Raise the Minimum Requirement for entering Abyssea to Lv70 or 75

[Chocobits]

Look. Panthera's point on Parasitic and Symbiotic relationships is the single most valid point that has been touched in this entire thread. If you don't know anything about those types of relationships, go LvUp and gain some experience to figure out how each of them is different.

Panthera... Thank you for having what counts most: Common Sense.

From your perspective, it is, because he's like-minded.

To 90% of the other readers, Leon, Ramona and myself make the most valid points, because we're sane and our logic is based on the common good and not a personal agenda.

[Svens]

This is still going? News flash: You can now leech abyssea-style from GoV pages once the exp cap is reached, racking up 3000-4000+ exp/page depending on how hard the page is (600-700 exp/mob give or take). Only difference is you click the tome every time a regiment is complete vs. completely afking and you get gil/tabs vs cruor as a secondary bonus. And you can start at lv1 instead of lv30.

So if players want to restrict access to Abyssea, should we restrict access to Vanadiel?

[Chocobits]

This is still going? News flash: You can now leech abyssea-style from GoV pages once the exp cap is reached, racking up 3000-4000+ exp/page depending on how hard the page is (600-700 exp/mob give or take). Only difference is you click the tome every time a regiment is complete vs. completely afking and you get gil/tabs vs cruor as a secondary bonus. And you can start at lv1 instead of lv30.

So if players want to restrict access to Abyssea, should we restrict access to Vanadiel?

Is Lumoria considered outside of Vanadiel? People might leech in Sea.

[Svens]

Is Lumoria considered outside of Vanadiel? People might leech in Sea.

I want to say it is a part of Vanadiel as it is part of the world/dimension and a counterpart does exist in Abyssea as your Abyssean counterpart loses to Promathia. There is Walk of Echoes, but people already leech there, so...yeah...

[Kindra]

Hear are my thoughts and this will be the third time I say this.

Some of you like abyssea, some of you don't, I happen to be one of those that likes both. The problem here is that both sides are set in their thinking and neither side is going to change their minds. This is a debate that will go on forever because you can't make each other think the same way. Let's face it guys everyone has their own ways of doing things. We may not like them or even agree with them but the one thing we will never accomplish is making them change their minds.

And I want to make sure that the we in that last statement doesn't mean I agree with either side. Like I said I like both ways. :)

[Khiinroye]

People don't complain about killing NMs in abyssea over and over because the reward is quick--with a pickup group of 4, you can get a +1 piece of gear in about 2 hours. Oldschool xp, you might have gone from lv 37 to lv 38 in CN.

As for empyreans--those are, for many of them, the best weapon of their type in the game. Even going at a casual 4 hours per day average, you can get most of them to lv 85 in two or three weeks. (empyrean weapons involving glavoid or chloris might take longer if you're unlucky with cleaving KIs, harp/shield take longer due to VNM upgrades). Since they're currently the best of their class, people expect to have to work more for them. Shirley, you've seen the relic / mythic / empyrean threads.

While there are still some new players, most of the players have been around for a while. The majority of us have leveled to 60+ before abyssea, many with several lv 75 jobs. Skills from these jobs carry over, as does knowledge.

Say you played warrior and ninja, and have tanked a myriad of mobs, and have mostly capped skills on those jobs since you need that to trigger in abyssea. However, for a change, you leech whm to 90, and your subjobs to 49. Put on your sch sub, light arts, instant B- rank skill; not optimal, but still better than whm's base skill for everything except divine and healing. You'll know how important haste is for melees, and will try to keep it up. You'll know the benefits of protect, shell, barspells, etc. You'll definitely know what moves give additional status effects, and what spell is needed to cure them. You'll need to pick up mp management and where you should stand as a mage, but that's something that's quick.

If instead you want to pick up a melee job, you'll already have the main weapon skilled a good portion of the way to 90. This includes scythe, GS, axe, GA, dagger, GK, polearm. You might even have decent h2h, archery, and marksmanship if you like blue numbers. There really aren't that many job abilities to learn on a new job melee job, and if you payed attention while leveling your old jobs, you'll know what they do.

New players will have to take a break from xping at lv 70 anyways, since they won't be able to beat G5 with vastly underlevelled skills. The two exceptions are whm (divine magic skilling only, sleep Maat for 5 minutes to win) and thf (successfully steal to win). Any other melee will need to skill their main weapon, and mages will need to work on their magic skills.

The only problem for new players is being able to afford gear. Cruor can be traded for items that net a bit of gil, but it will probably still fall a bit short. Teal/Aurore/Perle gear is decent for a new player to start with, but they should work to get better gear to replace it.

Anyways, if you find someone in your alliance who is trying to pass as a DD with the skill of a lv 30 job, kick them. Tell them that they need to skill up to an acceptable level before continuing to level that particular job. Its not abyssea's fault that the person is inconsiderate and intentionally gimping himself by not skilling up.

Most alliances only have 1 or 2 lowbies keying chests. Sure, a brd or cor could open them between songs, but you almost never have those in pickup alliances, and if you do, they'd really rather not be spending a ton of cruor on a pickup alliance instead of gaining it. Since the low level people are taking care of a boring job that nobody wants to do, they allow the higher levels to play as they wish. It's more like the relationship between an ER doctor and the garbage man than it is a dog and a flea. If someone is paying to get their job leveled in abyssea, its more like a homeowner and a lawn service.

The lv 75+s who stand off to the side or at the dominion npc and don't do anything at all need to go, but nobody here is arguing against that.

You may argue that the fast xp will let people finish with everything faster, get bored, and quit sooner, but I believe that if you force lower level xp to be slow again, most people will give up on leveling new jobs, and have fewer options for doing the existing content, which will cause them to quit. The option to quickly level a new job every now and then gives the opportunity for a fresh perspective on the content--having the option to play as a healer or nuker or melee dd or tank is far less confining than being pidgeonholed into one or two styles due to a lack being able to quickly expand your job selection.

[TybudX]

No. I said that "It misleads people that you've been playing your job for 90 levels, when all you've done at best is just open chests." I say it's cheating because it's misleading... to deprive, mislead, evade, or act dishonestly.

So this is the heart of your argument?

You cannot say that I am cheating by 'leeching' any of my three accounts to have level 90 jobs. Functionally they are the same; that is, they are all me. I can play on all three accounts on any job and nobody would be able to tell the difference between the newer characters and my old character if they didn't already know me. I am in no way misleading anybody I come into contact with. I have not deprived anybody of anything by leeching my alts. I am not evading learning any skill or game mechanic that I don't already know, despite having leveled many jobs recently that I had never played past level 37 before. I make no claims when I do join events as to how I leveled my characters or how skilled I am at playing them.

In fact, the onus is on the people playing with me to not make unfounded assumptions about me based on their opinions. Abyssea has been around for some time now, and before that there were AB parties. It's safe to assume that a large portion of the population has 'leeched' one or more of the jobs that they play on. Nobody is being dishonest about it. Nobody is being mislead except for people who choose to walk around with blinders on. Nobody is evading the skills you learn during traditional experience parties because quite frankly you don't learn much of anything by fighting a few select monsters over and over again for weeks or months.

Now, how about some context?

I know somebody who has played PLD since at least 2006, who has completed an Aegis, who has been tanking in an HNM ls for three years. He leveled his PLD in traditional experience parties. This player joins events with the express intention of being main tank, many times suggesting party set ups that make him the sole tank. Despite having proper buffs, proper support, and good party set ups, this player cannot maintain shadows, keep hate, control a mob, manage his MP pool, or generally do what a PLD tank is supposed to be able to do, especially after 5 years of playing it.

Isn't that misleading? And doesn't misleading = cheating by definition? Despite him playing PLD the way he plays PLD, despite SE 'legitimizing' his play style, he has mislead many, many groups into thinking he can do something that he is incapable of doing.

Isn't that dishonest? And doesn't dishonest = cheating by definition? He claims to have skills that he learned while leveling his job and tanking HNMs, but is incapable of implementing these skills.

[Panthera]

Not responding to the rest of your post because time and again you've shown your pure selfishness throughout your posts are are just arguing semantics that don't really matter.

It's more likely you aren't responding because you just don't have a counter argument. The analogy is that I'm an Abyssea mob, and you're level 30, and you should not be in Abyssea. That's admittedly condescending, for which I apologize, but while I don't agree with GreatGuardian on the other hand, but I did really, sincerely like and respect his bit about how he thinks I think FFXI is an RPG so therefore etc. It was a good effort. I would just once like to be able to say in this thread,"I just can't argue with that."

What I find selfish is taking the prestige of an accomplishment in an MMO just so that you can have the same accomplishments, but without the same effort. Showing no regard to what others have earned, that you have cheated for, that's selfish.

Semantics do matter because truth is contigent upon it. We are arguing what is and what is not. And with all due respect, if I am arguing semantics, it's because you don't know what words mean. You can't just claim "A" is "B" when really it's "C" when you don't know what "A", "B" or "C" really mean.


But try to get this through your head. for you it is about accomplishments. Not for everybody. Nor does it have to be for everybody just because you have pride in a video game.

No, I understand perfectly that some don't care about earning their levels. I get that. I just don't agree with it, and I don't think they should. I have to be able to understand it in order to wag my finger disapprovingly at it. It's already been explained how your cheating takes from my accomplishment, and how cheating effects those who want to level but do it honestly.


Nor does accomplishment have to = XP.

Correct. Accomplishments don't have to be experience points, but experience points DO have to be accomplishments, or why bother? If they don't matter, remove them. Do them, or don't do them, but just don't cheat. Get a Relic, but don't RMT it. Get a Lu Shang's or Ebisu's, but don't fishbot it, etc. In an MMO, part of the value of certain items are their rarity. Back in the day, having certain jobs at 75 meant something, because they were difficult to get to there, but valuable and praise-worthy once they did get there. Now you can have those jobs at max level, but so what? So does everyone else by extensive thumb-twiddling. Your leeching (by which I mean "one", not you personally) does not exist in a vacuum. Forgive me for "", but I am no more imposing my will onto others such that levels matter than they are imposing theirs on me by taking that value away. Now, what have you to say to that, hmmm?


Not everybody has to play the game under [b]your way. Sticking to what SE allows is good enough for me.

And what SE rules is legal doesn't mean it's not side-stepping or short-cutting. Up up down down left right left right B A is one thing in the context of an offline game, but in an online game, it's quite something else. If if isn't against the rules to cheat, the rules are insufficient.

Provided that you are just repeating yourself without offering up anything new, it's nothing more than an attempt to win the arguement by getting in the last word in. The arguement that is true will always prevail over the last word that isn't.

[TybudX]

What I find selfish is taking the prestige of an accomplishment in an MMO just so that you can have the same accomplishments, but without the same effort.

Really?


It might take a great deal of effort to do what you're doing, but that doesn't mean you aren't cheating.

You have no problem arbitrarily discounting the amount of effort it took me to level three characters at once, even going so far as to call it cheating.


And what SE rules is legal doesn't mean it's not side-stepping or short-cutting... if isn't against the rules to cheat, the rules are insufficient.

Again, this is your assumption based on what you think SE may or may not think. Unfortunately for you SE does have the sole responsibility of deciding what is and isn't legal in their game. They own it, they control it, and they hold that the state of the game may change at any time. How you or I interpret their rules is irrelevant. It's not our decision.

[Akujima]

Isn't that misleading? And doesn't misleading = cheating by definition? Despite him playing PLD the way he plays PLD, despite SE 'legitimizing' his play style, he has mislead many, many groups into thinking he can do something that he is incapable of doing.

Isn't that dishonest? And doesn't dishonest = cheating by definition? He claims to have skills that he learned while leveling his job and tanking HNMs, but is incapable of implementing these skills.


This PLD argument is a moot point, because everyone knows that PLD as a job itself is broken. The player you're describing is misleading himself into thinking otherwise, due to the fact that he's invested so much time and energy into the PLD job. He is blind to face the facts that PLD is not working as intended.

[TybudX]

PLD has many ways to accumulate hate and control a mob, especially in longer fights. It isn't a good tank because killing faster is always better than the alternative with the way the game is currently designed, not because PLD is bad at not taking damage and holding a mob's attention.

[Akujima]

PLD has many ways to accumulate hate and control a mob, especially in longer fights. It isn't a good tank because killing faster is always better than the alternative with the way the game is currently designed, not because PLD is bad at not taking damage and holding a mob's attention.

You are reinstating the obvious game mechanics that make PLD a useless job, in an attempt to derail away from the fact that the point is still moot. Your original point was on the topic of misleading and deception, so why don't you stop going off topic and practice what you preach.

[TybudX]

You have no real concept of why PLD isn't a good tank. Your point is that PLD as a job is 'broken'. Broken =/= bad at tanking. Broken = not as good as any other option except maybe three mobs in the game, which is either not important or bad depending on your opinion of the PLD job. It has nothing whatsoever to do with PLD solo tanking or even co-tanking mobs, which it is perfectly capable of doing.

[Akujima]

You have no real concept of why PLD isn't a good tank. Your point is that PLD as a job is 'broken'. Broken =/= bad at tanking. Broken = not as good as any other option except maybe three mobs in the game, which is either not important or bad depending on your opinion of the PLD job. It has nothing whatsoever to do with PLD solo tanking or even co-tanking mobs, which it is perfectly capable of doing.


Who are you arguing with?
When are you going to get back onto the topic of misleading and deception? How does that post have anything to do with misleading and deception?

[TybudX]

Go back and read it again, then ask yourself why PLD being 'broken' as a tank had anything to do with what I said. How is what you have started talking about on topic or relevant?

[Zyeriis]

You have no real concept of why PLD isn't a good tank. Your point is that PLD as a job is 'broken'. Broken =/= bad at tanking. Broken = not as good as any other option except maybe three mobs in the game, which is either not important or bad depending on your opinion of the PLD job. It has nothing whatsoever to do with PLD solo tanking or even co-tanking mobs, which it is perfectly capable of doing.
Which it isn't? (Don't bring up Ochain as that is an item, not a job).

[Akujima]

Go back and read it again, then ask yourself why PLD being 'broken' as a tank had anything to do with what I said. How is what you have started talking about on topic or relevant?


I'll say it again. He was misleading and cheating himself into believing what he could do. You don't disagree with how he was unable to hold true to his claims, but you assumed that he was cheating other people by misleading THEM. The fact is he tried his hardest and there are even people who are against this thread, that will agree with me about how PLD is a useless "broken" job that needs to be fixed.

Whatever the reasons are for PLD being "broken" don't have anything to do with the point you were trying to make about misleading and deceiving. Sure PLD can "Tank" well, but "Tanking" in FFXI is so obscure now, that there is basically no need for it to be defined in current endgame content. Whether this is true or not now for VoidWatch scenario's is going wayyy off topic.

Misleading others intentionally because they don't know any better is one thing, but not being able to accept the facts about reality is cheating yourself. But maybe he doesn't know about PLD's current state, and your posts #262 and #264 would be more suitable if they were directed towards him, instead of trying to slyly derail me.

Back to the topic at hand.

All I've seen in this thread is new point, after new point, after new point that has just been shut-down by people with established, defined reasons about why raising the LvCap is a good idea. Even going so far as to call us out as "Fanatical Moralists" implying that we're somehow imposing unbearable punishment to people.

I question whether these people are having fun with their newly leeched Lv90 jobs, and not complaining elsewhere about how long it takes to get things done, and how annoying it is for such and such to take such and such amount of time. It almost seems like they're measuring "time factor" with "fun factor", saying that the least amount of time spent doing something will also be the most satisfying.

So then the correct assumption would be to say that the sooner we can Lv all 20 jobs to Lv99, the sooner we can all have maxed out gear/equipment and the sooner we've depleted FFXI of all its resources and content, then and ONLY then, will we be happy... Right?

Sounds like life in the fast lane to me, though. Live hard, die young?


Some of us are on here trying to make the game last longer. Leeching only seeks to shorten the lifespan of FFXI and deprive it of any integrity it once had.

[TybudX]

@Zyeriis
Idontevenwtf. Between you and akujimi I'm not sure who is better at having a complete lack of reading comprehension. At least Panthera isn't an idiot. He/she is basing their argument on invalid theories, but they are making a valid point. The both of you do nothing but hurt your own position on everything you post about, every time you post about it.

edit - @akujimi
I'll say this again. PLD isn't broken because it isn't a good tank. It's broken because the abilities it has that let it survive don't matter, while dealing more damage does. Somebody saying they are a good PLD, setting up parties to support a PLD tank, fighting NMs and HNMs as a PLD tank, is not broken. You have zero concept as to what you are talking about, so I will explain it to you in simple terms. PLD is a perfectly capable tank in almost every situation in the game. It's survivability is outweighed by other job's damage dealing capacities. The job isn't 'broken' because it is bad at what it is designed to do, it's bad because almost every other job can survive within the confines of what the game design requires.

Also, I am trying to finish the game as fast as I can. The sooner I max out key jobs on my three characters, the sooner I can start maxing out all the other jobs. I can assure you this isn't a fast process, even with Abyssea style experience gains. What's your point again?

-pps
I was never trying to 'slyly derail' you. You're the one who can't understand what I am saying, took what I said out of context, and has no understanding of why my example is valid to the argument you made. And by the way, I never responded to you before this. Your own argument for 'your side' of the argument is so bad as to be laughable at best.

[Akujima]

@Zyeriis
Idontevenwtf. Between you and akujimi I'm not sure who is better at having a complete lack of reading comprehension. At least Panthera isn't an idiot. He/she is basing their argument on invalid theories, but they are making a valid point. The both of you do nothing but hurt your own position on everything you post about, every time you post about it.

Please explain further how we do this. Elaborate with more details please. Give us examples of what you mean by that. If you could do that, it would be appreciated. Because that last sentence is a little on the vague side.

[Ravenmore]

Its all for not now any way. Seeing how you can now leech outside of abyssea starting at level one. SE had to have known that would be one of the first thing people tried yet they did nothing.

[hiko]

you want that getting a job to 75 is an accomplishment that you can be proud of? ask SE team to remove all "make getting lvl75 easy" patch:
- double xp rate
- lvl sync
- higher chain lenght
- lower XP needed per lvl

[Akujima]

you want that getting a job to 75 is an accomplishment that you can be proud of? ask SE team to remove all "make getting lvl75 easy" patch:
- double xp rate
- lvl sync
- higher chain lenght
- lower XP needed per lvl


You can continue to imply that I'm some kind of extremist. But you are surely wrong.

[Greatguardian]

you want that getting a job to 75 is an accomplishment that you can be proud of? ask SE team to remove all "make getting lvl75 easy" patch:
- double xp rate
- lvl sync
- higher chain lenght
- lower XP needed per lvl

More like "Remove everything from ToAU onwards." The EXP system has been getting easier by leaps and bounds since then, with the introduction of Colibri, EXP rings, and Sanction EXP bonuses. It may not be Akujima's point (whatever point of his remains that hasn't been torn to shreds 9,001 times in all of these threads about the Abyssea cap), but it is surely Panthera's.

If you want EXP to be an accomplishment, remove everything that makes it easy. Unfortunately, most people don't really give a crap about EXP being an accomplishment.

Unfortunately for some of you, you are simply not used to the fact that any random person out there in the game needs to be considered a completely incompetent moron with the brain matter of a potato until they are proven otherwise. Those of us who have been Endgame-tier players for a long time already know this, so Abyssea leeching creating useless level 90s with no spells or skills or knowledge of the game is Absolutely. Nothing. New. These 'deceptive, cheating leeches' are no more deceptive to us than Mages who refuse to cast Haste, Players who don't swap gear, Samurai who don't have Polearm capped, DDs who TP in 0-10% Haste, and so on and so forth. In fact the latter are worse, because THEY ACTUALLY CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING WHEN IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THEY DO NOT AND ARE ABSOLUTELY 110% WORTHLESS IN A GROUP SITUATION.

[Pharaun]

All I've seen in this thread is new point, after new point, after new point that has just been shut-down by people with established, defined reasons about why raising the LvCap is a good idea. Even going so far as to call us out as "Fanatical Moralists" implying that we're somehow imposing unbearable punishment to people.

I question whether these people are having fun with their newly leeched Lv90 jobs, and not complaining elsewhere about how long it takes to get things done, and how annoying it is for such and such to take such and such amount of time. It almost seems like they're measuring "time factor" with "fun factor", saying that the least amount of time spent doing something will also be the most satisfying.


Lol, I'm not sure which thread you're reading, but it obviously isn't this one. You haven't brought up a single point that hasn't already been responded to and completely disproved either in this thread or the many other abyssea threads.

As for you assertion that we aren't even having fun with our leeched jobs, I can't speak for the others but I feel confident that they will agree with my sentiments. I'm having more fun because I"m actually taking part in the rewarding content of the game and not the mindless grind of exping. Grinding levels was never fun in and of itself, it could be made tolerable if you had a decent group of friends that you leveled with, but again it was never a fun part of this game.

As for Panthera and his assertion that hitting max level was an accomplishment, it hasn't been an accomplishment to have a max level character since ToAU at the latest if not earlier. The thing that you don't seem to understand is that by their very nature things that were once an accomplishment in an MMO become easier to achieve over time and thus no longer become an accomplishment worth noting. With the introduction of better gear and abilities and better understanding of game mechanics what used to be difficult for ever the elite level players eventually will become easy enough that even the most casual of casuals will be able to accomplish it.

[Romanova]

Correct. Accomplishments don't have to be experience points, but experience points DO have to be accomplishments, or why bother? If they don't matter, remove them. Do them, or don't do them, but just don't cheat. Get a Relic, but don't RMT it. Get a Lu Shang's or Ebisu's, but don't fishbot it, etc.

rmt = against TOS

fish botting = against TOS

You can't even come up with a "cheating" that's actually allowed by SE. Face it, you want this to be against SE, but as ravenmore said you can do this outside abyssea now too, it's growing, not getting taken away.

[Khiinroye]

In the higher tier voidwatch, DD tanks tend to die if the NM so much as sneezes at them. Plds are perfectly capable of taking what the mobs are dishing out, except the weakness inducing tp moves that NOBODY can tank. In order to maximize drops, you need to do many, many triggers, so survivability of the tank matters, rather than zerging. The pld in Tybud's example, who leveled the old way and had a relic and wanted people to believe that he knew what he was doing as a tank would be totally unable to tank these mobs, while a capable pld could. THE PALADIN IN THE EXAMPLE WAS INEPT AT HIS JOB DESPITE LEVELING THE OLD WAY AND EVEN HAVING THE BEST GEAR AND RELICS. He was inept in the old days when people used pld, and he is still inept now. Understanding the meaning of the example would have you believe that a competent, freshly levelled pld with the basic pld tanking gear would do a better job than him. That was the whole point of the example, and it was IGNORED based on "pld is broken". The job isn't broken; the need for a tank just wasn't there, so it wasn't used. One does not take the make an army of ultralisks when performing a zerg rush.

My example of how a capable, previously melee-only person could pick up a mage job and do perfectly fine with it was IGNORED.

The fact that truly new players will need to skill their main class skills (except for thf and whm) to get past 70 was IGNORED.


All I've seen in this thread is new point, after new point, after new point that has just been shut-down by people with established, defined reasons about why raising the LvCap is a good idea.

Since you have said that these points have been addressed, I guess we can assume that you have no real response to them and have therefore conceded them.


Do them, or don't do them, but just don't cheat.

My definition of cheating in terms of leveling is using third party programs to do your levelling for you (people do use curebots, so this is actually there), or altering your character data to fix your level at whatever you want it to be. Buying accounts is cheating. Keying boxes does not meet this definition, therefore it is not cheating.

Using third party programs to choose what fish you hooked and instantly set its hp to 0 is cheating. Being able to see VNMs while they're still in their unaggrod state is cheating. RMT is cheating.

See, I can define terms to my benefit, too, and mine is closer to SE's definition.

I leveled my rng from 20 to 56 via campaign ops and xp scrolls. Did I cheat by doing that? I sure didn't go out and get oldschool xp parties.

As to the RPG element; Sure, xp is a key factor in all of them. But when you have one character that you want to use to do something different, do you take him through all the areas in the game that you've been through and catch him up like that? No, you slap him in the party with your top characters, go to the spot in the game where the monsters give a ton of xp, and use your strong characters to tear through them like paper and skyrocket your weak character's levels. Some RPGs even level your characters while they're out of party (e.g. Chrono Trigger). Being able to use strong characters to level weak characters has always been a part of many games in the genre, even in SE games. If you want to look at other MMOs, WoW has twinking of new characters, and apparently death knights start at lv 55.


So then the correct assumption would be to say that the sooner we can Lv all 20 jobs to Lv99, the sooner we can all have maxed out gear/equipment and the sooner we've depleted FFXI of all its resources and content, then and ONLY then, will we be happy... Right?
Alternately, we can not level any new jobs because it takes so long the old way and people don't want to sit through that for the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th time. Then we'll max gear and equipment for our jobs even faster, and all quit sooner.


I am no more imposing my will onto others such that levels matter than they are imposing theirs on me by taking that value away. Now, what have you to say to that, hmmm?
They are not taking the value away from you. You can still feel that you earned your levels, while they did not; therefore, you can believe that your levels are an accomplishment due to how you achieved them, while their levels are not an achievement because they sped through them in abyssea. It does not have to be an all-or-nothing situation.

[TybudX]

@zyeris
This is not a thread about PLD's capabilities as a tank.

Get it?

You are attacking the example I used to prove a point, not the point itself. Your attack is off topic; it has no bearing on what this thread is about: raising the level cap for Abyssea - there is a thread for PLD tanking already, take your comments there.

And so that you will be more informed when you do post in that thread, I will explain again why my example is valid to the point I was making. PLD tanks have immense survivability. It is not at all unreasonable to use a PLD tank if winning is your only priority; in fact it is in your best interest since they are so sturdy. What makes PLD a poor choice is that winning quickly increases drop rates by allowing you to fight more often. It also gives support characters a smaller window in which to use their resources, which allows for less survivable DDs to effectively hold hate on a mob and survive.

None of that makes PLD a bad tank, it just means you either need a) more people involved to increase kill spead, or b) kill slower, which sometimes gives the mob more opportunities to use highly damaging effects. In the first case your drop rate is effectively lowered due to needing to provide more items for more people. In the second case the mob isn't always capable of doing anything dangerous to a PLD anyways, so it doesn't always matter.

