TLDR on current state of conversation (9/19 11:30 AM ET) for people who only want to read the original post and then reply:
Apologies for the Clickbait tile - I know it triggers emotional and not rational responses in some people but I felt this topic needed the attention
Original Post below
What if Gold could not be traded between players and was only used for player to NPC commerce? You could add a new currency harder for bots to get and capped far lower than gold that could be used for player-to-player trading?
It would obviously need to have some valuable use to the player for it to be accepted as a useful trade currency. Iām not quite sure what that looks like. One possible idea would be to have a special NPC where you use this currency to buy high-cost high value consumables like:
Tempering Reset Stones (or just one more chance to roll)
A chance at GA at the enchanter
MW mats
Stygian stones
Boss mats
This also introduces the possibility of making the acquisition of this currency much harder for bots. Gold drops from everything it is incredibly easy for people to bot farm or even just AFK farm without even needing to bother with bots. if the special tradeable currency was only acquired in a way difficult to bot it could really help the trade economy.
Could this work? What do you think? What other consumables could this special NPC sell to make players value it highly enough? What could the acquisition of this currency be tied to that would make it hard to bot farm?
why do you think adding another currency that can only be traded between players and then stopping gold from being traded does anything? what purpose does this serve and what problem does this solve? it literally does nothing other than add another currency.
except it doesnt. oh look another currency that is supposedly rare and can be traded between players and prevent gold from being traded. we already know gold can be duped due to trade bugs/dupes. so this new currency will be also. then you want to make it very rare so it just makes it more likely ppl rmt it. especially because you say lets add a vendor with super awesome things to buy with it. you are creating more problems than solving anything. use your head
I didnāt say anything about making it rare. I said make it hard to bot. I do agree it does not solve duping nor does anything other than extensive testing and quick reaction when bugs are found.
What it is intended to do is make it more difficult to bot farm. This exact approach has been used in other games and while it was not a magic bullet for all economy problems it did tamp down rampant bot driven currency inflation.
āharder to getā literally means rare. but i digress. you are just adding a new currency and blocking the trade of gold for no purpose. due to the existence of duping it doesnt solve any problem. adding a new currency for the sake of hey its something new is basically all this is doing.
bot farming has never been a serious issue in d4. there is no point in bot farming when duping is much more efficient. you can tell this because literally day one of a new season the rmt sites have trillions of gold and boss mats for sale. they arent botting all that
if that is correct then yeah this is not much help. A lot of players seem to think botting is an issue. Maybe they are wrong. I guess only people with access to Blizzardās data can know that for sure.
Anyone can get gold fairly quickly by legitimate means. All this does is gatekeep trading to those that are very lucky or have time to grind nonstop - the latter of which is less likely to need to trade anyway, or more than likely able to trade items for items.
the real problem is the duping. thats why rmt sites have trillions day 1 of new season. no amount of bots is farming that in less than 24 hrs. if they could ever get the duping issues solved then botting could become a problem because that is what the dupers would have to fall back on to make their money.
I have edited the title to make it clearer that the idea is NOT to make it rare or hard for human players to get but to make it hard for bots to get. As LavaWisp has pointed out duping is the real (or at least a much more substantial) issue, it may all be irrelevant, but the idea here was never to make it hard for human players to get the trade currency.
Bots and/or afk farmers can amass way more than someone playing in a more normal way which causes inflation. Pets made this even easier for the AFK farmers you will find promoted on YouTube and standing around just about any Blood Maiden in helltides.
because Horde is instanced I have no way to see if bots are able to farm it. I can very clearly see afks/bots standing around bloodmaidens soaking up gold and drops.
There has been only one real solution to the problem of bots and duplicators. It was a huge problem for D3 and a successful solution was created and implemented. No trading except between party members for a limited time. All gear is otherwise account bound. Make gold and gear relatively plentiful so there is no real need to trade or spend money to play at higher levels.
