Fundamental Game Play Issues

[SpankWustler]

I feel as though I have just shaken a magic 8-ball with only "My sources say no." printed on the die 20 times.

[Juilan]

Blinking: You said its not possible to have it so ppl dont blink. If a few people living at home in their moms basement can figure out this stuff then maybe you should hire them.

People have also found away to bypass the JA and spell lock while living in their home, SE with paid programs should be able to figure it out in 2hrs, even quicker if they look at the code on those "bots".

Tractor: lame excuse.

It'd be a quicker fix to make it so they treat tractor as a conflux rather than zoning, change the position to a predefined position (the caster that has to be in an ideal spot in order to cast) rather than recompiling a zone, again free lance bot makers have found away to bypass this issue, SE could do the same thing ...
*not saying i use or condone bots just pointing out that you can find this with a google search like "ffxi position hacking bot" or "ffxi no wait ja bot", i've been in endgame shells with people who swear by them on the third party chat server but you go by a code where you dont stab people in the back

leads me to wonder, if the only reason why they ban people from doing this is because they can't do it themselves, if they bypass the pol and use, of say, a lua based thing (oh my getting a dev team of 5 people) like wow they could add these themselves!

ALSO too far away from mob when you ws = 0 tp... this is pointless, you dont loose ammo if you're too far away to shoot and you dont loose mp when you're too far away to cast

[Kaisha]

There's a difference between a ToS-voiding hack that breaks every other update on a platform not bound by limitations, and getting this stuff to work on PS2/360 also which already has memory-leak issues.

[Juilan]

There's a difference between a ToS-voiding hack that breaks every other update on a platform not bound by limitations, and getting this stuff to work on PS2/360 also which already has memory-leak issues.

PS2/360 have memory leak issues?

Too bad there isnt a way to add ram to the systems via the expansion bays, though you could change the PS2 works via a different post boot OS on the platforms so it would accept more ram/larger image sizes. The only thing that would be done is altering a dead system to play a constantly updating game... though it would be cheaper to get a computer with more ram and a monitor at that point also to get a 0.01$ control adaptor from ebay(With 3$ shipping) to make the game practically the same... but god forbid you make the players pay for content...

[Leonlionheart]

Ok those I don't care so much about.

SPELL LOCK FIX IT

[Greatguardian]

There's a difference between a ToS-voiding hack that breaks every other update on a platform not bound by limitations, and getting this stuff to work on PS2/360 also which already has memory-leak issues.

Parsers break every update too. That's not because they're unreliable, but simply because memlocs change when the game is updated. Considering SE would be the one making the updates, there wouldn't be a memloc sorting issue.

That said, I don't think memory leak is the word you are looking for =/ but it's a fair point that the inferior console race can't be expected to keep up with the advancements of the PC master race.

[Randwolf]

I agree with everything the OP said. Those issues show both the age of the game and, worse, the horrible attitude the original team had towards players when the population seemed like it would never stop growing. Now, the current team is stuck with all the lazy and the "If you don't like it, quit" things the previous team did. Buff/Cure lock is a particular pet peeve along with the paralysis item loss issue.

[Byrth]

Tractor:
Your client fundamentally does two things:
1) Displays information from the server
2) Tells the server your updated position/what you did.
You can (and bots do) simply change your position in the zone. It's not, "Oh man, this would be really hard to implement on PS2." It's, "I changed it and now it's done." Changing the POS variable is one of the only functions the client has. It's entirely capable of doing it. The client also knows the place that tractors is being cast from, because it's necessarily within 20 yalms (casting range), so just have the client set its new position to the caster's position. It only works while dead and without reraise up, so it isn't like people could exploit it to undetectably POS hack. You don't believe me? Think about how Draw-in works. If Tractor was just Draw-in for dead people, it would be perfect.

The only reason to leave it this way is if SE fears people will somehow abuse it from a balance standpoint to move really quickly through a daisy-chain of tractor casters. I'm not sure exactly what the benefit of that would be (maybe actually getting to the top of Tor before your stone grows dark?), but this is the only real reason I could see.



