Put an end to online gil-sellers! Sign the petition!

[Braanu]

Originally posted by LawDawg
wheres this misconception that making gil is fun and challenging? Farming takes no skill at all. If you say "oh, finding the best farming place takes skill!" ... um not really. Maybe a brain, but not skill. And it is not fun... farming is the most pointless and boring part of this entire game. NM hunting? Yeah I suppose one of the only aspects that takes skill. Being able to control the emporer or lizzy is pretty impressive, but mashing a macro is not. Running around killing enemies that are way weaker than you = patience, not skill. If you want a game that takes SKILL, play a FPS... FFXI isn't about skill at all. Thats why so many "n00bs" can make it to level 75 and have plenty of money.

You are wrong on so many many levels. Wont even waste my time...

[Arkadya]

Originally posted by Braanu
1) You cannot have done everything in FFXI. I dont care who you are. I doubt even any JP players have done everything in FFXI yet with any of their characters, even one with 75 in all jobs that they stopped playing probably doesnt have EVERYTHING done yet.

2) About your quote in bold about quitting and selling your account. Maybe you wouldnt want to quit and move on to another game if you wouldnt have cheated and bought the gil to get anything you ever wanted, you'd still have some desire in the game.

People who buy gil are SOONER to quit in my opinion because they ruin the game and the fun and the challenge for themselves. Plus, they ARENT HAPPY WITH THE GAME to begin with which is why they had to resort to buying gil.

Sorry, but I dont buy the excuse that buying gil helps people to play longer. Try again.

1. I didn't say I've done everything, I said I've done everything I care to do. There is nothing left for me to do in this game except finish the story, and it isn't good enough to warrant slogging through the last 15 levels. Dynamis and HNM's are bullshit, I got enough of that crap in Everquest. It wasn't fun then, it isn't fun now.

2. I have never bought gil. I have spent months farming my ass off for the 4 millon or so gil that I have in equipment. I am an unemployed college student, I don't have a limited playtime like everyone else in my shell does. Rest assured though that if I had a job, I would more than likely buy gil.

I am quitting because the high end game is the same bullshit as everquest, only with the much needed bonus of racism thrown into the mix. I've already been to every zone in the game except tu'lia ones. Not like it takes anything special to do that either. Just sneak and invis will get you everywhere cept tu'lia. I've already farmed up every high end piece of gear my monk can wear except a peacock charm or scorpion harness, and I really really don't feel like farming that much gil. The only fun high end content are the various BCNM's and avatar fights, and those aren't really high end content. And once I'm out of seals, that's that. Should I spend the rest of my days just levelling up character after character and doing avatar fights?

[LawDawg]

Originally posted by Braanu
You are wrong on so many many levels. Wont even waste my time...

anyone who thinks making money in FFXI takes "skill" has never played a REAL skill based game. I'm sorry, but hitting a macro as fast as possible doesn't take skill. Locating and killing an enemy that is 20 times weaker than you doesn't take skill. Crafting takes no skill, gardening takes no skill, mining takes no skill, chocobo digging takes no skill, money making BCNM take no skill, AH manipulation takes no skill, teleporting takes no skill, lets see, what else? The only 2 money making ways that takes skill is:

1) Controlling a wide area spawn NM
2) HNM (only some) and soloing HNM

But i guess if you only have 1/2 a brain, you might consider farming "oh so tough!"

[Legionnaire]

Originally posted by Braanu
You are wrong on so many many levels. Wont even waste my time...

I find it funny that when anybody who doesn't agree that "gil-buying is EVIL", actually makes a point and a valid arguement, it gets ignored completely.

Oh and I looked at that petition. Only 300 people have signed it. That's 1/10th of a single server. (A small server at that.) You really think that will make a big difference with 500,000+ other players who don't care enough to sign it? Heh there are probably just as many gil-sellers on the servers as the people who signed the petition.

