f13.net

Seems that RMT has become a problem in RF Online and the European DDO service, which are both run by Codemasters. The RF Online GM's had a little fun before permanently banning the accounts of known Farmers.

2 GM's teleported the soon-to-be-banned characters to their location, and then chased and killed them using boosted characters of their own, and said things like "Enjoy WOW" and "you have some adena please". They recorded the whole thing, and made a video which can be downloaded from a link in their Forum Post.

Link to the post that has the video's of the "dev fun"

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1284452

"we are sorry"
"anything else for you today?"

LOL. I could do without the singing, though.

BTW, that's some pretty slow ass gameplay.

That is pretty cool. WoW should do something like that, like a cannon that fires the characters into a volcano or something.

If WoW did it.. that would take awhile. But if they did it with the "O RLY? MONIES!!11!" style chatting it'd be worth it.

Sigh, the link seems kinda broken (topic removed?).

--
the Falconeer

Will I sound preachy if I state that two wrongs don't make a right?

I was thinking the same thing.

In this case, who the fuck cares that some GM's abused a couple of doofuses before banning them.  The dipshits could have logged out anytime they wanted AND all that happened is they got fucked with in a video game, big fuckin deal.


Two wrongs don't make a right?  Call the wahmbulance.

Two wrongs do make good comedy.  Party on, Wayne.

Turning gold farmers into content.  I like it.

Yup.  Would've been funnier if they teleported afk mining bots somewhere the equivalent of Ironforge, stripped them naked, and had their macros continue over a pile of dung or somethin'.  Bot'in is the real juice and the real evil I'd go after.

The actions were the pathetic acts of petty people.  The GM's should do their job professionally.  Were I their boss, they would have been fired for their actions.  This is not the type of example I'd want anyone working for me to set. 

Wahmbulance?  Take that kind of crap to VN or the WoW forums. 

I dunno. This is a _game_ after all. Game companies have things like beer fridges and stuff, and even the developers deserve fun.

I don't see the harm and I don't see how ragging on these fuckers is a 'wrong.' But then, my moral compass has always been a little broken.

It's a business.  Regardless of the context, you'd expect people to act professionally.  You can have fun while being professional without crossing any questionable behavioral boundaries.

Make me.  :roll:

The question is, what's unprofessional about it? You certainly can't apply the same standards of professionalism to game companies. These are businesses run by people who don't want to grow up. Where do you draw the line? I simply don't see this as crossing it, wherever that line may be.

Last time I was at Disney World, there was this restaurant inside that tried to replicate "Mom and Dad's kitchen" circa 1950.  All the wait staff were "Mom" or "Dad", the tables looked like a 1950s eat in kitchen, they had era TV shows cycling, etc.  They also fussed at you for not cleaning your plate, referred to custoemers as "the kids" regarldess of age, and would do the airplane or other antics.  Somewhat degrading, but funny as hell.  Was it unprofessional?  Not really, because this was their selling point.  Even more unprofessional is a restaurant in Myrtle Beach whose wait staff insults and rags the customers (named "Dick's" or something similar, can't recall) as part of it's 'selling point'. 

The link is busted so I can't tell, but sounds like the in-game GMs were showing off some "creative" customer service, in a similar vein to the crucifixion thread.  Personally I have no issues with them bouncing a guy in this way; public humiliation can be a powerful lesson.  It kept WUA away for a good while, afterall.

I don't think that public humiliation by the people of authority does anything more than encourage similar among the playerbase.  I think it was appropriate to ban those people breaking the EULA of the game.  I just don't think the additional reaction set the proper tone.  If they were really interested in setting an example, they'd take legal action against the gold farming companies.  Not ridicule a couple of toons.

I find something _keenly_ professional about exacting public humiliation in a controlled fashion against goldfarmers.  Game managers are recognizing that their TOS basically have no teeth for establishing damages done to their IP by goldfarmers, so rather then try to establish something legally, they just start up a program of controlled abuse.

I like this program more then the usual ban-and-forget, simply because it's public.  People deserve the right to know if their friends, guildmates, or guildleaders are actually goldfarmers. 

I don't see why people "deserve" that. People may like to know, but that doesn't mean a game company should disclose it to the population at large.

Pardon me for getting political but that’s what the debate here is about, what policy is the most effective at repressing unwanted social elements.

What will stop those who break the laws of the game or the laws within the game? Banning is literally nit picking, one-by-one attempting to kill the swarm. Banning leaves many of the criminals in place. Mass banning is likely to boot legitimate users and is perceived by the populous of the game as being an overblown PR stunt or worse. What is needed is a method of atrophying the demand for the criminal's services and as well as the supply of new criminals. Humiliation is such a weapon by disparaging the character of a criminal you support the idea of "I don’t want to be a criminal".

This is both negative and positive reinforcement, as all good behavior modification should be. The positive reinforcement is a sense of pride at not being a criminal. While the negative effect of shame causes those who are near to the criminal to distance themselves from the criminal. In the end the effect of a successful humiliation is that people who want to be criminals are ostracized while those who would conceder being criminals decide by themselves not to be.

All that said I think the punishment wasn’t nearly harsh enough to be truly effective. My suggestions are that the GMs hang the characters in game with a sign around their necks that says "Dirty Gold Farmers" or "Damn PKrs" etc... Let the players practice their marksmanship on them and after a few days their names should start slowly fading from above their head until eventually their just the gold farmers hung in effigy.

Why not?  Punishment doesn't serve as deterrence unless people know its working. 