[Akujima]

More like "Remove everything from ToAU onwards." The EXP system has been getting easier by leaps and bounds since then, with the introduction of Colibri, EXP rings, and Sanction EXP bonuses. It may not be Akujima's point (whatever point of his remains that hasn't been torn to shreds 9,001 times in all of these threads about the Abyssea cap), but it is surely Panthera's.

If you want EXP to be an accomplishment, remove everything that makes it easy. Unfortunately, most people don't really give a crap about EXP being an accomplishment.

Unfortunately for some of you, you are simply not used to the fact that any random person out there in the game needs to be considered a completely incompetent moron with the brain matter of a potato until they are proven otherwise. Those of us who have been Endgame-tier players for a long time already know this, so Abyssea leeching creating useless level 90s with no spells or skills or knowledge of the game is Absolutely. Nothing. New. These 'deceptive, cheating leeches' are no more deceptive to us than Mages who refuse to cast Haste, Players who don't swap gear, Samurai who don't have Polearm capped, DDs who TP in 0-10% Haste, and so on and so forth. In fact the latter are worse, because THEY ACTUALLY CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING WHEN IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THEY DO NOT AND ARE ABSOLUTELY 110% WORTHLESS IN A GROUP SITUATION.


I'm done with this thread and its lowsy implications that Myself, Panthera and other like minded people are some kind of radical extremist group. Accusing us of trying to force everyone to go back to when it took 2 days to find a PT and 1 week to get a few Lv's.

So let me set the record straight:

None of us said to remove FoV.
None of us said to remove GoV.
None of us said to remove EXP rings.
None of us disagreed with the new EXP rate per mob.
None of us disagreed with Colibri camps, SMN Burn, BLM burn or anything outside Abyssea

All we are asking for is some balance.

FFXI in the past took ridiculous amounts of time to LvUp, but now the game has taken a '180' in the other direction. Now it's a bit TOO easy to cap your level. If you can't grasp the idea of a healthy balance, then maybe stepping out of your perception of absolutism would do you some good.

Players lack of competence has nothing to do with balance in game design.

Bad players are bad players. They have nothing to do with how ridiculously fast it is to level up inside Abyssea. Just because you proclaim yourself to be a "good, smart player" is no excuse to be spoon fed a Lv90 character. You should have to do the work, just like everyone else. Trying to justify the circumvention of how game genre's are meant to stay true to their style, just because you are "good" and other players that "suck" are the actual problem, is a VERY poor excuse. This attitude towards incompetence amongst a portion of the player base is very biased to an "elitist" point of view, but I'm not surprised to see such a cookie-cutter post. A post that seeks to stray away from the real issue and blame it on someone else.

GG. I challenge you to make a thread that is creative, innovative, or addresses issues that other like minded players can agree with. If you can make just one thread that can get some kind intelligent feedback... then, and only then, will I give you credit for your enormous post-count.

[Leonlionheart]

GG. I challenge you to make a thread that is creative, innovative, or addresses issues that other like minded players can agree with. If you can make just one thread that can get some kind intelligent feedback... then, and only then, will I give you credit for your enormous post-count.

I wish you would stop trying to show off this thread as an accomplishment; it's not creative. It's a rehashed point that's been over used and over discussed to absolutely no avail- because every one has an opinion and is stupid and stubborn about it. It's gotten this far because you, and many people who see differently from you, WILL NOT CHANGE THEIR MIND. If you want to make ANOTHER long useless thread, go post about how BST got jipped from invincible pets. Go post about how relics are being undermined by empyreans. Pick any other FFXI hot topic and just paste it onto a thread and you'll get what you think is some kind of accomplishment.

On Topic: I agree with you actually, Abyssea leeching subtracts from the game 'experience.' Do I think they should take it away? No, because that part of the game 'experience' sucked.

[Meyi]

I'm done with this thread and its lowsy implications that Myself, Panthera and other like minded people are some kind of radical extremist group. Accusing us of trying to force everyone to go back to when it took 2 days to find a PT and 1 week to get a few Lv's.

That's because you are.



All we are asking for is some balance.

No, you're asking to forbid low level players from entering Abyssea and earning fast exp. To you, the slow grind is necessary. A balance would be increasing the outside world exp to a level that makes everyone happy and willing to go back.


If you can't grasp the idea of a healthy balance, then maybe stepping out of your perception of absolutism would do you some good.

Yes, it would be wise for you to listen to your own words of wisdom.


Bad players are bad players. They have nothing to do with how ridiculously fast it is to level up inside Abyssea.

What's this? Weren't you the one claiming that bad players (a.k.a. leeches) were because they failed to take long enough to level up and therefore didn't know how to play? Hmm...


Just because you proclaim yourself to be a "good, smart player" is no excuse to be spoon fed a Lv90 character. You should have to do the work, just like everyone else.

We already did. It's called leveling jobs to 75 for the last 8 years. Playing the game for the last 8 years.


Trying to justify the circumvention of how game genre's are meant to stay true to their style, just because you are "good" and other players that "suck" are the actual problem, is a VERY poor excuse. This attitude towards incompetence amongst a portion of the player base is very biased to an "elitist" point of view, but I'm not surprised to see such a cookie-cutter post. A post that seeks to stray away from the real issue and blame it on someone else.

GG. I challenge you to make a thread that is creative, innovative, or addresses issues that other like minded players can agree with. If you can make just one thread that can get some kind intelligent feedback... then, and only then, will I give you credit for your enormous post-count.

1. It's completely ridiculous to think that anyone with intelligence would strive for a large post count merely for the sake of having a large post count. GreatGuardian is truly intelligent and has a sophisticated way of getting his point across. He's not the one with a problem. He's not the one creating threads. It's your responsibility to present your call for change, not ours.

[Ravenmore]

Its not work. You said it your self it could take 2 days just to get a party or find people willing to do a party that you put to gether. There are very few complety new players joining the game at this stage. The exp grind and top heavy nature of the game thats been around since end of CoP has put off anyone that would have tried the game. When even game mag points that out or crap show like X-play push it people stay away.

The game is dated, only keeping the core players that don't like WoW or the wow clones sticking around. The job system of FF11 being the biggest reason most stay, no need to make another toon(in wow that is what they look like) go back though the same content not only to level but having to redo everything else you done. In FF11 once you finish a mission its good for the life of your char no matter what job you decided to take up along the way.

In todays game market its all about whats new and fresh and why even WoW has people jumping ship for whats is basicly the same game with differnt names. On top of that other games have massive ad runs pushing the games where SE seems really just want to run off word of mouth outside of Japan.

Me and other said it so many times now, gimps were every were at 75. They did the same as you did put thier own parties together and on the way to 75 people were lot less picky taking a invite from said gimps. You couldn't say anything to them if they were leaders, only things you could do was suck it up take what you could get or drop out and Blist them. You know the players i'm taking about lvl 75 with 3/5 af1 with str rings. Better yet the players that TP in heca and haste gear saying that it even out.

[Chocobits]

It appears Akujima has given up on a lost cause. I've been saying and saying that:

A) It's impossible to win this thread, since it's between 2 deeply seated camps.
B) It's an opinion war and nobody is going to change camps.
C) SE's introduction of GoV is a firm indication that they do, in fact want to better the exp grind experience by making positive changes.
D) As with above, improving the exp system outside of Abyssea will eliminate the need for leeching.
E) Faster exp does not diminish the skill level of the average player. Either they will ask questions/research after they burn up, continue to suck, or never touch the job again after it's 90. That's been happening since day 1 and speed of exp has nothing to do with the mindset and willingness or aptitude of each individual to pick up on their jobs.

The question I've asked 3x now (which has been completely glossed over by petty personal arguments) and I think is pretty much the heart of the entire argument:


Why are 75+ players entitled to higher exp per hour?

still hasn't been answered.

Unless someone can give a firm, irrefutable reason for the above, this entire thread is a gigantic load of hypocrisy and should be shut down.

Also, how did you think you were "winning" when you only had 2 vocal supporters the entire time, whose only supportive arguments were farfetched/irrelevant analogies? You lost this thread as soon as you titled it and clicked submit thread.

[Ravenmore]

In my opinion being 75 does not mean we are entitled to faster. Accross the board or not at all. SE seems to feel the same since with the EXP increase for outside of abysea you can hit 30 rather fast.

[Panthera]

THEY ACTUALLY CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING...

...gonna go out on a limb here, do you feel very strongly about this?

As before, you're merely being loud, cursing in bold all caps, using emotion rather than reason to win the point. This is a debate/discussion, I will not be drawn into a shouting match. Otherwise, it just comes down to who will use more exclamation points and the biggest font, which doesn't prove anything.

Shouting doesn't make your arguement stronger, it makes it weaker, and hurts your cause. I can see making the main points of a direct quote from SE in bold, or a word, perhaps even a sentence for emphasis. By all means, carry on. But even though you'll be shouting, let me assure you I won't hear you.

[Chocobits]

Panthera vs Greatguardian pseudo-intellectual bantering is boring me to tears. Respond to my points Panthera if any portion of your logic has an iota of legitimacy.

*edit*
Also, stop saying this thread is a debate. It was never a debate until you rolled in herpdy derpdy and started rambling about how everything you dislike = cheating.

*double edit*
This:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/8285-ffxi-should-not-be-this-easy?p=105131&viewfull=1#post105131

My post yesterday has more likes than this thread's OP has gotten in a week. Unpopular idea is unpopular. I'm ready for my cake. At the end of my testing, will I be missed?

[Greatguardian]

I don't shout. I'm simply used to having to bold important things around certain people (it knows who it is) because they pretty much don't read anything anyone else types unless it's bold/underlined/italic.

This is not a debate, however. There is no argument to be had. There is simply rhetoric and semantics. You may consider bypassing a portion of the EXP curve using an intentional and well-known game mechanic cheating, others don't. I may consider Leeching to be a subjective term that applies to anyone who is not pulling their weight in a group, whether they are level 30 or 90, whether their skills are 0 or capped, whether they've been playing for 10 days or 10 years, and others don't.

Either way, I think this entire thread, and all of the preceding threads on this same topic, are a complete waste of time. This is not something that is ever going to change, especially when the population is so severely split on the issue. Hell, the entire population could be adamantly against Abyssea exp and it may not change. I don't really want to hear about "Feedback", and "Making voices heard", because everyone heard the community's voice the first dozen times this same thread was made. They heard it in thousands and thousands of posts. There is not a single thing more that can be gleaned from making more threads like this and throwing the same worn out arguments at one another.

In the end, Abyssea EXP is fast EXP which allows weaker players to leech off of stronger players. I don't care if they're 30 or 90, this was the single best thing that could ever happen to 90% of the FFXI population. PUPs can actually get exp invites. People can show up to a party in their absolute shit gear and 4% total Haste and no one will kick them on the spot, because someone else will make up the slack somewhere. People who never would have stood a chance in competitive party play are able to gain as much EXP as anyone else because they are able to leech off of stronger, better geared players.

You don't need 2 Bards to EXP. You don't need Polearms or gtfo. That one DRK fulltiming a Wyvern Helm is not going to cut your EXP/hr from 25k to 8k. That WHM who refuses to use macros or change gear and barely cures is bearable because people have Temp Items that are restored at a decent rate. BLMs are no longer forced to solo/duo EXP from 50+. Beastmaster actually sees the light of day if only because Nazuna is stronger than your average gimp DD.

Yes. Abyssea promotes Leeching. The entire Abyssean EXP system is designed around Leeching. Level 30s leech. Level 90s leech. When I join a party and parse more than 75% of the entire alliance damage on Paladin, everyone else there is leeching off me. But I am fine with that. It does not negatively affect me in the slightest. I get the same amount of exp solo as I do in an alliance of 18 people.

Abyssea EXP, and ToTM, were an attempt to promote cooperation within the historically viciously competitive FFXI playerbase. And it worked. BG is probably the most mellow forum around now, since there's no reason to fight with anyone any more. Some people find it boring, since they practically lived off the competition. I think it's a nice change of pace. Instead of worrying about how someone else is getting their EXP, why don't we all just do our own thing?

[Arlan]

I don't shout. I'm simply used to having to bold important things around certain people (it knows who it is) because they pretty much don't read anything anyone else types unless it's bold/underlined/italic.

This is not a debate, however. There is no argument to be had. There is simply rhetoric and semantics. You may consider bypassing a portion of the EXP curve using an intentional and well-known game mechanic cheating, others don't. I may consider Leeching to be a subjective term that applies to anyone who is not pulling their weight in a group, whether they are level 30 or 90, whether their skills are 0 or capped, whether they've been playing for 10 days or 10 years, and others don't.

Either way, I think this entire thread, and all of the preceding threads on this same topic, are a complete waste of time. This is not something that is ever going to change, especially when the population is so severely split on the issue. Hell, the entire population could be adamantly against Abyssea exp and it may not change. I don't really want to hear about "Feedback", and "Making voices heard", because everyone heard the community's voice the first dozen times this same thread was made. They heard it in thousands and thousands of posts. There is not a single thing more that can be gleaned from making more threads like this and throwing the same worn out arguments at one another.

In the end, Abyssea EXP is fast EXP which allows weaker players to leech off of stronger players. I don't care if they're 30 or 90, this was the single best thing that could ever happen to 90% of the FFXI population. PUPs can actually get exp invites. People can show up to a party in their absolute shit gear and 4% total Haste and no one will kick them on the spot, because someone else will make up the slack somewhere. People who never would have stood a chance in competitive party play are able to gain as much EXP as anyone else because they are able to leech off of stronger, better geared players.

You don't need 2 Bards to EXP. You don't need Polearms or gtfo. That one DRK fulltiming a Wyvern Helm is not going to cut your EXP/hr from 25k to 8k. That WHM who refuses to use macros or change gear and barely cures is bearable because people have Temp Items that are restored at a decent rate. BLMs are no longer forced to solo/duo EXP from 50+. Beastmaster actually sees the light of day if only because Nazuna is stronger than your average gimp DD.

Yes. Abyssea promotes Leeching. The entire Abyssean EXP system is designed around Leeching. Level 30s leech. Level 90s leech. When I join a party and parse more than 75% of the entire alliance damage on Paladin, everyone else there is leeching off me. But I am fine with that. It does not negatively affect me in the slightest. I get the same amount of exp solo as I do in an alliance of 18 people.

Abyssea EXP, and ToTM, were an attempt to promote cooperation within the historically viciously competitive FFXI playerbase. And it worked. BG is probably the most mellow forum around now, since there's no reason to fight with anyone any more. Some people find it boring, since they practically lived off the competition. I think it's a nice change of pace. Instead of worrying about how someone else is getting their EXP, why don't we all just do our own thing?

this guy knows what he is talking about.

[Panthera]

You cannot say that I am cheating by 'leeching' any of my three accounts to have level 90 jobs. Functionally they are the same; that is, they are all me.

I don't neccessarally doubt they're your accounts originally, and that you're playing them as opposed to someone else. What's dubious is that having a 90 supposes you earned exp on each of them independantly, especially when by your own admission you didn't.


I can play on all three accounts on any job and nobody would be able to tell the difference between the newer characters and my old character if they didn't already know me.

You are cheating the second time around because you didn't show the same praise-worthy persistence and force of will that comes with leveling a job as you did the first time. Just because you earned exp on job X on character x the first time, doesn't mean you didn't cave in and cheat on character Y on job X, y, or z the second time.

Again, walking across the United States is an accompishment the first time and every time thereafter the same. Flying across the United States the first time, second time, or any time thereafter doesn't mean you're not cheating the accomplishment of "walking across the United States" even if you've done it once already. Accomplishments are not about the video game character that the person plays, but the character of a human being who plays a game.

So no, you didn't evade the learning process the first time through. But on the second time and on, you deprived those who earned their levels honestly by your leeching, and mispresented your second job/character and on as having been leveled honestly, but were not. Were you the kind of person that went through trials once and went through them again? Or did you decide, "I got a Lu Shang's the first time manually, botting through it the second time should be just as much of an accomplishment." What are you trying to say about yourself?--by which I mean, oneself, not "you"
personally.


I am in no way misleading anybody I come into contact with.

I give you that you earned exp on one job, but you cheated on another. You represent yourself truly one time, and falsely the second. I've earned every level on every job on my main as well as my alt without exception. I have an alt, and I fought every mob and actively participated in a way specific to or supported by the job(s) of my alt, without all this FOV/GOV leeching nonsense. Cheating is Cheating! Now, I only use this to mean 1) I am not the hypocrite that you contend, and 2) as an example of earning one's levels each time vs. earning them the first time, and not the second.

If you did buy an account and leech on jobs you've already leveled previously--and I'm only presenting this hypothetically--then you earned the exp on your first account, and you did not on the second. There's so little difference between the leeching and RMTing that they are as negligable. People should earn levels, or they should be done away with. Why earning levels is worthwhile I've already explained.


I have not deprived anybody of anything by leeching my alts.

It's not enough to say "I'm not depriving anyong of anything." You have to give examples proving that leeching doesn't deprive anyone of anything on your alts. Otherwise, I could just say "Leeching is bad, thread over." But I haven't. I've said exactly why leeching is cheating.

I've yet to see an irrefutable retort from you or anyone else as to how or why it doesn't. If it's your positition that it doesn't, you have to say why.


I am not evading learning any skill or game mechanic that I don't already know, despite having leveled many jobs recently that I had never played past level 37 before.

Ok, here you're saying that cheating isn't evasive because you learned it early the first time, so you shouldn't have to shortcut the exactly the same thing on a second characters. This is an admirable retort, even if it doesn't quite hit the mark. My rebuttal is that just because you did standard parties from 30 to 69 and particpated actively from say 70 to 90 in Abyssea on Character A on job X doesn't mean you didn't evade the same process if you leeched from 30 to 90 on Character B on job X the second time. There's more to evasion as a form of cheating than learning how to play. There's evading the determination and competence each time that the accomplishment of leveling entails.


I make no claims when I do join events as to how I leveled my characters or how skilled I am at playing them. In fact, the onus is on the people playing with me to not make unfounded assumptions about me based on their opinions. Nobody is being dishonest about it. Nobody is being mislead except for people who choose to walk around with blinders on. Abyssea has been around for some time now, and before that there were AB parties. It's safe to assume that a large portion of the population has 'leeched' one or more of the jobs that they play on.

From your verbal stumbling about, I can only guess that what you mean is that that the onus is on me to prove that you based upon your skills, you haven't earned your levels and therefore you've leeched?

If I invite someone that's 90, am I getting someone that can accurately and with great force attack high level monster, or someone who has no combat skills because of leeching or AFB? I've been aware of the sad existance of AFB for quite some time now. I know all too well that Abyssea leeching has been allowed for far too long. But that doesn't mean that I can not, should not, and do not expect that when I invite a level 90 that they can peform at the end game level.

Or are you really saying that one cannot expect quality players because of Abyssea leeching, and that it is a good thing? Are you suggesting that because of Astral Flow Burn and Abyssea leeching that I cannot assume that people don't know what they're doing? Are you sure you're really want to assert this? The only thing that's becoming clearer to me is that if you favor leeching, don't argue for it, you'll only hurt your cause.


Nobody is evading the skills you learn during traditional experience parties because quite frankly you don't learn much of anything by fighting a few select monsters over and over again for weeks or months.

Yeah, you learn the fundamentals of FFXI going AFK and watching reality tv eating vienna sausages from a can while looking to the horizon thinking one day you'll get your GED and everything will be ok, if only you could make the distinction between 3's, M's, W's, and E's.


I know somebody who has played PLD since at least 2006, who has completed an Aegis, who has been tanking in an HNM ls for three years. He leveled his PLD in traditional experience parties. This player joins events with the express intention of being main tank, many times suggesting party set ups that make him the sole tank. Despite having proper buffs, proper support, and good party set ups, this player cannot maintain shadows, keep hate, control a mob, manage his MP pool, or generally do what a PLD tank is supposed to be able to do, especially after 5 years of playing it.

Isn't that misleading? And doesn't misleading = cheating by definition? Despite him playing PLD the way he plays PLD, despite SE 'legitimizing' his play style, he has mislead many, many groups into thinking he can do something that he is incapable of doing.

Isn't that dishonest? And doesn't dishonest = cheating by definition? He claims to have skills that he learned while leveling his job and tanking HNMs, but is incapable of implementing these skills.

YES! This is a very good rebuttal. It's logical, non-abrasive, and impersonal. It's well
written without being arrogant or dismissive; it directly and accuratly takes my own suppositions, and then turns them against me, but without it being about me in a personal way. It has a premise, and then comes to a logical conclusion based upon a specific example. Likes this.

But not irrefutable.

Chest leeching and do-nothing leeching cannot and will not make someone get better at their job as they level up, be it Paladin or any other job. It is not supposed to teach you how to play your job. It's just teaches you that you can get to 90 if you have friends that are willing to tolerate someone who's good for little or nothing, and just don't expect much from their friends, whom they should expect the most of. I myself, and I'm sure many others have well, have known Paladins that have full MP and will not cure themselves at all, and then yell at the healer for letting them die, when the healer was really just trying to teach them a lesson. Let me put it to you this way. If I say, "I'm going to punch you in the face kinda slowly with my right hand so you should block with your left in exactly 3 seconds", and you don't, and we do this ten times, and you have a black eye, a broken nose, and 2 cracked teeth, does this mean that the learning process has failed you, or you've failed the process?

Allow me to reference an old joke as an analogy. Know what you call someone who scores a C- in Med School?:... Doctor. If they do that absolute minimum to make it through, and don't really have a firm grasp on what they're doing, than even simple procedures that are supposed to be painless can be torture to their patience. It doesn't mean that med school fails, it just means they're stupid (the would be doctor). Now, someone can have an MD, it's supposed to mean they are competent, but that doesn't stop the rate of malpractice suits. So, if someone says they're an MD, and should therefore be able to do something, which they really should, but in actuallity cannot, does in fact make them misleading and dishonest. Incidentally, the fact that both your tank story and mine are bad enough. The fact that the doctor story is true is worse!

Now, let me tie the analogy to the tank situation. Traditional 6 man parties or 18 man alliances teach the same fundamentals to those who actively take part in the battle in a way specific to or supported by the job. Whether they've learned from those fundamentals are quite something else. Someone volenteering for or accepting tank responsiblities because they're passing themselves off as competent because they've attained max level from non-cheating means remains fraudulent, cheating and dishonest. In other words, leeching never teaches. Leveling does neccessarally mean you've learned, it means you are supposed to have learned.

[Kimble]

So wait, I leveled WHM on my main the first time, way before TOAU, and now I burned my alts WHM to 90, therafore, im still a cheater and dont know how to play WHM on my mule? Or if I use my mule to get into a shout group and tell people I know how to play WHM, im lying to people?

[Chocobits]

Panthera secretly agrees with everything I have said, which is why he doesn't refute it and is blatantly ignoring me.

Panthera is also against the level requirement increase and in favor of Abyssea leeching, which is evident by his complete refusal to offer rebuttal.

So now that we have established Panthera is a keywhoring mofo like the rest of us, does that still leave anyone in Akujima's camp?

[Zyeriis]

Panthera secretly agrees with everything I have said, which is why he doesn't refute it and is blatantly ignoring me.

Panthera is also against the level requirement increase and in favor of Abyssea leeching, which is evident by his complete refusal to offer rebuttal.

So now that we have established Panthera is a keywhoring mofo like the rest of us, does that still leave anyone in Akujima's camp?
Don't know (don't care) but we can always add a third wheel to this "debate" and start another argument about the evils of paying to leech. I'm taking the "pay for exp? screw that" stance. I called it first. Then we can have Tybudx go off-topic, make a mistake, get called out on it, and then have him subsequently try to blame the off-topicness on the other person again while he flails about trying to avoid the mistake. Then watch him throw angry words around to try to cover it up by kicking dirt on it. You know, like a dog hiding a bone that it stole from the kitchen table.

Well I'm done throwing fuel on the "fire", I'll be over there, rolling my eyes (or sleeping, yeah, that sounds good).

[Ravenmore]

How many times does it have to be said EXP only teachs how to exp. Once you get the tageting of IT++ out your head tanking or have more then one mage is not needed. In exp bouncing hate around between all the melees is better then cure bombing one player over and over. Your trying to say the game is hard or is confussing when its very basic. Get over your self game was never hard. The whole pld not cureing them selfs is a joke plds should not be wasting thier time trying to cure them selfs, they should try to get shadows back up. PLDs only used /war in dyna so they could voke the mob before waking it. So right there exp only teach a pld how to play in exp. Before abyssea people that were not brain dead didn't use /war. Lots of plds got a wake up call when they hit old endgame. Take a exp pld and throw him at JoL with /war and he would die just as fast Soul eater spaming drk with zerk up. Cause no exp mob needs a MDB biuld.

[Ravenmore]

I seen what he was saying clear as day so did most every one else.

[Akujima]

@GG: "It" ??? Very nice impersonal approach. But it's nice to see you've decided to LvUP "Shepherd" and rally up all the sheep behind you, because they're too afraid of the big bad wolf. Just for the record, I never said it was "cheating", I said it was poor game design.

[Greatguardian]

Because I was totally responding to you.

[Ravenmore]

Aku so if we all got behind you we would be wolfs?

[Romanova]

All I read from panthera is: "if you are bad in this game, and don't shout it to everyone, you are a dirty dirty cheater."

and achievements are srs business

[rog]

Before abyssea people that were not brain dead didn't use /war.Think you got that backwards.

[Chocobits]

Aku so if we all got behind you we would be wolfs?
Lonewolfs. Normal wolves hunt in packs. You can't have a pack when you're baying at the moon by yourself.

[Ravenmore]

Your right rog people that were not brain dead didn't use pld at all.

[rog]

Your right rog people that were not brain dead didn't use pld at all.They also subbed war, just fine. /nin was always overrated.

[Chocobits]

Don't know (don't care) but we can always add a third wheel to this "debate" and start another argument about the evils of paying to leech. I'm taking the "pay for exp? screw that" stance. I called it first. Then we can have Tybudx go off-topic, make a mistake, get called out on it, and then have him subsequently try to blame the off-topicness on the other person again while he flails about trying to avoid the mistake. Then watch him throw angry words around to try to cover it up by kicking dirt on it. You know, like a dog hiding a bone that it stole from the kitchen table.

Well I'm done throwing fuel on the "fire", I'll be over there, rolling my eyes (or sleeping, yeah, that sounds good).

I wonder if anyone has caught on yet that I'm not whiteknighting leeches or defendering justice. It would've been more apparent (or transparent?) if the forum police hadn't deleted all my muffin related content from this thread.

