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Some concerns about selling BoA/BoP items ingame

rysiek86rysiek86 Member Posts: 145 Arc User
edited December 2019 in General Discussion (PC)
I would like to touch some issue that is happening ingame lately. Some people think that selling the Lionheart Weapon Set is absolutley all right for people who offer them some kind of currency. To be honest it doesnt matter what kind of currency this is... real cash/marks of potency/enchanting stones/whatever... The items are Bound to Account and should be obtained by effort of combined actions of players that play together in community such as guild or know eachother and form a solid group. The weapon as i understood should be some kind of reward to skilled players as developers mentioned it. The content is not obtainable for some people without a purpose. Taking additional benefit from Tower of the Mad Mage excluding chest drop is pure greed.
To me it is forbiden and such doings should be penaltied by permament ban for all the people who took a part with such occurrence...

I would like to hear opinion of other players.

I would love to get a clarification from developers with the issue.

I hope the players stop acting like freakin hyenas and see profit on every step possible (like ToMM itself was not profitable), than whine on everything is bad here (your actions make the game good or bad as well)
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Comments

  • zimxero#8085 zimxero Member Posts: 876 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    IMO, the majority of top end equipments should be Bound to Account. Absolutely everything which might make a BiS list, should be bound to account. There are a million ways to make money selling lower tier gear, craftables, and everything else... There is absolutely no shortage of auction opportunities without them. If the game does not protect its top-end items from being purchased... then there will be no desire for players to play content to attain them. If a top-end equipment set can be purchased for a modest amount of AD on the market... by a player who has never run a quest in-game beyond the game intro sequence... something is wrong, and the game company is cutting their own income in the process.


    What about crafting?

    Over the years... our crafting system gets upgraded occasionally, producing temporary BiS items. The top crafters with time on their hands.. make tens or hundreds of millions of AD on the market selling these items until the market becomes competitive and then the items become trash that few ever buy. Isn't there a better way?

    I recommend that normal items crafted are sellable as always, but that crafter's with enough skill can create +1 to +X versions of the gear (increases as new mods are released), which is bound to their account. This way... skilled crafters can always create some gear for their characters that is BiS. How would this work? using fictional item... a Wolf Sword would be craftable and sellable at market by anyone. A crafter could create a "BtA" Wolf Sword by taking a Wolf Sword as one of the components, adding another component, and needing much more skill than a basic Wolf Sword. The result would be a Wolf Sword +1, same level req, but with more stats. A Wolf Sword +2 could be turned into a Wolf Sword +3, etc.. the limit would be set according to the MODs desires, to make sure crafting is always valuable.
  • snuff#8759 snuff Member Posts: 13 Arc User
    Trading in the game is not prohibited after all..
  • greywyndgreywynd Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 7,083 Arc User
    Caveat emptor.
    I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Member Posts: 693 Arc User
    rysiek86 said:

    The items are Bound to Account

    If they were BtA then they couldn't be sold or traded outside of that account.

    They are apparently BtA when equipped, and like everything else that is not bound until equipped, they are fair game to be sold, traded, or given away as the owner sees fit.

    You want clarification from the devs? There it is.

    If they wanted these to be untradeable they would have made them untradeable.
  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User

    rysiek86 said:

    The items are Bound to Account

    If they were BtA then they couldn't be sold or traded outside of that account.

    They are apparently BtA when equipped, and like everything else that is not bound until equipped, they are fair game to be sold, traded, or given away as the owner sees fit.

    You want clarification from the devs? There it is.

    If they wanted these to be untradeable they would have made them untradeable.
    Go check Rishindar in Stardock, and you'll see that Lionheart items are "Binds on Pickup (Account)".
    They would be in the AH, fetching much more than legendary rings, if they could be traded/sold.



  • rysiek86rysiek86 Member Posts: 145 Arc User
    Ill add something more to the whole conclusion...

