Nerfing sparks and unity enchanges for gil is not the answer.

[Pixela]

What are you doing? You are taking action to combat RMT by punishing everyone else?


In June, we are planning on bringing you a number of things that were pushed back from the May version update.
Perhaps the biggest of these changes are adjustments to sparks of eminence and unity accolade rewards. We are placing a weekly cap on the amount of points that can be exchanged. You have probably deduced that this is an effort to combat RMT activities in-game. We wanted to combat these activities in a way that would provide minimal pain to the playerbase, but in going over all the data we have, we believe that this is the best place to target to reign in this issue, as they were providing a very easy, stable, and repeatable source of gil. We hope that the majority of you will not suffer too much as a result of this limit.


This is stupid, here is what you're doing:

You are punishing players, especially new players who have been returning because you give them no alternative to make money now. This is so stupid.

You are also encouraging the RMT to farm gil in other ways that are more annoying to the players, you aren't stopping RMT because the demand is still there.

They will now move to farming revies or currency in dynamis or whatever...this sucks, at least when they were farming sparks they did it out of the way of most others.

What on earth are you doing? This is terrible.

[Pixela]

If you're going to throw a stink bomb like this, tell us what the cap is.

[Sirmarki]

What are you doing? You are taking action to combat RMT by punishing everyone else?

Who is everyone else? There is far more ways of making money in the game.
We have too much gil in circulation, unlimited amounts being "printed" and everything has shot up in price because of it.

Stand at the Vendor NPC and you will see clusters of "players" stuck together, touch the NPC vendor for 1 second and run back and fourth to the sparks NPC.

[Pixela]

Do you think these entities will all just go away now? they will retool to make gil another way, and that way will be even more annoying to the rest of us.

[BST]

What on earth are you doing? This is terrible.
I'm going to have to disagree, this should have been done long a go.
Also, it is a Weekly cap, they could have made it monthly.

[Sirmarki]

Do you think these entities will all just go away now? they will retool to make gil another way, and that way will be even more annoying to the rest of us.

Maybe, maybe not, that will then get patched. It will be a lot harder though. Sparks (gain exp) you are talking millions upon millions of gil in 10 minutes with a multi-boxer who is bending mechanics by not even interacting with the NPC's in the native form, enabling them to trade a mass of items in half a second.

People abuse the system, what do they expect will happen?

[Pixela]

We have to see what the nerf is, it all depends on what the cap is. If it's high then it's aimed at bots, if it's fairly low then it's going to hurt players.

[Jerbob]

I was about to disagree with you - nerfing sparks does seem to fix the immediate issue - but...


You are also encouraging the RMT to farm gil in other ways that are more annoying to the players, you aren't stopping RMT because the demand is still there.

They will now move to farming revies or currency in dynamis or whatever...this sucks, at least when they were farming sparks they did it out of the way of most others.
I'm worried that you're right. There are already scumbots in Dynamis - Jeuno almost every time I go there - these are just going to get worse. And while I don't think that bots being out of sight and unobtrusive makes them acceptable, this change has the potential to make them more directly disruptive, on top of allowing them to continue damaging the economy.

I applaud SE for publicly acknowledging the problems caused by these bots, but I'm not convinced that this is the right action. We need more boots on the ground, and we need more active and immediate action from the STF.

Having an easier way to report this scum would help too. I'm willing to use the STF report page sometimes, but even I can't be bothered when I'm busy, and I complain about them constantly. Most people aren't going to use it at all.

[Sirmarki]

We need more boots on the ground, and we need more active and immediate action from the STF.

Without a doubt. One thing I am interested in, has this problem of RMT sparks/unity been widespread or is it a fault of THAT server again(?) which has initiated this move.

[Werewolf]

This will not stop RMT or people from buying gil, it actually might make more people buy gil now that you take away an easy way to make some gil.

RMT will just go back to other ways to farm gil, so this does nothing to stop them.

[svengalis]

This is just bad for players who make their gil this way. RMT have been in this game for as long as I can remember.

[svengalis]

Who is everyone else? There is far more ways of making money in the game.
We have too much gil in circulation, unlimited amounts being "printed" and everything has shot up in price because of it.

Stand at the Vendor NPC and you will see clusters of "players" stuck together, touch the NPC vendor for 1 second and run back and fourth to the sparks NPC.

How? Cause I'm not aware of any others beside selling currencies. Selling currencies doesn't put gil in the game it just rotates it. One thing I never understood in this game was why it was so hard to actually farm gil from quest.

Everything like what? The best items in the game have always been priced out of most people's reach.

[svengalis]

Maybe, maybe not, that will then get patched. It will be a lot harder though. Sparks (gain exp) you are talking millions upon millions of gil in 10 minutes with a multi-boxer who is bending mechanics by not even interacting with the NPC's in the native form, enabling them to trade a mass of items in half a second.

People abuse the system, what do they expect will happen?

If they are doing this RMT will just create a new account and start the process all over.

[svengalis]

Without a doubt. One thing I am interested in, has this problem of RMT sparks/unity been widespread or is it a fault of THAT server again(?) which has initiated this move.

tbh ive never seen ambiohrogh RMT trading sparks for gil during gain exp.

[svengalis]

What exactly is the issue with sparks/accolade farming? Because it can't be because people are buying gil. People have been buying gil way before sparks/accolades became a thing. And from what I heard most gil sellers were leaving the market because it's not worth it anymore. So my original statement stands.

