Discussion on Policy: Buying and Selling "Runs"

Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming. Quit being ambiguous please.

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming. Quit being ambiguous please.

Why are you so bitter dude? Selling raids doesn't harm anybody and it's the buyers own risk. Nothing more. They're not ambiguous at all, they outright say it's okay.

Edit: I also don't think we were supposed to be able to reply to these.

@Blude.6812 said:Quit being ambiguous please.

They aren't ambiguous at all. AFK farming is not allowed; inattentive farming is. Selling (or buying) clears is ok; using RMT funds to pay for it isn't.

@Blude.6812 said:apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it.Or maybe players who dislike the policy should accept that it's ANet's choice. Maybe it's worth considering that ANet has thought long & hard about it as this is the best use of their limited resources and the best thing for the majority of players.

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming. Quit being ambiguous please.

I mean the thing is really: feel free to do whatever you want just dont be surprised if ANet slaps you on the wrist for it if you break the rules.

afk-ers but more importantly botters are a bad news for any mmo and I cannot blame them for wanting to make sure those people cannot actively destroy the ingame economy.

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming. Quit being ambiguous please.

:+1: From all the policy updates posted in this section of the forum, almost all sound ambiguous.

I especially disagree with ANet allowing dual/multi-boxing. I understand that selling more accounts to a single individual means more money for the company, but no user should be allowed to run more than one account at a time, not even in PvE (seen horrible videos on YouTube on this, people abusing multi-boxing to increase their chances of Liquid Aurillium Infusion drops during the AB meta and the likes).

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming.

Quit being ambiguous please.

Gist version: People have been selling runs since the literal Droknar's Forge run. If everyone is buying runs for 100g and yours is 2000g, you're going on a list.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming.

Quit being ambiguous please.

As long as people follow the rules i think it should be allowed. I think some people are annoyed by it beacuse they cant do it mechanically themselves. Just like some peopel are annoyed by raiders beacuse they dont have the mechanical skill to raid themselves.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming.

Quit being ambiguous please.

It is ambiguous.. you have a policy to not allow the LFG tool to be used a point of selling goods/items but strangely its ok to allow the sale of achievements… just because years ago someone dropped the ball in GW1.. sorry that is just plane ridiculous. It is especially stupid when ANET come out and state that there is a large proportion of fraud / RMT is involved within this area ambiguity.Further to this ANET wont support the function they simply tolerate it even when they know players accounts can become compromised.. their first and only concern here should be to protect the players accounts at all times and therefore remove their tolerance for an area of the game that is considered ( by ANET) to be a source of such issues.

It is not about liking or not liking the selling of runs it is about the wholesale issues that surround tolerating such ambiguity.

As for multi boxing, no I don't like it for the same reasons, it can often be abused by those lamers seeking to cheat the game.Yes I agree it requires some skill to multi box fairly, no argument there but that skill can very often be dumbed down by other more nefarious methods and that is undeniable. Therefore the best option to protect the integrity of your product and those that play it is to eliminate the potential to cheat by way of outright disallowance of the activity, cos if I see something that looks suspicious I will report it and let ANET decide.. but that takes valuable time and activity that I am sure could be better spent working on more cost plus areas to the game not cost minus, just like with LFG abuse/run selling.

Making multi-boxing disallowed will somehow change cheaters' minds? It seems to me that such a policy (applied to any of the controversial issues) would only affect those that don't cheat. I don't think saying, "Cheater, you are not allowed to cheat" will make much difference.I suppose I could be mistaken.

Edit: It seems the post I was commenting on was removed. Que sera.

This discussion was created from comments split from: Policy: Buying and Selling "Runs".

What's great about Guild Wars 2 is that there are a number of ways to make money if you are skilled/creative enough. The game is more alive with in game buying and selling for services. I mean I love fighting the npc's but its nice to deal with humans, provide them assistance, and make some gold from it. I am not sure how I feel about RMT and Services. Would RMT for Services really hurt anet? Its hard to pin one specific reason down, but when certain game interactions become profitable, it has the potential to change the game play climate.

I'm not sure whats to stop someone from paying real money for services since player behavior will look very close to everyone else and no "virtual items" will be transferred from one account to the other. This probably happens now to some extent. This kind of RMT happens behind the scenes.

I would like to see a game someday that is fully supported for users to make real money off of it. How that would look and how it would avoid hyper commercialism in game, i don't know.

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming.

