Gifting Badge Discussion [Merged Threads]

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  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    When I say the value was 0, I'm highlighting the fact that they were charged nothing extra for it. The Packs are the same price with or without the Badge. Now, obviously the Badge is not worthless. We wouldn't be discussing it if it were. However, the argument that people paid that much for the Badge is not accurate.
    As for banning the ones responsible, that would go without saying, but they wouldn't really be operating out of their own Accounts, and therein lies the problem with just banning them. They'd just move on to the next Alt. As for their Main, I would like to think if they could identify it, they would be banned. Obviously, they won't talk about actions, but I'm pretty sure that much would go without saying. Anyone responsible for this should get the hard boot. I don't usually say things like that, but yeah. If it were my choice, that's grounds for Account termination.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    Keyword, identify. It might seem unfair, but that's the sneaky part about it. They can't go on screenshots and word-of-mouth. They have to have quantifiable proof within the data of the game to associate the people responsible with the actions. I highly doubt they were that careless, but I sure do hope they were. Not a fan whatsoever.
  • Sieger7999Sieger7999 Posts: 48
    Yes but at the same time you can’t argue at certain times people buy unit packs for the bonuses rather then the unit packs themselves, the units actually become the bonus, I can definitely say that has been my thought process a few times (to be honest I can’t remember my thought process when getting the gifting badge).

    Now in regards to the bans, maybe you can’t ban the people behind the fraud but you can ban the people that accepted the fraud, there should be nothing stopping Kabam working with apple and Google to understand which accounts had the fraudulent money and who they gifted to

  • Sieger7999Sieger7999 Posts: 48

    Keyword, identify. It might seem unfair, but that's the sneaky part about it. They can't go on screenshots and word-of-mouth. They have to have quantifiable proof within the data of the game to associate the people responsible with the actions. I highly doubt they were that careless, but I sure do hope they were. Not a fan whatsoever.

    Agreed and that is why I think they need to go after people that benefited from it, cause I can GUARANTEE that the people running the fraud gifted to their main account at some stage

  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    I don't really follow that line of thinking. People may have been more excited to get the Badge, but the Units were the Offer. There's a reason it was no extra charge. Just my perspective I guess.

    In terms of the bans, all you can prove is people received Gifts. Arrangements were made outside the game for real money, and in return people received Gifts from Fraudsters. It's a very sneaky operation. It's really unclear. I'm more concerned with the perpetrators than victims. I find it much more plausible that some people just wanted Gifts. Although I wouldn't argue if they did get punished. That's the thing about it, how do you determine who was a victim and who knew these people were stealing? I doubt they said they were selling Gifts as a result of Fraud.
  • Sieger7999Sieger7999 Posts: 48
    edited March 2019
    Have you never bought unit packs for the bonuses over the packs themselves? I certainly have.

    Edit: if you buy something well below market value, you lose the excuse that you weren’t aware that something wasn’t dodgy. This is in regards to saying people may not be aware it was fraud
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    I buy for the Units. The Bonuses are nice, but I bought for the Units either way.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    Well, I used to. I Grind for them now. That can get costly, quickly.
  • Sieger7999Sieger7999 Posts: 48

    I buy for the Units. The Bonuses are nice, but I bought for the Units either way.

    I guess that is where the difference of opinion lies, I can definitely say I have bought unit packs for the bonuses and seen the units themselves as the bonus. Others are saying they have never done this. I can definitely see how people bought the unit pack for the gifting badge and the the units were a bonus, this was not all people’s thought process but it would have been some
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★

    Have you never bought unit packs for the bonuses over the packs themselves? I certainly have.

    Edit: if you buy something well below market value, you lose the excuse that you weren’t aware that something wasn’t dodgy. This is in regards to saying people may not be aware it was fraud

    The Fraud came from the method they were making purchases. The Black Market is a whole other ball of wax in which people were selling Services that were not legit. In my opinion, illegal. That debate was a couple pages ago. LOL. Even still, they were selling Items under Kabam's nose for real money.
    I'm not saying the buyers shouldn't be punished, and I'm not saying they should. All I'm saying is it's entirely possible people saw the Ad and just wanted discount swag. It's entirely possible. Look at how many people get had by Ads on Facebook or other sources for Units and the like. It's not unheard of that some were just victims.
  • Sieger7999Sieger7999 Posts: 48


    I'm not saying the buyers shouldn't be punished, and I'm not saying they should. All I'm saying is it's entirely possible people saw the Ad and just wanted discount swag. It's entirely possible.

