Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[Hyan]

Good point. Problem is the longer you leave it the harder it will be to fix.

Well, they seem to be fine with this, so I don't think we should give ourselves a headache over it.

[jPuff]

The game needs some gil sinks and fast. I already know a guy who has 100mil, which is ridiculous in the first 4 months of the game. Every 50 crafter has some ridiculous amount between 30-100mil while everyone else is averaging about 5-10mil. Playing with bigger numbers would be fine if gear sold for bigger numbers, but people still undercut gear down to rock bottom prices regardless of how much gil is available. If gil is 10 times easier to get than it was in FFXI then why is gear not selling for 10 times as much? It's selling for less from what I remember. SE failed somewhere and I blame the flood of crafting mats. The only things worth anything apart from HQs is NM and faction NM drops and very few people are willing to buy those.

I don't like the current system of being able to equip gear before your rank because it makes people want NM gear before they even hit 40. I'd like to see all loot that is designed to be rare made class and rank specific because eventually it's going to piss people off. That or just make it give 0 stats on the wrong class/rank so people can still equip it for looks.

LOL no. I'm 47ARM and I have 5mil. I've never once had more than that. Why? The answer is I had a job and didn't get r50 in 1-2 months to rip people off 500k-1mil/ea on Bronze Cuirass. If there is a way to make 50mil HERE and NOW without selling shit on 8 mules please enlighten me because it seems that the only people with that much are the ones that no-lifed the first couple months. The economy was decimated by people with no jobs months ago. Crafting is pretty much fucking worthless unless you were able to ride the curl and rip the shit off of people on gear before the economy got flooded. Not every crafter had the playtime to do that.

[Sephiroth]

Well like I mentioned earlier in this thread or another, bot crafters comprise of most likely now 50% of the crafter population possibly more, as SE hasn't readily taken action, only a warning. Considering the games state, most probably don't care if they get caught. SE may not even be able to effectively detect the method being used to block/detect the current major player crafting bot thats widely used (seen it posted on JP boards with Jp instructions even and how to use it).

Considering bot crafters just spam 1 thing constantly, they won't really ever see hq, but to make up gil for the massive loss of spamming 1 thing for 8-10 hours tossing the extras for hours (and probably breaking tons with unstable element) they just flood the market with as much possible junk they can.for as little as possible jsut to move it along and recover what little they can as fast as they bot craft.

My server economy has basically collapsed, that bannert? lance on my servers down to 35-45K

only thing over 50K is +1~3 items , NM items and bows (crabshell bow used to be 1mil+ its down to about 120-150K now)
In a way this helps new players that just started because they have no gil... but they sure as hell aren't making any. I mean why would you buy 25-30K cotton robes, when you can get a velvet robe for 10-15K?

I guess this is what I have to look forward to in a month or two. It seems there's more bot crafters on your server than mine. There's a few I suspect of bot crafting but no way to prove it.

So are you saying bot crafters just synth items while their inventory is full and shit starts dropping out their loot list? Maybe that's where SE could start looking for them. Every 50 crafter I know who legitimately skilled up would go NPC their shit when the inventory filled up.

[Gulkeeva]

I guess this is what I have to look forward to in a month or two. It seems there's more bot crafters on your server than mine. There's a few I suspect of bot crafting but no way to prove it.

So are you saying bot crafters just synth items while their inventory is full and shit starts dropping out their loot list? Maybe that's where SE could start looking for them. Every 50 crafter I know who legitimately skilled up would go NPC their shit when the inventory filled up.

The "sort of suspicious" possibly a bot list
1. Red damaged gear icon
2. Don't respond to a thing you say to them no matter how much you spam them
3. Crafting 1 spot, not moving for very long periods of time, and with a red damaged gear icon.
4. spams standard synth on everything, uses no abilities.
5. Invis status/no LS

The somewhat obvious craft bot
1. Crafting in a cave/isolated area far from everything
2. no LS/invis status, red gear icon and still in the same spot in the same position when you go sleep-> wakeup and go to work.. and come home.
3. Their ffxivpro ranking is shooting up to the top 30-40's range very fast (like 4-5 ranks per day)

and... the most hilarious one (might have a screenshot on my home pc) is a guild mate lvling carpenter ... he gets on and I ask him...
"Hey your finally on, where were you?"
"Was asleep, sup?"
"grats on Lv 35 carpenter while asleep"
"..."

