One F2P feature that LoL doesn't have and Planetside 2 NEEDS

[Tapman]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

I guess one partial solution would be to make consumable items non-giftable. At least then you could take them all back without having to ban everyone.

Maybe you could also put restrictions that you have to meet before you can send or receive a gift.

Sending:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (to prevent idlers)
Spent a minimum amount of money in non gifted items in the shop ($20?)
Made a payment to the cash shop a minimum amount of time ago with the card you are using to purchase the gift (3 months?)
Gifts must be purchased as gifts. You can not gift an item after purchasing it for yourself.

Receiving:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (prevent idlers)
Recipient must agree to terms and conditions of receiving a gift, including loss of item if fraud was involved
If fraud is found to have occurred, the recipient gets a warning that if they accept any future gifts that turn out to be fraudulent purchases, disciplinary action may be taken against their account.

I would love this. Most parents don't give their kids credit card info to buy stuff like this until they see a legitimate interest that has stood the test of an average child's attention span, three months is fine. Outfits would go crazy over it too, especially if you eventually had a deep customization system where you could basically design your armor but you had to pay to be able to use it in-game. Side note, you should be allowed to keep it private by setting it up as a favorite and sharing it with your outfit, or submitting it to the shop as another template for people to choose from.

I would recommend adding a forced waiting period on the first few items purchased using a new credit card no matter how old the account is. If it fits in the financial model, add the fraud prevention services that credit card companies already offer to other vendors to verify it on the spot. If that is too expensive for the majority of transactions you could at least use it for power-buyers, which I would define by transaction frequency. This will also keep the rich folks who may or may not think it is a status symbol buying the new stuff you release all the time.

As far as potentially receiving fraudulent items, I would be fine with having the item removed from my account. If it happened to me twice, I would be fine with extra scrutiny on my account, but please don't let some asshole troll ban people when they get their hands on a working set of numbers. You could avoid this by only allowing items to be gifted to your account by someone on your friends list, make all other gifts reviewable prior to accepting. One last note, please don't forget to have a one-time, if-you-save-my-credit-card-information-I-will-freak, payment option, and show the option for the SOE Authenticator in with a font size that scales up based on the amount of items you have purchased.

[SKYeXile]

never gets old:

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Tapman

I would love this. (...)

*sigh* You're missing the point.

[Crator]

Wow, do people actually spend that much? Going to have to start a MMO anonymous support group! :P

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Crator

Wow, do people actually spend that much? Going to have to start a MMO anonymous support group! :P

Hi, I'm Firek and I'm a vanityholic...

[Xyntech]

Firek, as someone who knows a little more about the situation, would not requiring a waiting period on an active character as well as a waiting period on an active billing card (card used for non gifted items) remove most of the dangers?

If you can't bust someone who is actively using a stolen card number after 3 months, what's the point?

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Firek, as someone who knows a little more about the situation, would not requiring a waiting period on an active character as well as a waiting period on an active billing card (card used for non gifted items) remove most of the dangers?

If you can't bust someone who is actively using a stolen card number after 3 months, what's the point?

A waiting period on an active character may be exploitable, however this obstacle alone would mean most CC thieves will just look for easier merchandise, like gift codes for new AAA titles. At first I thought that some might exploit this by finding a niche in PS2, by exploit-farming new characters, but I think AAA titles would sell just as well, and would be easier to get.

The waiting period for an active card would work in general, but would be a major inconvenience, especially for new users. If you don't mind, let me write this down for tomorrow's meeting, as we'll be discussing a similar subject at work and are looking for fresh ideas. It would probably be too hardcore and inconvenient for a non-MMO business... Still, it might stir a brainstorm.

And of course the bank, or the CC's owner, may only realize that the card is being used fraudulently after a long while, giving you dozens of chargebacks... But I don't recall such a case. It's always a possibility, though.

[Baron]

You also need to think of this in terms of SOE employee resources. With a gifting system, sure you can automate a significant amount of work but do you want PS2 support spending 90% of their time on "gift investigation?" or force them to have a dedicated individual to bird-dog those things?