If anything sparks/accolades farming was a combat to RMT.

At this point it seems this has already been implemented so all we can do is wait and see what kind of effect this has on us. I wander what research they did to come to this conclusion.

[svengalis]

This will not stop RMT or people from buying gil, it actually might make more people buy gil now that you take away an easy way to make some gil.

RMT will just go back to other ways to farm gil, so this does nothing to stop them.

Exactly. When you make something hard to do people are just going to find easier ways to do it. If gil is easy to earn most people would not buy it.

[svengalis]

I'm not sure why SE is doing this (maybe its to combat the bots? I guess the bots are sparks farming?), I have made most of my gil from farming sparks/accolades but I could have so much more from selling my ambuscade currencies. I have less then 100m gil on me but I have hundreds of millions in currencies sitting on a mule.

[Sirmarki]

Exactly. When you make something hard to do people are just going to find easier ways to do it. If gil is easy to earn most people would not buy it.

It is easy to earn if people use a bit of grey matter. You mention people buying gil, then they are either incredibly lazy or stupid (or both?).

[Sirmarki]

I'm not sure why SE is doing this (maybe its to combat the bots?).

As they have said in their notes - that is the exact reason.

[Sirmarki]

I wander what research they did to come to this conclusion.

Well, on a busy server (Asura). Observe the sparks/vendor NPC and you will see players all stuck together, or with anon names and the same gear using this method.

[svengalis]

It is easy to earn if people use a bit of grey matter. You mention people buying gil, then they are either incredibly lazy or stupid (or both?).

I wouldn't say they are either. Right now sparks/accolades are the only efficient way for you to make gil.

[Alhanelem]

We hope that the majority of you will not suffer too much as a result of this limit. As noted in the other thread, I'm not passing judgement until we find out exactly what the limit is. This comment here implies that ordinary players probably won't hit this limit and it is meant to constrain how much the gil farmers that do literally nothing but grind sparks 24/7 can produce.

But really, the proper course of action is to just BAN THE BLANKIN' RMT, not that I should really have to say that.

[Sirmarki]

Right now sparks/accolades are the only way for you to make gil.

If that's what you believe and are unwilling to think outside of the box, then alrighty then.


Some people just want to do the fun stuff not farm gil when they log on.

Running around in circles killing the same mobs multiple times zoning back and forth is fun?

[Sirmarki]

As noted in the other thread, I'm not passing judgement until we find out exactly what the limit is.

Yep. We will have to see how that pans out. As we know, certain RoE objectives produce a lot of sparks in one hit, in a short-time.
Obvioulsy, this isn't the only way to generate fast sparks - I'll be interested to see what happens with UNM battles, which ofcourse you also earn sparks from. Will this be included within the cap I wonder (?)

[bluryu]

It is easy to earn if people use a bit of grey matter. You mention people buying gil, then they are either incredibly lazy or stupid (or both?).

Typical elitist brain dead fool.

You can't do what I can? You must be:

Lazy.
Dumb.
Or, their favorite. "Beyond help".

Congratulations. You've played a video game for a very long time. You've made a lot of progress. Your characters are very powerful. You have access to all of the things. You're amazing. We get it. Congratulations, oh, user of "grey matter".

Hey, guess what, though? You're not very good at using that ole grey matter, actually... oh, you're hopelessly out-of-touch with reality.

I'm a returning player. Been back 2 months. Been working my rear end off. 12-18 hour days. Studying. Studying. Studying. Running. Running. Running. Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Questing. Mission-ing. Crafting. I've been doing EVERYTHING possible at my disposal to not be "lazy" to not be "stupid" to use my "grey matter".

What can my character do? 2k savage blades. 4.5k with 2000 TP. How much gil have I earned? Around 20 million with... probably 300-400 hours of work. Planning. Grinding. Farming.

What can a new player do to make money? You can:
farm things with your 2,000 damage weapon skills (and you do not have a tp set, so you get 2 ws every 60 seconds or so if you're lucky, with haste from koru moru and bard haste as well). 'things' being: alexandrite and dynamis currency.
you can run things at a snails pace that geared people can 'actually' farm like walk of echoes or resienjima crystals...
you can craft things, and the best you're looking at is gobbiebag ingredients, but you need REALLY high skills (like 88 clothcraft for one particular craft for example) but even these only net you like 160k a day if you're lucky. there's lots of competition and really, very few people are buying crap like this off of the AH anymore.
you can do domain invasion and SELL YOUR POINTS THAT YOU NEED DESPERATELY TO ACTUALLY SLOWLY INCH YOUR WAY INTO HAVING A POWERFUL CHARACTER. This will make you 5 million twice a month... and is the worst thing you could do.
you can play the gobbie boxes, but I've got 3 accounts and I've played it around 300 times and never gotten ANYTHING worth more than 30k, and I trash these 'rewards' anyway because they aren't worth the massive amount of inventory space they would take up trying to sell.
you COULD farm the very bad RoE objectives like kill 20 plantoids and such, but I tested this with a 99 bst that can one-shot massive pulls. Guess what? You can't pull very much. Tried pulling lots of mobs in boyadha tree and they despawn before you can collect too many of them. At most this will get you like... 90k gil an hour even with aoe...
The best. And really, only option for new players is gain experience. Its the only way to make money for anyone who actually wants to play the game. And lets be honest... you need LOTS of money these days.