A successful troll doesn't allow his arbitrarily decided opponent to realize they've been beaten, so that he can milk the topic for all it is worth. Once the opponent realizes defeat, the troll fails because he won't be fed any more. This thread, however is starting to degenerate into the stuff that even trolls won't even touch. It's been picked clean twice through. I may have to retreat into my cave for the winter. Even trolls hibernate to conserve strength, you know?

[Panthera]

All I read from panthera is: "if you are bad in this game, and don't shout it to everyone, you are a dirty dirty cheater."

and achievements are srs business

I'm quite sure that is all you got out of it.

[Romanova]

I'm quite sure that is all you got out of it.

you're right, I lied. I also learned you are not a doctor.

[Chocobits]

I'm quite sure that is all you got out of it.

See I got so much more out of it than that. I took all the random one-sided analogies and I put them together and I realized you were telling a story.

A story about a man who was going through med school. One of the students he was paired up with stole some of his work and used it in their thesis. They cheated to get their PhD and, embittered, the man dropped out. Not soon afterward, his fiance left him for a man who never went to school and was elevated to a well paying position because his father owned the company.

Exasperated, lonely and filled with raaaaage, he embarked on a quest to go forth and exterminate laziness, corruption, cheating and free rides by utilizing the only venue open to him:

The internet.

[Greatguardian]

I'm quite sure that is all you got out of it.

I'm curious.

How good are you at FFXI? How well do you know the game, and fundamental mechanics? Do you gear swap, and how much? How fast are your reaction times? Do you carry PDT/MDT sets? Do you keep Food, Reraise, Sneak, Invis, and other necessary consumables on your person when you play? What Atmas and Abyssites do you have? How about Mission line accesses? Do your 2-hand melees have a working 5-hit? Do you have any WoE/Empyrean/Magian weapons?

Because, as far as you're concerned, that's all that matters. I might be good at FFXI, or I might be bad as far as you know. Either way it won't affect you one bit unless we are in a group together. And really, if you're picking up people you don't know for a group and aren't ready for them to be utterly useless (or prepared to replace them if they look like they might be), you don't have anyone to blame but yourself. This has been the case since ... forever.

[Panthera]

the smart player will learn a lot more about how to play his job in few days of training on aby NMs (different ones,not brewing) will learn a lot more effithan 3month of stupid xp monsters (even if he sux on the first fight)

Your diction and spelling not withstanding, you think it's a better idea to have someone leech to get to 90 and then throw them at an NM? The reason that it makes more sense to have people learn the basics on an exp monster than a notorious monster is that there's less at stake with the former than the latter. Even first tier or stand alone NMs might drop something someone wants, and no one wants to waste time with slow fight or defeats because someone doesn't know what they're doing because they leeched to get to 90. And furthermore, I'd wager that a leecher "sux" for more than just the first notorious monster you threw him at.

Depending on what you fight, you learn the fundamentals on experience points mobs. Even Imps teach that life-saving cures comes first, using negative status removal spells comes second, and buffing and debuffing after that. It teaches you to stay out of AOE if you're a mage, and other core concepts.

Yes, you are exposed to more different things at end game Abyssea which you must grasp to succeed, but that's exactly why it's a terrible idea to cut your teeth there. You want to learn fundamentals first, and then the various quirks of each NM, and the entire convoluted mechanics of Abyssea second, bit by bit as you go. As an analogy, sure, you could take 23 hours in college, but for most people, it spells disaster. Sometimes, learning less means learning more, and learning more means learning less.


I haven't consider getting a job @75 an accomplishment since colibri burn exist unless it was your first job (you did the lol LBs) a 6 year old could grind xp to 75 ( I know people who lvled some of their job by letting their children play them)

IMO getting another job at 75(now 90) was just a (boring time sink) mean to do content in a different way (not always being the same job) you can get satisfaction getting your lvl75 outside Abyssea , you can even lvl it to 90 outside abyssea if you want (that might be worth being considered an accomplishment)

Between the parenthesis and sentence fragments, I gather from this that you're saying that you don't think it's an accomplishment because it's too easy. But you're taking for granted what challenge there is to be had from exping. Players did die, and entire parties did wipe. This is not possible without the presence of challenge, or it wouldn't happen. That's like saying,"oh, it's completely safe! the sniper not withstanding, of course."

Part of the challenge was precisely the grind aspect, which you again take for granted. If we removed leveling and had poweful characters from the get go, having powerful characters wouldn't mean as much, because they were always that way. Being at the top of the mountain is not the achievement; getting there is. That's why they call it achieving the summit.


I leech in abyssea pt so that i can tell people "Hey, now i can come This job"
I recently leeched my war, few hour after that leech PT I was able to proc all the RED !! we couldn't proc before, we finished empys faster because we got 100% KI.

Yes, cheating to get to 90 means you have a 90 you can play. You're using the "ends justify the means" arguement, saying having a 90 is all that matters, but there are previously explained, broader implications.

[Panthera]

So wait, I leveled WHM on my main the first time, way before TOAU, and now I burned my alts WHM to 90, therafore, im still a cheater and dont know how to play WHM on my mule? Or if I use my mule to get into a shout group and tell people I know how to play WHM, im lying to people?

Yes. You did learn how to play on your first time through, but forgot how to be persistant the second time through. There's much to do in FFXI, all of which takes time, and I'd rather not waste time with people who burn out easily. I am just as concerned with the quality of the player as I am the quality of the character that they play. I would rather trust myself with hard working people than people who take short cuts.

[Panthera]

you're right, I lied. I also learned you are not a doctor.
Didn't say I was.

[Ravenmore]

Again targeting IT++ was what caused 90% or wipes in exp. If you got 2 IT++ beating on your party you would wipe, but 2 VTs no problem. Please also stop acting like there a massive amount of completly new players that have never fought most of the mobs in the game. One of my LSs best whms leach it up about 2 months ago and was as good if not better then every other whm in the LS. Know why hes been playing the role of whm for the past 3 years on rdm. Every job in the game right now can fill many differnt roles. Right now blu is more of a jack of all trades then rdm, in a party I can out heal rdm, out nuke (magical nuke), damn sure can out tank them since SE came out the blue one day and took all of rdms hate tools away. I master all those roles outside of EXP on NMs.

[Akujima]

Being at the top of the mountain is not the achievement; getting there is. That's why they call it achieving the summit.


Having a Helicopter fly you up near the summit of Mt. Everest (as high as a chopper can go) saying you reached the summit, is BS and nobody will officially recognize your efforts.

[Akujima]

Again targeting IT++ was what caused 90% or wipes in exp. If you got 2 IT++ beating on your party you would wipe

If you wiped on 2 IT++, your mage didn't know how to sleep (or had poor enfeebling and reaction time), or your THF didn't know how to evasion tank.


EDIT: Please stop with the "I know someone who just leeched and he's already a pro at FFXI!!!" which is just hearsay and provides no proof.

[Ravenmore]

Basic understanding of how the game works does more then level in old exp parties.

[Chocobits]

Yes. You did learn how to play on your first time through, but forgot how to be persistant the second time through. There's much to do in FFXI, all of which takes time, and I'd rather not waste time with people who burn out easily. I am just as concerned with the quality of the player as I am the quality of the character that they play. I would rather trust myself with hard working people than people who take short cuts.

Define short cuts?

Webster defines shortcut as:

a route more direct than the one ordinarily taken

This game is full of shortcuts, some of those are literal.

If you take a Chocobo to Oztroja, that is a shortcut.

If you Tele-Mea > FoV Repatriation (or Cruor Warp)> OP Warp to Qufim to get to the Shinryu, that is also a shortcut.

If you take that little path in Tahrongi that kind of sorta saves time getting through the rocky area, that's also (sort of) a shortcut.

If you realize you've forgotten a scroll of Warp (which is also a shortcut), and instead use a Mhaura earring to warp you next to the Nomad Moogle so you can sub BLM and warp back to Jeuno so that you can shout about the evils of Abyssea leeching more quickly, that is a shortcut.

All of those save time. They get you to your destination faster than the game originally intended. Are those the lazy man's way of getting around? You bet. Nobody likes unnecessary timesinks. Are any of those cheating? Nope. As the game advances, transportation has become a non-issue because the devs listened carefully to our getting around woes.

Before ToAU, WoTG, Abyssea, level sync and SMN burns were even a notion, people were finding ways to exp faster than normal or complaining that they couldn't exp fast enough. I had my very first version of the "meripo" setup in KRT in 2005, on VT mobs. I chuckled when ToA came out and people decided to lock in the eventual meripo setup for years to come, much to the displeasure of BLM, PUP, BLU, DRK, WHM and whatever other jobs I'm forgetting because I never got to party with them.

So the speed at which we exp has been steadily increasing since the introduction of ToAU. It wasn't "cheating" to prefer Lesser Colibri at level 54 instead of Robber Crabs. It wasn't "cheating" having 2 BRDS and 4 SAMS in Mamook right after the 2H update (although it was pretty cheesy). It certainly wasn't cheating when an army of BLM, fed up with non-invites mass pulled in Mount Zha for 30k/hr.

Fast forward to today. All jobs have an equal opportunity to level a job, and do so efficiently. It's still not cheating. Shortcut =/= cheating. Shortcuts are there to improve efficiency so that we have more time to enjoy our game the way we want. Are you really saying that we learned anything mindlessly fighting crabs/beetles/bats for 40 levels pre-ToAU? I learned that:

Jet Stream HURTS, and that not having a dispel on the other 2 mobs cut your exp/hr in half. I learned that within 15 minutes of my first camp, but I put in an additional 400+ hours on those mobs to REALLY make sure it hammered home.

Undoing Abyssea leeching with the game in its current state just reverts us back to that job biased, slower than molasses grinding that we didn't like before.

I STILL don't understand how taking a shortcut to the only level that matters in the game is cheating, or grind to 75+ before we're entitled to a bigger chunk of exp.

I'll tell you what:
Volunteer yourself to have all your jobs reverted to 30, and go exp them back up in Zilart onry areas, then get on the soapbox and call us lazy for not doing it.

[Panthera]

As for Panthera and his assertion that hitting max level was an accomplishment, it hasn't been an accomplishment to have a max level character since ToAU at the latest if not earlier.

The thing that you don't seem to understand is that by their very nature things that were once an accomplishment in an MMO become easier to achieve over time and thus no longer become an accomplishment worth noting.

With the introduction of better gear and abilities and better understanding of game mechanics what used to be difficult for ever the elite level players eventually will become easy enough that even the most casual of casuals will be able to accomplish it.

(My bold).

You're contradicting yourself. Here's why.

To paraphrase, what you say're is that having a pre-ToAU was an accomplishment in an absolute sense. Post-ToAU, it was no longer an accomplishment in an absolute sense. Then you say that because of various factors, things that used to be accomplishments are less so now in a relative sense. You can't have it both ways. They have to be either accomplishments then but not now, or big accomplishments then and smaller accomplishments now, but not both. As an aside, saying "worth nothing" qualifies the accomplishment to be as as naught for it to have value, in an absolute vs. relative sense.

It was never my contention that getting to 90 didn't get easier over time; I understand that perfectly. clearly it did. Getting a 75 pre ToAU was a bigger accomplishment than post, but it was still an accomplishment. Getting to 90 by leveling ones job in a way specific to or supported by that job in Abyssea is less so, but still has some value. Standing around AFK is not an accomplishment at all, such that it takes away from the meaning of having a 90 from those who put forth effort.

[Ravenmore]

Getting to max level was not a accomplishment at any time in the game. People leeched long before abyssea. Some afk leech, other leech by using poor job/subs combos, more did it with really poor gear. They may have gotten max level, but they still did it on the backs of others. Something else Drk k.club zerging of HNM like kirin in under a min using JAs and items that been in the game since CoP would you say thats cheating since its also a short cut.

[Chocobits]

Akujima and Panthera should review all of their thumbs up in this and similar threads. Do you see a patte(0)rn? That's indicative of the popularity of your ideas. I keep hoping beyond hope that a community rep will chime in one day with nothing but "Lawl no".

I understand that it sounds like you're both pent up because the game has changed and lost whatever "magic" it held for you, but umad for all the wrong reasons and it shows with all of your p(0)st ratings. If this was a live meeting, I'd put it to a vote, the most democratic of traditions for solving a dispute. Looking at # of likes on the OP, and # of views on the thread, combined with the general feeling of the thread so far, the vote would go something like this:

12 in favor, a thousand or so against, and a few thousand abstaining (cuz they're too busy exping and enjoying the game to care about these trifles).

If you want to talk to like-minded individuals about your concerns/rants, you should create a google docs with your 11 friends and swap ideas that way. The rest of us do not want.

[Ravenmore]

Climbing Mt. Everest is a peronal accomplishment, since your not the first, maybe not even the first of the season. If you see your self getting to max level as a accomplishment great good for you thats still only holds value to you. Others see hitting max level as finaly getting to start the real content.

[Akujima]

Akujima and Panthera should review all of their thumbs up in this and similar threads. Do you see a patte(0)rn?

Yes, I see the pattern. It's turning into what I expected: Leeches clinging on and sucking the life out of the thread.

[Chocobits]

Or even think of it this way:

Everyone and their neighbor as climbed Mt Everest once already. There's little repeat value in repeating it, so sometimes the helicopter ride is a nice way to get to the top and enjoy the view. Not actually climbing the mountain doesn't make it any less breathtaking when you're looking down from the highest point. Some people enjoy the challenge and the exhilaration of the journey. Some are just there for the view. You who fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life should realize that your sense of accomplishments, while justified, are yours alone to treasure, as they should be. Those that don't treasure your accomplishments, or even their own, are also justified in doing so.

[Chocobits]

Yes, I see the pattern. It's turning into what I expected: Leeches clinging on and sucking the life out of the thread.

You still think this thread had life, or a chance. Until you realize that fallacy, you'll never improve as a person and just go through life thinking everyone that shuns your opinions has a character flaw. As far as sucking, I see a lot of it, but there's a certain irony when the leeches are required to say "Hey, you suck too much".

[Ravenmore]

One thing you should know is I only have 2 jobs at 90 both 75 before abyssea with soloing my blu from 55 to 75. While I have leech my a couple of my more niche subs my main subes were 40+ before the first level increase. My drg was covered by my blu being 75 and my sam being 75. Took NIN to 46 long before it was anounced that we were getting 99 and my rdm was already 60. Main reason I don't have more is my drg was my first fav job and provided me with a fun solo job, and my current fav job blu is far more flexable and needed then anyother job I think I would enjoy at endgame.

[Chocobits]

Actually, to be fair Akujima, I gave every opportunity for life to be breathed back into this thread. All you had to do was respond to ANY of the numerous, valid and well substantiated points I made throughout. You ignored them all (even the non-troll ones), because they were contrary to what you believe.

A healthy discussion isn't a circlejerk where everyone hifives each other for everything they say. Those that ignore opposing views (or worse, those that somehow delude themselves into thinking they have beaten the opposition when that is CLEARLY not the case and make self proclamations of victory) aren't contributing at all, whether or not they started the topic.

While I was a bit rude with the google docs thing, and probably 3 dozen or more other comments, I genuinely think getting together with the (incredibly small) group of people who think like you might turn up some juicy topics for you to enjoy. You won't find that here because you represent a (ridiculously) small minority here.

And then after a fabulous get together with those like-minded individual resulting in a truly cathartic experience, you can all play "Let's count the rings on our straight-jackets" when the wards haul you off for happy med time. :)

[Leonlionheart]

Yes, I see the pattern. It's turning into what I expected: Leeches clinging on and sucking the life out of the thread.

Dude, where do you not get it that leeches aren't always bad.

Most people who leech and want to play a job (like myself, 30-90 WHM in a handful of hours) will read up on how to gear and play it efficiently. FFXIAH has forums where there are many people willing to tell you where you should go with your gear, and will give you help on macros. Macros can aslo be found on wikia or gamerscape. This group of people will leech a job and still play it better than tons of your 'legit' levelers. This is the majority of the people who truly enjoy the game.

The bad leeches will actually quit the game because they won't get enjoyment past getting all 90's since they don't know how to play; this is the minority.

Like I said before, no matter how much evidence you see you won't change your mind because you want to QQ just sooooooo badly.

[Tamoa]

Depending on what you fight, you learn the fundamentals on experience points mobs. Even Imps teach that life-saving cures comes first, using negative status removal spells comes second, and buffing and debuffing after that. It teaches you to stay out of AOE if you're a mage, and other core concepts.


Browsing quickly through the last pages of this thread, and I just have to comment on this.

Grinding exp in oldfashioned exp parties doesn't teach you the above. It's called common sense. If you know whichever mob you are fighting can use an AoE spell or move, you stay out of range when you're a mage. If you don't know - well you stay out of range anyway, just in case! And if you cast Blindna on the war when he's @ 25% hp instead of a cure, then you have no business being on whm or rdm. Funny thing is - I still see people do this today, people that I know have played whm or rdm since well before Abyssea. And coming across players on jobs that use some form of magic but don't carry something like echo drops, is almost a daily occurrence. Again, people that have been playing for a long time, maining something like pld (when that was still a relevant job).

Point is, grinding exp on pink birds and whatnot, doesn't teach you much if anything at all. Common sense and willingness to learn is what it's about.

[Akujima]

Point is, grinding exp on pink birds and whatnot, doesn't teach you much if anything at all. Common sense and willingness to learn is what it's about.


EXP is based on the idea of training and practice. The word "experience" by it's very definition cannot be argued.

People don't join the army with one physical and that's it. They're doing push-ups and ALOT more every single day in the army. It's called exercising your job. Most people don't pick up a guitar and play some Jimmy Hendrix flawlessly as their first song. People don't run marathons without a $#!% load of training beforehand. You may doubt these facts because this is a video game, but the same rule of thumb will still apply.

It's just self flattery to think that you're already a professional the minute you play a job at Max Lv for the first time.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I was a professional DD the minute I played it at max level because DDing isn't complicated.

[Akujima]

I was a professional DD the minute I played it at max level because DDing isn't complicated.

So then direct yourself over to rog's thread, about how FFXI is too easy.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Learning how to perform a role was never hard unless you were incompetent to begin with.

[Tamoa]

Being able to remove status ailments and keeping haste up, requires practice? Being able to sleep an add or 2, requires practice? Meleeing a mob, maybe turning if necessary, requires practice? Really? I'm sorry but I disagree, it only requires you to pay attention and use some of that common sense I mentioned before.

[Akujima]

Being able to remove status ailments and keeping haste up, requires practice? Being able to sleep an add or 2, requires practice? Meleeing a mob, maybe turning if necessary, requires practice? Really? I'm sorry but I disagree, it only requires you to pay attention and use some of that common sense I mentioned before.


You're claiming that your ability to perform these actions, has already reached its potential without any prior experience.

[Saefinn]

I think you can learn a certain amount from parties, I mean if you're nuking like hell, you're going to get hate so you'll learn to try and avoid hate even if it takes a few deaths to do so. But there's still plenty you can be ignorant towards, such as crowd control, when somebody in a party links the first thing I notice people try to do is leg it (and end up dying) or the party splits in two when there's at least one person in the party (usually me) who can sleep the mob. Even when I shout 'sleep', it doesn't necessarily sink in and they attack the mob. I'm the experimental type, so I take advantage of parties to experiment (without detriment to the party), but I realise not everybody is the experimental type. I find if I am experimental then at least I'm creating my own play style and people have no need to tell me how to play my job.

NMs can be good practice, I don't think levelling up the slow way will teach you the best way to help a party kill a NM, as a mage not only is it important that people stay alive and keep their health up but that status effects are removed and your MP is kept up and you've got to be tactical about everything. If you're just nuking or just healing in an exp party then you're not going to necessarily perform brilliantly well, which you can pretty much get away with in any exp party. I think with any job a person should practice with it and learn what they can do and how they can do it. I don't think whether it matters if you do an exp party and experiment that way or leech to 90 first and do it. Personally I found the former easier, but each to his own. I think both scenarios can create people who don't know how to play their job properly.

[Tamoa]

You're claiming that your ability to perform these actions, has already reached its potential without any prior experience.

Prior experience with what? The job? Or whatever it is that you're fighting?

You don't need experience in casting Paralyna if you are playing whm and you see "Monster starts casting Paralyga", or "Player is paralyzed". You don't need experience in casting CureV if the war's hp bar is @ 50%. You don't need experience in playing mnk or any other DD job to be able to turn if you see "The cockatrice readies Baleful Gaze". You don't need experience in playing blm to cast Stun if you see "Apademak starts casting Thunder V". You may need some experience in fighting the specific mobs/NMs, or read up/ask about them before the fight, but that's hardly the same thing.

[Saefinn]

Prior experience with what? The job? Or whatever it is that you're fighting?

You don't need experience in casting Paralyna if you are playing whm and you see "Monster starts casting Paralyga", or "Player is paralyzed". You don't need experience in casting CureV if the war's hp bar is @ 50%. You don't need experience in playing mnk or any other DD job to be able to turn if you see "The cockatrice readies Baleful Gaze". You don't need experience in playing blm to cast Stun if you see "Apademak starts casting Thunder V". You may need some experience in fighting the specific mobs/NMs, or read up/ask about them before the fight, but that's hardly the same thing.

If you're fighting specific mobs/NMs there will always be a first time, so you will be inexperienced. So a level of what you'll be doing is without prior experience, and reading up on them is therefore necessary as you say. I do it before any NM, "Paralyga", "Doom", "Petrify", I can automatically know how important my -na spells will be having never done the fight.

[Nacht]

Different people will have several levels of intelligence.
For a smart player, no, they are not going to learn anything about playing a job in a shitty exp party. They already know this information from playing their other jobs and reading etc.
For the mildly intelligent player, they probably won't learn much about playing a job in an exp party. They have experience from their other jobs etc.
For retarded players, they won't learn anything about playing a job in an exp party. They're too stupid to learn anything.

[Panthera]

Since you have said that these points have been addressed, I guess we can assume that you have no real response to them and have therefore conceded them.
With all due respect, what's going to be ignored are your arguements if you start shouting.

Italics are great, bold if you must if you can use restraint. An exlamation mark is fine when it's called for, but as Roger Ebert said, the only time he's ever used three exlamation marks in his entire career are when he talked about Megatron in the original live action Transformers, because Megatron is just a three exlamation mark kinda guy. All joking aside, the use of caps is shouting, and bold caps far worse.

Further, not everything and everyone in the thread are worth replying to. Some are merely trolls. Some posts don't just have flawed logic, they have no logic at all; there's just nothing to reply to. Some, and by no means all, are so poorly written they aren't worth taking seriously, that putting effort into a reply when they didn't put any in in the first doesn't make much sense. Further, some are so abrasive and dismissive in tone that they're just trolling, trying to the same angry, shouting reaction from you that it's just best to put them on ignore list, and OP would do well to heed this. Some of your points are good and worth addressing, but I can do without the shouting.


My definition of cheating in terms of leveling is using third party programs to do your levelling for you (people do use curebots, so this is actually there), or altering your character data to fix your level at whatever you want it to be. Buying accounts is cheating. Keying boxes does not meet this definition, therefore it is not cheating.

I'm really glad you brought this up.

Your meaning of cheating ignores the meanings plural of the word cheating. You are absolutely correct that third party leveling programs are cheating, and I'm glad that you recognize that. Similarly, do-nothing leeching is cheating because the leveling doesn't represent the leech's own work. Is there really anyone who is actually in favor of that? But you were talking about keymasters, and I'll address that.

Low-level keymastering is cheating because you're not leveling up in a way specific to or supported by your job, as I've said, as well as other definitions as well, which I've also already explained. Again, just becuase you aren't cheating according to one meaning, doesn't mean you aren't cheating according to others.


Using third party programs to choose what fish you hooked and instantly set its hp to 0 is cheating. Being able to see VNMs while they're still in their unaggrod state is cheating. RMT is cheating. See, I can define terms to my benefit, too, and mine is closer to SE's definition.

You do have a reasonable, but not infallible, grasp on what cheating is conceptually. However, I never defined the term cheating. The meanings plural of the word cheating were around before I used them. According to a dictionary website:...

cheat   
[cheet] Show IPA
–verb (used with object)
1.to defraud; swindle: He cheated her out of her inheritance.
2.to deceive; influence by fraud: He cheated us into believing him a hero.
3.to elude; deprive of something expected: He cheated the law by suicide.

I merely applied the definitions and the concepts to explain why leeching is cheating, and they're a perfect fit, if I may say. The real problem is that SE's rules for what cheating is and is not don't address what cheating really is in this context. You want to be closer to what cheating actually means, not what SE thinks it is, as they may not necessarally be close. Again, if there were a body-building competition, and for whatever reason, the use of steroids were explicity allowed, that doesn't mean that those who take steroids aren't cheating, and that doesn't meant they aren't cheating
those that don't use them. This is a key point, because keymasters don't just cheat, they cheat me and those who level in real way. In this analogy, the rules just don't make sense, as they don't support what cheating is conceptually. Again, just because it isn't against the rules, doesn't mean it's not cheating.


I leveled my rng from 20 to 56 via campaign ops and xp scrolls. Did I cheat by doing that? I sure didn't go out and get oldschool xp parties.

You haven't completely made a connection between the two. I am not obligated to make your arguements for you. You tell me? How and why are doing those not cheating by definions (plural now!) and how does that make keymastering not cheating, and why? I'd like to know.


As to the RPG element; Sure, xp is a key factor in all of them. But when you have one character that you want to use to do something different, do you take him through all the areas in the game that you've been through and catch him up like that? No, you slap him in the party with your top characters, go to the spot in the game where the monsters give a ton of xp, and use your strong characters to tear through them like paper and skyrocket your weak character's levels.


Yes, this would level up the characters quickly. But in those games, the weaker characters aren't opening chests, and I'm pre-supposing they were participating in the battle by fighting monsters, or being fought by them. Again, chests don't try to kill you, that's part of why it's leeching and therefore cheating.


Some RPGs even level your characters while they're out of party (e.g. Chrono Trigger).

It is my assessment that yes, those characters were do-nothing leeches, that much should be obvious. The experienced gained by the lower level members did not reflect their own work at all. And I'm interested to know if you think do nothing leeches are OK, as you've only addressed keymasters specifically, but not do-nothing leeches. It would seem to be, but I'd like to hear that from you. You cannot say that they aren't leeching and therefore aren't cheating in the one and not the other.