    Let's imagine that Developers decide to bring new Pack as almost every pre-mod period brings us. This Pack contains some new cool looking mount, some fantastic title, some campaign currency boost and... The Lionheart Weapon set ! One whole weapon set to choose whatever character you pick to open with. The standart price of such packs is around 10'000 ZEN without special offer.
    What will you say now Weapon selling defenders ?? Is it fine for you ?? Oh hell no !! And i bet you will scream: "Cryptic its Pay to Win !!! Why are you destroying the game by bringing such things to the game !!!!" And id say , because it will help to obtain more founds to improve our overall experiance in quality of the game.
    Wait a minute, so company that runs the game cant implement such things... but the players who are doing excatly the same (someones pays you to win the weapon set to be strict) are cool right ??.
    You will say but it costs ZEN ! You must bring your wallet here... yes ?? Not at all, we have a fantastic transfer method... so all the Marks of Potency or Enchantings stones you get can be sold for Astral Dimonds in auction house and transfered to ZEN... 10'000 zen is 7'500'000 milion ad right ?? How much do u want for the weapon set ?? Do you have the bravery to tell it here ?? Would you put the effort still to to carry "friends:D" there ??

    It seems you still dont get my point, and you flaten the topic to my personal wealth ingame... I dont mind your wallets i dont mind your Dimonds quantities... What i mind is: you are breaking the bond established by all the players progressing Tower of the Mad Mage. Who of us was not carried here in any way ?? Who of us who put enormous effort to learn the mechanics didnt want to help another person to learn them too ?? All the people colaborated together, invited eachother to the friend list because they knew: "that person is the one i can rely on when i ask to join my team". Can you rely on person who bought the weapon, i bet not , because you will probably never see this person again and will never come back on ToMM because it is still a mistery how does the trial works ??

    Kudos to all the people i met and spend time on Tower of the Mad Mage.

    Kudos to all who helped their guildies and friends to teach them the trial mechanics and consider the Weapon set as an ultimate reward for cooperation and hard time spent there on learning.

    I hope I precised my general idea and Im still looking forward to get the response from the Developers.
    Thank you and Merry Xmas
  • apollo#5199 apollo Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    micky1p00 said:

    Interesting, few observations I guess:

    1. It is indeed 100% legal, as long as it is in-game items.

    2. Market control? Fame and fortune? Am I the only one that noticed that the time of big AD from ToMM long passed, rings at 30k will not bring fame or fortune. Probably easier to sell Xunas and Bulletes from CoDG or doing stupid PF on average per time spent.

    3. It is usually the same people who request "Looking for X for ToMM exp must have weapons" that also sell those weapon runs. Yet we know that you, obviously, don't need to have the weapons to complete it, otherwise where the weapons would come from.. So the question becomes, how it is called when someone puts an artificial barrier and then charges for a way to pass it?

    4. Friends compensate? Posting in Zone and lfg and various channels "Selling weapons, pm" (paraphrasing). Those that I saw are not friends compensating, this is pure and simple trading and selling. Which akin to squeezing the last bit of AD from ToMM now since the rewards themselves are not really sell high, people found a new way to make profit. So lets not pretend this is done for any friends, greater good, or whatever. It is a pure revenue thing. Also there is that little tiny part of requesting for a price...

    5. The value of the weapons is in the time spent, as in earned via work. You can buy grades, and you can buy whole degrees nowdays, nepotism buys positions without qualifications, and so many other ills of society that obviously it devalues the whole system.
    Is it black and white? Not at all, want to help actual friends, help them to learn, help them to complete, but lets not compare that to selling, those are not the same.

    6. If someone doesn't have the time, no biggie, there are plenty of really nice weapons out there, Burnished, Alabaster, Warden, which will not prevent anyone from doing LoMM or mod18 Avernus thing. If you can't put the time or the will, it's ok to not have the weapons. Simple as that.

    I agree with you on most of the things. I just posted how others think/feel and what I think was their real intentions and I don't agree with their assessment either. Only thing I would disagree is that good (as in useful) rings do sell good even though not as good compared to the past (as some might wanted?). A lot of those who complain keep flipping rings trying to increase the price that people pay etc. I'm sure it may not worth for you and me but it seems it's worth enough for them.

