Regarding AP-Trading

[Alvie]

9 hours ago, Rag-DN said:

I wish I could  react this post! May your ban hammers be swift and precise!

Banning anything kills the game slightly.

The fault is in the way AP works, not the trading, which is not really just trading, it's AP creation at the same time, which creates an AP imbalance between the players.

When you kill another player of the opposite faction, you gain way more AP than they loose, that's a serious design flaw, AP is being created out of thin air. So the two players can kill each other in turn and make heaps of AP repeatedly. Both gain AP.

It needs to be changed so you gain exactly the same AP as the opponent looses, then no new AP is created inflating the AP system, it's only being transferred.

The new AP in the game will then come from quests, mobs, whatever, but not from killing other players, that will just be a transfer of existing AP.

[Makisekurisu]

24 minutes ago, Alvie said:

Banning anything kills the game slightly.

The fault is in the way AP works, not the trading, which is not really just trading, it's AP creation at the same time, which creates an AP imbalance between the players.

When you kill another player of the opposite faction, you gain way more AP than they loose, that's a serious design flaw, AP is being created out of thin air. So the two players can kill each other in turn and make heaps of AP repeatedly. Both gain AP.

It needs to be changed so you gain exactly the same AP as the opponent looses, then no new AP is created inflating the AP system, it's only being transferred.

The new AP in the game will then come from quests, mobs, whatever, but not from killing other players, that will just be a transfer of existing AP.

Ap trading is the problem, if Kibbelz that work for ncsoft says it, then it is what it is, not banning is what kills the game, stop being manipulative and twisting the meaning of ap trading

 

Quote

First, we would like to make it clear that intentionally trading kills with other players with the intent to obtain Abyss Points is considered an abuse of the in-game mechanics, and this behaviour is at-risk for penalization.

 

[Alvie]

19 minutes ago, Makisekurisu said:

Ap trading is the problem, if Kibbelz that work for ncsoft says it, then it is what it is, not banning is what kills the game, stop being manipulative and twisting the meaning of ap trading

 

 

It's just you not understanding what's actually going on.

When someone trades, it's assumed fair value on each side of the trade.

eg. You have two rank 9 toons one from each faction.

One rank 9 kills the other, the winner gains 120 AP the looser forfeits 24 AP, how is that even remotely a trade?

It's an exploit. Out of thin air 96 AP have been created.

If the winner had only gained 24 AP not 120AP then it would be considered an AP transfer and hard to be an exploit.

[Makisekurisu]

Quote

First, we would like to make it clear that intentionally trading kills with other players with the intent to obtain Abyss Points is considered an abuse of the in-game mechanics, and this behaviour is at-risk for penalization.

 

[Sundial]

1 hour ago, Alvie said:

Banning anything kills the game slightly.

The fault is in the way AP works, not the trading, which is not really just trading, it's AP creation at the same time, which creates an AP imbalance between the players.

When you kill another player of the opposite faction, you gain way more AP than they loose, that's a serious design flaw, AP is being created out of thin air. So the two players can kill each other in turn and make heaps of AP repeatedly. Both gain AP.

It needs to be changed so you gain exactly the same AP as the opponent looses, then no new AP is created inflating the AP system, it's only being transferred.

The new AP in the game will then come from quests, mobs, whatever, but not from killing other players, that will just be a transfer of existing AP.

In other words: "To stop AP trading, NCSoft should totally kill PvP in AION". Right, got it. As if players are not already risk averse enough...

It's not a design flaw at all, it has to due with player psychology and risk vs reward. People tend to extremely overemphasize when negative events happen to them. Dying and losing a ton of AP is already a huge feels bad moment. However, if the player knows they can die and still be AP positive on average, they are much more likely to continue playing this aspect of the game.

You can fix the AP trading problem lots of different ways without killing PvP in this game. Make PvP a zero sum game and people will just stop doing it, its pretty simple.

[Alvie]

12 minutes ago, Makisekurisu said:

 

And it's the "in-game mechanics" which Kibbelz refers to, that are broken.

AP is an in-game currency, just like Kinah.

Except, there is no way in Aion to trade AP between your own toons, let alone between characters of another faction, so it's not AP trading that's going on, it's something else.