    It is and what I am saying is that I am ok with them getting permanently banned even if they didn’t realise, they still accepted stolen goods and ruined it for everyone else.
  • Jones979Jones979 Posts: 84
    kabam, you did the right thing topping up the units to 850 for eliminating the gifting badge. But why is it that you only ever do the right thing AFTER an outcry from the player base? Why don’t you have someone on staff that makes the right decision to begin with? This is a pattern for this company, and it sucks.
  • SiliyoSiliyo Posts: 1,452 ★★★★★
    edited March 2019
    Lormif said:

    [...] A better way would be to use a new resource that acts exactly like units, but can only be earned in game and only allow that to be used for gifting. It solves all the problems.

    I agree. We should have more ways to farm items in the game that you cannot simply "buy" with cash. I think farming and earning things in a reasonable fashion is what helps an MMORPG game feel like an MMORPG.
  • GegeGege Posts: 26
    Return the gifts or a large percentage of players will stop.
    There is no way to continue in the game if there is more help from comrades, be they alliance, or not.

    Items sent as gifts help a lot in evolution.
    Buying is part and also helps, but the gifts were something fundamental in the game.

    When you pass this week, there will be many players here complaining about this and / or giving up the game.

    Do you have any idea how much the gifts helped most of the players?

    Thanks for your attention.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 19,242 Guardian
    Siliyo said:

    Lormif said:

    [...] A better way would be to use a new resource that acts exactly like units, but can only be earned in game and only allow that to be used for gifting. It solves all the problems.

    I agree. We should have more ways to farm items in the game that you cannot simply "buy" with cash. I think farming and earning things in a reasonable fashion is what helps an MMORPG game feel like an MMORPG.
    In my opinion, the game already does a very good job of making sure that players can farm and grind things in the game without having to pay cash. But as to the larger point, creating a new currency that cannot be purchased with cash and only allowing that currency to be used to buy gifts would not completely address this problem, because "this problem" is not a singular problem. Gifting allows for various kinds of fraud or abuse, not just one. If people are watching Youtube videos or reading Reddit articles and they think they know what "problem" this attempts to solve, you're just reading one guy's guess. In fact there's at least two different categorical ways for gifting to be used to abuse the system.

    In the first way, it is used to launder money defrauded from other people via mechanisms like credit card fraud, cell phone SIM cloning, or other methods. You get this stolen money, use it to buy units, then use the units to gift people stuff and charge them *out of game* for that stuff. This in effect is money laundering. The money you steal might eventually be detected and someone might come to get it back. But the money you get from other players buying your "cheap units" isn't fraudulent, and you're more likely to be able to keep it. Inventing a "gifting currency" could reduce the amount of this kind of abuse if gifting currency can't be purchased, but you'd have to be very careful not to have any loopholes in the system.

    In the second way, you create accounts that farm units with bots. You can then "sell" people those units earned through automation for cash. If the account is eventually detected by Kabam, you just make another one (remember, this account doesn't have to have any direct connection to you: it could be using different invented email addresses, different devices, it could even be using emulators on PCs because you don't need the account to evade detection forever; it could cost virtually nothing to make another one). Really, you probably have dozens or even hundreds just parked about, botting in the background earning currency slowly, until you need them. Inventing a special gifting currency wouldn't address this kind of abuse. People would just rewrite the bots to specifically farm the gifting currency.

