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Raid Selling and "LFG" Clutter [Merged]


Buckeye.9846

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In this forum post from 2015 Gaile Gray say that selling posts in the lfg is allowed http://prntscr.com/lscmc2

"Our policy: Players may use the LFG Tool only for the formation of a group.

Players may use the tool to sell a spot in a group, but they may not use it to sell or trade items or for any other unintended purposes. Doing so will result in an account infraction.

You can help us reduce the spam and refocus the tool by reporting individuals who are misusing the LFG Tool. Simply click on the name of that player in your chat window, right click, choose “Report,” and then choose “LFG System Abuse.” With your help we’ll be able to keep the LFG Tool clear for your use in forming groups"

However in recent responses by Anet GM's they have said this game is meant to be actively played, how is getting boosted in content u otherwise wouldnt succeed in count as actively playing. The people selling raids usually tell their customers to kill their char and they will do the raid themselves so the raid can be done smoothly. This is not active play and you are boosting your account with rewards you otherwise would not get.

A big portion of the raid lfg and other sections of the lfg is filled with people selling clears, how is this allowed. RMT is a big no no for Anet and i'm sure some of the sellers accept real money for clears aswell.

What do you think

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@"Buckeye.9846" said:This is not active play and you are boosting your account with rewards you otherwise would not get.

That's not a very good argument. Telling someone to die is valid only when a single player can ruin an entire run, which can happen almost exclusively in Wing 2 (Slothasor and Matthias), everything else can be somewhat recovered by the team, and in most bosses that extra player is just more dps, no reason to tell anyone to die.Further, this is the same as someone getting killed at the beginning of the fight with Tequatl, then not using a waypoint, and in the end getting for the reward for the kill. This can be done on almost any type of PVE content in the game, when others can finish the content for you, while you afk dead.Imagine if something like this was actionable and at Matthias for example, half the Raid dies, and 5 players manage to kill him in the end. Let's ban those that died early? Or when you play a casual escort run and someone dies at a mine near the entrance and you go "screw it, we can 9-man it" and move on anyway.

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Getting killed at teq and not respawning is not good either, you are not actively participating in the meta and you get reward for others work. Not good example to bring up a raid fight, there is no way for the dead to respawn when the rest of team is fighting. If someone is not pulling their weight in raids that person gets kicked, You cant kick players from world metas, you can and should however report them for botting.

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@Buckeye.9846 said:You cant kick players from world metas, you can and should however report them for botting.

That would result in lots of false reports and would be terrible for the CS team. After all, the only way they ban someone for botting is by finding said player and sending them a few whispers. If they don't respond, they are inactive and they can take action against them. If they do, they aren't botting anyway. That's not something they can do for dead people, either inside a Raid, or (even worse!) during a world event.

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From a "gaming philosophy" perspective what is so wrong about selling services and so right about selling items? I think selling raids has a positive effect. Players who are good at raiding have away to earn gold and players who aren't good at raids can experience them. Tyria needs more jobs besides farming, especially jobs that reward ability.

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By offering those clears, you give the players out there an alternative to never bother with the content at all, but gaining every advantage anyway. So they forcefully reduce the player-base, prevent a good portion of people from even trying the thing for real, and transform the content into a dull repetitive routine for themselves. That is not forbidden, but imho counter-productive if you really enjoy the content and believe more people should give it a try.

It belongs to the long list of player-created-problems. So it would be our task to find a proper solution to this. Reasoning with the sellers is pointless.

Discussing the topic in public sooner or later leads to the ultimate argument. I have not managed a way to counter that, yet. You can justify almost everything with that line:

It is a free world, everyone can decide for themselves whether they want to do this or not.

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@"mindcircus.1506" said:The developers have gone on record as saying they are just fine with raid selling.

This is a non-issue.

Then they are contradicting themselves, you cant disallow boosting your account/s and use "active" play as a basis for other suspensions. And give people buying raids a pass.

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@Buckeye.9846 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:The developers have gone on record as saying they are just fine with raid selling.

This is a non-issue.

