(08-30-2016, 08:55 AM)Yssen Wrote: It is incorrect to say that no one at SE is batting an eye when they called for people to report house flipping and selling plots for profit in a live letter. Clear as day in a live letter. SE is not to blame for you not doing as they asked when someone violates the terms of service. Further, the fact that a similar behavior is allowed on the market board, does not mean that house flipping is in anyway justified when they have said "We don't like this, don't do it." It is specious reasoning to say that they don't care at all when they have bothered to clarify the point in a live letter, and given a method of action that you as a player can take to help them solve it. One can come up with as many reasons as they like as for why a behavior against the ToS might be justified in their eyes, at no point does this truly justify anything. It also doesn't change the fact that a behavior is against the ToS.Â
One's personal experiences with a GM do not encompass the entire experience of everyone who has reported anyone for any reason. I'm sorry you have had a negative experience with a harassment claim, but that does not justify people breaking the ToS at any point. Houses are moving still, sure. People still buy gil with real money and bully people with parsers, too. People speed all the time on the road irl, but saying "everyone else was doing it" is not a defense that holds up in court, ever. Someone getting away with something is not an indication that SE doesn't care. It is just an indication they haven't been caught yet. If they are not being caught because you refuse to report the people doing it for reason x, then you have given them tacit approval. In doing so, it can be argued that you become part of the problem.Â
Snatching up a house to inflate the price to make a large level of profit when relinquishing the plot is about the same sort of act as when that douche bag bought the rights to an AIDS treatment medication and jacked the price up. Yes, you can argue that it is simple supply and demand, and that it is all SE's fault for a flawed housing system. This does not make the action right. Particularly when the people who created and own the game say it is wrong. Flawed systems do not absolve an individual from making bad moral or ethical decisions.
If I report someone and have no chatlogs and no evidence they simply tell me I've reported something without enough information for them to do anything. I'm not saying it's justified I'm just saying wow, 6mil he's getting a ban but 200mil, 175mil, sliding by with astroglide home free. I got nothing to report. I have nothing but a name and why should I report someone if they're happy with their purchase? I'm appalled they paid that much and they thought it was fine, but my god. How did that much gil get by the GMs?
Also, there's mountains of RP fcs that bought their houses for outrageous prices. Do we rally up and report each and every one of these fcs? Because it was against the rules? I'm not sure what happens to these plots. The live letter said these transactions are reversed but reddit has said the gil is gone... do we risk it?
(08-30-2016, 12:20 PM)Valence Wrote:(08-30-2016, 08:17 AM)Arvid Greave Wrote: See, the market economy and the housing economy are very different things. The market is very fast. I can see 5 items up, buy them up, and resell them the same day for double the price and that's perfectly fine and well. Or I can buy 3 items, price them very very high, wait for someone to undercut me and then I can undercut them and make a profit over a week or so. Not against any rules at all. I'm not talking about buying a house just to flip it for a profit. That guy didn't get a profit. Sure ok yes it's against the rules, so ban him, but why aren't the actual house flippers who already have 900mil+ from doing this NOT getting banned? I don't know where any profit relinquishing came from. I'm not sure where you were going with that.
Then we got the people buying smalls for 20mil, selling for 60mil the same week. Keep an eye on reddit and you can see the same plot go up and down as someone tries to flip it again and again. 160mil a medium, far more for large and that is absolutely ridiculous. We all know there are people out there who buy only to flip. And they never flip cheap. How do you get proof of it to report it unless you're part of the deal and therefore on the chopblock yourself? Nothing is being done about those transactions. No one at SE is batting an eye. Why not? Why should anyone have to report a transaction of over 40mil gil at all? That doesn't show up on their side and raise any red flags of RMT? Why aren't they reinforcing their own rules? Why do we have to report them/have them report one another in the first place? You can try, certainly you can try, but you risk yourself reporting them by making a party finder saying you're buying. But HOW are these large masses of gil going by unnoticed? They just ..don't care. I don't know what else it is. Because houses are moving still. And for far more than they ever did before the 'NO HOUSE SELLING' rules came around. 15-20mil used to be standard for small houses but not anymore.
I mean the last time I had to report someone for using slurs in a dungeon I literally had to look up the guy's server on lodestone for the GM. The chatlogs, timezone, location of my character was not enough. The GMs don't have the tools for this? They can't open up the lodestone and check the character's name for the server, and where that character was at the time? What kind of customer service are we paying them for? I've never been asked on any other mmo to do half of the GM's work for them. But it certainly somewhat explains why they also don't really care about all of this house flipping going on. Hopefully we get as many apartments as we think we're going to and here's hoping they're a little more than just private rooms.
What makes you think they don't ban some of them when they catch them? Do you personally know all of those house sellers to confirm that? The same way, you are taking one single example of how badly any system can turn with some poor soul selling his house 6M and getting banned. That's a bit disingenuous I think.
As said just above, it's a bit like saying because one guy stealing pocket money to an old lady in the street got into prison while a few groups doing a heist never got caught means by all logic and necessity that all little thiefs always get stomped and not the dangerous guys pulling big heists... What kind of logic is that? One example or two don't make a generality.
Unless you have proofs of course. What we would call a consistent and sufficient pool of stats to show otherwise.
In any case, why would SE only ban the smallest offenses and not the big ones? Because they are mean bullies?
I actually do personally know three people who flipped houses frequently to make 300mil+ and I don't find it my business to report them as I have no in game evidence to report. I have nothing. I have no chat logs, no screenshots, I have nothing in-game and they do not take out of game information. If they took out of game information as fact, everyone would just report the names on the housing reddit and that would be that. I have 'hey look at that guy sold this plot for x amount of gil to this player' and they could go 'um ok'. I assume I'd need a lot more than that to get anything done. I'd probably need chat logs, relinquish date/time, and I just don't have any of that information. In one of these cases, I'm friends with the person. I'm not going to report my friend. With such large masses of gil being moved I am legitimately impressed nothing has been done to their account at all. Like I said before, GMs should be able to see this gil moving and they should be doing something about it.
I mean, maybe they DO ban some? But ok, who? Where? I keep my ear to the ground when it comes to housing because goddamn, I want a large house, and I've never heard of any high rolling flippers getting banned yet. Just careless people who do their dealings in game. And if they're banned, what happens to their plots? Are they going to be on the timer when it comes back? Why give them that courtesy if they're banned? ..But wait, their bans are situational. Sometimes it's just a 24hr ban, or week, or month. It's not always a permaban. I want to say bans depend on how many prior offences someone has on their account. Sometimes your ban depends what kind of mood the GM is in. You can report win trading which is also very much against the rules and sometimes the GM doesn't even read the ticket and just tells you it's not against the rules to pvp. So honestly, I shouldn't be surprised.
I do squint at the GMs. I don't hate the players, I hate the game's system. Everyone knows about the one fella who has a FC house on each character with fully decked out airships in each house.. and he also has a personal large. Honestly, I don't feel the need to report him. Why? It's not his fault the game let him do that. Why should I be upset with him when I should be more upset with the game for letting that be possible in the first place? I also have to consider that FFXIV is run with a skeleton crew. Everyone at SE is working on FFXV. They have barely anyone manning the stations on this poor MMO that deserves so much more attention. And all the attention they do give it is going in all the wrong places.. DOUBLE CROSS HOTBAR. DOUBLE CROSS HOTBAR.