    When I used to play MMOs a lot more, I knew all these tricks, because I used to use all these tricks. I never sold anything for cash: I drew the line there, but I used to give away an incalculable amount of stuff, just to see if I could do it. In fact, there's lots of tactics well-known in the MMO world that I haven't seen attempted yet in MCOC. For the record, I haven't attempted any of these things in MCOC: I'm retired.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    Oh, I agree 100%. Those minds will find any crack to exploit. My suggestion on Resources earned through game play was just an idea thrown out to minimize risk and create a more isolated, easily-monitored way of reinstating it. However, there is an inherent problem with that. Unless it's extremely limiting, it won't abolish all risk. Scamming minds will find a way. It's quite sad, really.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 19,242 Guardian

    Oh, I agree 100%. Those minds will find any crack to exploit. My suggestion on Resources earned through game play was just an idea thrown out to minimize risk and create a more isolated, easily-monitored way of reinstating it. However, there is an inherent problem with that. Unless it's extremely limiting, it won't abolish all risk. Scamming minds will find a way. It's quite sad, really.

    In the MMO world, this problem has been around for a very long time and the solutions to it have evolved as well; the lesson to learn is there is no trivial way of addressing this issue, and I think Kabam should look to MMOs to at least see how it is done, if they aren't already.

    In games that have to deal with this, there's usually a combination of overlapping ways to address the problem. You put account prerequisites on trading and gifting, like the account has to be at least X days old, to prevent quick drive-by gifting abuses and to give you time to find those that are modding or botting. You limit the value of gifts until even higher prerequisites are achieved. You limit the target of trades and gifts so it is easy for long-time friends to do it but much harder for two anonymous random strangers to do it.

    There's also mechanics like binding that are used to limit this kind of thing (where some items are and some are not tradeable not based on what they are, but rather how they are acquired). So if you earn the Sword of Overpowered Evisceration, you can use it but you can't give it to an alt account or your friend or even sell it to another player and then go get another one. This allows you to allow players to farm without being able to use farming to sell or transfer too much resources (in MMOs, this is often referred to as "twinking").

    There's enough here to teach a month-long course in game design, and it is best to build on the effort of others rather than try to reinvent the wheel. If you try to do this all by yourself from scratch, you'll be decimated by the abusers who have a twenty year head start on you.

    But the problem is also manageable, and I hope Kabam reaches that point and can return gifting capability to players. The ability to trade and gift is part of what makes massively multiplayer games interesting, and is a valuable component of social interaction. It just has to be protected from the abusers of the privilege.
  • GegeGege Posts: 26
    Money laundering does not require you to have just the gift mechanism.

    There are thousands of other ways to cheat and carry out money laundering.

    This greatly harms players from third-world countries and favors extreme first-world players.

    There will be a very large imbalance in the game if the gift mechanism does not return.

    Many players will abandon the game upon seeing this imbalance. It will be restricted for some players with a purchasing power for a moment, but these will also gradually disappear, precisely because of lack of competitiveness;

    That will be a fact.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 19,242 Guardian
    Gege said:

    Money laundering does not require you to have just the gift mechanism.

    Amazingly, the crime doesn't even require online video games. But that's not a relevant issue.
    Gege said:

    Many players will abandon the game upon seeing this imbalance. It will be restricted for some players with a purchasing power for a moment, but these will also gradually disappear, precisely because of lack of competitiveness;

    That will be a fact.

    That's true. "Many" players, for some definition of "many" will leave the game because gifting was suspended. Many players left after 12.0. Many players left after Alliance War Seasons was introduced into the game, many players left after AQ Map 6 was introduced, after 6* champions were added, after uncollected difficulty was added, after Variant was added, after the Maze made an appearance, after MODOK was added to the game, after basically every change to the game. Many left yesterday, because it was Wednesday.
    Gege said:

    This greatly harms players from third-world countries and favors extreme first-world players.

    This, on the other hand, seems completely made up.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    edited March 2019
    Gege said:

    Money laundering does not require you to have just the gift mechanism.

    There are thousands of other ways to cheat and carry out money laundering.

    This greatly harms players from third-world countries and favors extreme first-world players.

    There will be a very large imbalance in the game if the gift mechanism does not return.

    Many players will abandon the game upon seeing this imbalance. It will be restricted for some players with a purchasing power for a moment, but these will also gradually disappear, precisely because of lack of competitiveness;

    That will be a fact.