And players should have a right to know if their old social group was full of farmers, if only for the sake of keeping that player from doing business with new accounts claiming to be those players.  Part of the idea behind bans isn't just to remove accounts, but to damage the social structure of goldfarming.

As long as it's all directed at people who degrade the game for others (gold farmers, exploiters, griefers), I think that's an excellent thing.  Players should be encouraged to vilify those people (or at least their virtual representations) rather than be tempted to emulate them.

Apparently having a high level toon's account banned isn't enough of a deterrent?  Farmers will have to level up again before becoming proficient... all of this time paying a monthly fee for the right to do so.  If companies could sniff out farmers better, they could turn farmers into a nice profit for the game companies.  Farmers have to pay for accounts while they level, meaning that they have a front-end investment they hope to recoup.  If they were continually being banned just when they become useful, the gold farming companies may find that this is no longer profitable.  Then, the farmers would be forced to seek their profits elsewhere.

Create a better mousetrap and you win.  At least that's how I might look at the issue rather than letting a few GM's make a show of a few farmers likely working for substandard wages.  You win when you beat the system, not when you mock a few pawns.

Do you actually think you’re on the moral high ground with an argument like hey if we work this out right we can exploit the poorly paid gold farmers even worse then they already are?

I'd be foolish to think of morals and good business as bedfellows.  Why is it the "high ground" anyway?  What's right is always the right thing to do.  There's nothing "high" or "elitist" about that.

All I was saying above is that the reaction of the GM's was unnecessary and excessive.  Ban the people and move on.  The theatrics were in poor taste and little more than vengeance (which I am also against).

Maybe humiliation is good sometimes.

While I'm certain that they exist, I can think of very few cases where humiliation might be better than the alternative.  I also doubt seriously that the people being humiliated were at the core of the farming problem.  Am I really the only person that this is obvious to or do you all just enjoy playing Devil's advocate?

Personally, I think this is awesome, and well within the GM's rights.

That said - are we really all in agreement that gold farming damages these games?  I've always viewed gold farming as a logical response to flawed systems built by amateur devs.

I would like to see more things like Station Exchange and I'd like to see SOE open SE on all servers.

I'm with you. I'd be pissed that not only did they exact the bannings so unprofessionally, but they posted the video on the web.  That said, I was the guy on the publisher's side of things in the whole game credits thing.

I think its great. I cant see the video either, but I can imagine. I agree with Sam... anyone who participates in this kind of activity should be villified till they cry. I'd be all for a special texture that can be applied to anyone the Devs see farming, that makes their toon look like they have leprosy and only 1 leg, with the phrase "I am an asshole Farmer" written all over.

Banning is stupid. It takes these people maybe a day to level a toon up. Make them a target for the legitimate players maybe... permanent PvP enabled, with a -100% de-buff? And a nice reward of gold for anyone  who kills them.

They're threatening to ban buyers of gold apparently. That seems a far more intelligent way to get rid of the problem.

It's not humiliating to the gold farmer, they are only in it for the money.  They don't care about their character or reputation and they certainly don't care what you think about them.  And since they are sitting in some hell-hole of a room playing it 18 hours a day they probably don't even like the game .

I mean think about it, you're a gold farmer sitting with a dozen other gold farmers in some cramped muggy room in China and a GM warps you and starts attacking your character.  You're not thinking "wow this sure is embarrassing" you're thinking "hmm, they found another of my characters, guess I'll have to level up a new one, thankfully I know all the exploits".  Anyone who thinks they are crying over this is delusional.

This is nothing but a weak PR exercise, what is truly humiliating is that games still aren't designed to stop gold farmers.  The only way the humiliation angle might scare some off is if they did this to the buyers of the gold.  You know, the same people who are downloading that video and laughing at it.

Just for reference, RF Online is not a new game. It's not an old game, but nowhere near say WoW. RF Online is a Korean grindfest. The ability to farm gold was probably built in and Codemasters could use all the press they can get. Unfortunately they still use Starforce on most of their releases.

I'm not sure what I'm getting at. It's really not important. I just wanted to reiterate how much Codemasters sucks and that, for some reason, I still root for them over the gold farmers.

Here's the video (requires XviD/Divx codec): RFOnline-Farmwars.avi (http://www.pandadesigns.com/games/RFOnline-Farmwars.avi)

The only thing I can think of when watching that video is omg the pace of that game seems glacial. I think I would stab my eyes out if I had to plod around like that.


Kaid

Public humiliation of gold farmers accomplishes a few things.

1) It gets rid of gold farmers, at least for a little while.
2) It makes your gaming publich THINK you are doing something to protect the game they are playing. Whether or not your efforts are a fleck of spittle in a rainstorm, the public nevertheless THINKS you are trying, which means they give you a bit more slack.
3) It discourages people who might have thought to make easy money by gold farming, but who aren't going to open up a business around it.

If your game is item-centric, you need to start offering player-based selling of gold and items in-game, and you need to charge a transaction fee for it. We've gone far enough in the MMOG medium to realize that this shit is GOING to happen, so long as you have people willing to play the game. You might as well make some money off it, and undercut the fuckers trying to leech onto your game.

Um, having watched that, that's not cool?  Two GM's filmed it, did it in isolation, and even wrote lyrics and sang a theme?  Uhhh.  Little too much preparation?  And what was up with them not being able to outrun the people they teleported there, and the fact they seemed to fight the same two players (apple and bluesky) more than once?  Wasn't the point to gank them and then boot them?  Or just grief them into quitting?  Confusing is all.

Gold farmers are like telemarketers, they might just be doing a job but god damn its fun to fuck with them.