Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

[Kailea]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Nah I was stating my opinions for the most part... I can't stand camping NMs, it drives me nuts. I have never considered camping the Minstrel's Coat myself, simply because I can't stand playing bard overall, it's just too passive of a job for me. And I still don't really agree Tir, because even if the "gilsellers" weren't doing it, it still drops sirens hair, so someone else would still be down there anyway. So ultimately, one way or another someone is gonna be camping it to sell the item.

I don't like camping anything, personally. To me it's a waste of time. To sit in some place for 2-5 to have a chance at killing something that has a chance of dropping an item... {Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass.}

If I want an item, I'm just going to go farm beehive chips or sell teleports in lower jeuno...

sad you think that way, Gilsellers do screw everyone else over.....they are unneeded compition to already over camped NMs, and they screw with the AH over chargeing most of the time.......yeah it can be blamed on the players for buying them, but the main blame should be on the sellers.......

[Atma]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Ok, I'm done playing devil's advocate now.

Over the last few weeks, after watching the debates, I have thought long and hard about the issue. Just be aware that I don't side with the gilsellers, as yes, I am well aware that many of them hack, exploit, and cheat to get thier stock of product to sell. I have just come to be of the opinion that the practice really affects my play experience in such a negligable way that I have a hard time understanding why people get so riled up about it.

I dunno, maybe I just play the game differently, considering I don't ever really camp anything and prefer to make my money by buying low and selling high on the AH. Ah well, to each his or her own.

[Caspian]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

I don't camp nm's simply because I can make the money to buy the item faster than the odds are that I'll both get claim and get the drop. I still have my fair share of run-ins with gilsellers though. Try mining in Gusgen sometime. They're everywhere! I can't run 3 feet in any direction w/o tripping over one of those little tarus. What makes it worse is their general lack of manners (currently being discussed in another thread so I won't get into it here.). They may price hike certain items, but they are responsible for maintaining a constant supply of darksteel ingots on the AH and many times undercut me just to get theirs to sell.
I don't like them, at all. Some of them use hacks, some try to MPK, and for the most part, they're rude. Personally, I think most of the major price inflation you see is due to greedy normal players and gilbuyers with gil coming out their ears and a burning hole in their pocket. Now, w/o gilsellers you have no gilbuyers and a lot of these problems don't exist, so its easy to put the blame on them in that sense. Mainly though, its the fact that they're easily identifiable compared to gilbuyers (assuming they keep their mouth shut) and that they get away with breaking the ToS everyday that gets the general population so riled up and spitting mad.

[Tirrock]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

A normal player would at least be much more willing to give somebody a rare/ex item if they had no use for it. And without gilsellers, there isn't always "somebody else" camping items. I've walked into ordelles to see morbolger up and nobody around to camp him. Gilsellers don't touch it any more because archer's rings moved.

Let's just assume there always is another player camping every NM worth money in the game. Gilsellers just add onto that number. It goes from two or three people camping the NM to three to nine... Then you get all those normal players who just want the item and would leave if they got it, but now they have to camp even longer because gilsellers are getting the NMs...

Gilsellers certainly effect my exp too. I love it when they kill robber crabs in kuftal at the amemet camp... It was even better before the MPK patch, where people kept dying from the massive trains of crabs/haunts they'd cause. Or even the inflation they caused during christmas. Yeah, the inflation at this rate is inevitable... But there's a difference between a subtle change in the amount of gil available on a server and a sudden change with many items hitting 4 or 5 times it's price a month prior.

One last thing gilsellers do: Provide those stupid level 60+s that have no idea what they're doing. Yay for bought accounts. ._. They certainly hurt exp when you get stuck in a party with one...

I just think it's silly to say that gilsellers don't effect players in any way.

[Nazo]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

I think part of the problem with inflation is that the economy is pretty much entirely player controlled, if SE introduced some more baselines then they could restrict what an item is 'worth'.