[mythrillboots]

The game needs some gil sinks and fast. I already know a guy who has 100mil, which is ridiculous in the first 4 months of the game. Every 50 crafter has some ridiculous amount between 30-100mil while everyone else is averaging about 5-10mil. Playing with bigger numbers would be fine if gear sold for bigger numbers, but people still undercut gear down to rock bottom prices regardless of how much gil is available. If gil is 10 times easier to get than it was in FFXI then why is gear not selling for 10 times as much? It's selling for less from what I remember. SE failed somewhere and I blame the flood of crafting mats. The only things worth anything apart from HQs is NM and faction NM drops and very few people are willing to buy those.

I don't like the current system of being able to equip gear before your rank because it makes people want NM gear before they even hit 40. I'd like to see all loot that is designed to be rare made class and rank specific because eventually it's going to piss people off. That or just make it give 0 stats on the wrong class/rank so people can still equip it for looks.

^this x1000
Not even shooting for gil, and mind you I did the majority of my fishing levels before the rank 1-20sp drop. I had more than I could spend vendor trashing 90% of what I caught. Since the fish/shard update, it’s a fucking joke, I make about 600k-1m each trip selling 60% of what I catch. Every piece of gear I have, which I at least try to buy out of bazzars vs. having crafted, can essentially be made back in 1 week of levs. Heck I bought my r47 fishing pole for 150k, and that was the highest price I saw listed on YG’s bazzar thingemabobber at the time.
I personally never wear gear above my level, outside of fashion day, and I could care less if they took that away, Might give people some sense of satisfaction for leveling their classes. I remember how happy I was the first time I got to equip those godly pieces in FFXI. I had a happygasim the first time I got to equip BLM AF hat, Nobles tunic (lulz NQ), and Black belt. How gay would it have been if everyone had BB’s equipped on WAR n shit in FFXI, mind you it would probably have the stats worse than swift belt. Where is the joy in that?

Elrina, I'm not a big fan of BoE of craftable items myself, but yeah something needs to get done about all the surplus gear. I suppose it would be kind of interesting if the gear held its full stats and just deteriorated to 0 and had to be tossed. But the gear damage would need to be dropped wayyyy down. like two months+ for casuals, 3 weeks for “ZOMG I took Archer 1-50 in 2 weeks solo killing EP mobs while my LS was sleeping” hardcore players. These items would have to be sellable in any condition.
Or maybe give them repair charges similar to that cocktease Ducal Guard's Ring from CoP.

[Sephiroth]

I'm sure the first ban wave is coming. SE have already issued a warning, that "special task force" has to be up to something, probably investigating. For biggest impact they'll ban a load at once and make a post about it like they do in XI.

[solracht]

I'm sure the first ban wave is coming. SE have already issued a warning, that "special task force" has to be up to something, probably investigating. For biggest impact they'll ban a load at once and make a post about it like they do in XI.

This. How are we so certain that they don't know who is botting? Their bannings have always come in waves. The fact that people have been botting and still are doesn't really say much about whether they know or not, especially after seeing the course of action they took with the Salvage bannings.

[Cooleko]

I just dont see how they could differentiate.
Bots are programmable to be random. They arent going to only wait x seconds for everything.
Bots are just as smart as a normal person, they can press wait after a failure, they can tiptoe around unstable elements.
Bots spam rapid, bold, hastyhand, abilities as programmed and are likely to intelligently decide which to use.

Problem is, if your skilling up your bot is going to be set to spam standard/wait just like a normal person. But, on leves the bot is going to spam bold/standard or standard/wait depending on the difficulty.

Perhaps there are crappy bots out there but im certain you guys are not giving bots enough credit.

