Question for Devs regarding cleave

[Crimson_Slasher]

There are also married couples/siblings that play ffxi, among the married, there are likely stay at home parrents, who yes, in fact, have 10+ hours to play ffxi, due to children being in school for 7+ hours and largely self-sufficient. Pair this with as was stated, people passing off the control of the character to another friend/family/spouse/etc to resume the task, this is very much realistic. In fact i actually encountered one cleaver on 3 separate occasions on sylph here, and 2 of the times it was actually his wife doing the cleave on his character. Had some short and lengthy conversations with them over it actually, they were in fact working on 2 relics up to the 99 stage. So while its unlikely, its just as plausible that these individuals are not conducting "real Money Transactions" and are simply using this activity to fund their in game activities. Not that any legitimate player needs to come on here and justify their activities to the penut gallery.

[Caketime]

So it's OK for us to FC as players but we'll be investigated for doing so? Awesome.

The 10 mob limit is completely ignored by regular FCers, so was that just put in to discourage small groups? I can't help but notice that duos and trios are most highly affected by this change, large paid alliances are not. Yay Square, sticking it to the common player in response to RMT!

[Cowardlybabooon]

Yeah this really is not okay. RMT means Real Money Trade. It doesn't refer to earning lots of gil. There are so many things wrong with the way SE bans people. For example:

There really isn't a review process. If a player was just given a chance to write a paragraph explaining that they are a 9 year player with 3 relic weapons and 5 empyreans who charges people to kill Apademak because he happens to be able to do it as an ochain/aegis/almace paladin without using a brew, they should not be banned just because they made 300m in a week and played 16 hours a day while they were on summer vacation and having a bipolar episode where they experienced insomnia. This player is not doing "Real Money Trade" and they are likely going to buy alexandrites or relic currency with their gil, which is probably where their "clients" got their gil in the first place. There may be some farce of a review process, but I have 2 friends that have been banned for making too much gil in a short period of time by selling services like Empyrean farming and Epona's rings/Zelus Tiaras, and they were definitely not RMT, they were making mythics.

Secondly, there is nothing worse than a manager at a workplace that punishes you before telling you what you that what you were doing was wrong. "You aren't getting your bonus because you didn't hit your sales goals, here are the goals for you that I made during the review process" RMT activity appears to be an instant ban process, with no temp ban unlike third party tools. It makes perfect sense that this would be the case for real RMT players, but the innocent casualties are similar to doling out the death penalty without a rigorous review and appeal process. You just wouldn't do it.

In conclusion SE, just rescind your statement about joining Fell Cleave parties and go back to banning people for laundering large amounts of gil. It should be absolutely clear when you permanently ban these players. Go on a temp banning spree as much as you want, but perma ban should be treated like a really big deal. As a side suggestion, the tenure of the character should be a large consideration.

[Kikorimo]

Okipuit already stated that it is ok to cleave as long as no RMT is involved, and so I plan to do so on occasion. Let them investigate me all they want, they'll see all my gil goes towards gear for making my character better, or fish for my quest to complete Lu Shang's. I've got nothing to hide.

[Alhanelem]

"only SE would kick out paying customers"

No, anybody would kick out "paying customers" that are an unplesant presence that might cause other paying customers to stop paying. Otherwise, there would be no reason to fight RMT, because they're "paying customers" too.

Legitimate paying customers that are not breaking the rules set forth for participating in the service are not going to be punished by this.

[Alhanelem]

old FC prices were 100k/hour, even with 16 leechers, 10 hour cleave, thats 16 Million gil, a fraction of the cost of many high end pieces of gear right now,

Two things: Depending on where or what you're cleaving, you're also making some more gil from whatever you're killing, there are some items in gold boxes in some places that are 50-80k or more each. Second, every cleaver i've seen charges a lot more than 100k an hour. Frankly if you could get 100 million gil in 10 hours, that 100 million gil item would inflate to several hundred million. So 16 million in 10 hours is nothing to sneeze at, especially considering I don't usually earn 100k in a day from normal activity.

[Demon6324236]

Prices on Phoenix were 100k/hour 900k/10 hours for a long time.

[Rustic]

I look at it this way. When you have something that literally negates the entire level-up process in favor of a few guys swinging AoE's all day...something has broken. Badly. Think about it.

You have a brief soloing period, a few cycles of parties in two-three specific zones...and then you have a system of gaining exp so good that people happily are paying millions of Gil just to be able to skip straight to 99. On multiple jobs.

We're going to have a legion of Geomancer and Rune Fencers who barely know which end to use for nose-picking if this isn't changed, not to mention the effective crippling of play that's already happened. Why bother with gear you may barely use for an hour, or playing a job prior to having all the benefits of L99 funtimes once you get past 10th or so and jump through the brief FoV hoops on the way to Cleave-O-Rama? Sure, the level caps are gone in most areas. That's OK. Most of the reasons to be in those areas has been obliterated in the process. Big ol' bad-boy mobs in old areas? Nobody cares. There's no reason to exp in those areas anyway, nor much of use in them at this point.

