Suggestion to discourage exploits/farming and improve the economy.

I guess many would automatically hate this suggestion at first sight, I would too

So, I choose first to present the apparent issues I believe my idea could solve to a lesser or greater degree.
(Disclaimer: The following list is mostly compiled subjectively by reading the forums. It contains the things I have the impression that people find a problem, which my suggestion might help improve.)

- First and most important, it would be a strong deterrent against farming/exploiting the system.
- Almost as important, it would be a strong deterrent against using the game for real-life economic-crime.
- It could in some cases be a deterrent against scamming.
- It would in some cases be a deterrent against alts.
- It would improve demand and value of skills.
- It help against the problem of "players buying deeds, going inactive and withdrawing the deed-income."
- It helps against resellers/auction-bots milking the economy.
- It would help against the problem of "the four day old noob who hits a tower, withdraws all/almost-all, and maybe even quits" also the problem of "bigger hof's got big chance of being withdrawn and leaving game-economy"
- The above combined would/could probably result in better overall loot, and/or better economy for MA.

So far, all good, I presume. Well here comes the "bad" part, 'coz it needs to be really bad to solve that many problems, don't it? Well here we go:

There should be a Skill-Tax on withdrawals. And a minimum-total-skill-requirement for withdrawals, where the minimum-total is calculated after the Skill-Tax is deducted.

I suggest the minimum-total-skill-requirement for withdrawals be somewhere between 2k-7k skills, enough to make sure one can not withdraw without having actively played a few weeks or months.
As for the Skill-Tax itself I would suggest it be a base fee of 500-3k skills for the first 1k ped.
And then a Skill-Tax based of the total amount of the withdrawal on top of that; which could be percentages, increments or logarithmic increments.

The Skill-Tax should be deducted proportionally all skills except Attributes, Mentor, Reputation and Promoter rating-skills.

How this would work (with arbitrary numbers):

If minimum-total-skill-requirement for withdrawals is 3k, base fee for withdrawals is 2k and 1k Skill-Tax incremented by amount of digits in total of current withdrawal.

Player A has total 6k skills

Skill A: 100pts
Skill B: 1000pts
Skill C: 1000pts
Skill D: 200pts
Skill C: 400pts
Skill E: 100pts
Skill F: 200pts
Skill G: 2000pts
Skill H: 1000pts

Player A wants to withdraw 1000ped:
System checks if Skill-Tax 3k deducted from total-skill 6k is bigger than or equal to 3k, if yes player can withdraw(given he has the peds)

As player A has exactly 6k skills the check passes, withdraw is initiated and Skill-Tax gets deducted. The skills of player A after the withdrawal is:

Skill A: 50pts
Skill B: 500pts
Skill C: 500pts
Skill D: 100pts
Skill C: 200pts
Skill E: 50pts
Skill F: 100pts
Skill G: 1000pts
Skill H: 500pts


Player B has total 50k skills

Skill A: 1000pts
Skill B: 10000pts
Skill C: 10000pts
Skill D: 2000pts
Skill C: 4000pts
Skill E: 1000pts
Skill F: 2000pts
Skill G: 10000pts
Skill H: 10000pts

Player B wants to withdraw 100000ped:
System checks if Skill-Tax 5k deducted from total-skill 50k is bigger than or equal to 3k, if yes player can withdraw(given he has the peds).

As player B has 50k skills the check passes, withdraw is initiated and Skill-Tax gets deducted. The skills of player B after the withdrawal is:

Skill A: 900pts
Skill B: 9000pts
Skill C: 9000pts
Skill D: 1800pts
Skill C: 3600pts
Skill E: 900pts
Skill F: 1800pts
Skill G: 9000pts
Skill H: 9000pts

Player C which has 2300 total skills and want to withdraw 5000 ped would need 3700 more skills.

Player D which has 50 total skills and want to withdraw 15000 ped would need 6950 more skills, and since he is planning on withdrawing another 15000 ped in 3 weeks he will need another 4k skill by then.


Again, the numbers used in this example are arbitrary, I do not claim to know what would be an appropriate level of taxation for this to be effective, the example is only to show the practical effect.

-Hagbard Celine

I never agree with punishing everyone when it is the minority who exploit or are the criminals.

Especially hitting me for more when i withdraw, i already lose skills when i chip them and i have to pay to withdraw and i get the privilege of waiting 50 days or more to get my own money once i do make a withdrawal.

You want to encourage people not drive them away, MA already do a pretty good job of the latter.

So many noes.
Just one objection is that it hurts high skilled players more than low skilled as a skill pt is a lot harder to come by if you have 5k in a skill instead of 1k.

Butch C v.2 said:

I never agree with punishing everyone when it is the minority who exploit or are the criminals.

