Stopping Gil Sellers (Peaceful, not a flame or a rant)

[Songi_]

Gilsellers are slowly gaining a chokehold on all forms of making money in this game. Our server is not as bad as some other servers, but we're heading in that direction.

For my friends that post on gamefaqs.com, you all know that board is troll-ridden, but on occasion, you find a diamond in a pile of garbage. (Besides, the trolls are hilarious) Here's an intelligent post on stopping gil sellers:

The most effective thing to do as a group is to create bad press from the situation. Everyone who is fed up with this should write letters and send emails to every major gaming mag and website about how IGE and the gilsellers are disrupting the economy of yet another online game, which will inevitably cause it to become unplayable as the most expensive items become less and less obtainable, and ironically more and more profitable as they're being camped more and more often. Ask the mags and sites to get S-E to comment on how they're working to enforce their POL terms of service to prevent item, account, and gilselling; and to ask how they expect to bring in and keep customers when the problem only gets worse. In other words, say anything that will make the game look so unappealing it will make the mags and sites publish berating articles (like, "Don't buy this game!") and hopefully it will force S-E to take litigation against IGE. If they're threatened with a big enough number in the damage claim, IGE will pull out and leave gilsellers without their steady source of income. The same can be said for Ebay, except Ebay usually buckles at the mere request of removal.

The only people who shouldn't hate gilsellers are the gilsellers and the gilbuyers.

End post.

What do you guys think? I don't want to send one isolated letter, but if we get enough people, maybe we can do something?

Just a desperate attempt that could theoretically work.
-Songi

 

[Direwolf]

Hmmm... Definetly a good idea, I think by putting SE on the hotseat they would have to do sometigna bout it. They do not even pretend to care. As near as I could tell they have INCREASED inflation in the recent patch by the decreasing the spawn rate of many NMs.

 

[Sculli]

What do you guys think? I don't want to send one isolated letter ...

Why not?

Personally I think none of this will be of any use, sellers of virtual property are well established in the game world, and the legal real world. The player does have the ultimate choice though, if the game is really unplayable, then quit, and write S-E customer service why you made that choice. Only if enough people quit to hurt S-E's bottom line, only then will they be interested in doing something about it.

 

[Faedryth]

Im rather confused about this whole gil-sellers thing! I dont think I have ever really encountered this. Maybe just recently when I saw 3 high level camping Hawkeye and Tigerbane together. I mean really, how can a 20k drop split three ways really benefit much when you are level 55+? They were kinda rude and let a monster that they needed to kill aggro me and force me to kill it myself as I was healing. Anyways...

Shit man, this is these peoples income. I know a lot of them most likely dont have another type of job to get and are from other countries. If they found a job as easy as this one then more power to them! But again, I must be doing the wrong things as I have never really run into them...

 

[Daroth]

thank god I didnt sell my gil and char for a whopping .35 lol I would be hated cause you would all see daroth running around not being controlled by his true master muahahahha. actually I deleted him and gave the goods to jender

 

[Sinhard]

I've thought about writing to SE about the problem and discussed it with a few people in game and most people seem to agree with it. The fact it's now a post though makes me think this really does have a shot. Although it is true I doubt one letter will cause much change I'm sure if we could pull at least a 25% turnout from this forum though we may accomplish something. But who knows SE doesn't seem concerned and this seems to be the best path... ( and possibly the most entertianing )

 

[anesly]

Everyone who is fed up with this should write letters and send emails to every major gaming mag and website about how IGE and the gilsellers are disrupting the economy of yet another online game, which will inevitably cause it to become unplayable as the most expensive items become less and less obtainable, and ironically more and more profitable as they're being camped more and more often.

None of this will work, because SE doesn't give a tiny rat's ass. They will only care if enough people quit because of it (and 'enough' has to be more than the number of people who are signing up).

--
Anesly, the optimist.

 

[Sinhard]

Everyone who is fed up with this should write letters and send emails to every major gaming mag and website about how IGE and the gilsellers are disrupting the economy of yet another online game, which will inevitably cause it to become unplayable as the most expensive items become less and less obtainable, and ironically more and more profitable as they're being camped more and more often.