    That logic is completely faulty. "Crime is going to happen anyway, might as well let it happen.".
    Some may leave the game because Gifting is disabled. No doubt. If not that, the next thing. Some of them may even leave the game because their way of making money illegally was ended. That would be a good thing. However, it is not going to destroy the game. That's apparently been done consistently for years, so we seem to be discussing a ghost.
    No idea what you quailfy as a Third-World Country, but the ones I understand aren't worried about MCOC. They're concerned with much larger problems.
  • LongtimegamerLongtimegamer Posts: 179 ★★★
    DNA3000 said:


    That's true. "Many" players, for some definition of "many" will leave the game because gifting was suspended. Many players left after 12.0. Many players left after Alliance War Seasons was introduced into the game, many players left after AQ Map 6 was introduced, after 6* champions were added, after uncollected difficulty was added, after Variant was added, after the Maze made an appearance, after MODOK was added to the game, after basically every change to the game. Many left yesterday, because it was Wednesday.

    I understand that players will come and go for all sorts of trivial reasons, but the removal of gifting is a giant concern for many players. End games players with tons of content on their plate have relied on gifted potions to be able to run content and without this, many are wondering if they should even continue playing.

    6x5
    map 7
    7x5
    variant
    war where a single mistake in one fight could cost 1000 units to fix

    I have 200k arena fights and I spend all day grinding and it's not easy. "Just grind" isn't a solution. The game is and endless barrage AQ, AW, boosting, arena for units, t1a/t4b, and monthly and side quests.

    I know super skilled guys in master who spend 8k units a month on advanced war boosts and potions for war and they're hanging it up for gold alliances. And that's just AW let alone everything else and what it takes to maintain their position. Something has to give now.
  • GegeGege Posts: 26
    I understand and respect everyone's point of view.

    I really hope that Kabam will review the gift mechanism.
    I work for more than 20 years with marketing and market intelligence and, after analysis, faithfully believe what I said in my post above.

    It's wait and see what happens.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    To be clear, I'm not agaisnt bringing it back. I just can't get behind bringing it back in the same capacity and allowing Fraud to take place again.
  • GegeGege Posts: 26
    Before I forget ...

    @DNA3000 , are you moderator here in the forum? It's just that this job is for a Kabam. But maybe it was just the wrong impression of me, since I had the same impression on other opportunities to read the forum.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 19,242 Guardian

    DNA3000 said:


    That's true. "Many" players, for some definition of "many" will leave the game because gifting was suspended. Many players left after 12.0. Many players left after Alliance War Seasons was introduced into the game, many players left after AQ Map 6 was introduced, after 6* champions were added, after uncollected difficulty was added, after Variant was added, after the Maze made an appearance, after MODOK was added to the game, after basically every change to the game. Many left yesterday, because it was Wednesday.

    I understand that players will come and go for all sorts of trivial reasons, but the removal of gifting is a giant concern for many players. End games players with tons of content on their plate have relied on gifted potions to be able to run content and without this, many are wondering if they should even continue playing.
    I've had this particular conversation with multiple players. All I can say is this: the vast, overwhelming majority of players play within their means of both time and money. They accept that they can only do what they can do given their own free time and the limits of their own cash that they are willing to spend. Absolutely EVERYONE wishes they could do more. If you were relying on gifting, whether that was legitimate gifting from generous friends or illegitimate gifting from botnets or fraud accounts, well now you can't, and you have to make the same decision everyone else has to make: adjust your expectations to be more realistic, or quit.

    I know super skilled guys in master who spend 8k units a month on advanced war boosts and potions for war and they're hanging it up for gold alliances. And that's just AW let alone everything else and what it takes to maintain their position. Something has to give now.

    Maybe nothing has to give, because there's nothing wrong with this. There's always going to be people at the top, no matter how much money is spent. It is ultimately we players that decide how expensive it is to be "competitive" at the end game. Because it isn't the prices of the potions that cost players money, it is their use of the potions that costs players money. And there's only two groups of people pushing potion use: the players who choose to use them, and indirectly their competition who also uses them.

    The less people spend on the competitive aspects of the end game, the less expensive the end game will be. That's a choice that is directly in the players' hands. People are always complaining about how Kabam is constantly "forcing" players to spend on "cash grabs." If people just decide to stop spending, the competitive end game will become cheaper. That's true no matter what Kabam does to it.

