Job point sellers need to be addressed

[Pixela]

Right now on Asura, job point sellers are so rampant that they are impacting the ability for players who don't want to buy them from getting them due to bots operating 24/7 and camps being a limited resource.

I would ask that a developer or at least a community GM staff goto Asura and check Dho gates to see how rampant this is, 3 players perma killing with parties of afk players just behind them. Shouts constantly selling 500 JP for 10 million gil.

I get that the developers don't want to stop people doing this as they want the world to exist with as little intervention as possible, but something really needs to be done because the game is devolving into abyssea worm camps again with armies of afk people getting job points. It's destroying the content the developers are banking on to keep people around and also making it harder for players to do it without resorting to buying.

Some suggestions that I think the developers might accept:

Offer an ROE objective that changes daily to clear content or kill a set number of higher level monsters to get 2-3 job points per day.

Boost the effectiveness of Trizek rings to give larger increases.

Boost how much CP monsters like Aerns in Escha and monsters in Reisen give compared to Apex so that it is an acceptable alternative outside of botters.

Right now job points are so hard to get for "normal players" and so easy to get for "elite players" that the first group are giving up and just buying them cheaply from the 2nd group for low prices that can practically solo them with a geo alt using bots.

The first group need to see a way to get job points themselves so as to not be disheartened and give up, people buying job points in the numbers they are right now is a failure of the developers to address the acquisition rate of getting them and impacting normal players getting them normally too.

[Divaud]

Any change in the rate is only going to exacerbate the issue because it will benefit these botters as well.

The only thing we can advocate for is policing of multi-boxing, but i'm not sure that is realistic, or even against the ToS (not saying it should or shouldn't be I just don't know)


The other option is to leave Asura, because with enough population there will always be this kind of demand regardless of how well it is policed.

[Pixela]

The botters don't care anyway, they sell 500 job points for 10 million. Which is nothing.

[Dzspdref]

One good function would be to limit capacity points by how much time you've had interaction to help kill the targets.
.
I.E. you're afk and do nothing, you get no capacity points. You cast one spell that does under 5% total damage dealt and that's it, then you get under 5% total CP on that kill, etc...
.
This also negates the NEED to pay mercs under TOS, since you helped to remove the kill target IN ANY WAY, then no need to pay.
(Same rule about lotting on a treasure drop that you helped kill and the leader says you cannot lot, but legally you can; it's called trust and learning whom to trust - lessons learned)
.
Mercs would not be legally able to charge for farming CP/JP (sadly what players do in betwixt as "donations" is a loophole).

[Sirmarki]

I'm not saying that these should be implemented, but I'm going to focus on the way things have been dealt with in the past (such as fishing).

1. Cap the amount of job points you can get in one day.
Let's be honest, no non-botting player(s) will grind out 500JP in one session (as constantly advertised in /yell). Although, I guess there are a few hardcore peeps out there.

2. Remember the whole thing about staying in the same place for x,y amount of time has an effect on drops/fishing? (never proven as far as I'm aware).
If said group/person hits a set JP limit, then they can't earn anymore, unless they zone and come back.

[Venat]

Add new form of exp that can only be earned by doing x content. Like dynamis, ambu, odessey, limbus, high tier battlefield, some RoE's.

Basically add in something that a person cant just stand in one spot and do over and over and it has some kind of cooldown to re enter.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

In the Development Team Q&A I and others have promoted the proposal of expanding both the locations and variety of enemy types for Apex enemies. I am personally hoping for a minimum of 20 new locations and a minimum of 10 new Apex enemy types. If need be a whole new set of transporters could be placed into the game to allow players to access numerous freshly created area additions. Maps could be created and populated with Apex enemies or if there's room on an existing map, SE could make a significant addition of playable area then populate that space for those seeking Job Points.

[Venat]

In the Development Team Q&A I and others have promoted the proposal of expanding both the locations and variety of enemy types for Apex enemies. I am personally hoping for a minimum of 20 new locations and a minimum of 10 new Apex enemy types. If need be a whole new set of transporters could be placed into the game to allow players to access numerous freshly created area additions. Maps could be created and populated with Apex enemies or if there's room on an existing map, SE could make a significant addition of playable area then populate that space for those seeking Job Points.

