Does this constitute cheating or is it against the TOS?

@OP: you can report, but doubt anything will happen to that person or that "Union" crap

Even on my back-water server, mb price fixing and crashing is very common practice. You see people tracking others and crashing their markets on purpose to drive them out. The mistake here that the Union is making is sending threatening tells. That's harassment and is reportable. The other stuff, as long as no tells are sent, SE won't lift a finger.

eta: Over on the DoH sub-forum, people have begged for the crafters' names to be removed from items on the mb. SE has said no. Phew! Took me a bit to find it; the post was actually in Gen. Discussion:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...42#post2197042
And having seen someone chased on the mb, I am VERY disappointed by this response. :/

Dont sound too bad to me. In fact this is an interesting idea, if not good. Undercutters suck! Theyre the Walmart of MMO's! I always thought there should be some regulation on the AH, like a minimum value for items. Having a free market is great in RL because there is a certain value on time and a necessary minimum living income over time spent on resources and manufacturing. Not so in MMO's where we are all just playing a game and while there is an interest in making profits, there is also interest in just getting rid of it for more than vendor change (undercutters). I do this myself to a degree, buying from the next guy up from the jerk who obviously put the item up for 5g less than the next guy.

Of course it can also be a double edged sword where this "cartel" can monopolize the market and charge whatever they want.

As for the tell, im not sure if its harassment or recruiting. I like how theyre seemingly fighting undercutters in the form of a union but it can also be interpreted as "join us and we'll protect you from ourselves."

What is wrong with these people. IT'S FAKE MONEY.

Are they gonna set your personal room on fire if you don't comply? lmao. If they keep bothering you report them for harassment.

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Originally Posted by Moqi

What is wrong with these people. IT'S FAKE MONEY.

Are they gonna set your personal room on fire if you don't comply? lmao. If they keep bothering you report them for harassment.

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Worse, they'll waste your time.

Blacklist, report, and move on. Keep doing what your doing :) have fun and enjoy the game.

If making gil is your only enjoyment, then have fun killing their market :) since they will be shooting themselves in the foot by killing "your" market.

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Originally Posted by Sadana

Worse, they'll waste your time.

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Backlist and report! You don't wanna hang with those silly rabbits anyway.

Report them and also, mess with their Union by undercutting them. If all of them decide to undercut you, they're going to have a lot of people losing gil, just make sure to undercut them by 1g. :D

Looks like they are trying a veiled attempt at PR: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ters-out-there

"Hey, 'dere. Dat's an awfully nice Leatherworker's Bench ya got there. It'd be a shame if something, er, 'unexpected-like' were to happen teh it - if ya catch my drift."

I have 1.3 million gil on Adamantoise, I am willing to use all of it to self-fund a quest in which the intrepid adventurer must dismantle the evil cartel posing as a Union. ONLY TO FIND OUT I'M THE LEADER OF IT!!! OH MEH GERDD!!!

Historically, the temptation to cheat collusion is extremely high - probably the only thing you need to do to topple one of these things would be to plant the idea in 5-6 of their member's heads that they could make more money by cheating the collusion.

I've had a player threaten a price war with me due to an undercut, wasn't even an undercut I set some hq books at the price the rest were at.
Nothing ever came of it, but worrying about an entire cartel tho, unless it's just them trying to scare you "oh look I'm in a big gang now do as I say"

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Originally Posted by Kayo

Dont sound too bad to me. In fact this is an interesting idea, if not good. Undercutters suck! Theyre the Walmart of MMO's! I always thought there should be some regulation on the AH, like a minimum value for items. Having a free market is great in RL because there is a certain value on time and a necessary minimum living income over time spent on resources and manufacturing. Not so in MMO's where we are all just playing a game and while there is an interest in making profits, there is also interest in just getting rid of it for more than vendor change (undercutters). I do this myself to a degree, buying from the next guy up from the jerk who obviously put the item up for 5g less than the next guy.

Of course it can also be a double edged sword where this "cartel" can monopolize the market and charge whatever they want.

As for the tell, im not sure if its harassment or recruiting. I like how theyre seemingly fighting undercutters in the form of a union but it can also be interpreted as "join us and we'll protect you from ourselves."

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They threatened OP to undercut him out of the market if he didn't join them, it's harassment.