None of this will work, because SE doesn't give a tiny rat's ass. They will only care if enough people quit because of it (and 'enough' has to be more than the number of people who are signing up).

--
Anesly, the optimist.

Ah this may be pretty true... I was hoping not but hell your the optimist not me

 

[DodgeRoadRage]

Crafting linkshells may help. People farm or mine the items needed then the crafters would pay these people for it. We have QCDN, all you need too do is post what you need and a person you trust pretty well in game would send the stuff too your mog house and exchange you would send the gill too theirs or just meet in game. Start getting linkshells more organized and set up too have crafters in a certain feild and people willing too farm or mine for these for a certain price. Just cut out the AH, where these gil sellers do their buisness. All we need too do is get organized and work together and if everyone did it this way then the gil sellers would have too move on. This would not solve the problems with them farming mobs that drop gil or doing repeatable quests that give certain amounts of gil. Its just a theory I heard somewhere and thought I would pass it along.

 

[Songi_]

^Good idea. Do you craft at all? I know there are tons of crafters on this forum. Really, what it comes down to, is if we can organize miners, loggers, harvesters, fishers, and crafters, then you're right, we can elmininate a ton of the problem. GOOD LUCK on making this work, but I'd help. This won't stop NM campers at all, but if that's the only thing gil sellers will have left, there will be intraspecific competition and many will leave.

I know that SE doesn't care. Guess what? That's my point. Get magazines to trash the game. Get magazines to ask SE to comment on what they think about this. SE won't care if one person quits. They'll care if they get loads of bad press and no new players.

Anyway, my gripe with gil sellers is this:
They totally and completely ruin any fun of making gil in this game. Look at ghelsba outpost. Everyone used to be polite, not stealing spots, and logging used to be fun. But now the gil sellers logging there 24/7 will sit there and pray that you don't get anything from the tree so they can steal your spot. I hear the same thing is happening in zeruhn and gusgen mines, but I don't mine there. NM camping? Yeah, right. They do anything to kill you so you don't have a legit shot at the monster. It's insane.

 

[Shayla]

I am going to do my part and start sending email to all the gaming magazines out there, to generate some bad press so that SE listens. Hell if I could get away and have someone on Wired magazine pick up on it, and even Maxim it would become mainstream real quick. I could picture Maxim doing a spoof on a sweatshop of people earning virtual money. Okay, kinda getting outta tangent over this. Time to start finding email addresses and start the bad press. I'll post later on the email addresses and their corresponding companies.

 

[Drecan]

I'm going to send an email to all the major mags myself. If I can get just one othem to respond then hey I've done my part. All you really need to do is write an email and just send carbon copies to the others. If you dont' use foul lanauge and such and make sure you use spellcheck lol. When I'm done writing my email I will post it up on here for all to see.

-Dre

 

[Songi_]

Hey dre, get any of those addys yet? I'm going to grab them myself this weekend, and...yeah, you guessed it, this is a fancy way to BUMP.

 

[Svina]

If people want to stop these businesses from making the game so annoying, simple rule of business. No customers = no money. Everytime you buy gil you're just giving these companies more and more reason to hire people to play these BS chars all day long. If no one buys gil, they get no money, and cannot keep paying their employees, and then the business sinks or they pull out from losing money.

BUT, no one catches onto this, and they continue to buy gil. So don't expect this to end in the near future.

 

[Osse]

The frustrating part of all this is that not only does S-E appear not to care, when they do take action it's a half-assed attempt that actually makes matters worse. Their usual method is to nerf the activity that gave easy gil to the gil farmers. Fishing has been nerfed several times, most recently the hit that rusty cap fishing incurred. As mentioned earlier, several NM's have had their spawn rates reduced. This hurts the gil farmers--for about 2 hours. Then they find another method. Meanwhile, the players have one less option to make decent gil and the gil farmers are more concentrated on the remaining methods. This is obviously the exact opposite of what is needed to fix the problem.

