13k accounts banned (1/24)

[Khamsin]

So if you've had to either cheat or join a cheating group of friends just to advance yourself past a certain point, how in the blue hell is the game properly balanced?

I couldn't agree with you more, that one sentence alone sums up exactly what I think is wrong with this game.

Probably the most intelligent and well-constructed post that I've seen on this forum for a long while.

Nobody "needs" to cheat to advance, and not everybody does. If nobody did, nobody would think they had to. They only do it because it's easier to cheat, not because it's required.

[RKenshin]

Rawr, got the gilsellers camping Big Bomb banned for the third time!

Or well, at least I may have. I report just about every RMT team I run into, and it seems to work pretty effectively!

Halvung is nice and roomy now.

[Lucavi]

I couldn't agree with you more, that one sentence alone sums up exactly what I think is wrong with this game.

Probably the most intelligent and well-constructed post that I've seen on this forum for a long while.

Many, many thanks.

Nobody "needs" to cheat to advance, and not everybody does. If nobody did, nobody would think they had to. They only do it because it's easier to cheat, not because it's required.

All I can go on is what I've seen. There are no honest end-game HNM shells in FFXI, at least on Hades. Every. Single. One. of them has serious dirt on their hands, even if there are some of the nicest people in the shells. All have been confirmed to at least bot, or at least have one or two people that POS or alter the game in some unlawful way that gives them an edge on the next guy. Before I left Fenrir, it was heading in that direction, with a large number of NAs feeling disenfranchised about the fact that "JPs claim everything!"

In my zealousness and stupidity, I essentially chose to wage a "battle of purity" with many of the end-game shells on the server. I vowed never to buy an abjuration from, or join a LS that used exploits to claim NMs, beat mobs, ect., nor shells that practiced MPK as a viable solution to getting a claim from another shell. I wound up leaving a sky shell three days before getting my Osode (which I got in another shell later) after being backed into a corner about why I wouldn't support MPKing a group of 4 individuals that had simply out claimed us on Ulli. Sure, I got a lot of flak from it, but I also got a lot of support for it.

When I had just finished my bard to 75, I got an invite from the leader of EX, probably the strongest shell in existence on Hades. Its pretty much akin to the borg: if you want shit, eventually you're either going to join EX or buy it from EX. I watched all the HNM wars between the big shells, and even joined LotL until that died, not knowing that 4 of the leaders used bots, but really didn't claim anything while I was there. Again, I got nothing from that shell.

So I sit as a retarded strong Dragoon that is incomplete, lacking heca cap, body, and ace's helm, as well as love torque, as my awesome little social doesn't have enough to slaughter JoL, and the only shell I've confirmed to be strong enough and NOT have members that cheat in other areas of the game is simply too large to accept anymore invites.

At this point in the game it doesn't bother me that I never "really" finished the job, especially as I now find myself playing another MMO where I don't have to cheat or level the job that is socially-acceptable, but I still call my past viewpoints on honesty and integrity foolish in a game that is so poorly designed that it basically begs you to cheat to win -- throwing you in a series of small, cramped areas with a single monster that can be packet-sniffed basically down to the second that it pops, that is essentially the only mob in the game that has a 3% chance to drop what will actually enhance the performance of my drg -- abet by a little bit. Sure, I could do salvage and spend about 65 mil on ores, and about another 8 months to get a full set of Ares, but by that time Ares started popping up on the radar, I was already feeling the urge to look elsewhere in a game.

So no, I don't think every single person in existance that ever played FFXI has to cheat to advance their career, or willingly or unwillingly associate with cheaters to advance, but I'll ask you, Khamsin:

How many players do you know at the top of the mountain are 100% clean? I'm not asking about how nice they are, or how good of friends you are -- how many have not a speck of taint from being affiliated with any linkshell, group, or have received help from anyone that has botted or joined a shell that cheats? If there's a percentage, its in the decimals.

