I'm in favor of the cap to spark/accolades despite the minor inconveniences, but I hope the developers and STF know they can't stop here. The crackdown needs to be harder on players who are using crafting exploits and item duplication.
- Remove more of these accounts sitting on thousands of medals or who have started to try and massively trade them into popular shard/void items to hide them. I don't expect overnight to get them all but I don't see how it's possible for 7 stacks of 99 medals on AH not being a red flag or buying 6 of them in one day (Bismarck).
- Look into these accounts selling suspicious amounts of Su5 weapons / +2 necks. Just on Bismarck I'll look at one person's AH history and it contains multiple crafts +2 necks being sold frequently. Instant ban? No. But these things should be suspicious enough to look into where they got them from and then ban all associated.
- Farming items needs an overhaul: Gardening, mining, logging, harvesting, fishing, clamming, chocobo digging, enemy farm, etc. needs an overhaul on grinding materials. Make things fun, non-competitive for spots, and deterrent to players who automate bots to complete the tasks like what spark/accolade farming was.
Unfortunately fishing got crippled by RMT/bots. I can only really comment on that aspect of your post, as I've not really done much of the others.
To get the best fishing rod in the game is a lot of work, and there doesn't seem to be much reward at the end of it.
I mean it is good to fish and cook, that used to be a great combination, however with so many people seemingly botting shields, even the crafting market (as you mention) has been decimated by cheats.
Sirmarki, ex-Fenrir, a young warrior, in the heyday.
Yeah, that sucks about fishing. I don't know what the answer is and I'm sure there will always be someone cheating/botting but the current situation sucks. There's so much as you said decimated by cheats. Directly through price/inventory manipulation on AH but also providing false metrics to the devs on how content needs to be adjusted.
Devs should also consider making a way to transfer your RP progress on NQ/+1 weapons/necks to give them more value. That detracts some players from feeling the need to go directly to +2 neck / Su5 weapon. The game needs some return to casual progression and encouragement to actively participate in the game.
There are only a handful that are worth much at all tbh, and trying to use them as a reliable source of income is a generally bad idea in my experience. (The only ones that are close to the max value that you are quoting are all pop items for GF NMs, and come from ilvl128+ fights.) At 10k accolades per, they are also a significantly worse point:gil conversion ratio than powders/shields/etc even in the best case scenario since the alternatives were 100% reliable and independent of the economy. They also do require defeating each UNM at least once to unlock their material for purchase, so there is a gameplay barrier involved (which can be bypassed by being carried, yes. But that goes for all content at this point other than Master Trials.)
I believe that there is very little inherent risk in excluding them in addition to EX items, and given how low demand on the AH is for any of them, I can only see the AH prices for all of them going down along with the current deflation trend, which will also discourage RMT from dealing with the low time:profit ratio.
“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”
Would it not be possible to implement some more Apex mobs, would love to see some in the old zones, such as;
Valkurm Dunes, Sea Serpent Grotto, Yuhtunga Jungle, Beaucedine Glacier.
I'm sure are parts of these map, no one ever goes to.
This has been a painful and ongoing battle for SE. It's difficult because since Gil is still very meaningful, and any methods to counter the RMT's will impact the player base in one way or another.
Although I will say that I've always preferred that about this game over FFXIV since Gil is almost cosmetic only there. While Gil can be used for a wide number of things here in FFXI.
I also have to agree with Flackoo though. More Apex camps or adjusting some zones in general would definitely help. Even using some of the other areas of like Al'Taeiu, they could also use some of the Abyssea zones as with some adjustments since they can already accommodate large numbers of players with multiple camps. There's a pretty large number of zones they can work with.
Former Toren of Fairy
But then the RMT would just bot Unity points, and run back and forth to that NPC buying pop items and selling them, setting the price trend (as opposed to sparks).
There are more than a handful of unity items that sell for good amounts of gil.
Why not just get the group in question who needs whatever Escha NM's, to come along with you and farm the needed Unity fights for pop items?
That way, everybody has something to do.
Last edited by Sirmarki; 06-18-2020 at 05:19 AM.
Sirmarki, ex-Fenrir, a young warrior, in the heyday.
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