PLEASE REMOVE OR LESSEN RESTRICTIONS ON GARDENING FOR NEW PLAYERS

[Olor]

Hi, I just rerolled about a month ago and I have to say the restrictions on gardening really suck for new players. Now that RMT seems to be less of a problem I would hope that the developers would look at at least rolling back some of the restrictions on gardening for new players - even setting it up like fishing wouldn't be so bad.

It is really hard to make gil when you have just started - unlocking gardening would help! I also really want to raise a chocobo but without gardening it is just way too expensive.

I think that given the state of the game outside of Abyssea the developers should look at taking some action to make things a little easier on new players. Rolling back some of the restrictions on gardening would be a good step.

[Rambus]

What did SE do exactly?

[Masekase]

For 90 days plants only yield 1 item from them.

[Olor]

For 90 days plants only yield 1 item from them.

Yeah so you are better off selling the seed/crystal than bothering

[Rambus]

For 90 days plants only yield 1 item from them.

oh wow it is the same thing the send gil cap change did.

SE he is right, these changes do more harm then good, if someone wants to RMT they will, you should not harm real players in the process.

That send gil cap needs to be abolished too.

[Olor]

The thing is I really enjoyed gardening and it was one of the things I was looking forward to when I repurchased the game and started a new character - ditto with chocobo raising. Chocobo raising as far as I am concerned is not viable for a newbie if they can't garden (and don't have some outside source of money). So this 90 day thing is really sucky not just cause it makes it harder for genuine new players to make money/skill cooking/raise chocobos, but it takes away a fun part of the game.

[RAIST]

There still is RMT, so there will still be some restrictions while accounts are in free trial. I agree that 90 days is a bit much at this point though. At best, they may reduce it to 30 days.

There are still decent ways to make gil as you are starting out though. Crystals and base mats for crafting are still going at a decent rate, and when they merge the AH you will be able to flip them even faster than you currently can in the starter nations' AH's. You can start crafting things that sell well at 0 craft skill too (tsurara, beeswax, ingots) that you can also craft into usable items yourself--don't discount cooking either, you can start making items for yourself really cheap early on, and some still sell in the AH--there are some beginner's meats, drinks, and jug pets you can make with 0-5 skill and mats are sold by vendors. You can also get a lot of things to use/sell from chests for free too, not just off of mobs. You also get a little chunk of gil from the FOV pages once per game day as well.

Besides, you really only need a couple sets of gear to get you to Jueno and eventually abyssea now too. With the elevated XP rates and ablility to spam FoV pages, you out-level gear so fast now during the first 30 levels you don't need to upgrade a whole lot--probly do better to use the cheap vendor and <free> CP gear options until you hit 30. You can make one set of gear last easily 7 levels (or more) now with the faster xp rates.

Also, if you go the CP route, remember you can get some ls mates to upgrade them to higher level gear with just a handful of items like ingots/sheets or pieces of leather/cloth. For example, level 10 Legionaire's Harness upgrades to level 15 Bastokan/Republic Harness by just bonding a brass sheet with an earth crystal (23 goldsmithing). Same thing applies to the weapons: level 10 Legionnaire's Knuckles become level 15 Bastokan/Republic Knuckles by simply applying a bronze ingot on them with a fire crystal (19 goldsmithing). If you don't go the CP rout, use starter gear to ~7, upgrade to better vendor gear, then get lsmates to upgrade them by the same method (Leather gear can easily upgrade to higher level armors, for example: lizard, various scale, brass, studded pieces).

[Olor]

Besides, you really only need a couple sets of gear to get you to Jueno and eventually abyssea now too.

People who haven't rerolled totally over-estimate the ability of noobs to get into an Abyssea party. Just stating that right off. I am 52 now, and I haven't done anything but unlock the traverser stones accumulating. And, no, if you are soloing post 30, you actually need decent gear unless you want your life to suck.

You're nuts if you think I only need to get a couple pieces of gear to last till 75+ when I can realistically hope to get a spot in Abyssea for the first time (with no cruor/keys). If hadn't been busting my arse to make money and get gears (and hadn't gotten some gil as a gift from an LS mate) I would be totally screwed. You just can't solo effectively with crap gears.

I can go without jug pets, I can go without pet food - but I need armor that can take some hits, charisma gear, and decent axes - or I am going to get ridiculously slow exp./eat dirt constantly.

Your advice is fine otherwise - and believe me, I've farmed up lots of onions and tiger skins and tiger fangs (my personal favourite) and sold lots of crystals and beechips and honey - but newbie gears are really expensive (35 stacks of most crystals for the lvl 25 dagger I just bought for my DNC) compared to the kind of money you can realistically make through most farming.

[Alhanelem]

Only people on a free trial should be subject to any kind of restrictions of this sort. Once the free trial is over any restrictions should be lifted. 90 days is just silly. No RMT is going to last 90 days.

[Olor]

Only people on a free trial should be subject to any kind of restrictions of this sort. Once the free trial is over any restrictions should be lifted. 90 days is just silly. No RMT is going to last 90 days.

This!

I understand blocking things while on the trial, but for goodness sake - I'm not on the trial and I even bought all the Abyssea expansions - just let me garden so I can afford to raise my choco!

[Rambus]

There still is RMT, so there will still be some restrictions while accounts are in free trial. I agree that 90 days is a bit much at this point though. At best, they may reduce it to 30 days.


30 days is still stupid, all that needs to be done is restrict people on free trail.

same goes with the send gil cap.

if you are paying for the game these restrictions should not exist.

they harm real players more then being anti rmt measures

[Hoshi]

Is earning gil from gardening still so game breaking (now that you can make tons of gil in abyssea)? Assuming you were going about it the legit way and just farming gold chest items you'd still make gil faster than if you're gardening I would think? Since last June, without even trying, I've made 5 million gil selling scrolls, pop items, synth mats, and trash gear from abyssea and if I'd touched the 5.2 million cruor I've stored up for anything other than brews I could have made significantly more.

[Rambus]

Is earning gil from gardening still so game breaking (now that you can make tons of gil in abyssea)? Assuming you were going about it the legit way and just farming gold chest items you'd still make gil faster than if you're gardening I would think? Since last June, without even trying, I've made 5 million gil selling scrolls, pop items, synth mats, and trash gear from abyssea and if I'd touched the 5.2 million cruor I've stored up for anything other than brews I could have made significantly more.

be nice to have inventory to do that.

but to answer your question about gardening it is an OLD RMT countemeasure that needs to get rid of ( like the gil sending cap too) for people not on trial.

It is something newer players can do while leveling to 30 or something i guess.

[RAIST]

People who haven't rerolled totally over-estimate the ability of noobs to get into an Abyssea party. Just stating that right off. I am 52 now, and I haven't done anything but unlock the traverser stones accumulating. And, no, if you are soloing post 30, you actually need decent gear unless you want your life to suck.

You're nuts if you think I only need to get a couple pieces of gear to last till 75+ when I can realistically hope to get a spot in Abyssea for the first time (with no cruor/keys). If hadn't been busting my arse to make money and get gears (and hadn't gotten some gil as a gift from an LS mate) I would be totally screwed. You just can't solo effectively with crap gears.

I can go without jug pets, I can go without pet food - but I need armor that can take some hits, charisma gear, and decent axes - or I am going to get ridiculously slow exp./eat dirt constantly.

Your advice is fine otherwise - and believe me, I've farmed up lots of onions and tiger skins and tiger fangs (my personal favourite) and sold lots of crystals and beechips and honey - but newbie gears are really expensive (35 stacks of most crystals for the lvl 25 dagger I just bought for my DNC) compared to the kind of money you can realistically make through most farming.

Actually, no.. you don't need high end gears.. I just took 4 jobs from 60 to 78 in mostly level 50-57 gears (WITHOUT abysses, mind you). You just need to be a little smarter about your targets. Use the FoV system more. Remember, a DC mob now gives more xp than an EM used to, and EM gives more than a VT used to. You also get double the CP return as well. Those CP gears have a lot more value than people realize. You also need to earn your gil more wisely as well. If you are getting tiger fangs, you get more gil turning them in for a quest. You can farm bee chips and wild onions on easy mobs right outside Bastok (if you are over there, that is) and make a quick 20k a pop (or more) still in the AH. If you are in Windy area, you can still do the same there as well, just have to go to two different zones to do it. The "high end" gears you are talking about needing are ridiculously cheap. For instance.. Amamet +1 for 20k or less now.

[Atomic_Skull]

You guys realize that if they remove the 90 day wait period they'll probably also nerf the NPC selling prices of certain items instead thus removing the reason you wanted to garden in the first place, right?

[svengalis]

Is earning gil from gardening still so game breaking (now that you can make tons of gil in abyssea)? Assuming you were going about it the legit way and just farming gold chest items you'd still make gil faster than if you're gardening I would think? Since last June, without even trying, I've made 5 million gil selling scrolls, pop items, synth mats, and trash gear from abyssea and if I'd touched the 5.2 million cruor I've stored up for anything other than brews I could have made significantly more.
I guess you missed the part where he said he couldn't get into abyssea parties. Unless you make it yourself or know someone then good luck finding a abyssea where you sit there and do absolutely nothing.

[Starcade]

Oh, so the OP wants RMT to overrun Gardening again...

No thanks.

[Alhanelem]

30 days is still stupid, all that needs to be done is restrict people on free trail.The free trial lasts 30 days. -.-

EDIT: clarification: they quietly removed the 2 week free trial download from their "buy the game" flash site. This is actually probably the main reason RMT have declined. The only free trials there are now are the 30 free days you get with the game, and buddy pass trials, if anyone still has them.

[Rambus]

The free trial lasts 30 days. -.-

EDIT: clarification: they quietly removed the 2 week free trial download from their "buy the game" flash site. This is actually probably the main reason RMT have declined. The only free trials there are now are the 30 free days you get with the game, and buddy pass trials, if anyone still has them.

how is it free if you buy it? 30 days is too long -.-

I was pointing do that free trial dl yeah you can put resections on that.

guess they would only have restrictions on buddy pass trail then.


Oh, so the OP wants RMT to overrun Gardening again...