Adding new apex enemy types isn't going to change it. Biggest issue in this game is your fighting the same thing from level 1 to level 119. Bats, crabs, worms etc. People will still flock to the weakest thing to kill for exp. Adding more bats, crabs, worms in other places in the game is the best and cheapest option. Its either that or start deleting all the apex bats,crabs,worms,toads or start randomizing their spawns to be any apex mob. Just like having a undead enemies just spawn in when it becomes night time. The key is to make it so any camp could be the best option but not for too long. This could even highly combat 3rd party tool exp farming. A hard enemy could spawn in its place where the program only option is to engage it or not and just stand there since its only programed to target Apex Bats etc.

Also remove Cap. point/exp chain campaigns. As it flocks these areas with players all at once trying to take advantage of a once in a few months perk. Just increase the overall cap. points from this point forward.

[Pixela]

Adding new enemies and camps would address it actually, one of the problems is a) the bots now take the best camps permanently and b) some of the monsters suck and have way too much hp and evasion.

All they would need to do is add Apex Flans for manaburn parties, add Apex Collibri, Apex Imps etc with lower HP so people can actually go and get XP alone or in small groups and feel like they are making progress. Right now people just give up and buy the job points from the cheap bots. The issue is camps are all taken permanently, the mobs are too hard to kill for newer players and too easy to kill for elite players. Apex were designed to be killed by groups making skillchains, this is no longer relevant because barely anyone makes groups now because it's so cheap to just buy from bots and killing them solo is a pita.

A new player takes about 10-15 minutes to kill an Apex monster, a fully geared player can kill that same monster in about <10 seconds when botted with a geo alt. This is why they can sell job points for 10 million for 500.

I and many others can make 10 million in a day, even new players can make that in a week farming dynamis and selling sparks. I can't get 500 job points in a week and I'm pretty well geared, and most new players can't get that much in a month by playing.

The main problem is people are destroying the game for themselves and shortening the time before they stop playing, the whole point of an mmo is the climb the mountain. Not pay for a helicopter to fly you to the peak. Once you have all your job points, have all your gear you have no reason to login anymore.

[Pixela]

It was less of an issue when buying job points was expensive, now they bot 24/7 so can sell really cheaply. So now nearly everyone is just buying them.

[Sirmarki]

The main problem is people are destroying the game for themselves and shortening the time before they stop playing, the whole point of an mmo is the climb the mountain. Not pay for a helicopter to fly you to the peak. Once you have all your job points, have all your gear you have no reason to login anymore.

This... 100%
With people buying everything under the sun, things are going to get really boring, for everybody.
It is incredibly self-destructive on all levels.

People 'play the game' and join content one of two ways.
1. Linkshell activity.
2. Watching the /yell system.

1. Finding a good linkshell running events and content that you need is... hard. You have to have a good group, all in the same time zones with a excellent leader that knows the ropes. People come and go, and so do linkshell's quite often. You then have to start this process again if your linkshell collapses which can be a long and experimental process.

2. The content creation in yell is not very often these days. If you consider the population of Asura, minus the merc and RMT/JP/EXP yells, people asking to join anything other than Ambuscade are few and far between. I think during this campaign I have seen two genuine delve yells.

[Alhanelem]

If people want to ruin the game for themselves though, that's their prerogative. Ultimately, no rules are being broken unless they're selling JP for real money directly.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

Two major underlying factors that Sirmarki is bringing to the table. One is that cooperative and collaborative activities are faltering mostly because of the dreadful reliance upon /yell as the primary source of creating groups. Two is the market dynamics are corrupted by AFK ToS violating programs which destroys what should be native and fundamental cooperative progression. This is further inflamed to a horrible degree when these scoundrels park these opportunist parasitic entities into areas of open world environment which obstructs access to these apex enemies. Each additional parked bot on a server increases this pain of obstuction and congestion.

Issue #1 is that lack of communicative and group facilitating competition for the /yell. I have and CONTINUE to call for a overhaul, upgrade and modernization of the /seacom interface.
Issue #2 is the congestion and obstruction of access associated with the limited open world sources for acceptable apex camps.
There is an issue #3: The total lack of conversion capability to apply capacity point gains across jobs. Today I am officially proposing a way of achieving this in a responsible manner.
Allow for the exchange of one Copper A.M.A.N. voucher a conversion of 100 Job Points from one job on a character to another job on the same character. You can either achieve this completely through the exchange at a NPC or by allowing the exchange to occur with the NPC creating a "EX" property item upon use that would apply 100 Job Points when consumed to the job a character is set as. This will facilitate the re-engagement of characters who have 2100 JP master essential jobs such as healers, party support and even BLM back into viable usage for party creations.

