Suggestions: Quality of Life Stuff and other suggestions

[Alhanelem]

My point is that they had the big grand finale in 2016 and scaled back operations, so that means they just don't have the stuff to do big stuff like expand the auction house or the number of slots per inventory box and such.

Operaitons had already been "scaled back" before 2016.

And lest you forget, we got yet another new storyline in The Voracious Resurgence, which was also never orgiinally planned. Have you not been playing this game for the last couple years or something?

And "expand the auction house" is your idea of a high effort task?
They can make the AH sales limit whatever they want it to be, the reason they don't do it (according to them at least) is because of the load a greater item and sales volume puts on the AH and delivery server. And there are similarly technical reasons they can't simply increase the number of slots per box which is why they gave us more boxes instead. Is it really that much better if had 2 fewer storage spaces that held 100 items each? I'm really not seeing the point to this.

You've really got me confuzzled here. Your definition of "not maintenance mode" seems to be "Do things the devs said ages ago they had no plans of doing for specifically provided reasons."

To overcome those limits would reuquire a total overhaul of the game engine to accomodated higher network transfer rates and enterprise hardware. That's not something that would have been in the cards even 10 years ago, well before your "maintenance mode" date.

[Tarmarkvar]

Operaitons had already been "scaled back" before 2016.

And lest you forget, we got yet another new storyline in The Voracious Resurgence, which was also never orgiinally planned. Have you not been playing this game for the last couple years or something?

And "expand the auction house" is your idea of a high effort task?
They can make the AH sales limit whatever they want it to be, the reason they don't do it (according to them at least) is because of the load a greater item and sales volume puts on the AH and delivery server. And there are similarly technical reasons they can't simply increase the number of slots per box which is why they gave us more boxes instead. Is it really that much better if had 2 fewer storage spaces that held 100 items each? I'm really not seeing the point to this.

You've really got me confuzzled here. Your definition of "not maintenance mode" seems to be "Do things the devs said ages ago they had no plans of doing for specifically provided reasons."

To overcome those limits would reuquire a total overhaul of the game engine to accomodated higher network transfer rates and enterprise hardware. That's not something that would have been in the cards even 10 years ago, well before your "maintenance mode" date.

What the hell are we even arguing here? I'm on your side and agreeing that they wouldn't increase auction house slots beyond 7, or inventory per box beyond 80.

[Alhanelem]

What the hell are we even arguing here? I'm on your side and agreeing that they wouldn't increase auction house slots beyond 7, or inventory per box beyond 80.

Well, that's not the impression I got, you made it sound like "we didn't get XYZ things, therefore we're in maintenance mode."

We've gotten far more in the last few years than anyone likely expected.

[Eth]

I would like to propose a time-gate solution to fix the problem of pervasive out-sourcing of a major game element - earning job points and master level - to RMT botters.

Give every character 2 hour daily of "apex time". This means that each apex camp and its exp-earning area is surrounded by a permanent virtual fence, similar to that which surrounds Geas Fete NMs. Once a character enters, its timer starts ticking. When it reaches zero, the char is returned to its homepoint. Chars with no apex time remaining cannot enter apex camps.

Apex time accumulates and rolls over with no cap. For legit players, this makes the restriction virtually meaningless because they can save up their time. 2 hours daily adds up to 14 hours per week, more than enough for most people. For RMT bot characters, the restriction cuts rather massively into the profitability of the business model . Around-the-clock leveling is now impossible with 1 char. For each bot character, you now need 12, which means 12 times the subscription fees. A party of 3, plus outside whm, operated around the clock, now needs 48 subscriptions.

[Uriah]

I mean that's cute, but it's literally the opposite of what they want. Why on earth would they purposely hinder their most valuable customers.

[Eth]

I mean that's cute, but it's literally the opposite of what they want. Why on earth would they purposely hinder their most valuable customers.

RTMs do a lot of damage to SE's business. SE creates content that could keep players busy for literally years, and thanks to RMTs, people complete the content quickly, get bored and quit again because there is nothing to do. Their activities are really not in SE's best interest.

[Alhanelem]

I would like to propose a time-gate solution to fix the problem of pervasive out-sourcing of a major game element - earning job points and master level - to RMT botters.

Give every character 2 hour daily of "apex time". This means that each apex camp and its exp-earning area is surrounded by a permanent virtual fence, similar to that which surrounds Geas Fete NMs. Once a character enters, its timer starts ticking. When it reaches zero, the char is returned to its homepoint. Chars with no apex time remaining cannot enter apex camps.