The guy with the great axe knows he's the key to the state of "normal" in FFXI play at this point. I'm not surprised he's milking it for all it's worth, and the fact that it costs big money is just a huge sign saying "RMT me!" as people who want to be "normal" with 99 job levels are jumping straight on the buy-a-top-job bandwagon.

That's just wrong. Even with all the (good) changes we had towards making leveling up easier, somehow we've ended up with them being tossed aside in favor of alliances worth leeching their way to the top of their jobs, barely twitching in the process. Further, this means there's no real cycle of building up Gil, gear, whatever. Just whip through the level breaks and you're done...in need of gear, but done. Psst, need some Gil to buy that gear?

All of it points towards creating immense demand for RMT-supplied product at the top of the food chain. That's cancer. The cure is probably needed before the next expansion comes out, and honestly, if FFXI hadn't gone through the chaos of FFXIV's ups and downs and dev-team-eating-shenanigans, I think we'd have seen FC's as a method of totally bypassing the job-leveling process eliminated months ago.

[Kikorimo]

I look at it this way. When you have something that literally negates the entire level-up process in favor of a few guys swinging AoE's all day...something has broken. Badly. Think about it.

You have a brief soloing period, a few cycles of parties in two-three specific zones...and then you have a system of gaining exp so good that people happily are paying millions of Gil just to be able to skip straight to 99. On multiple jobs.

We're going to have a legion of Geomancer and Rune Fencers who barely know which end to use for nose-picking if this isn't changed, not to mention the effective crippling of play that's already happened. Why bother with gear you may barely use for an hour, or playing a job prior to having all the benefits of L99 funtimes once you get past 10th or so and jump through the brief FoV hoops on the way to Cleave-O-Rama? Sure, the level caps are gone in most areas. That's OK. Most of the reasons to be in those areas has been obliterated in the process. Big ol' bad-boy mobs in old areas? Nobody cares. There's no reason to exp in those areas anyway, nor much of use in them at this point.

The guy with the great axe knows he's the key to the state of "normal" in FFXI play at this point. I'm not surprised he's milking it for all it's worth, and the fact that it costs big money is just a huge sign saying "RMT me!" as people who want to be "normal" with 99 job levels are jumping straight on the buy-a-top-job bandwagon.

That's just wrong. Even with all the (good) changes we had towards making leveling up easier, somehow we've ended up with them being tossed aside in favor of alliances worth leeching their way to the top of their jobs, barely twitching in the process. Further, this means there's no real cycle of building up Gil, gear, whatever. Just whip through the level breaks and you're done...in need of gear, but done. Psst, need some Gil to buy that gear?

All of it points towards creating immense demand for RMT-supplied product at the top of the food chain. That's cancer. The cure is probably needed before the next expansion comes out, and honestly, if FFXI hadn't gone through the chaos of FFXIV's ups and downs and dev-team-eating-shenanigans, I think we'd have seen FC's as a method of totally bypassing the job-leveling process eliminated months ago.

Development Plans

With all that said, to make it easy to understand, we will be redefining and deciding on themes for the below points:

* Content structure
* Jobs overall
* How to add stats to items
* How to hand out rewards


I'd personally like to see players that are below level 99 reach level 99 quickly (we will be looking into whether we can make adjustments so that the level 95 limit quest can be completed solo), and for players that have reached level 99, I’d like to create separate elements such as solo, group, casual, hardcore, and provide game play after defining themes for new elements and adjusted elements.

The idea is that the game is old and mostly focused on end game content these days. They want new players to get leveled up fast, THEN learn what end of the spear to pick their nose with. How jobs play changes drastically between levels 1 and 99. The lack of focus on mid-game content means a player is better off just learning how things work in end game these days. Assuming there are players around to help the newer people learn how to play end game properly, it's better for them because they're not stuck grinding xp (likely solo) for a year to level one job and then find out no one wants it for anything end game. Farming can be done at any level, and pre-blinker nerf It was actually possible to make back most of what one spent in a cleave in the first place.
Despite cleaving, there are still GoV parties and standard abby parties still happening, you just have to know where to look. Often these parties are going almost non-stop and constantly replacing people, and instead of shouting they just pick up people waiting in line in the area.
Good day.
(On a side note, is it possible to lock the thread down before the relevant information gets completely buried? It was made for one purpose, and that purpose has been met thanks to Okipuit.)

[Jaall]

Also, if you literally bought all your gear at 99 you will be sub par to those who farm their gear. Take for example DRK (just a job I know a bit about). If you bought the best pieces on the AH for every slot and then a relic, you will still only be decent and not great because you miss some key R/E pieces, such as rajas, atheling, and most importantly AF3. Also this is a very self explanatory game, I personally learnt how to play THF within 20 mins and don't get how some still cant grasp the SA and TA system >.> but then again shouldn't your gripe be with the players and not the system because when it comes down to it, it's the lack of research that really fails them.