PLEASE REMOVE OR LESSEN RESTRICTIONS ON GARDENING FOR NEW PLAYERS

[Alhanelem]

You know what i would do if i had power doing those savage bans? delete the gear that was gained by the "cheating"

I never said I completely agree with how it was handled. My main issue is that it took too long for the problem to be addressed, thus leaving too wide a window open for people to be subject to sanctions. I agree that removing items would have been a decent solution. But the problem is, with duped items, one of the copies was obtained legitimately. But how do you determine which one? either way you go, the other person is going to say theirs is the "real" one. So you either delete them all, or you have to take a different action. As far as banning one guy and not another- you have to be careful of collateral damage. They have to judge if everyone there was willfully participating in the cheating, or if some people were only "along for the ride" and were not aware of what was happening (But that only works if the incident only happens once. You can't argue people didn't know what was happening after the first time). For such people who were caught in the middle, they usually received a suspension at worst, not a ban.

My only issue with this discussion with you is that you are overstating the scope of the affected population, and that you seem to think that banning people for cheating in salvage has something to do with killing RMT. RMT do not do salvage, so that makes no sense.

SE banned roughly 550 people for the Salvage dupes, suspending another 400 temporarily.

I like seeing actual numbers, but where did you get these?

[Seriha]

In November 2008, we discovered an issue that allowed players to create multiple items for certain treasures and rewards in areas such as Salvage and Assault by exploiting the game system.

The issue was fixed during emergency maintenance on November 26, 2008. However, we discovered that some players had already exploited the issue and used it to gain additional items before it was addressed. We then investigated more than a year's worth of logs throughout all areas.

As a result of the investigation, approximately 400 players were temporarily suspended based on the evidence gathered. Approximately 550 players who committed more serious misconduct had their accounts banned.

We are working hard to ensure that these kinds of issues do not occur again in FINAL FANTASY XI. However, if you discover any problems with the game system, please submit a GM call or fill out the feedback e-mail form to report the problems to us, instead of exploiting or spreading the issue.

We thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

On PlayOnline.

[Alhanelem]

That means around 30 people average per server were punished. (Though it's very likely some servers had very few and others had more)

That's seriously not a lot.

[Olor]

Having your own choco is something worthwhile to look forward to getting. There is nothing wrong with not having everything in the game at the beginning. It would be very boring if we didnt have to work to get the fun stuff. Have some patience and you can enjoy it all.

I am not asking for "everything in the game at the beginning" - I am asking to be able to do the things I enjoy in a game I am paying full price for. Due to time constraints - there is no way that I can/expect to have everything in the game in my first month - but I should be able to enjoy the content I am paying for - that is all there is to it.

[Olor]

Leave the restrictions in place. I hate RMT and it doesn't take THAT long for legitimate players to get to be able to garden

Three months? That is a long time.

[Fiarlia]

Gardening: I don't know the specifics of what happened, but if anyone was exploting a bug or doing anything that was unintended by the developers intentionally and for their own gain, yes, they should have been banned.

The way the gil was obtained seems to not be an issue in SE's eyes because when Gardening itself was restricted, there were absolutely no changes to what actually made it profitable in the first place. I'm not arguing whether or not it should be fixed, but at the time they banned RMT's for it, and not legitimate players (as far as I'm aware).

What it basically boils down to is being able to buy something from an NPC, use it to garden, and then turn around and NPC the results for profit. The amount of profit is honestly not very much, but it was (is) easy as hell to do, and with a lot of mules could generate significant returns over time.

Again, not here to argue if it's good or bad for legit players, but obviously once RMT's discovered this it had to be stopped, thus the Gardening restrictions were put in place for new accounts. Again, though, the price of buying/selling from/to an NPC was not changed at the same time, despite SE knowing full well what items were being targeted.

[Olor]

In my 8.5 years of playing, I've never reached 500,000 gil on my character. I've only broken 200k a couple of times, trying to level BLM as my main. Gil is even harder to earn, excepting doing it via Abyssea by cruor exchange, than it has ever been for me before. I can only imagine what it is like for someone starting new completely. NPC shops are the only source for a lot of gear now, especially for levels 20-75, since the AH has dried up with people not needing gil so much anymore. I've donated about 10-20k to friends I've had starting new, when I've had it to spare.

You don't get a lot of the gil back for gear you have leveled past when you sell to an NPC, and you can't earn a lot of it until you can get cruor, compared to the current NPC prices things go for. How am I supposed to handle a 10k+ scroll every level or two as a mage with just quest rewards? Now at 90 I'm looking at 100-200k per scroll, and they only drop in Abyssea pyxides, they aren't sold by NPCs.

Yay, someone who gets it.

[Rambus]

That means around 30 people average per server were punished. (Though it's very likely some servers had very few and others had more)

That's seriously not a lot.

way more then that where banned, asura had over 100 so yeah what she posted is not the full banning numbers, 2009 was mass banning year, I am not sure when they ended the savage ones (actually I may be confusing that number with that BOT ap list)

http://killingifrit.com/forums/topic/175335-unbanned/

those savage bans that note was just the start of it. (pretty sure)

I am sure it takes more then 30 people to brake 3-4 LS

I lost the first thread I had talking about my mule account that got banned with the wave of gardening bans but this guy posted the total number of bans that year and it was huge.

That first thread I posted here i cannot find ( I clicked on my self to try find it) So i made a new one.

I might of been overdoing it by saying the savage bans alone was the cause of FFXIs downfall, and yes you have a point with the game getting old game was dieing off SLOWELY just after ATU came out.

however that mass bannings in 2009 really sped it up and had a ripple effect of from the savage bans of friends of those people quitting and such.

ether way month 1- month 7 in 2009 sucked for people there was a huge number of bans that should never have happened.

If you buy the game and get a 30 day free month cuz you bought the game should not have the restriction, only the free trails should ( requt a friend thing pass w/e FFXI calls it)

and bring back the free trails try get some new blood and those trails you can have them have a gil cap, unable to send tells to people or a big limit of tells to people, say amount, so on so RMT don’t use them for advertise.

SE can also be like WoW and have naming rules , qwertyrdfswswf is not a name and that can red flag rmts quicker.

Get rid of this gardening restriction and get rid of gil sending cap. I guess you can have like a 30 or 60 day time for gil sending cap.

Let me tell you why that gil sending cap is annoying. 1 you can only send gil to one person,2 the cap is 1 M

I have a lot of mules and during lotto day it is hell to send gil to them one by one (I stopped bothering when my mule was banned though)

I hate selling stuff on mules anymore or having mules because of all these pointless gil sending cap and it do not even effect RMT.

[Fiarlia]

way more then that where banned, asura had over 100 so yeah what she posted is not the full banning numbers, 2009 was mass banning year, I am not sure when they ended the savage ones ( actally I may be confusing that number with that BOT ap list)

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/pol...ews15265.shtml

Those are the correct numbers.

[Alhanelem]

way more then that where banned,

Sorry, no. I will take SE's numbers over yours.