That the game has it built-in doesn't mean it isn't cheating. Using a non RPG game analogy, there's Warp Whistles in Mario 3, the original Super Mario had warp pipes, etc. Activision's famous cheat codes, supported by the game by design, are still cheats! They don't pretend that they're not. They are short-cuts that completely evade, they are cheating. There's a funny bit about this on College Humor that explains it. http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6180043/the-problem-with-warp-whistles

It's not that you got to the final level of Mario(and notice how we're still talking about "levels"), it's how you got there. Suppose the game supported warping from the first level to the last. There's a difference between saying,"I saw the Super Mario Credits," which isn't really winning, and "I beat every single level of of Super Mario."


Being able to use strong characters to level weak characters has always been a part of many games in the genre, even in SE games.

That still doesn't mean that the near-convention isn't cheating. If most body building competition explicitly allowed steroids as a convention does't mean it's not cheating in each and every instance.

As I've said before, this game, Final Fantasy XI, actually makes it so that characters who are lower level than the highest party member are penalized in exp, and as far as monster exp goes, it's the same way in Abyssea as well, to the best of my knowledge. Given the penalty, I'd say SE actually discourages this in the context of FFXI exping. I'd like to hear from SE why level 30 characters, who's negligible contribution to a battle against a monster that's almost level 100 should be allowed to get 5000 experience points for a whopping 5 mobs. Why have an exp level difference penalty in some cases, but not others? It's inconsistent.

I really appreciate that you brought this up. You don't evade what RPGs are, you address it intelligently. I've enjoyed this exchange, Khiinroye. I eagerly await your rebuttal.

[Panthera]

Browsing quickly through the last pages of this thread, and I just have to comment on this.

Grinding exp in oldfashioned exp parties doesn't teach you the above. It's called common sense.

If you know whichever mob you are fighting can use an AoE spell or move, you stay out of range when you're a mage. If you don't know - well you stay out of range anyway, just in case! And if you cast Blindna on the war when he's @ 25% hp instead of a cure, then you have no business being on whm or rdm.

Funny thing is - I still see people do this today, people that I know have played whm or rdm since well before Abyssea. And coming across players on jobs that use some form of magic but don't carry something like echo drops, is almost a daily occurrence.

Again, people that have been playing for a long time, maining something like pld (when that was still a relevant job).

Point is, grinding exp on pink birds and whatnot, doesn't teach you much if anything at all.

Common sense and willingness to learn is what it's about.

(My bold)

Common sense really means one of two things: good judgement, or intuition. Someone standing in front of a door where people are trying to walk in and out of showing no "common sense," to mean that they are showing poor judgement.

In the sense that common sense is "intuition," I don't believe there's such a thing in this context. Man and many creatures are born as a Tabula Rasa, a blank slate, knowing absolutely nothing. A baby deer will walk right up to a predator, as its mother watches on in terror. The baby deer has no way of knowing that the predator is about to have an easy meal. The mother deer knows because she's seen it before. No one knows what AOE is until they've learned it either from reading about it, or from experience, no one "just knows to stay out of AOE because it's common sense."

Colibri do not teach you everything, but it's hyperbolic to suggest that's the only anyone has ever fought in their entire job leveling career. If they did, this is a case where the process has failed the player. If the player doesn't learn from opportunities, then the player has failed the process. The leveling path is still supposed to prepare players for end game by giving them the fundamentals. It is about good judgement and willingness to learn, and I would add, the ability to learn.

I appreciate your contribution nevertheless, Tamoa.

[Arlan]

You're claiming that your ability to perform these actions, has already reached its potential without any prior experience.

Actually, Tamoa is claiming that it doesn't take that long to learn these basic actions at all.
And I agree with him.
It doesn't take that long to learn these basic actions, specially for a new player since all it needs a little explaining and being able to pay attention for the right times.

[Pharaun]

(My bold).

You're contradicting yourself. Here's why.

To paraphrase, what you say're is that having a pre-ToAU was an accomplishment in an absolute sense. Post-ToAU, it was no longer an accomplishment in an absolute sense. Then you say that because of various factors, things that used to be accomplishments are less so now in a relative sense. You can't have it both ways. They have to be either accomplishments then but not now, or big accomplishments then and smaller accomplishments now, but not both. As an aside, saying "worth nothing" qualifies the accomplishment to be as as naught for it to have value, in an absolute vs. relative sense.

It was never my contention that getting to 90 didn't get easier over time; I understand that perfectly. clearly it did. Getting a 75 pre ToAU was a bigger accomplishment than post, but it was still an accomplishment. Getting to 90 by leveling ones job in a way specific to or supported by that job in Abyssea is less so, but still has some value. Standing around AFK is not an accomplishment at all, such that it takes away from the meaning of having a 90 from those who put forth effort.

Please go back and read my argument again because you misread it. I never said having a max level character was worth nothing, I said it wasn't worth noting, I never made a statement in the absolute sense it was all relative. I never contradicted myself, your lack of reading comprehension created the perceived contradiction. I merely stated the reasons why what used to be an accomplishment will become much less of one with the natural progression of games of this nature.

[Panthera]

Please go back and read my argument again because you misread it.
Very well then.



As for Panthera and his assertion that hitting max level was an accomplishment, it hasn't been an accomplishment to have a max level character since ToAU at the latest if not earlier.
Now, here, what you're saying is that it's not an accomplishment, period. You didn't say less of one, more of one, or just as much of one. You said not an accomplishment, full stop. You don't seem to know what "not an" means. Had your sentence said,"As for Panthera and his assertion that hitting max level was an accomplishment, it hasn't been as much of an accomplishment to have a max level character pre-ToAU than post TaOU at the latest if not earlier," then that would mean that it was relatively less of an accomplishment, and a contradiction would not have existed, because even without the bit about "worth noting," it was clear that you meant that in a relative sense. One was absolute, the other was relative, you contradicted yourself.

It's not up to me to go back from the second paragraph to figure out what you meant by the first, but your responsiblity to make yourself clear from the get-go. I understood what you actually said clearly. What I did not understand was what you meant. Any misunderstanding on my end has nothing to do with a presumed lack of reading comprehension on my end. It's because of an inability to say what you mean accurately and clearly on your end. And when I did say you were contradicting yourself the first time, I managed to do so without sounding rude. I was courteous the first time, I don't owe you that now, and I can no longer be bothered with you.

[TybudX]

@panthera
You are using the 'accomplish' of leveling as a way to assign value to the end result, a functional level 90 character with respectably leveled skills and knowledge of how the job they leveled works by way of the leveling process. You consider a bad level 90 character who has leveled by traditional means more of an accomplishment than a good level 90 character that was leveled by some other way.

The end result either has value or does not regardless of the means of leveling. What is your answer to players who are better at their jobs than others, and reach level cap faster even using more traditional means? Players who don't have capped skills despite being active in a party? On one hand you try to place importance on learning a job, but leveling faster gives you less time to do that. Learning any job in this game is easily offset by doing outside research, and I argue that outside research is in fact a much better learning tool than leveling by traditional means. By researching a job or game mechanics we achieve the same 'accomplishment' as leveling, and more so, in a shorter time frame. We learn more valuable skills than grinding out experience points can ever teach us.

The PLD story I spoke of earlier is not made up. I brought it up because it proves a point. Your definition of cheating can be applied to every single person who plays this game, even you. It is a loose employment of the term that is subject to assessment by the governing body of this game. SE holds all rights over the game environment, and as such what they deem allowable is in effect 'not cheating' in their game. That they have not outright condoned it doesn't matter. They continue to alter other aspects of the game to allow even more methods of fast leveling, even below level 30. These methods also allow for characters to 'leech'. If you truly believe that SE didn't intend for people to 'leech' in Abyssea, that it was an oversight on their part, what is your answer to recently released content? Community reps have responded in several of these topics, it's safe to assume that they are aware of our actions in game.

I'd also like you to answer me one more question. You claim to not allow people below a certain level in your parties. Who opens chests? Do you have a level 90 character with capped merits on all his jobs just for that? Or do you let people temporarily cheat so that you can get chests? After all, opening chests is 'leeching', 'leeching' is cheating. People will miss out on the accomplishment of learning new skills above 75, or whichever level you arbitrarily decided wasn't cheating anymore.

And by the way, I own all three of my accounts. I started the first one in December of 2003. I started the second with an Ultimate Edition game key from Steam when Abyssea came out, and I started the third this month from an UE - Abyssea copy. I started the second because I purchased a second laptop, I started the third because I built a new desktop. I'm running my three accounts on three different machines. You mention that I made my arguments without resorting to name calling, yet you use petty offhanded remarks in an attempt to discredit me? Nice try. That's your moral outrage showing.

[Catsby]

You guys don't realize why you are upset. Ask yourself this; Is there any reason to be any level besides 90?

If there was meaningful content to explore at lower levels or tangible rewards for getting to 90 on multiple jobs then yes there would be a valid excuse for raising the required level for entrance. Until then quit pissing and moaning about how you spent a year leveling THF to 75 so everyone else should too.

[rog]

I mean if you're nuking like hell, you're going to get hate so you'll learn to try and avoid hate even if it takes a few deaths to do so.Perfect example of how exp parties actually do more harm than good. Over nuking in exp is not a good idea. At 90 however, you simply hit manawall and keep nuking. What works in exp does NOT necessarily apply at 90.

[Greatguardian]

Perfect example of how exp parties actually do more harm than good. Over nuking in exp is not a good idea. At 90 however, you simply hit manawall and keep nuking. What works in exp does NOT necessarily apply at 90.

This is pretty much always the case. EXP'ing teaches you how to EXP, not how to play FFXI.

Maat's Cap players pre-SMN burn were notorious for being some of the absolute worst players in the entire game because they tried to apply their EXP playstyle to Endgame and refused to listen to anyone else.

[Kensagaku]

Don't you know? Maat's Cap means you won the game and clearly you cannot be wrong. Geez, GG, I thought you were the smart one.

That aside, I'm in general agreement with the crowd that's against raising the level minimum for Abyssea. Sure, you don't get the "traditional" way of learning your job, but that hasn't slowed me down once. Even back then, I didn't learn the job by mindlessly grinding and repeating the same actions over and over and over; I asked my linkshell for advice, or other party members if they've played the job. In fact, the only good thing old-school parties did for me was hook me up with five other characters who might have leveled my job and might have some modicum of skill in it, so that I could talk to them and learn how to do better, or give advice myself.

My point is, we can learn from grinding, yes, but it's a slow, experimental process that's more likely to get you killed than not. On the other hand, learning from other players, asking advice, etc is the fastest and quickest way to learn a job, as well as buffering that with research so you don't get things like Naturebeckles's take on Haste that we've seen on this forum. I remember that I thought TA only worked on party members for a while, not the whole ally, because I was told that. ;(

So yeah. Raise the minimum? Two thumbs down, down, down.

[Romanova]

Don't you know? Maat's Cap means you won the game and clearly you cannot be wrong.

This is the only thing that matters, amirite?

Whether xp is an "accomplishment" is irrelevant, fyi @ aki and panthera and anyone else who wants to keep yapping about it.

Even if xp was still the hardest grind ever, that doesn't automatically mean everyone has to take part in it just because you get the enjoyment out of the accomplishment as well. As I stated before, people care more about gear, crafting, lolchocoracing, even ballista for some.

No one here is going to call you a cheater and a n00b just because you don't participate in pankration. But some take great pride in their little mob.

Oh and yes because of that one arena being broken, you could "leech" your pet to cap level. More power to them I say.

Again it's about the choice. You want to take pride in your xp and jobs? Go for it. Do not then insist everyone has to partake in what many consider a headache.


More to the point, care about your accomplishments because you care about them, not for personal glory in making sure as many people know about it as possible. You know you did it, that should be enough.

[Vold]

Ultimately no MMO is really complicated. It's not how you maintain a player base. Really, anyone who is telling themselves they're pro at a MMORPG is just grasping for something to be proud of. Sitting at your computer desk or on your couch for long hours, mashing keys and controller buttons is not what I call impressive, boys and girls. We like to play pretend and all that crap, but let's step out of character for a moment and be realistic here. No one outside of this game cares about you or what you're doing in FFXI. It is more or less 7 billion people minus 3-500,000 FFXI players that couldn't care less how fast you mash keys during a Byakko solo. You're not really pro. You're not impressive except to those who never learned how to use a keyboard. You're just a normal Joe or Jane Doe in this world in this vast universe of worlds that exist.

So, are we done here? Can we move on already? Is this thing on? They are NEVER going to raise the entry level to Abyssea. It is tied to add on sales. NEVER. End of story.

[Romanova]

I'm curious.

How good are you at FFXI? How well do you know the game, and fundamental mechanics?

He can't be that great. With all his talk about lvling jobs, being honest, expecting when you invite people to have basic things like skill he never even finished most of his merits...

http://www.ffxiah.com/player/Unicorn/Panthera#merits

[HFX7686]

I don't understand why people believe that exping is the most important part of the game. Personally, I try to avoid exping as much as possible, even the current Abyssea leeching trend. I'd rather be doing other things.

[RaenRyong]

Why am I not surprised to see a Maat's Cap and all jobs levelled? They are not skill-based achievements, just time based...

[Romanova]

Why am I not surprised to see a Maat's Cap and all jobs levelled? They are not skill-based achievements, just time based...

also a manthra. And he talks of others being dishonest.

[Kimble]

So, even though I know how to play WHM on my Main, if I bring my burned alt's WHM to events, I'm suddenly unable to play WHM on it just because he was burned to 90? Hell, he has better WHM gear than my main.

[Sayelle]

The thing that I find most amusing is that according to his AH profile he doesn't have a single piece of AF3 at all, not NQ, not +1, and not +2.

[rog]

The thing that I find most amusing is that according to his AH profile he doesn't have a single piece of AF3 at all, not NQ, not +1, and not +2.That does not really mean anything.

[Romanova]

That does not really mean anything.

because it doesn't take xp to get!


it all makes sense now.

[Starcade]

You guys don't realize why you are upset. Ask yourself this; Is there any reason to be any level besides 90?


One of the two main reasons this game is dying, and is only kept going on life-support because XIV is a functional zero.


If there was meaningful content to explore at lower levels or tangible rewards for getting to 90 on multiple jobs then yes there would be a valid excuse for raising the required level for entrance. Until then quit pissing and moaning about how you spent a year leveling THF to 75 so everyone else should too.

The problem is, then: Why even have any other content? Why even have levels 1 to the level cap minus one?

[Chocobits]

One of the two main reasons this game is dying, and is only kept going on life-support because XIV is a functional zero.



The problem is, then: Why even have any other content? Why even have levels 1 to the level cap minus one?

That level up animation is what keeps me paying my 13 bucks a month. It starts of kind of soft and then gets dramatic like
do-do-do-do DO DO do-do-do!

Ohwait, I'm not Akujanthera. I never really liked that animation and realize the lack in value leveling up holds for me.

[Neisan_Quetz]

One of the two main reasons this game is dying, and is only kept going on life-support because XIV is a functional zero.



The problem is, then: Why even have any other content? Why even have levels 1 to the level cap minus one?

Even at 75 cap most content was geared toward level 75... the only low level content I can think of was Eco-warrior, Garrison, and BCNMS. Campaign wasn't introduced until WotG and you still weren't useful in it on most jobs until at least 60ish.

[Chocobits]

Does anyone remember this thread?

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/8413-Raise-the-Minimum-Requirement-for-pets-entering-Abyssea-to-Lv70-or-75

I still think it's hypocritical to demand that players grind their exp when you allow pets to just enter and leech.

Akujima: "Dude Panthera I'm so glad you got your Ph.D. so we can pwn these guyz in the thread."

Panthera: "Dammit Jim, I'm not a doctor!"

[Zyeriis]

He can't be that great. With all his talk about lvling jobs, being honest, expecting when you invite people to have basic things like skill he never even finished most of his merits...

http://www.ffxiah.com/player/Unicorn/Panthera#merits
(Disclaimer: Don't agree with Panthera) However: Thanks for the idiotic post. He doesn't have max merits because he hasn't necessarily bothered to update his ffxiah.com profile, amirite? Do I get a cookie for basing my post on something potentially untrue by passing it off as hard fact? (In case you didn't get the memo, you have to manually edit your merits on ffxiah.com, thanks for the most pointless post in a pointless thread full of pointless words).

I'm going back over there to go back to sleep.

[Romanova]

(Disclaimer: Don't agree with Panthera) However: Thanks for the idiotic post. He doesn't have max merits because he hasn't necessarily bothered to update his ffxiah.com profile, amirite?

They are more than welcome to prove otherwise.

[Khiinroye]

Your meaning of cheating ignores the meanings plural of the word cheating. You are absolutely correct that third party leveling programs are cheating, and I'm glad that you recognize that. Similarly, do-nothing leeching is cheating because the leveling doesn't represent the leech's own work. Is there really anyone who is actually in favor of that? But you were talking about keymasters, and I'll address that.

Low-level keymastering is cheating because you're not leveling up in a way specific to or supported by your job, as I've said, as well as other definitions as well, which I've also already explained. Again, just becuase you aren't cheating according to one meaning, doesn't mean you aren't cheating according to others.

You do have a reasonable, but not infallible, grasp on what cheating is conceptually. However, I never defined the term cheating. The meanings plural of the word cheating were around before I used them. According to a dictionary website:...

cheat   
[cheet] Show IPA
–verb (used with object)
1.to defraud; swindle: He cheated her out of her inheritance.
2.to deceive; influence by fraud: He cheated us into believing him a hero.
3.to elude; deprive of something expected: He cheated the law by suicide.

I merely applied the definitions and the concepts to explain why leeching is cheating, and they're a perfect fit, if I may say. The real problem is that SE's rules for what cheating is and is not don't address what cheating really is in this context. You want to be closer to what cheating actually means, not what SE thinks it is, as they may not necessarally be close. Again, if there were a body-building competition, and for whatever reason, the use of steroids were explicity allowed, that doesn't mean that those who take steroids aren't cheating, and that doesn't meant they aren't cheating
those that don't use them. This is a key point, because keymasters don't just cheat, they cheat me and those who level in real way. In this analogy, the rules just don't make sense, as they don't support what cheating is conceptually. Again, just because it isn't against the rules, doesn't mean it's not cheating.



You were not using objects for your verbs, so therefore you omitted the applicable definitions.
–verb (used without object)
4. to practice fraud or deceit: She cheats without regrets.
5. to violate rules or regulations: He cheats at cards.
6. to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers. (Not applicable to this situation)

#5 is the most used definition in terms of discussing the game, and nearly impossible to separate from the use of the word, and I don't believe that you are arguing that keying or leeching violates rules or regulations.

I do not believe that #1, #2, #3, and #4 are as widely applicable as you are using them.
Leeches are not claiming anything about how they leveled when they join a party, just that they have the job at X level. At this point in the game, there is no way to know how a stranger gained his levels other than asking, so it is inappropriate to make assumptions one way or the other. Without this assumption, there is no deception based on the manner of leveling.

There is an implication that people who join for active DD and mage spots have the appropriate level of combat and magic skills, and that they know what they're doing If they have the appropriate skills and knowledge, there is no deception or fraud. If they choose to not skill and gimp themselves, then sure, you can say they're cheating the party out of a DD spot, but it is because the player made bad choices, not how they gained their levels. If they only made Qufim sync xp parties, they'd still have terribly low skills.

By your example, you can claim that leeches are cheating your sense of accomplishment, but saying that we are cheating is not applicable to those definitions. However, people who leech are saying that getting lv 90 is not an accomplishment for them, so they're not cheating their sense of accomplishment.

In the bodybuilding example, if the winner used steroids and openly admits it since it was not against the rules, there is no cheating in regards to rules violations, nor is there fraud or deception in that they are not claiming to be steroid free. If a participant chooses not to use steroids, he is just putting himself at a disadvantage.



You haven't completely made a connection between the two. I am not obligated to make your arguements for you. You tell me? How and why are doing those not cheating by definions (plural now!) and how does that make keymastering not cheating, and why? I'd like to know.


They are not cheating because they are not frauduelent or deceptive: Again, no claim was made by the person otherwise. In fact, it was agreed when the keymaster was invited (or changed jobs) that that was his role in the party would be. There is no violation of rules, or deception to the party as to what that character's role in the xp party is.



Yes, this would level up the characters quickly. But in those games, the weaker characters aren't opening chests, and I'm pre-supposing they were participating in the battle by fighting monsters, or being fought by them. Again, chests don't try to kill you, that's part of why it's leeching and therefore cheating.


It is very possible to set up a first strike one-hit KO with your strong characters in many games (e.g. Sneak attack + knights of the round + wsummon + hp<>mp in FFVII, or the Exp. Share item in pokemon), and if not, its about the same participation as a subbed cure II. Revive them just before the fight ends if they get targetted. Anyways, those are not FFXI. Have you ever seen low level characters trying to open chests while fighting murex? They really should have 2 hp atmas and atma of the apocalypse, because they die a lot in pickup groups. Stilll, most mobs used for xp do not have aoe like that. Also, if a mimic happens to pop in the middle of the group, then the chest will try to kill the keymaster.



It is my assessment that yes, those characters were do-nothing leeches, that much should be obvious. The experienced gained by the lower level members did not reflect their own work at all. And I'm interested to know if you think do nothing leeches are OK, as you've only addressed keymasters specifically, but not do-nothing leeches. It would seem to be, but I'd like to hear that from you. You cannot say that they aren't leeching and therefore aren't cheating in the one and not the other.


I think joining as a DD and then afking the whole time is a jerk move and worthy of a kick. It is deceptive, but is not a violation of the rules. Therefore, it is cheating the party out of a DD slot, but it is not cheating at FFXI. If you let the group know that you need to afk for 30 minutes, they are fine with it, and you come back, that's ok. If the person payed for a leech spot, then it is a business transaction of gil for easy xp, and there is no fraud or deception, and there is no cheating using any of the definitions.

Related, what is your opinion of people who key their subjobs from 37 to 49, and then never touch them again? You will still need to learn when to use the subjob's abilities with your main job, and adjust to the slightly different playstyle. Does your opinion change if the person admits that its a new subjob for them that they're trying out in an xp group?



As I've said before, this game, Final Fantasy XI, actually makes it so that characters who are lower level than the highest party member are penalized in exp, and as far as monster exp goes, it's the same way in Abyssea as well, to the best of my knowledge. Given the penalty, I'd say SE actually discourages this in the context of FFXI exping. I'd like to hear from SE why level 30 characters, who's negligible contribution to a battle against a monster that's almost level 100 should be allowed to get 5000 experience points for a whopping 5 mobs. Why have an exp level difference penalty in some cases, but not others? It's inconsistent.


The 5000 xp per 5 mobs is actually scaled to the level. (I know, I tossed some dominion ops at my lv 70 nin to get it to lv 72 so I could equip it better for DDing in a Visions zone). I got something like 2300 xp and 270 dominion notes. I've tossed a dominion op or two at jobs that I left around 50, and those give around 1300/420. Only xp from chests is not scaled. Since the keymaster is paying 500 cruor per chest opened, he is actively participating in that aspect of the party.

In regards to the walking across the US example, it may be one person's goal to walk across the US, but others may just want to cross the country so they can spend some time at the beach with their friends; those people lose nothing by taking a car or plane, nor does it detract from the first person's sense of accomplishment for getting there in his own way. Climbing Mount Everest is not a good example, because the whole point of that is the climb itself, not the destination.

TLDR: Panthera can claim that, with his particular expectations, leeches cheat his sense of accomplishment. In my opinion, Panthera is making some assumptions about people that, at this point in the game, should not be made. He would be better off saying that it cheapens the accomplishment of leveling rather than calling people who leech jobs from 30 to 90 cheaters.

[Akujima]

That the game has it built-in doesn't mean it isn't cheating. Using a non RPG game analogy, there's Warp Whistles in Mario 3, the original Super Mario had warp pipes, etc. Activision's famous cheat codes, supported by the game by design, are still cheats! They don't pretend that they're not. They are short-cuts that completely evade, they are cheating. There's a funny bit about this on College Humor that explains it. http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6180043/the-problem-with-warp-whistles

It's not that you got to the final level of Mario(and notice how we're still talking about "levels"), it's how you got there. Suppose the game supported warping from the first level to the last. There's a difference between saying,"I saw the Super Mario Credits," which isn't really winning, and "I beat every single level of of Super Mario."


Panthera's attempt to use the word "cheating" is quite risky for an argument. But after seeing this, then I'm going to have to say that this is hard to top. Having circumvention mechanics in an offline console game is one thing, but having those same mechanics built into an MMORPG is simply poor game design.

It doesn't take as long as it used to, to EXP and LvUp from 1~75. The idea behind giving a LvCap of Lv70 or 75, was to give a chance for all the veterans with multiple 75 jobs, to quickly LvUp after that. Abyssea is a break for the veterans, but it should not allow for newcomers to be able to leech their way to Max Lv. Just because a few "smart" players decided to KeyLeech to Lv90, doesn't mean that there isn't people out there taking advantage of Abyssea Leech, because they are simply lazy in the Lvling process.

The argument of "Oh but I'm tired of Lvling Up, because I've done so much of it already!" is nullified by the fact that Abyssea Lv30 Cap is simply poor game design, which has been my argument from the beginning. Newcomers have the chance to circumvent 80% of the games content and skip basically everything else, going straight to Abyssea. I say 80% because all that's needed is to get a few friends to farm items for the Limit Break quests. And 20% allotted to LB quests is very generous.

This thread will go on and on, because the fact is this: People out there want to be able to cheat, leech and be lazy. They want to hear good things about their bad habits. If encouraged to do it, they will then have more zealous in defending that cheating/leeching system. SE's decision to allow for this to happen is poor game design, no matter what way you look at it. MMORPG's new OR old, should not have circumvention mechanics built into them.

Good MMORPG's are designed so that players can experience as much possible content that the game has to offer. Abyssea Lv30 Cap has the potential to water-down all the other content in the game, and any video-game critic worth their weight in salt, will agree (for the fourth and final time) that it is simply poor game design.


EDIT: If you want to argue with me that FFXI is NOT an MMORPG. I'm ready and waiting to have a good laugh at that post.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Teleportation abilities placed in a game are cheating, you heard it here first.

Also wtf is this 80% of the game you circumvent by leeching, you miss all of Eco-warrior and Garrison which no one does in the first place (and you can do that if you really wanted to but there's no worthwhile rewards in either) and Campaign which isn't really worth doing anyway due to length of time spent waiting around waiting for another battle to come around.

[Greatguardian]

Who cares, Aku.