Then they are contradicting themselves, you cant disallow boosting your account/s and use "active" play as a basis for other suspensions. And give people buying raids a pass.

Let me get this. If I get a low level friend of mine and "boost" them while they are standing there and I finish let's say a couple T1 fractals. Is that questionable to you? Boosting your account -alone- for your own benefit is illegal and should be. In the other cases some players might be inactive, but others are perfectly active finishing the content -for- them. This is the difference, having some other players "boost" you is completely different to "boosting" yourself using a bot or other similar program.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:The developers have gone on record as saying they are just fine with raid selling.

This is a non-issue.

Then they are contradicting themselves, you cant disallow boosting your account/s and use "active" play as a basis for other suspensions. And give people buying raids a pass.

Let me get this. If I get a low level friend of mine and "boost" them while they are standing there and I finish let's say a couple T1 fractals. Is that questionable to you? Boosting your account -alone- for your own benefit is illegal and should be. In the other cases some players might be inactive, but others are perfectly active finishing the content -for- them. This is the difference, having some other players "boost" you is completely different to "boosting" yourself using a bot or other similar program.

This is a interraction between a GM and a player:

Player:"During Wintersday I do the following. I multibox my accounts and do a group with them. I go inside the Wintersday Dungeon and use my main account to clear the instance while the others just stand around at start. Now since this is an extreme strain to my PC already, I try to not tab over to another account unless I finished the Boss Golem. This means I wont be able to react on of those accounts while I am running around on my main."

GM:"That would become problematic. You would not be playing actively at that point. Yes, you are in a sense 'just boosting your other accounts', but if you write your computer is pushed to the limit of what it can handle, you'd need to consider what it looks like. The game is made to be actively played. If you are not actively playing it and you need to take shortcuts and assistance to push your system past what it could normally do, something's not right."

So yes, you doing the work while someone standing doing nothing is boosting, and not allowed. That player is not actively playing and get rewards. It doesnt matter if its you and some friends doing it or you and your alts.

Explain this"This is the difference, having some other players "boost" you is completely different to "boosting" yourself using a bot or other similar program."

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@"Buckeye.9846" said:"This is the difference, having some other players "boost" you is completely different to "boosting" yourself using a bot or other similar program."

I assume the GM said only what is in the quotes, and the paragraph under it is yours? Because they are really different.

Because the GM was talking about boosting your other accounts, which are all still yours, this isn't similar to a player being boosted by their friends (or someone they paid). Further, as I said, they ban when you don't respond. Someone that is being boosted by their friends, or even a raid seller, WILL be online to get their rewards, chat with their palls, they aren't going afk so if a GM approaches them they will be able to respond, unlike that situation in your post.

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Actively playing never meant you have to move, press skills, jump up and down or dance. Actively playing means that you as a player of the account must be present, pay sufficient attention to the running game and are able to react to a GM when he tries to interact with the character. You have no obligation to do anything in the game, be it move, kill mobs, use skills, or anything else.

The "problematic" thing here is that the situation described specifically states that the player will NOT tab to his alt accounts and will NOT be able to notice when a GM tries to interact with his other accounts. But multiboxing is only allowed as long as you actively play all of those accounts, meaning that you MUST be able to respond to a GM trying to interact with any of the accounts you currently have logged in.

Multiboxing three accounts to go into an instance and use one character to clear the instance if fine as long as your other account characters do not become merely unsupervised zombies that fail to react to anything that is happening in the game because they are tabbed out. Get the difference?

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Because there's just no way to stop it.

If they forbid it in-game, people would start advertising in chat to check some discord site.

And the only real way to stop it would be making trading impossible and gold account bound, and that would also prevent many desirable behaviors, like guild contests with prices and giveaways, and helping newbies.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Buckeye.9846" said:"This is the difference, having some other players "boost" you is completely different to "boosting" yourself using a bot or other similar program."

I assume the GM said only what is in the quotes, and the paragraph under it is yours? Because they are really different.