Personally I'd rather use that resource to quash bugs or work on future content.

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Baron

You also need to think of this in terms of SOE employee resources. With a gifting system, sure you can automate a significant amount of work but do you want PS2 support spending 90% of their time on "gift investigation?" or force them to have a dedicated individual to bird-dog those things?

Personally I'd rather use that resource to quash bugs or work on future content.

It all boils down to fine-tuning whatever system detects "suspected" orders. In the long run, having someone investigate this crap should pay off, plus it shouldn't take that much time. Not to mention SOE most likely already has a person whose task is doing just that.

[CutterJohn]

Why does SOE have to be responsible for policing stolen stuff? Is it honestly that big of a worry? Is there some rampant crime spree of people buying ingame items for friends?

I dunno.. Maybe ask the guys over at steam how they deal with the issue. They seem to handle it just fine.

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Why does SOE have to be responsible for policing stolen stuff? Is it honestly that big of a worry? Is there some rampant crime spree of people buying ingame items for friends?

I dunno.. Maybe ask the guys over at steam how they deal with the issue. They seem to handle it just fine.

It's not about people buying stuff for friends. It's about people using stolen credit card information to buy gift codes, and then reselling them on eBay and such. It's the perfect way of laundering money off stolen CC info.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Steam will either not share such info, or they aren't doing a great job at prevention, but are prepared to deal with the consequences instead. Having all but monopolized digital distribution, I think they've got monies to spare.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

I'm sure vanity can be sent as a gift and drawn back in case of fraud. No need to allow consumables (speaking of which, you promised not to sell power, never forget that).

Why does Steam allow you to buy and send games as gifts? GAMES! I mean Valve has as much to lose as SOE, but they're still doing it. So why not just have some helmet camo that I would like to buy and give away to my friend in game and trace it via e-mail notifications (thus if there's all of a sudden 10 outbound e-mails in a row saying that MrX gifted 10 different people with the camo, you will find out and investigate)? There's no need to be able to send weaps and temporary/consumable stuff as gifts.

You can even have some vanity that's gift exclusive, like - you cannot buy it, you can only recieve it as a gift...

EDIT: LOL, brainwreck

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by FIREk

A waiting period on an active character may be exploitable, however this obstacle alone would mean most CC thieves will just look for easier merchandise, like gift codes for new AAA titles. At first I thought that some might exploit this by finding a niche in PS2, by exploit-farming new characters, but I think AAA titles would sell just as well, and would be easier to get.

The waiting period for an active card would work in general, but would be a major inconvenience, especially for new users. If you don't mind, let me write this down for tomorrow's meeting, as we'll be discussing a similar subject at work and are looking for fresh ideas. It would probably be too hardcore and inconvenient for a non-MMO business... Still, it might stir a brainstorm.

And of course the bank, or the CC's owner, may only realize that the card is being used fraudulently after a long while, giving you dozens of chargebacks... But I don't recall such a case. It's always a possibility, though.

Well I figure that as long as you limit the fraud potential to mostly the people purchasing things for themselves, you instantly have removed most of the dangers caused by gifting. Someone could already sell their tricked out character under their current giftless cash shop system. Obviously that is a risk they are ready and willing to take on.

As for owners not realizing until much later that something is amiss, that sounds to be a more rare problem and as such would be unlikely to be large enough to warrant disallowing gifting.

Obviously it's a nuanced thing. Hopefully Higby and crew figures out a way to work it out. If not, the game probably won't be hurt too much by it's exclusion.

I look forward to hearing your further thoughts on the matter after the meeting.

[FIREk]

Steam either has great fraud prevention (automated or carbon-based) or can afford taking the risk and dealing with consequences. I think it's as simple as that. SOE may not want to take that risk but, as I wrote before, vanity items won't cause fraud. Premiums would.

[Sentrosi]

I could see gifting a cosmetic item, such as gifting a fellow soldier in your outfit a Buddy Christ decal for his armor or something along those lines.
I just don't want to see gifts start going out for items like +15XP, +20dmg/round, etc. Like real game changers.