February 2020 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Spaitin]

Lol then go play wow or FFIV. you can do that in those games. People like this game the way it is, which is why they still play it. Your suggestion would just kill the game. SE is aware of people breaking ToS. Guess what? they dont really care. Your suggestions are a bit silly. They dont have NEAR t he manpower to do it. I wish they would make bst not suck. But it aint happening. They only tweak existing parameters. THey are not changing to new ones. Sure make it sellable by NPC. then they are doing the same thing you dont like just different.

People have been complaining about the mercing for 17 YEARS. you really think they are going to change it now? lol The reason they havnt stopped it is because they dont want to.

[Sirmarki]

Your suggestions are a bit silly.

Me: "Play the game, form a group and do content, it's actually quite fun" - Silly apparently.

Sure make it sellable by NPC

You: make everything sellable, nobody has to do anything whatsoever other than own copious amounts of gil and just stand there doing not much of anything...

In case you haven't noticed, with current trends, there is only one 'undead' server left with (I just checked) 2500 people on it.......
So, yeh, merc'ing isn't really working.....

Edit: I mean 500 people running 5x alts on each account.

I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one thinking this...

[Typral]

You just sound like a communist at this point, just let people sell whatever they want. SE just needs to keep adding content and not let things stagnate like they have. There is nothing stopping players from grouping up, mercing or buying from mercs is not required in any form.

[Sirmarki]

SE just needs to keep adding content

And mercs just keep selling that content. Reducing the chances of people getting together and doing it (because they already bought the stuff from a merc).

Whatever your thoughts as well as Spaitin's are. Mercing breaks ToS.... Controlling 6 characters on one computer using third party software and sending scripted automatic commands to
each instance is breaking terms. End of story...

Unless SE want to re-write the entire ToS to say it is ok, until that day, it remains against the terms of service.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

Correct, there's no requirement.
The alternative traditional way of doing things must be facilitated by players.
The implementation of billboard advertising by mercs in /yell imposes a perspective that contradicts the core intent of community formation and building relationships of trust.
Core values of MMOs.

If people would actually read each word of the comments concerning the topic you would have seen that the proposal didn't remove capabilities to sell things, it actually INCREASES those capabilities through the use of a new commerce interface that would replace the antique auction house with a evolved player supplied warehousing market. Complete with massively more items available (due to removing "EX" tag from equipment with the exceptions being items with rank points, items that are augmented and items that are described as Artifact/Relic/Empyrean).

[Kylos]

Wow, this thread got derailed hard.

1) Thank you SE (& Matsui especially!) for taking the time to address some of our issues, especially as it pertains to Mireu and Beastmaster.

2) Still have not seen any Mireu kills on Cerberus, but hopefully this can happen soon thanks to your adjustments.

3) I'm not a BST, but it's clear there's so much that can be done to the job going from the suggestions by others.
Just be smart about it, do small updates every month or so. Ask for feedback, test, test, test. BST can be great
again without being ridiculously overpowered.

As for the other stuff..

4) You'll find the merc 'problem' is only prevalent on the biggest servers. Go to any small server like Cerberus
and these services either don't exist, or only show up once in a blue moon. If you're so upset by players
selling content? Go to a smaller server and join/build a linkshell with players who want to beat things
the way the game should be played.

You'll be surprised how many players still get together to do content without any
exchanges of currency. My endgame linkshell is close to completing its fifth Aeonic,
we've destroyed Omen and plan on doing the new content as well. You won't get
things done as fast as somewhere like Asura, but you'll probably enjoy it more.

[Sirmarki]

Go to a smaller server and join/build a linkshell with players who want to beat things
the way the game should be played.

I came from a small server (300 population peak around 3 years ago).

It felt like a ghost town. I mean you could go through zones and not see one person.
Every linkshell collapsed because it had literately no players in them.
Looking at the /yell log, it was completely dead....

The problem is, there is no happy medium. Asura is big, and the rest are tiny. There needs to be some middle ground met a long the way because the balance is way off.

[Nyarlko]

Merc'ing has been explicitly permitted by the devs under the justification that it qualifies as role-playing as a mercenary/sell-sword (as silly as that may sound.) So long as everything changing hands is in-game resources (ie: there are absolutely no RMT or RMT-like activities involved,) the practice does not break TOS according to SE. The devs have stated that in the past, and I've been told the same thing by GMs and their customer service line.

Multiboxing in and of itself is not against the TOS either. I believe the line they've drawn is that as long as you are doing so without using any tools which are manipulating FFXI data, then it's acceptable. Don't know for sure if they've ever actually come out and specified what types of non-cheating tools are permitted to interact with the FFXI client beyond screen capture/record software, but I know for a fact that it's OK to play multiple characters/accounts on multiple PCs, and that using hardware like KVM switches do not break TOS since that's what they told me when I asked. I figure that something like running multiple VMs on one machine w/ one FFXI instance in each would probably be acceptable as well since no game data is being altered, but don't quote me on that until we have an official answer. There are legitimate methods to multibox which are not against TOS, and multiboxing itself is not the actual source of your complaints.

That'd be bots.
Bots are bad and need to go away.
Preferably banned by IP AND payment method.
-_-

[Alhanelem]

Merc'ing has been explicitly permitted by the devs under the justification that it qualifies as role-playing as a mercenary/sell-sword (as silly as that may sound.) So long as everything changing hands is in-game resources (ie: there are absolutely no RMT or RMT-like activities involved,) the practice does not break TOS according to SE. The devs have stated that in the past, and I've been told the same thing by GMs and their customer service line.

I think most people understand that mercing via in-game resources isn't prohibited, however the problem is if people buy gil and don't get caught they're basically using an out of game resource.

Even though it's allowed, a lot of players see mercing as a problem because it facilitates lack of skill in the playerbase. This is also true in FFXIV where the same thing happens (you can even see people advertising "selling content" in the Party Finder). Since people don't have to learn how to beat content to get the rewards, now they may have the drops they want but they still don't have the skills they need.