BG; Your opportunity to talk to Allakhazam and SE.

[Pwyff]

Allakhazam.com: Final Fantasy XI: Unrest in the Garden of Square Enix

This was the article I wrote in response to the LM-17 bannings. While I certainly feel that exploiting comes with its own share of risks and punishments, there also remains the fact that this is truly indicative of a company who does not listen, monitor, nor even pay attention to its player base.

The fact is, if an exploit this massive was known for such a long period of time, it is the responsibility of any company to know these things. To ignore what some of the 'top' (this is a subjective term) LSes are doing, and have been doing for such a long period of time is simply a true indication of a company who has no communication with its customers.

Anyways, an article like this has created quite a bit of controversy because of a few things:

1.) Misunderstandings.
2.) Bad use of lolcats.
3.) A lack of real, credible sources (like you all) to discuss this matter in Allakhazam, not BG.

I really could care less about option 1, and option 2 is obnoxious, but what really matters is option 3.

So let's go BG. Let's talk. Do you feel that the punishments were fair, and if not, why? Do you feel that SE is really out of touch with its North American playerbase, and if so, explain. Do you have something that you want to say (intelligent) to SE? Do it.

[email protected]

P.S.
If you all feel I'm totally delusional, feel free to also say that.

[ringthree]

There are already 5 threads dedicated to this in Advanced.

General conclusion was that no matter if you believe SE was right or wrong, cheating is cheating and SE had the right to deal with them however they pleased.

[Pwyff]

Do you feel that SE is really out of touch with its North American playerbase, and if so, explain.

I need this.

[Spider-Dan]

One of the issues that I would like to see Square-Enix publicly address is:

How were permanent vs. temporary bans determined?

So far, we've seen that it was NOT based on:

a) number of previous strikes on the account
b) run organizers vs. run participants
c) those who talked about it using in-game chat vs. those that did not
d) numbers of illicit runs participated in
e) length of time the exploit was abused for
f) number of illicit items obtained

And many of these examples are from people comparing their punishment to others whom they grouped with (so the argument of wildly varying judgment calls by different log evaluators doesn't really hold much weight).

The level of punishment given from player to player seems arbitrary at best; at worst, it appears that they set out to make examples out of specific persons. I would like to hear Square-Enix give us SOME insight as to what merited a permanent ban instead of a temporary one.

[ringthree]

Maybe, maybe not. Banning cheaters really has nothing to do with being in touch with the player base.

If you are asking without referencing the duping affair, I believe that SE needs more direct contact with it's player base world wide. There would be a huge difference in player reaction if there was an SE rep that posted on some of the forums. An outlet for suggestions, some reasonable explanations. I wouldn't even care if they just ignored us most of the time, it would still make a world of difference.

[ringthree]

One of the issues that I would like to see Square-Enix publicly address is:

How were permanent vs. temporary bans determined?

So far, we've seen that it was NOT based on:

a) number of previous strikes on the account
b) run organizers vs. run participants
c) those who talked about it using in-game chat vs. those that did not
d) numbers of illicit runs participated in
e) length of time the exploit was abused for
f) number of illicit items obtained

And many of these examples are from people comparing their punishment to others whom they grouped with (so the argument of wildly varying judgment calls by different log evaluators doesn't really hold much weight).

The level of punishment given from player to player seems arbitrary at best; at worst, it appears that they set out to make examples out of specific persons. I would like to hear Square-Enix give us SOME insight as to what merited a permanent ban instead of a temporary one.

Seriously, give it up. They had their own criteria, and they have every right to ban whoever they want for whatever reason. Cheating is cheating. They don't owe anyone an explanation, especially not people that broke their rules. There is no right to due process or fairness in sentencing. Stop trying to think it is the real world.

You are paranoid and delusional if you think SE cared who they banned. As someone else said already, we are all just numbers that equate to 12.95 a month. If you think they actually targeted people then you are probably one of those people that thinks that SE hates the players.

[LD]

If you think they actually targeted people then you are probably one of those people that thinks that SE hates the players.

To be fair, they could not have targeted anyone and still hate the shit out of us.

[ringthree]

To be fair, they could not have targeted anyone and still hate the shit out of us.

Touche.

[greenhills]

P.S.
If you all feel I'm totally delusional, feel free to also say that.

You are delusional.

[Absolutely Virtue]

I never pointed this out before because I got tired of reading all the other threads, but I might as well say it now.

You could make a pretty convincing argument that the people who were banned, are, in effect, far more expensive to SE than average players. When you consider the "cost" of having players such as this, and the constant babysitting and monitoring that goes on, surely you'll see that these are the last people SE wants on their servers.

Divide the players into two groups

First group are average. They come home from school/work, log in for a few hours, stand around WG, and generally don't much. Cost to SE? Almost nothing.

Second group are "elite," the type who got banned. They constantly look for glitches and exploits, they send GM calls every time the latest tragedy happens in the Aery, and they spend all of their free time on BG criticizing everything SE does. Attending to these "elite" players costs real money. Who do you think pays the salaries of GMs and developers who have to make patches? Hey, that's right, SE does!

Considering both groups pay the same amount in fees every month, which set of fucking customers would YOU want?

I'll start listening to the people who complain about SE's business model the minute they get a job at a place other than Gamestop or Quiznos. The people who work at SE run a multinational, multimillion dollar company. You have to read from a script when you answer the phone at work. Unless you're prepared to present a well-constructed, analytical critique of their model based on even a shred of management or marketing theory, get your community college dropout ass back behind the counter and make me a fucking sandwich.