It was a foolish attempt to play the game, trying to use a storybook set of logic and do things the "hard, but right" way. I have no one to blame for myself for my personal actions, but enough people on BG apparently see something in my posts that they feel is true, so I can at least take comfort in knowing that I wasn't completely alone in my thoughts.

[Paegan]

So if you've had to either cheat or join a cheating group of friends just to advance yourself past a certain point, how in the blue hell is the game properly balanced?

I couldn't agree with you more, that one sentence alone sums up exactly what I think is wrong with this game.

Probably the most intelligent and well-constructed post that I've seen on this forum for a long while.

Nobody "needs" to cheat to advance, and not everybody does. If nobody did, nobody would think they had to. They only do it because it's easier to cheat, not because it's required.

You're right, no-one "needs" to, but the fact is that many people do because the shitty game mechanics make it so easy to, and that leaves the people who don't with the choice of joining them or pretty much giving up on ever obtaining certain pieces of gear. I've been there, I tried to do Kings fair for over a year, it doesn't work. Sure, it's possible to out-claim bots, and we did sometimes (although I later found out that half of those claims weren't as fair as I thought >.>), but hoping to get a Ridill or an Ebody from an average of one claim a month or less is just unreasonable.

So atm, if I want any reasonable chance at King gear then yes, I am pretty much required to either cheat myself or associate with people who do (and their retard army of Ebody/Barone Cosciales/AF feet WARs, but that's another story). I choose not to, I can live without that gear and there are other things that I enjoy doing and other ways to get decent gear. But I shouldn't be forced to make that choice in the first place, and a game that requires me do so is clearly very broken.

[ronin sparthos]

SE would say just go do Salvage and forget the Ebody sensation.

Then again the hole known as '12 imperial RMT ingots' still escapes them.

[Khamsin]

It's not the game mechanics that make people cheat. It's the prisoner's dilemma (or, in larger part, game theory).

The only way to completely remove cheating would be to make it impossible to cheat, not to eliminate the incentive to cheat.

In any perfect scenario you come up with where it is possible to cheat to gain an advantage, all participants have certain choices. Nobody can cheat; Some people can cheat; Everybody can cheat.

Ideally, nobody cheating would be best. However, that requires you to trust everyone else not to screw you over, and thanks to that dilemma I referenced above, people are going to cheat because they're paranoid everyone else is going to cheat.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how hard anything is to get, or what the drop rates are, or how perfect or imperfect the game mechanics are. It has everything to do with being paranoid that someone else is going to cheat and so you have to, too.

[nekura]

Rawr, got the gilsellers camping Big Bomb banned for the third time!

Or well, at least I may have. I report just about every RMT team I run into, and it seems to work pretty effectively!

Halvung is nice and roomy now. :)

Is there any suspicious behavior you noticed that I should look for before reporting suspected RMT in Halvung, or did you report them and hope they got banned for sending gil to an RMT bank mule?

[RKenshin]

Rawr, got the gilsellers camping Big Bomb banned for the third time!

Or well, at least I may have. I report just about every RMT team I run into, and it seems to work pretty effectively!

Halvung is nice and roomy now.

Is there any suspicious behavior you noticed that I should look for before reporting suspected RMT in Halvung, or did you report them and hope they got banned for sending gil to an RMT bank mule?

Anything and everything a stereotypical gilseller description fits is usually fine.

Including but not limited to everything from small stuff like no pearl, always anon, speaking Chinese and/or extremely broken english, to monopolizing and living at an NM(s) at nearly all times of the day (all the while having extremely cheap gear), large number of people that appear to be controlled by a small number of people, and they often can't help but use third party programs so if you catch them doing anything suspicious like that you have another positive.

Personally quite a few have probably been banned just for POSing/speed hacking into past all the true sight mobs.

[chunz]

Rawr, got the gilsellers camping Big Bomb banned for the third time!

Or well, at least I may have. I report just about every RMT team I run into, and it seems to work pretty effectively!

Halvung is nice and roomy now.