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Fair point. But I would claim it would practically punish only a small minority of players: the ones in a position to withdraw peds. And part of the idea was keeping more peds ingame to generally improve economy. Also the improve demand and value of skills must be considered.

KijkkiJikki said:

So many noes.
Just one objection is that it hurts high skilled players more than low skilled as a skill pt is a lot harder to come by if you have 5k in a skill instead of 1k.

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Also a fair point, whose simple solution would be to reduce the Skill-Tax proportionally as your skills go up to make it fair.

People would just get around all these rules by paying someone who is skilled to withdraw for them. Besides... how do you know that the scammers and crooks aren't highly skilled?

It's good to think of ways to make EU a better place, but putting more hurdles in the way of withdrawing is wrong wrong wrong. If it's truly a RCE it needs a way to withdraw easily, and the current withdrawal system isn't adequate IMO. Three month pending withdrawals, international wire transfer only. On the contrary, lower the barrier to withdrawals and you'll get people a lot more willing to put money into the game.

KijkkiJikki said:

So many noes.
Just one objection is that it hurts high skilled players more than low skilled as a skill pt is a lot harder to come by if you have 5k in a skill instead of 1k.

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Well, that can easily be addressed by looking at skills in terms of their true value, which is tt value rather than number of skills points.

That said, I do not agree with the OP.

Neil Stockton said:

People would just get around all these rules by paying someone who is skilled to withdraw for them. Besides... how do you know that the scammers and crooks aren't highly skilled?

It's good to think of ways to make EU a better place, but putting more hurdles in the way of withdrawing is wrong wrong wrong. If it's truly a RCE it needs a way to withdraw easily, and the current withdrawal system isn't adequate IMO. Three month pending withdrawals, international wire transfer only. On the contrary, lower the barrier to withdrawals and you'll get people a lot more willing to put money into the game.

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This ^ ^ ...

Effort (to think up changes) is good!
But this would only hurt the economy, and it would hurt pretty bad...

hmmm... have you actually tried to withdrawal lately? It's actually not the easiest or fastest thing to do in the world as it is. ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to make an already difficult, and slow process like this, which should be easy and fast, even harder... unless maybe you secretly want the game to die a lot more instantly than it's already doing on it's own slowly over time?

You do realize that this only benefits MA and the user is left as a looser 100%?

Honestly speaking, the premise of the game, I believe, is that we can deposit whatever we want to, play however we want to and at the end of the day, withdraw whatever that's left over once we decide to move on.

- Make it any harder to withdraw and there's less reason to deposit.
- When there's less reason to deposit, there's less reason to play.
- Less reason to play, then why play at all? There's tons of other cooler, better games out there for us to enjoy, right?

The fundamental problem with this game right now is something more simpler, more primal.

That's right...no need to doubt about it.

Its how do we balance the needs of the company, as a business to make money/profit, versus the needs of the gamers to have a worthwhile entertainment/enjoyment of a meaningful game without having to bleed profusely.

Hagbard Celine said:

-Hagbard Celine

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Similar thig is already in game and is so bad that rapresent proff that EU is not RCE.

Think about medium player with 350k+ skills who want to chip out and quit.

How many ESI and on what MU?
How long he will need to get that amount of ESI and how many peds he need for that?
How about players with more total skills ?
How many years they will need to find enought ESI, chip out and find buyers?

We cud consider that player already paid his tax by skilling up as owner of skill walues that cant be monetised so easy and have unknown future MU value and unknown future looses in form of 10% chip out skill loss, skill MU, ESI MU and wery long time (years) to sell all that + 3 month withrawal.

Your idea have bad base (skills) and it create also big difference between diferent skilled players.

I + repped you because I was thinking of a way to acheive the same thing (FAILED) and I like the effort and direction you are going in. There will be flaws and ways to exploit any system though I think.

I think what you want is really for money to go in and stay in, which I like but would that decrease the attraction?

Kitch said:

I + repped you because I was thinking of a way to acheive the same thing (FAILED) and I like the effort and direction you are going in. There will be flaws and ways to exploit any system though I think.

I think what you want is really for money to go in and stay in, which I like but would that decrease the attraction?

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Basicly a system wich only takes in and not gives out is a standard subscription fee MMO

No thanks.

What makes this game so unique, is that there are real money, wich if you basicly make all depo final ( more or less ) would make the money not real anymore, and the game would loose the ONLY edge it has to keep it alive.

What would be a better idea, in terms of finding ppl who exploit, would be to let some players become "entropia police" and do the research work for MA , and present candidates for closer investigation.

How such a system would work, and how lines would be drawn i dont know. But you could see them as ingame "moderators" and they would do more free work for MA than they could ever afford to do themselves. Many ppl would put in a tremendous amount of work for free just to get the status of a police uniform ingame.

ermik said:

Basicly a system wich only takes in and not gives out is a standard subscription fee MMO

No thanks.