In the real world, if I sent $24 US dollars to someone in another country, and their account got credited with $120 USD, someone would eventually complain.

That's the "in-game mechanics" which are broken.

 

[Zzzzzz]

2 hours ago, Seppura said:

if you want to get pvp gear without trying or get 50e in a week i suggest playing a priv server instead 

You are still unable to get 50e in a week with AP trading 24/7 and there must be a reason that you are not going to play on a private server

[Gaybar]

9 minutes ago, Zzzzzz said:

You are still unable to get 50e in a week with AP trading 24/7 and there must be a reason that you are not going to play on a private server

You are right, they need 1½ weeks.

 

[Seren-Dust]

@Alvie purposely trading or  feeding kills to other players / friends / alternate accounts, is abuse of mechanics, regardless of you getting more or less than the person dying loses, and is always been so. Period. There's no semantics here.

12 hours ago, Kibbelz said:

First, we would like to make it clear that intentionally trading kills with other players with the intent to obtain Abyss Points is considered an abuse of the in-game mechanics, and this behaviour is at-risk for penalization.

[Alvie]

9 minutes ago, Seren-Dust said:

@Alvie purposely trading kills / feeding kills to players is abuse of mechanics, regardless of you getting more or less than the person dying loses, and is always been so. Period. There's no semantics here.

You have the cause and effect backwards. Trading kills wouldn't exist if the AP loss/gain  was a zero sum game. People would just get on with getting AP other ways, the rule would not be broken. Too many people here act as if the kill traders want to break the rules, no, they want easy AP instead of working for it. Take away the easy AP mechanism and problem solved.

Learn how the AP kill system works http://impetusium.blogspot.com/2009/08/abyss-compendium-access-points-ranks.html

eg. If an Elyos General kills an Asmo General, and then they do it in reverse, both end up loosing AP.

The problem is in the lower ranks where up to 5x AP gain can be obtained. That needs to be fixed.

 

[Daggers]

do you guys still play aion? The all thing they are trying to do is make some easy money and after 1 year they will shut it down. Its really sad watching this

[Seren-Dust]

7 minutes ago, Alvie said:

You have the cause and effect backwards. Trading kills wouldn't exist if the AP loss/gain  was a zero sum game. People would just get on with getting AP other ways, the rule would not be broken. Too many people here act as if the kill traders want to break the rules, no, they want easy AP instead of working for it. Take away the easy AP mechanism and problem solved.

i think you're the only one here not understanding things despite telling others how they don't understand. 
First of all i never talked about causes and effects, and none of those matter facing the rule stated above, exploit is exploit regardless of how you try to justify it. Second of all, the only thing you did indeed get correctly is what i highlighted above. Yes, they want easy ap and not work for it (aka not needing to face legit fights in which they can lose), so yes, they could continue doing AP-trading regardless of getting the same amount the other loses. The amount the other loses is irrelevant to their gain. They would continue making deals with "friends" or even creating their own alternate accounts and continue the feeding, because in the end, it's easier, controlled, and less risky than having to do true pvp. 

[Alvie]

3 minutes ago, Seren-Dust said:

i think you're the only one here not understanding things despite telling others how they don't understand. 
..

80% of the posts on this topic are clueless about the" in-game mechanism" that is being exploited, that's why they talk about the rules being broken, and not about the problem itself.

Not unusual for social media forums.

[Fest-DN]

This debate is pointless. An AP-Positive system incentivizes PvP by raising gains and limiting losses. Abusing this system is exploitative and should/now does result in penalties. Nothing needs adjusting. Adequate policing of this system would even warrant an even greater positive gain/lower loss system since the one we're working with still renders high officers+ hesitant to go out and fight due to the risk of losing their rank (this lessens over time as AP stacks up and we get the other set of AP-related problems).

 

[Alvie]

1 hour ago, Fest-DN said:

This debate is pointless. An AP-Positive system incentivizes PvP by raising gains and limiting losses. Abusing this system is exploitative and should/now does result in penalties. Nothing needs adjusting. Adequate policing of this system would even warrant an even greater positive gain/lower loss system since the one we're working with still renders high officers+ hesitant to go out and fight due to the risk of losing their rank (this lessens over time as AP stacks up and we get the other set of AP-related problems).