No thanks.

thats like saying lets not trade high amounts of items because its RMT ( really muling) lets not send gil from alt accounts/ chrs acting as a bank, only RMT must do that.

RMT will always be there, no reason to hurt real players because they can't make RMT target softwere ( targets real people not rmt ) lol

[Olor]

Actually, no.. you don't need high end gears.. I just took 4 jobs from 60 to 78 in mostly level 50-57 gears (WITHOUT abysses, mind you). You just need to be a little smarter about your targets. Use the FoV system more. Remember, a DC mob now gives more xp than an EM used to, and EM gives more than a VT used to. You also get double the CP return as well. Those CP gears have a lot more value than people realize. You also need to earn your gil more wisely as well. If you are getting tiger fangs, you get more gil turning them in for a quest.

I am using the fangs for the sandy quest (no please don't assume I'm brain dead). I am wearing A LOT of conquest gear (unfortunately - most of it comes from nations I am not a member of- since no matter how much I would like the bastok dagger to be equippable by DNC - IT ISN'T). I know what drops frigging onions.

However, the fact of the matter is - all of that farming nets for the most part less than 10k/hr in goodies - and when the market is filled with gil people can get from selling weapons bought with dom notes (and other Abyssea sources) - it means the price of lowbie gear is STILL REALLY HIGH compared to what people can realistically farm on a lowbie job.

I am lucky cause this is my 4th char and I know how to make money - but for new players it has to be a complete and total nightmare.

[Flunklesnarkin]

There should be a forum rule/guideline against using all capital letters

[Caps Lock Key] [No Thanks]

[Seriha]

Is earning gil from gardening still so game breaking (now that you can make tons of gil in abyssea)? Assuming you were going about it the legit way and just farming gold chest items you'd still make gil faster than if you're gardening I would think? Since last June, without even trying, I've made 5 million gil selling scrolls, pop items, synth mats, and trash gear from abyssea and if I'd touched the 5.2 million cruor I've stored up for anything other than brews I could have made significantly more.

My take on mass gardening was that it was more or less legalized RMT. For very little effort, just throwing an additional $1 per ID at SE meant relatively risk-free gil. This is not something every player can do, but the difference between this and something like dual-boxing is that characters out in the field at least risk death, EXP loss, wasted gil on food/tools/meds, and of course time. On top of that, it's assumed they're competing for limited resources like an NM, HELMing spots, or even a good EXP camp.

Put simply, it was possible to make millions upon millions of gil per month with enough mules. From the RMT perspective, that would mean in order to prime an account for NPCing, they'll need to have spent at least $70 for the game, IDs, and monthly subs after the 30 days. With the amount of time they need to invest, being overt in moving funds can pretty much blow up in their face easily and so they're back to the point where any money they could've made selling things off is lost in trying to start over again if they were actually able to sell it off to begin with.

Back to players, though, they'll need to stomach that same initial investment and waiting period. While a ban is unlikely for personal use of harvested gil, it's still currency largely created from nowhere and some might be tempted to sell off excess. Their economic value is largely toxic, too, as the simple result is unnatural potential inflation that multiplies the more readily it can be done. Good for the people with plenty of RL cash to spare. Not so much for those who don't.

Realistically, the only way to remove the gardening nerf is to go through all possible yields and tweak their NPC values accordingly. Gardening should be a tool used to provide unique goods to other players, not junk other players would never want and instead NPC as primary source of gil for the gardener.

[Olor]

Realistically, the only way to remove the gardening nerf is to go through all possible yields and tweak their NPC values accordingly. Gardening should be a tool used to provide unique goods to other players, not junk other players would never want and instead NPC as primary source of gil for the gardener.

I have/had no intention of using gardening to make npc junk. I want to grow chocobo food and ingredients for cooking.

>.>

Maybe that is how some people garden but it seems like that would be an awful time sink for a not great return. But then again - maybe I am doing it wrong.

[Seriha]

Like I implied, it's pretty much money for nothing. More pro-active players could make more, but an equally ambitious player could do the same on top of gardening and walk out that much richer. Some have allegedly funded relic weapons in this way. 3-5 minutes a mule per day, all for the cost of the initial seeds and some cheap crystals come feeding time. No competition, no undercutting at the AH, just a paycheck every few days.

I can sympathize with wanting to make things for personal use and not being able to, but this is an unfortunate side effect of people abusing the system and SE not making the right call with their response.

[Olor]

But blocking me from gardening isn't stopping anyone with an account older than 90 days from abusing gardening...

[Seriha]

And again, I feel for ya. SE didn't make the right call with their initial reaction. They instead should've looked at NPC values so what you get never exceeded the value of what you put in when dealing strictly with NPCs. For now, all I can suggest is maybe asking a friend or shellmate who plays regularly if they could garden for you until your 90 days pass.

[Olor]

Meh, I will just suck it up - this thread is less "fix this for me" and more "fix this so that no one in the future has to deal with this crap."

The worst part of it is - the game doesn't give you a message about what is going on - so if a new player WAS to start gardening, and never get anything more than 1 crappy item per pot, they might just think it sucks and never try it again.

[Rambus]

The worst part of it is - the game doesn't give you a message about what is going on - so if a new player WAS to start gardening, and never get anything more than 1 crappy item per pot, they might just think it sucks and never try it again.

I second this issue, would like something to be done about it.

[Camate]

Hey everyone,

We definitely understand your concerns about the restrictions on gardening for new players and also for current players that create new characters. We will talk to STF about this and see what is possible.

However, please keep in mind that the currently low amount of RMT activity is mainly due to these kind of countermeasures, so it might not be so easy to loosen up on these restrictions as there is a high possibility that RMT activity will grow once again if we ease up.

We will keep you posted on any info we receive.

[RAIST]

Hey everyone,

We definitely understand your concerns about the restrictions on gardening for new players and also for current players that create new characters. We will talk to STF about this and see what is possible.

However, please keep in mind that the currently low amount of RMT activity is mainly due to these kind of countermeasures, so it might not be so easy to loosen up on these restrictions as there is a high possibility that RMT activity will grow once again if we ease up.

We will keep you posted on any info we receive.
I also think it has a lot to do with how irrelevant gil has become in the game as well. There are simply a lot of ways to aquire gil/items in-game now, so there is less demand for it in general. I think if you guys could ease off the caps on secondary crafts we may see even less of an impact from gil selling.

[Runespider]

I also think it has a lot to do with how irrelevant gil has become in the game as well. There are simply a lot of ways to aquire gil/items in-game now, so there is less demand for it in general. I think if you guys could ease off the caps on secondary crafts we may see even less of an impact from gil selling.

Although true right now, who knows how the game will change with new content.

[Rambus]

Hey everyone,

We definitely understand your concerns about the restrictions on gardening for new players and also for current players that create new characters. We will talk to STF about this and see what is possible.

However, please keep in mind that the currently low amount of RMT activity is mainly due to these kind of countermeasures, so it might not be so easy to loosen up on these restrictions as there is a high possibility that RMT activity will grow once again if we ease up.

We will keep you posted on any info we receive.

Your countermeasures do not stop RMT, your mass bannings did

In 2009 the savage bannings, the gardening bannings and the credit card bannings is what hit the RMT hard. With less players around you have less demand for gil, it is that simple. It has nothing to do with programmed coutermeasures. the coutnermesures hurt real players more then it does to RMT.

Not only do you have less damad for gil because there is less gamers, but abyssea killed the want for gil. most of the stuff we want is rare ex after abyssea and abyssea also hurt big ticket items ( B hide, cerb hide, so on)

So abyssea killed crafting, abyssea killed RMT ( or the last nail) due to people not needing gil

You are delusional if you think the countermeasures help stop rmt. They find ways around it. They broke around your chat filter, made advance bots for fishing, made advance ways to bypass your filter and ways around the sending gil cap.

Even your filter was known to bug and block legitimate tells.

I want to ask you, how many legitimate players have your STF banned to get better numbers to act like you are doing something to RMT?

And speaking about STF I want to know why my mule account is still banned:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...stomer-service

All I did to get banned was trade a lot. A program saw I made a huge amount of trades so I got banned. Is STF even real? Or is STF just a code name for a program?

You want to stop RMT? I can tell you what to look for without hurting real players. I lost track on the amount of times GMs did nothing when I reported new ways of RMT leveling, RMT farming and so on.

If the STF is real I bet i know more than them, since I know how to ban RMT without hitting real players. I know GMs so well and if you want proof of that i can tell you how many GM calls i made at the next adventurer apperation thing. I do admit Abyssea killed my observation on them as well. I can start again I guess if i have a reason to.

[Kari]

IMO Gardening needs many improvements.
It takes way too long to be able to harvest, with little reward.
Not to mention the mog safe space taken from attempting to mass garden, heh.

[RAIST]

IMO Gardening needs many improvements.
It takes way too long to be able to harvest, with little reward.
Not to mention the mog safe space taken from attempting to mass garden, heh.

they recently reduced the time to harvest. I don't garden much anymore...only do it for taru rice really, which I need less of with the abyssea enhancements I get. Never tracked the actual time, but it feels almost like half the time.

[annewandering]

I wish there was not a cap on the gardening but I hate rmts more than the cap. The rmts did more than just garden. They took the gardening and added hacks that allowed them to harvest same garden over and over again. They did NOT pay for the game since it was free to download, or close to, and they did not have to pay for the month so they took the new account, gutted gardening, closed account and moved on to new account.
I am thrilled beyond measure to know they are gone. I WAS banned wrongly, during the garden bans, so I could go whining how it is all wrong blah blah blah but I WANT the freaks that caused SE to be banning people at all gone for good. It is rmt at fault here not SE, although SE did go at it a bit recklessly at the time. Its a lot better to prevent the rmts from starting that all again.
For new people: did you realized wind stacks are 4k or more at AH? That is in the cities. Five stacks and you have a 20 k item. I would have loved that at start of my game. There are good ways to make gil same as there always have been. Having your own choco is something worthwhile to look forward to getting. There is nothing wrong with not having everything in the game at the beginning. It would be very boring if we didnt have to work to get the fun stuff. Have some patience and you can enjoy it all.