What makes this game so unique, is that there are real money, wich if you basicly make all depo final ( more or less ) would make the money not real anymore, and the game would loose the ONLY edge it has to keep it alive.

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Yeah you are ofcourse right, I was maybe thinking at that moment that a different model might be better than what we have now... Never mind...

As simple as heavily regulating alts. Goodbye to self-fapping, event cheating, markup manipulation, and a long etc.

Punish alts as hard as you can and this game's health will improve a lot, then you can start fixing the other stuff.

imho

mastermesh said:

hmmm... have you actually tried to withdrawal lately? It's actually not the easiest or fastest thing to do in the world as it is. ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to make an already difficult, and slow process like this, which should be easy and fast, even harder... unless maybe you secretly want the game to die a lot more instantly than it's already doing on it's own slowly over time?

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This is just speculation. But suppose the claims voiced sometimes in the forum that "the apparent prolongation of withdrawal time reported the last years are due to cash flow issues" are correct. My idea is designed to reduce the total amount of withdrawals being made, and would in that case help in so respect.

Neil Stockton said:

People would just get around all these rules by paying someone who is skilled to withdraw for them.

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If you refer to regular players, yes they might. Scammers, exploiters and farmers, not so easily. They would first need to find a high-skilled player willing to risk getting banned if MA investigates.

Neil Stockton said:

Besides... how do you know that the scammers and crooks aren't highly skilled?

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I do not know that. But I assume the majority of accounts used for farming, exploiting and scamming with the sole intention of withdrawing are not very high-skilled. Where it would help for sure is things like, organized sweatshop farming of free noob-mission-rewards for withdrawal, as the more peds they manage to generate, the more skills they would need to be able to withdraw.
Take for-example the the long standing issue we had with people making multiple accounts sweating 24/7 at server border. This system would have reduced those peoples ability to withdraw, or forced them to implicate their real avatar if one exist.

Hagbard Celine said:

This is just speculation. But suppose the claims voiced sometimes in the forum that "the apparent prolongation of withdrawal time reported the last years are due to cash flow issues" are correct. My idea is designed to reduce the total amount of withdrawals being made, and would in that case help in so respect.



If you refer to regular players, yes they might. Scammers, exploiters and farmers, not so easily. They would first need to find a high-skilled player willing to risk getting banned if MA investigates.



I do not know that. But I assume the majority of accounts used for farming, exploiting and scamming with the sole intention of withdrawing are not very high-skilled. Where it would help for sure is things like, organized sweatshop farming of free noob-mission-rewards for withdrawal, as the more peds they manage to generate, the more skills they would need to be able to withdraw.
Take for-example the the long standing issue we had with people making multiple accounts sweating 24/7 at server border. This system would have reduced those peoples ability to withdraw, or forced them to implicate their real avatar if one exist.

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Whats hurting the game for real isnt a few sweat-bots, its medium to high skilled players, using high cost gear, in a way its not designed to, to gain an unfair advantage.

Low skilled players cant drop lvl 13 amps like it was "raddim" holiday, just to give an example.

There is always alos the difference between beeing smart, and beeing too smart, its not a crime to be smart, but it may be if you get too creative.

Entropia Police, would be a state an avatar could gain, if approved by MA ( alot of rules has to be set, punishing the avatar if broken ) to get higher privilidges ingame, for example seeing who places an order in au, who buy an item someone else sold, etc.

If you have been in EU for a long time, can show MA you have the ingame experience in a field of expertise, that could make you suitable to find and determine wich avatars would be good to closer investigate by MA. It could work.

If approved as a Entropia Police, you would gain access to a Police HUD, with functions normal avatars cant reach, giving you much more detailed information about things goin on, ofcourse only information that in the wrong hands wouldnt be such a big deal. But information that we today dont have, that could give us a clue on who to look closer at.

For example a hunting police officer, could see if two avatars standing together hunting share the same IP ( not seeing the actual IP, but in some other way get info that the avatars origin from same IP. ) its not an offence, but could be a lead in a chain of events leading to an investigation ( much how real police work functions )

A trade police officer could see a list of auctioned items that were sold, and see red flags on items bought and sold by avatars from same IP, or another flag showing that the item was traded between the buyer and seller prior to it beeing traded again between them via auction.

etc etc, only the mind of an investigator could set the boundaries for the various rulesets that could be created to determine if an avatar should enter suspicious mode, for closer review.

All this handled , by a tight group of Police officers, to help MA enforce hard upon cheating, without them having to put much effort into it, and thus making it happen. ( free is always attractive )

cheers

ermik

Hagbard Celine said:

This is just speculation. But suppose the claims voiced sometimes in the forum that "the apparent prolongation of withdrawal time reported the last years are due to cash flow issues" are correct. My idea is designed to reduce the total amount of withdrawals being made, and would in that case help in so respect.