Take Scorpion Harness for example. acc + 10, eva + 10. Now let's introduce armour for same lvl / jobs sold by an NPC with say, acc + 8, eva + 8 for 1 mil. SH is still going to be desirable because it's better but people aren't going to pay that much more for it because it's not that much better. You also have a gil sink taking cash out of the economy and a happier player base because they can still get decent armour even if it isn't the greatest.

I'm probably missing something here, as a whm the only really expensive thing I've had to buy is erase so I don't really follow these things too carefully, but I don't understand why SE chose to make the AH and NMs the only place where you can buy good gear.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Atma, a little off topic here but did you play EQ before coming to FFXI and which server if so? I seem to recall back in 2003 you posting on a thread about warrior balance and you claiming you were sick of those same nerf screaming debates back in EQ.

[Moaku Hyena]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

I'm probably missing something here, as a whm the only really expensive thing I've had to buy is erase so I don't really follow these things too carefully, but I don't understand why SE chose to make the AH and NMs the only place where you can buy good gear.

Yeah, and Raise III/ Reraise III jacked up to 10 million (literaly 1000x the previous cost!!), but it shot back down to 1k. Erase lingers at 500k.

Let's just assume there always is another player camping every NM worth money in the game. Gilsellers just add onto that number. It goes from two or three people camping the NM to three to nine... Then you get all those normal players who just want the item and would leave if they got it, but now they have to camp even longer because gilsellers are getting the NMs...

Gilsellers certainly effect my exp too. I love it when they kill robber crabs in kuftal at the amemet camp... It was even better before the MPK patch, where people kept dying from the massive trains of crabs/haunts they'd cause. Or even the inflation they caused during christmas. Yeah, the inflation at this rate is inevitable... But there's a difference between a subtle change in the amount of gil available on a server and a sudden change with many items hitting 4 or 5 times it's price a month prior.

One last thing gilsellers do: Provide those stupid level 60+s that have no idea what they're doing. Yay for bought accounts. ._. They certainly hurt exp when you get stuck in a party with one...

Lesee. Coffer hunting alliance of mine was MPKed by a lot of mobs in Garlaige Citadel over the idea that we were camping Serket. That's EXP lost for me! I fear that they'll be MPKing us in Tu'Lia during Trigger Runs. X_x;

Way of MPK is to use NM's, as they won't despawn.

I've noticed our Tarutaru BLM and SMN have been leveling through Yhoator Jungle for a while. I've taken Woodland Sage and Bisque-Heeled Sunberry from their respective places, and dropped them onto their parties.

MPK is still do-able. Just more difficult.

Not that I'm a serial MPKer or anything.

You can also MPK with normal mobs using Call for Help. It happened with us in Tu'Lia when we wiped to a bunch of Aura Pots, CFHed, and he didn't despawn, but stood there for like two minutes and was back at full health.

[Sokarr]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Well it's either put up with the annoying anti-RMT measures or make Air Jordans in a sweat shop.

Which would you choose?

[Vyuru]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Which is basically the point I was making with that statement. Whether it's a gilseller or a standard player, every NM is going to be camped, whether it is someone legitimately looking for the item, or someone looking to get it to sell to buy something else. And while I will certainly admit there's a higher amount of cheating and third party programs amongst that group of people, there's plenty of that going around in the standard playerbase. All you have to do is watch people at king behemoth and you better believe that sooner or later someone's head is gonna start spinning around like they're on a bad crack binge for a few seconds.

I mean, just look at the evidence.. Leaping lizard - drops a rare/ex item. still basically camped round the clock. Emperor, camped round the clock. Argus... well, camped every once around the clock or so There's no profit in any of these items save having it for your character, and there's still enough people who need it to make 'em camped basically all the time.

Part of the problem with the Emperor and Leapin' Lizzy is that so many people have the normal versions of the items, they want to get the rare/ex items and sell the normal ones, so using those for an example isn't exactly a good example, a better one might be Ose, or Mystic maker Proflix. I know at least all dragoons want an assualt jerkin, and all the ninjas in my LS want one as well. Mystic maker Proflix, all black mages and a number of red mages want that earring, and neither of these are camped anywhere near the degree of Leapin' Lizzy and the Emperor.

