selling wins

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Considering that it's against the ToS to give your account credentials to anyone, the people buying these clears for real money are sabotaging themselves if the raiders decided to take the money and flee.

Very rarely does this happen. Sells are all about reputation and repeat customers. You only do yourself a disservice by stealing money since your name will get passed around and near universally black-listed. And considering most sell groups are apart of large FCs, the last thing they want is the reputation of associating with someone who steals since that will make potential buyers wary. Basically, it's not worth being an asshole.

There's no way only 1% of raiders do this. That's never how stuff like this works.

Look at parsers.

You do realize you're comparing a free tool which displays damage numbers and calls out mechanics with buying content clears for hundreds of dollars; over a thousand if it's Ultimate, yes? Making this comparison really does show you have very little idea of how the raid scene works. The amount of people willing to spend the money asked will always be staggeringly small. If sells were frequent, you wouldn't see groups slash their prices from $1,200 to less than $600 in a matter of weeks. In fact, as Penthea said, you wouldn't see $1,200 prices period. Once a market becomes saturated, its value sharply declines. Look no further than the in-game Market Board itself. All that crafted battle gear used to cost a fortune for several weeks since crafting it took absurdly high stats and dedication. Those prices have long since plummeted due to crafting being significantly easier in Stormblood.

[Sebazy]

Very rarely does this happen. Sells are all about reputation and repeat customers.

This

I wound up being one of the regular healers for a particular sales team on my server (again, only ever for gil). Reputation was absolutely everything, we had very strict rules both in conduct and in ability too. If someone couldn't do the kills cleanly and consistently, they wouldn't stay in the team for long. Multiple wipes were a disaster in our eyes. Running off with someone's gil was absolutely unthinkable and would have ended us as a team right there.

A fun side note to the reputation thing. Back in 2.0 my FC even went as far as doing various PR stunts on Titan including having a WHM tank and Bikini armour. Fun times =(

[Penthea]

Making this comparison really does show you have very little idea of how the raid scene works.

I think it's safe to say that person has little to no contact with the raid community. They talk as if RMT is very commonplace among raiders and tries to compare using a free damage meter to buying a boss kill for several hundred dollars. It seems they have this idea that most raiders are a lawless breed of players with no moral compass.

At this point I wonder if they're even playing the same game as the rest of us.

[RiyahArp]

You do realize you're comparing a free tool which displays damage numbers and calls out mechanics with buying content clears for hundreds of dollars; over a thousand if it's Ultimate, yes? .

The point of the comparison was how attitudes of a playerbase can change from "it's against TOS" to "we're ok with it." It's not trying to compare the two in harm; the way player attitudes change about something is that it starts top down. There's a certain saturation point when it becomes unable to be contained, and that varies based on a lot of things. But the point is that it's never really a only 1% issue; the 1% filters down.

Even if people do report advertisements in PF, literally nothing will happen because SE's own policies prevent them from enforcing anything. You could sit with PF open for an entire week, reporting the same few people with advertisements where it's obvious real money is being traded and nothing will happen to those players. In fact, I reported someone on my server who is a known bot, and very obviously brought his bot alts into Eureka. Still botting away. SE does nothing. That contributes to general apathy on the subject

This isn't "SE will do nothing." Way, way too many raiders here don't see any harm in doing it at all. This is the difference. If you're angry at SE that's cool, they deserve the blame. But please, be angry at the sellers too. Nothing is forcing sellers to sell runs in this game; they choose to do it for their own gain. there's no ethical need to sell clears in this game.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The point of the comparison was how attitudes of a playerbase can change from "it's against TOS" to "we're ok with it." It's not trying to compare the two in harm; the way player attitudes change about something is that it starts top down.

That attitude changes because initial perceptions of what ACT did were inaccurate. Regardless, people may have more indifference towards selling runs, but it will never become widespread. Unlike parsers, you need both players with enough skill to consistently kill Savage and Ultimate content, and a large enough pool of people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on it. You simply aren't going to see thousands of people spending that kind of money on clears, especially in a game where gear becomes irrelevant every six months.

[RiyahArp]

Unlike parsers, you need both players with enough skill to consistently kill Savage and Ultimate content, and a large enough pool of people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on it.

Not that innaccurate, considering how people use triggers. I'm wondering if the recent change to show ability names in pvp is a result of people using act triggers or a similar program to what they used with titan's gaols in ultimate. There's also the big grey area that exists in general due to parsers as a gateway to client modification culture; nude mods, reshade, dat hacking ability names, etc.

As for the selling..Bourne, you know you are an advocate of the game stepping up its difficulty some in general, being perceived as being too easy. That easiness in part helps keep selling runs down, because there's not any point where required content is too hard for players to beat, or too time consuming. Mercing in general would be a direct response to the things you want implemented in game, and its important that the culture isn't primed or too willing to deal with it. And with rl money there's a big incentive to get people to do it.

[Endeleon]

Not that innaccurate, considering how people use triggers. I'm wondering if the recent change to show ability names in pvp is a result of people using act triggers or a similar program to what they used with titan's gaols in ultimate. There's also the big grey area that exists in general due to parsers as a gateway to client modification culture; nude mods, reshade, dat hacking ability names, etc.

I've mostly agreed with you, but how in the world is reshade at all like the other programs? All it does is add color filters.

[RiyahArp]

I've mostly agreed with you, but how in the world is reshade at all like the other programs? All it does is add color filters.

i was just thinking of examples of all the kinds of third party stuff. Benign stuff gets people used to the idea of modding the client overall. You can strike that one from the list if it bugs you, my point is more there's a pretty big gray zone of stuff on top of benign uses.

I'm not really a fan of mod culture in general though, thats a bias. I kind of associate it with knockoff culture; back in the arcade days, they had "modded" version of games like SF2, so its a lot earlier than you think.

[Sebazy]

There's also the big grey area that exists in general due to parsers as a gateway to client modification culture; nude mods, reshade, dat hacking ability names, etc.

Thanks Obama

[Endeleon]

Thanks Obama

????

Great comeback!