Get your levels however you want. At the end of the day, all that matters is you and how competent you are. If you are incompetent, no amount of accomplishments are going to change that. If you are competent, I don't care if you don't even have all your teleport crystals yet as long as you can play the game well.

Bottom line, Panthera's two main arguments are that Leeching deceives people into thinking that someone is better at the game than they are, and that an abundance of level 90s lessens the rarity and thus the exclusivity of being level 90.

The former is a faulty assumption on the part of the player. You cannot ever assume that someone is competent, whether they are level 90, whether they have Endgame-tier gear, or whether they are a member in a respected shell. Unless you know someone, or have interacted with them, you should not be making assumptions about them. If you assume that the WAR you picked up is smart and knows what he's doing just because he has an Ebody and is a member of a big HNMLS, it's your own fault if you end up disappointed.

Smart, competent players will always have solid gear. However, having solid gear does not require being a smart, competent player. All squares are rectangles, but just because something is a rectangle does not make it a square.

The latter is just silly. EXP takes time. As time goes by, max level players become more common. As max level players become more common, more efficient routes to max level are discovered. The number of players at max level will always increase exponentially, with or without Abyssea. Allowing whatever sense of personal accomplishment you have with regards to your level to be influenced by the exclusivity of that level is simply asking to be disappointed. The community has not considered being max level anything special. If you do, that's your business, but there's no reason for Abyssea to change how you feel about your personal feats.

As far as Akujima's arguments go, no u. It's bad because it is. It's good because it is. It should be this way. It shouldn't be that way. Good games do this. Critics say this.

Protip Aku: New players aren't skipping over 80% of the game's content when 80% of the game's content is at max level.

Protip 2: No one is barred from exploring or completing side-quests just because they are max level. If anything, exploring is easier because you are less likely to get chomped on in every single dungeon in the game. And if you like that sort of dangerous exploring, there are still plenty of dungeons with mobs that will aggro level 90 and can eat your face.

Bottom line: Abyssea gives people options. Everyone is a leech anyways whether they're level 30 or not if they aren't a strong, contributing member of the group. No, parsing 0.3% with maxed skills is not contributing just because you're there in spirit.

[Panthera]

@panthera
You are using the 'accomplish' of leveling as a way to assign value to the end result, a functional level 90 character with respectably leveled skills and knowledge of how the job they leveled works by way of the leveling process.

Yes, correct.


You consider a bad level 90 character who has leveled by traditional means more of an accomplishment than a good level 90 character that was leveled by some other way.

I didn't actually say that as such. It's best to use direct quotes whenever possible, but

Stumbling through 90 levels without learning a thing--and I staticed with that guy--is not really impressive. If they played badly all that time, and still do, and we all know they're out there, is not an accomplishment. That just means that they leeched off of the spare skill and knowledge of those around them. If someone plays well at 90, but cheated to get there, then no, the journey was not an accomplishment. If anything, the journey was side-stepped.

So no, neither are really accomplishments, they can't be compared in terms of one moreso than the other.


The end result either has value or does not regardless of the means of leveling.

Ok, now we're talking about something a bit different. Of course, having a level 90 has value in a practical sense. It means you can do end game events with friends, etc, whether or not you cheated to get there, correct.


What is your answer to players who are better at their jobs than others, and reach level cap faster even using more traditional means?

My answer to what question? Which players?

Assuming a lot, and assuming I'm not addressing you in particular, I'd guess I'd tell them, "You play very well at level 90 for your first character that you cheated to get to 90. I'm really not impressed that you went afk and leeched, and keymastering really wasn't much of a challenge, so please, please stop bragging getting to 90. You could have just bought your account, and it would be about the same thing. I wish that the last X number of NMs went faster and we didn't lose so often, but at least you learned, and at a heavy price as compared to normal exp mobs, but you do well now. "


Players who don't have capped skills despite being active in a party?

Depends. Scythe is tough to cap because Haley's Comet has come and gone since your last swing. I just wouldn't expect them to have capped scythe. Also, I'd say skill up rates are a fickle lover. God knows they are on fishing.


On one hand you try to place importance on learning a job, but leveling faster gives you less time to do that.

Yes. Players have less time to learn than they used to. It is the responsiblity of the player to meet the challenge. The game is tough. It's even tougher if you're not smart, but that goes without saying.


Learning any job in this game is easily offset by doing outside research, and I argue that outside research is in fact a much better learning tool than leveling by traditional means. By researching a job or game mechanics we achieve the same 'accomplishment' as leveling, and more so, in a shorter time frame. We learn more valuable skills than grinding out experience points can ever teach us.

Ok, good point. Some things you can learn just by looking it up. You can learn what Blind is by looking it up. You can also learn it by casting it on a mob, and see how it effects their accuracy, or having it cast on your or a friend by a mob and see how it effects your accuracy. In this case, research is an acceptable substitute for experience.

But all of that is only academic until you sit down and do it. For example, you can learn about blink tanking from reading about it. What that doesn't give you is the feel of doing it, when to start casting by the timing of the monster's attacks, when to cancel out a Ni shadow for an Ichi one, is not something you can get from a book, as it were. Knowing how to shadow is something you learn to do by doing it. There's learning about it, and then there's learning to do it.



The PLD story I spoke of earlier is not made up.

I didn't say it wasn't, I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was, though I'm not sure if it's your contention that I don't believe you, when... well, I said your Pld story was true in the previous post.


I brought it up because it proves a point. Your definition of cheating can be applied to every single person who plays this game, even you.

Correct.


It is a loose employment of the term that is subject to assessment by the governing body of this game.

That's actually quite articulate, but incorrect. Saying that leeching is not cheating because it is not against TOS is a strict employment of the term. I would argue that I am using the word strictly according to other definitions. If I say that traditional experience points are legitimate because they don't deprive, mislead, evade, or act dishonestly, I am using the word loosely, because legitimate has more to do with cheating in the sense of "not breaking rules" than with the alternative definitions of cheating.

SE cannot say that cheating aren't things that deprive, mislead, evade, or act dishonestly by definition. That's just what the word means. The meaning of the word is not subject to their assessment.


SE holds all rights over the game environment, and as such what they deem allowable is in effect 'not cheating' in their game.

Correct. FFXI is the property of Square Enix, and they make the rules. If they say something isn't cheating it isn't in the sense that that it's not against their rules.

Leeching is not against the rules, they don't try to stop, it is allowed. It is not cheating because it is not against the rules in effect: something that is produced by an agency or cause.


That they have not outright condoned it doesn't matter.
Well, if you mean that if they don't say leeching isn't against the rules, then it isn't against the rules. They have to say it is, or it is not. If that's what you're getting at, that is correct. Although, a word from SE would be nice, if at least just to put an end to this, but along side that, I'd like to know how they came to that decision.


They continue to alter other aspects of the game to allow even more methods of fast leveling, even below level 30. These methods also allow for characters to 'leech'.

Can you give specific examples? I don't want to put words in your mouth on this one.


If you truly believe that SE didn't intend for people to 'leech' in Abyssea, that it was an oversight on their part, what is your answer to recently released content?

Again, so we're on the same page, tell me exactly what you're talking about. I'm not sure if you're talking about Abyssea or FOV or GOV or what have you.


Community reps have responded in several of these topics, it's safe to assume that they are aware of our actions in game.

Yes, it's safe to say they assume they know about the existence of AFB and chest leeching and do-nothing leeching.


I'd also like you to answer me one more question. You claim to not allow people below a certain level in your parties. Who opens chests? Do you have a level 90 character with capped merits on all his jobs just for that? Or do you let people temporarily cheat so that you can get chests? After all, opening chests is 'leeching', 'leeching' is cheating.

Correct. I'm sure I've said something like, "low level chest leeching is cheating." I'm pretty sure I've said,"keymastering is cheating."

Logically, what I should have and must say is this: Keymastering at any level on any job is cheating because it's not specific to or supported by the job/support job combination played at the time the experience points were earned.

Now, you're gonna get a kick out of this. I myself have been keymaster from +75, but, I didn't inhale. Just kidding. I really wasn't cheating when I was doing it... and here's why.

I specifically recall doing keymaster on Corsair once. The ally was obliterating the largely defenseless Crapaudies very quickly. Chests were popping up all over the place, I was running around like a madmen trying to pop them all. But while doing this, I was buffing my party with Corsair rolls, and using Wild Card because I'd get the 2 hour chests. Another time, I was playing Samurai/Dancer like Dancer/Samurai to help cure people while popping chests. In either case, I was exping in a way specific to or supported by my job.

With tos, you're not cheating because it's not against the rules. But it is cheating because of evasion, deception, etc. In this case, there's just a single definition. Keymastering is cheating because it's not earning exp with your job, and not cheating means earning exp with your job. You can't be cheating and not cheating, so since I was getting exp on my job, the fact that I was a keymaster at the same time didn't matter, because I can't be cheating and not cheating if cheating means only one thing. Saying that I was cheating because I was opening chests, even if I was playing my job doesn't make sense.

Now, if at any time I have invited or allowed a low level person as key master, it means this: they were cheating, not me. Their levels were fraudulent, not mine. If one gets exp on characters reserve characters in offline games, that means those characters levels were cheated. That it's a necessary evil, and a flaw in the design, and unavoidable, does not make it not cheating. I did not design abyssea. I am not responsible for it. If I have to get a low level person to do chests as a matter of necessity, those levels are cheated, but they are not my levels.

And if someone with an Emperian is willing to open chests, I won't stop them, the cheat that they are.


People will miss out on the accomplishment of learning new skills above 75, or whichever level you arbitrarily decided wasn't cheating anymore.
Yes, they will miss out on that. But there's more to the accomplishment than what was learned along the way.


And by the way, I own all three of my accounts. I started the first one in December of 2003. I started the second with an Ultimate Edition game key from Steam when Abyssea came out, and I started the third this month from an UE - Abyssea copy. I started the second because I purchased a second laptop, I started the third because I built a new desktop. I'm running my three accounts on three different machines.

I never disupted that this wasn't actually the case. I raised some hypotheticals, but they were only hypotheticals.


You mention that I made my arguments without resorting to name calling, yet you use petty offhanded remarks in an attempt to discredit me? Nice try. That's your moral outrage showing.

I'd like to direct your attention to your initial post:...


You're argument is stupid, and here's why... Also, your definition of cheating is stupid."

Only because you were uncivil the first time. That set the tone for later replies, this one I hope not withstanding. I'll accept,"Your arguement is logically unsound," or,"your arguement doesn't show sufficient reasons to prove that it is so.." What I will not accept is,"You logic is stupid." That's just rude and insulting. I would be happy to continue civilly if it does not continue. I've enjoyed this exchange, and hope you have as well.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I came 7th in total damage on Blu while leeching it, clearly I did not earn my levels despite outdamaging all but 6 in the Alliance. I also main healed while leeching whm and kept people hasted which is more than I get when I'm in the same pts on a DD job.
You still haven't brought up a single point of cheating that is allowable by the ToS, because, instances of actual cheating and not your imaginary cheating because people get exp faster than at 75 cap are not allowed under the ToS. Seriously your arguments are asinine and you're entitled to your view on what counts as an accomplishment, but no one has to agree with it. In fact, almost no one does.

[Greatguardian]

Still has not, and probably never will, address the fact that 90% of Level 90 players are leeches whenever they join EXP parties.

If your DD is a piece of utterly detestable garbage wearing 4% Haste, a completely unfinished Str GA, using Full Break and parsing less than 1% of the party's damage when I'm parsing 95%+ out of 18 people, you are a leech. If you are a SAM using Tachi: Gekko with a Hagun for 600 damage using a 7-hit and fulltiming a Wyvern Helm, you are a leech. If you're a NIN spamming level 40 Shuriken with a Fire Staff, you are a leech. If you are a Dark Knight ... just a Dark Knight, you are a leech.

Weak players leech off stronger players. The only change Abyssea made is that it no longer hurts the stronger players when they do so. I'd say that's a win-win.

[Akujima]

Who cares

Great comeback.

[Akujima]

Still has not, and probably never will, address the fact that 90% of Level 90 players are leeches whenever they join EXP parties.


So having a narcissistic/megalomaniac elitist attitude is a requirement for FFXI as well?

[Romanova]

So having a narcissistic/megalomaniac elitist attitude is a requirement for FFXI as well?

= people like panthera who you keep supporting.

[Neisan_Quetz]

So having a narcissistic/megalomaniac elitist attitude is a requirement for FFXI as well?

This coming from someone who started a thread insisting everyone has to exp in a certain way?

[Greatguardian]

Simple works.

And no. It is not a symptom of narcissism when I parse 75-95% of a full alliance's damage based on what job I'm there on. It doesn't matter if it's Verethragna MNK or Corsair or Paladin or White Mage Melee. If I am doing 51 times more work than any single other person in the group (That's assuming the minimum 75% parse), everyone else there is leeching off me. Period.

Any BG poster or otherwise competent player will be able to share similar stories if they ever ended up in a pickup alliance.

[TybudX]

@panthera
Ok, so you admit to being entirely hypocritical in all your remarks, since you cannot possibly live up to the standards you set upon yourself?

Again, nobody is being evasive or cheating by 'leeching', they are simply using mechanics that were placed in the game. If it were an unknown method of gaining exp it would be different, say somehow duping exp. Everybody knows that Abyssea exping can get you to max level in a day. You have to take responsibility for how you perceive the players around you. If it was a small portion of the population taking advantage of an exploit, fine, but that is clearly not the case. There is no deliberate misuse of the system, nor misrepresentation.

[Kimble]

So having a narcissistic/megalomaniac elitist attitude is a requirement for FFXI as well?

So, if a non-abyssea leached player, isnt pulling their weight, have leveled the way you want them to, that doesnt make them a leach even if they arent doing their share?

[Sayelle]

Simple works.

And no. It is not a symptom of narcissism when I parse 75-95% of a full alliance's damage based on what job I'm there on. It doesn't matter if it's Verethragna MNK or Corsair or Paladin or White Mage Melee. If I am doing 51 times more work than any single other person in the group (That's assuming the minimum 75% parse), everyone else there is leeching off me. Period.

Any BG poster or otherwise competent player will be able to share similar stories if they ever ended up in a pickup alliance.

I have been kicked from pick up exp parties for doing too much damage and killing mobs too fast...

[Neisan_Quetz]

"Evil stop weaponskilling the mobs at low health"
*5 minutes later after Sekka WS WS*
"Evil stop weaponskilling the mob below 50%"

Personally I've been kicked for dealing the second highest damage, but Skeith's Drg who was beating me didn't get kicked :(

EDIT: Friend got kicked for 'botting exp' while using Masamune because he didn't feel like talking to the Pt which didn't even have a healer in 2 parties and was wiping badly to puks in Vunk. I was literally right next to him laughing my ass off.

[Chocobits]

So having a narcissistic/megalomaniac elitist attitude is a requirement for FFXI as well?

Apparently so, because we need to cry like a schoolgirl if people level too fast, because it undermines our own leveling "achievements".

[Ravenmore]

I don't talk in pick up exp either few are worth talking to in the first place.

[Akujima]

So, if a non-abyssea leached player, isnt pulling their weight, have leveled the way you want them to, that doesnt make them a leach even if they arent doing their share?

It seems to me the best excuse any of you can come up with, is incompetence amongst the player base.

Personally I prefer Lv'ing the old fashioned way in groups of 6, because then everyone is required to do their part in order for EXP to flow smoothly. Unlike in Abyssea, where it's possible for 2/3's of the alliance EXP PT do contribute barely anything, while some Super Hero like GG does all the work. Apparently we also need to pay homage to such Super-Hero's by handing them Lv90 jobs for practically nothing.

Not willing to go from 1~75 outside Abyssea, only shows your incompetence to LvUp a Job. Because you can out parse 80% of players who don't even bother contributing, doesn't make you "The Best of The Best", it makes you "The Best of The Worst". It makes you "feel" special, because the simple Abyssean game mechanics are designed that way.

[Leonlionheart]

It seems to me the best excuse any of you can come up with, is incompetence amongst the player base.

Personally I prefer Lv'ing the old fashioned way in groups of 6, because then everyone is required to do their part in order for EXP to flow in smoothly. Unlike in Abyssea, where it's possible for 2/3's of the alliance EXP PT do contribute barely anything, while some Super Hero like GG does all the work. Apparently we also need to pay homage to such Super-Hero's by handing them Lv90 jobs for practically nothing.

Not willing to go from 1~75 outside Abyssea, only shows your incompetence to LvUp a Job. Because you can out parse 80% of players who don't even bother contributing, doesn't make you "The Best of The Best", it makes you "The Best of The Worst". It makes you "feel" special, because the simple Abyssean game mechanics are designed that way.

Still being too stubborn to see the fact that if a player wants to be good at the job, he or she will do all they can to become good at that job, regardless the way they got to the level cap.

[Neisan_Quetz]

In case you somehow haven't figured out yet 90% of the playerbase is incompetent, and that's probably being generous. I can count the amount of competent players I've met in PUG on one hand, and 2 of them I can't even talk to because they don't speak english.

Leeching has nothing to do with it other than the fact they got 90 faster, pre level cap raise it sure as hell didn't stop people being incompetent at 75.

[Taylin]

you do realize that all the old content is still useful for something right? there are some really good atma you can get out of it, not that anyone would use much more than MM or RR.

[BorkBorkBork]

Just live by this rule. Don't invite people who don't know their jobs to events. EXP alliances don't count cause it's like little kids discovering their boy and girl parts for the first time so bitching OMG this person is ruining my exp alliance is silly. If you can't handle the new training wheel area head back to fields of valor or make your own alliances and never bitch again.

On a side note the argument of normal exp partyies teach you how to play is completely retarded. It all depends on the player. People will be a good players if they decide they want to. There were just as many mentally challenged players back then as there are now the only difference is they have emph weps .

[Ravenmore]

I will say one thing postive about the gimp players they were good at making parties. Couldn't play thier jobs worth a crap but they could put parties together to get them to cap.

[Kimble]

It seems to me the best excuse any of you can come up with, is incompetence amongst the player base.

Personally I prefer Lv'ing the old fashioned way in groups of 6, because then everyone is required to do their part in order for EXP to flow smoothly. Unlike in Abyssea, where it's possible for 2/3's of the alliance EXP PT do contribute barely anything, while some Super Hero like GG does all the work. Apparently we also need to pay homage to such Super-Hero's by handing them Lv90 jobs for practically nothing.

Not willing to go from 1~75 outside Abyssea, only shows your incompetence to LvUp a Job. Because you can out parse 80% of players who don't even bother contributing, doesn't make you "The Best of The Best", it makes you "The Best of The Worst". It makes you "feel" special, because the simple Abyssean game mechanics are designed that way.

So you agree then, someone who got 1-75 outside of abyssea, yet then does abyssea and does horribly damage wise, is as much as a leach as someone that burns 30-75?

[Meyi]

Still has not, and probably never will, address the fact that 90% of Level 90 players are leeches whenever they join EXP parties.

If your DD is a piece of utterly detestable garbage wearing 4% Haste, a completely unfinished Str GA, using Full Break and parsing less than 1% of the party's damage when I'm parsing 95%+ out of 18 people, you are a leech. If you are a SAM using Tachi: Gekko with a Hagun for 600 damage using a 7-hit and fulltiming a Wyvern Helm, you are a leech. If you're a NIN spamming level 40 Shuriken with a Fire Staff, you are a leech. If you are a Dark Knight ... just a Dark Knight, you are a leech.

Weak players leech off stronger players. The only change Abyssea made is that it no longer hurts the stronger players when they do so. I'd say that's a win-win.

I'll just leave this here:
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/101042-Gimp-Confused-WTF-Player-Thread-XXI-i-have-a-doctors-note

It's true. If people can't pull their weight they're leeching. It doesn't matter if they're level 30, 75, or 90. Raising the minimum cap to 75 will do no good.

[Akujima]

So you agree then, someone who got 1-75 outside of abyssea, yet then does abyssea and does horribly damage wise, is as much as a leach as someone that burns 30-75?

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Bad players are bad players. It's a poor excuse to say that you should be pampered and be handed a Lv90 Job for free, just because there is incompetent players at ANY level. Regarding them as "Leeches" does not discredit their opportunity to improve themselves. They are not "Leeches", they are "Incompetent Players" and NOT both.

@Panthera: Allow me to expand more on your "Theory and Practice" topic, because you got something going there. Alot of the player base seem to think that research and theory have more to do with "skill" than practice does. Reflexes and reaction time have nothing to do with theory, but are learned through constant practice with the occurrence of various battle situations. It's a waste of peoples time because the new Lv90 has to learn how to tank/when to fish/what to heal because not every battle is "by the book".

[Neisan_Quetz]

How is a leech who doesn't know how to play the job any different from someone who doesn't leech and doesn't know how to play the job? Nothing at all other than one has been incompetent at the job for longer.

Because hand eye coordination is so hard. If you know how to make a macro you're probably smarter than 50% of the playerbase right there.

[BorkBorkBork]

Allow me to expand more on your "Theory and Practice" topic, because you got something going there. Alot of the player base seem to think that research and theory have more to do with "skill" than practice does. Reflexes and reaction time have nothing to do with theory, but are learned through constant practice with the occurrence of various battle situations. It's a waste of peoples time because the new Lv90 has to learn how to tank/when to fish/what to heal because not every battle is "by the book".


That's silly, I know a guy that soloed his whm/bst to 75 and it just made a whm that doesn't know anything about playing since he never took the time to research the job.
Any person that's capable of moving their fingers coherently can learn to play any job in this game in about an hour or less if they've taken the time to read up on it.

As for various battle situations again if you do your research odds are you'd be able to move them fingers at appropriate times.

Grinding out levels forever does nothing to remotely prepare you for going against harder mobs in larger group situations.

[Ravenmore]

Whats killing EXP mobs going to teach you about NMs. Yets see nothing cause people stay away from mobs with stat effects and tp move that inflict stat effects. Why do you think people stayed away from imps when lvl sync came out. Though the mages wouldn't silna you anyway, just ask why you didn't bring echo drops.

[wish12oz]

@Panthera: Allow me to expand more on your "Theory and Practice" topic, because you got something going there. Alot of the player base seem to think that research and theory have more to do with "skill" than practice does. Reflexes and reaction time have nothing to do with theory, but are learned through constant practice with the occurrence of various battle situations. It's a waste of peoples time because the new Lv90 has to learn how to tank/when to fish/what to heal because not every battle is "by the book".

Learning something by constantly having to repeat an action for hours and hours and hours and hours does not sound like skill to me. It sounds like trying to ingrain something into your mind so much so you can do it without thinking or paying attention.

Skill is being able to do it without all those hours and days of grinding it into your memory.

Beyond that, all those things you learn how to do at low levels, like tank on PLD/WAR, have no place outside of those low levels, and most people would of been better off not learning it because they get stuck on it at endgame. Take ninja for instance, up to around lvl 63 throwing shurikens outparses everything else you can do to do damage at those levels. But once you get past those levels, it becomes useless. Not because shurikens are hard to acquire or the damage on them is lower or anything. But because other superior options become available. But yet 'some' people who 'leveled ninja the right way' are so stuck on those low level mechanics they can't see past it to what is actually useful at 75 and beyond. To me, having people skip those levels seems more and more useful the more I look at it.

[Panthera]

@panthera
Ok, so you admit to being entirely hypocritical in all your remarks, since you cannot possibly live up to the standards you set upon yourself?

I'm not being a hypocrite. To make an analogy, I have never at any point the reserve, 5th character when only 3 or 4 can at time in an offline game where reserve characters still get exp, I'm always one of the 3-4 characters actively playing.



Again, nobody is being evasive or cheating by 'leeching', they are simply using mechanics that were placed in the game.

Now we really are debating semantics, and I'm fine with that, but we must go about doing so in a logical way. Just because its legitimate to call leeching "using game mechanics that were placed in the game ", doesn't mean it's not fair to call it "cheating" as well. Yes they indeed "using in game mechanics that are placed in the game." I don't dispute calling it that. But it's still fair to "call" it "cheating" because of the definitions of the word. And yes, I am more or less using the word "legitimate" loosely.

And I find it interesting that you call attention to the word cheating by putting it in quotes. If you had a literal leech on you like that scene in "Stand by Me," I don't think you'd call it a good thing. The only thing that think that leeches are good things, are leeches.


If it were an unknown method of gaining exp it would be different, say somehow duping exp. everybody knows that Abyssea exping can get you to max level in a day.

My contention with leeching is so not much that they cheat quickly, but that they cheat at all. That they benefit from it so greatly only makes it worse.


You have to take responsibility for how you perceive the players around you.

I'm not sure if you're really saying what you mean here, but I'll take it at face value. I see the leeches in my own ally as leeches, and not something else. I'm not saying the keymasters in my ally are supporting the alliance symbiotically, they are leeches.


If it was a small portion of the population taking advantage of an exploit, fine, but that is clearly not the case.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if 1 person does it, they're cheating. If 100 people or 1000 people are doing it, they're leeching.


There is no deliberate misuse of the system, nor misrepresentation.

Ok, now you're talking about something else. Whether one accidently popped a Warp Whistle, or did so wittingly and willingly, it's the same "in effect," as you say, it's still "cheating".

[Panthera]

= people like panthera who you keep supporting.
I would be deeply worried about this if but only you knew and understood what those words meant. You've been a troll from the get-go. Just not worth it anymore.

[Akujima]

Take ninja for instance, up to around lvl 63 throwing shurikens outparses everything else you can do to do damage at those levels. But once you get past those levels, it becomes useless. Not because shurikens are hard to acquire or the damage on them is lower or anything. But because other superior options become available. But yet 'some' people who 'leveled ninja the right way' are so stuck on those low level mechanics they can't see past it to what is actually useful at 75 and beyond. To me, having people skip those levels seems more and more useful the more I look at it.


Oh hi wish. Welcome to the thread.

If you still believe that I was using Shuriken past Lv60 (and I know you're trying to hint towards me), then I applaud your ability to pronounce anyone other than yourself "A pathetic noob, who should quit life". I was simply elaborating on "skill" and how more than just theory is required for it.

Having "skill" at a video game, still doesn't explain why you should be handed a Lv90 job on a silver platter. Unless your reason is to imply your own greatness amongst the rest of the incompetent player base. And if you claim to have so much "skill" at FFXI, what would be your problem in Leveling Up so quickly outside of Abyssea, because you would surely Level much faster than the rest of those invalids... Right?

Look on the bright side. Then you wouldn't have to put up with them in Abyssea, because they're still stuck at Lv45, while you've already got your next Empyrean Weapon.

