I was thinking about how many conversations I have had with my Guild Mates regarding resources that they are missing, which I have in spades, or troops that they have duplicates of that I haven’t managed to find from a random chest drop.
Could there be an addition to Guilds where members could donate traitstones to a communal Guild Inventory or just trade resources and troops with fellow Guild Members?
This would be a a great way to increase the desirability of Guilds while also providing a function for in-game mail.
I suppose the same exploit that was discussed in another thread concerning general trading would apply to guild trades as well. It would be easy enough for someone to place their alts in a guild so they could do trades to build up their main account.
I’m not sure how the devs could prevent that. If they could block the exploit, I think it would be great if guildmates could do trades.
Forgive my naivety but having alts still requires putting in the time to earn the resources. I don’t understand the benefit with trading with yourself?
From my understanding in the other thread, the idea is that it makes the game unbalanced if someone can run two accounts and use one account just to make the main one stronger. How many people would do this? I have no idea. I’m just pointing out that in guild trading wouldn’t have any real difference from global game trading when it comes to the possible exploit.
I think that would be a cool addition too, but I think it might be harder to implement code wise for the devs. And it would still lend to power gamers. The trading/mail option could still include payment. “hey you have an extra sheggra, I’ll give you 100 gems for it?” Then the the players mail their respect goods and wala done, without the need for a big market addition.
Global Auction for gems sounds better although they’d probably have to take away earning as many gems in the game. Otherwise they wouldn’t sell as many gems. If they could sell a lot of gems and have global auction house? Take my money now.
What about a mercenary system like in heroes charge, where a member can send a troop to be “rented” by another good member, and when it’s used it gives gold or whatever?
Any / many of the above would open the game to exploitation for people for money… and / or fraud and other stuff the devs (I’d say understandably) don’t want to see… or (as someone else wrote) at least to people trading with each other not putting money into the game (I think @Lyya spelled this out with elegant simplicity somewhere)…
There are pros and cons, I’m sure, but I suspect the devs will never see any kind of sharing or trading enter the game, it’s just too risky…
Again, I am without @Lyya 's elegant explanation, but it seems to me the only easy thing to spam with alts is tribute and daily awards, wish is gold and keys. If you restrict the shared Guild Inventory to only traitstones then you shouldnt have to fear alt spamming, because atm stones can only be gained via real money purchases or farming which would require gameplay.
If anybody could link the @Lyya explanation, I would love to read it.
“Elegant” is a bit of a stretch, and my point was about the dev team cannibalizing their revenue stream by allowing trading to exist in any form. This game has longetivity through troop acquisition and leveling (souls and traitstones). You obtain resources by grinding or “giving in” and making a purchase. This is how the company makes money. If you could acquire a long-pole resource more cheaply (in the case of trading, effectively for free), the company makes less money. It is therefore not in their economic best interests to enable any such feature.
There is no way this could work and keep the game alive at the same time. Long term players could hand out cards or resources they have in abundancy and the whole economy would ruin as it wouldn’t be profitable to sell packs with legendaries, gems, weapons or whatever.
How it could be exploited?
A malicious player could get two accounts and put both on a guild that does a fair ammount of tasks, mainly gems and keys. Both accounts can contribute and finish tasks, and as that both would get the same rewards. At the end of the day the player would just transfer the desired loot for his main account and as well transfer any duplicates of cards for the secondary account that could be used by a little cousin/brother/minion.
“Is there a way to make this work and even help the game economy and profits?”
Using my amazing “Mastery of the Obvious” i’ve concluded that the only way for trading systems to work on some “freemium” enviroment is if the game charges money from each player that is trading something.
Sorry for the blunt answer, but hard truths are not gentle.
What prevents me from playing at my computer, my phone and my tablet with three separate accounts? Nothing at all, and if we could trade stuff it would get out of hand really quickly…
I mean, you can do that now with one account. I honestly don’t think the trade-to-self is the concern here. Scamming (out-of-game real money transactions) and revenue loss due to devaluation of premium currency are the concern, as I see it.
Thanks to others for the explanation. What if a guild trade required x number of gems to pay the courier? This would be required of the recipient.
This would continue to promote the ingame currency.
I certainly understand @Lyya that any trading can devalue ingame currency and longevity and ipso facto revenue for devs. However I am still a firm believer that having access to the full content, meaning some way to easily fill my roster will not ultimately hurt longevity. Players that are 1000 with all troops still play because the game is good in its own right. I just want to be able to play with team builds.
I don’t want to allow a means for ppl to take advantage or pay to win, see the thread about what you are willing to pay for, but a means to get access to all content is beneficial to me and gamers like me who don’t wish to take advantage of a system but enjoy everything the dev team has built.
PS: Forums have been fun today! I may have to keep visiting.