Is there any suspicious behavior you noticed that I should look for before reporting suspected RMT in Halvung, or did you report them and hope they got banned for sending gil to an RMT bank mule?

Anything and everything a stereotypical gilseller description fits is usually fine.

Including but not limited to everything from small stuff like no pearl, always anon, speaking Chinese and/or extremely broken english, to monopolizing and living at an NM(s) at nearly all times of the day (all the while having extremely cheap gear), large number of people that appear to be controlled by a small number of people, and they often can't help but use third party programs so if you catch them doing anything suspicious like that you have another positive.

Personally quite a few have probably been banned just for POSing/speed hacking into past all the true sight mobs.

'speaking Chinese and/or extremely broken english'
Erm, you are almost like a FFxi Idol in Seraph...and there's a chance that you might mislead people into thinking that people who speak chinese and speak broken english are RMTs...

[neochaos]

It's not the game mechanics that make people cheat. It's the prisoner's dilemma (or, in larger part, game theory).

The only way to completely remove cheating would be to make it impossible to cheat, not to eliminate the incentive to cheat.

In any perfect scenario you come up with where it is possible to cheat to gain an advantage, all participants have certain choices. Nobody can cheat; Some people can cheat; Everybody can cheat.

Ideally, nobody cheating would be best. However, that requires you to trust everyone else not to screw you over, and thanks to that dilemma I referenced above, people are going to cheat because they're paranoid everyone else is going to cheat.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how hard anything is to get, or what the drop rates are, or how perfect or imperfect the game mechanics are. It has everything to do with being paranoid that someone else is going to cheat and so you have to, too.

I sorta disagree with the last statement in ur post, but everything else is primarily true. People in FFXI dont cheat out of paranoia and fear that everyone else does, people cheat "initially" because it gives them the advantage. At this point in the game, depending on what server ur on, most if not all shells bot to some degree. So now people cheat because everyone else does, and while you have a slight, and i stress slight chance of outclaiming bots, most just take the route with higher guarantee and have a shell choc full of bots to maximize effectiveness.

As noble and virtuous as the "anti-botters" are, the unfortunate fact is that in this game, they are the ones who wont ever become the "best", as far as HNMs go, etc. So as to what someone said earlier, pretty much any player you see and say "wow they are badass" to, probably cheated to some extent. Usually, in every extent possible, lol. But as luck, karma, and inevitability would have it, every so often a couple of those overzealous cheaters who pwn so much face with their leet gear get the banstick, so, while you do get close to being top-notch via cheating, it will primarily fuck you over bad in the end if u get the wonderful LM17.





And I'm pretty much with Lucavi, if the next update doesn't deliver some game-breaking badass shit, [Goodbye FFXI]

[Lucavi]

And I'm pretty much with Lucavi, if the next update doesn't deliver some game-breaking badass shit, [Goodbye FFXI]

Join the revolution! I will lead you to the promised land!

[Lampoon]

Luc, while your points are valid I'd like to argue few points from personal perspective.

First you said there isn't a battlefield which requires more than a beat down of NM. Look at CoP Dynamis. Rewards aside, that instance is hard and requires more than just zerg.

Second; you cannot call someone dirty if they do not do it themselves. Guilty by association is too strong of a statement. What I personally find dirty, are people who lie and backstab their way to what they want. Shit, I have more respect for someone who's a blatant botter, than someone who is a coniving, backstabbing lier.

[Kenji]

That's what all the punch-drunk masochists say, but if that were the case, smns wouldn't be complaining about how long it takes to hit 75, thf's wouldn't have ever complained about a lack of a good end-game role pre-feint, no one would have complained that sams were game-breaking initially after their update, no non-rng jobs would have complained about arrowburn, because all that stuff just makes it harder for the other guy, but there's a real sense of accomplishment when you finally struggle and get what you want, amirite?

In a word, yes. And I did level SMN before the Rage/Ward change.

