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  1. #11
    Player
    Join Date
    Jun 2018
    Posts
    552
    Less garbage in the pile is better for everyone.

    Mercs being and creating more.
    (0)

  2. #12
    Player TullemoreAsuraFFXI's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Bastok
    Posts
    307
    Character
    Tullemore
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    DRK Lv 99
    I'm going to chime in here as well. This is a content, interface, development and community interaction. I remember when 'EX' was added to equipment. Content of the game has adapted and evolved along the wishes of SE's dev team and feedback of us the customers. Above VM is absolutely correct about the purely in game based gil sinks, SE has placed these gil sinks into existence purely to counteract the inflation of gil in circulation, the regulation of their perceived value of items sold via NPC vendors and at least over a significant amount of time combats the detrimental activity of unethical behavior of users that violate ToS to exploit sources of wealth accumulation. 99/ilvl119 crafter gil sinks are massive.

    That being said, VM is also correct in the case of a chain of linked battle content or a single battle by which multiple direct drops are acquired from said source, the content is of concern here where FFXI has common, uncommon, rare, extremely rare treasure creations. Because of this content and development environment a player or group will encounter many times over duplicate and unwanted treasures that can be distributed within the constraints of bazaar, AH, P2P trade, treasure pool cast lots etc. At one point in the game very desirable and sometimes job changing items which source was an open world "claim" had scoundrels monopolizing the source effectively blocking and bottle-necking others from accessing these sources. The 'EX' tag not being a perfect fix was at least a small effort made on the part of SE to fight a serious problem on their servers. Most battle content of significance released with SoA/Escha however is instanced platform or force spawned battles by which an 'EX' tag corresponding to the treasures is completely unnecessary but due to the behavior of scoundrels in the past SE has overcompensated to combat these exploiters. As within any population where there is a demand there will be a supply, those that are feeding the market are the ones that proliferate the occurrences the original poster has complained about.

    The /yell command comes with both it's upsides and downsides. If you have six brain cells you can figure these out so i won't rant on a list of pro's and con's associated with /yell.

    I will however initiate some fixes for this topic.

    Player/Community fixes:
    Don't interact with sellers if you deem them unworthy of your attention. Utilize blacklist if need be.
    Create, join and foster teams and linkshells that correspond with your morals and ethics.
    RMT is a ToS violation for a reason, DO NOT PROLIFERATE IT.
    Discourage ridicule of equipment power whenever you encounter it.

    Development/Interface Fixes:
    ~ Overhaul/Evolve the /seacom feature. At one point there actually was etiquette and utilization of /seacom. The categories had purpose and what you put there was significant. Make this viable again.
    ~ Expand /search result lists so that these lists are not truncated.
    ~ Develop new set of NPC economic facilitators that can warehouse and vendor items acquired by players as they determine these items being sellable merchandise or something to purchase. Allow these NPC to exchange all equipment items including those tagged 'EX'. Understandably items tagged 'Aug' can not be accommodated. This might take twelve brain cells to determine gil values and fluctuation of the gil values depending on a supply and demand of each item with limits placed on the rock-bottom and maximum in gil. Place one or more of these NPC in every town/city/commerce zone. All new npc warehousing vendors would be linked server-wide consisting of a unified stockpile of items. Actually developing and implementing this would take significant effort, although the idea is simple the expansion of NPC services by adding these NPC is challenging. For one, personally, i'd rather see this type of improvement in the game made as a priority over the creation of battle content.
    ~ Enforce fully FFXI ToS as it pertains to the interaction of characters with FFXI environment. Remove all bots, scripting exploiters, automated (AFK) activities.

    Thank you for your attention.
    (0)

  3. #13
    Player Afania's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Posts
    1,452
    Character
    Afania
    World
    Bahamut
    Main Class
    BRD Lv 1
    Quote Originally Posted by Isola View Post
    Less garbage in the pile is better for everyone.

    Mercs being and creating more.
    This is a pretty strong word to describe buying and paying for gears. I personally don't understand why would you use the term "garbage" to describe them, outside of "I don't like them so they are garbage".
    (0)

  4. #14
    Player DarkValefor's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    71
    Character
    Kukiki
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    DNC Lv 99
    I don't think mercenaries are a bad thing even tho I'd never pay for getting anything done when I can put in the effort and get it done myself, but the current situation of Asura right now is somehow ridiculous.

    New players struggle with NMs that someone geared can kill by themselves within 1 minute and charge you 5M or more for it. I don't think that is helping the community in any way.

    The mercenary may think that is a low price because gil is easy to make for them but it's not really that easy for the new player. Also, how is it helping the community when people rather play mules and sell every kind of clear rather than invite people to form a group or a linkshell and actually have parties of people playing one character each?

    Anyway the situation you are describing in this post sounds like an issue in one particular server. There are mercenaries probably in every server but what I saw in Asura and what made me leave Asura I don't think it's happening in any other server.
    (3)

  5. #15
    Player VoiceMemo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    793
    Character
    Voicememo
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    BRD Lv 99
    Which is exactly your choice as well, if you don't like it you have the option to change servers. Same as it's a buyers gil, they can do with it what they want.
    (1)

  6. #16
    Player
    Join Date
    Jun 2018
    Posts
    552
    That's all well and good. Problem is it creates an unsolvable problem.

    When the only barrier to entry is gil, you have what we have now. Absolutely trash tier players with all BiS gear.

    While that would still happen, inevitably, regardless, the rate at which it's happening now is straight up ridiculous. This DOES NOT mean that if you earn it, you know how to better use it. It means that you can't be bothered to earn it, and can't be bothered to be capable enough to be playing with others.