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Oh my god. This attitude we see in real world as well especially from governments just sickens me. Yes, making something as important as deposit/withdraw system worse is going to improve overall gameplay. Right... Yes, installing an additional tax is going to improve the gameplay and everyone will be rushing to deposit...

how about improving the actual gameplay? Oh that must be just an irrelevant side thing.

Brilliant way of undermining the whole RCE concept, where you can sell skills and get the PED out of the game. It would make it impossible to chip out and leave the game, so people will be less motivated to build skills, the ESI market will collapse and you destroy the whole unique feature of the game.

Oh, and like someone said, you are punishing the good for the abuse of the few rotten apples.

No. Bad idea.

A world were some crime exists vs a world were everyone preventively wear handcuffs?
I think I can live with some crime.

Can anyone show me some maths that realistically demonstrates how much cash low lvl alts can generate via exploits and then withdraw? Because I have a hard time believing that the amounts are significant compared to the overall volume of peds in the economy or compared to some of actions of mid to high level players.

In any case, I would rather see ideas to encourage increased depositing rather than reduced withdrawals as that is more likely to contribute to the longevity of EU.

KijkkiJikki said:

Can anyone show me some maths that realistically demonstrates how much cash low lvl alts can generate via exploits and then withdraw? Because I have a hard time believing that the amounts are significant compared to the overall volume of peds in the economy or compared to some of actions of mid to high level players.

In any case, I would rather see ideas to encourage increased depositing rather than reduced withdrawals as that is more likely to contribute to the longevity of EU.

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Sweat and fruit mafias are controlling everything, MA is just a puppet.

KijkkiJikki said:

Can anyone show me some maths that realistically demonstrates how much cash low lvl alts can generate via exploits and then withdraw? Because I have a hard time believing that the amounts are significant compared to the overall volume of peds in the economy or compared to some of actions of mid to high level players.

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Let me translate this question. Your asking how much money can auction bot alt generate per month? Well, business been slow lately, suppose barely enough to pay the rent.

And what the hell, let em. Those resellers provide a stabilizing buffer for the market, someone who needs money fast can get it fast. And it's most likely someone's alt and he has one set up on every planet, well ok, it's indeed not so easy to take action if the owner swears those are not him but his brother, granny, cat and dog. If it's so hard, well, let it be.

But then i want something else instead. I wanna know who i'm trading with. I wanna know if it's possible that those 2 guys who sell me could actually be the same guy? So, please, group avatars in Player Register by source IP (in case there's a match). I mean, i don't ask for any action or anything, just show me the facts and let me make up my own mind.
I wouldn't be able to see the actual IP address, so it's not like it reveals any confidential info.

Hagbard Celine said:

This is just speculation. But suppose the claims voiced sometimes in the forum that "the apparent prolongation of withdrawal time reported the last years are due to cash flow issues" are correct. My idea is designed to reduce the total amount of withdrawals being made, and would in that case help in so respect.

Click to expand...

Casinos in the Las Vegas in the USA take home billions of dollars every year in revenue. Billions! And how long does it take to withdraw? Well, you see, you go up to the desk, hand the cashier person your chips, and they give you cash. In other words, it's instantaneous. So how, you ask, can they make so much money when it's so easy to withdraw? Shouldn't they be making it harder? The reason is the same reason why Entropia isn't more lucrative, and that is number of participants. That is far and away the most important issue and it is what MA should be focusing on - not making withdrawals more difficult.

By the way, if you had to wait 50-60 business days to get your money back at those casinos, I'd be willing to bet (no pun intended) that that billions of dollars figure would be quite different (read: less).

Lol if that idea comes true I would never deposit again for shure

worst idea I have seen for a long time

Fifth said:

But then i want something else instead. I wanna know who i'm trading with. I wanna know if it's possible that those 2 guys who sell me could actually be the same guy? So, please, group avatars in Player Register by source IP (in case there's a match). I mean, i don't ask for any action or anything, just show me the facts and let me make up my own mind.
I wouldn't be able to see the actual IP address, so it's not like it reveals any confidential info.

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This is an awesome idea! Of course, it won't always be useful since some folks would just log in with laptop at work or at a wifi hotspot, but still would be a step in right direction.

mastermesh said:

This is an awesome idea! Of course, it won't always be useful since some folks would just log in with laptop at work or at a wifi hotspot, but still would be a step in right direction.

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Same issue if could use mac address or some client ID.

How about.. du dum... If when you register an avatar you MUST register a bank card for that avatar or ava will remain inactive...? And naturally only ava per card, similar names on cards would be flagged to MA..

Sorry, have to say no to the OP idea, that's just adding insult to injury.

And a big F no to player police.