Answers people who don't use their "grey matter" will tell you:
Just do ambuscade. You can't make money off of ambuscade if you're in SPARKS gear. You need ambuscade to upgrade your gear. "just wait 2 months" to begin making income is not how an MMORPG WORKS. You need money on-the-regular. This is a stupid recommendation, furthermore because THERE ARE NO newbies. In two months of playing on Bahamut I did not see a single shout for a V2 ambuscade group. Not one. Not a single player. Everyone is either soloing it or doing something else.
Just go farm dynamis. You mean that activity that is heavily inferior to gain exp, even with 2k weapon skills gain experience is easily 4x as fast gil as this terrible outdated gil farming method. You encounter bots. Its slow. Its painful, its dumb.

This game has a divide, and the old players set in their ways and geared to the teeth don't want you around. People like this Sirmarki guy have been around a long time, and they've been shooing away new players for years now. Their purpose? Its not to help. Its to seem smarter than everyone else, and somehow like they're more amazing because they're ahead of the curve in an old video game. Congratulations, boomer, you win the game. (btw, I am likely the same age as you, I have just had different priorities in my life).

I honestly don't know if this change will hurt the game or not. But I think it has the potential to. And I really hate elitist snobs, if that wasn't very clear. These people are terrible and they don't belong in this or any social game. They don't deserve praise. They don't deserve thanks. They're just entirely worthless human beings. Grats.

[Stuzey]

Seems to be a lot pf panic before we even know what the restrictions will be, I doubt this will affect the average player, as others have stated above

[Sirmarki]

Typical elitist brain dead fool.

You know somebody has no valid case to make when they start their reply with an insult.... Not that I care, it's rather funny (and completely wrong).
I'm not geared to the teeth "elitist brain dead fool", I'm a casual player, I probably spend 2 hours a day playing, if that. Between working.

Read what I said, I made the comment about people who purchase gil. Unless you are justifying that?

[Venat]

I feel like this limitation should of been added the month of when they released sparks/accolades. Its little too late square.

[BST]

I'm going to guess that the Cap will be 99999 maximum earned Spark's per Week, and it will reset at a certain Day/Time each Week.


New players could buy complete Set's of gear and have plenty left over to turn in to Gil, and the limit is reset each Week, just Seven days!

[Morovich]

I'm going to guess that the Cap will be 99999 maximum earned Spark's per Week, and it will reset at a certain Day/Time each Week.


New players could buy complete Set's of gear and have plenty left over to turn in to Gil, and the limit is reset each Week, just Seven days!

That I could easily get behind. After reading some of the other comments if it was higher than that the total amount of points it could be exchanged per week was maybe a little higher than that I think that would be okay.

[Lockhart]

To be honest, I'd be lucky to spend 200-300k sparks a week. How many sparks are you all converting? I think if the caps say 1m sparks exchanged a week, that would limit a character to 10m from sparks a week. Does anyone here actually spend more sparks then that?

[svengalis]

To be honest, I'd be lucky to spend 200-300k sparks a week. How many sparks are you all converting? I think if the caps say 1m sparks exchanged a week, that would limit a character to 10m from sparks a week. Does anyone here actually spend more sparks then that?

last time i did gain exp i made 8m gil. im not really sure how many times i dumped sparks cause i just dumped them whenever i capped accolades. accolades cap faster then sparks, this is in one session. so during a double accolade campaign yes i would pass that cap in one week.

some people claim they make way more then this in once session but idk.

[Pixela]

Square always allow anger to fester by not giving all the information. If they told us what the cap was most of us would have no issue, assuming it's 99k per week or something.

[Vold]

I would hope the "cap" is placed on the items being bought, not the sparks earned. I use sparks almost exclusively for skill books and chapters, WHEN I use it. The last thing I care to see is a cap on sparks/unno earned when you can just limit the damn buying capabilities at the source.

[Rubicant82]

How about instead of limited the amount of money people can make SE goes after the actual RMT accounts.
Sparks to gil is the only way a new player really has to make the gil they need to get spells, gear (not offered by sparks dealers) and other misc items.
Also, as has been stated earlier, the RMT will just move onto some other way to make gil because THAT IS THERE BUSINESS MODEL, and new players with the inability to get gil easily (after farming for a bit) will flock to the cheap gil prices offered by the RMT.

What to stop RMT for gil; Make gil rare/ex, I dare you.

[Lockhart]

last time i did gain exp i made 8m gil. im not really sure how many times i dumped sparks cause i just dumped them whenever i capped accolades. accolades cap faster then sparks, this is in one session. so during a double accolade campaign yes i would pass that cap in one week.

some people claim they make way more then this in once session but idk.

So If SE Makes the cap on sparks 1m sparks per week, the could affect you but not to much. 8m gil sounds like 800k sparks. Which theoretically you could do twice a week if you get on during gain EXP. In any case, if caps around 1m sparks a week, wont affect you to much, although, the RMT doing who knows how many sparks a week, will be heavily effected. In any case, if the caps around 1 million sparks it wont affect the average player to much. As far as hurting new players, during the height of the corona virus, I played like 12 hours a day for a whole week, honestly maybe more, I have great gear and can kill much faster then any new player. There is no way a new player will hit this 1m sparks without large assistance from a veteran even doing both gain EXPs on a EXP campaign. For everyone saying "they will just find another way to do it", while your not wrong, most people would prefer they try to fix the problems as they come instead of just giving up.

[Lockhart]

All I am really trying to say, is if they limit sparks to what even what the best actual REAL player is, its not going to hurt any of us. It will however hurt the 24/7 bots that are apparently never going to be banned because people have reported them a million times over the last year and they are still there.