[Gulkeeva]

zomg romper stomper is on my server

anyway, unless SE makes some really massive changes, doubt to really see any gil sink besides buying shards... the craft bots are probably the only gil sink ingame (to themselves) as they just craft for hours on some probably 15-200 sp item using obscene amount of shards and tossing away tons of whatever they craft.

All gear in wards is pretty insanely low price (It'll get worse for sure with the new wards search as people scramble to outsell everyone else, especially craft botters flooding the wards).

no one really wants to spend gil to have their gear repaired

although I guess on my server the gil sink now thats 2nd place besides the shards is probably gear repairs by NPC since all the craft bots hiding in remote location's of the world and you'd see about 10-15 afk+actual people in uldah (yes combined) till about jp hours.

I just dont see how they could differentiate.
Bots are programmable to be random. They arent going to only wait x seconds for everything.
Bots are just as smart as a normal person, they can press wait after a failure, they can tiptoe around unstable elements.
Bots spam rapid, bold, hastyhand, abilities as programmed and are likely to intelligently decide which to use.

Problem is, if your skilling up your bot is going to be set to spam standard/wait just like a normal person. But, on leves the bot is going to spam bold/standard or standard/wait depending on the difficulty.

Perhaps there are crappy bots out there but im certain you guys are not giving bots enough credit.

the "main" crafting bot out now thats spread like wildfire, free and first one known to be out... all it does is spam normal at a certain interval, it doesn't do anything fancy like use various abilities or vary in the time to start standard. How do I know? The author explains it in detail what it exactly does. It uses an image overlay of some sorts over the craft bar, after the craft bar matches the same point as that image, it makes some other program make your PC think you pressed enter, and repeats. Thats it, simple and effective 24/7 crafting. He explains he just made it to make crafting "the same shit" to level easier, and thats what it does, it wasn't done to be super stealthy mimic human randomness.

I'm sure there is one out like that by now, but its nowhere near as well known as the very first bot that just does 1 simple task as mentioned above. Its the most common, and widespread bot out there and has been for months.

edit n/m some of that looks like the guy posts premium version uses skills every X amount of time
(the bot author mentions premium only and that was added on the 26th January)

[Cooleko]

ahh, I see. someone has released an ugly unpolished bot to the masses.

well that one can get banned all it wants.

[Sephiroth]

A lot of bots will be like that. They're a lot quicker and easier to make than one that covers all potential factors to avoid getting caught. A good bot probably won't be released for free either and people will flock to these poorly made free alternatives.

[mythrillboots]

zomg romper stomper is on my server

Indeed

Spoiler: show

Get me a pearl to your fine shell

Such botting failure.... i think this thing mimics me when I'm desynthing fish. unlike the bot i can only tolerate small intervals of crafting.
At least it will be incredibly easy to target suspected characters.

Maybe its just me but i haven't noticed any fish-botters yet, or at least high level ones. i thought i saw one but it was hard determining if he was just an idiot or a simple computer program. r10's fishing grade 5's n shit is pretty hilarious.

[Lucavi]

Well, they seem to be fine with this, so I don't think we should give ourselves a headache over it.

That's about the only thing I can agree on right now. There's nothing really to spend money on anyway (through lack of content), so stop worrying for now and just play the game to play the game. No sense in beating yourself up over something you don't even know if they're planning on addressing at any point, much less soon.

[Cureslime]

Alchemy/fishing is the only real moneymaker left, and only then because it supplies the other crafts.

The low prices are kind of lol. I was ready to shell out big bucks for Boarskin Himantes and then I ended up buying a couple for 20k each. S-E is going to be very gunshy about adding gilsinks because they think that will fuel RMT. It will to a certain extent but there are so few players and so much money that it should be negligible. I would like to see gilsinks AND itemsinks. There are countless ways you can do this without fueling RMT.

Itemsink: This reset armorer guild guy wants a Bronze Hauby. Reward: 800 guild marks. He sells an item for 1k guildmarks that increases your crafting rank by 2 for 10 minutes. Results: Haubys removed from economy and crafter is happy.

Gilsink: Culinary NPC sells an item for 20k that can be crafted into exp sushi. Raises sp gain by 10% for one hour. Culinarians make some money and some money disappears from the economy.