[Arkadya]

Originally posted by Legionnaire
I find it funny that when anybody who doesn't agree that "gil-buying is EVIL", actually makes a point and a valid arguement, it gets ignored completely.

Oh and I looked at that petition. Only 300 people have signed it. That's 1/10th of a single server. (A small server at that.) You really think that will make a big difference with 500,000+ other players who don't care enough to sign it? Heh there are probably just as many gil-sellers on the servers as the people who signed the petition.

The way people on these boards talk, that's the same amount of people as there are gil sellers on ech server. 6 man teams camping kote, the 2 in delfkutts, the team in zi tah, and the 60 or so fishbots in rabao. Then there are the AH bots, the bots who permacamp argus and stroper chyme, emperor hairpin bots, lizzy bots, bot fishers on the coastlines of the sarutas, bots camping hoo, bots that screw up other bots, teleport bots, bots that can run up and down passhow farming, and even bots that stand around in lower jeuno offering handjobs for 20 gil

[Faust]

I have yet to hear a single VALID argument in favor for gil selling/buying and breaking ToS. There aren't any. The only things I hear are lame excuses. There's a ToS backing up our argument.

As far as the petition's concerned, it's still new. So far it's grown pretty quick too. Keeping in mind that this board is only a small percentage of the people that play FFXI, so far it isn't bad. Once word gets out I'd think there'd be a lot more signatures to yet be added. At least someone went through the trouble of making the petition and people, even if it's just signing your name to it, are doing something. It's a shot and it can't hurt.

[Xyphere]

I like how many of the people here posting arent even LV50

Personally I see nothing wrong with buying gil, though I wouldnt do it. If people wanna spend money on this game, let them. Some people dont have time to farm due to real life responsibilites and BFs/GFs.

[Legionnaire]

Originally posted by Faust
I have yet to hear a single VALID argument in favor for gil selling/buying and breaking ToS. There aren't any. The only things I hear are lame excuses. There's a ToS backing up our argument.

As far as the petition's concerned, it's still new. So far it's grown pretty quick too. Keeping in mind that this board is only a small percentage of the people that play FFXI, so far it isn't bad. Once word gets out I'd think there'd be a lot more signatures to yet be added. At least someone went through the trouble of making the petition and people, even if it's just signing your name to it, are doing something. It's a shot and it can't hurt.

Considering this petition is on every major FFXI forum on the net, it's not much. VNBoards, Allakhazam, KillingIfrit, and FFXIOnline.

I would like to know your definition of "VALID". And again, that ToS backing you up is just a lame excuse. That ToS is just to keep S-E guilt free if some idiot loses everything in an illegal transaction. If they actually cared about what was going on they would be doing something about it, like what Sony did to keep EQ items off Ebay. Anyway let's try one more "lame excuse" and see if people might understand. This has actually happened to me and people I know.

Spending weeks farming for a single item is rough. But I did it, 400k for a Sniper Ring. I was happy I finally got the ring I worked so hard for, considering the fact I don't have 5+ hours to play everyday. Later a friend I know, and our linkshell leader, asks to borrow said ring. This is a person I've known for a while in-game and completely trust. I give it to him, and then he disappears. Here I am 400k in the hole, all because of a person I thought I trusted. I didn't see the point in farming for 4-5 more weeks for an item I already "earned". (You must realize in the time all this happened the ring price jumped up 200k) GMs can't give me the gil back because it was my fault for trusting someone I've known for almost a year. I really REALLY considered buying gil to get back the item I worked so hard for, but I didn't. I just stopped playing all together.

Had I bought the gil I may still be playing like I used to, pretending as if it were the actual Sniper Ring I had previously earned. But after I thought about it, I just don't see the point in this game anymore. The racism, the elitism, and the people who are so close minded that they have no sense of compassion, and just worry about their own happiness in the game... it's just not worth it to come back.

