and for the players involved in it. It is the basis of most of the issues and "frauds" committed. I am talking, of course, about Real Money Trading aka Gold Farming.

Dofus is no exception to this. We have the nuisance of the spammers who sit at the Zaaps, the Astrub Highstreet and Class statues shouting out their dodgy websites. Or the more recent variation whereby they PM you with their warez. Then there are the huge amounts of bots running riot through the F2P areas just to generate the necessary income for these RMT websites. Does it harm the game? Of course it does. New Players are put off by the fact that they cannot level in Incarnum on basic monsters, they cannot sell basic resources at decent prices because the farmers flood the market, and it generates lag whenever bot trains run through the map which you are using. But what can you do about them?

Firstly stop buying from them. Yeah, I know. Idiots always want the quick and easy fix. So why pay a months P2P and making 5 or 10 times the kama when you pay it to a scam site and get instant money (even if you could have got much, much more by paying properly). Can you stop idiots? No. Plain and simply. This will not change. It is basic human nature. More than 50% of the human population are below average intelligence. Whether that translates into gamers is a different matter, but to be honest it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is the market. It is there. That's what the Gold Farmers exploit. So how can you take that away from them? You could enter into an arms race. Ankama introduce a measure to limit the interaction of bots or scammers. They respond by changing methods or writing new routines into their code to get round the restrictions. This race continues until one side or the other gets tired. And lets face it, the Gold Farmers rely on this for their income so they won't get tired. So we need a viable alternative. Remove the need for the buying of "Gold".

You can't.

But you can change it so the need goes away. The answer is to make everybody into Gold Farmers.

Now I'm not saying that you turn everybody into bots and allow mass gathering and such. I'm saying give people something to sell which is worth money, and that "something" should be Game Time. As players do at present, you buy subscriptions on the Ankama website. These are monthly, 3 or 6 months or a years subscription. The act of buying gives your account the extra Game Time along with a pet, item or bonus from the lottery. But why not make that Game Time purchased into something tangible? Something that could be traded?

By allowing Game Time be part of the game you instantly kill off the Gold Farmers market. Now *anybody* can buy "items" for money. Except they are not items which will have a direct impact in the game economy - except by allowing money to be moved around.

Consider how things would change.
1) A user buys a subscription and then uses it in the game to extend their P2P status. No change to the game.
2) A user buys a subscription and then sells it in the market. Let the market sort out the actual price for it (same as other resources). This replaces the Gold Farmer webshites.
3) A user buys a subscription item from the market with kamas and uses it to extend their subscription. How many times have you seen people yelling out "buy P2P codes"? Now they can buy legally without any scamming or penalties.
4) A user buys a subscription item then puts it back into the market at a higher price. Well isn't this what people do to the markets anyway?

So who benefits? Well Ankama for one. Now all of the real money is "traded" through their website. More money for Ankama to improve the game. F2P players also benefit. Now they can buy game time just with Kamas from the market. P2P players may benefit. They might be able to get a Kama boost for selling off unwanted subscriptions. But mostly ALL PLAYERS benefit by pushing out the market for the Kama sellers. They have no recourse but to drop their prices so low to try and "undercut" the market prices of the Game Time items. But there is also the added hazard that people who use their "services" do not get any real benefit or guarantee that what they are buying will 1) be delivered, 2) not result in your account being banned, or 3) will not be paying over the odds for what it's worth.

All-in-all, it's a win-win situation for Anakama and the Players. And a lose situation for the Kama farmers, who can go rot in a sewer for all I care.

This post has been edited by TallarasiaTheWhite: 23 Oct 2009, 13:34

No. THis wont work. Subscription is one of the few ways Anamka makes money. Trading it in Dofus for virtual money isn't going to work unless I have not read the post properly.

This post has been edited by mrmoz: 2 Nov 2009, 17:19

I don't think you're reading it properly. the whole point is Ankama DO get the subscription. Once you've paid for it and it is added to your account, THEN you can trade it, or use it as you see fit.

They're planning something called Ogrines that seems to be pretty similar to this in some ways, actually.

Really? Ogrines are 50% damage pets usually given away at conventions.

Unless this is some other Ogrine that I've never heard of.

No, you're thinking of Ogrine Seekers, which I believe aren't actually connected, beside the name. I actually bothered to look up a link this time, so here you go: http://ogrine.dofus.com/en
It's not exactly the same etc etc, blah.

Thanks Generic.

And yes, that is pretty much what I was thinking. Obviously Ankama have put their own twist on it to fit in with the game. But the Ogrines will be buyable, tradable, useable by everybody. That should lessen the market for the Gold Farmer, since we can now ALL become traders.

I look forward to their integration into the game.