[Dragoy]

I'm slightly surprised it took this long for them to do something like this.

I never used these methods to make gil much, and only started doing it in any sort of regular fashion quite recently (of course that's when they decide to adjust the system!). That's mostly just because I started going for 10,000 job points for Oboro, so it kind of comes with the process.

I do hope they'll find a nice spot to limit things at, so as to not bother actual players much this time around. I myself don't expect to be affected much at all, but time will tell.

At least they didn't just remove, or make the most popular items worth 1-10 gil. :]

[Neogon]

It's naive if not down-right ludicrous to even assume there is a possibility of it hurting RMT, and makes me wonder how many supporting it also support FFXIV's horrendous mailbox implementation. All it'll do is hurt new players at most, so nothing changes.

1. Create more characters; hack/buy/create more accounts.
2. Level them to 99.
3. ???
4. Profit.

[Sirmarki]

It's naive if not down-right ludicrous to even assume there is a possibility of it hurting RMT, and makes me wonder how many supporting it also support FFXIV's horrendous mailbox implementation. All it'll do is hurt new players at most, so nothing changes.

1. Create more characters; hack/buy/create more accounts.
2. Level them to 99.
3. ???
4. Profit.

They have to be counteracted somehow, and SE have examined the data.

It is virtually impossible for somebody to have their account hacked if they have the proper security means in place (i.e They use the Securekey).

Rather than speculate, it will be a case of wait and see what happens.

[Venat]

All they would need to do is reset everyones Sparks & Accolades to 0 then re price everything at the npcs and decrease the rate of which sparks are obtained. So 999999 is more like 9999.

[VoiceMemo]

Sparks of Eminence and Unity Accolades now have a maximum weekly exchange limit of 100,000 each.
* This weekly limit will reset each Sunday at 8:00 a.m. (PDT) / 3:00 p.m. (GMT) / 4:00 p.m. (BST)

[Taruphic]

Gain xp used to be fun. This nerf is stupid. Maybe I'm about done with this game.

[VoiceMemo]

At least SE put a limit of 100k, instead of just nerfing prices like they did for chocobo blinkers back in abyssea days

[Sirmarki]

Gain xp used to be fun. This nerf is stupid. Maybe I'm about done with this game.

Bit extreme. Gain EXP is fun?

[hideka]

the cap is sheer madness.

SE please. dont let this cap count towards anything that cant bet traded or sold for gil. you basically just ended 90% of the games ability to make money. how are we supposed to keep up with the insane crafting prices now? Are you under some illusion that the price fixers will actually let the price of these items fall? the cap should have been at a minimum 700,000

[Taruphic]

Dear SE, just email me with a title of "Sparks limit increased/abolished" and I may re-subscribe at that point. Ya sure there is other ways to make money, but now everyone else is seeking those out as well as the RMT.

[Sirmarki]

you basically just ended 90% of the games ability to make money.

No, they really haven't.

Think outside of the box...

[Sirmarki]

Dear SE, just email me with a title of "Sparks limit increased/abolished" and I may re-subscribe at that point. Ya sure there is other ways to make money, but now everyone else is seeking those out as well as the RMT.

You're basing your whole subscription on one 4 hour Gain Experience Points Records of Eminence?

and that won't happen... They have already done this to counteract RMT, which is a good thing. No more anon keyboard smashed BST's repeat killing sparks objectives.

[Divaud]

I play maybe 10hrs a week and my gear is at best a C+

Making gil outside of sparks is not challenging and frankly I always considered it to be the worst return on investment

I'm glad they did this

[svengalis]

this is awesome....

[svengalis]

You're basing your whole subscription on one 4 hour Gain Experience Points Records of Eminence?

and that won't happen... They have already done this to counteract RMT, which is a good thing. No more anon keyboard smashed BST's repeat killing sparks objectives.

this is not just during gain exp. during a double accolade campaign you can easily cap accolades multiple times a week from just doing random things.

[svengalis]

I play maybe 10hrs a week and my gear is at best a C+

Making gil outside of sparks is not challenging and frankly I always considered it to be the worst return on investment

I'm glad they did this

as far as i know the only other efficient method to make gil is UNM farming and its not nearly as time efficient.

[Sirmarki]

this is not just during gain exp. during a double accolade campaign you can easily cap accolades multiple times a week from just doing random things.

So? Go and do some unity battles, and then restock!

[Sirmarki]

as far as i know the only other efficient method to make gil is UNM farming and its not nearly as time efficient.

Research is your best friend!

[Divaud]

as far as i know the only other efficient method to make gil is UNM farming and its not nearly as time efficient.

Well here's an easy one; solo farm Omen.

You can do it once a day, takes about 30-40mins and you generally will get 4 or so swart crystals which on most servers are 250k+

Easy 1 mill per run, plus job cards for your AF.

Another is Ambuscade, very soloable on lower difficulties, use hallmarks to buy currencies and resell them.

These tactics work on any server, and that's just off the top of my head.

[Alhanelem]

100k each? not really that bad tbh. that's still plenty of gil to live on lol. sparks are like universal standard income, you can make money elsewhere.

[Sirmarki]

You can do it once a day, takes about 30-40mins and you generally will get 4 or so swart crystals which on most servers are 250k+

Went THF last night on a solo run and got 11 crystals!

[Alhanelem]

heaven forbid we have to play content to make money! :p

[Neogon]

They have to be counteracted somehow, and SE have examined the data.

