Raid selling

...I'd like to talk about raid selling and the effect it has on the raiding community. As stated on a previous thread (now deleted - thanks mods), I believe that although raid selling isn't technically against the ToS, it does harm the raiding community, by making it harder to tell at a glance who is competent and who is going to be dead weight. The result of this is that PUG raid leaders have to increase their requirements to ridiculous levels in order to be guaranteed to get half decent players. This has the knock-on effect that a lot of players who are competent can't join the raids because they don't meet the extremely high requirements, and the raid leaders have fewer and fewer people they can bring in for their raids.

Now a lot of you will probably say something along the lines of "just join a raiding guild" etc, but the problem with that is that a lot of newer players want to try out raiding first, to see if it takes their fancy before joining a guild, and a lot of guilds require previous raiding experience before they let you join. In this scenario, the only option is to join a PUG, but they can't do that because they lack the requirements for it. This again has the effect of reducing the number of able raiders for raiding guilds to recruit. Really, I can't see anyone who benefits in the long run to selling raids.

So, my question to you is, do you think that Raid Selling is a good thing for the community, or a bad thing?

P.S. To any mods that read this, please for the love of Kormir if you believe this thread is unacceptable, just lock it and give us a reason rather than deleting it without notice and pretending like it never existed. Thanks.

First, your title is terrible, the tone in your thread also isn't very constructive and attacking the mods of a forum is not a very good idea. You can easily remove those parts and keep the rest of your thread as is, without consequences.

As for the topic, Raid Selling is not a good thing for the community, but I don't think there is anything they can do to "fix" this.

In this scenario, the only option is to join a PUG

Their option is to join a training run, not a random PUG.

@maddoctor.2738 said:First, your title is terrible, the tone in your thread also isn't very constructive and attacking the mods of a forum is not a very good idea. You can easily remove those parts and keep the rest of your thread as is, without consequences.

As for the topic, Raid Selling is not a good thing for the community, but I don't think there is anything they can do to "fix" this.

In this scenario, the only option is to join a PUG

I'm not expecting Anet to "fix" anything. This is a problem for the community to sort out, not the devs.

This is a place to discuss topics such as this one. There is nothing wrong with asking for people's opinions on how raid selling should be treated. The topic itself was not the reason why the first thread got deleted. Not even close. The OP tried to shame a certain guild for doing it. Something that is not allowed on these forums. You are supposed to report them instead. No matter what they did. Nothing more to it than that.Pick a proper title such as "Let's discuss raid selling and it's effect on the community". Be constructive and allow different opinions. You are as free to have your own as they are. Refrain from insulting people like the other guy did and you have nothing to worry about here.

This is good place to discuss such topics, don't worry OP. However, consider changing thread title to make it clear what it's about :)

I think instance selling and especially raid selling is harmful for the content itself. Dungeons, fractals - whatever. However raids are targeted as prestigue content for selected group of people. Allowing raid selling is devaluating raid content and its players.

However I don't think it should be solved by rules as players will find walkarounds (look at goldselling). I think raid desing should be made this way, that lowmanning is not possible so that players can't carry anyone and only 100% dedicated groups can complete bosses :)

On the other hand, if Anet is okay with selling instances, they should allow pvp and wvw wintrading aswell, there's no difference :)

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is good place to discuss such topics, don't worry OP. However, consider changing thread title to make it clear what it's about :)

I think instance selling and especially raid selling is harmful for the content itself. Dungeons, fractals - whatever. However raids are targeted as prestigue content for selected group of people. Allowing raid selling is devaluating raid content and its players.