 

The rules have been in place since Aion Classic launched and have done nothing to solve the problem, which is typical of prohibition.

It needs an engineering solution, not rules.

[Wsnow]

Any AP they grained should be removed and any gear got with that AP should be removed, then maybe players can lvl also, and a 7 day ban, to give real players a chance. 

[Fest-DN]

1 hour ago, Alvie said:

The rules have been in place since Aion Classic launched and have done nothing to solve the problem, which is typical of prohibition.

It needs an engineering solution, not rules.

The rules have been in place since Aion launched. They have been necessarily clarified since NCsoft has a history of poor communication and a ruleset that shifts and changes based on who is running the show. This merely lets us know that the previous rules still stand and will hopefully be enforced. There is no engineering solution to be had and Aion's collective history stands as proper evidence that we will not get one. Your energy would be better spent coming up with feedback around the eventual rank stagnation/non-participation of high ranking transforms along with the snowball effect of AP hoarding over time. We have a roadmap for all the many problems coming our way and this simply isn't one of them. There are, however, engineering solutions from later in Aion's development for the previously stated issues that could potentially be implemented to keep the board full of active and motivated players to lead each faction.

[Contraste]

5 hours ago, Gaybar said:

You are right, they need 1½ weeks.

 

https://imgur.com/d08hyQ5

 

[Alvie]

47 minutes ago, Fest-DN said:

The rules have been in place since Aion launched. They have been necessarily clarified since NCsoft has a history of poor communication and a ruleset that shifts and changes based on who is running the show. This merely lets us know that the previous rules still stand and will hopefully be enforced. There is no engineering solution to be had and Aion's collective history stands as proper evidence that we will not get one. Your energy would be better spent coming up with feedback around the eventual rank stagnation/non-participation of high ranking transforms along with the snowball effect of AP hoarding over time. We have a roadmap for all the many problems coming our way and this simply isn't one of them. There are, however, engineering solutions from later in Aion's development for the previously stated issues that could potentially be implemented to keep the board full of active and motivated players to lead each faction.

What you are saying is nothing will be done about the kill trading problem, in which case Kibblez starting this thread was a waste of time.

[Draakeen]

Yikeeees, ban AP Traders and let all those hackers with Glide Hack, Speed, Attack Speed, TP Hack, Hide Detection alive.. Multiple Videos and not even any repply

[Arhangelos]

13 hours ago, Alvie said:

Banning anything kills the game slightly.

The fault is in the way AP works, not the trading, which is not really just trading, it's AP creation at the same time, which creates an AP imbalance between the players.

When you kill another player of the opposite faction, you gain way more AP than they loose, that's a serious design flaw, AP is being created out of thin air. So the two players can kill each other in turn and make heaps of AP repeatedly. Both gain AP.

It needs to be changed so you gain exactly the same AP as the opponent looses, then no new AP is created inflating the AP system, it's only being transferred.

The new AP in the game will then come from quests, mobs, whatever, but not from killing other players, that will just be a transfer of existing AP.

Kill trading is more accurate but  when the incentive is AP then "AP trading"is a term used to explain that two characters of opposite faction either agree to kill or both belong to the same person and one is an alt while one is the main.

The mechanics are having it like this so lower ranks cannot lose much and that AP can indeed be generated through pvp but only at lower ranks, on higher ranks there is an AP sink because you gain less than you earn when you die. You cannot mutually AP trade two chars to governor status by killing each other.

~~

They call it "ap trading", you can call it "ap generation out of thin air", it is still the same thing as an offense as I understand it from the rules.

Most importantly: if AP could not be generated out of thin air then AP trading would still exist. It would simply require more dedication because you could farm AP with alts and then get them killed by the main which is high rank and in bigger risk of being killed and thus lose AP.

Even worse people would RMT their AP to people willing to buy the AP via killing.

As long as AP can be "transferred" from char to char via pvp, AP trading will exist in one way or another and it will be regarded an offense.

