Salvage Bans v 2.0

[Cyleena]

Technically if they do this you'd be well within your rights to charge back. It's not like they could ban you after you're already banned!

I have heard from several people that this has happened to them about being banned right after their monthly subscription was paid. I have never been banned so I do not know how hard it is to get your account pro-rated for the days you did play before the ban after they received payment. It just seems like SE likes banning people right after they pay for their account though this is probably just a coincidence.

Also, for those that mention bans ceasing I have heard of a few more bans within the last week, so it seems like they are still going on though not as big of a group ban atm. I am sure it is working up to another big ban again soon.

[Xantavia]

I wonder why SE doesn't just make an anything-goes cheaters server and instead of banning folks, send 'em there. I seem to recall hearing about some other MMO doing something like that.

Not sure about MMO's, but other games that have done that, those servers don't stay full that long. It ceases to be fun for them when other people are using the same cheats they do.

[Lolwutt]

the thought that RMT accounts remain constant is almost as stupid as the thought that you can use xiah for any real data

you can't possibly assume that RMT getting banned effectively are going to remake every char that's lost in the same manner.. never mind that a huge chunk of banned rmt accounts never even touch the AH and were only used to transfer gil between servers

the bans aren't going to stop until the game ends or people stop cheating

[vivbiibasjiu]

Not sure about MMO's, but other games that have done that, those servers don't stay full that long. It ceases to be fun for them when other people are using the same cheats they do.

Exactly, cheating is all about one-upping people and screwing people over, which is, shockingly, why cheating is wrong. Otherwise it wouldn't be against the rules. It makes the game pointless. Let's all hack our swords of infinity+1 and AFK in Jeuno forever! Boring.

[Spicyryan]

Exactly, cheating is all about one-upping people and screwing people over, which is, shockingly, why cheating is wrong. Otherwise it wouldn't be against the rules. It makes the game pointless. Let's all hack our swords of infinity+1 and AFK in Jeuno forever! Boring.

Yeah, everyone who had been using Windower for years to view alliance MP, PT TP, a time stamp, spell and JA recasts, time left on reraise and buffs, what items are located on their mules without changing character, etc were all out there trying to see who could have it easier. There is extreme competitiveness in being the best telling time in this game as we all know.

One could also argue that players simply trying to perform well at their job with Gearswap or ye ole Spellcast had the byproduct of out preforming others without that being their actual concern. I know when my gear changes before and after a WS so I can kill something or sets switching based on the amount of haste I have on. That I don't think about anything other than how I am having a better time not spamming macros and simply playing instead of worrying about menial mechanical tasks.


I can hit buttons better than you because I cheat!

As far as clipper users go I don't think anyone trying to get from point A to point B faster is trying to outdo anyone either.

None of what people are being banned for is about "hacking sword of infinity+1" as nothing is making us invincible or stronger than anyone else. It is about people not wanting to spend their free time running around.

[Lolwutt]

None of what people are being banned for is about "hacking sword of infinity+1" as nothing is making us invincible or stronger than anyone else. It is about people not wanting to spend their free time running around.

not really.. fulltiming speed in an instanced area is the equivalent of a free 10-20% time extension, then you have the people using it to ignore gravity/bind so their mages don't have to be competent

not sure how prevalent it is now with how easy everything is, but a ton of shells did that when delve1 first came out and it's pretty clear it makes you 'stronger'

add in some open world things, such as treasure coffers or abyssea trigger nms(not heavily contested now, sure, but i've still had competition a few times when farming emp109 mats or belts for fotia).. obviously one person running at permaflee is going to be much more likely to claim than the guy playing legit

it has innocuous uses, but i somehow doubt the people using it to get from point A to point B decide to turn it off for situations where it gives them a benefit..

