All offenders are equal, but some are more equal than others?

[Byrthnoth]

The server jumping part doesn't hold water, I got a perma and server hoped about 2 weeks prior. Either that, or they had the bans and all information in place previous to the 2 weeks.

Ah, okay. We actually don't know what happened to our one static member who transferred servers, so that was the condition that I was least sure about. The theory was that having a drop with the same ID tag as someone else = permaban, while having been in zone when one of those drops dropped = temp ban/warning.

[MarkM.]

Most likely case. I also think they failed to give very solid guidelines on how to mete out their punishments. Too much collateral damage for my taste. There's too little information coming from SE regarding how they researched and doled out the punishments. We just know the end results and have a pretty good idea who did what. Two of my friends got 72 hour banned for using the exploit in nyzul to dupe a water crystal simply playing around the same way someone would play with a bug in a console game. Another (Kaeko) got perma-banned because he's a self-professed bug junkie that simply likes to play with bugs rather than use them for his own personal gain. A fourth friend of mine was temp-banned for doing salvage one day with a pick-up group that somehow duped Enyo's Gauntlets. She knew nothing of the dupe trick until she got her 72 hour ban and the actual party leaders in this group got nothing. (100 gil on someone saying she's lying.)

There really seems to be very little consistency with how they handled it.

I agree with your statement here, and that's my main complaint about this. 6 of 7 of the people in my salvage group got perma-banned, and we literally only knew about the glitch 2 weeks leading up to it being fixed.

The 7th, didn't even get a warning. I know he wasn't trying to play it off or anything because I have his account info and often botted him during the time period in case something dropped and he wasn't there. And checked to see if he got any action on the day of the banning.

[mallister]

my old group got hit hard, 5 permas in a crew of about 6 or 7 total people. of that group i know two were former HNMLS members but i haven't heard what former infractions they may/may not have had from the aery life. the other three had no priors whatsoever.

my current group has two confirmed permas out of the 12 of so of us participating (membership varies according to day/schedule, run w/ 8 generally). none of us have any HNMLS/botting/hacking/bullshit on our records until now. the permas are one of full-time monks and the co-leader of our group. the other leader (who is generally ally leader) and myself (i'm in 2nd pt with TH4 mule) were temped. we are the ones that organized/facilitated breaking/remaking the group to dupe.

in both groups:
-alex was not specifically farmed to dupe/sell
-salvage piece drops were not sold
-duped pieces were recieved by players/pieces were completed (at least one for sure, my ares feet 25's were duped though the other piece went freerot as i was only one needed)
-exploit was not used for a long period of time, two or three weeks tops for old group, 5 - 6 runs with current (i was present for 2 w/ old group, 4 with new)

no one in my current group does sandworm/nyzul. i can't speak for the old group.

no consistancy whatsoever in the punishment meted out. i can speak for my group at least that who got what punishment does not fit who did what on the runs. if anything, the other leader and myself should have been perma'd instead of the guys that got hit.

[Shinta]

Doesn't anyone remember fan fest? The psychological attack tactics they use against RMT come to mind. Randomly perma-banning people to instill fear across the game, sounds like SE to me.

[Septimus]

Doesn't anyone remember fan fest? The psychological attack tactics they use against RMT come to mind. Randomly perma-banning people to instill fear across the game, sounds like SE to me.

Yes, there is no better way to keep a happy and stable playerbase than to instill the fear that people may be randomly banned for some infractions (Salvage duping), yet other infractions (botting buying gil) are almost entierly ignored. This is as if to say "cheating won't be tolerated, unless it is condoned cheating, then we will tolerate it".

[arus2001]

I wouldn't put it past minor infractions getting marked without the player even being notified. This could range from an abusive conversation to yanking claim on a briefly yellow (H)NM. The former's definitely easier to prove with just chat logs, but the latter falls into the whole "grief tactics" gray area and may require more than just a GM to investigate.