[Arkadya]

Your ToS iarguement is akin to relying on the satanic bible to prove the existence of God. Utterly ridiculous. Are you going to sit here and tell me you've never ever broken a law?

As to your online petition actually meaning shit, it doesn't. If you think this is the first m morpg peition ever placed into existance, you're wrong. Druid petition for fixes that didn't come, the requisite gil sellers are teh evil petition. EQ monks didnt make a petition though. They organized a mass cancellation. Guess who got their changes implemented? Wasn't druids.

I'm going to restate this, because it is indisputable truth. This is not something you can argue with. For some reason all you anti gil sellers seemed to gloss over it and head right for the opinion.

Square Enix does not care if you are happy or not. All SE cares about is your money every month. Happiness is not a pre-requisite for continued subscription to MMORPG'S. Signing petitions without action behind them solves nothing.

One last thing regarding ToS. It will not hold up in court. EQ tried to ban the sale of plat and characters. The courts found that the EULA was not a legally binding docuement.

[Fullmetal]

I bought gil online and now my Dynamis weapon is fully upgraded. Thank you China!

[Scatman]

Originally posted by Faust
I have yet to hear a single VALID argument in favor for gil selling/buying and breaking ToS. There aren't any. The only things I hear are lame excuses. There's a ToS backing up our argument.

Um that's because no one who's attempted to make an argument is really heavily in favor of gil selling/buying. When someone counters a ridiculous claim made about the impact of gil trading on the game, it doesn't mean they're supporting it. They're just saying, it's useless and pointless to keep making threads and petitions about it. That's all. I see more apathy than support for the trading. Obviously in an ideal world, no one would be breaking the ToS, no one would be playing dirty, and everyone would just get along, but life ain't ideal, so we'll just have to live with it.

Besides on the other hand, I haven't really heard any valid arguments AGAINST gil trading either. Yes, there's the ToS, but the generic act of "violating a ToS" alone is not particularly any concern of ours. Some other reasons I've heard, are that the gil-sellers make farming more difficult, and cause prices to rise, and I can see the impact this may have on other players, but it is my opinion that most of you are linking two completely unrelated events together.

The first notion is that gil-sellers destroy farming. That is nonsense. If you guys truly believe that a few dragoons and whms with underlevelled subs can wipe out an area for other players, we would have faced over-crowding ages ago. They're only a handful of extra competition that is around above average, but I would hardly say they can take over all the farming grounds in the game. Annoying? Probably. Game-breaking? Hell no.

I also heard posted on numerous occasions, that a group of gil-sellers running bots can corner a market for a particular NM's drop, and force the price up. Logic check people. Since when do bots and gil-sellers have a direct correlation? Regular players and LS's can do the same thing just out of greed, assuming such bots are even reliable enough to theoretically nab every single spawn (and personally I think that's a load of BS as well, but hey, maybe they do exist). Get your issues straight please.

Another commonly posted "issue" is that those who buy gil, force prices up, because they suddenly have a large supply of gil they did not work for. Go to a store, and buy a can of coke for $10, and watch if the price magically rises to $10 the next day because you were stupid enough to offer that amount. It won't. And before anyone says "But this is FFXI, it's different from the real world!", economics is based largely on human psychology, so the guiding principles remain, whether in a virtual world or the real one. A very good example on the elasticity of the FFXI economy, is the whole padded cap "abuse". Yes, people have generated an awful lot of gil by doing this, but has anyone noticed the price of light crystals lately? More and more people are tempted by the potential profit of crafting padded caps, so they "enter the market". This creates excess demand for light crystals, causing the price to rise. Now according to some of you, we can force any item up in price, simply by overpaying. Go buy a stack of water crystals for 5k, and watch the impact of your little statement. One person won't change a thing. Now get all your friends to also buy them up for 5k. Once again, no impact. Now what happens if say your friends bought up ALL the crystals available for 5k? Then every Joe, Mac and Harry will go, "Holy crap, water crystals sell for 5k! Time to go farm water crystals!", and suddenly, the price will collapse right back down again.