[Ravenmore]

Its still what matters to you doesn't mean other players give a flying flip about the way you leveled. Its not cheating if SE does not come out and say they don't like it and nerf it, in fact like I pointed out you can now leech from level 1. SE had to know that people would try it yet still did nothing. If a GM can not ban me for it and it not in the ToS as cheating then its not. Many of us have played every role in the game either on jobs meant to tank, cure, melee, nuke or jobs thats not the prime role. Nothing new has been put in the game since dnc was added. Thats easy as its get to fig out use tp to cure wow so hard.

[Greatguardian]

Outside Abyssea, I could be a demigod and still get total shit EXP if one or two of the other 5 people in the party are completely useless (or even less than ideal, really).

Inside Abyssea, other people can suck their own thumbs for all I care and it won't negatively affect me in the slightest.

[Akujima]

Outside Abyssea, I could be a demigod and still get total shit EXP if one or two of the other 5 people in the party are completely useless (or even less than ideal, really).

Inside Abyssea, other people can suck their own thumbs for all I care and it won't negatively affect me in the slightest.

So basically you just admitted how much Abyssea appeals to your desire to be better than everyone else, rather than have everyone contribute equally and be good as a team. 'Kay~

[Ravenmore]

Wow thats what you got out of that. Thing is outside of abyssea it was hard to find people to contribute equally. With your exp depending on them not sucking. All it took to take a 20k hour party to 10k is one crappy DD, or mage.

[wish12oz]

Oh hi wish. Welcome to the thread.

If you still believe that I was using Shuriken past Lv60 (and I know you're trying to hint towards me), then I applaud your ability to pronounce anyone other than yourself "A pathetic noob, who should quit life". I was simply elaborating on "skill" and how more than just theory is required for it.

Having "skill" at a video game, still doesn't explain why you should be handed a Lv90 job on a silver platter. Unless your reason is to imply your own greatness amongst the rest of the incompetent player base. And if you claim to have so much "skill" at FFXI, what would be your problem in Leveling Up so quickly outside of Abyssea, because you would surely Level much faster than the rest of those invalids... Right?

Look on the bright side. Then you wouldn't have to put up with them in Abyssea, because they're still stuck at Lv45, while you've already got your next Empyrean Weapon.

I never said you or anyone else was a pathetic noob, you should learn some reading comprehension. I was explaining that some mechanics are good at low levels, and some people try to cling to them at higher levels when they are no longe ruseful. And that eliminating these learned behaviors is in the interest of everyone.

And I had plenty of jobs at 75 and mostly capped merits before abyssea came out. 7 in fact, which is about 1 every 10 months since I started playing this account, not to bad I think. And also, I did genkai 1 twice, before it was nerfed, with lvl 50 alliances where everyone lotted that darn paper, and I leveled 2 jobs to 75 before the original exp nerf. And when they upped the drop rates and decreased the required EXP I didn't flip out and lose my mind cause others would get to 75 now. I said 'YAY! I can lvl more jobs easier.' Which is the attitude the rest of you need to have, and I don't understand what is wrong with you. If you don't like abyssea you are not required to do it.

As far as I am concerned, ever since ToA came out, every new person has been handed exp on a silver platter compared to when I originally did it. When I originally exped, 3k/hour was great exp, and we needed something like 80k exp more then you do now to get to 75. There was also INTENSE competition for the genkai 1 papyrus, you camped it with alliances, and pretty much everyone lotted it. I know you weren't around then, but you're complaining about losing less effort to max level now, as compared to what was lost with the exp nerf, increase drop rate on papyrus and introduction of weak toa exp mobs and numerous camps to exp at. And not only are you saying it was hard to exp after these original changes, you are saying it with such gusto and believing it makes you so amazing, that I just can't help but laugh at you. Did you have any jobs at 75 before these original changes? and if you're so PRO OLDSCHOOL LVLING why are you not advocating for the original exp decrease to be taken back as well, and make everyone get that 80k again. Heck while you're at it, make papyrus go back to the original abysmal drop rate and make all the people who didnt get it before 2005 go get it again, cause they 'didnt do the hard way.'

Also: I make it a habit to not join shout anything groups, because they're usually just terrible and not fun and I fall asleep. I did however join a cruor farming party the other day, but thats exactly what happen. They were bad at capping azure and getting time, so I went and capped azure and amber and got them like 2 hours of time, then went back to their camp, and fell asleep. Know what happen? they kicked me after about 20 minutes and I had timed out when I woke up. Doubt I will ever join another shout group, they're just to terrible for me.

EDIT::: Heck you could also go back and make everyones EXP cap at 3k/hr, so they are forced to gain only as much exp as we use to before 10k/hr toa parties. And you could make it retroactive so even you and panthera lose all those shiney levels you seem so proud of at 3 to 5x faster then they were originally achieved.

[DrStrangelove]

cheat   
[cheet] Show IPA
–verb (used with object)
1.to defraud; swindle: He cheated her out of her inheritance.
2.to deceive; influence by fraud: He cheated us into believing him a hero.
3.to elude; deprive of something expected: He cheated the law by suicide.

I merely applied the definitions and the concepts to explain why leeching is cheating, and they're a perfect fit, if I may say. The real problem is that SE's rules for what cheating is and is not don't address what cheating really is in this context. You want to be closer to what cheating actually means, not what SE thinks it is, as they may not necessarally be close.

You are completely in error.

1. Fraud (or to defraud) is a process which requires a person to actively lie. It's not fraud when a person makes unwarranted assumptions or takes no reasonable actions that could have been made. You already know that people leech, so you would be clearly in error to assume that someone that is level 90 could only have reached that level though traditional parties. This is equally true of everyone. Unless the person SAYS I leveled my job to 90 in parties the old way and a person acts on that information, there is no fraud. Simply assuming they did because they are 90 is your fault not theirs. You can't commit fraud if people make an assumption about something where common knowledge indicate that they could easily be wrong. (E.g., you see someone in an office building wearing a suit and you assume they work there. That's nor fraud. That's you making an unwarranted assumption.)

2. Deception requires you to BOTH hide something that would otherwise be known and to do so with the intent of avoiding an unwelcome outcome. But what has a person hidden? How they got to 90 of course! But who cares? Most if not ALL party will never ask how you got to 90. They are concerned with how well you perform now not how you leveled. You can't be deceptive if no one cares about what the truth is and especially so if you don't think they care. (E.g., on Saturday you watch a movie then lay down on the sofa for a nap while your spouse is out. You don't mention you watched a movie when your spouse returns and he/she doesn't ask. That's not deception.)

3. To deprive of something expected is again in error. You assume that party leaders expect the person to have leveled their jobs the old way. I have been in hundreds of parties over the last 7 years. No one ever asked me how I leveled. Abyssea leeching is not new. Before this there were smn burns, paid PL parties and bought accounts. No one asks because no one cares. They invite you to produce. (E.g., you offer to take a friend to the store but your gas tank is 1/4 full but still plenty for the round trip. Your friend might assume you have more gas, but you haven't deprived him of anything because his assumption is both irrelevant and false. Moreover he shouldn't care and typically won't since rarely if ever do people ask.)

You're just way off base here. Cheating can't occur when 1) SE has specifically designed the game to work the way it does 2) the player base is completely aware of how this is designed, and 3) people in parties generally don't care.

Leeching is a method of gaining XP that you don't like. We get it. In the old days, there were far fewer teleports. Now there are more. In the old days there were far fewer camps. Now there are more. You get twice the XP for kills, plus XP rings, plus stronger signets, plus faster mob re-pops, more merits, etc. It's much easier to level now than it was before. People who level now using xp rings, double xp, signets, merits, ports, etc aren't cheating because others of us leveled jobs the old way when it was easier. They're not cheating if some people refuse to use those things. They aren't cheating if they fail to tell people how they leveled.

And if people look at someone's jobs, they might think they are all years old or brand new. They might think they were burned or leeched or the account was bought. But they don't ask because they don't care: they just want to add you to produce.

[Romanova]

I would be deeply worried about this if but only you knew and understood what those words meant. You've been a troll from the get-go. Just not worth it anymore.

so basically, you can't refute my posts. Gotcha. Only troll post I made was about you not being a doctor. Everything else I said I believe 100%. Including you being an elitist who insist everyone has to do things your way just so you can be proud of yourself.

[Akujima]

This is a never ending debate. And debates that continue to go on forever, show perfectly well that there is an imbalance somewhere that needs to be corrected. There are quite a number of people out there, that feel the same way as Myself and Panthera. The only difference is that they don't have the patience to come in here and continually voice their opinion on the matter. And I don't blame them either, but something has to be said from our side of the fence. Even if you think that our numbers are so insignificant that it's best we're just ignored, that is never the solution. But...

The minority will always be shunned upon it seems, even if the reasons they give are just and their topics have merit. And don't forget that FFXI is a minority when it comes to the MMO' genre. The failure of FFXIV only proves that SE is not taking the correct approach to appeal to the MMO' player base. Just because you claim that the majority of the FFXI player base is okay with Leeching 60 Lv's, in no way can that be true for the majority of the MMO' player base, who have turned their back towards XI.

I know many who've quit and expressed their distaste with the direction FFXI has taken. I've almost quit myself, but decided to just tolerate the fact, that some people will want excuses to be lazy. I'm here trying to ask SE not to keep making the same mistakes over again. Although it's highly unlikely that they will raise the LvCap, because the damage is already done, and taking it back will only cause a giant uproar amongst those who still haven't leeched all their jobs.

SE doesn't intend for their player base to be dishonest, I'm sure. The culture that the developers come from, is very different than most of the world. They're still taking their time in figuring out how to balance online games, so that it appeals to everyone on a global scale. RMT would have never survived if XI wasn't released in North America. Fish-botting would never have been an issue if there was no RMT. And my guess is, SE allowed for Lv30 cap on Abyssea, so that people can start collecting their stones, while Lvling up the old fashioned way.

I do not disagree that Lvling back at NA release was a tad slow, so the adjustments outside of Abyssea are welcome by me. But the ridiculous amounts of EXP that is provided inside Abyssea for a Lv30 Job, is absurdly out of balance... So...

@SE: If your idea was to allow speedy Lvling just so that players can experience your new expansion quicker, it's poor game design. If that was not your intention, then you need to implement ways to prevent the player base from taking advantage of certain game mechanics.

I just hope that you are listening to both sides of the story, and getting a better idea of how to take everything into consideration when creating a balanced game.

[Ravenmore]

I know many that quit for takiing to long to find or form parties then when you finally get to camp kill for 30 mins and people start leaving. FF14 failed due to not having basic things like AHs, forced limits on exping, lack of auto attack, really poor UI, not listening to bug reports or anything from the beta. If WoW had done the same thing they would lose thier ass too. When a new game turns out worse then the one its trying to replace as the flag ship something went wrong.

[Chocobits]

I leave this thread alone for a few pages and this is what it turns into?

Akujima and Panthera don't want SE to take actions against leechers, if nobody ever caught on. One posts an unpopular idea knowing it's unpopular, the other bandwagons it. They take turns hi-fiving every thing each other says and disregarding all other points made in the thread except a select few which turn into personal 1 on 1 mini wars versus a legit discussion that everyone can possibly learn and benefit from.

The whole thing reeks of trollery, and that's coming from a troll. They keep responding with "wah cheaters" "it takes no skill to leech, therefor all leechers must have no skill" and other perverse logic/butthurt.

If you stop responding, they'll become petulant and just write each other back and forth on how great they are.

[Leonlionheart]

If SE makes me go back outside abyssea just to get level 70 I don't think I'll ever level another job.

Not that it matters since I can do everything on the jobs I have at cap already.

[Tamoa]

there is an imbalance somewhere that needs to be corrected

That's your opinion.



There are quite a number of people out there, that feel the same way as Myself and Panthera. The only difference is that they don't have the patience to come in here and continually voice their opinion on the matter.

They don't even need to voice their opinion, they all could just hit the "like" button on yours and Panthera's posts to show their support.

[Chocobits]

That's your opinion.




They don't even need to voice their opinion, they all could just hit the "like" button on yours and Panthera's posts to show their support.

They did. All 12 of them.

[BorkBorkBork]

Dear Bork here's a hi-five at you my friend.

Sincerely
Bork

[Chocobits]

Anyone ever visit the official youtube page of a J.B. or Rebecca Black video?

No? Well, as with this thread, you didn't miss much.

The point is, some ideas are so unpopular that people converge on them from around the globe to offer protest and ridicule.

The only difference between this and that: I don't see J.B. or Rebecca Black giving page long retorts to each commenter. Is it because they're too busy honing their skill? No. They just spend more waking hours trying to decide how to blow their money than the rest of us.

We'd all have more time to hone our skill if Akujima had his way. Just imagine him in glowing red armor leading drills in Valkurm dunes and sending people to Mordion Gaul if they bring a powerlevel with them.

[Leonlionheart]

We'd all have more time to hone our skill if Akujima had his way. Just imagine him in glowing red armor leading drills in Valkurm dunes and sending people to Mordion Gaul if they bring a powerlevel with them.

this actually made me lol pretty good.

[Panthera]

You were not using objects for your verbs, so therefore you omitted the applicable definitions.




Leeching deprives those who actually earned their level out of their prestige. It misleads people that you've been playing your job for 90 levels, when all you've done at best is just open chests, and at worst, just stood around doing nothing. Leeching evades the leveling up process of particpating in battle in a way specific to the main job being leveled. More generally, cheating is dishonest. Did you really, honestly earn level 90? No, you just leeched. Leeching is cheating by defintions,

No, I used them with objects when I originally explained applied cheating to leeching, except for usage two, but the operative word for #2 and #4 are the same anyway with or without objects.


#5 is the most used definition in terms of discussing the game, and nearly impossible to separate from the use of the word, and I don't believe that you are arguing that keying or leeching violates rules or regulations.

I disagree. The meanings are more or less independant for the purpose of usage. A bear and to bear have different, independant meanings for the purpose of usage.




I do not believe that #1, #2, #3, and #4 are as widely applicable as you are using them. Leeches are not claiming anything about how they leveled when they join a party, just that they have the job at X level. ---At this point in the game, there is no way to know how a stranger gained his levels other than asking, so it is inappropriate to make assumptions one way or the other. Without this assumption, there is no deception based on the manner of leveling.--

(My -'s (didn't want to shout for that long, but it needed disinction, and it's already in italics!).)

Here I think we're getting to the real crux of why you feel my position is invalid.

It depends on what you mean my "appropriate."

Are we talking about a "safe" assumption or a "reasonable" assumption? Assumptions are inherently never safe, because they take for granted that something may be or not be, when the opposite is actually the case. It's not reasonable to expect an assumption to be safe. If there's a 99% probability that you'll be fine, and a 1% probability that you will be harmed, the assumption is no "safe."

Is it reasonable to assume that they RMT'd their account? Is it reasonable to assume that people went afk and did nothing? No. I've never AFB'd, I know people who've never AFB'd, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that they did.

When someone is 90, we give them the "benefit of the doubt" that they didn't cheat. It is going out on a limb, I'll give you that. In other words, they are innocent until proven guilty--is that unreasonable or inappropriate? The US system of justice doesn't think so. If you did, you'd also have to explain why people should have to prove their innocence when charged with a crime.


There is an implication that people who join for active DD and mage spots have the appropriate level of combat and magic skills, and that they know what they're doing. If they have the appropriate skills and knowledge, there is no deception or fraud.

If that's the case, someone could RMT a fully leveled and skilled character. They still "have" a 90 account. But the person playing cheated by purchasing the RMT'd account in the first place, and present it as their own achievement in skills and knowledge, even if they did somehow know what they were doing, which I find doubtful. In other words, they cheated our giving them the benefit of the doubt. Even if they did admit they RMT'd their account, they still evaded the leveling process. You keep assuming that not saying anything or admitting it either way, means they're not cheating, when that isn't the case.


If they choose to not skill and gimp themselves, then sure, you can say they're cheating the party out of a DD spot, but it is because the player made bad choices, not how they gained their levels. If they only made Qufim sync xp parties, they'd still have terribly low skills.

Here's where it gets tricky. We all know that you should be able to skill up on an IT monster, even if your level exceeds the skill cap of the mob; you're still fighting something strong than you are at that level. How we've clamored for this. We should be able to expect this.


By your example, you can claim that leeches are cheating your sense of accomplishment, but saying that we are cheating is not applicable to those definitions. However, people who leech are saying that getting lv 90 is not an accomplishment for them, so they're not cheating their sense of accomplishment.

I don't think we're on the same page here.

What they're cheating is the prestige and stature of my accomplishment, not the actual accomplishment itself. In other words, they cheat the perceived value of the accomplishment, which still has a value in and of itself. Just because they don't care about getting to 90 and don't see it as an accomplishment, doesn't mean that their cheating doesn't damage the perceived value of my accomplishment. This assumes that others value the persistence that "legitimately" leveling to achieve the the accomplishment entails, in other words, people like-minded to myself, and they're out there. I've manually fished up a Lu Shang's. A friend of mine was in disbelief, he couldn't believe I did it. He didn't say that doing that doesn't have value, he just didn't think it was humanly possible! His disbelief, his perception of the impossible, has much value to me.


In the bodybuilding example, if the winner used steroids and openly admits it since it was not against the rules, there is no cheating in regards to rules violations, nor is there fraud or deception in that they are not claiming to be steroid free. If a participant chooses not to use steroids, he is just putting himself at a disadvantage.

No, of course they aren't cheating in the sense that they're "breaking the rules."

Would they openly admit they used steroids? Doesn't sound like an accomplishment to me. If they don't openly admit it, it is a lie of ommission, and deceptive. If they do admit they were taking steroids, they are admitting to cheating by avoidance of the purpose of the competition. I really don't think the point of a body building competition is just having a good physique, it's getting one. For example, the purpose of a race isn't just being at the finish line, it's getting there. The fact that steroids are against the rules means that having a good physique isn't the end-all and be-all of the competition.

And personally, I don't like cheating by any definition. The more definitions it meets, the worse the cheating.


They are not cheating because they are not frauduelent or deceptive: Again, no claim was made by the person otherwise. In fact, it was agreed when the keymaster was invited (or changed jobs) that that was his role in the party would be. There is no violation of rules, or deception to the party as to what that character's role in the xp party is.

This evades the definition of cheating as a form of evasion, which means it cheats the definition of the word. The most common usage is "to cheat death," but that usage is not exclusive.

And as for experience points scrolls, it depends on if you completed the quest on one job and then changed to another. If you changed jobs, by the same definition, experience points scrolls evade the leveling up process gone through by gaining experience points by defeating monsters in a way specific to or supported by the job/support job combination played, directly or indirectly while that monster was defeated. Getting experience points from ENMs, MMM, exp chests, or Dominion Ops are examples of gaining exp indirectly, but could not have been gained without participating in the battle directly. If you changed jobs, short version this time, then you did not gain exp on your job when the monster was defeated.

Levels are about combat ability, measured in increments by skill and combat levels, by stats such as STR and VIT. If you study karate, you get better at it by practicing it, not by cooking, or driving, or something that isn't karate. It only makes sense then that in order to gain combat levels, one must participate in combat, and not something else. The only way to get better at the Fencing job is to fence, and the only way to get better at the Boxing job is to box. There might be some overlap, but it's not one in place of the other.

One should not get experience points for sending tells. That's just bad game design that supports evasion. Standing around in and of itself does not give exp, it's not supposed to. You don't get exp for riding chocobos, but you can get chocobo digging skill, and not something else, which makes sense. You don't get experience points for riding the airship.

Also, notice that FOV/GOV do not allow changing jobs. One should not expect to gain easily exp on mnk/dnc and then use it on White Mage or Bard. The In other words, exp scrolls don't fight back at you via the monster on a different job, when doing so is a different leveling experience. Getting EXP on Dancer is easy by design, on bard it's difficult by design; one does not mean you've had the experience of the other.

By having a 90, you've lead me to the reasonable assumption that you've been playing it, when you have not. You've just been, for example, taggin the ??? in Sacrarium once a week. In principle, it's no different than chest leeching. It's not as bad as do-nothing leeching, but it's still cheating.


...and if not, its about the same participation as a subbed cure II.

Leeching, by which I mean keymastering, does not have the same participation as a subbed Cure II. One is related to fighting monsters. The other is keying chests.



Anyways, those are not FFXI. Have you ever seen low level characters trying to open chests while fighting murex? They really should have 2 hp atmas and atma of the apocalypse, because they die a lot in pickup groups. Stilll, most mobs used for xp do not have aoe like that.

This means they don't belong there. A level 1 has no business in a fight with even a lowly lesser colibri, let alone a Sand Sweeper. SE doesn't allow it the latter. Why they allow it with a level 30 doesn't make sense. Does a feather weight belong in the ring with Mike Tyson? Even if it were allowed for official matches, that's just plain nuts.


Also, if a mimic happens to pop in the middle of the group, then the chest will try to kill the keymaster.

This means that Mimics fight back, and normal chests do not. No one goes through the leveling process on mimics, they only happen to. If they do, it's coincidence. Not that you're saying this as such, but it's deceptive to say,"People exp on mimics." It's deceptive because it takes advantage of our assumptions about our understanding of the leveling process. It's fair to say,"I happen to get some exp on mimics while I was farming in Pso-Xja." In a more general way, it's not honest thing to say, in other words.


I think joining as a DD and then afking the whole time is a jerk move and worthy of a kick. It is deceptive, but is not a violation of the rules. Therefore, it is cheating the party out of a DD slot, but it is not cheating at FFXI.

Close. They are not breaking the rules of FFXI, but they are cheating at FFXI.


If you let the group know that you need to afk for 30 minutes, they are fine with it, and you come back, that's ok. If the person payed for a leech spot, then it is a business transaction of gil for easy xp, and there is no fraud or deception, and there is no cheating using any of the definitions.

Not completely true. It evades the leveling process in earnest.


Related, what is your opinion of people who key their subjobs from 37 to 49, and then never touch them again?

They cheated.


You will still need to learn when to use the subjob's abilities with your main job, and adjust to the slightly different playstyle.

Yes, they should have played their jobs so they'd know how to play from first hand experience.


Does your opinion change if the person admits that its a new subjob for them that they're trying out in an xp group?

They cheated on their subjob. Not taking subjobs seriously is nothing new. I didn't like it then, moreso now.


Since the keymaster is paying 500 cruor per chest opened, he is actively participating in that aspect of the party.

He didn't fight the monster to get the 500 cruor to open the chest. If he did, it might be ok. But......I don't like the time limit in Abyssea such that opening chests can practically be a full time job for most jobs so that you can keep fighting. And Dominion Ops aren't well designed, either. I think it's silly we have to stop fighting to have a chat with an NPC, back and forth and back and forth, and someone who just takes up space and can't fight the monster shouldn't be allowed to benefit from it. Fighting for up to 30 minutes in MMM I liked; a good bit of fighting and then a short teeny tiny break. If I may be indulged in a bit of my own hyperbole, I can blink in the amount of time it takes to beat an OP, and then I'm going through riveting confirmation windows with an NPC, which probably takes up as much if not more time than fighting monsters that drop like flies because of the fact that it's 18 guys against 1 EXP monster when they have Abyssites. Killing monsters should not and doesn't really depend on proc-ing and chests and lights. It's gimicky and convoluted. Why not just have us climb ladders and do backflips and sing and do a little dance? It's just as arbitrary, and probably more entertaining. I think that if they had doubled or tripled the exp to begin with, and Abyssea wasn't just nothing more than areas we've already played, except with bells and whistles added, we wouldn't be having a discussion about people who's actions contribute nothing to the battle in ways that don't have anything to do with the battle, period.


In regards to the walking across the US example, it may be one person's goal to walk across the US, but others may just want to cross the country so they can spend some time at the beach with their friends; those people lose nothing by taking a car or plane, nor does it detract from the first person's sense of accomplishment for getting there in his own way.
Ok, if I've been unclear, let me rephrase: getting there matters as being there does. The practical value of manually fishing up a Lu Shang's is that you get a Lu Shang's, which also has it's own practical value. A Lu shang has it's own value to have, but getting there also has value, if you do it the hard way as opposed to the easy way. If i wanted to walk across the US, and then do something really cool once I got there, they both have value to me.

Now, here's the thing. It depends on if you believe in objective, inherent truth, or if it's just something we as humans make up. It is my assertion that Walking across the United States has an inherent, objective value. It's an accomplishment, whether anyone wants to think it is or not. It's the damage to the subjective, perceived truth of the value of the accomplishment that bothers me as much as anything.

[Nacht]

So if you think that people shouldn't level jobs in abyssea because they have to learn their jobs, then what about if we're leveling a job on a mule character? I already know how to play whm, I've played whm for years, but now I want a 2nd character that's a whm, and I want it quickly. Then that's ok to leech because I already know how to play the job, right?

I might have to learn a different playing style that involves controlling 2 characters, but I better get that whm to 90 as quickly as possible so I can start learning that.

[Panthera]

You are completely in error.

Let me give you an analogy. Advertisers love to say "free with purchase." Now, you have to pay for your bologne sandwich or whatever, and then they give you the cheap plastic promotion toy for a Disney live action movie. Now, obviously, the bologna sandwich was not free, because you had to pay for it. Now, you've got the bologna sandwich, and then they give you your toy. But they didn't give just give you the toy, you had to pay for the Big Mac. If you had to pay for A to get B, then B isn't free because you had to pay money to get it because you had to pay money for A. It's bologne, and I don't care for bologne.

It's deceptive because it takes for granted our assumptions about our world. I just assume people do the right thing unless I can prove otherwise. If someone shows me a Purple Heart and says,"look what I got!" when they mean got to mean "have" not got as in, got it the hard way like real heroes do, they're taking advantage of my assumptions. And that's just not honest. That's why it's cheating. They called it the Stolen Valor Act. Stealing isn't honest, either.

I just love how people evade definitions they can't argue with. They cheat the arguement. It's not an honest particpation in the discussion. It's merely a show of it, false.


In the old days, there were far fewer teleports. Now there are more.
Just getting from point A to point be can be an accomplishment or not. Getting through Promyvion back when it first came out was an accomplishment. Trying to get to Khimaira is an accomplishment, if it had undead, moreso.

They had POS hacking too, and that was never an accomplishment.

Changing the game does not change the definition of cheating. Changing the rules does not change the definition of cheating. It might or might not coincide with the definition of cheating, which it should, but it doesn not change it.