Because the GM was talking about boosting your other accounts, which are all still yours, this isn't similar to a player being boosted by their friends (or someone they paid). Further, as I said, they ban when you don't respond. Someone that is being boosted by their friends, or even a raid seller, WILL be online to get their rewards, chat with their palls, they aren't going afk so if a GM approaches them they will be able to respond, unlike that situation in your post.

Also from GM"You need to be active and involved when you gain benefits in the game. So "afking while meta", if it gives you a benefit, is not okay. The game was made to be played, actively, by a person directing the actions directly."

If you are aware and responsive how is boosting your own chars any different then boosting your friends. People who buy raids do it with the intent to get rewards they would not get otherwise. Paying someone to do content for you to get rewards is not you being involved in the game. The people selling the raid would succeed is beating the raid no matter who is the buyer.

And with Anet allowing sell posts to stay up in the lfg they encourage the behaviour of not being involved the gameplay while getting rewards. And potential RMT between sellers and buyers.

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@"Shikigami.4013" said:Actively playing never meant you have to move, press skills, jump up and down or dance. Actively playing means that you as a player of the account must be present, pay sufficient attention to the running game and are able to react to a GM when he tries to interact with the character. You have no obligation to do anything in the game, be it move, kill mobs, use skills, or anything else.

The "problematic" thing here is that the situation described specifically states that the player will NOT tab to his alt accounts and will NOT be able to notice when a GM tries to interact with his other accounts. But multiboxing is only allowed as long as you actively play all of those accounts, meaning that you MUST be able to respond to a GM trying to interact with any of the accounts you currently have logged in.

Multiboxing three accounts to go into an instance and use one character to clear the instance if fine as long as your other account characters do not become merely unsupervised zombies that fail to react to anything that is happening in the game because they are tabbed out. Get the difference?

This is sort of a double edged sword isn't it? What happens if you're in the middle of a boss fight, and the GM tries to communicate with your alt accounts? Are you going to accept the bans, or are you coming to the forums with "but I was in the middle of a boss fight, and couldn't respond on that account"? I say this as someone who, in other MMOs, has run multiple clients looking to pull specific items from an end chest in a quest. I tend to clear a section, move the alt account to that spot, clear the next section, rinse and repeat. If, however, I'm in the middle of a big fight, I may miss it if a GM tries to communicate with me on the secondary account.

I believe the solution to the OP's problem is actually listed in their opening post: If you believe the system is being abused, report it, and hope the GM that investigates agrees with you, otherwise you may pull your own infraction. If you join a group and they offer an RMT clear, screenshot it, and submit a report. Don't post the screenshot on the forums, include it in your report. Otherwise, there's really no reason to discuss it here, the avenues for dealing with this are clearly laid out.

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@Buckeye.9846 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:The developers have gone on record as saying they are just fine with raid selling.

This is a non-issue.

Then they are contradicting themselves, you cant disallow boosting your account/s and use "active" play as a basis for other suspensions. And give people buying raids a pass.

Most raid buyers (as far as I know) are more or less active participants in the encounter. It is absolutely different than your history of exploiting and getting suspended during Wintersday.

I'm willing to wager you don't even raid.

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@"Buckeye.9846" said:In this forum post from 2015 Gaile Gray say that selling posts in the lfg is allowed http://prntscr.com/lscmc2

"Our policy: Players may use the LFG Tool only for the formation of a group.

Players may use the tool to sell a spot in a group, but they may not use it to sell or trade items or for any other unintended purposes. Doing so will result in an account infraction.

You can help us reduce the spam and refocus the tool by reporting individuals who are misusing the LFG Tool. Simply click on the name of that player in your chat window, right click, choose “Report,” and then choose “LFG System Abuse.” With your help we’ll be able to keep the LFG Tool clear for your use in forming groups"

However in recent responses by Anet GM's they have said this game is meant to be actively played, how is getting boosted in content u otherwise wouldnt succeed in count as actively playing. The people selling raids usually tell their customers to kill their char and they will do the raid themselves so the raid can be done smoothly. This is not active play and you are boosting your account with rewards you otherwise would not get.