I think this is awesome. The leatherworking mafia is attacking! Nggghh

i would check the lodestone an see how big is ls really is. i'm betting money that they dont have enough members to seriously control the markets, especially since they use extortion tactics to get new members. do you really think alot of people would agree to that, or would they say screw that guy an go lower their price just to mess with him? lol but ya the gm will prolly tell you that it was harassment an he'll look into it, an that if he does it again let him know. As some others have already said u might want to change your retainers name to something else. And if they do continue to mess with you on the boards, 2 can play at that game, you can start undercutting wars on purpose too.

/baseballbat
/kneecaps

You're gonna find a chocobo head in your grand company utility cot.

creating a crafting 'union' (read: racket) isn't illegal at all. If players want to get together and establish prices, corner markets and try to make lots of money together so be it. buttttttttttt bullying you into complying with their sales practices, thats not ok. So feel free to report for harassment

I really want to know what items these guys are crafting since they're on my server haha

According to the ToS harassment is:

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•The use of language that is generally considered unacceptable in a public venue
•Any language that is purposely meant to harm or harass a third party
•Any language that promotes the discrimination of any race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or gender

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Now I would consider it harassment due to the fact of the middle one "any language meant to harm or harass" seeing that the person told you in tells:

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“It is in your best interest that you join our union and stop undercutting, or we will make sure no one outside our union, makes gil on the ltw markets.”

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I'm sorry, but that is a blatant threat, which is harassment. But I would also consider the next part which is "Inappropriate Behavior" which states:

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Disturbances that do not fall under the harassment category but are intended to prevent or hinder game play for others are considered inappropriate. Examples of inappropriate behavior are spam, gridlocking, and scam. FINAL FANTASY XIV respect individual player’s unique play style.

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By trying to force you into this 'union', they are not only disrespecting you unique way of play, but hindering your game play and rights as a paying player. If you go out and farm the skins, make it and put it up, you should not be held down by another players rules of how many skins you can put up at what prices per day. If you want to fill up 20 posts on your retainer, it is your right.

In all honesty, if I agree or not with this practice, they can do as they like and if that is what they want to do. I don't think SE could have told them to stop. But when they threatened/harassed/disrespected your rights as a player, that was when they stepped over the line and that (in my mind) made it something that a GM can now look into and maybe put a stop to.

I would hate to see this spread to my server too.

Sounds like they are harassing you & trying to bully you. So, the harassment specifically action is against the terms of service. I so want them to come to my server & try this. I'll set whatever price i want & they won't be able to do a thing about it. /blacklist /report

Love the responses from you guys. Still waiting on GM response. Usually I receive one by now. Maybe they're actually investigating. I was selling some LTW items. I think going after these people will solve nothing, but reporting them hopefully will.

It's almost like they are an Online mafia. except they can't silently kill you and make sure your body will never be found.

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Originally Posted by JamieNeima

I would hate to see this spread to my server too.

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I'd actually like to see it spread to Leviathan. 30mil+ and looking for something to do with it. ****ing with a monopoly and "union" of this nature would be absolutely dreamy.

aw dang some net gangstas up in yo virtual grill wat u gon do son

I think it's really not a big deal.

Why?

It has no teeth.

If they post 500 of something on the Market at 999Gil, and I post 50 at 799Gil what are they going to do exactly?

- They can't remove my market listing. (SE isn't going to do squat about it)
- They can't directly harass me into removing the listing. (Blacklisting works)
- They can't indirectly shame me into removing the listing. ("Hey, someone in your FC is listing things below our prices!", "That's nice, tell me why I should care?")
- They can have their LS members not buy my things, but with how many players are on the server should I really care? I don't think so.

It feels like a tempest in a teacup.

Someone is trying to organize and be a petty dictator. But in truth the emperor has no clothes on.

I list things on my server for what I find to be fair. Wolfram ingots selling for 80k a pop? Let me put up 15 at once for 50k a pop and see the market deflate like it should. They are around 30k due to my listings and I'm damn proud of that.

Forget these cartel people, I'm gonna find their markets and ruin them.

Free market is free. They (the ls) can organize to put in items at the price they want.
And at same time, you too can put your items at the price you want. 1 Gil is legit as 1,000,000.

Asking other players to not do things, and threating of consequences, is called harassment and is well handled in TOS and by GMs, just report to them if this happens.