It is virtually impossible for somebody to have their account hacked if they have the proper security means in place (i.e They use the Securekey).

Rather than speculate, it will be a case of wait and see what happens.

Firstly, I provided proof (or do you really believe RMT only sticks to a single account? lawl), not speculation; and secondly, if Facebook, the biggest cybersecurity nightmare to ever exist (and that is not an over-exaggeration either), isn't willing to to fix their security, then have nearly 2 billion people still using it then how can you count on the majority of people having proper security in place? You cannot; the mass majority of people wouldn't know how to keep themselves secure if it hit them on the head.

(Ironically, while Facebook is a cybersecurity nightmare with exploit after exploit - all of which I and others like me can remember pointing out from as far back as Facebook's beta phase - it was Google that canceled its social network due to only one major exploit. The same major exploit they had managed to patch out several months before its actual cancellation, despite the fact that G+ never had a history of exploits.)

[Thatos]

While I agree with a cap, I believe this amount chosen is too low. just 1 fill up a week makes it so you don't need to do much of anything to cap weekly, and hitting 100k unity accolades takes maybe 30 minutes (with sparks taking roughly double)

I understand slowing down gil generation, and hurting the bots, but as someone who is getting back in to this game looking for a way to grind out money for the millions of things I need, this hurts significantly.

[Lockhart]

Firstly, I provided proof (or do you really believe RMT only sticks to a single account? lawl), not speculation; and secondly, if Facebook, the biggest cybersecurity nightmare to ever exist (and that is not an over-exaggeration either), isn't willing to to fix their security, then have nearly 2 billion people still using it then how can you count on the majority of people having proper security in place? You cannot; the mass majority of people wouldn't know how to keep themselves secure if it hit them on the head.

(Ironically, while Facebook is a cybersecurity nightmare with exploit after exploit - all of which I and others like me can remember pointing out from as far back as Facebook's beta phase - it was Google that canceled its social network due to only one major exploit. The same major exploit they had managed to patch out several months before its actual cancellation, despite the fact that G+ never had a history of exploits.)

I really dont see how its worth it for RMT to make more accounts to bot for sparks/accolades anymore. Even if they have all the possible 16 characters leveled up to 99 and cap exchanges on all of them every week, which would be significantly more work for them already, with the imposed limits I cant see how it would be worth it for them to do this.

[Neogon]

I really dont see how its worth it for RMT to make more accounts to bot for sparks/accolades anymore. Even if they have all the possible 16 characters leveled up to 99 and cap exchanges on all of them every week, which would be significantly more work for them already, with the imposed limits I cant see how it would be worth it for them to do this.

Sure, but does that even hurt them compared to the average player they're marketing to? I'm still going to say, no (if for another reason that I did not bring up: an average player does not have the logistics to get things done as efficiently as RMT), which is what ultimately matters to the customer when MMO publishers play these little wargames: whether or not it affects them enough to get them to buy the in-game currency or to quit. Not being one myself, I can certainly pick out the people that I personally do know will suffer from this and I won't be surprised if they quit. (And that's another thing; it'll only affect average not even on Asure.

Thank you, however, for providing an argument instead of just trying to dismiss it by saying "that's just speculation" or "we should wait instead of speculating".

[Sirmarki]

Firstly, I provided proof (or do you really believe RMT only sticks to a single account? lawl), not speculation; and secondly, if Facebook, the biggest cybersecurity nightmare to ever exist (and that is not an over-exaggeration either), isn't willing to to fix their security, then have nearly 2 billion people still using it then how can you count on the majority of people having proper security in place? You cannot; the mass majority of people wouldn't know how to keep themselves secure if it hit them on the head.

I didn't see any proof? Facebook doesn't have a Securekey. I have a physical key. obviously something that can't be accessed unless someone actually grabbed it off my desk.

With regards to RMT making multiple accounts - it would have to be financially viable for them to do so. This game charges the 'market rate' for subscription, yet has a lot less subs than other titles.

[Dragoy]

I think the limits don't affect me much, but it would indeed be nice if they made them not affect the non-sellables, such as the Capacity Ring, as others have pointed out.


With regards to RMT making multiple accounts - it would have to be financially viable for them to do so.

Sometimes I wonder if they even actually pay, or if the accounts only get suspended due to a charge-back or stolen credit card info and what have you. Never researched this topic, but that's something I've wondered about a bit. They probably wouldn't have time to do much if anything with such tactics though.

They probably do pay at least for the accounts that they use to level up their minions (I've been keeping an eye on a few of such characters for a time now).

I'd also imagine them to rather go somewhere else, than start putting effort into stealing account credentials, which seems like it might be a lot more work for them. Could be very wrong of course.

[Sirmarki]

Thank you, however, for providing an argument instead of just trying to dismiss it by saying "that's just speculation" or "we should wait instead of speculating".

You know I was referring to 'wait and see' with reference to the long/short-term result of what happens when it comes to the capping of sparks/unity. Right?

[Lockhart]

Sure, but does that even hurt them compared to the average player they're marketing to? I'm still going to say, no (if for another reason that I did not bring up: an average player does not have the logistics to get things done as efficiently as RMT), which is what ultimately matters to the customer when MMO publishers play these little wargames: whether or not it affects them enough to get them to buy the in-game currency or to quit. Not being one myself, I can certainly pick out the people that I personally do know will suffer from this and I won't be surprised if they quit. (And that's another thing; it'll only affect average not even on Asure.