    Just to be clear tho the "friends" concept was not brought by me and I'm not sure how it got into this conversation. This has nothing to do with friends and how one treats them.

    The OP made a comment about this being illegal and people should get banned. Thats was my main objection and the heart of my comments. I don't like when people try to push other people into doing or not doing things by imposing their opinions on others,

    Someone doesn't like to do it? Fine and I will support their opinion on not doing it.
    Someone else likes to do it? Same as above.

    That simple.
    Post edited by apollo#5199 on
  • karvarekarvare Member Posts: 264 Arc User
    We really Must stop, "those people", from getting the set. I mean, "Really!"
  • mamalion1234mamalion1234 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,415 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    1: Is 100% legal to trade in game currency for anything in game.
    2: The players that pay they dont want owe a favor thats why they pay they dont want to do it for free.
    3: selling rings to poeple they dont deserve them isnt the same as to sell the weapons to the poeple they dont deserve them?
    4: each group has its own rules we do whatever we want as long is legal.
  • ecrana#2080 ecrana Member Posts: 1,654 Arc User
    I personally find it disgusting when people post things on the auction house too. How dare people earn in game currency from doing in game tasks. It's reprehensible.
  • micky1p00micky1p00 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,594 Arc User
    edited December 2019

    1: Is 100% legal to trade in game currency for anything in game.
    2: The players that pay they dont want owe a favor thats why they pay they dont want to do it for free.
    3: selling rings to poeple they dont deserve them isnt the same as to sell the weapons to the poeple they dont deserve them?
    4: each group has its own rules we do whatever we want as long is legal.

    2) This is not the case of players offering something for help, this is a case of other players advertise sale of runs, so no, that explanation is not working. This is not a case of "Thanks for helping me, here some X items", this is a case of "Pay me X, stay on campfire until we finish, then you get to roll on weapons". IMO there is a small yet significant difference between offering compensation in gratitude after help, and requesting payment upfront as a deal for services delivered.

    If someone wants the weapons, they can train, learn, do it, or if they don't have the time or don't like ToMM (and both completely valid) they can stay with burnished, nothing wrong with that.

    3) No, not the same, rings are unbound, and meant to be sold. Weapons are bound and meant to be earned.

    Some people work hard to get to medical school, some get their rich parents to donate a new library to the University. Admission criteria is set by the University so both legal in some backwater countries, but we don't have to like it.

    4) This is not a group issue, this is overall community behaviour, and while I'm sure you don't care about what I think about this, and that is valid too, I have much less respect to people who try to earn AD on something that in a good community should be offered as mutual help - and other people indeed do training runs, help others to learn and help with groups, and all the respect to them.

    Is it legal? As in does the ToS explicitly forbid this? No it doesn't forbid, but not all things that are not explicitly forbidden should be done, wouldn't it be nice to see sometimes a bit beyond personal gain, and do something for the overall health of the community. Especially when the clear intention is weapons = earned, rings / artifact or anything that unbound = sold. Yet, ofc, that doesn't make it "forbidden".
    I guess it is the concept of earned that is fluid here.

    Bottom line, I guess, there is nothing much to go on about this, some will keep doing it, and others (me included) will keep not liking it. But opinions are opinions, we all have them, and they....
    Post edited by micky1p00 on
  • namelesshero347namelesshero347 Member Posts: 2,109 Arc User
    As long as RL money is not changing hands, devs probably don't mind. I don't mind as it probably helps the ZAX backlog. I think the problem people have with the arrangement is the weapons are like status symbols, making them available to anyone willing to pay cheapens the value. SH weapons used to be BiS. People didn't have an issue crafting and selling them. How is it different from grinding tomm for weapons to sell?
  • apollo#5199 apollo Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    Most of the "moral" rules people refer to, are based on game rules set by the devs, if X is allowed and Y isn't allowed, then doing Y is "bad" and doing X is good which we all agree. Clearly here, Y is allowed and so the "morality" of the case should be adjusted because I can show you several cases of the same in essence issue (look at the above post about Mastercraft weapons) but the only differentiating factor is the game rules and no nothing else.