A big portion of the raid lfg and other sections of the lfg is filled with people selling clears, how is this allowed. RMT is a big no no for Anet and i'm sure some of the sellers accept real money for clears aswell.

What do you think

How does this affect you? Why should you care? Raids are not a competitive environment. I don't understand the point here.

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What has me raiding or not have anything to do with it. The people i talked to about raid buying have told me the buyer doesnt need to stay alive for the encounter, even asked to die. This is not being involved in the fighting. Dont even need to raid to look on the lfg at all the selling posts that are there.

I'm sure you dont pvp but are you okay with people selling pvp rewards to people who suck at pvp, even for real money. Those are unique rewards for the best, sold to the highest bidder.

Its boosting your accounts with rewards you normally wouldnt get.

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It is not a double-edged sword. It is known for years that GMs will be "overly generous" with the time given to respond, and a GM will not try to interact with you and then when you do not reply within a minute immediately ban that account. People "getting banned" for not immediately replying is just fearmongering.

Theoretical scenarios about people being banned because they don't reply immediately keep being brought up over and over no matter if the topic is afk-farming, "afking a meta", raid-selling or multiboxing in an instance (or anywhere else) like in this case. It goes from "what if the phone rings", "what if the doorbell rings", "what if I have to go to the toilet", "what if there is an emergency", "what if my kid cries" and here "what if I am just in a boss fight" :)

Chris Cleary (Game security lead), May 19th 2016 on the topic on GM checks concerning people being unresponsive to GM interaction:GMs have been trained to identify and handle these situations, it’s one of the first things they learn. GMs are overly generous on the amount of time that players are given to respond.

The whole very long thread (which is about afk-farming) is here in the archive

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In raids, you have to do some damage to get credit. On the spectrum from 100% inactive to 100% active, that puts you across the arbitrary line that ANet has drawn.

Why did they draw the line there rather than further along the spectrum? To a large extent, that's a moot question. We can reasonably presume that they have a better idea than we do about what's better for the game in the long run. If they don't see a problem, why are we trying to imagine one for them?

For some it can be interesting to speculate regardless and some answers have been suggested:

  • The existing line is easier to enforce than a stricter one. (Fairly easy to explain & demonstrate.)
  • People who buy a raid run are actively involved in the game in other ways, otherwise they couldn't afford the cost and wouldn't be interested in the service. (Even easier to explain & demonstrate. I know people who chose to learn to raid, after having been carried in their first raid boss fight.)
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@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Buckeye.9846" said:In this forum post from 2015 Gaile Gray say that selling posts in the lfg is allowed

"Our policy: Players may use the LFG Tool only for the formation of a group.

Players may use the tool to sell a spot in a group, but they may not use it to sell or trade items or for any other unintended purposes. Doing so will result in an account infraction.

You can help us reduce the spam and refocus the tool by reporting individuals who are misusing the LFG Tool. Simply click on the name of that player in your chat window, right click, choose “Report,” and then choose “LFG System Abuse.” With your help we’ll be able to keep the LFG Tool clear for your use in forming groups"

However in recent responses by Anet GM's they have said this game is meant to be actively played, how is getting boosted in content u otherwise wouldnt succeed in count as actively playing. The people selling raids usually tell their customers to kill their char and they will do the raid themselves so the raid can be done smoothly. This is not active play and you are boosting your account with rewards you otherwise would not get.

A big portion of the raid lfg and other sections of the lfg is filled with people selling clears, how is this allowed. RMT is a big no no for Anet and i'm sure some of the sellers accept real money for clears aswell.

What do you think

How does this affect you? Why should you care? Raids are not a competitive environment. I don't understand the point here.

Beacuse i believe rules should apply to everyone not “rules are for thee, but not for me”. And i believe Anet should be strict with their tos they have in their game, or scrap parts of it to be consistent. Other players in games such as WoW have voiced their compliants with people selling clears for gold and RMT, maybe Anet who likes to do things differently should do something about it.

Not everything people do affects me personally or in game but i care for the game so why souldnt i care.

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