[RAIST]

There is nothing wrong with not having everything in the game at the beginning. It would be very boring if we didnt have to work to get the fun stuff. Have some patience and you can enjoy it all.

This... 10 times over. Heaven forbid an adventurer actually explore and try to interact with different aspects of the game. I was in the game for roughly over 5 years before I ever ONCE kept more than 1 million gil (most the time I was b/t 300-500k)--yet, I never wanted for gil.

Explore, experiment, improvise--part of the fun is figuring out diffrerent ways to do things rather than running through the game on rails doing everything cookie-cutter style.

[CrystalWeapon]

I never liked how overly restrictive they got when they went on the warpath against rmts. Seemed like it was done with the mentality of "sometimes you got to shoot the hostage to save them." They wiped alot of repeatable gil quests, nerfed both gardening/fishing, and nailed a good bit of players with their mass bans.

While I abhor the RMT, I think the strings should be loosened a bit. I doubt the RMTs would flood the game again. Let's face it FFXI isn't as popular as it was in their heyday, and the need for gil isn't anywheres near as high as it used to be.

[Alhanelem]

Hey everyone,

We definitely understand your concerns about the restrictions on gardening for new players and also for current players that create new characters. We will talk to STF about this and see what is possible.

However, please keep in mind that the currently low amount of RMT activity is mainly due to these kind of countermeasures, so it might not be so easy to loosen up on these restrictions as there is a high possibility that RMT activity will grow once again if we ease up.

We will keep you posted on any info we receive.
Actually, I think it's far more likely that the decline in RMT is due to the removal of the 2 week free trial.


Your countermeasures do not stop RMT, your mass bannings did

In 2009 the savage bannings, the gardening bannings and the credit card bannings is what hit the RMT hardOh, for the love of all that is holy, please stop posting this BS. Only a handful of people relative to FFXI's population were banned. More were slapped on the wrist than banned, and RMT were around LONG LONG after the salvage bannings. Everyone who was banned deserved it. Stop acting like this was a majority of high level players or something, because that's just plain false. The STF has done it's job, it is ridiculous to argue that something like banning a few cheaters/exploiters ruined the economy. The salvage bannings were about removing people exploiting bugs, it had absolutely nothing to do with RMT.


While I abhor the RMT, I think the strings should be loosened a bit. I doubt the RMTs would flood the game again. Let's face it FFXI isn't as popular as it was in their heyday, and the need for gil isn't anywheres near as high as it used to be. Some of the restrictions are not really needed anymore (though they were needed at the time they were created, to be sure). Since even RMT will have to either buy the game or steal accounts to do their job now, that's one of the reasons they've all but disappeared.

[Zephrose]

Though a bit off topic from the OP, I believe SE-STF has taken the wrong approach to dealing with RMT. The number one goal RMT focus on is a solid repeatable aspect of the game. Either to raise the demand of an item in their favor or to exploit game mechanics.

In most other MMOs that often find themselves flooded with RMT, they saturate the demanded object. In Final Fantasy's case, that object would be gil. With said saturation, there is an obvious balance. Not to make it too simple so that the means don't justify the ends. But also to not make it too difficult so that the reward does not meet the ends.

If gil is being horded by RMT and sold for a premium, give the players a reason not to purchase gil(Obviously reason would be banned xD). Make the player feel like the gil is not worth the purchase when they can generate it on their own.

There are many different ways to fix these issues and SE-STF chose a more punishing tactic. I believe instead of punishing the entire player base for what the RMT have done is simply excessive.

I realize the times of the game are not about purchasing high end items as much as it was in the past. I believe Abyssea has a big part in that. But in the future all this might change. Just something to think on.

[Rambus]

Actually, I think it's far more likely that the decline in RMT is due to the removal of the 2 week free trial.

Oh, for the love of all that is holy, please stop posting this BS. Only a handful of people relative to FFXI's population were banned. More were slapped on the wrist than banned, and RMT were around LONG LONG after the salvage bannings. Everyone who was banned deserved it. Stop acting like this was a majority of high level players or something, because that's just plain false. The STF has done it's job, it is ridiculous to argue that something like banning a few cheaters/exploiters ruined the economy. The salvage bannings were about removing people exploiting bugs, it had absolutely nothing to do with RMT.

Some of the restrictions are not really needed anymore (though they were needed at the time they were created, to be sure). Since even RMT will have to either buy the game or steal accounts to do their job now, that's one of the reasons they've all but disappeared.

It is not BS, you cannot handle the truth.

you can target banning botting, MPK harrsment, and other things then jsut telling a program to monter trade count to ban people that should be banned ( both RMT and non RMT that do that)

SE would rather ban real people with thier flawed programing for numbers then ban bigger issues

[Hoshi]

Oh, for the love of all that is holy, please stop posting this BS. Only a handful of people relative to FFXI's population were banned. More were slapped on the wrist than banned, and RMT were around LONG LONG after the salvage bannings. Everyone who was banned deserved it. Stop acting like this was a majority of high level players or something, because that's just plain false. The STF has done it's job, it is ridiculous to argue that something like banning a few cheaters/exploiters ruined the economy. The salvage bannings were about removing people exploiting bugs, it had absolutely nothing to do with RMT.

I disagree with the sentiment that salvage bans did not take out a lot of high level players. 2/3rds of my friends list were either banned by salvage bans or quit in response to the fact that their friends were banned. The only reason I was not banned is because I left my salvage group one week before they started duping (my entire salvage ls was banned aside from the two members who left the shell before it started duping). I watched 3 of the prominent end-game shells on asura crumble because of salvage bans. I don't know how much these bannings culled RMT activity but they definitely reduced the end-game population on asura by quite a bit.

[Glamdring]

Leave the restrictions in place. I hate RMT and it doesn't take THAT long for legitimate players to get to be able to garden

[Rambus]

Leave the restrictions in place. I hate RMT and it doesn't take THAT long for legitimate players to get to be able to garden

did you read my post? it can try to effect RMT all it wants but it does not stop RMT or make RMT happen any less.

all it does is have less gil thus higher prices for gil.

No these countermeasures are meaningless, get rid of them. They harm real players and the entry of new players then it does to rmt.

I am talking about the cap of sending gil in the mail and other such "countermeasures" i do not know about.

Like that rep tp replay to my post and show the STF/ DEV team the truth


I went for a taru this time. Chaz, my friend I hate so much, gave me 100k to get started. He bought me a pair of astrals (you know, because taru have 50 HP to be giving up early on) and a couple pieces of noob gear. He probably spent 200k on gear. I'm in the game for 3 days, am told about Abyssea, purchase both expansions, and THEN I come home to being banned the next day for RMT activities.

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/183356-i-hate-friends/

RMT are bad but SE does not do RMT countermeasures in the right way like what this topic is about. if you cannot do it right do not do it at all.

Get rid of these in game program countermeasures, they do nothing, they harm real players more then RMT.

If you want to know how to do free trails look what WoW does, No need just to get rid of it

[Starcade]

The only way you can really get to the point where you could remove the restrictions is to end what has been the single most RMT-enabling thing in the game: The Free Trial itself.

[Rambus]

I take you don't know what it is like on wow's trail

you cannot send tells ( only replay to them)
you cannot send party invites ( maybe? not sure been a while)
you cannot trade people or accpet trades.

sounds pretty anti rmt to me.

since wow does not have gardening you can toss that in there too i guess, gil limit, so on. ( think wow had some gold cap too was not a lot be like holding 10k or 100k gil)

[Alhanelem]

I disagree with the sentiment that salvage bans did not take out a lot of high level players. 2/3rds of my friends list were either banned by salvage bans or quit in response to the fact that their friends were banned. Maybe "2/3s" of your friends list were either dupers or angry that friends didn't get away with it, but your personal friend list does not represent the majority of your server's population. For every salvage group that cheated, there were several that didn't.

Further, the only way these people could have had an impact on RMT activity is if they were RMT customers, which itself is also a violation of the terms of service and grounds for banning.

It's not like these rules were alien and unkown to anyone. None of these people had anyone to blame for breaking the rules but themselves. But again, these people are a minority. Any smart person who cared about their own account would have realized after the first time it happened that "hmm, breaking an alliance in salvage duplicates items. That's probably not intended. Maybe I shouldn't do that."


The only way you can really get to the point where you could remove the restrictions is to end what has been the single most RMT-enabling thing in the game: The Free Trial itself. They've already done that. At least, on official channels. The retail game site (e.g. the flash site that encourages people to buy the game) used to have a prominently displayed free trial button. That link is gone and I can't see any way to get a free trial key. So as far as I can tell, the 2 week free trial no longer exists. All there is now is the 30 day free period with a new account.

[GlobalVariable]

Hey everyone,

We definitely understand your concerns about the restrictions on gardening for new players and also for current players that create new characters. We will talk to STF about this and see what is possible.

However, please keep in mind that the currently low amount of RMT activity is mainly due to these kind of countermeasures, so it might not be so easy to loosen up on these restrictions as there is a high possibility that RMT activity will grow once again if we ease up.

We will keep you posted on any info we receive.A suggestion: check the age of the account rather than the age of the character. RMT mainly used trial accounts for gardening didn't they?
I disagree with the sentiment that salvage bans did not take out a lot of high level players. I noticed that at least on my server a lot of people who were banned had spare accounts "just in case". So it was like nothing happened to them. They had no serious attachment to the character they lost and just spent the day after complaining on their alts. Some even knew of some method of hiding salvage gear they had duped on alts and I reported the method to the STF. Can still find webstes describing how to use malformed packets to pull it off with a quick google search. So yeah, accounts got banned..But most of the same people came right back.

[Rambus]

Maybe "2/3s" of your friends list were either dupers or angry that friends didn't get away with it, but your personal friend list does not represent the majority of your server's population. For every salvage group that cheated, there were several that didn't.