In the old days there were far fewer camps. Now there are more. You get twice the XP for kills, plus XP rings, plus stronger signets, plus faster mob re-pops, more merits, etc. It's much easier to level now than it was before. People who level now using xp rings, double xp, signets, merits, ports, etc aren't cheating because others of us leveled jobs the old way when it was easier. They're not cheating if some people refuse to use those things. They aren't cheating if they fail to tell people how they leveled.

You're still fighting monsters in this case. With chest leeching or do nothing leeching, you are not.


And if people look at someone's jobs, they might think they are all years old or brand new. They might think they were burned or leeched or the account was bought. But they don't ask because they don't care: they just want to add you to produce.

If someone is trying to figure out how to play on NMs that I have an interest in, I care, it matters to me. If someone RMTs their account, I care, I want nothing to do with them. And given that do nothing leeching is about the same thing, I want nothing to do with them either, and I don't, I kick them. People complain about do-nothing leeches, I'm really not the only one. If I could have a Bard, Cor or Smn, for example that can handle doing their job well enough while doing chests well enough, I wouldn't call them cheating, because they're particpating in the battle. If someone shows up on pup/thf and wants to open chests because they can't do much else, that's cheating.

[Akujima]

I might have to learn a different playing style that involves controlling 2 characters, but I better get that whm to 90 as quickly as possible so I can start learning that.

Ever notice how alot of people in game say they "need" something?

I see it all the time amongst 90% of the player base. How so many people say that they "need" a certain piece of equipment. When the fact is, they don't "need" it at all. It's a desire, not a necessity. Sure, you may want a Lv90 mule quickly, but what is the "need" for it? If as quickly as possible was to LvUp outside of Abyssea, then how would you know the difference? When is there a consensus on what is "fast enough" for everyone? Technically the fastest way to get a Lv90 WHM, is to buy an account with a Lv90 WHM job. But that is fraudulent, and is against the rules.

There needs to be rules and regulations, even within the construct of video games. If sports had no rules, how would they be entertaining at all? What is the excitement of scoring a goal in hockey, if there is no goalie to defend the net? Would it even be considered "scoring" without the challenge of having to get the puck past the goalie?

[Byrth]

Ever notice how alot of people in game say they "need" something?

Sometimes I do


There needs to be rules and regulations, even within the construct of video games. If sports had no rules, how would they be entertaining at all? What is the excitement of scoring a goal in hockey, if there is no goalie to defend the net? Would it even be considered "scoring" without the challenge of having to get the puck past the goalie?

I think you have a self-incriminating post fetish. This is another of my favorites:


I wish SE would step up and have the guts to do something unorthodox for once. Every other MMO has blood tanking as the main focus. Constantly avoiding DMG or taking so few DMG, kinda lessens the importance of "Healing" type jobs.

Hurry up and try something unorthodox, guys! Make it the same as every other MMO! If you don't even read what you write before you hit the post button, you can hardly expect other people to read it. By the way, worst analogies ever.

[Akujima]

Hurry up and try something unorthodox, guys! Make it the same as every other MMO! If you don't even read what you write before you hit the post button, you can hardly expect other people to read it. By the way, worst analogies ever.


Pulling a post out of context, from a different thread, because you don't understand the topic being discussed proves nothing.

The OP in that thread was talking about raising Utsusemi Ni to Lv50 so that subjobs would not have it available to them. In this context "Unorthodox" means "Do Something Drastic" to change the game mechanics around.

[Vivik]

I wish you guys would let this thread die so I can start my "Make Abyssea level 75+ or at least level 70" thread. It's tiring waiting so long and I don't think it's fair to others who want to rehash the same topic over and over again.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Holy walls of text you are are thick and still wrong. I can't believe you even made a reference to cheating death just to show how horribly wrong you are, get over yourself, damn. You still haven't provided a single instance of cheating that is allowable because cheating isn't allowed by the ToS. Seriously, just shut up.

[Akujima]

@Panthera: Good luck trying to get any point across. It's quite obvious that it's impossible to have a mature debate with anyone here.

The fact of the matter is that people want to be deceived into believing that there is no objective truths. That absolutely everything is subjective to perception, is what they base their entire thesis on. It's the other end of the fanatical agenda, allowing them cling to whichever side that suits them best at that particular moment.

If you bring up a reason that has to do with morals, they will say things like "you're QQ'ing, because you just want people to LvUp your way!"

If you bring up a reason that has to do with logic, they will swing in the other direction saying "well we should have have the choice to play how we want"

Whatever situation arises, they will simply pick and choose whichever response best suits them.

Speaking to them about intangible things, such as emotion, feelings and accomplishments is futile. Rarely do people truly understand these things anymore, and far and few between will have the integrity to discuss these things in a mature manner.

They will continue to avoid confronting the real discussion, picking and pointing at your minor inconsistencies until it drives you mad. Like a child who repeats everything you say, just to get under your skin until you give up. That is how they win.

[HFX7686]

Akujima,

Why are you so obsessed about leveling? Leveling is one of the least important things in FF11. There are a lot more things to do other than leveling. Most people I know, including myself, try to avoid leveling as much as possible so we can get out there and do other things. In fact, when they last raised the level cap I got all my new levels on my main jobs through doing NMs in Abyssea, not experience points parties.

There's really so much to do in this game I don't understand why you're so focused on such a small part of it.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Ok, here's an objective truth:

1. You can bring low level characters into Abyssea.
2. SE is aware you can bring low level characters into Abyssea.
3. You can gain massive amounts of exp in a short amount of time in Abyssea.
4. SE is aware you can gain massive amounts of exp in a short amount of time in Abyssea.

Therefore, SE is not only aware a low level character brought into Abyssea can gain massive amounts of exp in a short amount of time, they intended for this to happen.

SE was aware of people 'burning' jobs up before Abyssea was released, and not only said they were aware of it, they stated it was working as intended, i.e. they wanted this to happen.

Are you seriously trying to argue the developers who intended for something to happen are openly allowing people to 'cheat' when gaining a massive amount of exp in a short amount of time is both a) nothing new and b) working as intended?

[Vivik]

@Panthera: Good luck trying to get any point across. It's quite obvious that it's impossible to have a mature debate with anyone here.


Mature debates ended on this topic a while ago when the servers were down. Now it's just user 6489+ rehashing the same crap. It's not going to change, the majority of the player base does not want it to change, SE does not want it to change, and nobody cares if you do, move on...

[Panthera]

@Panthera: Good luck trying to get any point across. It's quite obvious that it's impossible to have a mature debate with anyone here.

I think that's completely true of some, not completely true of some, and not at all of others.

Some write or think poorly, are rude. Some just repeat themselves without adding anything new. Some won't address valid points because they don't have an arguement. Some just want attention. Or all of the above. What particularly tickles me is that some that argue for leeching because it's not against TOS are trolling, which is against forum rules.

Some may only have a brief verbal mistep, but don't continue when asked to stop.

Some write quite well, have points with some validity. There was a good point about Exp scrolls, as just but one example.

I honestly think some may not actually care if it is cheating at all, with the recognition and agreeance that leeching is everything I assert it be; they just don't care. They get their levels at the consequence of their own conscience, because it is, afterall is said and done, only a game. They do what they know is wrong, and do it anyway because it benefits them; it does more good for them to cheat than play honestly, that they may feel a little bad about it is just a trade off.

To convince them is not the only goal. Some mind may be in fact be changed. Some silent, undecided may have gone one way or the other, or decided that both sides have points, so they are both right, and wrong. But just because you may or may not have convinced them does not mean you haven't won the arguement.

To the other side's credit, I think saying that there's no one with whom to have a mature discussion--as an absolute, is exaggerating, my friend. If you feel someone has something new and worthwhile to reply to, don't let trolls stop you from doing so. But just put trolls on the ignore list where they belong. I have.


picking and pointing at your minor inconsistencies until it drives you mad.
Such as? I think I've been very, very consistent, and I've added new arguements when possible. I'd like to think my arguement as evolved over time, becoming more specific and more clear, if I may say so.

[RaenRyong]

@Panthera: Your argument is terrible because it relies on your own arbitrary definitions of "wrong" and "cheating", when from the perspective of the game, leeching or fast exping is neither.


There's really so much to do in this game I don't understand why you're so focused on such a small part of it.

I would assert it's likely because neither poster has much accomplished that isn't grinding exp that everyone who has ever played the game has accomplished. Care to prove me wrong on this point?


Speaking to them about intangible things, such as emotion, feelings and accomplishments is futile. Rarely do people truly understand these things anymore, and far and few between will have the integrity to discuss these things in a mature manner.

Because these things are completely subjective. While you may be ecstatic and loving your life after the 20th hour of colibri grinding in a row, most people want to curl up in a corner and die, for instance.

[DrStrangelove]

Ok, here's an objective truth:

1. You can bring low level characters into Abyssea.
2. SE is aware you can bring low level characters into Abyssea.
3. You can gain massive amounts of exp in a short amount of time in Abyssea.
4. SE is aware you can gain massive amounts of exp in a short amount of time in Abyssea.
5. In no place EXCEPT Abyssea is it possible for a level 30 character to gain XP while killing mobs in an alliance with a level 75+ character. In short, SE specifically CHANGED the code to allow low level players to gain XP. This proves that not only was this not an oversight, it was intended.

Therefore, SE is not only aware a low level character brought into Abyssea can gain massive amounts of exp in a short amount of time, they intended for this to happen.

SE was aware of people 'burning' jobs up before Abyssea was released, and not only said they were aware of it, they stated it was working as intended, i.e. they wanted this to happen.

Are you seriously trying to argue the developers who intended for something to happen are openly allowing people to 'cheat' when gaining a massive amount of exp in a short amount of time is both a) nothing new and b) working as intended?

Great post you made. I added point #5 with all due respect.

[Meyi]

@Panthera: Good luck trying to get any point across. It's quite obvious that it's impossible to have a mature debate with anyone here.

Yes, it's impossible to have a mature debate when the other side is composed of complete morons.

Nobody appreciates bringing appropriate logic to a debate only to have the entire argument crapped on by a few selected words being picked by the other team and debated upon. It's rude. You need to learn how to debate better if you want anyone to take you seriously. You want mature responses to respond to? Look through all 43 pages of this thread. You'll find tons of them scattered everywhere. Consider maybe actually taking apart good responses rather than just sentence fragments.

[TybudX]

Levels are about combat ability, measured in increments by skill and combat levels, by stats such as STR and VIT. If you study karate, you get better at it by practicing it, not by cooking, or driving, or something that isn't karate. It only makes sense then that in order to gain combat levels, one must participate in combat, and not something else.

This doesn't apply to FFXI. I learned almost everything I know about the game from sources outside the game, and applied them after the fact. I earned the accomplishment of leveling before I ever achieved the levels. All going from level 1 to level 90 does is prove that you gained 1,513,850 experience points.

Why is leveling in a traditional party the only way you see that as an accomplishment? What about Campaign? Campaign Ops? You mentioned earlier that you personally thought SE made Abyssea accessible to level 30 jobs so that they could do minor fetch quests, but those are clearly outside the leveling process, while giving exp rewards. All of this is cheating according to you by virtue of not actively playing the role of your job in an experience points party. Hell, being designated puller is outside of every job's normal function. That makes it kind of hard to have a traditional exp party without being guilty of collusion.

Yes, your argument has been very consistent. You have selected a point at which you say you are not cheating when you gain experience. You have taken the strict definition of the term 'cheating', applied it to something you don't like, and removed all context but your own. What have you gained from your levels, though? Strictly speaking if you aren't able to present yourself as a competent level 90 *whatever* you have in effect 'leeched' your experience points, no different than a 'key master'. That's what makes you a hypocrite.

[Byrth]

SE supposedly didn't realize Utsusemi would make Ninja a tanking superpower. Lets not pretend they have a massive amount of foresight here.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Typically though abilities etc. being used outside their intended purpose that they are aware of are either quickly patched or they decide sure why not and let it roll. Utsusemei was the latter. From what I've heard they already nerfed Utsusemei twice - they patched it so shadows were wiped by AoE and that you lost hate from shadows being hit.

[Ravenmore]

Byrth have not read the whole thread? Its been brought up more then once how they knew about leech and still didn't do anything for GoV leechinging.

[Sayelle]

Pulling a post out of context, from a different thread, because you don't understand the topic being discussed proves nothing.

The OP in that thread was talking about raising Utsusemi Ni to Lv50 so that subjobs would not have it available to them. In this context "Unorthodox" means "Do Something Drastic" to change the game mechanics around.

I can say with 100% confidence that Byrth knows more about this game than you will ever know.

[Sayelle]

Some write or think poorly, are rude. Some just repeat themselves without adding anything new. Some won't address valid points because they don't have an arguement. Some just want attention. Or all of the above. What particularly tickles me is that some that argue against leeching because it's not like it used to be are trolling, which is against forum rules.

Oh you. You shouldn't talk about yourself like that.

[Panthera]

Oh you. You shouldn't talk about yourself like that.

"To the other side's credit, I think saying that there's no one with whom to have a mature discussion--as an absolute, is exaggerating, my friend. If you feel someone has something new and worthwhile to reply to, don't let trolls stop you from doing so. But just put trolls on the ignore list where they belong. I have."

~Panthera

[Ravenmore]

It seems from the "like" button that more people don't like what your saying.

[Mrbeansman]

Morals are Subjective btw. Also I bet everyone who thinks having a 75 job etc belongs to the minority group of people who can't get into a end game LS for being gimp self entitled self righteous crybabies.

[Kensagaku]

@Akujima

Welp, after reading one after another Akujima thread, I've made an observation that seems to carry over through all of them. Stop me if you've heard this one before, Shuriken dude.

There's this guy, and he feels entitled because he doesn't like something. Because he doesn't like something, he assumes there are hundreds of other people who agree with him. Because he wants to do something else, and others don't because they're busy doing what they want to do (i.e. leveling their jobs in this case), he decides that he wants to cut them off so that they can do things in his ideal image of FFXI. He's rather obsessed with the smallest roleplay details despite not knowing how things really work (something something throwing shuriken throughout an entire battle something). If people aren't doing one section because it's inefficient (i.e. old-school grinding parties) then suddenly they're wrong and cheating. He believes that because people don't level the old way, we're missing out on sooo much content, like bashing colibris for hours on end. Clearly we cannot go back to do storyline missions or old EG content like sky because of Abyssea; we don't have a personal choice not to do things outside of Abyssea or anything. This guy is not finding much support, and even when he does find it in people who are trying to assist in forming ideas, he drives them off by putting his back to the wall and going full-Krystal on them.

So, any guesses as to who this is? :o

---

@Panthera

Apologies for the above part of my post, but I'm seriously just getting tired of this guy. x_x; Now for the serious part.

There's no way that Abyssea leeching is cheating. First off, it's been going on for a good while now, and if SE had thought it to be cheating, they would have done something about it now. Some valid points were made not far back:

-SE knows that people can gain massive amounts of EXP in Abyssea. SE knows that people can go to Abyssea as early as level 30. Both of these are designed mechanics. Therefore, SE knows that people as early as level 30 can and probably will gain massive amounts of experience in Abyssea.
-SE made it so that level 30s can gain EXP on par with level 75+ players. Previously players couldn't be powerleveled in a party by a level 75 tearing through low-level mobs because the level gap would gimp or negate EXP. If they can gain EXP on par with level 75+ players, that's a designed mechanic.

At the moment, this whole system is by design. Until SE actually takes an action to cut off level 30s from leeching to 75+, it's not cheating. They've made actions to ban botters before (though I haven't seen it done recently), therefore marking it as cheating. They've warned/banned people who fleehack, slide, etc, marking it as cheating. Does this mean it's not done? No, it doesn't. There are those who will still cheat, of course. However, the point I'm making is that until SE either fixes Abyssea themselves or they start warning/banning players, your belief that leeching is "cheating" or "against morals" is purely subjective. There's no fact to it, there's nothing by SE saying that this isn't as intended.

If you don't like it, you're entitled to your opinion. But at the same time, we're entitled to ours as well, so please respect that. If you don't want to leech, no one's forcing you to or tying you down. Every now and then I shout for an outside party because I don't feel like keying or I don't feel like farming cruor for keys so I can keyleech, and I rarely if ever have problems forming one. There are likely plenty of people who are willing to EXP outside of Abyssea. Just gotta be patient, is all.

---

@Bean

Sentence totally fell apart in that edit. :P

[Romanova]

"To the other side's credit, I think saying that there's no one with whom to have a mature discussion--as an absolute, is exaggerating, my friend. If you feel someone has something new and worthwhile to reply to, don't let trolls stop you from doing so. But just put trolls on the ignore list where they belong. I have."

~Panthera

Completely hypocritical post as you keep repeating yourself into weird analogies to try to support your definition of cheating when you can't even come up with a single instance of cheating that is allowed by SE outside of your obsession over leechers.

Anyone you blocked is basically because you don't know how to refute them. I'm still waiting to see proof of your merits.

[Nynja]

Sure, you may want a Lv90 mule quickly, but what is the "need" for it? If as quickly as possible was to LvUp outside of Abyssea, then how would you know the difference?

Next time you need to go across the country, do it by foot. You dont "need" an airplane, a car, a train to do it, it can be done on foot.

http://motivationed.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/terry_fox_running.jpg
He's such a boss, he didnt even "need" two legs to do it!

[Panthera]

I learned almost everything I know about the game from sources outside the game, and applied them after the fact. I earned the accomplishment of leveling before I ever achieved the levels.

All going from level 1 to level 90 does is prove that you gained 1,513,850 experience points.

You earned the accomplishment of learning how to play.

First, I don't expect everyone to be quite as academic as yourself, and know almost everything about the game going in as you do from research alone, and I don't think it's reasonable to do so. I think a basic understanding from research is sufficient, because there is so very much to know about this game! This is of course giving you the benefit of the doubt my friend, that your learning is skewed that much on the research side than the experience side as you said it is, because it is a very bold statement indeed.

Second, going on the assumption that people haven't only a little, or none at all, the path is suppose to be educational. Starter zones--the three first ones--tend to be very simple. No elementals, and undead and arcana are the exception rather than the rule. In other words, there are no @#$ *&%# Soulflayers in SarutaBaruta! More monsters start agroing, linking or both as you go. As an example, crabs don't agro until mid-ish levels, using pre-level cap increase terminology. It gets harder as you go along to represent the learning experience; fundamentals first, advanced concepts later--not everything all at once as per some poor leech who's learning everything all at once on Abyssea NMs.

So no, and I think I've said this before, you are correct in that it means you have that much exp, but you should have learned something along the way, and I can and do expect you to have, because we are learning beings, even if that capacity varies so widely.


Why is leveling in a traditional party the only way you see that as an accomplishment? What about Campaign?

Traditional parties are just the most obvious, common example. There's other valid forms. I'll address yours and name a few others.

Campaign is by and large fine. It's just a battle. The exp isn't per mob, but per action in battle. I don't see a problem, post buff-nerf, of course. All that buff spamming was never legit, and SE saw to that; the rules represented what is and is not cheating, to their credit.

If you got cooking skills for casting Lullaby on an Aern, which is a very strange thing to be doing to begin with, something is off. I don't see why SE designed getting points for a combat stat system from doing non combat activites this way. It's not logical. If you got fishing skills for chatting with an NPC, that makes no sense, so I don't see why talking to an NPC (Dominion OPs) when you haven't participated actively in the battle should give you experience points. That's why I have a problem with some campaign ops.

ENMs are valid. The exp doesn't come directly from the monster, it comes from the chest that drops when you fought the monster, but you still had to fight a monster on that job to get exp for that job... provided you did actually fight. MMM is the same way; the exp is from the chest, not the monsters, but it's actually based on the exp you would have gotten from the monsters anyway, so that's fine.

EXP from COP BCMs is fine... you fought a quest-based battle, which is actually kinda cool, and you got exp for it for winning. No problems here.

Bastion is fine, Besieged is fine, am I missing something?


You mentioned earlier that you personally thought SE made Abyssea accessible to level 30 jobs so that they could do minor fetch quests, but those are clearly outside the leveling process, while giving exp rewards. All of this is cheating according to you by virtue of not actively playing the role of your job in an experience points party.

If the fetch quests give you seals, equipment, gil, or cruor, they're fine. If fetch quests and the like give exp, that's cheating.


Hell, being designated puller is outside of every job's normal function. That makes it kind of hard to have a traditional exp party without being guilty of collusion.

But you're forgetting that you're engaging the monster, or involved in combat with it. Also, as you know from your research, Thief has very high evasion, that's one of it's defining traits. Pulling is supported by Thief. If Paladin can take a beating and pull, as some do, that's supported by it's job. Ninja can because of inherent utsusemi as well as high evasion, so that's supported by the job as well. Summoner pet pulling is a highly specialized form of pulling, so that's very specific to Summoner or Beastmaster, and Puppetmaster to a much lesser extent. I've pulled a lot on Bard, where it has the unique advantage of being largely indirectly--which still counts-- related to the fight, so it's free to put songs on and get another mob while the party fights the mob.

Btw, I didn't understand your use of collusion. Could you elaborate? Seems odd in this context to me.


What have you gained from your levels, though? Strictly speaking if you aren't able to present yourself as a competent level 90 *whatever* you have in effect 'leeched' your experience points, no different than a 'key master'.

Correct. I've said the same thing myself, with the same premise right down to the conclusion. But aren't you then validating my position that keymastering is cheating?


That's what makes you a hypocrite.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're using "you" to mean "one". I've been called many things, but incompetent is not one of them. I do some research myself, other things I learn by doing.

While I often end up often disagreeing with you, at least you have a valid premise as often as not, but then the conclusion isn't always supported by it. Regretably, some posts by others lack your solid foundations. One of the other side's better fighters, /cheer.

[Mrbeansman]

My totally wrong opinion

You people really need to get out of this idea that you should only get exp for participation when that's simply not how it works. The only people who care are self rightgous Dudley Dorights such as yourself who are the minority.

[Kimble]

wait, wait, wait, did Panthera REALLY just say if you get exp from a quest in abyssea from 30-75, THATS CHEATING?

So I guess SE should disable getting any exp from quests in abyssea too between 30-75?

[Neisan_Quetz]

Oh wow, completely missed the exp scrolls is cheating, that's just golden.

[Kimble]

so I guess doing Streetsweeper or the like campaign ops below 75 is cheating as well?

[Aliekber]

If you got cooking skills for casting Lullaby on an Aern, which is a very strange thing to be doing to begin with, something is off. I don't see why SE designed getting points for a combat stat system from doing non combat activites this way. It's not logical. If you got fishing skills for chatting with an NPC, that makes no sense, so I don't see why talking to an NPC (Dominion OPs) when you haven't participated actively in the battle should give you experience points. That's why I have a problem with some campaign ops.

Have you ever been an apprentice? You don't start out pounding away on an anvil, or running the drill press. You start out sweeping the floor. You will still learn buckets about working metal just by being there, even though you're not doing a thing to help, other than keeping the shop clean.

Knights start out as Squires, Squires start out as Pages. Pages are glorified errand-boys, who do next-to-nothing to do with fighting. Cleaning out stables, delivering anything the Knight needs sent, setting up a tent--that's what Pages do. They will learn plenty about how to be a Knight in the process of this. Squires manage armor, clean weapons, saddle the horse, carry packs, and cook food. They don't use a sword, but they watch the Knight train and fight. They learn lots in the process, even though they are not doing it themselves. Keymasters are there watching high-level players fight high-level mobs. Why shouldn't they get secondhand experience points (which is what they do get) from this?

[Crica]

Keymasters are actively participating in Aby groups. No, they are not fighting, but they are active in the group.

I can understand why ppl prefer a dedicated keymaster (or two, so they can trade off AFK's for RL such as WC/food/etc) in Aby groups - that way the rest of the group are able to solely focus on the battles.

[HFX7686]

5. In no place EXCEPT Abyssea is it possible for a level 30 character to gain XP while killing mobs in an alliance with a level 75+ character. In short, SE specifically CHANGED the code to allow low level players to gain XP. This proves that not only was this not an oversight, it was intended.

Not true. It's always been possible to leech characters. I used to do it on evil weapons in sky and on colibri at the bird camp. Just barely anyone did because they thought 45-60 exp a kill was bad, while forgetting to realise that level 75 parties kill a lot faster. That's why this debate now surprises me. It's always been possible to leech but no one ever cared before.

[Akujima]

You people really need to get out of this idea that you should only get exp for participation when that's simply not how it works. The only people who care are self rightgous Dudley Dorights such as yourself who are the minority.


@Panthera: I've no idea why you continue to debate against these people. The only reason they're still here, is because they need to defend they're own moralistic viewpoint and criticize ours. You are calling them out for "cheating" so they need to defend that it is not, to save themselves from feeling guilty. The moment you started to elaborate on "leeching as cheating" the argument turned in the opposite direction. At this point, they probably just view you as a religious preacher, trying to explain and uphold commandments such as "thou shall not cheat".

Your posts are strong. That's the only reason this thread has lasted so long. But when you break down the walls too far, people feel insecure about being out in the open. They will need to build those walls back up and target you as the enemy for trying to show them something they are not ready to see. They will not understand your intentions, and it will continue to be personal attack after personal attack, so save your self some dignity for at least trying.

Nothing good will come from the rest of this thread, so let the issue go and face the facts of reality. Stop allowing them to retaliate in a rude manner. You're giving them the opportunity to demean you and they're relishing in it. The thread tags only prove this to be true.

[Ravenmore]

So panthra thinks every quest in WoW is also cheating, by the way you come off anything outside of your point of view is cheating. I know not the same game but same principle. SE nerfed afk buff spam soon after it was found. Abyssea been out out a year, if they thought it was cheating then they would have done something bout it. Instead they add another way to leech.

[Chocobits]

@Panthera: I've no idea why you continue to debate against these people. The only reason they're still here, is because they need to defend they're own moralistic viewpoint and criticize ours. You are calling them out for "cheating" so they need to defend that it is not, to save themselves from feeling guilty. The moment you started to elaborate on "leeching as cheating" the argument turned in the opposite direction. At this point, they probably just view you as a religious preacher, trying to explain and uphold commandments such as "thou shall not cheat".

Your posts are strong. That's the only reason this thread has lasted so long. But when you break down the walls too far, people feel insecure about being out in the open. They will need to build those walls back up and target you as the enemy for trying to show them something they are not ready to see. They will not understand your intentions, and it will continue to be personal attack after personal attack, so save your self some dignity for at least trying.