Thank you, however, for providing an argument instead of just trying to dismiss it by saying "that's just speculation" or "we should wait instead of speculating".

I'm so sorry, I am having trouble understanding what you are saying. However; I do think it is hurting RMT a lot at the moment. If you just search for ffxi gil, you'll see that gil prices were around $0.25/1 million gil, now they are between $1-5/1million gil. I cannot imagine being into this game so much that it was worth $100 minimum for a SU5 weapon (let alone how much it cost to upgrade it). There might be some people willing to pay those prices, but not many. I think with all the hacks (crafting/duping) they have caught lately and then throwing this in too, we will probably see a lot less of the RMT. They will move to another game or stop. It is possible they will move on to doing something different, but the amount of bots running constantly that will be gone now, is a QoL improvement for me. If anyone from SE wants to know where these sites are, please check your report RMT request or just do a simple google search.

[Neogon]

I didn't see any proof?

The very guideline I showed was proof (re: proof; not evidence).


Facebook doesn't have a Securekey. I have a physical key. obviously something that can't be accessed unless someone actually grabbed it off my desk.

Yeah, which further proves the fact most people give no shit about security.

Just consider the fact that Facebook passwords have been saved in plain text ever since it went into beta over 14 years ago (even then, we knew plain text was a bad solution), and they're most likely still saved to plain text, yet somehow two billion people have continued to use it. If people cared about security, Facebook would never have made it past beta. (Then on top of that, for years there was a way to glitch the Display Preview into hacking someone else's account.)

Then, on top of that, there's the fact that the majority of people still fall for phishing scams despite the fact that phishing is the most renown scam on the internet, and the cherry on top: people still wind up giving their passwords to complete strangers who claim to be admins even when it's written in big, bold letters that: "WE DO NOT ASK FOR YOUR PASSWORD OR ACCOUNT INFORMATION."

(Oh, and while I'm at it, you can bet that there are numerous high-profile officials who continue to hold insecure passwords to their primary email like, p@ssw0rd...)

So again, how can you possibly expect other people to take proper security measures?

And you talk about OTP; I use 2FA and 30 to 80-character passwords for everything. Hell, you wouldn't find my real name anywhere on the internet; any search for it will bring back an obituary as the first result; a Facebook account that doesn't belong to me for the second; and one of the most renown film directors for the third.


If you just search for ffxi gil, you'll see that gil prices were around $0.25/1 million gil, now they are between $1-5/1million gil.

That's not even remotely a noticeable difference. I remember back when 1 million gil cost $25, and yeah, you can bet your ass that it was worth it to a lot of people.


I cannot imagine being into this game so much that it was worth $100 minimum for a SU5 weapon (let alone how much it cost to upgrade it).

Sounds like a steal to me. For someone working, say, $5/hr, that'd only be 20 hours of labor when getting an SU5 is going to take a lot longer by any legit means. Since most people in the U.S. do not even work that low, it becomes an even bigger steal.

[Rolodex]

Sounds like a steal to me. For someone working, say, $5/hr, that'd only be 20 hours of labor when getting an SU5 is going to take a lot longer by any legit means. Since most people in the U.S. do not even work that low, it becomes an even bigger steal.

Why bother playing the game at all at that point? 10-35 dollars for the game, 12-15 dollars a month, plus anything extra like mog lockers on top of whatever gil you buy sounds like a rip off. It is akin to using a gameshark back in the nes/snes days. Sure it's fun for a bit to have everything handed to you but then what do you do next? At that point just save yourself a ton of cash and look at the cutscenes online, that only costs whatever you pay for internet!

[Neogon]

I do apologize for the late response, so forgive me.


Why bother playing the game at all at that point? 10-35 dollars for the game, 12-15 dollars a month, plus anything extra like mog lockers on top of whatever gil you buy sounds like a rip off. It is akin to using a gameshark back in the nes/snes days. Sure it's fun for a bit to have everything handed to you but then what do you do next? At that point just save yourself a ton of cash and look at the cutscenes online, that only costs whatever you pay for internet!

What do you know about hard work? You sure do talk an awful lot about being handed everything in such a small post.

[Jrc]

What to stop RMT for gil; Make gil rare/ex, I dare you.

I totally agree with this! Make gil only tradable between characters on the same account, or not tradable at all. Gil RMT problem solved!!! It would be no different than Ambuscade points, Nyzul tokens, Ichor, Silt, Plasm, etc.

[Alhanelem]

I use 2FA and 30 to 80-character passwords for everything.Most places dont even let you enter passwords like that, nor is it really necessary if you h ave 2fa. long as the 2fa isn't just a 3-4 digit number or something like that, all the password really needs to do is exist- it can be pretty much anything, they're not getting in without the 2fa.

[Neogon]

Most places dont even let you enter passwords like that

False. Most websites do allow for a password beyond 30 characters, especially when the account system is dealing with financial data.


nor is it really necessary if you h ave 2fa.

I never said it is necessary, however...


long as the 2fa isn't just a 3-4 digit number or something like that, all the password really needs to do is exist- it can be pretty much anything, they're not getting in without the 2fa.

2FA does not protect anyone from MITM phishing attacks - AKA, their own complacency that leads to a lax security mindset.

‘You can’t relax’: Here’s why 2-factor authentication may be hackable (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/04/how-secure-is-your-account-two-factor-authentication-may-be-hackable.html)
Chinese hacker group caught bypassing 2FA (https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-hacker-group-caught-bypassing-2fa/)

Moreover, you're creating a red-herring. I will not respond again to that.