Quit being ambiguous please.

That is not ambiguity. You might be able to argue that it is inconsistency, but not ambiguity.

Even the inconsistency argument would struggle under the weight of the poor comparison between selling items in a Looking For Group interface and offering spots in a Group, in a Grouping interface, for a fee.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Maybe some 'core' roles need to be eliminated and it's time get off the fence, apologize for the mistake made by devs of GW1, and state GW2 will no longer allow it. End of conversation. Make better use of teams limited resources. Ditto for AFK farming.

Quit being ambiguous please.

Then we will have to agree to disagree.It is to me is very ambiguous, and inconsistent.The only reason that it is tolerated is because ANET stand a very real chance of profiting from it by way of gem sales and converting for gold in order to pay for the runs/spots .. hence the post yesterday out of the blue referencing it around RMT.. you shall not RMT, use legit means, buy gems, convert, its all good.No genuinely concerned company would allow its product to be left open for fraudulent activities, whilst stating it doesn't support the function, but go ahead.. that right there is ambiguity at its finest.The LFG tool is not allowed to used as a means to advertising sales.. but wait yeah its ok to advertise the sale of your spots/runs cos.. GW1 was ok cos we couldn't be bothered to enforce it properly.. ooh and those nice unlock packs they might be able to sell by allowing it.it is just another of those bad smell areas of the ToS that is used for their own purposes not for the enforcement of the game as a whole.

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:It is to me is very ambiguous, and inconsistent.You haven't actually explained how it's either.

The only reason that it is tolerated is because ANET stand a very real chance of profiting from it by way of gem sales and converting for gold in order to pay for the runs/spots .. hence the post yesterday out of the blue referencing it around RMT.. you shall not RMT, use legit means, buy gems, convert, its all good.That's an odd theory, since (a) ANet's been 100% consistent in combating RMT (although sometimes they are more successful than others) and (b) there's no evidence that gems-to-gold is a significantly affected by purchasing of runs (whereas there are plenty of correlations with other, more plausible factors, e.g. when BL keys go on sale).

No genuinely concerned company would allow its product to be left open for fraudulent activities, whilst stating it doesn't support the function, but go ahead.. that right there is ambiguity at its finest.It doesn't allow RMT at any level, but no company in the industry has been able to eliminate it. ANet's done better than most, worse than others. As long as people are looking to save a buck or a Euro or whatever, they are going to be tempted to go outside the official channels.

The LFG tool is not allowed to used as a means to advertising sales.. but wait yeah its ok to advertise the sale of your spots/runs cos.. GW1 was ok cos we couldn't be bothered to enforce it properly.. ooh and those nice unlock packs they might be able to sell by allowing it.They have been 100% consistent & unambiguous about this too:

• It's okay to form a group using LFG, and 'runs' are a group activity.
• It's not okay to sell items or other types of services via LFG.

It's a community solution to a Arenanet created problem. Maybe raids ought to be balanced more with every class in mind , without quickness or alacrity factored in, and focus on mechanics rather than DPS. Look at the percentage of the playerbase that actually completes them. People treat them more like a job than a game when there's so much preparation and rate of failure involved (instakills with no ressing) compared to say fractals , story, or openworld. Almost every profession forum is littered with "DPS" this and "DPS" that and there's builds that drop every nondamaging utility to eek out every hundred DPS and it's pretty tiring to read.

Chronos never should have had the power they had up until Dec 11 patch, it's that simple. They were way overtuned.

People sell raids because there's a market for them, it's that simple. Raids, much like ascended gear (if you've been around long enough you will remember they were added after launch), are contrary to Arenanet's original design vision of making content accessible to everyone and having it a "pick up from where you left off" style game. That's why I'm not surprised that the majority of development is on Living Story these days. Living Story is more unique as far as MMO content than any form of dungeon environment.

There's quite a few semi-casual people with relatively high Achievement Points I know that wouldn't have set foot into raids: they just couldn't bother to deal with the grind , time commitment, and toxicity of raiding environments and would rather obtain legendary armor through WvW.

I think that was what the Snowman lair was for actually, to test the viability of a "raid" without such a high demand on players.

As far as account sharing goes, that's on people doing it. If you get banned don't be surprised.

If its accepted by anet, then at least make its own subsection in the LFG. Lot of us are sick and tired of these guys. My block list is full and I still cant see the actual runs among the loads of sellers.

I understand why people would want it gone but it seems both hard to control and might make the game worse as a consequence.