    In my opinion we have 2 separate issues. One is to learn the dungeon/mechanics etc and the other is to get a weapon set that only drops in there. People make it sound like the two are mutually inclusive. It's a different thing if one wants to learn the dungeon as that person will still seek training teams/groups and guidance and still try to do it and it's another if one wants an item from there and doesn't care about the dungeon itself and never plans to come back. One may see it as immoral but at the end is a decision and a conscious choice that no one should force another to do or not do by pointing fingers.

    To close this and to be honest I would agree with people on the moral issue up to an extend, but being able to look behind the curtain of most groups I do ToMM, I only see people worrying that others will come in and get a share of the pie and undercut etc. Don't take my word I can send you 100s of screenshots to see. Almost none expressed an issue with a person having the weapons doing whatever else they kept doing.

    My 2 cents
    Post edited by apollo#5199 on
  • micky1p00micky1p00 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,594 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    I think there are two differences from the SH example.

    One is the easier one, and its key is here: "How is it different from grinding tomm for weapons to sell? "

    You actually can't grind ToMM for weapons to sell, the weapons are bound, so you invite a person as dead weight, they ask the person to sit on the campfire while they 9 complete the run, and the person gets the 1 weapon that drop (or whatever arrangement goes by weapon type).

    So ToMM has 2 incentives to play it, one is direct to char progress and achievement (and I guess status), the Weapons, and the second economical, the rings and artifact. This method turns the first into the second, by creating a "completion token" for the ToMM runs, and as opposed to old campaigns, I doubt that devs like it. (That doesn't mean that anyone will do anything about it now, or can do something about it)

    Also in this case, there is no AH involved, and I doubt that it affects the ZAX in meaningful way, even if the few people that do buy use ZAX to get AD.

    The second will be the entry barrier. MW had equal entry for everyone (discounting a specific bug), you put the dime, you unlock, you sell. In this case, people on purpose add to the groups requirements the "must have weapons" when you don't need those, just to sell the runs to get them and prevent newer players to ToMM to get them otherwise.
    IMO, this is the HAMSTER part of the process, a group that clearly can finish it as 9 people chooses to sell it instead of giving a player who trained for months a chance to see a return for their labor.

    Personally, I had higher expectations overall, and ToMM disillusioned me about the "Community" in so many ways. Long long ago, in a galaxy far away, so many mods ago, when I was a noob, people took the time to explain thing, take with them, and demonstrate, even at the cost of a run failure.
    I've assumed the same, that people who completed will take the time to help others, and so on, without some agenda, just because we are all here for a game, and it does feel nice (at least IMO) not to carry or being carried, but to complete it as a group. How wrong I was.


    ... is the game rules and no nothing else. ..

    I think we have the game rules, and the intent that we understand from them, and the values we bring with us. I think the core disagreement of some of us, is not legality, but those values and expectations we believe in as individuals and come from outside the game.


    In my opinion we have 2 separate issues. One is to learn the dungeon/mechanics etc and the other is to get a weapon set that only drops in there. People make it sound like the two are mutually inclusive. It's a different thing if one wants to learn the dungeon as that person will still seek training teams/groups and guidance and still try to do it and it's another if one wants an item from there and doesn't care about the dungeon itself and never plans to come back.

    Not the same, but IMO, closely related. The main incentive to learn the mechanics and do live runs is the weapons, especially when the rest lowered in value.
    Upgrading your char, learning the mechanics, and getting a group enough times to get the weapons is much more AD, time and effort, and with that comes a sense of achievement. That shortcut devalues that sense of achievement, as in "Why I've put months of training, upgrading the char, etc.. when x threw couple of mil and got them"

    Learning the mechanics just to learn the mechanics is not an incentive enough to do ToMM, the rewards must match the effort.


    One may see it as immoral but at the end is a decision and a conscious choice that no one should force another to do or not do by pointing fingers.