[Alhanelem]

I don't find /yell to be "Dreadful." It was a huge help when it was introduced. Not having to be near people in order to recruit th em also means you don't need to have as many people to be able to find help. The problem with yell isn't that so much as people using it for less savory purposes, which you also mentioned. I'm not sure why you think yell made things any more of a problem though. People have always used /shout to find groups, its just that it only worked in high traffic areas, and you had to stay there.

Search comments have been updated multiple times over the years, and by and large people never really made use of the additional categoriess nor have people really used the party request feature.

Short of copying FFXIV's Party Finder (I'm not talking about the duty finder, the automatic matching system- i'm talking about the system that allows you to post listings to recruit people for a specific activity and these listings appear in a searchable, categorized list that you can easily join parties or contact leaders of those parties from), I'm really not sure what they could do to improve it.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

First off, you're on Shiva which gives you a completely different perspective from a dead server. The availability of /yell is fine. The way "certain" users exploit it is dreadful. The lack of a better culture and better interface utilizing the search capabilities is dreadful.
Second, I haven't asked for SE to remove /yell. Please read and understand the true upgrades and evolution i have proposed concerning /seacom. I am not saying to limit a /seacom overhaul to purely what i have suggested, if anyone else can provide ideas that will truly improve the usage and convenience of the search feature; please do so.

[Alhanelem]

First off, you're on Shiva which gives you a completely different perspective from a dead server. The availability of /yell is fine. The way "certain" users exploit it is dreadful. The lack of a better culture and better interface utilizing the search capabilities is dreadful.
Second, I haven't asked for SE to remove /yell. Please read and understand the true upgrades and evolution i have proposed concerning /seacom. I am not saying to limit a /seacom overhaul to purely what i have suggested, if anyone else can provide ideas that will truly improve the usage and convenience of the search feature; please do so.
Shiva isn't dead lol- it just isn't overpopulated like Asura is. We're at like 60% of the pop we had 10 years ago which really isn't bad. No trouble getting stuff done here. We still have job point sellers just like you do, we still have mercs like you do, just not in the same volume.

I did read your post, and I'm still searching for the "true upgrades and evolution," to be frank. (The party finder would be nice, but we're far past any chance of getting a real UI update, in all honesty).

[Balduran]

In the Development Team Q&A I and others have promoted the proposal of expanding both the locations and variety of enemy types for Apex enemies. I am personally hoping for a minimum of 20 new locations and a minimum of 10 new Apex enemy types. If need be a whole new set of transporters could be placed into the game to allow players to access numerous freshly created area additions. Maps could be created and populated with Apex enemies or if there's room on an existing map, SE could make a significant addition of playable area then populate that space for those seeking Job Points.

I don't believe this is necessary because there is in fact an existing zone with hoards of Apex Monsters, I am talking about 99 Apex monsters of different types all wondering freely, in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court!

The bad news is the poor design of Apex monsters in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court zone terms of monster agro mechanics, and I'll explain why in my point of view.

Firstly, I will distinguish between the 2 types of usual 'monster luring' camps in job point parties in the current era.

Type A: Safe spot where the party can camp from a short distance to the apex pool and the lurer is able to pick up mobs with flash/provoke etc.

Examples of above style camps are available in Dho Gates crab room, Dho Gates crab/fish camp @H-10, Dho Gates Bat Camp at H-10/I-10.

Type B: Apex monsters do not agro, and therefore the party is able to stand in any spot they please within the apex pool.

Examples of above style camps are available in Woh Gates Apex Pugils/Apex Toads, Woh Gates Apex Toads, and Outer Ra'Kaznar Apex Bats, Outer Ra'Kaznar Apex Twitherym.

Now back to Ra'Kaznar Inner Court, unfortunately neither of the above styles can apply to any of the apex camps in this zone. There is absolutely no safe spot in that zone where a party can stand in the same place and continue to lure monsters from a safe distance, due to the fact that every 'safe spot' is occupied by Apex Umbrils or Apex Bhoots. Also all Apex monsters in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court hostile, so standing the middle of the camp is obviously out of the question.

So I really don't understand the logic behind implementing 99 Apex Monsters in a zone where there are unnecessary monsters placed in potential 'pulling zones' and at the same time making all monsters agro so you couldn't stand in the middle of the camp either. What is the point then?

These are the adversaries you can find in Ra'Kaznar Inner Court.