[Alhanelem]

it was Google that canceled its social network due to only one major exploit. ?? I was pretty sure google+ was killed because it was crap and nobody liked it, not because it had a security exploit. I personally didn't enjoy google trying to shove it down my throat and make me create a google+ profile every time I went to youtube or tried to play games on my phone.



False. Most websites do allow for a password beyond 30 characters, especially when the account system is dealing with financial data.Nearly every website I've ever used has a maximum password length less than 30 characters. Hell, my company's intranet only allows 8 characters (But they also make you change it constantly).



2FA does not protect anyone from MITM phishing attacks - AKA, their own complacency that leads to a lax security mindset.This is true, but if you can be compromised in this fashion, odds are they can get your password out of you as well (or force you to enter it for them)

[Neogon]

?? I was pretty sure google+ was killed because it was crap and nobody liked it, not because it had a security exploit. I personally didn't enjoy google trying to shove it down my throat and make me create a google+ profile every time I went to youtube or tried to play games on my phone.

Nearly every website I've ever used has a maximum password length less than 30 characters. Hell, my company's intranet only allows 8 characters (But they also make you change it constantly).

This is true, but if you can be compromised in this fashion, odds are they can get your password out of you as well (or force you to enter it for them)

You're welcome to find another means to contact me if you really want, and I'll respond to your inquiries further. However, I refuse to bite at red-herrings - AKA, off-topic responses.

[Alhanelem]

You're welcome to find another means to contact me if you really want, and I'll respond to your inquiries further. However, I refuse to bite at red-herrings - AKA, off-topic responses.You already responded right there. If you're bothered so much by "red herrings" (what?) then don't reply, and don't bring up other topics if you don't want anyone else to talk about them. The only way for you to end a conversation is to walk away- and not tell people you're doing it.

You brought those things up, so you've no one to blame but yourself if it's such a problem. This isn't even your thread, nor are you a moderator, so why do you feel like you get to make the rules?

[Kalimairo]

What are you doing? You are taking action to combat RMT by punishing everyone else?



This is stupid, here is what you're doing:

You are punishing players, especially new players who have been returning because you give them no alternative to make money now. This is so stupid.

You are also encouraging the RMT to farm gil in other ways that are more annoying to the players, you aren't stopping RMT because the demand is still there.

They will now move to farming revies or currency in dynamis or whatever...this sucks, at least when they were farming sparks they did it out of the way of most others.

What on earth are you doing? This is terrible.

You have dynamis, Salvage II, For gill, its not hard to do with sparks its PRE ILVL, Square did the right thing imagine if u sixbox? thats 6 mill gill, and less than a day yea no. I think they did the right thing but that's just my opinion.

[Tharly]

Not everyone wants to spend their limited playtime on gil making endeavors. They would like to actually be doing events with friends. Sparks was a nice easy way for people to not have to do those boring activities and still have some sort of income, or make a good amount of gil with minimal time invested. RMT were here from the start and will be here till the end, there's no changing that. You simply made it so they can sell gil they already are sitting on for a higher price and they will move on to doing something else to make gil. You could slow down the RMT and not hurt players so much with a higher cap though.

[Sirmarki]

Not everyone wants to spend their limited playtime on gil making endeavors. They would like to actually be doing events with friends.

Gil making/farming is part of almost every single game in this genre. There aren't many games out there where you can NPC a load of items that you just bought from another NPC standing 15ft away.
I seriously doubt people do stuff with friends ALL the time, so outside of that, is time to farm and make weapons. Otherwise, what else are you going to do?

[Alhanelem]

Gil making/farming is part of almost every single game in this genre.
I mean, it is, but the games don't usually directly revolve around it, you just make money by doing the contents of the game, not by explicitly grinding out money with no other purpose in mind.

Until Sparks came along, this was mostly true of FFXI as well, since the game gave out almost no gil by fighting regular enemies with few exceptions.

[Neogon]

You already responded right there. If you're bothered so much by "red herrings" (what?) then don't reply, and don't bring up other topics if you don't want anyone else to talk about them. The only way for you to end a conversation is to walk away- and not tell people you're doing it.

You brought those things up, so you've no one to blame but yourself if it's such a problem. This isn't even your thread, nor are you a moderator, so why do you feel like you get to make the rules?

I'm not talking about some forum's subjective and nonsensical rules. I'm talking about objective, argumentative rules. Red-herring Fallacy... Everything You Said was Beside the Point. (https://fallacyinlogic.com/red-herring-fallacy-definition-and-examples/) What was I responding to when you quoted me? Someone who had originally stated, "It is virtually impossible for somebody to have their account hacked if they have the proper security means in place (i.e They use the Securekey)" despite the fact that most people are not remotely security-minded (as proven by the success of Facebook, phishing, and middle-man attacks).

Shalom.

[Alhanelem]

I'm not talking about some forum's subjective and nonsensical rules. I'm talking about objective, argumentative rules. Red-herring Fallacy... Everything You Said was Beside the Point. (https://fallacyinlogic.com/red-herring-fallacy-definition-and-examples/) What was I responding to when you quoted me? Someone who had originally stated, "It is virtually impossible for somebody to have their account hacked if they have the proper security means in place (i.e They use the Securekey)" despite the fact that most people are not remotely security-minded (as proven by the success of Facebook, phishing, and middle-man attacks).

