Has anyone else seen these "Selling Runs" in PF with a Discord advertised?

[supergiz]

I'm used to seeing people selling runs for gil in game since I started playing FFXIV, and as far as I'm aware it's not against the ToS.

Something I've started to see popping up is people advertising selling runs in the party finder but in the description they have something akin to "contact on Discord at (discord name) if interested" or "for pricing reach out on Discord at (Discord name).

This seems like a way to get any communication off of in game chat and a way of selling runs for IRL money. Am I off base here or is that what people are doing?

---

Also think it's super shady to sell runs for in game gil for way more than any (even rich crafter) would pay. Seems like some of these people are doing it knowing that the only people who will do it are getting their gil through RMT.

[Alaray]

Yeah, they're selling runs for money.

Technically against ToS, but if there's no in-game evidence SE doesn't action it. At least, that's the last position I recall them holding with regards to things occurring outside of their game.

[Neoyoshi]

Anything remotely having the stench of RMT is a cause for concern. D:

[Alestorm]

It's more commonly seen when the new savage/EX primal fights come out. I find it funny when genuinely bad player have UWU weapons and they are really bad at the class because they bought their clears. "A fool and his money are soon parted ways" comes to mind with this sort of thing.

I'm surprised SE doesn't block people from posting Discord channels from PF. Granted it wouldn't stop it.

[NekoNova]

You;re only doing yourself a disservice if you rely on these kind of things.

[Hasrat]

I think you're the only one seeing that. Must be a virus.

[Nyxn607]

Personally I think it is a horrible idea to pay someone real life money to get something so arbitrary as a game title/weapon. However, people will do as they please, if they found a work around good for them I guess?

[LalaRu]

It is rmt. Only reason they get away with it, is not being explicit but a discord for contact = real money to pay.
Only way to get rid of them is the same as any rmt "service": don't buy.

[KageTokage]

It's a pity SE isn't more aggressive about pursuing parties attempting to take advantage of their game for profit.

[Eriane_Elis]

It's a pity SE isn't more aggressive about pursuing parties attempting to take advantage of their game for profit.

I don't know how they can be more aggressive other than banning. I mean, RMT are probably running a dozen games at a time on VMs and all with random IP addresses. If they were forced to be locked into a singe ipv6 address, it would be easier to ban but ipv4 isn't so easy. I don't think SE has a policy to ban by IP but by account, so they just keep creating new ones.

They probably could have a bot that has some sort of ML algorithm that figures out what most likely sounds like RMT and auto-reports but you see how quickly bots create accounts and in numbers. I see like 4-6 bots running to the same spot at the same time (if they're running, sometimes they are just appearing/disappearing).

Which brings up another point, SE doesn't check to see where characters are from point A to B and make a logical assessment that they might be a bot. You can fall through the floor sometimes, but you fall through the floor. Bots just move themselves from x1, y1 to x300, y200 instantly, sometimes out of bounds.

There is also another important thing that SE isn't doing which they should consider and it's a anti-cheat engine. I don't know how well they work but instead of relying on server resources to know if the player is attempting fraudulent things, have a client application do it instead. I know sometimes they cause false-positives. BUT, this game isn't free to play and cheating in the game is only cheating yourself. It affects no one else unless you're running market / gathering bots which do exist. So the reasoning on why they may have not included this is probably because it might cause more problems than it solves.