You are very ignorant, you where not on asura. I was actally when that happened. I think all the major ls broke or fell but one, witch would be chorma, an EU engame ls. The game felt so empty after those bans it was not funny. the person you quoted is correct, do not sit here acting like most people did not get effected, it hurt and effected a LOT of people.

you can sit here and say "cheaters got what they diservered" all you want, but i disagree with what SE did with savage and the impact it had on the comuinty.

the game would not be such in a dieing state if SE did not ban anyone ( including the mass xmas RMT bannings)


if you only want to be on one server with 2000 people because SE bans everyone that uses windower be my guest, not something i want.

I will say it again, get rid of all these worthless "countermeasures" all they do is hurt real people, does little to curve RMT, all it does is make prices per gil higher cuz they can't get as much.

give back the 2 week trial with the resistions wow does and everyone will be happier.

[Komori]

It's not to go without mentioning that the Goblin Bots ruined a great deal of EXP camps (why people intially started leaving the dunes and qufim etc.) And RMT could just level themselves to get around it.

[Alhanelem]

You are very ignorant, you where not on asura.So are you saying Asura was the Cheaters, Botters, and Dupers server? Not a place I'd want to be.

I'm not ignorant. You are making the problem out to be many times worse than it really was. People banned were a minority, plain and simple, no matter what server you were on (unless, as you suggested, Asura is where all the cheaters congregated).

But the long and short of this is banning cheaters is not a countermeasure against RMT, nor did it have a drastic long term effect on the player population.

The game would be in a MORE dying state if SE did not ban anyone. If people thought and knew they could get away with duping and such, everyone would be doing it and then it would be impossible for legit people to enjoy the game. Then those people would leave and all that would be left are the cheaters. Banning a few people for breaking the rules is better than no one being able to enjoy the game because those people weren't banned.

When you sign up for the game you agree to the rules they set forth. If you break them, you pay the price.

[Rambus]

So are you saying Asura was the Cheaters, Botters, and Dupers server? Not a place I'd want to be.


Why you think i left? and not just botters and cheaters, MPK and greifers too.

I am not making the situation worse than it is, I am stating the truth, this is why i called you ignorant. I do not like to name call but you are giving me no choice.

1. Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.
2. Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular: "ignorant of

No, the game would be more active if SE did not do anything or did other measures to fight RMT.

instead of banning people left and right for numbers they could of found ways to find botters, greifers, link botting ( some RMT play 5 chrs at once that all follow each other to level)

there is plenty of ways to only target RMT/target people that need to be banned.

SE took the route of "lets hit everyone that looks like RMT"
You know those charts, numbers, so on, that they flashed in fount of your face? it was just a ploy to make you think they actually did something. They had no issue letting botters play.

game would be in a better state if SE did nothing VS the actions they did.

I would of prefer SE not to do nothing, but it is apparent SE does not know how to fight RMT properly so doing nothing would been an improvement.

See this thread for example THIS IS NOT A COUNTERMESURE to fight RMT. All it does is herm real players.

You are right, people should be banned for breaking the rules. If SE did that we would not have so many people that harass people, stalk people, scam people, BOT, mob steal, and MPK

But SE does not do that, they let some people brake the rules and allow them to still play ( botters/ harassers) but turn around and do mass bans that shouldn’t never take place

you want SE to ban everyone that broke a rule?

You have 1000 people on one server then. ( I would be one of those 1000, I have never used windower or anything. I am sick of being made fun of for saying windower brakes ToS and I am gimp for not using it)

I would find it very interesting to see SE ban everyone that used windorer.

You cannot handle the truth.

comeone Camate like a replay, I want to know what you think of what really goes on.

[Seriha]

Sorry, but if someone duped, they deserved what they got. And no, these people were not the lifeblood of FFXI no matter how close a friend you might've been to them.

Moral of this story? If you find a bug, report it. Not keep it a secret and profit to the tune of millions of gil or triplicating the amount of items entering the game.

[Alhanelem]

1. Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.I am not lacking knowledge or awareness in general, nor am I uneducated or unsophisticated. Thanks for showing me that though.

You gave your viewpoints through the perspective of your specific server. I am giving them from mine, and the fact that they are both different should be a signal to you that any one server is not an accurate representation of the total population. Each server is different, with different people who do different things. That said, no matter how you want to say it, not even the entirety of everyone who did salvage on a regular basis constitutes a majority of any group of players. There are many "prominent" players who never did salvage, or did not do so regularly. "Prominent" players make up a very tiny percentage of the total population. Even banning a "large number" of them does not substantially affect the total population.


You cannot handle the truth.I cannot handle your "truth" because it's not the truth.

A few pro players does not represent the entire playerbase.

[Rambus]

I am not lacking knowledge or awareness in general, nor am I uneducated or unsophisticated. Thanks for showing me that though.

You gave your viewpoints through the perspective of your specific server. I am giving them from mine, and the fact that they are both different should be a signal to you that any one server is not an accurate representation of the total population. Each server is different, with different people who do different things. That said, no matter how you want to say it, not even the entirety of everyone who did salvage on a regular basis constitutes a majority of any group of players. There are many "prominent" players who never did salvage, or did not do so regularly. "Prominent" players make up a very tiny percentage of the total population. Even banning a "large number" of them does not substantially affect the total population.

I cannot handle your "truth" because it's not the truth.

A few pro players does not represent the entire playerbase.

I was talking about total player base... that was just an example. so yes you fit that word.

oh wait when did the server merges start? was it 6 moths or so after that? hmm

on top of the CC bans and gardening bans? oh yeah gardening, the ability to charge you, muling, and gift giving warrants a ban!

and ill ask you again, you want everyone baned that violated the tos correct?

[Alhanelem]

oh wait when did the server merges start? was it 6 moths or so after that? hmmYou're delusional if you think the salvage bannings caused the playerbase to decline.

1) FFXI is an old game
2) It has reached many of its limits in terms of adaptability, upgradability and expandability
3) It was at it's peak long before the salvage bannings
4) It was already declining at the time of them

The number of people who were banned or quit because of the bannings is tiny compared to the number of people who quit or left for other reasons. Many people have left simply because they've been here for years and they've moved on to other things. It's a fact of any MMO that lasts this long. Circumstancial evidence is not useful or helpful and is not admissible in courts for those reasons. You are implying correlation where there is no provable connection.

So let me spell it out one more time. Salvage. Bannings. Are. Not. A. Significant. Cause. Of. The. Decrease. In. Population.


and ill ask you again, you want everyone baned that violated the tos correct? It entirely depends on the violation, and if it can be conclusively proven that a violation actually took place. I know where you're going with this- "So they should ban everyone who ever used windower?" Answer: Possibly, but there is no way to conclusively prove anyone's use of windower -- other than their own admission -- which does not violate privacy laws of various countries (e.g. they'd have to search your computer).

Anyone who shared credit cards or addresses or any other personal information amongst several people to purchase/pay for the game yes indeed should be banned. If you want to play, get your own account information and payment method. If you can't do that, find another game.

Gardening: I don't know the specifics of what happened, but if anyone was exploting a bug or doing anything that was unintended by the developers intentionally and for their own gain, yes, they should have been banned.

Smaller population of people you can play with fairly > larger population full of cheaters/botters/exploiters.

Edit: Man, by the way, when it comes to ninja editing posts, you're a worse offender than I've ever been.

[Rambus]

It entirely depends on the violation, and if it can be conclusively proven that a violation actually took place. I know where you're going with this- "So they should ban everyone who ever used windower?" Answer: Possibly, but there is no way to conclusively prove anyone's use of windower -- other than their own admission -- which does not violate privacy laws of various countries (e.g. they'd have to search your computer).

Edit: Man, by the way, when it comes to ninja editing posts, you're a worse offender than I've ever been.

have fun on having 1000 people on one server then.

so with that logic you have to be selective, where do you draw the line?

if you cannot be fair with that line do not ban anyone ( this is where I will place SE)

SE banned way to meny people that should not have been, that was the downfall of the game, not age.

[Alhanelem]

have fun on having 1000 people on one server then.
Indeed I will. Thanks for the kind wishes.

It's not about "being selective." Different violations warrant different punishments.

[Rambus]

Indeed I will. Thanks for the kind wishes.

It's not about "being selective." Different violations warrant different punishments.

This is true, normally.

but you cannot ban one guy for botting, temp ban the next and never touch a 3rd botter and ban the 4th guy that had nothing to do with it.

You cannot ban people that do nothing wrong.

Look at this thread for example. punishment real players VS RMT. RMT may not make as much, RMT may find different outlets but it does not stop RMT. It may slow the gil gain of RMT but all that does is make the dollar of gil to go up.

SE in their countermeasures has been punishing real players more then RMT. They focus was on trades and such vs getting botters and camp harassment. I got to tell you I care more about that RMT harassment then the effect on the market. It will balance out on its own, but that harassment? Wasting your time camping cuz RMT or real player botted claim? That cannot be fixed.

You know what i would do if i had power doing those savage bans? delete the gear that was gained by the "cheating"

even if you hit some people that got it ligitmently they would have their account and cotunie playing.

not have this ripple effect that killed 1/10 of the overall playerbase.

[bungiefan]

Not having cruor to join an Abyssea party isn't such a big deal. I've still seen people actually solving the puzzles for the chests in parties on Ragnarok when they were lacking in cruor. You just turn on all the chat log filters for battle actions, since you aren't participating in battle and that leaves you room to see the clues. After a couple of cruor chests, you have keys for time extension chests when you are otherwise going to fail the puzzle. I have seen people speed through the puzzles as fast as we can generate them with worthwhile contents.

As for the gil issue... I'm still having money problems for scrolls as a 90 BLM, there's a few I haven't bought yet. My other mage jobs are mostly below 30, with WHM at 57 and SCH at 49 not having bought a scroll since Dispel. Spells still cost a lot of gil from NPCs, and even at a 2-2.3 gil per cruor exchange via the Teal, Perle, and Aurore armor sets (the 3000 cruor pieces give this return, the more expensive pieces only give a 1.5 gil/cruor exchange), I'm not making enough gil to afford everything from the NPCs. Leveling another job that eats scrolls is almost unthinkable for me right now, and I know people with a couple hundred million gil with nothing to spend it on. Only food, tools, ammo, and scrolls seem to be things to spend gil on anymore.