The rarer items will behave similarly to the last case. Even if several gil buyers manage to push the price up, it is only a temporary disturbance. It's not like they'll keep coming back to buy the same item over and over: eventually the price will return to its regular equilibrium state. Blaming the rise in price for items like Vassago's and sniper rings on gil-buyers is ignorant. 6 months ago how many people were able to use Vassago's and sniper rings? Now how many are there? Yeah, a lot more. 6 months ago, Earth crystals were a whopping 150-300 gil a stack. Why? Tons of new players selling them by the dozens. Now they're up to 600-1k. Why? I believe it's due to the demand for insect paste for all the fishermen (and fisherbots for that matter), and the up and coming cooks. The economy is a lot more fluid than a lot of you are making it out to be. It constantly shifts according to trends of the majority, not the few who buy gil. They only cause small ripples that quickly subside.

It just seems to me that most of those who are vehemently against gil trading, are categorizing and looking for an identifiable source to blame. It's like those people in first-person shooters who blame their bad scores on hax and/or lag. It's much easier to blame a group of people violating the ToS, than it is to accept the presense of legitimate competition and admit to saying, "I wish there was no competition here at all, be it a legit player or a gil-seller", and it's also easy to over-exaggerate some minor annoyance into a supposed game-wide issue. IE the guy who said he makes 500k an outing...well, even if S-E banned all gil-sellers, don't you think maybe every other player also wants to make that much money? If you make profit, there will be competition, and your profits will fall.

No, I don't buy gil, and I dislike the practice of it, but I don't really care if someone wants to be an idiot and spend their real money on virtual items, or if some underpaid laborer in some foreign country is toiling to keep the gil flowing. Repeat after me: "It's only a game...".

[Circlezero]

I dont see a reason to ban this, I mean the only reason people have to buy gil with real money is because SHIT ON THIS GAME IS SO FUCKING GODDAMN EXPENSIVE! If anything, tell these bastards at Square to lower the prices on everything at the merchants so people dont have to farm for hours, craft for hours, or whatever the case may be. That sounds like a better solution to me, but of course Im probably just some stupid noob.

[little ninja]

actually some of us do have real lives outside of the game. i do work 50+ hours a week. take care of odd jobs around my own home, an manage to go out with friends, an my g/f. an i managed to buy ubber gear for my drk, my war, an now my nin. without going online an buying gil. so spare me that route.


if S.E did lower prices on items, an raised the drop rates on rare items. you lose an aspect of the game. crafting would be useless, as well as farming. so that is good they keep shit expensive, an drop rates low...


what is boils down to is some people have put up with the bullshit of the gil sweatshop workers, while the other half hasnt. theres nothing like farming an having them tell me in JAPanese. "sorry but i am told to do this," as he brang a wave of mobs at me then d/c. i have never been in an area to farm all by myself. there is always competition. thats what i like about it. but the differnce is they never trained mobs on me.


take it as you will. if tos means jack shit. head to jeuno an start preaching religon. an see how fast a gm takes you to jail an has a talk with you.

if tos means jack. shit sit in lower jeuno an use the auto translator to say nasty/ dirty things then spam it, then see how fast a gm puts you in jail. an has a talk with you.

if tos means jack shit. go farm an when you lose a mob. tell the other player you will find where he lives an blow up his house. an see how fast your suspended.

if S.E AN GMS want to inforce parts of the " toilet paper called tos". then shouldnt the other parts of tos also be inforced.

[Arkadya]

Except... that's all they ever do is talk. The only people I've ever seen banned for breaking ToS are people who spend months doing the same thing. Nobody ever gets banned easily, that's less money for SE. Oh no, a mostly powerless GM will give me a stern talking to if one day I decide to act an ass.

[Outaru]

All of you make valid points however I fear that dude is coming back with, uhmm ahh it violates the ToS, cry me a river dude.