Nothing good will come from the rest of this thread, so let the issue go and face the facts of reality. Stop allowing them to retaliate in a rude manner. You're giving them the opportunity to demean you and they're relishing in it. The thread tags only prove this to be true.

We treat you like preachy preachers because you sound preachy. You're imposing on our style of gameplay with weak and overcited examples of your definition of cheating. In any democratic process, yes, the majority IS correct. You need to get over the idea that just because you are a minority, you are not incorrect. You are incorrect by popular census. Your ideas suck by popular census. You are controlling and feel a need to dictate the way everyone else plays, and attempt to justify that by saying that anyone who disagrees is immature or not2bright.

Imagine a town hall meeting. Everything is pretty much wrapping up and everyone wants to get home and get on with their lives. There's this guy though, he keeps standing up and asking for action against the new hay bail loading system because it requires less work. Everyone else in the meeting dismisses the idea and the mayor is attempting to adjourn the meeting. This guy just won't stop though. He harps, preaches, whines and even makes accusations of cheating and laziness.

Who is being immature? We just want this meeting adjourned.

By the way, how are your interactions IRL? At work? Do you harp on your coworkers for being lazy or cheating? Do you have that obsessive need to control every aspect of your life as you do in Vana'diel? You probably aren't very popular or well-liked IRL either. You just need to relax broseph. You go against the grain just for the sake of going against the grain, instead of letting life flow naturally in a manner that would be more enjoyable for yourself and everyone around you. Once you come over to "our" side, you'll see that the grass is much, much less green on your side, and how silly you've made yourself look so far.

[Catsby]

I'm not really against abyssea leeching but I think it would be nice if there were more engrossing ways to gain exp that rewarded the player with similar exp (looking at you FoV and your rewards that make you wonder why you bothered).

edit: would be interesting if you couldn't earn limit points inside abyssea :3

[Akujima]

By the way, how are your interactions IRL? At work? Do you harp on your coworkers for being lazy or cheating? Do you have that obsessive need to control every aspect of your life as you do in Vana'diel? You probably aren't very popular or well-liked IRL either. You just need to relax broseph. You go against the grain just for the sake of going against the grain, instead of letting life flow naturally in a manner that would be more enjoyable for yourself and everyone around you. Once you come over to "our" side, you'll see that the grass is much, much less green on your side, and how silly you've made yourself look so far.

Personal attack after personal attack.

[Chocobits]

And seriously, an analogy between exping the old way and obtaining a Purple Heart? Megalomania much?

[Chocobits]

Personal attack after personal attack.

Not really, if you actually read. I'm giving you advice on how to change your faulty mindset, so that you can enjoy life. I'm not attacking you, but your poisonous way of thinking. You can't live a healthy adult life with an attitude like that because you're not going to be allowed to control people in the way you want.

[Greatguardian]

Personal attack after personal attack.

Hi Hypocrisy, my name is Narcissistic Megalomaniac.

[Mirage]

I'm not really against abyssea leeching but I think it would be nice if there were more engrossing ways to gain exp that rewarded the player with similar exp (looking at you FoV and your rewards that make you wonder why you bothered).
Indeed. What if FoV would auto-reactivate each time you completed it, but for exp only. That way you'd only need to run back to the book once a day to get tabs, which would coincide with needing to reapply refresh and regen.

FoVs were more worth it before the exp was increased, but now they have fallen behind because of the time needed just to run back to the page.

Double FoV EXP and we're talking. And put manuals in even more areas. Uleguerand, tavnazia zones, why not even in Sea? The field manuals managed to get their way through the gate of the gods, why not up to Lumoria as well?

And just add a few ways to kill vanadiel monsters even faster, then no one would bother with these arguments cause they could do things real fast outside of abyssea anyway.

[Kimble]

@Panthera: The only reason they're still here, is because they need to defend they're own moralistic viewpoint and criticize ours.

Pot. Meet Kettle.

[Alkalinehoe]

Personal attack after personal attack.
He's right you know.

Also, I love how after nearly a decade SE finally fix leveling issues people have been complaining about, and all of a sudden they want to go back.

SE made it possible for two types of players to level. The one who is more concerned about reaching the level cap faster and the one more concerned with taking their time "learning" (lol) their jobs. What I don't get is, why must there be only one way? I've never heard anyone who is pro keywhoring/leeching in abyssea once say they should get rid of EXP in outside areas/make it harder to EXP. Most of them are in favor of adjusting old content (campaign for example) to give more EXP/make it easier leveling. Yet nearly all the people who I talk to who dislike Abyssea leveling claim they should raise the level cap to stop low levels from leveling in Abyssea.

Their reasons seem to be:
1. It would make building low level parties easier.
2. It would reinvigorate the AH/economy for crafters to make more low level equipment.
3. You don't "learn" your job.
4. You get to "explore" new areas.

Well first off, sure it would make building low level parties easier, but there isn't a want for it. Face it, the majority of people wish to focus on endgame content instead of spending their time in low level exp parties. If you really can't find 1-5 more people who want to static exp with you then you are probably in the minority when it comes to wanting low level parties. Crafting low level gear usually wasn't profitable, they did it to skill up on and hope to break even. If it did reinvigorate the economy, chances are it would be overinflated due to high demand. If it really must take you 45 levels of doing the same thing you've been doing since level 1 to learn your job, then go ahead and do it, but most competent players (Read: competent, THF/DNCs who fulltime full aurore and NQ +4 STR rings since they dinged 90 3 months ago are not competent). Though many jobs are really just the same and shouldn't take you more than a few hours messing around with it in the tree while skilling up to get the grasp of it. If going to one corner of the map and staying there for hours is called "exploring" then idk i just, idk anymore.

[Ravenmore]

Alkalinehoe is spot on. wouldn't do anything for low levels see how before abyssea low level were already dead outside of the best camps even then might see one party there. People only made low level gear to skill up but crafting gear was never a good way to make gil, people don't level woodworking to make gear.

[Akujima]

then you are probably in the minority when it comes to wanting low level parties.


This minority that people speak of, is not as small as everyone thinks.

[HFX7686]

@Panthera: I've no idea why you continue to debate against these people. The only reason they're still here, is because they need to defend they're own moralistic viewpoint and criticize ours. You are calling them out for "cheating" so they need to defend that it is not, to save themselves from feeling guilty. The moment you started to elaborate on "leeching as cheating" the argument turned in the opposite direction. At this point, they probably just view you as a religious preacher, trying to explain and uphold commandments such as "thou shall not cheat".

Your posts are strong. That's the only reason this thread has lasted so long. But when you break down the walls too far, people feel insecure about being out in the open. They will need to build those walls back up and target you as the enemy for trying to show them something they are not ready to see. They will not understand your intentions, and it will continue to be personal attack after personal attack, so save your self some dignity for at least trying.

Nothing good will come from the rest of this thread, so let the issue go and face the facts of reality. Stop allowing them to retaliate in a rude manner. You're giving them the opportunity to demean you and they're relishing in it. The thread tags only prove this to be true.


I only see you and Panthera being draconian while attempting to impose a play style on all other players, regardless as to what those players like and what SE has made available.

[Mrbeansman]

This minority that people speak of, is not as small as everyone thinks.

A minority is a minority no matter how small it is.

[Kimble]

Well if thats the case, you shouldnt be having any problems making low level parties out side of abyssea then should you?

[Alkalinehoe]

This minority that people speak of, is not as small as everyone thinks.
To reiterate, if you cannot find 1-5 people to exp with you out of a usual 2k+ server population, then you are in a small minority.

Edit: beaten!

[blowfin]

2. It would reinvigorate the AH/economy for crafters to make more low level equipment.

This argument is moot now anyway. At least on my server the Auction House is well stocked with low level gear, it's day and night compared to before the patch.

[Ravenmore]

Only ones that don't like leech are the same ones that were to lazy in the past to make thier own parties, all you got to do to leech.

[Aliekber]

I'll just leave this right here. (http://xkcd.com/481/)

Edit: The above is a link, in case that wasn't clear.

[Myrrh]

Joined a pt of 6 for Exp? Cheating
Soloing mobs for Exp? Cheating
Made a mule to hold gear? Cheating
Used the Wiki? Cheating
Asked someone for advice? Cheating
Went Afk? Cheating
Changed gear while using a JA? Cheating
Started playing FFXI? Cheating
Zoned? Cheating
Warped? Cheating
Blood warped? Botting
Died? Cheating

[Chocobits]

Joined a pt of 6 for Exp? Cheating
Soloing mobs for Exp? Cheating
Made a mule to hold gear? Cheating
Used the Wiki? Cheating
Asked someone for advice? Cheating
Went Afk? Cheating
Changed gear while using a JA? Cheating
Started playing FFXI? Cheating
Zoned? Cheating
Warped? Cheating
Blood warped? Botting
Died? Cheating

Indeed. It sounds like we deserve a paddlin'.

"Talking out of turn... that's a paddlin'. Looking out the window... that's a paddlin'. Staring at my sandals... that's a paddlin'. Paddlin' the school canoe... you better believe that's a paddlin'."
-Jasper

[blowfin]

Indeed. It sounds like we deserve a paddlin'.

"Talking out of turn... that's a paddlin'. Looking out the window... that's a paddlin'. Staring at my sandals... that's a paddlin'. Paddlin' the school canoe... you better believe that's a paddlin'."
-Jasper

EXP chests are bad, m'kay?

[Leonlionheart]

Joined a pt of 6 for Exp? Cheating
Soloing mobs for Exp? Cheating
Made a mule to hold gear? Cheating
Used the Wiki? Cheating
Asked someone for advice? Cheating
Went Afk? Cheating
Changed gear while using a JA? Cheating
Started playing FFXI? Cheating
Zoned? Cheating
Warped? Cheating
Blood warped? Botting
Died? Cheating

When this post gets as much or nearly as much likes as the OP (which should have much more publicity) you know that there is a problem with the original idea.

[Akujima]

When this post gets as much or nearly as much likes as the OP (which should have much more publicity) you know that there is a problem with the original idea.


There is nothing wrong with being apart of the minority. Just because an angry mob attacks you, doesn't mean that we should give up and join them. Those amongst the minority are forced to learn their lessons the hard way, because the majority refuse to learn their lessons at all.

I know where these forums are heading. They're heading into a clash of who can withstand the longest belittling. Those who "win" are those who don't cave in. There wont be any equal compromise or collaborative efforts, about how to work towards creating a healthy balance. Anyone who speaks out about a topic they believe has merit, will just be consistently attacked and drown out, pushed to the side and ridiculed.

So there you go. You won. But not because you are right, but because you are the majority.

I see no reason to post further, in this thread or any other.

[Myrrh]

hey're heading into a clash of who can withstand the longest belittling. Those who "win" are those who don't cave in. There wont be any equal compromise or collaborative efforts, about how to work towards creating a healthy balance. Anyone who speaks out about a topic they believe has merit, will just be consistently attacked and drown out, pushed to the side and ridiculed.

WHAT DID I JUST READ!?

[Greatguardian]

I see no reason to post further, in this thread or any other.

If I had a nickel.

Protip: If you're in such an extreme minority and cannot simply deal with the things you don't like (like everyone else), you are always welcome to try out different games.

You are not required to play FFXI just because it has history and has "Final Fantasy" in the title.

[Kimble]

He has said several times he was done posting but yet, he keeps responding, lol.

Stick to your guns man!

[Aliekber]

You won. But not because you are right, but because you are the majority.

Of course winning doesn't make us right. But being right to begin with sure helps with winning.

[Kindra]

The problem is Akujima you can't expect people to bend to how you think this game should be. People like abyssea. I know that you don't and that's fine. But you can't expect everyone to agree with you. It is a matter of opinion. And we all know that everyone has their own Opinions.

Here is an example of my opinion, I happen to like Old school PT's. By Old school I mean a party with a Tank 2 DD's that skill chain BLM for magic bursting, RDM and WHM. As a BLM i had asked many PT's to make skill chain's. Once I was told that "It would kill the mob to fast so no." or heres another fav "But that weapon skill sucks for damage." While both are true I don't see a prob with a mob dieing fast lol. But I do understand that DD's like to use there highest damage weaponskill. Even if it means that during the leveling process many BLM's didn't learn to Magic burst. Can I force them to do skill chains? No they will do what they want. I may not like it but hey it's not going to change.

As for the accomplishment side. I don't know why how someone else levels effects anothers sense of accomplishment. Your accomplishment is your accomplishment. Theirs is not your accomplishment. Your accomplishment hasn't gone anywhere. Let's say I level one way and my man levels another, we both finished getting up there he feels accomplished & so do I. Did I effect his accomplishment just because I leveled a different way? No he still has it & feels it. His doesn't effect me in anyway either. Again this is a matter of Opinion. Just because someone doesn't do something the same way you do doesn't mean its wrong.

Btw my skill chain >>> Magic burst thing really did happen lol. And yes I do think its more fun to do, but I had to take my own advice and say to myself not everyone feels the same way. My friends still do them sometimes though so I have fun with that. :)

[Chocobits]

So wait, are we right because we won, or won because we were right?


You're beggin' me to go, you're makin' me stay
Why do you hurt me so bad?
It would help me to know
Do I stand in your way, or am I the best thing you've had?
Believe me, believe me, I can't tell you why
But I'm trapped by your love, and I'm chained to your side


We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
No promises, no demands
Love Is A Battlefield

[Romanova]

So there you go. You won. But not because you are right, but because you are the majority.




wewt, WE WON GUYS.

[Sayelle]

So wait, are we right because we won, or won because we were right?

According to Akujima we won because we are more resilient than he is, and we refuse to change. Oh the ironing...

[Mrbeansman]

I see no reason to post further, in this thread or any other.

U mad?

Seriously stop posting none of us care what you have to say.

[Krazy]

WHAT DID I JUST READ!?
It's a new terrorist tactic designed to induce aneurysms in innocent forum users.

[Romanova]

I just...I can't believe anyone believes getting xp from ops is cheating...my head is going to explode...

[Leonlionheart]

almost 500 posts spanning nearly 50 pages of the same thing over and over and over and over and over.

[Kensagaku]

I see no reason to post further, in this thread or any other.

If only.

Anywho, that's what you said in the shuriken thread. I give you a week tops.

[Mrbeansman]

If only.

Anywho, that's what you said in the shuriken thread. I give you a week tops.

Gotta have hope Iwanttobelieve.jpg

[Panthera]

wait, wait, wait, did Panthera REALLY just say if you get exp from a quest in abyssea from 30-75, THATS CHEATING?

So I guess SE should disable getting any exp from quests in abyssea too between 30-75?


so I guess doing Streetsweeper or the like campaign ops below 75 is cheating as well?

At the risk of hyperbole, but yes, if any quest in the game at all gives points to a combat stat system for non combat activities, they are cheating. They are not against the rules, but it's cheating by other defintions, which I've explained repeatedly and thoroughly..

No, Sandsweeper Dominion Op is fine if said combatant is really, you know, a combatant, actively battling a mob that can nearly wipe out the entire alliance with one move. If someone is questing said Op or other Ops of that strain, but all they're doing is keying inert chests which pose no threat to anyone of any level, then that's getting points for a combat stat system with participating in combat.

[Ravenmore]

Boy panthera you have no clue what he was talking about do you. Still didn't say anything on scroll quest.

[Panthera]

@Panthera: Your argument is terrible because it relies on your own arbitrary definitions of "wrong" and "cheating", when from the perspective of the game, leeching or fast exping is neither.
Sir, with all due respect, you don't know what "arbitrary" means, and they aren't "my" definitions of the word "cheating."

You are correct though in that "from the perspective of the game" they aren't cheating, if you say that to mean, against SE's TOS. I never said it was cheating from that perspective.

[Aliekber]

Panthera, you are a classic Scrub (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Scrub). Read the article, become enlightened, change your life.

If something isn't against the TOS, it isn't cheating. Per. I. Od.

[Ravenmore]

So what panthera is saying all exp from exp scroll quest to camp. ops that all you got to do is run around hitting ???s is cheating gothca. Thats what your logic is implying, even though SE added those in the game as intended. No qustion as to what they are.

[hiko]

This minority that people speak of, is not as small as everyone thinks.
if it was not as small as everyone thinks you would have no issue doing pt outside aby and then wouldn't start this thread!

@panthera
- I unlocked avatar for my smn (lvl10) doing 75 fights with another job: is my smn cheated because he can summon avatar he didnt fought to unlock?
- I have beaten maat with a single job: are all my others 71+ job cheated?
- I use my 'best for xp job" to get merit I spend on other jobs, are all my others jobs cheated because I didnt get their merit playing them?

[Arlan]

if it was not as small as everyone thinks you would have no issue doing pt outside aby and then wouldn't start this thread!

Soo true lol
Most of us dont want to be limited from playing a game. We like having choices to leach or not to leach.
Most of us choose to leach because we later tend to enjoy the jobs better once we put time skilling up and learning job as we play through the contents. Some of us play the game differently than others. But having to limit what lvl to enter abyssea to prevent leaching wont satisfy anyone.

If you are against leaching then dont do it. But if you are with it then by all means go for it.
Play the game how you want it and how you enjoy it.
But don't prevent other people from enjoying their game by limiting them on having that option.
Just cause you dont like it doesn't mean others shouldn't either.

I leached 7 jobs to lvl68 just now and Im putting my sweet time learning them from lvl68 and skilling up.
I'm having a good time because I dont have to start from lvl30 or below. I can start from lvl68 and have most of the abilities my job has and start figuring out how to put each ability to use. I enjoy having access and being able to figure things out as I go along and not being limited in not having an "Option".

Some people might leach from lvl30-90 and might enjoy learning their jobs starting at lvl90 and skilling up and gearing up with contents. Some don't. This is the option abyssea gave us, sure it creates a lot of people who dont know how to play at their current lvl, but it doesnt take a rocket scientist to learn the mechanics and it doesnt take MONTHS or YEARS to be good either. It only takes a few days to get a good grasp on how to play and cap skill ups.
But remember, Everyone has different learning curves and have different pace. So don't expect people to be EPICLY GOD LIKE ELITES just because they are high lvls or some crap.

"Im paying to play the game the way I enjoy it just like everyone else is,
I'm not paying to play the game for You."

[Panthera]

Panthera, you are a classic Scrub (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Scrub). Read the article, become enlightened, change your life.

If something isn't against the TOS, it isn't cheating. Per. I. Od.

Article read, interesting stuff. Now, these might already exist, I really couldn't be bothered to read that website in its entirety, nor am I obligated to, but here are some terms of my own. This time, I really am making up both a term and a definition.

The Technically, It's Not cheating Guy (noun) abrev: TING

Ting is a stickler for rules. He knows them all by heart.

Ting is fond of Warp Whistles, and codes that are an inherenant part of the game. He never calls them "cheat codes," to him they're just "codes." Ting claims to have beaten many games, but without disclosing that he either warped through as many levels as the game allows, or was in God Mode the entire time. When asked about it, he says,"Yes, but Technically, That's Not Cheating." And despite how many games Ting has beaten many games, few respect him for it. Ting calls his critics "Scrubs."


The It's not really Cheating Guy. (noun) abrev: IRG

Irg knows the rules, follows some, but not others.

Irg uses TParty to see party member's TP. Irg knows this is against the rules, but uses it anyway. He reasons that since you can already see party members HP and MP anyway, he really doesn't see the difference between automatically seeing one but not the other. So he figures that while it's technically cheating, it isn't really cheating. What he intuitively understands is that it doesn't violate the spirit of the game; really means essentially, what it is about, what defines it in an abstract sense.

The It's My Account, Do Whatever the @#$% Want Guy (noun) abrev: JERK

It isn't known whether this guy knows the rule or not. What is known is that he's broken every single one.

He's RMT'd multiple accounts. He's RMT'd Relics for RMT accounts. He's fish-botted, and uses third party A.I. tools for exping purposes. He Salvage dup'd every single armor set. He's MPK'd by every known and some currently unknown means. He hasn't been able to play recently, because he's on trial... for everything, and no one will miss this jerk.

The PlayStation Two Fanatic (noun) abbreviation: none, because abbreviating is cheating!

He knows every rule, word for word, and recites them before he goes to bed. He's not a PS2 fanatic because he thinks it holds the game back, but exactly the opposite: He thinks everyone should play on PS2 so no one can have unfair advantages that they shouldn't have. He's never taken a teleporter, airship, or chocobo; he's walked everywhere. Not run, walked--in full Dusk Armor. He won't join level sync parties because that's not fighting at the intended level. He exps on Soulflayers on War/Mnk, because /Ninja is cheating. He thinks Puppetmaster is overpowered. If he's doing well against a mob, he removes armor to make the fight fair, or uses a Venom Potion on himself, or both. He's sworn his eternal allegiance to San'd Oria, and has yet to and never will beat Windurst or Bastok missions. He wishes people would stop focusing on later game events like "Limbus" so they can focus on what matters: Expeditionary Force!

[Rie]

What does any of that have to do with your skewed views about Abyssea?

[Panthera]

@panthera
- I unlocked avatar for my smn (lvl10) doing 75 fights with another job: is my smn cheated because he can summon avatar he didnt fought to unlock?

Good question! Yes. Here's why:...

You shouldn't be able to get Katana Skillups when weilding a Polearm, that makes no sense, that's not how it works, and rightly so.

Take Blue Mage for example. An inherant part of the job is that you must learn Blue Magic while on Blue Mage. Should you be able to learn it on Scholar? Blue mage spells are applicable to blue mage and only Blue Mage, so no, not on Scholar. I think you should be able to learn blue mage spells as /blue as long as a blue main could too at the same level, that makes sense.

Similarly, Summoner spells are specific to Summoner. You must beat the Primes on Summoner, which only makes sense. The other option doesn't make sense. It "cheats" the spirit of the job. As long as you beat the Prime on another job by participating in the fight, instead of just leeching on your friends, at least that's something. But why not learn Blue Magic fishing up Nebimonites? The Prime fights are more or less difficult; it's solo, and only at level 30, and only with Carby; you learn the spell for yourself. It's an accomplishment on some level. At level 75 with 5 other friends, not so much.


- I have beaten maat with a single job: are all my others 71+ job cheated?

Your character is restricted to level until he beats his the limit break. It's about the journey of the character, in a more general sense, than a job specific sense. In the original FF, all the characters go through the same Ordeal at the same time, they weren't job specific. I've beaten him on every job; that too is the journey of the character. Similarly, Chocobo quest and mission ranks are about the character, not specific jobs.


- I use my 'best for xp job" to get merit I spend on other jobs, are all my others jobs cheated because I didnt get their merit playing them?

Good question! The stats and skills are tied to the character, and shared across jobs. So that's fine. They really should make it so that you can't just get a ton of merits on "princess jobs" so you can use them on other jobs, it actually doesn't make sense. In many FF games, if you wanted to level up a certain job and get all of its abilities, you had to play that job. That some games had more flexible design (FFXIII for example) had their advantages, they were less true to the spirit.

[Panthera]

@Panthera: I've no idea why you continue to debate against these people.

Why? Because I enjoy it.

Or I wouldn't be doing it. If I find it rewarding, I'll keep doing it. You yourself don't have to continue if you do not wish to, that's your decision, not mine, just as my continuing is my decision and not yours, my friend.

By the volume of what I've written here, and by the effort I put into each post, I simply enjoy writing--and being read, and this gives a format to do so. Also, I enjoy a spirited debate, which this certainly has been, and remains. Everyone has the right to to their own opinions, and to express those opinions. However, not all posts really advance the discussion. I am being more picky-and-choosey about what I'm replying to, just because some are rehashing points that have already been made and addressed. They might be better written, but it's been done. If I do reply, it might be more just to advance or clarify my own position rather that keep it where it remains.

There are some people who have good points, and they deserve replies, so I do. I just accept trolls as a part of it and deal with them appropriately. In other words, haters gonna hate.

[Panthera]

SE nerfed afk buff spam soon after it was found. Abyssea been out out a year, if they thought it was cheating then they would have done something bout it. Instead they add another way to leech.

SE has a lot on their plate. They had to for example, do all the work entailed in the last patch for example. There are no overnight fixes. That they haven't adjusted yet doesn't mean they don't intend to. That just isn't logical.

[Panthera]

Not true. It's always been possible to leech characters. I used to do it on evil weapons in sky and on colibri at the bird camp. Just barely anyone did because they thought 45-60 exp a kill was bad, while forgetting to realise that level 75 parties kill a lot faster. That's why this debate now surprises me. It's always been possible to leech but no one ever cared before.

In sky, the exp is in many ways incidental. The goal was to pop Despot, or farm something. Getting exp was a bonus. This of course does't apply to Weapon parties, where that was the best exp you could get, and that's why you were doing it.

Now, if someone went afk in a Colibri party, people have complained, and I kicked them. People cared about being leeched off of, and it is cared about now, too.

[Panthera]

@Akujima

I don't think that leeching is necessarally by design. SE does not intend everything that comes up, and while some things are addressed quickly, other things take more time, so that they haven't done anything about it yet doesn't mean they don't intend to.

There's no way Salvage Dups were by design. AFB was an emergent property of level sync, and was not something they came up with; players discovered it. Beastmaster MPK wasn't something SE intended, and again, wasn't resolved overnight. I don't think it's fair to say it was by intent, or that it would have been resolved by now.

Leeching is not against TOS, the rules of FFXI. It is not cheating in that sense It is however by other meanings of the word "cheating." I contend that SE knows that people leech in AFB, and it's not against the rules, so it's not cheating in that sense. Even should SE never fix leeching, it will still be cheating by other definitions.

"If you don't like it, you're entitled to your opinion. But at the same time, we're entitled to ours as well, so please respect that," -Akujima

I do respect others' right to have and express your own views. I just don't agree with those views, and I have the right to have and express my opposition view.

"If you don't want to leech, no one's forcing you to or tying you down," -Akujima

That's just it! People are forced to cheat. Someone must be keymaster by design, and most people can't engage in combat while fooling about with chest GUI. so someone must cheat, whether they want to or not.

"Every now and then I shout for an outside party because I don't feel like keying or I don't feel like farming cruor for keys so I can keyleech, and I rarely if ever have problems forming one." -Akujima

And there again, does anyone really want to open chests just for its own sake? Is it so stimulating? I think people would rather play their jobs. That's why they're trying to level them.

"There are likely plenty of people who are willing to EXP outside of Abyssea. Just gotta be patient, is all.

Sentence totally fell apart in that edit. :P"-Akujima

It happens to the best of us <3 Thanks for your reply:D