In my 8.5 years of playing, I've never reached 500,000 gil on my character. I've only broken 200k a couple of times, trying to level BLM as my main. Gil is even harder to earn, excepting doing it via Abyssea by cruor exchange, than it has ever been for me before. I can only imagine what it is like for someone starting new completely. NPC shops are the only source for a lot of gear now, especially for levels 20-75, since the AH has dried up with people not needing gil so much anymore. I've donated about 10-20k to friends I've had starting new, when I've had it to spare.

You don't get a lot of the gil back for gear you have leveled past when you sell to an NPC, and you can't earn a lot of it until you can get cruor, compared to the current NPC prices things go for. How am I supposed to handle a 10k+ scroll every level or two as a mage with just quest rewards? Now at 90 I'm looking at 100-200k per scroll, and they only drop in Abyssea pyxides, they aren't sold by NPCs.

[Seriha]

SE banned roughly 550 people for the Salvage dupes, suspending another 400 temporarily. Spread amongst the, what, 32 servers at the time? That'd be roughly 18 banned and 13 suspended per server. Hardly the beginning of the game's decline, let alone a cause.

Meanwhile, you can't correlate gardening, or even the temporary restriction of it, to this. In part you can blame free trials for the creation of unlimited mules, but as I noted earlier, the ability to create more gil via NPC sales than what it cost to begin the process was the ultimate issue. This isn't a bug or dupe, merely a balancing oversight. It happens. I can't say I'm for the subsequent suspension of the trials that this likely led to, either, no matter how some may reason "It's just a few bucks to get the game!" over Steam over wherever. It just reeks of SE not making the proper fix at the time.

Otherwise, players need to utilize some common sense when it comes to something being off. Nowhere else in the game could dissolving your alliance at certain periods lead to the same items in each treasure pool. There is nothing of this "feature" spoken of in official manuals or tutorials. No doubt, I can see the temptation for exploiting this given Salvage's shoddy effort:reward ratio, but c'mon. It's duping. Duh.

Regardless, the downside of laying out rules is when it comes time to enforce them. Would simply deleting the items have been a sufficient lesson? No. Acquisition is a cumulative process, here. The more they got, the more they could dupe. The more duped, the more outfitted and in turn able to sell excess. Once you start getting to gil, the process becomes far more murky and they gain the ability to tap into other things that a fat wallet would've allowed like buying currency for relics/mythics or merc'ing out other goods. In turn, this act potentially affected the entire server. The message SE conveyed with the bans was simple. It's unfortunate some still feel these policies shouldn't apply to them, feigning innocence or hiding behind the whole "nobody likes a snitch" mentality.

[Alhanelem]

You know what i would do if i had power doing those savage bans? delete the gear that was gained by the "cheating"I never said I completely agree with how it was handled. My main issue is that it took too long for the problem to be addressed, thus leaving too wide a window open for people to be subject to sanctions. I agree that removing items would have been a decent solution. But the problem is, with duped items, one of the copies was obtained legitimately. But how do you determine which one? either way you go, the other person is going to say theirs is the "real" one. So you either delete them all, or you have to take a different action. As far as banning one guy and not another- you have to be careful of collateral damage. They have to judge if everyone there was willfully participating in the cheating, or if some people were only "along for the ride" and were not aware of what was happening (But that only works if the incident only happens once. You can't argue people didn't know what was happening after the first time). For such people who were caught in the middle, they usually received a suspension at worst, not a ban.

My only issue with this discussion with you is that you are overstating the scope of the affected population, and that you seem to think that banning people for cheating in salvage has something to do with killing RMT. RMT do not do salvage, so that makes no sense.


SE banned roughly 550 people for the Salvage dupes, suspending another 400 temporarily. I like seeing actual numbers, but where did you get these?

[Seriha]

In November 2008, we discovered an issue that allowed players to create multiple items for certain treasures and rewards in areas such as Salvage and Assault by exploiting the game system.

The issue was fixed during emergency maintenance on November 26, 2008. However, we discovered that some players had already exploited the issue and used it to gain additional items before it was addressed. We then investigated more than a year's worth of logs throughout all areas.

As a result of the investigation, approximately 400 players were temporarily suspended based on the evidence gathered. Approximately 550 players who committed more serious misconduct had their accounts banned.

We are working hard to ensure that these kinds of issues do not occur again in FINAL FANTASY XI. However, if you discover any problems with the game system, please submit a GM call or fill out the feedback e-mail form to report the problems to us, instead of exploiting or spreading the issue.

We thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

On PlayOnline (http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news15265.shtml).

[Alhanelem]

That means around 30 people average per server were punished. (Though it's very likely some servers had very few and others had more)

That's seriously not a lot.

[Olor]

Having your own choco is something worthwhile to look forward to getting. There is nothing wrong with not having everything in the game at the beginning. It would be very boring if we didnt have to work to get the fun stuff. Have some patience and you can enjoy it all.

I am not asking for "everything in the game at the beginning" - I am asking to be able to do the things I enjoy in a game I am paying full price for. Due to time constraints - there is no way that I can/expect to have everything in the game in my first month - but I should be able to enjoy the content I am paying for - that is all there is to it.

[Olor]

Leave the restrictions in place. I hate RMT and it doesn't take THAT long for legitimate players to get to be able to garden

Three months? That is a long time.

[Fiarlia]

Gardening: I don't know the specifics of what happened, but if anyone was exploting a bug or doing anything that was unintended by the developers intentionally and for their own gain, yes, they should have been banned.

The way the gil was obtained seems to not be an issue in SE's eyes because when Gardening itself was restricted, there were absolutely no changes to what actually made it profitable in the first place. I'm not arguing whether or not it should be fixed, but at the time they banned RMT's for it, and not legitimate players (as far as I'm aware).

What it basically boils down to is being able to buy something from an NPC, use it to garden, and then turn around and NPC the results for profit. The amount of profit is honestly not very much, but it was (is) easy as hell to do, and with a lot of mules could generate significant returns over time.

Again, not here to argue if it's good or bad for legit players, but obviously once RMT's discovered this it had to be stopped, thus the Gardening restrictions were put in place for new accounts. Again, though, the price of buying/selling from/to an NPC was not changed at the same time, despite SE knowing full well what items were being targeted.

[Olor]

In my 8.5 years of playing, I've never reached 500,000 gil on my character. I've only broken 200k a couple of times, trying to level BLM as my main. Gil is even harder to earn, excepting doing it via Abyssea by cruor exchange, than it has ever been for me before. I can only imagine what it is like for someone starting new completely. NPC shops are the only source for a lot of gear now, especially for levels 20-75, since the AH has dried up with people not needing gil so much anymore. I've donated about 10-20k to friends I've had starting new, when I've had it to spare.

You don't get a lot of the gil back for gear you have leveled past when you sell to an NPC, and you can't earn a lot of it until you can get cruor, compared to the current NPC prices things go for. How am I supposed to handle a 10k+ scroll every level or two as a mage with just quest rewards? Now at 90 I'm looking at 100-200k per scroll, and they only drop in Abyssea pyxides, they aren't sold by NPCs.

Yay, someone who gets it.

[Rambus]

That means around 30 people average per server were punished. (Though it's very likely some servers had very few and others had more)

That's seriously not a lot.

way more then that where banned, asura had over 100 so yeah what she posted is not the full banning numbers, 2009 was mass banning year, I am not sure when they ended the savage ones (actually I may be confusing that number with that BOT ap list)

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/175335-unbanned/

those savage bans that note was just the start of it. (pretty sure)

I am sure it takes more then 30 people to brake 3-4 LS

I lost the first thread I had talking about my mule account that got banned with the wave of gardening bans but this guy posted the total number of bans that year and it was huge.

That first thread I posted here i cannot find ( I clicked on my self to try find it) So i made a new one.

I might of been overdoing it by saying the savage bans alone was the cause of FFXIs downfall, and yes you have a point with the game getting old game was dieing off SLOWELY just after ATU came out.

however that mass bannings in 2009 really sped it up and had a ripple effect of from the savage bans of friends of those people quitting and such.

ether way month 1- month 7 in 2009 sucked for people there was a huge number of bans that should never have happened.

If you buy the game and get a 30 day free month cuz you bought the game should not have the restriction, only the free trails should ( requt a friend thing pass w/e FFXI calls it)

and bring back the free trails try get some new blood and those trails you can have them have a gil cap, unable to send tells to people or a big limit of tells to people, say amount, so on so RMT don’t use them for advertise.

SE can also be like WoW and have naming rules , qwertyrdfswswf is not a name and that can red flag rmts quicker.

Get rid of this gardening restriction and get rid of gil sending cap. I guess you can have like a 30 or 60 day time for gil sending cap.

Let me tell you why that gil sending cap is annoying. 1 you can only send gil to one person,2 the cap is 1 M

I have a lot of mules and during lotto day it is hell to send gil to them one by one (I stopped bothering when my mule was banned though)

I hate selling stuff on mules anymore or having mules because of all these pointless gil sending cap and it do not even effect RMT.

[Fiarlia]

way more then that where banned, asura had over 100 so yeah what she posted is not the full banning numbers, 2009 was mass banning year, I am not sure when they ended the savage ones ( actally I may be confusing that number with that BOT ap list)

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news15265.shtml

Those are the correct numbers.

[Alhanelem]

way more then that where banned,Sorry, no. I will take SE's numbers over yours.

[Vold]

way more then that where banned, asura had over 100 so yeah what she posted is not the full banning numbers, 2009 was mass banning year, I am not sure when they ended the savage ones (actually I may be confusing that number with that BOT ap list)

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/175335-unbanned/

those savage bans that note was just the start of it. (pretty sure)

I am sure it takes more then 30 people to brake 3-4 LS

I lost the first thread I had talking about my mule account that got banned with the wave of gardening bans but this guy posted the total number of bans that year and it was huge.

That first thread I posted here i cannot find ( I clicked on my self to try find it) So i made a new one.

I might of been overdoing it by saying the savage bans alone was the cause of FFXIs downfall, and yes you have a point with the game getting old game was dieing off SLOWELY just after ATU came out.

however that mass bannings in 2009 really sped it up and had a ripple effect of from the savage bans of friends of those people quitting and such.

ether way month 1- month 7 in 2009 sucked for people there was a huge number of bans that should never have happened.