Apex Bats
Apex Bhoot
Apex Cyhiraeth
Apex Draugar
Apex Poxhound
Apex Umbril
Apex Vodoriga

I also want to point out that I have no objection at all with the mechanics of these monsters as some of them are quite nasty to fight (like the undead), but that just adds to the challenge and means you have to find the right setup and strategy to overcome them. The only real problem is these camps are totally unsuitable due to the horrible layout of the mobs.

Here what I think can be done to make this zone 'playable'.

- Change the hostility of the Apex Bats to be similar to the ones in Outer Ra'Kaznar where they aren't hostile.
- Remove or replace the position of the Apex Umbrils

[Pixela]

Apex are all different level ranges, many players can't even hit the ones in Ra'kaznar.

We need lower tier apex with less awful abilities that are there for solo players.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

In Ra'Kaznar Inner Court as Balduran has illustrated, the debilitating affliction of utilizing a vast amount of those locations is the rarity (typically non-existence) of dependable environment in which to position party members to be outside of the regular aggro and blood-aggro of the monsters available. Coupled with the mixtures of Umbrils and other undesirables these camps are treacherous at best. In addition to the environment being extremely harsh as it pertains to positioning; the offering of undead category types imposes a party configuration that requires a top tier bard that must be adequately agile to lullaby aggro, utilizing party compositions with higher ratio of healing magic casters and for enemy types which cast magic a party member highly competent successfully casting silence.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8FnhYuh_M From Ruaumoko.

[Balduran]

In Ra'Kaznar Inner Court as Balduran has illustrated, the debilitating affliction of utilizing a vast amount of those locations is the rarity (typically non-existence) of dependable environment in which to position party members to be outside of the regular aggro and blood-aggro of the monsters available. Coupled with the mixtures of Umbrils and other undesirables these camps are treacherous at best. In addition to the environment being extremely harsh as it pertains to positioning; the offering of undead category types imposes a party configuration that requires a top tier bard that must be adequately agile to lullaby aggro, utilizing party compositions with higher ratio of healing magic casters and for enemy types which cast magic a party member highly competent successfully casting silence.

Very very well said Tullemore! Spot on!

Also thank you very much for posting Rua's video reviewing the Ra'Kaznar Inner Court camps! Very insightful !

This would definitely need to brought to the attention of the developers, and a topic on its own really.

[Cdryik]

The thing is, with ppl buying JP, it make less people joining into normal party, so the number of seeking party is dramatically lower... and some class are unable to join the phew pty that still trying to gather member for an exp pty.

But it get enhanced when the exp/cp bonus is up, you can see more pty forming. so making the exp double, should be a base exp.

Then, SE must give an exemple for thoses cheaters with bots. Lowering their exp gain to 0 on their char and thoses that are in pty with them, keeping the subscription fee from thoses still.

Actually, there is a ToS, that SE dont follow...

[Sirmarki]

The thing is, with ppl buying JP, it make less people joining into normal party, so the number of seeking party is dramatically lower... and some class are unable to join the phew pty that still trying to gather member for an exp pty.

But it get enhanced when the exp/cp bonus is up, you can see more pty forming. so making the exp double, should be a base exp.

Then, SE must give an exemple for thoses cheaters with bots. Lowering their exp gain to 0 on their char and thoses that are in pty with them, keeping the subscription fee from thoses still.

Actually, there is a ToS, that SE dont follow...

The first line is applicable to mercs too. A lot of people are buying stuff from mercs, the game is just a bunch of soloer's or multi-box standing in town looking pretty.
It is evident this has happened. despite most people being indoors at the moment, the game feels dead in yell. If it's not dead, its trolls and arm chair US politicians.

Turn off all the JP selling bots, mercs and trolls and the content creation (party) yells on Asura account for probably 5% of all yells.

[Elliander]

I found this thread because I've been getting tired of having cut scenes interrupted by repeated shouts to sell job points. Now it's even worse than it was in 2020. The shouts sell 500 Job points for 4 million (down from 10 million) and 2100p for 15 million. What's the point of getting a master ranking if you can just buy it and go AFK? That shifts the focus from level grinding to gil grinding.

it used to be that a power leveler was just a higher level healer who would sit outside the party and keep everyone alive while they all participated in combat. Now people don't have to do anything at all. What's the point of even playing a game that anyone can just pay to complete and be done with?

It used to take time to level up. I spent 5 years in the old days getting to level 75. Now that can be done in a weekend. Reaching 75 used to be a rite of passage since no matter what help you got you had to face Maat alone, but now you can summon an army of thugs (Trusts) to beat him up for you. It used to be that crafters had to work on gear, but now none of that matters since you level up so fast you can live with older gear until 99 and then just use the free sparks to buy the lvl 99 gear. Add in the ability to buy max job points for a mere 15 million gil and it literally takes less than a month to finish everything off. Then all the story stuff can be dealt with in a week. After that, well, what's left to do?