[Demosthenes11]

Yes, there is no better way to keep a happy and stable playerbase than to instill the fear that people may be randomly banned for some infractions (Salvage duping), yet other infractions (botting buying gil) are almost entierly ignored. This is as if to say "cheating won't be tolerated, unless it is condoned cheating, then we will tolerate it".

or, that shit is 10x harder to track and salvage duping is pretty easy

[test123]

Disclaimer: This post is not about whether the people who got banned deserved it, or duping/economy/morals/blahblah etc.; in fact, it's only tangentially related to the Salvage issue. This post is about how (and to whom) punishment was (and is) applied.

So far, I've read of at least two people (Wafik and Corwen) who got perm'd with (purportedly) no prior marks on their account. According to Corwen's LJ, he has 4-boxed other accounts for this exploit, yet only his account was hit with a perm (again, first offense) while the other accounts he controlled (and other players in his LS) were hit with temps. (insert standard disclaimer about "but what if he is lying about evrythings???")

This raises the question of whether or not Squenix specifically decided punishment based on who the player was, rather than what they had done. This is an extremely disturbing possibility; the idea that your punishment is determined not on by you have done, but who you are should be pretty frightening to any first-world citizen.

P.S. There may be some who feel compelled to point out that it's Squenix's game and they can do whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want. That's true, but essentially beside the point; Squenix still wants to present the appearance of fairness, if only from a PR standpoint. If the media were to run the story that Squenix determines punishments based on who has the most to lose... I don't think that would play very well.

If you use 5 bot mules to fish devil manta for your main, your main should'nt banned but only your bots? gtfo

[Fiye]

I hate to post in another LM-17 Dupe-related thread. But I promise this time there will be information.

Recently, we've noticed the STF have changed her tactics. Instead of banning as soon as possible, we've been learning they've been biding their time. Waiting for the most opportune moments before striking out. Lashing out in the most possible damage with somewhat-minimal effort.

Various tools like the RMT-PWNER V1.337 and the Gilded Tomb (Waiting for RMT-related characters to accumulate a certaint amount of gil and/or valuble items before banning them) have proven to have some effect.

As noted in the December 24th, 2008 STF report.

November: 391,225 moat carp and 49 Lu Shang's fishing rods seized
December: 24,367 moat carp and zero Lu Shang's fishing rods seized

There definitely was an effect. Either that, or SE banned a few month's of gilseller work in November.

Now, applying this to the current bannings. What we've seen is the permanent banning of 550 people, and the temporary suspension of the other 400. Maybe SE is applying STF tactics to the 1/22 bannings?

As can be noted, quite a few people who were permanent banned were leaders, and people who actively participated. Even people involved in the community (Bagel, Chinchilla, and others I can't name right now), or people with the community's awe (Minidragon and Wopa).

In any case, I think this was a, somewhat, controlled ban. Designed to hit at a few pressure points to give the FFXI community a "We shouldn't do this shit again" jolt.

As a case in point, I heard about a person quad-boxing regularly in Salvage to do this exploit. Most likely, SE perma-banned the one who was apparently leading the situation.

Why that one person got banned versus all four, who were connected.

Either way, just a thought I came across. (Dunno if it was mentioned at all before in the thread.)

Edit: I understand my grammar/typing might be shit at some points in my post. Things such as "I heard about a people" instead of "I heard about a person". Sorry, but its late and I could really care less.

[#686578]

I stand corrected. Blackrose = Trendsetter.

What if it was a lottery. SE takes the "number" of each player accounts that were found to be duping, put them in a lottery thing, and the lucky 500 gets perma banned, while luckier 450 gets temp ban, and all the left overs get warning letter.

It's like a mog lottery that people actually win at.

[Naash]

Aren't we getting the impression famous and well geared players got hit because, well, the non-famous ones don't stand out? I'm being obvious but nobody would go and say "look, 9/10th of these players are complete strangers!".