If you buy the game and get a 30 day free month cuz you bought the game should not have the restriction, only the free trails should ( requt a friend thing pass w/e FFXI calls it)

and bring back the free trails try get some new blood and those trails you can have them have a gil cap, unable to send tells to people or a big limit of tells to people, say amount, so on so RMT don’t use them for advertise.

SE can also be like WoW and have naming rules , qwertyrdfswswf is not a name and that can red flag rmts quicker.

Get rid of this gardening restriction and get rid of gil sending cap. I guess you can have like a 30 or 60 day time for gil sending cap.

Let me tell you why that gil sending cap is annoying. 1 you can only send gil to one person,2 the cap is 1 M

I have a lot of mules and during lotto day it is hell to send gil to them one by one (I stopped bothering when my mule was banned though)

I hate selling stuff on mules anymore or having mules because of all these pointless gil sending cap and it do not even effect RMT.

Maybe Asura had just THAT many cheaters. Are you calling SE liars? Really? How do you even know how many got banned on Asura? What did you do a head count? Really?

Basically what you are saying is that SE should permit cheating on a grand scale for the sake of the game. They look the other way on windower, so it's not fair they won't do the same for salvage dupes? Really? That is for all intent and purposes exactly what you are saying because no one is buying this argument that tons of people were unjustly banned. Even if the game lost 10,000 players, whether if they were all cheaters, or friends of cheaters who quit because their friends got banned or just mostly cheaters with some innocent folk caught in the fire, whatever conceivable thing you can come up with, there are still hundreds of THOUSANDS of players. Do you understand how many people that is? And how 10,000 lost is not going to cause any kind of a downfall to the game?(it was around 1k that got punished for salvage dupes, and I think it's safe to say no more than an additional 2k were banned for whatever you keep talking about. I say 10,000 to be extremely forgiving) People got bant. Most of them came right back on new characters, bought characters, characters on loan, you name it. Life went on.

You know I can sum up 90% of your posts with this one sentence: I know best. All of you are delusional. SE killed FFXI. I want my grind back. Etc stuff.

Go ahead SE. Lift ALL of your counter measures. See what happens. Rambus knows best. It's not like you guys have been at the front lines fighting the war all this time, playing a cat and mouse game with RMT. You guys trippin' if you think you know better than a random customer playing your game. Back to the minors with the STF. Come back when you're pro.

There's no denying that SE hasn't been perfect through the years. But you make it sound like the game is dying entirely because of SE, when in fact it's because of it's age. You can expect it to keep "dying" until about 200,000 remain and will probably keep playing long enough for SE to hang themselves because people don't know when to quit. Just ask Sony about their EQ players that just won't go away.

[Rambus]

way more then that where banned, asura had over 100 so yeah what she posted is not the full banning numbers, 2009 was mass banning year, I am not sure when they ended the savage ones (actually I may be confusing that number with that BOT ap list)

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/175335-unbanned/

those savage bans that note was just the start of it. (pretty sure)

I am sure it takes more then 30 people to brake 3-4 LS

I lost the first thread I had talking about my mule account that got banned with the wave of gardening bans but this guy posted the total number of bans that year and it was huge.

That first thread I posted here i cannot find ( I clicked on my self to try find it) So i made a new one.

I might of been overdoing it by saying the savage bans alone was the cause of FFXIs downfall, and yes you have a point with the game getting old game was dieing off SLOWELY just after ATU came out.

however that mass bannings in 2009 really sped it up and had a ripple effect of from the savage bans of friends of those people quitting and such.

ether way month 1- month 7 in 2009 sucked for people there was a huge number of bans that should never have happened.

If you buy the game and get a 30 day free month cuz you bought the game should not have the restriction, only the free trails should ( requt a friend thing pass w/e FFXI calls it)

and bring back the free trails try get some new blood and those trails you can have them have a gil cap, unable to send tells to people or a big limit of tells to people, say amount, so on so RMT don’t use them for advertise.

SE can also be like WoW and have naming rules , qwertyrdfswswf is not a name and that can red flag rmts quicker.

Get rid of this gardening restriction and get rid of gil sending cap. I guess you can have like a 30 or 60 day time for gil sending cap.

Let me tell you why that gil sending cap is annoying. 1 you can only send gil to one person,2 the cap is 1 M

I have a lot of mules and during lotto day it is hell to send gil to them one by one (I stopped bothering when my mule was banned though)

I hate selling stuff on mules anymore or having mules because of all these pointless gil sending cap and it do not even effect RMT.
people read that bold?


Basically what you are saying is that SE should permit cheating on a grand scale for the sake of the game. They look the other way on windower, so it's not fair they won't do the same for salvage dupes? Really? That is for all intent and purposes exactly what you are saying because no one is buying this argument that tons of people were unjustly banned. Even if the game lost 10,000 players, whether if they were all cheaters, or friends of cheaters who quit because their friends got banned or just mostly cheaters with some innocent folk caught in the fire, whatever conceivable thing you can come up with, there are still hundreds of THOUSANDS of players. Do you understand how many people that is? And how 10,000 lost is not going to cause any kind of a downfall to the game?(it was around 1k that got punished for salvage dupes, and I think it's safe to say no more than an additional 2k were banned for whatever you keep talking about. I say 10,000 to be extremely forgiving) People got bant. Most of them came right back on new characters, bought characters, characters on loan, you name it. Life went on.

If you really went through my post I think you would know the answer to that already.
Maybe my words are no good since you and that other guy did miss what I had to say about what I bold
To answer this question I would say yes and no. In fact that is what SE did, they let botters bot for a long time, they let people MPK and harass but turn around and ban savage doup?
The answer to your question is yes because that is what SE does anyway, the no part is explaining what SE should of done in how to ban / punish people.

With the poor drop rates in savage how do you know that was an intended trick or not?
Like I said if it was up to me I would just delete the "cheated" earn gear and remind them of the ToS, that you are not allowed to exploit the game in any way. People even defended that pup should be allowed to solo diabolos and it was fair for that exploit.

If it was up to me from the start I would not put my banning focus on trade count.
First I would try to detect and ban botters ( RMT tend to bot). I would ban people that did any type of NM harass ( MPK, mob train, so on) since RMT to do that. I would look into what people did that had names like qwertgfdef. I would monitor NMs see if same group or person was claiming it over and over and try hard to find proof it is a bot or advance bot detection. SE ban RMT based on trade count and other flawed ways that hit a lot of people that where real players that did not cheat.

and lol yes I do know best, gardening countermeasure does not stop RMT, gil sending cap did not stop RMT, it was just something to work around.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/square-enix-cracks-down-on-gardeners-sends-out-bans/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.123849-Square-Enix-Bans-Players-for-Gardening-in-FFXI
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=19095
http://forums.g4tv.com/showthread.php?t=131377
http://gameguidexx.blogspot.com/2009/04/just-heard-news-that-squareenix-banned.html
http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/4179-got-banned-on-ffxi/
http://shamayaasura.livejournal.com/2009/01/23/

I have 3 accounts , all 3 where banned due to the credit card ban. I was lucky and got it lifted right away

then 2 weeks later my mule account got banned and i still have not have it fixed so if you think I am just telling stories of friends you are wrong. I was hit with it

I do not know how meny got hit wronfully and i am sure it is mroe then 10 000, someone posted in my ban compaint thread on all the numbers of that year and I cannot find the post.

I tried to google FFXI bans of 2009 and was not able to find the numbers.

and last part of your post shows you did not read everything I said, or try to understand.

I said FFXI has been slowly dieing since AHU (SE did not effect that much) came out.

SEs mass banings in 2009 greatly spead up its death however.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/68852-R.I.P.-Players!
hmm mabye it was over 100 for the bot list and the savage bans lol

lest i was right, act like i do not know what i am talking about.

oh yeah like it is hard to eye these people to learn how to detect bots:
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/92099-w1zbot-userlist

some may not used it but still...

and to restate i never mean to mean SE killed FFXI, spead it up sure, sorry for the confusion.

[RAIST]

WOW.. this debate just refuses to die.

Really don't understand what all the QQ is about. Bans happened in the past--be they right or wrong, good or bad for the game--it's over with. Look at what goes on NOW.

Things generally cost considerably less than they used to (for the most part) simply because those gears are less relevant now. Thus, by proxy--gil is less relevant now. Some of the sellers no longer even deal with FFXI anymore--they refer you to another supplier now, simply because there is less demand for the product.

If you can't make the gil one way...how about trying another? There are many early crafting recipes that can net good profits depending on how the market goes and whether mats are farmed or bought. You can make a 40-50% profit on Tsurara alone selling it to NPC's starting with 0 skill. Not exactly ideal, but it's easy money--and if you put some up in the AH it's a crazy markup.

Think outside the box a little. After all, this game is designed to encourage some level of exploration and experimentation.

[Alhanelem]

Every game bans people. End of story, Deal with it. Banning people does not kill games. Just because you or people you know got banned does not mean it had far reaching effects on the game.

Hell, MapleStory even publishes a list of the names of all the characters it bans on a monthly basis, and that game is still GROWING.. WoW bans people all the time and they still have millions of customers.

[SNK]

That means around 30 people average per server were punished. (Though it's very likely some servers had very few and others had more)

That's seriously not a lot.

It is and it isn't.

Here's the original thread on BG when the bannings happened.
http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68831

Here's the thread with the people that were known that got banned.
http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68852

And here's one I seriously enjoyed just for the amount of players who got their shit handed to them for thinking SE wouldn't do a damn thing. lol
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/68860-Delicious-quotes-from-the-original-dupe-fix-thread?highlight=

[Alhanelem]

Not sure what you're trying to say. BG's list only accounts for a little more than half of how many people got banned. But over 100 of them were on Asura (which has the most listed). I think that says something about that server... :p

[SNK]

Not sure what you're trying to say. BG's list only accounts for a little more than half of how many people got banned. But over 100 of them were on Asura (which has the most listed). I think that says something about that server... :p

What I'm trying to say is Rambus is right. You see the Salvage bannings were the biggest of the bans ever done but a lot of people were banned before & after that so the number isn't 550 permas which some people think that's the only time SE's ever hammered a lot of people.