[Gulkeeva]

ahh, I see. someone has released an ugly unpolished bot to the masses.

well that one can get banned all it wants.

thing is though, that bots been around for nearly 2 months, and aren't banned as of yet
Its become "popular" usage though in the past monthish as its been translated to japanese and passed around on various Jp boards now

[Vuitton]

A large part of the inflation problem is that there is so few people playing. Eventually everyone has everything they want, which means demand is super low. This means nothing is selling so prices drop. Of course, this isn't the source of the problem. It is just highlighting the cause of the problem, being that gil never leaves the system, despite that gil is constantly being added to it.

Personally, I don't think any leves except faction leves should be giving gil rewards in any amount. This would limit gil creation to missions, faction leves, and vendoring items to NPCs. If they can't come up with an effective gil sink, then they need to stemmy the amount of gil entering the system, and then work to lower the amount of gil already in existence.

Edit:

One gil sink idea is to remove the Guild Mark system. Have the abilities and books cost large amount of gil proportionate to the rank.

[Corrderio]

I'm sure the first ban wave is coming. SE have already issued a warning, that "special task force" has to be up to something, probably investigating. For biggest impact they'll ban a load at once and make a post about it like they do in XI.

One thing I've been wondering about is if they're planning on waiting for a ban until they can charge them.

[Vuitton]

Probably not worth perma-banning your last few potential customers anyway.

[Hyan]

I don't really like Yoshida. The man seems to be stuck changing shit that doesn't need changing and adding features that don't need to be added. Hopefully the end result makes sense at least.

[Elrina]

You seem to believe things like the AH, jumping, and class name/structure changes aren't as important as making the game playable right now by adding content/etc. But they're playing the long game, and aren't really as concerned with placating people right now by "making it playable". They're interested in later, after they start charging for the game, and the people they'll be able to keep and gain then. Combine that with the fact that they surely know that a lot of people are now botting, considering how obvious people seem to be finding it and their own warning on the Lodestone. Whether they choose to wait till they start charging or not, I've no doubt of an eventual ban, which could affect who knows how much of the current population.

Yoshida clearly stated in his letter that he felt it important to focus on the UI + usability first, because it underlies everything else. He's likely also wanting to make sure that the trading features and economy are more up to par before adjusting how things drop and what new stuff is introduced to the game. Then combat, to make it more fun and enjoyable to actually take part in and play, whether solo or in a group. Then the real meat of the content, once the other underlying features are all in place and ready to support it in a way that will reflect how he wants the game to look at an end result. I don't expect solid content aside from quests/mini-quests/new leves till most of the other changes/fixes have been implemented and they're coming up on time to start charging for the game and readying/releasing the PS3 version.

So really, what you think isn't important right now is probably most important, since it will affect everything else getting added later. It isn't supposed to make the game more interesting or fun right now. It's bad, and he knows it's bad, so he's laying a foundation for content that will actually entice people into coming to play and pay for the game later. Later is the emphasis. Right now isn't important, because they aren't charging for it. If they can't manage to overcome this whole mess and bring in a dramatically larger population than currently exists then they'll probably be considering the entire project a failure, meaning even if they lose some of the people that are still sticking it out that doesn't really matter, and won't, until they start charging for the game. At which point it should all be changed enough that it will entice people to come back anyway, as well as encourage new people to get the game.

Everything else until then is borrowed time that we aren't paying for, and any changes they make towards an overall better game should be welcomed, even if they start out as underlying features that mainly affect usability and don't make the game anymore interesting to actually be in. Because ultimately, that's all they're interested in, is when they can start charging people and the population they'll have at that point, the majority of which should consist of people who are not amongst those currently playing.

I think Yoshida realizes that starting out with the content that should bring in the new players is a bad idea until the rest of the game is ready to complement it, and I like that. I think his plans, and the way it seems his long term goals are laid out, will ultimately be the best treatment the game could really receive. It's just a shame he wasn't in charge from the beginning, we may have started out with a game that was fun and not be dealing with one that needs such a thorough "fixing".