Also, on "how many times", maybe it is counted by "how many objects were obtained" as opposed to "how many times (runs) the cheat was used". Or maybe "how many times you were a leader when a dupe happened". Or depending on whether you made money with it? There could be many things.

This raises the question of whether or not Squenix specifically decided punishment based on who the player was, rather than what they had done.

I don't know how serious you are saying that. But... Even if they wanted to do this, how could they practically do it? There's so many people they would have had to check, and many of them they would find absolutely nothing on.
Even if someone says things here and there on forums, would that be enough of criterion to judge them? Someone else could very well posting with the same name as your character (esp. since so many people use pre-existing names) or you could be joking or whatever. Your "fame" outside the game is part of your "privacy", isn't it? As for what you've accomplished in-game, how is that any good to chose whether you get banned?? I could see arguments in banning average people as well as hardcore people.

Also... The people conducting the bannings are probably Japanese and in Japan. Why would they be preoccupied with what the American community thinks or who is famous/exposed among the banned people?

[Day]

Like the guy issuing the bannings knows who the fuck Minidragon or such and such is. You are just a number to them. Jesus christ.

[johnboy]

Out of all the members of my salvage group that were there on the run we duped, only 1 got perma'd, and he was the alliance leader, maybe they checked everyone who had been the main leader during a duped run?

[Tagus]

Aren't we getting the impression famous and well geared players got hit because, well, the non-famous ones don't stand out? I'm being obvious but nobody would go and say "look, 9/10th of these players are complete strangers!".

What I'm taking away from this, and tell me if I'm wrong, (not that you guys need that invitation) is that SE used more than one type of way to determine who was guilty. They may have been able to both track the items and read chat logs at the same time, and use a variety of other sets of info to determine who was "most guilty", which would lead to the disparity between the types of punishments. They obviously missed some ppl for whatever reason, and the differences between those that they missed and those that they didn't is more important in determining how they made this decision than the differences between who got what type of bans, because it shows us where the line in the sand was drawn. They're human and working as a group, which makes it necessary to consider the fact that they may have made decisions individually and without a lot of specific sets of rules. The fact that people are famous probably had nothing to do with it, simply because people who have been playing a long time and are more involved in the game are more likely to be the ones going after Salvage gear because it is elite and difficult to obtain. If it is true that they targeted NA players first, it may indicate that they are dropping the ban hammer in stages based on national origins. However to determine if this is actually true we would need more info from our overseas counterparts, which they would more than likely be reluctant to give. Easiest way to avoid a ban is not to cheat, not to try to analyze how they make a decision and look for the next loophole. Not saying that is what you guys are doing, but I figured I'd say it.

[WraithLakshmi]

My opinion is that the reason so many people with relics got hit with bans is that it's likely many of them funded their relics by selling duped salvage gear or duped alexandrites. This glitch was apparently out for over a year before SE found out about it, so you know some people got ridiculously rich off of it, and these are the people who's transgression was so severe that they had to be banned.

[Garret]

Or it could simply be that lots of people with relics do Salvage especially since plenty of those were completed quite some time ago.

[Day]

Or I know!!! Maybe everyone that has a relic cheats!!

[Devek]

My opinion is that the reason so many people with relics got hit with bans is that it's likely many of them funded their relics by selling duped salvage gear or duped alexandrites.

I challenge you to find one person that funded a relic by selling duped alex.

Most people were keeping the alex to get a mythic...

[ringthree]

I challenge you to find one person that funded a relic by selling duped alex.

Most people were keeping the alex to get a mythic...

That is a non-starter, really. I am sure that some people used duped Alex or more importantly duped Sandworm drops exclusively for gil. I am also sure that some of that gil got used for relics. I am also sure that some of that Alex was used for mythics too.

Does it really matter?

[Devek]

Than it should be easy to find someone who paid for a relic with duped alex.