[Sephiran]

the thought that RMT accounts remain constant is almost as stupid as the thought that you can use xiah for any real data

you can't possibly assume that RMT getting banned effectively are going to remake every char that's lost in the same manner.. never mind that a huge chunk of banned rmt accounts never even touch the AH and were only used to transfer gil between servers

the bans aren't going to stop until the game ends or people stop cheating

Okay then. If you think my data is crap, then look at Enoch's, which is directly from SE. What do you see? I see big numbers the year the RMT-PWNER was released (the same year of the original Salvage bans and gardening bans), and then I see smaller numbers that go down, then climb up, then back down, and so on. It pretty much parallels the general population of game that isn't RMT. After all, RMT aren't stupid. As long as this game is around and has a marginal population, RMT will be around. They probably don't create accounts the moment they're banned. Of that part you are correct. However, I guarantee you that the those RMT come back on an intermittent basis to continue their business. Were this not the case, I sincerely doubt that you'd see such a high degree of fluctuation in frozen gil. That--and though I know you reject the XIAH data--you would see a much more steep decline in accounts per month. And for the record, this data has been advocated in various threads in the past for people deciding where to go when the jump servers. Not because it's good but because the last census was in what...2009? And unlike the people who used it back then for the total counts, I'm only interested in the rates of change. If you want, I can even dig those threads up. I'll even make a graph in Wolfram Mathematica to show how rates of change are unaffected by added constants.

Still not convinced? Look, here's the DB in March: http://web.archive.org/web/201503202...h.com/database

It's right around where I said it was. Not only that but look at the inactive server counts. They are the exact same as they are now, which is exactly how I said it worked. These approximations are as good as it's gonna get for approximating the number of non-RMT's banned. Is there ANYTHING else that I can possibly do aside from get a professor with a Ph.D in mathematics (which I can do because I'm bloody majoring in it) to look at this data and my analytical methods for everyone reading this?

[vivbiibasjiu]

not really.. fulltiming speed in an instanced area is the equivalent of a free 10-20% time extension, then you have the people using it to ignore gravity/bind so their mages don't have to be competent

not sure how prevalent it is now with how easy everything is, but a ton of shells did that when delve1 first came out and it's pretty clear it makes you 'stronger'

add in some open world things, such as treasure coffers or abyssea trigger nms(not heavily contested now, sure, but i've still had competition a few times when farming emp109 mats or belts for fotia).. obviously one person running at permaflee is going to be much more likely to claim than the guy playing legit

it has innocuous uses, but i somehow doubt the people using it to get from point A to point B decide to turn it off for situations where it gives them a benefit..

Yeah everyone acts like they have a halo on while they fleehack their way to pop that T3 VNM the other poor sob in the zone has been trying to pop for hours with his gravity speed

[Spicyryan]

not really.. fulltiming speed in an instanced area is the equivalent of a free 10-20% time extension, then you have the people using it to ignore gravity/bind so their mages don't have to be competent

not sure how prevalent it is now with how easy everything is, but a ton of shells did that when delve1 first came out and it's pretty clear it makes you 'stronger'

add in some open world things, such as treasure coffers or abyssea trigger nms(not heavily contested now, sure, but i've still had competition a few times when farming emp109 mats or belts for fotia).. obviously one person running at permaflee is going to be much more likely to claim than the guy playing legit

it has innocuous uses, but i somehow doubt the people using it to get from point A to point B decide to turn it off for situations where it gives them a benefit..

Stretching time extensions? Is that really infinity +1 status..?
When was the last time TEs mattered? Dynamis? So what you get more currency? What does that even really matter?

Oh, I got my shitty weapon faster than you instead of just farming Salvage to sell Alex in less then half the time per zone.

I don't see how running fast helps people kill the NMs in Delve too. You have to be able to kill them so moving fast does literally nothing unless you are kiting, and even then the clock was not friendly back until the ilvl gear went up.

Moving faster to a ??? with clipper doesn't help you claim better than someone since you should both be stationary. We are not talking claim bots or hacks here.
I also got more satisfaction from the many times I outclaimed people cheating on Gukumatz back in the day (multiple times in a row then use the flux to change claim) while I was playing legit or with 0% movement speed. Sure, I didn't have the advantage, but you shouldn't really have been doing it alone when it was new and relevant at 85-95 caps, and two to three people easily negated the speed difference for just about all the NMs. So far this has been the only valid point though so I can't sit here and belittle it with "big deal" or what have you.