Apex time accumulates and rolls over with no cap. For legit players, this makes the restriction virtually meaningless because they can save up their time. 2 hours daily adds up to 14 hours per week, more than enough for most people. For RMT bot characters, the restriction cuts rather massively into the profitability of the business model . Around-the-clock leveling is now impossible with 1 char. For each bot character, you now need 12, which means 12 times the subscription fees. A party of 3, plus outside whm, operated around the clock, now needs 48 subscriptions.

I think you grossly underestimate how much veteran players grind in a game that's all about grinding.

[Eth]

I think you grossly underestimate how much veteran players grind in a game that's all about grinding.

The point is that even the most dedicated will not grind for 24 hour a day, 7 days per week.

Time gates have never driven veteran players away. In fact, FFXI sustained itself on time-gated content (Limbus, Dynamis, king camping) for much of its life, and still has much content that is tied to a time element. Odyssey, Omen, New Dynamis.. all of these limit the potential for bot abuse by having a time-based entry limitation. This limitation has protected this content from being taken over completely by bot armies and RMT. I am only suggesting that the same principle be applied to apex camps.

[Alhanelem]

The point is that even the most dedicated will not grind for 24 hour a day, 7 days per week.

Time gates have never driven veteran players away. In fact, FFXI sustained itself on time-gated content (Limbus, Dynamis, king camping) for much of its life, and still has much content that is tied to a time element. Odyssey, Omen, New Dynamis.. all of these limit the potential for bot abuse by having a time-based entry limitation. This limitation has protected this content from being taken over completely by bot armies and RMT. I am only suggesting that the same principle be applied to apex camps.

FFXIV 1.0 would have a word with you. Remember fatigue? The backlash against that concept was immense, even though it was meant more to encourage you to play different classes over just one.
So yes, people have been driven away by time gates before. Particularly time gates against simple leveling up.

This idea does little other than punish dedicated real players. RMT will just make more characters to work around the limits.

[Tarmarkvar]

I would like to propose a time-gate solution to fix the problem of pervasive out-sourcing of a major game element - earning job points and master level - to RMT botters.

Give every character 2 hour daily of "apex time". This means that each apex camp and its exp-earning area is surrounded by a permanent virtual fence, similar to that which surrounds Geas Fete NMs. Once a character enters, its timer starts ticking. When it reaches zero, the char is returned to its homepoint. Chars with no apex time remaining cannot enter apex camps.

Apex time accumulates and rolls over with no cap. For legit players, this makes the restriction virtually meaningless because they can save up their time. 2 hours daily adds up to 14 hours per week, more than enough for most people. For RMT bot characters, the restriction cuts rather massively into the profitability of the business model . Around-the-clock leveling is now impossible with 1 char. For each bot character, you now need 12, which means 12 times the subscription fees. A party of 3, plus outside whm, operated around the clock, now needs 48 subsProgcriptions.

Programmatically, that sounds pretty difficult to implement. There's no precedent for closing off only part of a zone. All those zones that kick you out, like Dynamis, Salvage, Omen, various burning circles, are wholly enclosed instances. If you actually did do something like this, it'd make more sense to model it after Lair Reives where you can enter a specific area of the zone, but not attack anything. That logic already exists in the game.

Practically, it's like Alhanelem said, that just punishes legit players. I've been trying to get master level 30 on my Monk. I try not to spend TOO much time grinding it out. I was, for a little while, doing 2 hours a day, but sometimes exceeding that on weekends. Lately I switched that over to a 10 hour a week schedule, but if I've got a really open weekend and nothing better to do, I'll really grind it out, especially if I'm on the cusp of hitting another level. And I have a full time job with 2 hours of commuting 3 days a week (the other 2 days of the week I work from home). When I was unemployed, I could easily exceed 14 hours a week grinding out job points. I liked it. Binge watch some TV show on the other monitor and just zone out.

And of course the RMT could dodge this pretty easily. Get 12 groups to rotate around and your bases are covered. Building up something like that is a horrid slog, but these people are doing their jobs and they don't really have a choice but to do that kind of horrid slog.

And lastly, you're doing all this -- the development time to implement, test, and deploy this, the punishment of legitimate players -- to appease people on ONE SERVER. These bots are not a problem over on Bahamut, which is the 2nd most populous server. I imagine it's even less so on the other servers. I can't see a reason to cater to one narrow segment of the player base that is inflicting this upon themselves. Asurans can be like a guy who pounds his fists into a cinderblock wall, then complains that his fingers hurt.