Mutnin
Amarr
Veto Corp
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Posted - 2009.12.27 18:22:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Mutnin on 27/12/2009 18:26:50
I agree and disagree with the suggestions here. First off I 100% agree that character sales need to be more secure. I've done two now myself and it's odd for me to say this, but I really did think it was almost too fast and too easy. This makes it very easy for these hackers to steal toons from their rightful owners.
I also agree that your reputation and persona, is wrapped up in your character. Even though I've bought a toon before, it does bug me a bit that it can be so easy to wash your hands of one character and put your self in another with no real draw backs.
A) I'll state out a few issues I see with the current proposal and arguments for the removal of Character Sales.
1) Hacking of accounts, was going on long before this current rise in attacks. I myself had an account hacked but luckily the only thing they did was change the training que and I received the account back after about a week or so. I was lucky and had no real assets on that account.
Stopping Character Sales, will not stop the hacking as there isn't much CCP can do to stop someone Else's computer from being violated. Adding to this the hacker has access to the persons computer which will allow him to check e-mail accounts and so on in many cases.
2) If you look at any other MMO, they all have these same problems as far as I know. If people can't sell their toon in a legitimate way, they will sell them via a black market which will likely be controlled by the very hackers we are dealing with today.
Lets not forget, RMT and toon sales is a very big business, when you figure these groups are doing this very thing to many other games and not just EVE. These guys are making Millions of dollars a year doing this stuff which means they wont stop just because CCP bans Character Sales, it will just move even further underground and pull the player base to them.
Right now even though it's not as secure as it "should" be, at the very least CCP has control of the market on the sales. I'd much rather them have control and work on making things more secure than just ban it and turn the entire market over to the hackers and RMT'ers.
B) Now I'll toss in a few solutions that I think might help this proposal. I do think something needs to be done for the various reasons many have posted already.
1) I think we shouldn't actually be able to simply sell the "reputation and persona" as Verone has mentioned. I see this as the major draw back in Character Sales. Not to mention 90% of the character's for sale have crappy names.
The solution to this, would be that only the "skill set" should be sold. This would mean you could still effectively sell the time you have invested but not your actual toon. It would also be safer because if theft did occur, the toon would be in place and only require the skill sheet to be replaced.
Doing a "skill sheet" transfer, would mean each toon created would remain in the original owners hands, until he decided to terminate that toon. This would mean that you would keep your own history and others simply couldn't just buy another players game history.
This would mean that the market could still stay alive and players that haven't been in game since beta could still get access to decent skill sets if they could afford them.
There are of course advantages and disadvantages to what I've suggested, but even from a RP view, it should be more reasonable to do than actually buying the entire toon.
I will add to this that as a early 09 player and noob to the game, the training time is very discouraging at times. I can't do anything to make my toon train faster other than skills and implants. Even that is really not enough when you look at how long a basic skill plan can be.
Meanwhile I do make enough ISK, that I can afford to buy a older toon. There are of course many like me which means the market will always be there. Because of this I really think CCP is doing the right thing by controlling it.
We just need it to be safer..
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