The moment it became easy to get from level 1 to max level is, in my opinion, the moment this game started to die. It also cheapened the experience for those of us who took the long way. Which is really sad. If the problem can't be fixed going forward I would love to see a "Classic Server" setup with the old leveling schemes.

Personally, I don't mind multi-boxing. I think at this point it helps the game more than it hurts, but with the way Fields of Valor work we have the same problem. You get exp no matter what you do provided that the enemy on the page dies, and while it may be a bit slower than normal exp, you can level an entire party of alts solo no problem while grinding gil. Combined with the "free trial" system and it literally costs $30 USD per alt and no additional time to throw a new character in and get it to max level. That's way too easy.

These issue needs to be addressed one way or another. For any MMO to be successful players need to have something to do in the game. They need goals they can achieve and challenges to overcome. Without that, well, what's the point? You might as well watch a live stream of someone else going through the motions at that point.


One good function would be to limit capacity points by how much time you've had interaction to help kill the targets.
.
I.E. you're afk and do nothing, you get no capacity points. You cast one spell that does under 5% total damage dealt and that's it, then you get under 5% total CP on that kill, etc...
.
This also negates the NEED to pay mercs under TOS, since you helped to remove the kill target IN ANY WAY, then no need to pay.
(Same rule about lotting on a treasure drop that you helped kill and the leader says you cannot lot, but legally you can; it's called trust and learning whom to trust - lessons learned)
.
Mercs would not be legally able to charge for farming CP/JP (sadly what players do in betwixt as "donations" is a loophole).

I very much like this idea, although personally I'd also want to see that people who heal and buff allies who are engaging in combat likewise get credit. The system could work similar to campaign battles which already takes such things into account.

Maybe also make some of the locations actually difficult to reach. For example, after finding most gil farming locations overcamped I found a few in areas that took actual effort to reach which I couldn't just teleport to and found no problems doing my thing there because the bots won't bother with that. If some exp camps were the same way at least it could create an option.


If people want to ruin the game for themselves though, that's their prerogative. Ultimately, no rules are being broken unless they're selling JP for real money directly.

They aren't just ruining it for themselves. For an MMO to exist at all there must be sufficient players to justify keeping the servers in operation. If players can beat the game in a matter of weeks they will move on and do other things and even while playing they aren't likely to work with anyone leveling up which means it's even harder to get real parties going. Then servers have to get shut down and players are pushed together. Eventually, if this problem isn't addressed, the game will die. And, that aside, there's no real sense of accomplishment reaching max level when it's so easy to get there.

Speaking for myself, I come back periodically, but I don't play regularly because of these problems. I'll probably cancel after another month and then might pop back in a few months to a year later. In contrast to this, I was a regular subscriber for many years. I was also in the closed beta for the new Final Fantasy. I'd be a regular subscriber again if only it wasn't so easy to do everything all at once.

That aside, I am not convinced that they aren't breaking rules. I've noticed that the shouts from some players come in on exactly 10 minute intervals. Like, so exact it's fairly obvious that they are using a program to send on that interval. A real person would have some variability in that. Although, oddly, the RMT shouts (which still come in) are more irregular, but that's probably because they get banned almost immediately after. Still, even if it's somehow legit, I still think it's breaking the game.

[Alhanelem]

They aren't just ruining it for themselves. For an MMO to exist at all there must be sufficient players to justify keeping the servers in operation.Job points are far, far, far, far from the only grind in the game and the only reason to play. Half the reason people pay to do these things quickly because there are other parts of the game they'd rather be spending their time on. People buying JP aren't taking anything measurable away from FFXI's survival.

[Tarmarkvar]

For the people who buy into job points, master levels, or mercenary services, if they could not avail themselves of those services, they'd just quit anyway. Whether the game is deprived of those peoples' presence through them progressing too slowly and getting bored, or progressing too quickly and getting bored, it's all the same.

[Sirmarki]

For the people who buy into job points, master levels, or mercenary services, if they could not avail themselves of those services, they'd just quit anyway. Whether the game is deprived of those peoples' presence through them progressing too slowly and getting bored, or progressing too quickly and getting bored, it's all the same.

So they get ML50 in no time and then stand in town complaining that they are bored instead?

Good, let them quit, they ruined the game - look at yell as a prime example.