RMT everywhere

[Seish]

SE's stance on buyers isn't the one time buyer. Or those that buy in small amounts. It's the ones that buy a ton for projects. Those that buy themselves are not so much the problem--though it accelerates it. Who is, however, are those that sell the product to them. Because its getting to the point that RMT's are starting to corner in the smaller services, the modes of production and can corner services and goods. That's not good for anyone at all. What we shouldn't do is alienate those that buy per se, we should discourage it and explain why. What we need to fix is this culture of blackballing people that report RMT. It's not good for anyone to discourage players from reporting a huge issue.

[Alhanelem]

SE's stance on buyers isn't the one time buyer. Or those that buy in small amounts. It's the ones that buy a ton for projects. Those that buy themselves are not so much the problem--though it accelerates it. Who is, however, are those that sell the product to them. Because its getting to the point that RMT's are starting to corner in the smaller services, the modes of production and can corner services and goods. That's not good for anyone at all. What we shouldn't do is alienate those that buy per se, we should discourage it and explain why. What we need to fix is this culture of blackballing people that report RMT. It's not good for anyone to discourage players from reporting a huge issue.

We absolutely should alienate them. We need these people to understand that buying will come at a cost even if SE doesn't pick up on them and ban them.

[Mikah]

lul

ten characters

[Alhanelem]

Sorry, but I'm just not going to stand behind the argument that "buying once" is okay. Buying even once is an endorsement of the behavior, and so is turning a blind eye to the people "buying once."

[Mikah]

Every (internet) game in existence has pay to win. Pay for more tries. Pay for more lives. Pay to skip this thing. Pay to skip this grind.

That's all it is. It will never not exist.

If you want to play games where people can't/don't buy the win stick to single player games. If there is any possible way to interact with another player, smart people are going to use money to get ahead. Every time. Always. Forever. And to be totally honest, they couldn't care less how you feel about it.

[Alhanelem]

Every (internet) game in existence has pay to win. Pay for more tries. Pay for more lives. Pay to skip this thing. Pay to skip this grind.

That's all it is. It will never not exist.

If you want to play games where people can't/don't buy the win stick to single player games. If there is any possible way to interact with another player, smart people are going to use money to get ahead. Every time. Always. Forever. And to be totally honest, they couldn't care less how you feel about it.

I've never played a paid retail game that let me just buy extra lives etc. The game I played that came closes to that is Bravely Default, but that's about the only time I've ever seen it.

And again, the problem with your argument is this is an MMO, and unlike your unspecified games that let you buy your way through the game, this MMO has rules against this sort of thing and those rules are being broken. Unless and until SE adds its own officially sanctioned pay to win mechanics, anyone buying gil will and should be treated as cheaters. You are tacitly endorsing cheating (that is, explicitly breaking the rules set forth here. You may have rolled over and accepted this but I won't and neither should anyone else.

Again: Using sanctioned ingame mechanics is different from breaking the rules with outside the game mechanics. I don't like those either, but it's not breaking the rules to use a built in feature of the game in a manner approved by the people who made it.

[Seish]

I've never played a paid retail game that let me just buy extra lives etc. The game I played that came closes to that is Bravely Default, but that's about the only time I've ever seen it.

And again, the problem with your argument is this is an MMO, and unlike your unspecified games that let you buy your way through the game, this MMO has rules against this sort of thing and those rules are being broken. Unless and until SE adds its own officially sanctioned pay to win mechanics, anyone buying gil will and should be treated as cheaters. You are tacitly endorsing cheating (that is, explicitly breaking the rules set forth here. You may have rolled over and accepted this but I won't and neither should anyone else.

Again: Using sanctioned ingame mechanics is different from breaking the rules with outside the game mechanics. I don't like those either, but it's not breaking the rules to use a built in feature of the game in a manner approved by the people who made it.

There is truth here.

[Stompa]

Sorry, but I'm just not going to stand behind the argument that "buying once" is okay. Buying even once is an endorsement of the behavior, and so is turning a blind eye to the people "buying once."