But yes, you are right that there will probably always be campers camping the NM, there is at least a very good chance of it, since on the Unicorn server, there are typically 3,000 people online at any one time, and I think that the most I have seen online is 5,300.

However, gil sellers are VERY different from normal campers, even the ones who don't bot. Take for example the gil sellers in Ordelle's Caves, camping the stroper chyme. They are there 24/7, camping the mob nonstop. They are there for so long that they have the respawn timers down, and they know where he is likely to pop. If competition shows up, they would sleep him, or have the blm use poison II and then skill up his hand to hand, and there was nothing we, the players, could do about it. SE then adds more stroper chymes to the cave, now the gil sellers can not hold the chyme, and have to kill it. Even so, it is damn hard to get the claim. A normal player typically will not stay there for more than 3 hours trying to get the stroper chyme, the gil sellers are there 24/7, really now, who controls the market, and the price of archer's rings? I guess that should have been past-tense, no one camps the stroper chyme anymore really.

Another example, would be Moodcn and Resegirl camping the Morion worm, they would pop it, then if there was ANY competition, they would keep it spawned, and slept, and just sit there with it. Again, at the time there was nothing the players could do because it was Moodcn's and Resegirl's mob. From my experiance, a normal camper will not do that, they want to kill the mob and move on, they want the gil for some item/crafting spree/you name it. The gil sellers want control of the market, you have to buy from them at their prices or you don't get jack squat from 'em.

I have just come to be of the opinion that the practice really affects my play experience in such a negligable way that I have a hard time understanding why people get so riled up about it.

Out of curiousity, have you really thought about how they affect your play experiance? This is common knowledge, but let's look at the gil selling/buying cycle, however I'm going long term with it.

Gil sellers(most often) control most of the market for item X

Player wants item X but is unable to effciently compete in camping for item X, so he decides to buy gil. He buys gil, which was most likely obtained by the gil sellers for camping item X for so long, and buys item X. He gives them both real world money, and he stands a very good chance of just having given them back the gil he bought from them.

Fast forward a ways now, it is more common for people to buy gil, thereby increasing the number of people buying items that they would have otherwise been unable to afford, be it not enough time to play, or not willing to spend the time farming for it, or whatever. This creates an artificially high price for MANY of the highly sought after items. Take the scorpion harness for example, last I saw a long time ago (pre christmas inflation) it was selling for about 10 million gil, 10 million, now lets think on this a bit shall we? There are 3 HNM scorpions that drop the Vclaw, 1 KSBCNM, and 2 gods who are commonly farmed for the kirin pop items drop this claw, that is a possible 6 Vclaws/day that can be obtained. 6 Vclaws/day, and the SH is mainly used by ninjas, dragoons, monks, and thiefs, which make up let's say about, I dunno, 1/5 of the player base maybe? And that's mostly because of the ninjas.

Now let's look at the Haubergeon, I don't know all the ways the items are obtained, but there are alot more ways to get damascus ingots/damacene cloth than there are to get Vclaws, BUT, the haubergeon is worn mostly by warriors, dark knights, samurai, some beast masters, and some ninjas, which make up about 1/3 to 1/2 the player base, yet THIS item was only 3 million when the SH was 10 mil, and this item has a ton more beneficial stats on it.

Bah, and I had a great point I was trying to make but now I forgot it >.>

Still can't remember, but I think where I was going with this is that the prices for these items, the SH in particular, would go down VERY fast if people were not buying gil. The amount of these items that are created would not change, but suddenly the money supply would shrink, more people would not be able to afford these items, while more of these items are being made.