I'm not going to try and convince you, and at the risk of sounding like a heretic in a crowd of believers... there's more to it than that. People are different. They like different things. As strange and masochistic as it may sound, people do like difficult things. Things you work a long time for. And if you want a scientific angle, yes, people do tend to feel more euphoric over an accomplishment that took a lot of time and/or work, then things more easily and quickly gained.

And as far as I know, the cheating in end-game is pretty much restricted to HNM claiming. If you find any instance of people cheating in Dynamis, Limbus, Assault, Salvage, BCNM, KSNM, ISNM, Einherijar, etc., let me know. HNMs aren't the entire game. I think a lot of people here lose perspective on that point. Many do enjoy the challenge of leveling a job, either solo, duo or larger groups.

There are obviously things that could be done better. But the leveling experience does produce a greater sense of satisfaction for many people, then an easier system like WoW. And I'd argue, does more to teach and produce better players.

Having started over, and going through the Dunes (yes, I went there again), I actually took the time to take control of parties, and teach the subjob-less newbies. The xp was pretty good once everyone learned their roles. I felt a great sense of accomplishment in that. Far more than in other games where leveling was easy and best done solo. Are there still "noobs" at 75? Yes. There always will be. But even among the morons, if they leveled normally and didn't buy the account, they at least know their job.

Bottom line: The longer struggle does make for a better sense of accomplishment, among quite a few other people.

[Lucavi]

First you said there isn't a battlefield which requires more than a beat down of NM. Look at CoP Dynamis.

Look how many people do it, and theres a reason why: rewards suck vs. the effort put in. SE is terrible at it. Its either too easy with a great reward (rare, but I guess you could call faf easy -- if you get claim, which is the hard part), or its too hard or painstaking, with jack shit for rewards.

Second; you cannot call someone dirty if they do not do it themselves. Guilty by association is too strong of a statement. What I personally find dirty, are people who lie and backstab their way to what they want. Shit, I have more respect for someone who's a blatant botter, than someone who is a coniving, backstabbing lier.

You're entitled to have respect for whoever you want, as am I, and I chose not to have respect for those who knew their friends botted and didn't care, because they were still getting the phat lewtz. This was the stance I took while playing FFXI; now that I don't play much anymore, I couldn't give a shit what people do. Lie, cheat, bot, and steal as much as you want; I'm out of a situation where I'd have to take the devil's fruit if I wanted to advance my chara in terms of heca legs, cap, and ace's helm.

I see your points, though, and they are very valid. I'm just glad I don't have to think about things like that anymore -- it tore me up between getting mad at friends for joining botting shells, or botting themselves, vs. being their friend and supporting them.

I'm not going to try and convince you.

Please don't. It won't work. I don't tune you out, but we have two completely different mindsets. You love FFXI and it can do no wrong, hate WoW and it can do no right. I'm somewhere in the middle, where I loved FFXI but it did so much wrong for me that I can't go back, and I like WoW because it feels so new, has better interactivity, and I don't get chastised for trying something out that I personally feel is new, or like. It ain't flawless, neither is FFXI.

[RKenshin]

'speaking Chinese and/or extremely broken english'
Erm, you are almost like a FFxi Idol in Seraph...and there's a chance that you might mislead people into thinking that people who speak chinese and speak broken english are RMTs...

Are you joking? lol... Anyone who believes that every person who can't speak English properly or not at all is a gilseller is an idiot. That's just ridiculously untrue, and is no where close to what it meant. You completely misunderstood what I'm saying by a long shot if you think I was trying to promote that idea.

A person isn't defined by being RMT just because they match a single stereotype, especially the speaking Chinese or speak broken English one, and anyone who really thinks that SE accepts this as a sole reason someone is an RMT deserves a dunce hat. As implied earlier you have to be able to provide many logical reasons for why you believe someone is RMT, or SE just plain won't listen to you.