    People are still going to spend. The game makes millions of dollars a week. The game's future is not in jeopardy if a small percentage of players decide to stop spending because the gifting feature is disabled. It just isn't. But if the true cost of these things is something that some players used to be able to ignore, and now they can't, and that causes them to spend less on those things, that might be a healthy thing to happen. Because the game doesn't get cheaper when Kabam lowers prices. It becomes cheaper when players decide to spend less. The players who are deciding to spend less aren't just spending less: they are creating an opportunity for their competition to also spend less. And as long as the game can still generate enough revenue to be profitable and function, I have no problem with that. And I'm quite certain it can.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 19,242 Guardian
    Gege said:

    Before I forget ...

    @DNA3000 , are you moderator here in the forum? It's just that this job is for a Kabam. But maybe it was just the wrong impression of me, since I had the same impression on other opportunities to read the forum.

    It is against the forum rules to pretend to be a moderator. If you believe I took any action on the forums that should be reserved for a moderator, I'd like to know what that was specifically. However, if you feel that is inappropriate, you can also report me for that potential violation to the actual moderators, if you have any way to support that claim.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,473 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    DNA3000 said:


    That's true. "Many" players, for some definition of "many" will leave the game because gifting was suspended. Many players left after 12.0. Many players left after Alliance War Seasons was introduced into the game, many players left after AQ Map 6 was introduced, after 6* champions were added, after uncollected difficulty was added, after Variant was added, after the Maze made an appearance, after MODOK was added to the game, after basically every change to the game. Many left yesterday, because it was Wednesday.

    I understand that players will come and go for all sorts of trivial reasons, but the removal of gifting is a giant concern for many players. End games players with tons of content on their plate have relied on gifted potions to be able to run content and without this, many are wondering if they should even continue playing.
    I've had this particular conversation with multiple players. All I can say is this: the vast, overwhelming majority of players play within their means of both time and money. They accept that they can only do what they can do given their own free time and the limits of their own cash that they are willing to spend. Absolutely EVERYONE wishes they could do more. If you were relying on gifting, whether that was legitimate gifting from generous friends or illegitimate gifting from botnets or fraud accounts, well now you can't, and you have to make the same decision everyone else has to make: adjust your expectations to be more realistic, or quit.

    I know super skilled guys in master who spend 8k units a month on advanced war boosts and potions for war and they're hanging it up for gold alliances. And that's just AW let alone everything else and what it takes to maintain their position. Something has to give now.

    Maybe nothing has to give, because there's nothing wrong with this. There's always going to be people at the top, no matter how much money is spent. It is ultimately we players that decide how expensive it is to be "competitive" at the end game. Because it isn't the prices of the potions that cost players money, it is their use of the potions that costs players money. And there's only two groups of people pushing potion use: the players who choose to use them, and indirectly their competition who also uses them.

    The less people spend on the competitive aspects of the end game, the less expensive the end game will be. That's a choice that is directly in the players' hands. People are always complaining about how Kabam is constantly "forcing" players to spend on "cash grabs." If people just decide to stop spending, the competitive end game will become cheaper. That's true no matter what Kabam does to it.

    People are still going to spend. The game makes millions of dollars a week. The game's future is not in jeopardy if a small percentage of players decide to stop spending because the gifting feature is disabled. It just isn't. But if the true cost of these things is something that some players used to be able to ignore, and now they can't, and that causes them to spend less on those things, that might be a healthy thing to happen. Because the game doesn't get cheaper when Kabam lowers prices. It becomes cheaper when players decide to spend less. The players who are deciding to spend less aren't just spending less: they are creating an opportunity for their competition to also spend less. And as long as the game can still generate enough revenue to be profitable and function, I have no problem with that. And I'm quite certain it can.
    If anything, people would most likely spend more because they're not buying from the Black Market. Lol.
  • GegeGege Posts: 26
    Waiting for the return of those present.
  • DevillishDevillish Posts: 8
    With this gifting badge removing, many will step out of alliance activities. What a shame
  • Cranmer00Cranmer00 Posts: 527 ★★
    I actually will make it a point to spend less in spite of this.

    Also I wonder if the players leaving and dropping tiers will cut off vs the people spending more. I think kabam is going to see a cut in revenues and then when gifting comes back it will be a little too late
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