    There are only 2 kinds of people that get things merced. The ones that over pay, are clueless and just end up being overall negative on the in game environment. Or the ones that just don't feel like doing the same thing a dozen more times since the thing won't drop.

    Like I've done pakecet 200 times. If you sell jov bodies for 3m, Yeah I'm gonna take one because I can't be bothered to do it 201 times. But if you sell it to a noob for 20m theres a huge problem. That's the problem that needs to stop.
    (0)
    Last edited by Isola; 09-02-2018 at 03:55 PM.

  7. #17
    Player VoiceMemo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    793
    Character
    Voicememo
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    BRD Lv 99
    The same could be said about PL, or the way fast leveling is. To get my 1st 75 11 years ago it took nearly a year. Leveling too fast does not allow you to learn a job, yet getting to 99 asap seems acceptable now, so where is the uproar over that?

    Word also gets around if you're a bad player in end game circles, since the server population is small. So even if you get the BiS gear by mercing, if you don't know the job word will get around.

    Skill only takes you so far, gear does the rest. Good players have skill, but with the right gear they become great.

    A player that has poor skill will not become good even though they get the BiS gear and it will be evident.
    (0)
    Last edited by VoiceMemo; 09-02-2018 at 04:59 PM.

  8. #18
    Player Afania's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Posts
    1,452
    Character
    Afania
    World
    Bahamut
    Main Class
    BRD Lv 1
    Quote Originally Posted by DarkValefor View Post
    New players struggle with NMs that someone geared can kill by themselves within 1 minute and charge you 5M or more for it. I don't think that is helping the community in any way.
    New players doesn't have to pay, they totally have the option to shout "Can someone help me kill an X NM" in town and they are most likely will still get someone bored enough and help them kill for free.

    The thing is, for those who doesn't want to help for free because they have something else to do in game, the gil charged are weight against other gil making methods.

    It's possible to make 5m/hr from ambuscade with just 1 character and not selling spots. And it's also possible to spend 30 min to 1hr to get someone a drop even if each kill only takes 1 min, especially for Ruann T2 drops.

    So if gil charged can't match gil/hr from other activities, then merc isn't worth doing. You may think an NM that takes 1 min kill only worth 300k or something, in reality, you may ended up killing some ruann T2 for an hour and not seeing one single drop, and it's not profitable compare with ambuscade VD.


    Then there's also the fact that some NM is tough to solo and need 2 char+, then the gil hr is also being compare against 2 character doing ambu VD for 10m/hr.

    Quote Originally Posted by DarkValefor View Post
    The mercenary may think that is a low price because gil is easy to make for them but it's not really that easy for the new player.
    unfortunately merc price isn't determined by new players ability to make gil, but weight against other gil making methods in game for the one who is charging for the service.

    Quote Originally Posted by DarkValefor View Post
    Also, how is it helping the community when people rather play mules and sell every kind of clear rather than invite people to form a group or a linkshell and actually have parties of people playing one character each?
    Even if merc doesn't exist, people aren't going to "play with everybody". I know tons and tons of players who don't merc, they still play with their cliques with absolutely zero interaction with 95% of community. I don't merc either, and I basically don't do anything with anyone outside of LS, minus maybe like 3-5 people from another social LS of mine.

    This kind of behaviour is very common in FFXI because everyone has different goals and don't always have something to offer for different groups. It's not really selling gear causing clique to happen, but WIDE variety of content level and how certain content can be extremely selective with jobs, experience and gears. There are tons of people that I really like and would love to play together with, but we just can't because our job spread or ingame goals don't match.

    Playing with mules is the same. Sometimes it's easier/faster to use BRD GEO mules than actually communicate with real player and have them do things wrong.

    So it's not really merc causing people using mules or play with clique. It's just...part of FFXI.

    So what's the issue?
    If people's issue is price, there's always option to get them for free via asking for help.
    If the issue is clique, I can promise you even if SE ban every single account that sells gear and clear, people will still play with their mules and cliques.
    If the issue is yell channel being annoying to read, you can always change server or blist.

    Quote Originally Posted by Isola View Post
    When the only barrier to entry is gil, you have what we have now. Absolutely trash tier players with all BiS gear.
    Even if merc doesn't exist, we'd just have "absolutely trash tier player without BiS gear" instead, so the situation is the same.

    If someone doesn't care to play seriously in FFXI, not having the option to buy gear will not make them better. Because they don't play seriously to begin with.

    tl;dr: I'm not convinced that there's moral issue with merc, nor I think any of the "issues" people suggest here happened because of merc. It's more of a personal taste IMO.
    (0)
    Last edited by Afania; 09-02-2018 at 11:34 PM.

  9. #19
    Player crusher's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    7
    Character
    Mujhaid
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    THF Lv 99
    Just an observation, it appears that the "Merc" economy is mainly on Asura based on the posts. Years back, when players use to charge for PL services in abyssea, SE, put a stop to it. Now, with their primary focus on FF14 that just surpassed 14M players, they're probably not to worried about FF11 as much as they use to be. Unfortunately, you'll never be able to stop people from selling their services, hence the other forms of media that members can use to advertise whether it's through FFXIAH, Discord, etc. I've been on Asura for a short time from another server myself. I haven't partaken in "Merc" services as I find the content pretty easy and the vast majority of players want to do stuff as a group and learn. So basically, it's a players option on if they want to "earn" or be "gifted" an item. If they want to spend the "gil" to do so, that's their choice. Just my 2 pence worth.
    (0)

  10. #20
    Player TullemoreAsuraFFXI's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Bastok
    Posts
    307
    Character
    Tullemore
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    DRK Lv 99
    So, to our original poster Mr. Orionis, have you considered these responses to address your concerns? any further evaluations or specific tid bits of detail to add?
    (0)

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