So yes, these gil sellers are affecting you, whether you know it or not. They are making alot of the gear more expensive, they are influencing the crafting markets, very often if my party is exping in a zone wih alot of gil sellers camping something, they will interfere with my exp party, lvl 75 blm sleeping kuftal tunnel robber crabs comes to mind, as does the old days of the gigas/slime/bat/spider trains that Moodcn and Resegirl used to do. I cannot safely complete the paladin quest, because everytime I have tried to I have been met by massive orc trains led by the same character each and every time. Once or twice I can understand and put that up to bad luck, but 6 times? All led by the same character? The very same character who trained orcs down on the Archer's knife NM spawn area?

Then there are the gil buyers, who say that they don't have time to farm for the good gear, that their time is better spent buying the gil so that they can play and not neglet their children, neglect (insert whatever excuse here), or that they just want to have fun and not spend their time farming, my response for those players:

My mother has been bed ridden since I was 7 (I am 22 now btw) I have been taking care of her for 15 YEARS, she is so weak and sick that many times I have to hold her glass of water so that she can drink from it. I do most of the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, I take care of the animals (we live on a small farm) I do the yard work, I try to manage the garden as best as I can, I am a full time college student, and I still have time to farm for the nice gear (nothing like the SH, no, but Enky bracelets, valk mask, etc) If I can do it while playing FFXI 3 hours/week, you can do it too, do NOT give me the lame, "I play 7 hours/week and don't have time to farm" excuse. To be honest I am more disgusted with the gil buyers than the gil sellers. The gil buyers are supporting the gil sellers, if it weren't for the buyers the sellers would have nothing to sell, let's see how long they stick around then.

And my personal beef with the gil sellers, they were the reason my best friend on this game quit. Kalmiera helped me to unlock my dragoon job (which is my passion and one of the main reasons I started playing FFXI so I could be a dragoon) by killing the dragon while I hid She was one of the only two people who I was comfortable role playing with, we used to do practically everything together, she was my red mage idol, I took up red mage after she quit in order to honor her, and I strive to be as good a red mage as she was. She quit because of harrasement by the gil sellers, and because SE was not, and still is not as far as I can tell, enforcing their own terms of service. To be perfectly honest, because of that, I want blood, in particular I want Moodcn's and Resegirl's blood, I will never forgive them for what they and the other ilk like them have done, and I will never support gil selling in any way. And I am sorry, but there is just no rationalizing what these people are doing, I don't care if they are from China, I don't care if they are dirt poor, there is no excuse for treating other people the way I see the gil sellers treating everyone else.

Note: My video card is going out, so there might be spelling errors in there that I can't really see.

Ah, second note: I am not a Kain fanboy, actually, I never even heard of Kain until I started playing FFXI and ran into some other dragoons, I am a FFT Lancer/FFIX Freya fanboy

[Rodin]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Wow, that comment was a little harsh, Sokarr. You know, not all Chinese people have to work in sweat shops. The majority of Chinese people actually live as sustinance farmers. Which means they grow crops that they live off of. Not to mention that china has 329 million farmers, which is considered just about one half of it's total working population. Please do some reasearch before you post things like that again.

[Ryouken]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Well it's either put up with the annoying anti-RMT measures or make Air Jordans in a sweat shop.

Which would you choose?

Dude... harsh

Like Rodin said, Chinese ppl DO NOT have only one option of either being a money farmer in MMORPG's or work in sweat shops. Believe it or not, many Chinese ppl can have regular jobs just like Americans (maybe not as good as pay or benefits, but jobs nonetheless).

Regardless of whether gilselling/buying affects us regular players, the fact remains that gilselling is WRONG. It gives lazy players a means to make lots of money without effort and then use it to take good gear and items away from players who actually earn their gil (not to mention take mining/logging points away, causing MPK's, and of course camping NM's constantly), end of story...

[Aeolus]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Well it's either put up with the annoying anti-RMT measures or make Air Jordans in a sweat shop.

Which would you choose?

What an educated comment.... ignorance is bliss.