I totally agree with you.

Buying Gil destroys the Role Playing Game RPG part of MMORPG.

When I joined FFXI in 2004, I was arriving from a background of playing Dungeons And Dragons table-top since the early 1980s, being an AD&D Dungeon Master for three decades, and also being a huge fan of the groundbreaking and wonderful Baldur's Gate PC games.

In RPG, you can't just say "my character suddenly obtains millions of gold coins from a Bank Account in an alternate dimension" and yet this is exactly what Buying Gil does.

In FFXI, your character starts out with nothing, just some level one pyjamas and an Adventurer's Coupon to obtain 50 Gil. Becoming rich took a lot of work, and sometimes luck, which is called RPG realism. Back in the original game, it also took ages to level up and to skill up, which again is RPG realism.

I always felt that it was wrong to make the acquisition of Gil, experience points, and skill-ups, so much faster, in recent years, because I felt that the original core FFXI's slow progress actually reflected the RPG realism of the hardships that an adventurer faces. Not everybody in life has the guts to be an adventurer, not everyone in life becomes a Master, and not everyone in life becomes a billionaire.

What I liked most about the original FFXI was the stratification, the structure, and the strict rules that made adventuring difficult from level one onwards. This added realism to the character's adventuring journey, it gave the character a history of overcoming obstacles and enduring hardships. This made the characters feel more rounded, more real.

There is nothing realistic about a character that sleepwalks AFK from level 1-99 and then uses sparks books to instantly skill up to Skill Master Status. Similarly there is nothing realistic about an RPG character that suddenly obtains millions of Gil from a Bank Account on planet Earth.

Realism is not about graphics. Realism is about atmosphere and lore, and emotional engagement, the fact that you believe in and relate to a RPG character. The NPCs and player characters in FFXI might look like toy soldiers and dolls, compared to new 2019 eye-candy games, but those FFXI NPCs and player characters exist in a world that has a lot of history and lore and memories, all of which create an atmosphere of realism and emotional engagement.

Being an adventurer is not for everybody. Adventuring is a hard life. This is why most NPCs chose to be shopkeepers and townspeople, instead of being adventurers. And if the hardship of adventuring is removed entirely, it is no longer an adventure.

[Mikah]

You can absolutely "suddenly obtain millions out of thin air"

Game Shark. Game Genie. Code breaker. Cheat Engine. Underflows. Programming errors. Glitches.

You can do it in D&D too, you just have to pass a roll check.

New mobs, do not give any kind of gil anymore. Anything created after adoulin gives zero gil on kill and cannot be mugged. And even old mobs aside from kings don't drop or mug more than a measly 15k ish.

[Alhanelem]

You can absolutely "suddenly obtain millions out of thin air"

Game Shark. Game Genie. Code breaker. Cheat Engine. Underflows. Programming errors. Glitches.

You can do it in D&D too, you just have to pass a roll check.

New mobs, do not give any kind of gil anymore. Anything created after adoulin gives zero gil on kill and cannot be mugged. And even old mobs aside from kings don't drop or mug more than a measly 15k ish.

Hacking/cheating devices are also breaking the rules, what's your point? It's not approved, if you used any of those things anything you did in the game would be discreded by any external source.

But even that's beside the point because in an offline/oldschool single player game, the only person affected by your cheating is you (unless you use a cheating device in a speedrun and try to pass it off as legit playing). This is all different from sanctioned, official helps included within a game. Those are considered to be within the rules, even if we don't like those features. That's a lot different than using game genie / action replay.


TL;DR yes the stuff you describe is a thing, but it's still cheating and it's still breaking the rules and it served no useful purpose for you to mention.


I'll just quote myself again:

Again: Using sanctioned ingame mechanics is different from breaking the rules with outside the game mechanics. I don't like those either, but it's not breaking the rules to use a built in feature of the game in a manner approved by the people who made it.