Could Freedom Provide The Means Of Stomping Out RMTers in CoH/V?

I know this idea may not exactly be popular among some of the players--I have mixed emotions about it myself. What if the Paragon Store were to sell Inf? Doing this would provide easier access for players than any RMTer is ever going to be able to offer. Additionally, since RMTers have expenses in order to acquire inf, and Paragon Studios/NCSoft does not, it would be impossible for the RMTers to offer a competitive price and still maintain an appealing profit margin. In the end, it would be far more effective for the RMTers to move to greener pastures than it would be for them to try to compete in such a market.

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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

Yes, I'm sure effectively nullifying a large portion of the game (having to earn inf through gameplay) and gating it behind real-world money would be an excellent idea and not run at all contrary to one of the several reasons RMTers are banned to begin with.

And I can only imagine what this would do to the already inflation-ridden in-game economy. How's 50 million for a Nevermelting Ice sound?

Good god in heaven, Newbie, there are just so very many ways for me to say this to you: never, not in a million years, absolutely not, no way José, no chance Lance, nyeh, negatory, mm-mm, neh-eh, uh-uh, and of course my own personal favorite of all time, man falling off of a cliff -- NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.................. .............................

...pfft!

EDIT: But why stop there? AE farms are still a massive problem, why not put XP up on the Paragon Market? Buy a level 50, only 1600 points! Between this and purchasable inf, farming would disappear overnight.

First of all, earning Infamy is already not a huge deal for veterans. Many of them have to come up with tricks to store all of their infamy because they have such and excess over and above the cap. Furthermore, I am not suggesting gating it behind real world money. Gating would imply that you would be FORCED to buy it. That is not what I am suggesting at all. I am simply suggesting that this could be a way to take away the market from the RMTers.

Finally, as I said, I don't necessarily think this is a good idea. I clearly stated that I have mixed feelings about it, personally.

One more question, if I am a "Newbie" and I have been here 2 years longer than you, what does that make YOU exactly?

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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

Inf generation is a big issue. While there's already way too much inf in the game, that's gotten through gameplay. And while the gold sellers would be just repeating farms for it, at least they're playing the game, somewhat. And if they're using any non-AE farms, they're also getting drops which they probably sell on the market (because hey, more inf), which increases supply. Plus, they probably play the market a bit for the inf (since that's a super easy way to get rich), and that removes inf from the system (at least a bit of it).

Straight up selling inf, however, just adds more inf to the system without any chance of removing a portion of it at the same time. It also has no chance of producing any drops at the same time, as farming would... so you'd just get an increased amount of inf circulation without any increase in supply.

That would lead to an inflation nightmare.


What the devs ARE doing (which is a much nicer plan) is cutting the middleman and selling enhancements directly (though currently not ALL of them). These enhancements are also account-bound, so you can only trade them to characters on the same account. Only downside is that it MIGHT reduce the number of people using the market... though I doubt it. And it won't screw over the supply/demand balance like selling inf would.

What Xaphan said about inflation for sure. Prices would go nuts.

If they ever allow you to sell IOs that you buy at the Paragon Market at the Consignment House/Black Market, then you would have a way to "buy" inf with real money via Paragon Points.

Not as straightforward as EVE's PLEX but it's something.

Unless people are just obsessed with high inf numbers, the same effect without the inflation aspect can be had by directly selling the end products for real cash. Why pay real money for inf that you can use to buy an enhancement when you can just buy the enhancement directly (and a better enhancement at that).

If the main function of inf is SOs and the occasional jetpack, I think RMT will lose some of its charm.

There are very, very, very few things that I DOOOOM!-cry about, ideas that I truly believe would destroy the game. NCsoft/Paragon Studios selling influence is one of them, pretty much for the reasons stated. It would cause massive inflation. I honestly believe it would turn the game into Farmville, ugh. And that's a game I know I don't want to play or be involved in.

Nevertheless, I see this idea pop up now and then, and every time it gets responded to with extreme prejudice. No offense, but if you've been playing the game that long, surely you realized that this is the kind of reaction you would get to this post? I'm not saying, "shut up!" or anything, but it's just one of those things like server merges that everyone knows is inherently a bad idea. Hey Bill, any chance we can get a copypasta written for "NCsoft should sell influence to cut out RMTers!"?

Of course, then the sellers would offer their services for less real money.

So in the end, I doubt that it will help much and it will antagonize a lot of normal players.

The sellers aren't the problem.

The lazy buggers buying it are the problem.

Giving them more ways to be lazy is just going to inflate the problem.

No. Selling in-game currency for real-world money is:

Against the EULA (Yes, I know this is their game but it wouldn't be worth the effort to rewrite that section just for some profit)
A sure-fire way to inflate the markets
The #1 way people with lower income CAN AND WILL get screwed at the in-game market

I do not think it could be made to work because influence is so cheap. Looking at major gold seller sites, it looks like 1,000,000,000 influence sell for about $9.

What price would Paragon Studios have to sell it to undercut the gold farmers? Lets say they could offer 1,000,000,000 for $5 or 400 pp. I do think this would lead to the massive inflation others are talking about. Would $5 be low enough to drive all the gold farmers away? Would they need to sell 1,000,000,000 for 80 pp or 160 pp to really drive them away. Honestly, I can not see them making a profit off of $9 atm, they must be cheating, just can not see them making 1 billion influence per hour or 2. I know they have cheap labor, I expect it like $1-2 per hour but with still can not see how they are making a profit.

Currently I not going to give my credit info to a gold farmer but I would really think about paying $5 to PS if I needed influence which would cause the inflation others are worried about. People will buy influence from PS where they would never do it from gold farmers.

What, like the markets aren't inflating due to all the purple recipe farming at 50. At least before incarnates hit.

Here's the thing. Have any of you actually run into anyone who has bought INF? Getting rich in this game is so fall out of bed simple, and the mechanisms we have to slow down RMT sellers so generally effective, that I honest to god don't see it as an issue.

Leveraging against RMT by selling official INF would matter in a game where there were big INF sinks and pretty strict limits on acquisition. That's not this game, and the moment any new player talks to someone who has played longer than a week, they will learn that.