Selling Ultimate Weapon Ultima Is Apparently Not Against the ToS

[alimdia]

I think this is a morally grey area and what is morally acceptable or not will vary from person to person. To me the impact of merc runs is not the same as someone actually cheating or exploiting the game.

To me someone using an exploit to kill kefka under 1 minute or someone duplicating items falls within the unacceptable side. Gil farmed by hundreds of bots can destabilize the economy by introducing too much currency, and such falls under the unacceptable side.

As far as I know the people selling mercenary runs are clearing the content legit, no exploits involved, and there's no currency being generated so the market is unaffected, so why would I care if someone bought a clear?

Someone mentioned other forms of RMT. Player-sold gold = doesn't affect the economy if the gil was not botted, the gil generation is still within the limits expected by the devs. Account selling? No much different than those level up boosts, as long as no cheats were used to level them, who cares?

[Jijifli]

As far as I know the people selling mercenary runs are clearing the content legit, no exploits involved, and there's no currency being generated so the market is unaffected, so why would I care if someone bought a clear?

Forgive me if it's already fixed, but I'm pretty sure there's currently a way to glitch UWU to stand there and let you beat the boss to death. Square already knows and it's marked a critical bug, so no need to describe how.

But it could be possible they use this method, not to mention the already known fact they take control of your account. They already refuse to respond to any in game tells, so I wouldn't put it past these parties to abuse a game breaking glitch for the fight too.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Forgive me if it's already fixed, but I'm pretty sure there's currently a way to glitch UWU to stand there and let you beat the boss to death. Square already knows and it's marked a critical bug, so no need to describe how.

But it could be possible they use this method, not to mention the already known fact they take control of your account. They already refuse to respond to any in game tells, so I wouldn't put it past these parties to abuse a game breaking glitch for the fight too.

First and foremost, why would them ignoring tells be proof of exploiting content? I tend to ignore tells from strangers too, especially if they're aggressive or rude. If someone went out of their way to criticise them selling runs, what motivation do they have to respond?

As for taking advantage of this exploit, why? Elysium two WF statics have cleared UwU multiple times now. Why in the world would they risk their accounts using an exploit that provides very little advantage when SE will ban you for them as proven with Ungarmax? The exploit you're referring to is not remotely long enough that you could say, ignore a mechanic or have multiple deaths and still clear. Ultima eventually just ends the fight regardless.

[Sebazy]

Spin to win and other prior known exploits have been a very good way to get a ban. Bourne has this bang on. A lot of people got burned over Ungarmax, but people have learned their lesson over other bugs pretty much since Titan HM.

[Vnolan]

To me someone using an exploit to kill kefka under 1 minute falls within the unacceptable side.

Why? If they bought the clear, they still wouldn't have earned it and any exploit would be limited to the party.

Gil farmed by hundreds of bots can destabilize the economy by introducing too much currency, and such falls under the unacceptable side.

As far as I know there's no currency being generated so the market is unaffected, so why would I care if someone bought a clear?

There are buyers that pay with real money, buyers that pay with gil obtained through bots/RMT and buyers that pay with clean gil. If it was so easy to get the millions of gil needed through legit means, the sellers would be charging more than they already do.

when SE will ban you for them as proven with Ungarmax?

No one was permanently banned for using Ungarmax. If an account was permanently banned, that was because it already had some penalties.

Back to the topic:

May as well have gil sellers in party finder

"selling gil, contact discord for more info"

According to some in this topic, that should be allowed in the party finder. It doesn't say it's for real money and it could be in exchange for other services. If the GMs took it down, there would be no reason to not use the same discretion when dealing with the ads in the OP. If they didn't take it down, then that could allow gil selling for real money across the data center. Just goes to show how flawed the current system is.

[NephthysVasudan]

And where would these screenshots come from? The buyers themselves? A jilted team member of the static who did not get his share of the cut? A Jealous FC member? A special investigative GM who stalks a advertiser but likely lead to a dead end due to that advertiser being on a dummy account?