If I cared to look further into the whole STF thing, I could show you where SE literally did bannings so much that they even made monthly posts about how many accounts got hammered for even funnier shit. PoS hacking, ect.

I'm sure you get the idea.~

[Alhanelem]

In my 8.5 years of playing, I've never reached 500,000 gil on my character. I've only broken 200k a couple of times, trying to level BLM as my main. Gil is even harder to earn,Are you kidding? Gil is handed to you on a silver platter in abyssea. The game dishes out boxes full of weapons, rings and armor with crappy augments that no one wants (these items often are left to disappear), but most of them NPC for 7-12k each.

I have literally made my last few millions NPCing augmented items from abyssea (Especially from that seal quest in attohwa to find a bug on the ground- Before they nerfed it, it was 9k every 2 minutes; after 2 days getting seals from it, it adds up). If you can't save up 1 mil, there's something wrong.


What I'm trying to say is Rambus is right. You see the Salvage bannings were the biggest of the bans ever done but a lot of people were banned before & after that so the number isn't 550 permas which some people think that's the only time SE's ever hammered a lot of people.He's not right. All of the other times SE has hammered a lot of people, those people were RMTs and bots, not even real "people." FFXI still had at least 100-200k subscribers if not much more at the time, and 550 permabans is a drop in the bucket.

[Seriha]

Main reason I fished up the numbers was due to the implication that it was Salvage bans alone that somehow lead to this grand fall of the game. If I'm not mistaken, the RMT pwner or whatever they called their automated system had been into place and certainly started going through whatever criteria SE deemed inappropriate. Did others POS/flee hack, MPK, bot claim, grief, and so on? You bet. However, those claims are a bit harder to substantiate (especially when you introduce the language barrier) than a run where only 1 of a particular item is possible instead churning out 3.

As for the distribution of bans and suspensions, I'm not really surprised it might've been skewed toward one server over another. Remember, only people who "deserved" to know were filled in (So, why tell a random joe on some backwater server not your own?) and even in the few times someone apparently tried to whistleblow on BG, the posts were nuked out of fear to what it might do the game. Perhaps a noble reason, but hard to decide if it was devoid of ulterior motives. The whole "secret keeping" angle is probably what pissed SE off most and led to the actual bans over suspensions or item deletion. Perhaps the most recent comparison in exploit involved the Ironclads and height differentials allowing for near-invlunerability. People reported it, SE said not to do it (some still did, of course), and their patch for it came. Could it have resulted in another wave of bans if people said nothing for another 6+ months? Who knows. Just as the enfeeble/mob resist issue before that happened, people need to speak up so bugs get fixed, be they beneficial or detrimental to our play.

[SNK]

He's not right. All of the other times SE has hammered a lot of people, those people were RMTs and bots, not even real "people." FFXI still had at least 100-200k subscribers if not much more at the time, and 550 permabans is a drop in the bucket.

I'm sorry but you really are dead wrong on this. I recall two people I knew on Fairy alone that got hammered for PoS hacking thru a zone. One of them which was a guy who'd just gotten a D-ring *lol stupid for even doing it* and another guy named Juvant who MPK'd a mess of JP at Nidhogg and got his account hammered as well.

That number is nowhere excat and SE has banned normal players a lot of times but truthfully they've brought it on themselves more then anyone. The number of bans on real players greatly exceeds 550. The only reason that number is so out there is because the people who said SE wouldn't do anything ended up getting hammered.

I'm not trying to bullshit you here dude but the number of people hammered is a lot bigger then you'd suspect.

[Alhanelem]

I'm sorry but you really are dead wrong on this.I'm sorry but I'm dead right on this. The vast majority of all bans (meaning all bans, not salvage bans) are against RMT or bots. That doesn't mean no one gets banned for other reasons; But even if you know X number of people who got banned for POS hacking, that doesn't make them a majority or even a major chunk of the bannings.

And as a side note, the pos hackers deserved the bans just like the salvage cheaters.


The number of bans on real players greatly exceeds 550Total bans of all time? yes. Salvage bans? No. BG, the "prominent" community for "prominent" players, was only able to identify a little more than half of the salvage bans. SE's numbers are approximate, but they're not way off. If they were as far off as you'd like to think, BG sure as heck (knowing them) would be able to turn up more than 550 or so bans. If it's what you were thinking, in no way did I suggest or try to suggest that the people banned in the *salvage incident only* were mostly bots or RMT. In fact, few to none of them probably were. I was speaking about ALL bans.

People are banned all the time for this or that. But the number of people banned is a very very small percentage out of the total population. I don't think you realize just how many people still play this game (And don't start pulling /sea all numbers on me- there are a lot more active players than there are users CURRENTLY ONLINE at ONE INSTANT).

[SNK]

I'm sorry but I'm dead right on this.

No you're not <_>



Total bans of all time? yes.

That's what I'm talking about. I don't know where you think that SE has banned only RMTs and bots outside of the Salvage bans. This isn't as black and white as you're making it out to be.



Salvage bans? No. BG, the "prominent" community for "prominent" players, was only able to identify a little more than half of the salvage bans.

That's the thing, SE did a lot more then just the Salvage bans. I mean did you miss the people who exploited the Tav NPC glitch who made millions of gil? They got hammered for it and a lot of them were real people among RMTs. SE doesn't pick which type of player, RMT, Bot or real person & then does the ban. They ban anyone who does stupid shit that's breaking the ToS.



SE's numbers are approximate, but they're not way off. If they were as far off as you'd like to think, BG sure as heck (knowing them) would be able to turn up more than 550 or so bans.

You're totally missing the point. People already know the magic #was 550. There's no debating that but you're coming off as saying that any other accounts that had gotten banned weren't real people.


If it's what you were thinking, in no way did I suggest or try to suggest that the people banned in the *salvage incident only* were mostly bots or RMT. In fact, few to none of them probably were. I was speaking about ALL bans.

And so am I but again like I said... not all people outside of the Salvage bans were RMT accounts or bots. <_>



People are banned all the time for this or that. But the number of people banned is a very very small percentage out of the total population.

That's excatly what I'm talking about. "People." Not bots nor RMTs.



I don't think you realize just how many people still play this game (And don't start pulling /sea all numbers on me- there are a lot more active players than there are users CURRENTLY ONLINE at ONE INSTANT).

I've been playing since December 2003. I know that while the number of people isn't as great as it was circa 2004-2005 there are still a lot of people across all servers even if they're doing another server merge again.

I don't need to do any Sea alls to realize that SE is just condensing the servers more and more. It's just a sign of the times changing.

[Fiarlia]

Someone was saying that Salvage bans were the beginning of the decline for FFXI's population because it banned thousands of players, or at the very least a couple hundred+ per server. Alhanelem was arguing this point, and this point alone, because it's simply not true, as the amount of people banned was so low in comparison to server populations and number of servers as roughly 30 people per server (on average) received any kind of punishment at all. No way did ~30 people per server start a mass exodus regardless of how butthurt people seemed to be over the whole thing.

Then you come in and start arguing about something completely unrelated and missing the point of his posts in the first place.

[Rambus]

The savage bans was the start of the mass bannings that should not have happened.

again those that are picky about my words i am sorry SE did not kill FFXI but greatly speed it up in 2009

you want to worry about now? and stop the QQing of the past? ok

lets tell SE they are They do not know how to target RMT ( I showed why) and that they countermeasures target real players more then RMT ( i explained why)

So get rid of them. the countermeasures do nothing. the main thing that killed RMT was abyssea.


Someone was saying that Salvage bans were the beginning of the decline for FFXI's population because it banned thousands of players, or at the very least a couple hundred+ per server. Alhanelem was arguing this point, and this point alone, because it's simply not true, as the amount of people banned was so low in comparison to server populations and number of servers as roughly 30 people per server (on average) received any kind of punishment at all. No way did ~30 people per server start a mass exodus regardless of how butthurt people seemed to be over the whole thing.

Then you come in and start arguing about something completely unrelated and missing the point of his posts in the first place.

then he missed the point. it was the start of an increased decline but that was not the main point.
I admitted wrong on some of my word use so why is he carrying on?

[SNK]

I admitted wrong on some of my word use so why is he carrying on?

Probably because of me. lol

[Alhanelem]

it was the start of an increased declineA decline in players may have occured "within 6 months" (the number you gave) but you keep implying, with sentences like the quoted one, that the salvage bans were a trigger or catalyst for this decline when that can't be proven and there are many other explanations.

Your "admission" is not good enough, because you're still saying that the bans "greatly increased" the speed of the decline, which is just completely utterly wrong and you have no evidence to support the statement. Saying 500 people got banned and 6 months later there's a world merge does not prove any kind of connection. The server merge was also very likely in the making for a while. It wasn't just planned overnight, nor was SE thinking "Hmm, we banned 500 people, so we need to close some servers."



lets tell SE they are They do not know how to target RMT ( I showed why) and that they countermeasures target real players more then RMT ( i explained why)You haven't shown anything, and countermeasures never "target" real players. Sometimes they do affect real players which is unfortunate, but they certainly aren't targeted. But since you act as though you're such an expert on the issue, why not outline your detailed, exact plans for how to deal with RMT without impacting legitimate players?

There is very little RMT out there. Whether it has anything to do with SE's efforts remains to be seen, but the thrust of the original topic of this thread is that restrictions on things that have been abused by RMT in the past can probably be loosened now. However, that doesn't mean that SE's efforts had no effect on RMT.


That's the thing, SE did a lot more then just the Salvage bans. And?
This doesn't change the fact that bannigs are not a major contributing factor to population decline, and the fact that the people banned are still a very, very small portion of the total population. Dispute it all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that it's true.

Nothing lasts forever. When a game's population decreases, it's because it's old. FFXI is old. The population didn't decrease (other than by the number of people banned) because of the bannings. Period. There is no rational, logical way to dispute this, as there is no data to support such a theory.

