Mercenary runs on Hyperion or other servers.

I don't understand why people dislike it so much? Don't want to pay? Then don't pay. Enjoy wiping on titan 100+ times. Valuable lesson in life and business; if you're good at something, don't do it for free. When you start helping for free, you start having moochers who start to leech off of you and your generosity and then a cycle begins where they bring in a friend; then a friend of a friend; and then a friend of a friend of a friend, and so on.

Before you know it, you have 30+ people asking you to help them with Titan, not just any type of help. 100% 7 man help while that person dies in the first 2 minutes of the fight. If I'm supporting someone that hard, I'm going to charge them and eliminate the moochers who want everything done for free. You give a stray cat food and it will return to your doorstep expecting more free food; after a while, that cat will wander around and the scent of food on the cat will attract many more around him/her.

For those thinking it's a banable offense, I want to direct you to the ToS. Also, to prove a point. Why is there an option to pay people to meld your materia? You're paying for a service that you can't do yourself. If you could, you wouldn't pay at all. I've had 6-7 people send me private tells saying "I reported you" and "You're going to be banned". I laughed, but the fact is these people think that paying for a service is illegal. Gil buying/selling is illegal and always will be.

I hope mercenary runs become more tolerated as they have been going on since the beginning of MMO's.

Although you have defended your stance quite well there are several major problems that stem from mercing.
1. Players get gear from content they are unable to clear. This in turn makes them more geared which gets them into even higher tiers of content which they not surprisingly will not have the skill to progress through. It's a huge headache to run groups where you get player like this that are geared enough to participate only to find they are terrible at their job/class.
2. Depending on the type of mercing it can create easy revenue streams for RMT.
3. It takes away from the sense of accomplishment players get from clearing content when they know any old Joe they meet with the same gear could have very well just payed his way to getting it.
4. Trade skills are meant to be diversified, players are not meant to master master all trade skills and the economy is designed that players make what they can and trade for anything else. Dungeons were not designed as part of this process, players are meant to progress through dungeon tiers naturally so as to avoid the problems of point 1.

As veveaucent stated you defended your stance quite well and I do agree with you, personally the only thing I dislike about mercs is just the fact that Money Bags McSucksatgame gets to buy his way into all the high end stuff which devalues the sense of accomplishment for everyone else.

For example if I get destroyed by Titan 100 times then beat him and think to myself HELLZ YEAH I WON AWESOME! Then Moneybags over there pays for it, gets it done in one try then proceeds to go lolwhatever. It sucks ya know?

But again people can just run their friends and so on and so forth so it really isn't all that different, I think the only thing is when people run their friends you don't see it in shout where as mercs you see "welp some rich loser is about to get stuff, damn"

Okay I touched on a few different things and probably wasn't the most cohearant so all in all, Keep on being a merc everyone's gotta make money somehow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by veveaucent

Although you have defended your stance quite well there are several major problems that stem from mercing.
1. Players get gear from content they are unable to clear. This in turn makes them more geared which gets them into even higher tiers of content which they not surprisingly will not have the skill to progress through. It's a huge headache to run groups where you get player like this that are geared enough to participate only to find they are terrible at their job/class.
2. Depending on the type of mercing it can create easy revenue streams for RMT.
3. It takes away from the sense of accomplishment players get from clearing content when they know any old Joe they meet with the same gear could have very well just payed his way to getting it.
4. Trade skills are meant to be diversified, players are not meant to master master all trade skills and the economy is designed that players make what they can and trade for anything else. Dungeons were not designed as part of this process, players are meant to progress through dungeon tiers naturally so as to avoid the problems of point 1.

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I think you have some good points, but I would also disagree with a few things.

1. I think this is somewhat true, but not always the case. Sometimes, in the case of Titan (lets be honest, whenever people talk about Mercing, they are likely talking about Titan...), a decent player can just be in some rough circumstances. If your FC isn't up to 50 and you're stuck doing shout groups, then you could very well be a solid player who still can't kill Titan. So, while I understand the concept you present, I think it's a bit of an over-generalization.

2. This is true. That said, I don't really want SE to start limiting what players can do simply to prevent RMT, as a matter of principle.

3. I'm not sure I agree with this. I mean, I guess it could make someone feel less special knowing that other people can get the same thing a different way, but I'm not really sure it's justified. Someone else's accomplishments really shouldn't impact how you feel about your own. If you're struggle to beat Titan and eventually you get him down, some other guy just paying for it doesn't diminish the fact that you worked hard for it.

4. I'm not sure I understand this point either. Players still need to progress through everything in order (Story > Ifrit > Garuda > Titan > Binding Coil). Also, people have been selling runs through difficult content for decades in many different MMOs. I can't imagine Square Enix wouldn't have known that this phenomenon would happen in their game as well. I also don't follow how tradeskills are involved, but there are some people who do get to 50 on every job, including crafters, and just gather/make whatever they want.

I haven't paid for a Titan run, although I probably would at this point. I'm kind of stuck in the position I described in response to point 1, where my FC is made up of a number of RL friends who just aren't level 50 yet and aren't geared. I'm not willing to ditch them just to kill Titan and get a relic weapon, but I've also been slamming my face into a bunch of shout groups where we die over and over even if I don't make a single mistake (which is often the case). I've got the rotation memorized, I've parsed my own DPS and know is up to snuff, and I know how to dodge each and ever mechanic, but I'm still stuck. =(

It all depends on what your goal is, but still there isn't much to gain from buying a Titan win. You may complete a relic weapon but then what?

Work on another relic? You'll need to do Titan again so you're back to square one. Either pay again, do pickups, or join a group that can consistently clear Titan.

Pay for BCoB wins or join pickups? Might as well join a FC already doing BCoB. In which case they'll probably expect you to be able to clear Titan without being carried.

If people want to pay for content clears then that's their prerogative.

Soon Titan will be yesterdays news and this will probably go with him. Yolo, thug life, all that jazz.