Their are just so many loop holes. In the end though yes, something can be done about all this, but gotta look at it from a Suits perspective. Would it make them more money in the end to justify the cost of man hours and personnel to dedicate to something small like this?

In the end, its all about the Moola.

Please bother to read my post in full before you ramble off.

[Anatha]

RMT of all kinds should be banned.

Y'all would throw a fit if SE sold clears in the mogstation. How is that different from you know who? At least SE wouldn't charge what was it? Almost a thousand dollars or something? I'd have to find the Reddit post.

Don't be a hypocrite. If you think it's ok for these people to sell clears, then it's ok for there to be week 2 instant raid clears for all content in mogstation.

End of effing story.

[alimdia]

Why? If they bought the clear, they still wouldn't have earned it and any exploit would be limited to the party.

The majority of DF players don't earn the clears they get in any content, you can beat Tsukuyomi being mostly dead and having other people carry you, the same could be said of pretty much any other dungeon where dps do less damage than tanks and healers do nothing but heal spam. Any unsync clear is not earned. Yet none of that matters, why? Because those clears are legit, and as far as we know so are ultimate/savage clears.

There are buyers that pay with real money, buyers that pay with gil obtained through bots/RMT and buyers that pay with clean gil. If it was so easy to get the millions of gil needed through legit means, the sellers would be charging more than they already do.

As far as paying with gil goes, the price is determined by how much people are willing to pay, undercutting happens even with selling clears. It's not up to content sellers to police how people are getting their gil before paying, just like you don't audit every person who uses the marketboard to make sure you're not getting "dirty" gil.

No one was permanently banned for using Ungarmax. If an account was permanently banned, that was because it already had some penalties.

Bourne never said permanently banned.

[Alleo]

I think this is a morally grey area and what is morally acceptable or not will vary from person to person. To me the impact of merc runs is not the same as someone actually cheating or exploiting the game.

To me someone using an exploit to kill kefka under 1 minute or someone duplicating items falls within the unacceptable side. Gil farmed by hundreds of bots can destabilize the economy by introducing too much currency, and such falls under the unacceptable side.

But the question remains, why is using an exploit worse? I mean that also does not destroy the experience of a person that cleared it the normal way, right? Also its not like those that sell those clears are not doing any of the other stuff you mentioned. We had some of them using cheats in PVP and talked about it and they are also selling PVP ranks with it (something which does affect people way more than more gil, since the top 100 have special limited mounts). There is also some talk that some of those are using gathering bots and one FC even owns a whole ward..

And who knows what some of them are still doing. In the end RMT is against the ToS. Selling a clear for money means that real money was traded. And for Ultimate you even have account sharing.

IMO SE should take a clear stance in this. If you dont want parser then punish everyone that uses it (especially if call outs make mechanics easier..)and if you dont do that you cant just turn around and punish some that are just talking about it in a random group without any attack. If you punish RMT then do it with every single RMT. Otherwise its just double standards.

[Tiaque]

Please bother to read my post in full before you ramble off.

I did young lady and again, loop holes in everything. Who would provide these screenshots? Where would they be obtained? And why would they even accept them if given? With today's technology, its very easy to manipulate and doctor up pictures, screenshots and such to the point that if I wanted to, I could accuse someone of RMT who is completely innocent, but I placed in a fake chat log and doctored it to the finest detail, that it will look completely authentic. If GM's accepted that from any person capable of doing something like that, you would have someone blatantly abusing his knowledge and skill into the creation of these fakes to get banned anyone who upsets him.

GMs state they will accept screenshots, even video proof, but video can also be manipulated, though, significantly harder to do. Thats why they wont ban right away even when provided "indisputable" evidence, unless they investigate themselves, or the source is from someone they fully trust, aka not any player, no matter who he/she is.

But in all honesty, our ingame and forum moderation team is not best in class. From a 1 to 10 scale, FFXIV's mods are a 4, due to several negative factors. While mods from certain other mmos, one Western, and one Korean that are popular right now, are 8 and 6 respectively. Ours does the best they can but they are tied down by SE of Japan's suits and what they say goes.

So pretty much, just gotta deal with it and put it out of mind, it wont change.