The Hyperinflation of 2010

[Dooom]

The effects that this has on my game-play are minimal to nonexistent, and therefor I could care less if the guy next to me just bought his way into an Armada Hauberk.

Had any friends get hacked by keyloggers or other such things?

[drwaffles]

@Waffles

You know I love you, but my parallels are perfectly logical. Behind the two paragraphs, your entire argument is based on the fact that you personally believe that the game becomes too easy when someone buys gil.

I'm not denying the parallels exist, I'm saying it's like equating speeding with mass murder. That's obviously an exaggeration, but you get my point. It's certainly a personal thing too, probably based on my experiences with people I've encountered in the past who've been able to buy everything they want without a lick of effort - stuff that I would've put to infinitely better use and am a hundred times more deserving of in the first place. It left a very bitter taste in my mouth. And I love you too, even if you do have dreams of ToS-sanctioned RMT.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Had any friends get hacked by keyloggers or other such things?

Because the gil market has changed drastically since the discovery of account-hacking, right?

[Bugpop]

I have to disagree strongly on buying gil being an ok thing to do, and I think it's wrong to draw parallels between that and, say, paying for FFXIApp (thereby indirectly increasing your gil-making capabilities), paying huge monthly subscription fees in order to garden on dozens of characters and so on. Why? Because doing either of those doesn't remove any and all challenge from the game when it comes to making gil. Being able to browse the internet for three hours instead of keeping your eyes glued to your FFXI window during NM camps or making gil by keeping up with fifty gardening mules across several accounts are in no way comparable to ordering tens of millions of gil off a website and thus creating a situation for yourself in which the only thing you need to do in-game in order to make as much gil as you like is to run to the pickup location.

Maybe it's simply me being idealistic, but I think that when people intertwine their real and online lives in such a fashion it's downright sad. It's not a case of jealousy - that argument's always been laughable; even if I was rolling in cash I wouldn't buy gil. Why would I want to remove all challenge and purpose from the game? Again, I expect parallels to be drawn between App or Windower, but to say that those two are in any way on the same level as acquiring up to a year's worth of gil with a virtual card swipe is ridiculous. I guess you could say I'm limiting this to only the big-time oil prince gilbuyers here, but on a smaller scale it's still the same idea - you're cheapening the game for yourself and everyone you associate with by doing it, far moreso than someone who bots or someone who uses fillmode to navigate Nyzul.

I'm tolerant of pretty much any shit people do in XI, but I'll never associate with gilbuyers.

Usage of third party programs are against the TOS
Purchasing virtual currency with real money is agains the TOS

Both are breach of contract and carry the same penalites. Neither are illegal.

[Tsuko_Asura]

@Waffles

I understand why you feel that way, but I'm pro-legal RMT, and at the same time, still the guy who deserves what the richer guy next to him is wearing. The two scenarios can intertwine.

[drwaffles]

Had any friends get hacked by keyloggers or other such things?

Thanks for reminding me, that's the other thing that makes me despise it so much. The fact that lazy so-and-sos are the reason that RMT have been targeting legitimate players and destroying their years hard work in the blink of an eye in order to keep up with demand, and feed someone else's apathy and greed. That might be a bit emotive, but it's true all the same.

[drwaffles]

Usage of third party programs are against the TOS
Purchasing virtual currency with real money is agains the TOS

Both are breach of contract and carry the same penalites. Neither are illegal.

Did you even read my post? Where did I bring legality into it?

[Tsuko_Asura]

Thanks for reminding me, that's the other thing that makes me despise it so much. The fact that lazy so-and-sos are the reason that RMT have been targeting legitimate players and destroying their years hard work in the blink of an eye in order to keep up with demand, and feed someone else's apathy and greed. That might be a bit emotive, but it's true all the same.

Its still just an easier means to what they've been doing the whole time. I don't really think its really all that fair to blame the consumer for the producer advancing their methods(so to speak), when its really not due to any real increase in demand.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Did you even read my post? Where did I bring legality into it?

Probably talking to Ringthree

[Thorny]

Point to consider:

Legal or illegal, RMT will happen. If legalized, SE can provide the service for the cheapest price as their cost is essentially 0(possible marketting/person giving out gil if system isn't automated). This will -destroy- the china-based companies as far as ffxi is concerned, and in all likelihood they'll disappear entirely. Sure, oil princes will still be flaunting their armadaberks, but the actual effect on the game would shrink drastically. I'm pro-legal-rmt without being pro-rmt.

[Bugpop]

Did you even read my post? Where did I bring legality into it?

It seemed you were making the argument that buying gil is more wrong than using third party applications.


Is it wrong to buy gil? no
Is it wrong to use third party applications? no

Neither are wrong in real life.

Buying gil and using third party applications are both against the TOS and carry the same punishment. Is buying gil or using 3rd party apps wrong in-game? Yes but only because it's against the TOS.

[evilpaul]

Need we go through this again.

Buy Gils is RMT
Sell Abjs is RMT
RMT is NOT OK

Everything Ringthree does, A-OKAY
If you stand by your principal so much, pop FF10 into your ps2 and interact with NPC's. That way, there's no cheating.