[stewie]

Unless you're prepared to present a well-constructed, analytical critique of their model based on even a shred of management or marketing theory, get your community college dropout ass back behind the counter and make me a fucking sandwich.

lol?

[Meian]

Why do people think that more topics like these about the bannings is going to make people blind to what the ToS specifically says? If BG banned each person who made a topic like these I'll donate each time XD

And wow at ^ what Absolutely said hahaha

[evilpaul]

People get to choose to play by the rules or not. They don't get to pick how they'll be punished after the fact if they're caught.

Banning people with no strikes against them seems kind of harsh, but that's how it goes.

[Senji]

I think SE really hated us and wanted everyone and the game to go away, just possibly salvage people to switch to their next MMO, and then they got really invigorated banning the RMT and got carried away.

All "You would think SE would.." statements just fail though.

[Neosutra]

Why the fuck would BG want to give an official statement to Alla. This is the stupidest shit ive ever seen.

Ive already spent the last 4 days weeding through 200 pages of bitch threads, why would anyone want to fuel another one on an even more sophmoric forum.

[Spider-Dan]

Seriously, give it up. They had their own criteria, and they have every right to ban whoever they want for whatever reason.

They have every right to ban whoever they want for no reason at all, TOS says players have no rights, yes, I get it. There's no part of the TOS that says that AV should be killable (or should take less than 18 hours to kill), or that jobs should have competitive balance, or that highly competitive NMs should be force-popped with a spawn item, yet people bitch and moan about it anyway. Welcome to internet forums.

You are paranoid and delusional if you think SE cared who they banned.

Are you paranoid and delusional if you think that they perm'ed some and temp'ed others with little-to-no logical distinction behind who gets what punishment? Because that's almost as bad.

[Belgaer]

Seriously, give it up. They had their own criteria, and they have every right to ban whoever they want for whatever reason. Cheating is cheating. They don't owe anyone an explanation, especially not people that broke their rules. There is no right to due process or fairness in sentencing. Stop trying to think it is the real world.

You are paranoid and delusional if you think SE cared who they banned. As someone else said already, we are all just numbers that equate to 12.95 a month. If you think they actually targeted people then you are probably one of those people that thinks that SE hates the players.

Perhaps the ones who got a perma ban had less mules/characters (were paying less per month) than the ones who got a temp ban? xD

...I kid of course.

[jimbobsonofgod]

I'll start listening to the people who complain about SE's business model the minute they get a job at a place other than Gamestop or Quiznos. The people who work at SE run a multinational, multimillion dollar company. You have to read from a script when you answer the phone at work. Unless you're prepared to present a well-constructed, analytical critique of their model based on even a shred of management or marketing theory, get your community college dropout ass back behind the counter and make me a fucking sandwich.

God I just gotta quote this shit, cause man its just that full of the win.

Yeah square don't owe anybody shit if they cheated. All they gotta do is live up to the terms of service, and no where does it say "make people fucking happy.".

[Mesiah]

I think alot of people are putting way too much thought into who got a perma and who got a temp. I'm surprised to see all of these lengthy discusions about what individual SE employees looked for when deciding who to ban. I generally don't post anything on forums because most of what is said, wether of value or not, just gets flamed by people whos egos are too big for the room they are sitting in. But since I haven't seen a single person mention this in the hundreds of posts I have read, I will throw it out there.

To my understanding SE took action as soon as they were aware of the glitch, then sifted through archived logs to dole out punishments. They didn't have a live person watching your salvage runs and watching for people to duping, because they didn't know about it at the time. Now, they also said they went back what, 100 days or more and read logs, for all of the servers. Do you know how many pages worth of information that is? The man hours involved would be staggering. We already know SE doesn't feel it is cost effective to run investigations like this. That is why they have programs like their little RMT PWNER V1.337.

All SE did was write a query that would check all the back logs for certain conditions. *The following is merely speculation, but fits with what I have observed* The query most likely looked for a number of things. If duping occured, if the word Dupe or Copy was mentioned in the chat log, number of offenses, previous occurances, pt or alliance lead, items being duped. After acquiring all tha information and assigning weights to each value, each character on the list gets sorted into one of 3 groups: LM-11, LM-17, or Warning.

Those who got LM-11s and Warnings were set in stone. Then, SE most likely put actual humans to work reviewing everyone who was Issued an LM-17 and they decided on a person by person basis wether they felt they deserved a temp or permanent ban.

Being the administrator of a large database, I know that this is the only cost effective way to sort logs of this magnatude. It also explains why some people that received LM-17 ended up being perma'd. And lastly, why some people got off easier than others. If more flags went up because of things you did in the past you probably got lm-11 even though you didn't very little duping. And the people who got LM-17s, you would have all of the previous things being weighed against you, with the added variable of having a human making the final decision. One person could feel different than another, or even the same person could be having a bad day and be tougher on people than he usually is.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post. I'm not arguing for or against having computers or humans decide who gets banned and who doesn't. Computers are more consistent, but humans are able to see the gray area.

[Mayareira]

The biggest problem with recent bannings were that they were unclear. People naturally got confused and frustrated.

550 perma, 450 temp. Ok. But what were the criterias? At first you'd expect them to be past offenses but no, people with completely clean accounts got banned.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate if SE made a clear statement regarding this issue(just like STF mothly reports)? Some people feel they've been treated unfairly and to be honest, no one can blame them.

Not clarifying these points just fuels unnecessary speculation.