However I don't think it should be solved by rules as players will find walkarounds (look at goldselling). I think raid desing should be made this way, that lowmanning is not possible so that players can't carry anyone and only 100% dedicated groups can complete bosses :)

On the other hand, if Anet is okay with selling instances, they should allow pvp and wvw wintrading aswell, there's no difference :)

Well yes, upping the difficulty of the content so that every person on the team has to contribute would stop raid selling. However, given the stste of the community right now this would only exacerbate the situation of extremely high player-enforced requirements to get into raiding.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is good place to discuss such topics, don't worry OP. However, consider changing thread title to make it clear what it's about :)

I think instance selling and especially raid selling is harmful for the content itself. Dungeons, fractals - whatever. However raids are targeted as prestigue content for selected group of people. Allowing raid selling is devaluating raid content and its players.

However I don't think it should be solved by rules as players will find walkarounds (look at goldselling). I think raid desing should be made this way, that lowmanning is not possible so that players can't carry anyone and only 100% dedicated groups can complete bosses :)

On the other hand, if Anet is okay with selling instances, they should allow pvp and wvw wintrading aswell, there's no difference :)

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is good place to discuss such topics, don't worry OP. However, consider changing thread title to make it clear what it's about :)

I think instance selling and especially raid selling is harmful for the content itself. Dungeons, fractals - whatever. However raids are targeted as prestigue content for selected group of people. Allowing raid selling is devaluating raid content and its players.

However I don't think it should be solved by rules as players will find walkarounds (look at goldselling). I think raid desing should be made this way, that lowmanning is not possible so that players can't carry anyone and only 100% dedicated groups can complete bosses :)

On the other hand, if Anet is okay with selling instances, they should allow pvp and wvw wintrading aswell, there's no difference :)

Wintrading has nothing to do with selling raids.

@Chris McSwag.4683 said:

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is good place to discuss such topics, don't worry OP. However, consider changing thread title to make it clear what it's about :)

I think instance selling and especially raid selling is harmful for the content itself. Dungeons, fractals - whatever. However raids are targeted as prestigue content for selected group of people. Allowing raid selling is devaluating raid content and its players.

However I don't think it should be solved by rules as players will find walkarounds (look at goldselling). I think raid desing should be made this way, that lowmanning is not possible so that players can't carry anyone and only 100% dedicated groups can complete bosses :)

On the other hand, if Anet is okay with selling instances, they should allow pvp and wvw wintrading aswell, there's no difference :)

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is good place to discuss such topics, don't worry OP. However, consider changing thread title to make it clear what it's about :)

I think instance selling and especially raid selling is harmful for the content itself. Dungeons, fractals - whatever. However raids are targeted as prestigue content for selected group of people. Allowing raid selling is devaluating raid content and its players.

However I don't think it should be solved by rules as players will find walkarounds (look at goldselling). I think raid desing should be made this way, that lowmanning is not possible so that players can't carry anyone and only 100% dedicated groups can complete bosses :)

On the other hand, if Anet is okay with selling instances, they should allow pvp and wvw wintrading aswell, there's no difference :)

Win trading is somewhat similar in that it allows people to get an achievement or progression from doing very little work, but I would argue that win trading is worse than raid selling.

A more accurate comparison would be to pay 4 others to carry you in pvp(which isn’t the same as win trading). Raid selling has no victim, unless you count faking experience when joining groups. Given the amount of ppl that use chat codes or completely suck regardless, I’d argue that raid selling has very small impact on the success rate of pugs.

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Win trading is somewhat similar in that it allows people to get an achievement or progression from doing very little work, but I would argue that win trading is worse than raid selling.

Win trading at high tiers is very visible and hurts the leaderboards and pvp divisions. Also, higher divisions mean higher reward in-take (more pips) while selling Raids is a one-time deal/benefit. There is no leaderboard, nor division ranking in Raids. There is also no competition in Raids that is affected by Raid selling, while win trading actively affects competition. Finally, win trading affects the gameplay of players that are unaware of it, one person intentionally hurting their own team, while Raid selling doesn't really affect anyone in a direct way.

So win trading and raid selling are really fundamentally different.