How would you deal with our guild leader who gave every guild member some gold if runs where within a certain time frame?

Selling runs is as old as the GW franchise. I don't know for how many alts I've payed back in GW1 to get to Droknar's Forge for example.There's no real difference between someone offering other players to get to some Wypoint/outpost for gold, or to get through some dungeon/raid for gold.

Now, we can ask ourselves why there obviously are so many ppl that are able to squeeze in "dead weight" in form of ppl buying raids and why so many guilds are able to do the raids with so few ppl every time.

We can ask why so many ppl are willing to pay absurd amounts of gold to get almost no rewards from killing a raid boss.

We can ask what could be done to change this.

But we shouldn't just prohibit ppl doing what they want to do, just for the sake of it.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Bloodstealer.5978" said:It is to me is very ambiguous, and inconsistent.You haven't actually explained how it's either.

The only reason that it is tolerated is because ANET stand a very real chance of profiting from it by way of gem sales and converting for gold in order to pay for the runs/spots .. hence the post yesterday out of the blue referencing it around RMT.. you shall not RMT, use legit means, buy gems, convert, its all good.That's an odd theory, since (a) ANet's been 100% consistent in combating RMT (although sometimes they are more successful than others) and (b) there's no evidence that gems-to-gold is a significantly affected by purchasing of runs (whereas there are plenty of correlations with other, more plausible factors, e.g. when BL keys go on sale).

No genuinely concerned company would allow its product to be left open for fraudulent activities, whilst stating it doesn't support the function, but go ahead.. that right there is ambiguity at its finest.It doesn't allow RMT at any level, but no company in the industry has been able to eliminate it. ANet's done better than most, worse than others. As long as people are looking to save a buck or a Euro or whatever, they are going to be tempted to go outside the official channels.

The LFG tool is not allowed to used as a means to advertising sales.. but wait yeah its ok to advertise the sale of your spots/runs cos.. GW1 was ok cos we couldn't be bothered to enforce it properly.. ooh and those nice unlock packs they might be able to sell by allowing it.They have been 100% consistent & unambiguous about this too:

• It's okay to form a group using LFG, and 'runs' are a group activity.
• It's not okay to sell items or other types of services via LFG.

@"Zappax.4685" said:If its accepted by anet, then at least make its own subsection in the LFG. Lot of us are sick and tired of these guys. My block list is full and I still cant see the actual runs among the loads of sellers.

Oh cmon... You don't like looking at your LFG and only seeing this?

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Quit being ambiguous please.

And, there's no way the recipient of run money can know if the other person is using RMT money.

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@"Zappax.4685" said:If its accepted by anet, then at least make its own subsection in the LFG. Lot of us are sick and tired of these guys. My block list is full and I still cant see the actual runs among the loads of sellers.

What's the big deal? Just scroll down

@Rysdude.3824 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@"Zappax.4685" said:If its accepted by anet, then at least make its own subsection in the LFG. Lot of us are sick and tired of these guys. My block list is full and I still cant see the actual runs among the loads of sellers.

There was nothing past that... :'(

@"Bloodstealer.5978" said:The LFG is for promoting the formation of groups.. absolutely - it is not to be used to advertise and promote the sale of anything.. except the sale of spots and runs that ANET do not support. When the LFG actively shows the prices you gotta pay etc .. that is not about just forming a group it is advertising the sale of the product, the party, the spot, the run whatever you want to call it.. you can pussyfoot around that all you want but it is undeniably inconsistent and their approach purposefully vague.I would have more respect if ANET simply came out and said.. we now support the buying/selling of runs but only if paid for through our internal processes. That way ANET control who, what, where and how.I have nothing against ANET making money, but at least be upfront about the reasoning's behind why they continue to tolerate an activity that goes against principle and is considered to be a very large issue proportionally within the activity and puts players accounts at risk.

There would be inconsistency if ANet's use of the verb "support" meant, "Endure; tolerate." That is likely not the case with this practice. "We do not support paid runs," is much more likely to mean, "Provide material or financial assistance to." In this context, "we do not support selling runs" would mean that ANet is not going to provide customer service assistance to get buyers' gold back if something goes wrong. It would also mean, "We are not going to provide specialized UI features to facilitate sellers and buyers." This would not mean that ANet disapproves of the practice, just that -- as with many other things in game -- they are not going to develop features to enable it. Assuming that meaning, there is no inconsistency.