Some logical reasons are pretty major, and some are rather minor (but nevertheless, still worth mentioning). As I said in the post, broken use of English is a minor stereotype but it is still a true stereotype. Obviously this isn't a defining stereotype because this game is marketed across several continents and not everyone in the world speaks English if even at all, but it doesn't change the fact it's a trait of a gilseller among many other things. But, anyone who goes exclusively off of that is just stupid. What you're recommending is an extreme misunderstanding of that.

It's just as ridiculous as saying that anyone in the game that doesn't equip a linkshell 24/7 must be a gilseller too. Or anyone who doesn't have good gear. Or anyone who uses a mule. Or anyone who camps NMs often.

You can't single out one trait like it means anything alone, or even a handful. You have to hit nearly all the bases or it's worthless and you have a weak argument... Which was what point I tried to express.

[neochaos]

Shitty gear, inability to play the game right, speak broken english, sounds more like a french player than an rmt, wwwwwwwwwwwwwlol, all jokes aside..

A lot of whats good in FFXI thats difficult to obtain is seriously owned hard in the face by luck. My biggest fucking gulp of haterade against FFXI is how I know someone who got a Dalmatica and a Duelist's chapeau within 12 hours, whereas I spent almost 2 years as a RDM75 camping Aspid and Niddy, never even seeing an A.body drop the rare times we claimed them. And after 30+ dyna-xarc runs, only seeing hat drop once and losing lot to it. This is why I said it'd be nice to see some shit in the game thats rediculously difficult but with a high drop rate of good gear/other good items, as opposed to shit that's relatively easy but low drop rate for mediocre gear (Khimaira, case and point).




And relic weapons. Look at how generally difficult those are to get. How long it takes to get. You would think that relic weapons would be the end-all broken as fuck weapon in existence, but no. Only a handful of relic weapons are considered the best, another handful debatably better, but marginally/in certain situations, and a few that are plain out worthless fail (staff). Even tho I hate the guy who I'm referring to, this PLD and RDM upgraded Excalibur, and is a laughing stock. Now even tho its his stupidity everyone hates, its a bit of a shame Excalibur wasn't made to be some overpowered game-breaker item, considering the difficulty getting it. Well, we still have the apparently "newer relic weapons", which an ingrediant involves the piece that drops from nyzul floor 100, i can only HOPE those items will break the game. If you spend millions and millions of gil and/or months and months of time for a single item, shouldn't it be OMGWTFBBQBADASS? srsly

[Lucavi]

You would think that relic weapons would be the end-all broken as fuck weapon in existence

I'm waiting to see the player-usable version of Frostmourne when the new WoW expansion drops -- they're going to show you what an elite, ultra-legendary, soul-sucking, soul-stealing weapon should look like, stat-wise. Excalibur is a joke -- the only saving grace to most relic weapons now is the random triple damage, and even then, the proc rate is so low that its nothing you can rely on; its more of a "well cool, there it goes.." thing.

The +20acc is a non-issue on most of them, seeing as how we're in the new age of merits, lolsushi, and +80 billion in acc available. Then there's the additional effects; 80% of which are absolutely useless, or so minor and modest in their activation and implementation that you barely notice they went off. Seriously, shock spikes?

Seriously?

[Kenji]

You love FFXI and it can do no wrong, hate WoW and it can do no right. I'm somewhere in the middle, where I loved FFXI but it did so much wrong for me that I can't go back, and I like WoW because it feels so new, has better interactivity, and I don't get chastised for trying something out that I personally feel is new, or like. It ain't flawless, neither is FFXI.

If you've paid attention to my posts at all, you'd know that wasn't the case. FFXI does have things about it that I don't like. WoW does have things that I like. At this point in time, I want to play FFXI more, because I feel it has more for me.

So do me a favor, and don't ascribe things to me that are untrue, and I'll avoid doing the same to you, alright? Especially when you came across in your post as "FFXI can do no right."

[neochaos]

Well lets be honest, any MMO does no right in a real-life perspective, lol. In fact, for a select few, they end up leading to irl deaths :Q silly pplz

[Lampoon]

Suddenly I'm reminded of that incident with mortal Combat and a girl's death.