    I don't fully agree, if something will be stopped by "pointing fingers", then there was some consensus that it was morally wrong, otherwise that type of pressure wouldn't work. Ofc, in pointing fingers I mean figuratively about the subject, and not specific people.
    Also any discussion and "accusation" should be truthful, and if the action is within the ToS, then it is within the ToS.

    A community can set standards of what is "good" and "bad", for better or worse, and regardless of the written "law" enforced by external entity.


    To close this and to be honest I would agree with people on the moral issue up to an extend, but being able to look behind the curtain of most groups I do ToMM, I only see people worrying that others will come in and get a share of the pie and undercut etc. Don't take my word I can send you 100s of screenshots to see. Almost none expressed an issue with a person having the weapons doing whatever else they kept doing.

    IMO this is unfortunate, and perhaps in some away it is meant to appeal to the motivation of those who sell the weapons, for example an easy argument will be "You earn on the weapons now, but you devalue your own loot in the overall scheme of things, so it's not profitable"

    This is just an assumption. Personally, I put a lot of effort into getting everyone I know and want to finish ToMM, through it, with almost daily training runs. I want to see people who put the effort, complete it, and without payments, carry, and whatever. And yes, I think others paying for the shortcuts devalue that effort.

    It is extremely unlikely that anyone will care about my personal weapons or status, as I mostly do not join those groups that only care about profit. Nor undercutting wars or flipping or whatever, I just match the lowest and that is that.

    There are people, like @groo111 who did (and still does) many training runs, for anyone who just wanted to come, with the full knowledge that that will increase the AH competition on the rings.

    At the end I don't expect everyone to be the poster child of altruism, but yes, to think twice about the health of the game, the community and so on. At the end, a person who just buys the weapons and keeps doing their thing do not really "need" the weapons, their most significant contribution is in hard content, and as an achievement reward. It just lowers the chance of future player engagement in hard content, and hence lowers the chance of the devs investing into creating said content in the future.


    My 2 cents

    I want just to note that I was expecting world war forum PvP, due to the topic, and I'm surprised that how civil the discussion has remained.

    Ofc also all the above is my opinion and nothing more, I don't presume to force, enforce or anything to anyone.
  • sobi#1980 sobi Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    As long as it has no real money involved, I see nothing wrong with such transactions, "legally" speaking. But for goodness sake, don't call this "friends helping each other our". It's pure greed. One could argue that they are "Bound to account" , indicating that you are not supposed to sell them and in technical terms, it does make sense, but there are always loopholes.

    This is more of a balancing issue than OP's mentioned issue, but according to the rules, as long as no real life money is involved, it is but legal. However, morally you can point fingers on others but this is done with the consent of the buyer. Sure, you can go ahead and call the seller/s greedy for not carrying that one noob but i am 100% sure that a big part of this problem is balancing. I wouldn't second blaming the dev's for this because you reap what you Sow. TO those who think that balancing issues currently are unintentional, they you clearly are lacking in the business side of things.

    I do want to point out that Lion heart is actually a big part of completing TOMM. Of course if you have few good and geared wizards, then you probably don't need it, but I am thinking more in terms of none of the dps having lion heart. Then the dps loss would be huge. That's something the dev's really should consider in the future.

    As the only dps cleric in my guild, I know i was carried though TOMM for the weapon set eventhough i had weeks of practice on preview and i don't think i suck that much with cleric. I was told that as long as you are not doing around 250k encpds throughout TOMM, you are being carried and i was not doing that much and nor do i do that much currently in LIVE with lion heart and I have 200k power as well. The best barb in our guild is maxing out out on 250kencpds with Personal artifact in TOMM and he is one of the only barbs you'll ever see do that much damage. That's Hamster why the dev's should sort out the damn balancing issue. On preview things look better for dps cleric but i have no incentive to run TOMM live and being carried. People don't realize that a slow dps will mean you will go through additional mechanics and it just puts the burden on the performing dps to play perfect. That's absolutely not right and considering that the rest of the people want to grind TOMM, which is completely different to just completing TOMM, than any bottleneck in dps is going to be a lot of time waste and not to mention the effort.