People who buy raids aren't interested in doing the actual raid(95% of the time), they just want the rewards/AP/Titles/Skins/Legendary armor without having to invest time into them, chances are they will never touch raids again after the buy whatever they need

@Snipoukos.4912 said:People who buy raids aren't interested in doing the actual raid(95% of the time), they just want the rewards/AP/Titles/Skins/Legendary armor without having to invest time into them, chances are they will never touch raids again after the buy whatever they need

Sometimes yes, but other times you might get someone who buys a raid spot thinking all they want is the achievement but then do the raid and think "this is great, I want to do more of this". Then you get the situation of someone who has been carried thinking they know how to raid and throwing themselves into the PUGs with no clue what they are getting into.

I think its great. I bought my first Matt kill because I was impatient, got to join the team speak, and talk to all the experienced raiders, learned a bunch of helpful tips, now I full clear weekly and have on occasion gotten to sell as well. Additionally it provides casual players a mean of obtaining difficult goals. Too casual to beat a raid? Grind some gold, and buy it. Selling raids is one of the best manifestations of the, 'play how you want' philosophy.

Although I will say, it would be cool if we could instead make and sell legendary armor just like we sell core legendary weapons. One of my favorite ways to make money is map completeion -> sell legendaries. Raiding to make and sell armor would be great.

High LI requirements are not a result of buyers/sellers lol, they are the result of the fact that experienced raiders have a lot of LI.

@thrag.9740 said:I think its great. I bought my first Matt kill because I was impatient, got to join the team speak, and talk to all the experienced raiders, learned a bunch of helpful tips, now I full clear weekly and have on occasion gotten to sell as well. Additionally it provides casual players a mean of obtaining difficult goals. Too casual to beat a raid? Grind some gold, and buy it. Selling raids is one of the best manifestations of the, 'play how you want' philosophy.

Although I will say, it would be cool if we could instead make and sell legendary armor just like we sell core legendary weapons. One of my favorite ways to make money is map completeion -> sell legendaries. Raiding to make and sell armor would be great.

High LI requirements are not a result of buyers/sellers lol, they are the result of the fact that experienced raiders have a lot of LI.

Sounds like it was more of a training run that you paid for, than a raid boost. Did they fully explain the boss tactics to you when you did it? I will say that that kind of thing is definitely beneficial, as opposed to the selling runs where you are literally given no information or training at all by the people selling the raid. if you come away from the raid having learned something and improved, I am all for it.

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@thrag.9740 said:I think its great. I bought my first Matt kill because I was impatient, got to join the team speak, and talk to all the experienced raiders, learned a bunch of helpful tips, now I full clear weekly and have on occasion gotten to sell as well. Additionally it provides casual players a mean of obtaining difficult goals. Too casual to beat a raid? Grind some gold, and buy it. Selling raids is one of the best manifestations of the, 'play how you want' philosophy.

Although I will say, it would be cool if we could instead make and sell legendary armor just like we sell core legendary weapons. One of my favorite ways to make money is map completeion -> sell legendaries. Raiding to make and sell armor would be great.

High LI requirements are not a result of buyers/sellers lol, they are the result of the fact that experienced raiders have a lot of LI.

They explained a lot, yeah. I had read guides and pugged it for a few hours, so I knew the boss's attacks, but I was definitely unaware of a few helpful practices. FIrst off, they targeted whoever was Matthias hadoken target, I was not aware at that time that the target is the same player for the whole fight (unless killed). They also emphasized that healers needed to be escorting corruptions out of the group, at the time I only played power ps, so I had no idea about healers. But I usually commanded my own pugs, so I was able to forward that information to players. They also ran a heal ele (which I was unfamiliar with at the time).

Whole thing cost me about 150 gold I think, I'm sure prices are lower now. But I had no complaints about the deal. I got helpful knowledge, and I got my Matthias staff a week or so earlier (while also finishing envoy 1 collection). That envoy 1 armor would then become my minstrel chronos set which was extremely expensive at the time, so it felt like it paid for itself lol.