People absolutely do widely use the autodisable on Clipper too for when people are around when it would actually benefit them.

Really, the people around you are going to hurt or help you more than Clipper ever could. Same goes for Windower.

Yeah everyone acts like they have a halo on while they fleehack their way to pop that T3 VNM the other poor sob in the zone has been trying to pop for hours with his gravity speed

Yeah, it is almost like you lose your KI after popping it or something for a 15 minute respawn.

[Lolwutt]

I don't see how running fast helps people kill the NMs in Delve too. You have to be able to kill them so moving fast does literally nothing unless you are kiting, and even then the clock was not friendly back until the ilvl gear went up.

The clock being unfriendly is why it matters. If you save 6 minutes running, you have an extra 6 minutes on the clock. Certain people even ran out of range of TP moves at 800% speed.

Moving faster to a ??? with clipper doesn't help you claim better than someone since you should both be stationary. We are not talking claim bots or hacks here.

Unless neither of you were camping that ???, you were heading toward it and someone sped past you and got the pop. Nobody really hangs out in abyssea for hours, they run there to kill a couple mobs then leave.

I also got more satisfaction from the many times I outclaimed people cheating on Gukumatz back in the day (multiple times in a row then use the flux to change claim) while I was playing legit or with 0% movement speed. Sure, I didn't have the advantage, but you shouldn't really have been doing it alone when it was new and relevant at 85-95 caps, and two to three people easily negated the speed difference for just about all the NMs. So far this has been the only valid point though so I can't sit here and belittle it with "big deal" or what have you.

So, you shouldn't be alone because it puts you at a disadvantage vs cheaters..? This is some of your worst logic yet.

People absolutely do widely use the autodisable on Clipper too for when people are around when it would actually benefit them.

Really, the people around you are going to hurt or help you more than Clipper ever could. Same goes for Windower.

The people around you will hurt or help you by a bigger factor if using clipper. It's really not that tough a concept, let go.

Yeah, it is almost like you lose your KI after popping it or something for a 15 minute respawn.

He probably meant T2, which is much more contested. If you're quick, you can pop your T3 and get a fresh T2 pop before it's even back up, especially if speedhacking..

[Spicyryan]

So you are trying to tell me that 18 people all got together and ran at 800% movement speed to beat Delve? Yeah, there is no doubt that people used Clipper, but the collective extreme degree you are using is a bit ridiculous. It be like someone writing to use a command 10,000 times over and over in a Windower macro and calling the program a skillup bot. Pretty sure that is beyond the max speed of clipper too.

Maybe you forget Abyssea, but unless you didn't have the PI you were always standing at the ??? trying to trade faster than someone else. I didn't say you shouldn't be alone because it puts you at an advantage vs cheaters. I am saying that groups of people farmed Abyssea 85-95 and even 99. The loser who came along at 85 cap and took 10 minutes to proc and kill something solo were a waste of time to everyone.

Can't make a comparison by including what you are trying to compare as the comparison against itself, let it go.

The only way to kill the T3 and then the T2 would be if the T2 was not killed since it generally takes up to 15 minutes to respawn. It only takes a couple of minutes to pop it after upgrading since it is generally up if you were the one who just killed the T2.

[Byrthnoth]

Fleehacking to T2/3 VNMs is hardly the worst 3P offense even on those mobs. I get that it is a common example, but you hardly even need to go that far. We spent a vast amount of time in FFXI traveling around, so people who fleehacked were essentially playing the game on fast forward. Even ignoring situations where it made the impossible possible (like NI, but not like 18 man Delve where groups that had time problems never had a shot to start with), you get something like 25% more done if you run around at flee speed all the time. It is an easy way to improve efficiency beyond what was intended regardless whether it impacts your ultimate success or other players'. So innocuous fleehacking essentially doesn't matter, stacking up those digital dollars a little faster than your friends, but doing it in acompetitive situation would. Still, if someone is fleehacking to your VNM just GM them.