The solution is 2-fold:
1. Make earming gil easier. S-E will just have to suck it up and not string us along for another 5 hours of play per week just to eek out a living (equipment-wise). They don't want to do this because it means people will finish the game faster (i.e. quit). But I think that actually more people would stick around if it weren't for the tedious farming/mining/etc.

2. When you place a bid at the AH, the names of everyone you can buy from at that price should be listed. This information is already in the database, we just can't see it. This way, you simply don't buy from known gil farmers.

I know this wouldn't end the problem, but I think it would help considerably.

 

[Osse]

The frustrating part of all this is that not only does S-E appear not to care, when they do take action it's a half-assed attempt that actually makes matters worse. Their usual method is to nerf the activity that gave easy gil to the gil farmers. Fishing has been nerfed several times, most recently the hit that rusty cap fishing incurred. As mentioned earlier, several NM's have had their spawn rates reduced. This hurts the gil farmers--for about 2 hours. Then they find another method. Meanwhile, the players have one less option to make decent gil and the gil farmers are more concentrated on the remaining methods. This is obviously the exact opposite of what is needed to fix the problem.

The solution is 2-fold:
1. Make earming gil easier. S-E will just have to suck it up and not string us along for another 5 hours of play per week just to eek out a living (equipment-wise). They don't want to do this because it means people will finish the game faster (i.e. quit). But I think that actually more people would stick around if it weren't for the tedious farming/mining/etc.

2. When you place a bid at the AH, the names of everyone you can buy from at that price should be listed. This information is already in the database, we just can't see it. This way, you simply don't buy from known gil farmers.

I know this wouldn't end the problem, but I think it would help considerably.

 

[Songi_]

Going with dodge's idea, I've created a crafting linkshell. I have 6 members so far, which isn't bad considering I opened it two days ago, and haven't been actively recruiting. See my thread on this board or the LS board if interested. I need miners/harvesters/loggers/fishers and people that get craftable materials, too.

This goes with what Osse is saying as well. By excluding gil sellers, the players are cutting off their source of income.

 

[Jagster]

The idea about the crafting shell is appealing, but it wouldn't be effective since getting everyone would be impossible.

HOWEVER it's obvious what these people farm, tree cutting,quadav helms,certain NM drops, tiger fangs, and many more well known farms. You wouldn't need a crafting Ls for every single craftable item, that's just not going to happen.

But getting organized parties to disrupt the activites in sanctuary,beaudex,delk toewr is highly more simplistic.

However this could lead to more control of the remaining AH market for the gilsellers. This is too big a project but if you wanted to simplfy it, it could work. For example do this with solely big game gardeners who use tree cuttings. Get all the well known hardcore gardeners in the LS, get people willing to make their gil from tree cutting farming, specficlly in santuary to cut gilseller supply at the same time. This could hurt them over time from a noticable decrese in buyers.

This is too confusing for me to want to take on, but if you ever got something running, I farm for 75% of my gil, currently 57 thief. So I'm a willing farmer to such a project if it were to get underway. Instant sell, yes please...

And when you get magazine email addresses please post them. If everyone has the attitude "I'll do nothing because I'm one person", then you're right nothing will happen. Many several unique emails on the same topic would possiblely raise an eyebrow. If it doesn't, well writing a simple but well thought out email doesn't take that long, so not much time wasted.

 

[Songi_]

Hi jag! Glad I gave you a pearl. We're up to around 15 members now, and actively recruiting.

Anyway, the point isn't to get everyone in the shell, the point is to stop the gil-selling loggers, farmers and miners, that crafters know that they are not contributing to gil selling by only buying from people within the shell.

Anywho, I'm trying to get a website up and running so people can advertise their services (e.g. fishing level blah blah, mining, goldsmithing level blah blah, I farm coeurl whiskers WHATEVER). That should make things run more smoothly.

 

[Devi]

Here's what I'm gonna do, everytime I see a Gil Farmer, I call a GM, they send me the same letter each time. I figure if the GMs get flooded enough with complaints they may do something...just spam the help desk. They can't ignore something that is hitting them every few minutes.