[Vyuru]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

I would also like to point out that there are many other ways for the gil sellers to obtain gil, that would actually help the other players of this game. FFXI is incredibly group oriented, what if the gil sellers were, instead of hunting NMs and the like, helping people? Pay them X amount of gil, and they will take you through the promies, rank missions, zilart missions, and maybe power level your party for X amount of gil/hour or whatever.

People who have a hard time getting their linkshell to do these will be able to progress through the game's storyline much easier, and one could argue that the gil sellers were helping the player base as much as they were hurting it. But no, they don't, they harass normal players, and make things harder than they should be, so why should we have to put up with them?

[Ryouken]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

I would also like to point out that there are many other ways for the gil sellers to obtain gil, that would actually help the other players of this game. FFXI is incredibly group oriented, what if the gil sellers were, instead of hunting NMs and the like, helping people? Pay them X amount of gil, and they will take you through the promies, rank missions, zilart missions, and maybe power level your party for X amount of gil/hour or whatever.

People who have a hard time getting their linkshell to do these will be able to progress through the game's storyline much easier, and one could argue that the gil sellers were helping the player base as much as they were hurting it. But no, they don't, they harass normal players, and make things harder than they should be, so why should we have to put up with them?

That's a good idea, but there is still the risk that ppl will abuse it

Let me put it this way, if a newb were to acquire gil and pay the former gilseller to PL him, then it could risk the creation of a high lvl newb with no PT experience. Basically the result would be a cheap means for ppl to gain easy exp without actually "earning" it (sure they would pay with their own gil, but the end doesn't justify the means).

The whole point of this game is to work as a community, not bribe other players to do your work for you...

[Oogami]

Re: Oh my god. Will they (The Gilsellers) EVER give up?

Nazo:

Introducing a "lower tier" uber-gear would work, only if people stop being elitist.
This is not so much of a problem with the average mage, but if you see the Melee DD forums in other places like *cough* Alla *cough*, there are many people out there who would call you a gimp if you do not have a SH or a Hauby.

For example, Jaridah Peti gives +5 Acc and +5 Att. It only has 5 less Acc than a SH. And these people puts the pressure on other players by labelling them gimp just for the lack of +5 Acc, at level 60, when 5 Acc is only like a difference of 1.5%.

Jaridah Peti = 500k. SH = 8mill. 7.5 mill for a 1.5% boost in Acc? Too rich for my taste.

Another example: It takes me approx. 1 month to earn 1 mill gil, and as I sell consumables, I really depend on high volume sales. Now, people (especially gilseller crafters who basically do nothing else but craft, and can monitor prices better than people like us who actually have to log off) undercut not only to sell faster, but to drive out competitors. E.g. recently, 1 stack of acid bolt bundles, that takes roughly 30 synths to make, dropped from 100k to 72k in 1 week, wiping off 28k profit per AH slot, and my time to wait for them to sell.

I am now aiming for a pair of Spiked Finger gauntlets, which had gone up from 1.5 mill to 2.2 mill in just 2 weeks. As it took me 2 months to generate 2 mill, I am hoping for the price to drop again (looking good, last sale was at 1.8 mill). Most people who had bought gil would just have paid the 2.2 mill.

Gilsellers and gilbuyers (to me they are one entity, one cannot really exist without the other) affect me in 3 ways so far:
1. Gilseller crafters are reducing the rate I earn gil more effectively than normal crafters could.
2. Gilbuyers are reducing my buying power by spending gil recklessly.
3. The fact that new players have all these uber gear is raising the expectation of other people. (If you regularly parties with melee DD's in SH/Hauby, Snipers ringx2 etc etc, you can't help feeling 'meh' when you get one with Brigandine, Venerer ring and Sun ring <me>. Even after I have upgraded to Jaridah Peti! )

One poster has said it before, gilsellers and gilbuyers affect the game more by altering how fast gil moves in it, rather than the actual amount. 1 million gil moving 100 times a day have equivalent effect as 100 million moving once.