Also, about those VNMs... How about POS hacking to their location within 3 seconds of pop time and popping the T3 without losing your key item? Wouldn't that have been quite the reportable offense?

[Lolwutt]

heard a first hand account of a whole shell was using clipper so they didnt bother with erase on tuteweh, used speed to pull mobs, etc.. during the race for first kill part of delve prior to dex adjustment and ilevel gear

i really doubt they were the only ones, was a legion stream on xiah with the kiter speeding/ignoring bind as well

a single person using speed or position hacks effectively can have a drastic effect on the success of an event, to say otherwise is laughable.. back at 75 cap, i used to solo all the CoP missions and level capped NMs like boroka/heliodromos by binding keys to warps and hopping back and forth while nuking with :Nis(not bragging or proud of it, but it's a pretty strong example)

[Spicyryan]

heard a first hand account of a whole shell was using clipper so they didnt bother with erase on tuteweh, used speed to pull mobs, etc.. during the race for first kill part of delve prior to dex adjustment and ilevel gear

i really doubt they were the only ones, was a legion stream on xiah with the kiter speeding/ignoring bind as well

a single person using speed or position hacks effectively can have a drastic effect on the success of an event, to say otherwise is laughable.. back at 75 cap, i used to solo all the CoP missions and level capped NMs like boroka/heliodromos by binding keys to warps and hopping back and forth while nuking with :Nis(not bragging or proud of it, but it's a pretty strong example)

Yeah, but the players had to be capable in the first place. The fleeing honestly didn't grant them the win on Tuteweh since he is easy as shit compared to Tojil. It hardly helped them at that. This is also getting away from the general concept of ye ole days of running through a zone to Simurgh and Roc, lack of HPs, and pre 25% boost. Where you will be banned nowadays for not bothering anyone like we are talking about.

Not talking about warping here either, just getting around the game faster and not having to run through the nest to get to Simurgh sorta situations.

[Lolwutt]

are you suggesting that instead of creating a system to detect usage, they should create a system to detect only usage that could potentially hinder someone else or unbalance the game? that's an utterly absurd thought

[Spicyryan]

are you suggesting that instead of creating a system to detect usage, they should create a system to detect only usage that could potentially hinder someone else or unbalance the game? that's an utterly absurd thought

What I am suggesting is that everyone has their panties in a bunch and shouldn't be so upset.

I am not talking about regulatory policy at all.

But, why is that ridiculous though? Ye old days had a GM actually investigate what someone was doing instead of the now assumed automated banning process. Wasn't everything examined on a case by case basis before?

[Lolwutt]

this game is barely worth the staff it utilizes now, much less hiring/training additional people to review whether bans live up to 'Spicyryan's ethics standards'.

[ColenzoRidesAgain]

I think everybody should be banned regardless of if they're cheating or not. Nobody deserves to play the best game of all time.

[Cyleena]

One of the most annoying places where cheating is obvious is at the Behemoth/KB pop. People were getting it to pop before the actual ??? was up because they were using cheats to see it before it was actually there. So annoying for those of us trying to pop it legitimately.

[Spicyryan]

this game is barely worth the staff it utilizes now, much less hiring/training additional people to review whether bans live up to 'Spicyryan's ethics standards'.

Well then if we are banning like that without actual review then they might as well be banning for Windower/Gearswap.

Why exactly do they need to train additional staff to continue doing what they had been doing for years when the population is lower and decreasing?

One of the most annoying places where cheating is obvious is at the Behemoth/KB pop. People were getting it to pop before the actual ??? was up because they were using cheats to see it before it was actually there. So annoying for those of us trying to pop it legitimately.

Yeah, and I have lived through it too, we all have. I have also lived through being the guy called a cheater for legitimately taking KB three times in a row over people there. People aren't happy regardless.