It´s indeed a massive trap for the raiding community.With the selling of raids, the credibility and prestige of raiders goes out of the window. I had not thought about the idea that raid buyers would actually try to pug stuff on their own in the aftermath, but it makes me wonder how potential raiders view someone who has probably zero idea of what he is doing has probably reached more and in a much shorter time than people who cling on their accolades just because he opened his wallet.Without selling, you have to resort to train enough people so that they are good enough for PuGs at least. If you don´t do that, entitled or elitist behaviour is implied.

Thank you for that line of thought, OP.

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:First, your title is terrible, the tone in your thread also isn't very constructive and attacking the mods of a forum is not a very good idea. You can easily remove those parts and keep the rest of your thread as is, without consequences.

As for the topic, Raid Selling is not a good thing for the community, but I don't think there is anything they can do to "fix" this.

In this scenario, the only option is to join a PUG

There are only 3 ways to get rid of that

First, Anet can simply ban selling. Considering the whole discussion we had about selling dungeon runs, i doubt that's going to ever happen - they're not going to support it, but, as long as it doesn't touch any real world transactions and both sides keep to their deal, they're not going to suppress it either. No reason for them to do that, to be honest (besides, there'd be a ton of ways to circumvent that, shutting whose would require them to ban a lot of completely unrelated things, and basically any and every in-game transaction involving two players that know each other)

Second, they can make it so it's much harder to carry. If the raid would require every single player to be at their best to succeed, no selling will be possible. This will have two consequences you might not intend, however. First, the requirements you're so concerned about will go up through the roof. Second, most of the groups and players that are currently capable of killing at least some bosses consistently will become unable to do so. I'm not even going to debate on what this might do to the current raid community.

Third, you might decrease the demand - by either lowering difficulty, or by making the things the people buying runs go for available outside raids.For some reason, i don't think that option would be liked by the raid community at all.

By the way, notice that people selling runs are generally not affected directly by the fallout, because they're not pugging. They run in statics. And if they'd want to get new group members, they'd likely be able to train those on their own.

@"Astralporing.1957" said:There are only 3 ways to get rid of that

They did try to add some new mechanics in the wings after the first, that help against selling. For example, the random fixation mechanic means Raid sellers must be able to low-man the content, because the "buyers" will have to /gg so as not to mess up the run. In any way I don't think altering the mechanics of old Raids is a good choice, but they can plan their mechanics of future Raids to reduce selling.

Without selling US LFM tab would be empty except on peak hours. It is, at the very least, a way for the guilds to remain playing content they enjoy without feeling fatigued from not getting anything (why is CM not repeatable yet? CM's are clearly well done and introduce completely new mechanics). It is also a way for players who want the rewards but don't want to play the mode to actually obtain the rewards. Raids have some of the best skin designs in the game, which in itself is pretty whacky for a game mode that is supposed to be niche, but since the skins are there, let the community find a "fair" way for everyone to get it (emphasis on quotation marks since it's very arguable whether or not buying content is "fair", but it's the only way so far other than leeching, for many).

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:There are only 3 ways to get rid of that

@"maxwelgm.4315" said:Without selling US LFM tab would be empty except on peak hours. It is, at the very least, a way for the guilds to remain playing content they enjoy without feeling fatigued from not getting anything (why is CM not repeatable yet? CM's are clearly well done and introduce completely new mechanics). It is also a way for players who want the rewards but don't want to play the mode to actually obtain the rewards. Raids have some of the best skin designs in the game, which in itself is pretty whacky for a game mode that is supposed to be niche, but since the skins are there, let the community find a "fair" way for everyone to get it (emphasis on quotation marks since it's very arguable whether or not buying content is "fair", but it's the only way so far other than leeching, for many).

Well that is a whole other argument, one that has been raging since before mmorpgs existed: Should players be entitled to unlock all the content and rewards in a game despite not being skilled enough to complete the game? In my opinion, no but then again I'm the type of person who believes you should earn the rewards, even in a game. We could honestly debate this for 100 pages (and I have in the past) and still not come to a definitive answer or agreement.