Boring-pointless trolling is boring-pointless.

[Dooom]

Because the gil market has changed drastically since the discovery of account-hacking, right?

I genuinely don't know whether it's changed or not, but for me, account-hacking has had a far bigger impact on my gameplay than anything else RMT have done before. Losing claim on an NM to RMT can be classed as "annoying" - losing a character is something far more serious (and SE's initial "head-in-the-sand" approach didn't help either, but that's another issue).

[Tsuko_Asura]

I understand, but that wasn't my point. The demand for gil as a whole really hasn't changed very much. The only reason RMT have resorted to hacking accounts is because its easier, which you really can't blame on the consumer.

[ringthree]

There is no law [in the US] that prohibits the exchange of legal tender for virtual goods.

There is a certain expectation in the game to have certain equipment by certain levels in order to be an effective player. Who are disliked more? People who buy their gil or people who are gimp?

There are laws in the US and Japan that control the use of copyrighted material, or further, profiting off of someone else's copyright without their consent.

Your generation may be OK with the idea of taking intellectual copyrighted material without permission, but that does not make it legal.

[Dooom]

Well, what else has SE left them? I've not seen an RMT exp party in years; never seen them hunting NMs or Sky like they used to; whenever I've seen them farming, it's been on an account I know the original owner sold, and I've not seen that for about 18 months or so. Fishbots, crafting bots? Perhaps my paths simply never cross with theirs, but I can't recall the last time I saw either such thing. Farming got shut down not so long ago. So, it really seems like hacking accounts is the only way for them to "make" the money to sell. One could argue that without demand this would never happen, but c'mon, an MMORPG without RMT? Never gonna happen. The best that can be hoped for is to control it.

[evilpaul]

SE could be suing RMT companies for using their artwork in their fucking web ads if they wanted to. They could be doing lots of anti-RMT stuff. Maybe even get rid of the constant fucking /tells from them for "great gil service 19.99!!!" every two minutes. By getting rid of the trial accounts that no legitimate person has ever used.

But they're SE, so they're working on FF14 instead.

[ringthree]

Point to consider:

Legal or illegal, RMT will happen. If legalized, SE can provide the service for the cheapest price as their cost is essentially 0(possible marketting/person giving out gil if system isn't automated). This will -destroy- the china-based companies as far as ffxi is concerned, and in all likelihood they'll disappear entirely. Sure, oil princes will still be flaunting their armadaberks, but the actual effect on the game would shrink drastically. I'm pro-legal-rmt without being pro-rmt.

Another point to consider:

SE doesn't want to do that. I wouldn't want to play that game, and I have a feeling that even most of the people that don't care about RMT wouldn't want to play that game either.

I would suggest that while Tsuko_Asura may accept that RMT is a fact of life, he would be opposed to it being in FFXI. I am just guessing here, so feel free to tell me to shove it if I am wrong.

SE engaging in alternative profit creation (I just coined that, woot) by selling items in-game really is completely their prerogative. They own the copyright and they can profit off of it how ever they wish. Some people thought the Tidal Talisman was not a good idea, some people thought it was. If SE wanted to sell gil in their own game it would be completely legitimate and legal, but you can make the personal judgment if you want to play the game under those conditions. Some people would, some people wouldn't.

[Kyreth]

Feel free to uninstall windower and plugins and start using SE's windowed mode based on principle then.

Some of us really can throw the first stone there, as we never did Windower, plugins, buy gil, etc.

(Me, at least.)

Also, I can point at another part of the hyperinflation scenario that doesn't exist now- RMT's and/or super-gil-rich players deliberately manipulating the market on items, selling as the wave pushed the price even higher from demand, then coming up with even more money by selling off what they'd stocked up pre-manipulation.

Watching people literally ramp the price on commodities 300% inside of an hour, buying shit at twice the price I was -at the same time-. I'd buy something for 2000G, they'd be buying the same thing for 6000G, over and over until my lower buys were off the lists, and then slowly start pushing the price up further.

By the next day, the same item was selling for nearly 10,000G. It hadn't been above 3000 the two months prior. Someone raked in the money on that one before the price crashed again after folks went nuts farming and dumping. Two weeks later, they did it all over again, and similar shit was happening on multiple tradeskill resources all over the AH, day in, day out. I figure the profits went to RMT's and someone made a few car payments playing the 2005-6 market.

[Kyreth]

Point to consider:

Legal or illegal, RMT will happen. If legalized, SE can provide the service for the cheapest price as their cost is essentially 0(possible marketting/person giving out gil if system isn't automated). This will -destroy- the china-based companies as far as ffxi is concerned, and in all likelihood they'll disappear entirely. Sure, oil princes will still be flaunting their armadaberks, but the actual effect on the game would shrink drastically. I'm pro-legal-rmt without being pro-rmt.

Of course, you then get microtransaction-based MMO's these days. Welcome to the two-tier system of play, where putting extra $$$ means you get the full game, and everyone else gets the "basic" system of jack shit.

Legal "RMT" just fucks over the majority of the playerbase. I'm all for the STFU folks continuing into FFXIV and beyond.