As far as TOS-breaking to circumvent the issues that, until now, we've pretty much agreed plague the game... I don't know, it's like doing a slow roll through a stop sign past midnight in a sleepy neighborhood while you're driving back to your house. Technically against the law, but your life is slightly improved and no one is any the wiser.

[Arcon]

Theory
All I can think is that would be too taxing to perform this check for all other types of communication (say, shout, party, etc) because of the sheer volume of chat. But if system resources weren't an issue, it seems they could use the "tell routine" to check if other types of chat are headed for "zoning recipients"

There would be ways around it, but I think it's a design choice that it currently doesn't work. It was probably one price they were willing to pay for not having to deal with a solution for it.

Gonna break apart some of your concerns. Not trying to be rude, just things that you can do yourself to remedy them:

You're not breaking apart anything. Every single thing you criticized was either misunderstood from the OP, ignorant of the actual problem or just plain wrong. Except for two things, which were just your opinion, but those were still disagreeing with the majority (and common sense).

Overall Camate I am disappoint.

This sums up FFXI as of late.

The only reason to leave it this way is if SE fears people will somehow abuse it from a balance standpoint to move really quickly through a daisy-chain of tractor casters. I'm not sure exactly what the benefit of that would be (maybe actually getting to the top of Tor before your stone grows dark?), but this is the only real reason I could see.

That's true, however, there's plenty of quests in the game, where key items break or get lost upon death, so changing it to that shouldn't be an issue.

To people saying these problems have existed for years, why are we only complaining now? Well, several reasons. For once, no. People have been complaining for years, just without an official forum, there was no decent way to get the word out. All of these things have been annoying the shit out of me (and everyone) since day one.

Secondly, this isn't the same game anymore. It's not the same time anymore. FFXI faces distinction. There is a lot more competition out these days, and SE is losing serious amounts of customers. They need to go with the times and look at what players want. SE needs to consider what will keep more players or get more new players playing: More pointless "content" (I use that term loosely), which offers little to no reward, or making the game actually playable. Even if they fixed it now it would be very late and they will have lost tons of customers to an unplayable game, but if they wait longer it will just get worse (for them).

And lastly, we complain because we have to. Screaming loud enough is the only thing that seems to have any kind of effect on them. And it will not, never, ever, get better until SE actually gets of their lazy asses and does what the playerbase wants them to.

It's shocking how long this game has survived with the company's current motto of "Fuck the players, we know best". Because it's wrong, they don't know best. SE doesn't know their own game at all and they've proven that, time and again. They know nothing of MMORPGs, nothing of coding (apparently) and nothing of business strategies.

This, on the other hand, proves what tremendous potential FFXI has. Despite so many sinister acts of the company, it was largely successful and still is to some degree. I still call it the best MMORPG I know, because it is, because these elements that piss us off aren't all what there is to the game. However, this underlying strength of FFXI will not keep it afloat forever. These unnecessary flaws have cost the game (and the company) dearly, both in players/revenue as in image. They don't realize how important a good image is in the MMORPG market especially. That's the reason why FFXIV will never be successful, because it had a very troubled start. It does not matter how good they will make it, this first impression pretty much killed any future prospects the game had.

And finally, SE really needs to drop the "Holier than thou" act they have going. Don't pretend to be smart, you're not. Don't pretend you're fooling anyone, you're not. What we want, more than anything else, is honesty. Don't feed us lies about why you can't implement something when we know for a fact that you can. Don't tell us you'll fix something, then you don't (like losing TP on "too far away" messages, which you said you're looking into over two updates ago (and which should also be added to OP)). Respect your players enough not to lie to them, then we can start improving the game together, in everyone's benefit.

[Kraggy]

*not saying i use or condone bots just pointing out that you can find this with a google search like "ffxi position hacking bot" or "ffxi no wait ja bot", i've been in endgame shells with people who swear by them on the third party chat server but you go by a code where you dont stab people in the back

I guess if you had a friend who you knew was a criminal you'd look the other way too, as well.

You don't condone them yet you come here and quote two precise search strings to make it easier for people to find them.

/clap