I can guarantee you that anyone playing the banning card is just sore over being banned themselves, or some friend of theirs being banned, and assuming that because it happened to their friend, it must have happened to some huge number of people.

[Rambus]

A decline in players may have occured "within 6 months" (the number you gave) but you keep implying, with sentences like the quoted one, that the salvage bans were a trigger or catalyst for this decline when that can't be proven and there are many other explanations..

yes I did, there was a huge mass bannings in those 6 months and it started with the savage bans.

destorying 3 ls on one server is small?? what do you mean cannot prove? them more quit because these where friends with the said people then SE kept going with ban crazy.

what are you saying those bans had no effect because it was 500 total or w/e? thats crazy


I can guarantee you that anyone playing the banning card is just sore over being banned themselves, or some friend of theirs being banned, and assuming that because it happened to their friend, it must have happened to some huge number of people.

This is where you are ignorant, read the links I gave you, those mas bans of 2009 was no joke and i even got hit by them 4 times ( if you count 3 on each account on the first wave, then the 4th on my mule account again).

go back in my post and click on those links, you are underestimating what happened in 2009 because you are blind.

I cannot believe you are trying to debate that those bans in 2009 ( all the bans not just savage) had no impact on the decline of the game.

I was not greatly effected by any of the bans outside of principle (you DO NOT tell me I cheated when I didn’t, i am not a RMT), it does not or should not take much thought process to see baning like that is wrong. I did not have close friends that where effected by any of this ( that I know of) all things i speak is out of principle.

[Alhanelem]

I cannot believe you are trying to debate that those bans in 2009 ( all the bans not just savage) had no impact on the decline of the game. Not *NO* impact. But a small impact. To suggest that these bans directly led to the server merges and population decrease is just ludicrous. Age of the game, changes to the metagame (e.g. "its not the same game I played 5 years ago"). Abyssea possibly, though it's hard to say- I know some people who quit because they didn't like how they felt SE was easy-buttoning the game in their view, but I also it brought a few people back who quit because they were frustrated at not being able to get stuff done before. *I* can't believe you've argued that bans are a primary reason for the decline. People who did nothing wrong whatsoever for the most part had nothing to fear, and wouldn't quit the game because someone who DID do something wrong got in trouble for it. I know of no one who wasn't a close friend of a cheater (and probably cheated along with them) who ever threatened to quit because someone who did cheat got the banhammer.


yes I did, there was a huge mass bannings in those 6 months and it started with the savage bans.There were no huge mass bannings in that timeframe. Only the salvage bans, which we established aren't huge at all, especially compared to the RMT accont closures that occured in the years BEFORE the salvage bans (and yes, a few people who might not have been RMT were affected by those, but it was mostly RMT, whom nobody will miss)

WoW bans tons of people all the time. Has it affected their population? Not really- WoW's population has plateaued, but I never saw a bunch of people ragequitting every time they announced bans.

(edit)Now take a look at this.
http://maplestory.nexon.net/News/News.aspx?boardNo=105
I realize it's not exactly the same because it's a F2P game and it's hard to truly ban someone permanently in them, but still. MapleStory publishes a list of everyone it bans every month. They ban more accounts in a few months than SE has banned in the entire history of the game. and their game's population isn't hurting for it. They even added new servers recently, and the game's several years old. (Like 95% of the bans are RMT bots)

[Rambus]

Not *NO* impact. But a small impact. To suggest that these bans directly led to the server merges and population decrease is just ludicrous.

you are ludicrous, wrong, blind, w/e word you want to use.

whatever best dicribes not knowing what goes on around you due to only experence a little part of it ( I think ignorant is best).

All I can say is the bannings of 2009 greatly speed up the death and lead to those mergers and i think the first set of merge was before abyssea.


There were no huge mass bannings in that timeframe. Only the salvage bans, which we established aren't huge at all, especially compared to the RMT accont closures that occured in the years BEFORE the salvage bans (and yes, a few people who might not have been RMT were affected by those, but it was mostly RMT, whom nobody will miss)

OMG read the damn links you are ignorant.

NO! you cannot handle the truth

[Rambus]

This is the biggest one:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=19095
http://www.1up.com/boards/posts/list/41865.page

http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/square-enix-cracks-down-on-gardeners-sends-out-bans/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.123849-Square-Enix-Bans-Players-for-Gardening-in-FFXI
http://forums.g4tv.com/showthread.php?t=131377
http://gameguidexx.blogspot.com/2009/04/just-heard-news-that-squareenix-banned.html
http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/4179-got-banned-on-ffxi/
http://shamayaasura.livejournal.com/2009/01/23/


I went for a taru this time. Chaz, my friend I hate so much, gave me 100k to get started. He bought me a pair of astrals (you know, because taru have 50 HP to be giving up early on) and a couple pieces of noob gear. He probably spent 200k on gear. I'm in the game for 3 days, am told about Abyssea, purchase both expansions, and THEN I come home to being banned the next day for RMT activities.

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/183356-i-hate-friends/

Think SE mostly bans only RMT now????? you are blind or sheep or something to sound like SE is all perfect and mostly targets cheaters

There was a quite a number of people that end up stop playing because of that verified crap, then there was other issues where CC companies thought SE was doing fraudulent charges ( and i had my share of phone calls of that issue like some others reported in that thread cept some people end up being banned from it. The reason was the CC of some people just rejected all charges from SE after giving someone those extra charges and just banned the person)

[Alhanelem]

OMG read the damn links you are ignorant.

NO! you cannot handle the truth It's quite obvious you're the one that's ignorant, since this is the only defense you seem to have to your argument.

I can handle the truth. You're not speaking the truth. It's the last time I'm going to say it, since you seem to be blind to the facts. Have a nice day.

It's also problematic that you depend on the stories of others, instead of actual data, to make your points. Quoting some random guy on the worst forum in the FFXI community who says he got banned for something stupid does not support your point. A lot of those stories are made up.

No one said SE is perfect, but wrongful bans are extremely rare.

[Rambus]

No one said SE is perfect, but wrongful bans are extremely rare.

read the links, NO! you are wrong.

guess what buddy, thats not all the cases ether.

you are in your own world

This is the biggest one:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=19095
http://www.1up.com/boards/posts/list/41865.page

http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/square-enix-cracks-down-on-gardeners-sends-out-bans/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.123849-Square-Enix-Bans-Players-for-Gardening-in-FFXI
http://forums.g4tv.com/showthread.php?t=131377
http://gameguidexx.blogspot.com/2009/04/just-heard-news-that-squareenix-banned.html
http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/4179-got-banned-on-ffxi/
http://shamayaasura.livejournal.com/2009/01/23/


I went for a taru this time. Chaz, my friend I hate so much, gave me 100k to get started. He bought me a pair of astrals (you know, because taru have 50 HP to be giving up early on) and a couple pieces of noob gear. He probably spent 200k on gear. I'm in the game for 3 days, am told about Abyssea, purchase both expansions, and THEN I come home to being banned the next day for RMT activities.

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/183356-i-hate-friends/

Think SE mostly bans only RMT now????? you are blind or sheep or something to sound like SE is all perfect and mostly targets cheaters

There was a quite a number of people that end up stop playing because of that verified crap, then there was other issues where CC companies thought SE was doing fraudulent charges ( and i had my share of phone calls of that issue like some others reported in that thread cept some people end up being banned from it. The reason was the CC of some people just rejected all charges from SE after giving someone those extra charges and just banned the person)

stop spewing empty words and actually give proof, i find it funny I try to give evidence of my person dealings of the mass bans of 2009 posted links of others and you just sit there " it is not a lot of people because I was not effected or know anyone that was effected"

[Alhanelem]

read the links, NO! you are wrong.

guess what buddy, thats not all the cases ether.

you are in your own world
Don't need to read the links. 6 posts of people whining about being banned != a mass of bannings causing the decline of the game.

The end, good bye. (I find it funny that the text I quoted is different from what it was when I clicked the quote button- he edited it in the time it took me to click the button and have the page load)

[Rambus]

Don't need to read the links. 6 posts of people whining about being banned != a mass of bannings causing the decline of the game.

The end, good bye. (I find it funny that the text I quoted is different from what it was when I clicked the quote button- he edited it in the time it took me to click the button and have the page load)

Anyone else this blind??? " I do not need proof to state wrongfull information"

So what if I am editing? I had more to say and trying to make the post proper.

[Alhanelem]

Anyone else this blind??? " I do not need proof to state wrongfull information"

So what if I am editing? I had more to say and trying to make the post proper.
You edit every post you make like a dozen times at least. The last post, which I quoted, was a single line when i pressed the quote button. Then it was 3 lines, and now it's several paragraphs.

You have not given any proof, a bunch of links to people who got banned (I read some of them and in many cases I don't feel they were wrongfully banned)is not proof. The proof is in the numbers, which have already been given, are not lies or mistruths, and are all that is needed to prove you wrong.

This thread is totally off track, and I'm not posting in this thread again, so have fun talking to nobody. You're ignorelisted.

[Rambus]

You edit every post you make like a dozen times at least. The last post, which I quoted, was a single line when i pressed the quote button. Then it was 3 lines, and now it's several paragraphs.

You have not given any proof, a bunch of links to people who got banned (I read some of them and in many cases I don't feel they were wrongfully banned)is not proof. The proof is in the numbers, which have already been given, are not lies or mistruths, and are all that is needed to prove you wrong.

This thread is totally off track, and I'm not posting in this thread again, so have fun talking to nobody. You're ignorelisted.

It is not off track, my statements was to show SE does not know what truly goes on by putting in wronful countermeasures.

I had made my case, proved me case, shown and explained why gardening restrictions does not really affect RMT and harms players more then RMT.

Everything SE has done since the STF harmed real players more than RMT, I am here to state that, show personal experience to show that, and show others that had the same problems as me.
You cannot handle this truth and I am shocked you are this blind.

[Xophious]

Greetings everyone!

The thread has been closed due to it being derailed and off-topic. The original topic was about the restrictions of gardening to newer players. Now it's turned into an argument amongst players, discussing the bans that happened and how that killed, or did not kill the game. Please try to stay on-topic to the thread next time.

Thank you.