    Post edited by sobi#1980 on
  • milehighxr#1299 milehighxr Member Posts: 461 Arc User

    IMO, the majority of top end equipments should be Bound to Account. Absolutely everything which might make a BiS list, should be bound to account. There are a million ways to make money selling lower tier gear, craftables, and everything else... There is absolutely no shortage of auction opportunities without them. If the game does not protect its top-end items from being purchased... then there will be no desire for players to play content to attain them. If a top-end equipment set can be purchased for a modest amount of AD on the market... by a player who has never run a quest in-game beyond the game intro sequence... something is wrong, and the game company is cutting their own income in the process.

    Every single item from chest drops, to crafting, to dungeon rewards, to hunt rewards, to me/we/fe rewards, should absolutely be UNOBOUND on initial pickup. After that, it should be no more than ACCOUNT BOUND on equip. There is absolutely no reason that a Harper Bard comp that drops from a chest in Tales should be BtA on pick up. I got one of these and have no need for it. To me that's 600k ad that I'll never have, or an item that I can't trade for something I do want. I picked up several mounts, and comps that are totally worthless to me during tales. Same goes for battle horns in CTA events. I got 3 blue battle horns on the same toon in one 10x run(to get my currency for the day) and I couldn't pass the extras to my alts, or sell/trade them. To me that is unacceptable.

    Don't even get me started on the worthless vanity pets...
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    I see nothing wrong with this practice, although I have not (and have no interest in) partaken in it myself. This is fairly common in online games which are harder than NW and the premise is simple. People are selling a service. Just like in IRL, some people are friends with the person providing the service and they may be willing to provide it for free, or a discounted rate (for example, I am willing to help out my friends for ToMM, free of charge). Personally it is far too much of a hassle to offer a carry service for ToMM, but that is exactly what it is. Some random person whom you do not know and have no incentive to carry, wants to go through and complete it. You have the ability to carry them with 8 friends, or go with 9 friends instead. If you want to make currency, carrying them is a perfectly legitimate way to profit.

    IMO, the majority of top end equipments should be Bound to Account. Absolutely everything which might make a BiS list, should be bound to account. There are a million ways to make money selling lower tier gear, craftables, and everything else... There is absolutely no shortage of auction opportunities without them. If the game does not protect its top-end items from being purchased... then there will be no desire for players to play content to attain them. If a top-end equipment set can be purchased for a modest amount of AD on the market... by a player who has never run a quest in-game beyond the game intro sequence... something is wrong, and the game company is cutting their own income in the process.

    The incentive is in your post already and it is clear. The incentive to run that content if it can be sold, is to sell it. It is a much stronger incentive than the incentive that exists if it is bound, as once you have your gear, you no longer have a reason to run it unless you are setting up exactly the kind of service being discussed in this thread.
  • blargskullblargskull Member Posts: 514 Arc User
    I don't know if I am following this topic or if it is stalking me?? Back in my Guild Wars days many of us ran players to Droknar's Forge. I don't know if anyone else here did that? But we charged them 5 to 10 platinum per run. The run allowed low end characters to get the best armor in that campaign. If you left Ascalon with a new level 1 character, you could pay 5 to 10 p for a run to Lion's Arch. From there you could either hop a boat to Cantha and get armor or offer another 5 to 10 p for a Drok's Run. It was perfectly legit and they even talked about it on the wiki; https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_Drok's_run

    I have no clue what they charge for a Drok's Run today, but it was a service offered by one player to another. I don't like skipping ahead. I never bought a run, but I made a lot of platinum back then. Best of all you didn't have to advertise, some person would be asking and you offered the service. If your service was cash, then no deal, we dealt in virtual game currency only.

    This game offers the service to avoid playing entire campaigns with buyout tokens. Cryptic may think you are cutting into their profits by offering a service that would prevent them from making a sale. It doesn't matter what anyone here tells you. If Cryptic says your service is illegal, then prepare to get the ban hammer.

    Just killing time...
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