Shalom.
You going off on a tangent and people responding to that tangent doesn't make it "beside the point." You brought it up, therefore it is relevant, as if it had no meaning or relation you wouldn't have mentioned it. And here we are on a totally different one which you also brought up- logical fallacies. Are you going to play the "red herring" card a second time? Or are you going to stop taking this so seriously and just either discuss with dignity or move on?

I replied to the things you said because you said them and I was interested in what you said. If you're actually interested in the discussion but concerned about its relevance to what was going on before, you could have started a new thread.

Now, rather ironically, after Ireplied to someone on the original topic, you came back and sent it off topic again.... lol



despite the fact that most people are not remotely security-minded (as proven by the success of Facebook, phishing, and middle-man attacks).From a logic standpoint, it doesn't prove anything, as there isn't a proveable correlation between those things you listed and being "security minded." Being "security minded" itself doesn't make you immune to social engineering and other sorts of attacks, even if it does lower the likelihood. We are imperfect beings and even fi we are aware of good security practices, sometimes we make mistakes.

[Vold]

Alrighty then. So anyway, for those not following the JP threads the best they can on this subject, the devs basically said the following in code speak "the simple thing to do would be to raise the spark caps we implemented, but that is too simple so we're monitoring the situation and are trying to think of non existent methods of improving things for the playerbase that doesn't involve helping rmt i.e. we'll never think of a way, and blah blah yada yada repeat of how we like to deal with rmt and why we don't out right ban dem bots you see all the time"



and as far as things like chapter prices go



"we would like for you to do the orb and merit fights for chapters and have sparks be a bonus(like, snap I need just one chapter!!!!), even though we were fine with 7.5k and 15k before with unlimited sparks, but now we're not fine with easing the fees on players despite putting in a measly 100k cap on sparks. We hope you understand and apologize for the inconvenience"


A bold strategy, Bob. We'll see if it pays off.

[Pixela]

The bots are now spamming Salvage endlessly, which means real players cannot enter and when they do the prices of Alex have dropped 400k in a month. Probably the same is happening in Dynamis.

Also JobPoint selling has ballooned, well done developers you made it worse as we all knew would happen.

[Tenks]

As a new player all I want is for this cap to not include rare/EX items. I would happily spend my sparks buying Rem's Tales to help myself gear up faster, but I cant. I've been playing for <2 weeks and I use my entire spark cap the day it resets with nothing to spend it on for the rest of the week. If I could dump 100k sparks into buying shields for gil then spend the rest of the week buying tales, skill books, i117 gear for alt jobs or literally anything else I would be happy. The purpose of this system was to help new players, but it feels like it's been crippled to the point where it doesn't even do that.

[Sirmarki]

As a new player all I want is for this cap to not include rare/EX items. I would happily spend my sparks buying Rem's Tales to help myself gear up faster, but I cant. I've been playing for <2 weeks and I use my entire spark cap the day it resets with nothing to spend it on for the rest of the week. If I could dump 100k sparks into buying shields for gil then spend the rest of the week buying tales, skill books, i117 gear for alt jobs or literally anything else I would be happy. The purpose of this system was to help new players, but it feels like it's been crippled to the point where it doesn't even do that.

Buying chapters with sparks was the biggest waste of sparks in my opinion. The battles are there for everyone to do, at all levels. Form a group, or solo some of them, they really aren't bad.

[Alhanelem]

Buying chapters with sparks was the biggest waste of sparks in my opinion. The battles are there for everyone to do, at all levels. Form a group, or solo some of them, they really aren't bad.
depends on the BC. you can only get certain chapters from certain fights, and some are more annoying than others. There's a few fights id happly pay to not do, regardless of your opinion on their difficulty.

[Dzspdref]

The bots are now spamming Salvage endlessly, which means real players cannot enter and when they do the prices of Alex have dropped 400k in a month. Probably the same is happening in Dynamis.

Also JobPoint selling has ballooned, well done developers you made it worse as we all knew would happen.

you DO realize the price of Alex also Skyrocketed over 500k in a month also? For over a year a stack of 99 Alex was 500k, then they shot up to 900k~1Million in the space of a week, and have only recently gone back down to the 600k mark. So having it "drop 400k in a month" still doesn't bring it back down to what it was for years.

[svengalis]

depends on the BC. you can only get certain chapters from certain fights, and some are more annoying than others. There's a few fights id happly pay to not do, regardless of your opinion on their difficulty.

Which exactly? Farming chapters 1-5 with macro orbs the fights are basically all the same difficulty which I easily do on mnk. Then there are the Avatars that drop 6-10 which again are basically all the same fight a bit more difficult then the macro fights but still easily doable.

[Trumpy]

the cap definitely hurts players like me who use these points to buy chapters or etched memories, you know sparks for non gil reasons.

[Alhanelem]

the cap definitely hurts players like me who use these points to buy chapters or etched memories, you know sparks for non gil reasons.can always ask for help with those fights you know. happy to if you want. buying chapters is not really worth it unless you just need 1 more. There's been cases where I just dont want to do X fight because its kind of annoying but you always have an option, you don't really need special comps for most of the star BCs.

[Sirmarki]

the cap definitely hurts players like me who use these points to buy chapters or etched memories, you know sparks for non gil reasons.

Hurts? The chapters are designed to be obtained from (in comparison to most other elements of the game) relatively easy fights.

You can't get a group on your server?
If not, you can solo at lower difficulty levels.