Discussion of art selling exemption in T&C

I believe the ban of RWT is to ensure fairness in game progression for everyone (and acts as a deterrence to prevent server from getting flooded with mesos farming hackers/bots)? While it's really hard to enforce game progression fairness for everyone in practice (because eg. linny's catfish video example of free few hundred mil mesos offered for free, legit rich friends and possibly fake "friends" who are sellers trying to circumvent RWT rules lending out few hundred million~one billion's worth of gear to IRL/"IRL" friends just starting out, legit/fake inheritance of billions in gear from quitting players -- some of whom could be cashing out and selling for real $$ when they quit the game), I think this is something within our control that can be looked at to even the playing ground for new players who sell art & new players who don't.

While 50m 100m/piece of art isn't a lot to end-game players, it is a significant amount of mesos for new players who are just starting out (especially those under lvl 50~90 who didn't have any luck pulling a WS/CS from gacha). If RWTers who purchased 200m to start out and never bought mesos again in their ML lifetime are banned to ensure fairness in game progression, I think similarly new players who are art sellers should not have a significant head start over normal new players in terms of game progression (but don't get me wrong, RWT & selling art are two complete different things. 1 is breaking ToS and 1 is imo a community/fanfare service through legal channels ---- what I'm trying to say is that art sellers should not have too much of a head start in game progression over normal players).

I actually support monetary rewards for art selling as it's a community/fanfare service thing imo and would not advocate for art selling to be banned under ToS, however I think perhaps art selling could be moderated more closely by introducing a price ceiling (eg. 20m-30m per piece) with any higher priced high effort special commissions (eg. drawing of 30 people in an entire guild in a single artwork) to be subject to approval from staff in the forums.

TS provided a great perspective that I've never considered before. Many of these guide creators whose guides I've been relying on regularly since I started playing ML have never received any monetary rewards despite how much (intangible) value they've provided to me and many other ML players. No I'm not going to say that art sellers should not be given any form of monetary rewards because these guide creators are not given any form of monetary rewards. But I think these guide creators (the really quality ones that I keep going back to) are underappreciated and very much deserving of monetary rewards/donations --- perhaps staff could even consider a system of donor NX rewards for guide creators whose works have become flagship guides in the forum benefitting the population.

 

If you think 100m is big meso then that explains a lot. 100m is basically a drop in the bucket when it comes to getting actually good gear even in mid-late game. For it to be actual abuse imo it would have to be at least 2b mesos of profits without proper effort to obtain it. The reason why I mention most artists closing or burning out is because they do so before they actually reach that point. Even the ones that have gotten close is because they have taken countless commissions over a long period of time or are doing detailed full body colored works from scratch that take a significant amount of time to complete, which I do not think is considered abuse at all.

 

Something something finite number or buyers.

 

People who are arguing this encourages RWT via paying a real artist doesn’t realize that scheme will fail quickly because:

1. You are now beholden to only RWT with only one person because you’re selling their art and using their existing work to show off their art style.
2. You would either have to be performing art theft (passing work off your own) or disclosing that you are merely a middleman (which would get you banned as RWT, and this isn’t allowed - you can only sell your own art)
3. Artists are NOTORIOUSLY flakey (speaking as one) - our desire to do art waxes and wanes and good luck keeping your account if you are unable to get the art from the artist you have a relationship with IRL after someone has paid you. Not as applicable anymore since you can’t queue multiple works anymore, but imagine your artist was like “nah I don’t want to draw these 10 works anymore, here’s a refund”. You can’t force them to do the art if they pay you back IRL lol. If they also decide they’ll take ten years to return your work or money good luck managing it on the customer’s side
4. The customer cannot ask for anything custom / your ability to change the art piece if buyer is unsatisfied is limited / what happens if you promise something the artist can’t or won’t do? You’re less flexible than real artists selling their work for mesos.
5. “oh I’ll just use multiple artists” Good luck getting their art style to match. Good luck telling the second, third etc artists “they have to follow the style of this other artist”. Good luck having the actual result match the first results even if they agreed to copy the first artists style.

So in other words, to be able to abuse this as RWT, you need to have a relationship with ONE artist who can consistently output work and you need to be able to pay them AND they have to be okay with you stealing their art and passing it off as your own OR you have to lie to them and tell them you’re not doing that OR you will need to pay a LOT OF MONEY to let them ghostdraw for you. Like US$100-200 a piece money. Or multiple artists, all who are okay with art theft or need to be paid a lot more than regular artists. Also you would get rekted if the real artist ever contacts the admins here and tell them their art is stolen/bought for with real money even if they promised they were ok with it earlier. It just seems so absurd that RWT abuse via irl art commissions can ever be a possibility.

 

How cheap do you think it is do commissions IRL? Everyone prices things differently but you’ll need to spend on order of US$20 and more realistically US$40+ per 100 million mesos. Custom art doesn’t really get cheaper than that.

Except you’ll also have to do theft too via passing it off as your own or to pay them enough for them to be okay with it, so easily $30-50+ per piece. If you needed multiple artists to finish previously-existing commissions they cannot change the request so that’s less flexibility on their part, now it’s $50-75+ a piece.

RWT via IRL art commissions would become absurdly expensive real quick.

 

100m IS a drop of water for mid-late game. Mid-late game is gear on the order of 2b-10b of gear.

 

It’s a separate point and a big one. When you buy art IRL you still, on default, have to keep credit to the artist. What happens if they leave their watermark on their art? Are you gonna tell them to remove it? You usually need to pay extra to remove credit or to be able to pass it off as your own.

 

You have ignored the rest of my post. You can only get it this cheap if the artist is being severely ripped off or if you’re committing art theft.

 

$20 to $40 is base price with artist keeping their credit meaning you cannot ethically say you made it.

 

Or if someone is building a portfolio.. Or if the art isn't crazy time consuming.. Or if the person doesnt need publicity... You can talk to artists and figure something out its not rocket science.

1; People can certainly draw in more than just 1 style, 2-3 is perfectly reasonable
2; false
3;
4; communication isn't that difficult. I don't know what world of commissions you come from but unless its artists forced to draw minecraft fanfiction against their will to pay the bills they tend to not be extremely difficult in adjustments, if its too much or not possible simply dont take the deal or the artist could charge extra
5; I think you forget that we're not in court here no one is doing DNA exams on art, yeah some people have a distinct style, some people can only draw in a specific style, youre really overestimating the complications here

 

Look, if you think it’s so easy, then I invite you to carry out this exact scheme - oh, you don’t have the money for it? Well neither do most people. It’s gonna be an absurdly small population that would RWT via art, and just because it IS possible (has been possible) doesn’t mean it actually happens. In any case we should not ban selling art for mesos just because of an extremely slim, completely hypothetical situation. And as Staff said, they have been watching this for years and haven’t found evidence of this being a problem.

 

If they don’t care about ethics, why not just RWT the normal way?

 

Because unless they have some other loophole going on theyre more or less guaranteed to get banned?

 

My prices ARE for newbie and hobbyist artists. Anyone being paid less is being ripped off.

Additionally, cannot guarantee a consistent source of art from hobbyists or newbies. Furthermore, newbies and hobbyists will struggle to replicate a specific style of art if you need to switch artists.