[Nsn]

I want to stress how important NCsoft action on this issue is -

Everyone is watching to see what NC does about this. If nothing happens to these players, or if they get temp banned and get to keep their gear, other players may be encouraged to partake in this rule-breaking activity that completely undermines the character progression system in this game. Let me repeat myself here: if these people just get temp banned and that's it, they won't even regret their actions. They skipped character progression that would take perhaps a thousand hours to do legitimately, and it only cost them (let's say) a 2 week ban. They absolutely need perm bans or at the very least, their gear stripped.

 

Even worse, once a critical mass of players are doing this (say 200+), issuing permanent bans may no longer be realistic as you would be banning a significant percentage of the most active players in a game already bleeding players. Once this happens, the entire character progression part of this game is permanently ruined, and this is arguably the most important aspect of MMORPG's.

 

My worry is that we're already at that point where too many players are doing it and it'll hurt the population too much to perma ban them all. On top of that, every day that bans are not issued, more players may start breaking these rules too, as they will visually see everyone around them getting geared much faster than them.

 

The other issue that hasn't even been mentioned in this thread is that while many players are being very obvious about breaking these rules, others may be doing it much more covertly. If I 1v1 someone a dozen or so times in a row, am I automatically AP trading? How could you possibly tell the difference between legitimate 1v1s and more covert AP trades?

 

There's also the issue of abuse. What if I don't like somebody, so I suicide to them over and over again and I have my friend report them for AP trading? Etc.

 

tl;dr this is a huge issue, arguably the biggest issue in this game atm, tread carefully

 

Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not encouraging anyone to do this, and I hope everyone involved is permabanned before it's too late

[Wsnow]

38 minutes ago, Nsn said:

I want to stress how important NCsoft action on this issue is -

Everyone is watching to see what NC does about this. If nothing happens to these players, or if they get temp banned and get to keep their gear, other players may be encouraged to partake in this rule-breaking activity that completely undermines the character progression system in this game. Let me repeat myself here: if these people just get temp banned and that's it, they won't even regret their actions. They skipped character progression that would take perhaps a thousand hours to do legitimately, and it only cost them (let's say) a 2 week ban. They absolutely need perm bans or at the very least, their gear stripped.

 

Even worse, once a critical mass of players are doing this (say 200+), issuing permanent bans may no longer be realistic as you would be banning a significant percentage of the most active players in a game already bleeding players. Once this happens, the entire character progression part of this game is permanently ruined, and this is arguably the most important aspect of MMORPG's.

 

My worry is that we're already at that point where too many players are doing it and it'll hurt the population too much to perma ban them all. On top of that, every day that bans are not issued, more players may start breaking these rules too, as they will visually see everyone around them getting geared much faster than them.

 

The other issue that hasn't even been mentioned in this thread is that while many players are being very obvious about breaking these rules, others may be doing it much more covertly. If I 1v1 someone a dozen or so times in a row, am I automatically AP trading? How could you possibly tell the difference between legitimate 1v1s and more covert AP trades?

 

There's also the issue of abuse. What if I don't like somebody, so I suicide to them over and over again and I have my friend report them for AP trading? Etc.

 

tl;dr this is a huge issue, arguably the biggest issue in this game atm, tread carefully

 

Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not encouraging anyone to do this, and I hope everyone involved is permabanned before it's too late

As you already stated permanently banned will only hurt the game I therefore do not think that is an option here tbh after SR and the wave ban that has already hurt the player base badly and NCsoft did not correcting this banning of players wrongfully, the player base has already dropped badly so I feel permanently ban will only hurt it more.

I believe all AP should be removed all AP gear removed and a 7 day temp ban. this would also show players more that they cant do AP trading or they will loss everything. If players just go missing due to a permanently ban, players will not see the action that happen for AP trading.

 

 

 

[5s124D6A-DN]

On 8/20/2021 at 5:04 PM, Digz said:

 

Lets be real here. Most of the population dropped because lack of content. Most of my legion is bored waiting for 1.5 playing other games. The bans did nothing but get rid of the cheaters, which don't belong here regardless.

[Foxymelody]

Nothing will be done about this other than mentioning it on the forums that it is an offense

The same cheaters are using hacks on a daily basis and nobody cares.   People already have full 40e sets/50e/wepons etc