Job point sellers need to be addressed

[Balduran]

In Ra'Kaznar Inner Court as Balduran has illustrated, the debilitating affliction of utilizing a vast amount of those locations is the rarity (typically non-existence) of dependable environment in which to position party members to be outside of the regular aggro and blood-aggro of the monsters available. Coupled with the mixtures of Umbrils and other undesirables these camps are treacherous at best. In addition to the environment being extremely harsh as it pertains to positioning; the offering of undead category types imposes a party configuration that requires a top tier bard that must be adequately agile to lullaby aggro, utilizing party compositions with higher ratio of healing magic casters and for enemy types which cast magic a party member highly competent successfully casting silence.

Very very well said Tullemore! Spot on!

Also thank you very much for posting Rua's video reviewing the Ra'Kaznar Inner Court camps! Very insightful !

This would definitely need to brought to the attention of the developers, and a topic on its own really.

[Cdryik]

The thing is, with ppl buying JP, it make less people joining into normal party, so the number of seeking party is dramatically lower... and some class are unable to join the phew pty that still trying to gather member for an exp pty.

But it get enhanced when the exp/cp bonus is up, you can see more pty forming. so making the exp double, should be a base exp.

Then, SE must give an exemple for thoses cheaters with bots. Lowering their exp gain to 0 on their char and thoses that are in pty with them, keeping the subscription fee from thoses still.

Actually, there is a ToS, that SE dont follow...

[Sirmarki]

The thing is, with ppl buying JP, it make less people joining into normal party, so the number of seeking party is dramatically lower... and some class are unable to join the phew pty that still trying to gather member for an exp pty.

But it get enhanced when the exp/cp bonus is up, you can see more pty forming. so making the exp double, should be a base exp.

Then, SE must give an exemple for thoses cheaters with bots. Lowering their exp gain to 0 on their char and thoses that are in pty with them, keeping the subscription fee from thoses still.

Actually, there is a ToS, that SE dont follow...

The first line is applicable to mercs too. A lot of people are buying stuff from mercs, the game is just a bunch of soloer's or multi-box standing in town looking pretty.
It is evident this has happened. despite most people being indoors at the moment, the game feels dead in yell. If it's not dead, its trolls and arm chair US politicians.

Turn off all the JP selling bots, mercs and trolls and the content creation (party) yells on Asura account for probably 5% of all yells.

[Elliander]

I found this thread because I've been getting tired of having cut scenes interrupted by repeated shouts to sell job points. Now it's even worse than it was in 2020. The shouts sell 500 Job points for 4 million (down from 10 million) and 2100p for 15 million. What's the point of getting a master ranking if you can just buy it and go AFK? That shifts the focus from level grinding to gil grinding.

it used to be that a power leveler was just a higher level healer who would sit outside the party and keep everyone alive while they all participated in combat. Now people don't have to do anything at all. What's the point of even playing a game that anyone can just pay to complete and be done with?

It used to take time to level up. I spent 5 years in the old days getting to level 75. Now that can be done in a weekend. Reaching 75 used to be a rite of passage since no matter what help you got you had to face Maat alone, but now you can summon an army of thugs (Trusts) to beat him up for you. It used to be that crafters had to work on gear, but now none of that matters since you level up so fast you can live with older gear until 99 and then just use the free sparks to buy the lvl 99 gear. Add in the ability to buy max job points for a mere 15 million gil and it literally takes less than a month to finish everything off. Then all the story stuff can be dealt with in a week. After that, well, what's left to do?

The moment it became easy to get from level 1 to max level is, in my opinion, the moment this game started to die. It also cheapened the experience for those of us who took the long way. Which is really sad. If the problem can't be fixed going forward I would love to see a "Classic Server" setup with the old leveling schemes.

Personally, I don't mind multi-boxing. I think at this point it helps the game more than it hurts, but with the way Fields of Valor work we have the same problem. You get exp no matter what you do provided that the enemy on the page dies, and while it may be a bit slower than normal exp, you can level an entire party of alts solo no problem while grinding gil. Combined with the "free trial" system and it literally costs $30 USD per alt and no additional time to throw a new character in and get it to max level. That's way too easy.

These issue needs to be addressed one way or another. For any MMO to be successful players need to have something to do in the game. They need goals they can achieve and challenges to overcome. Without that, well, what's the point? You might as well watch a live stream of someone else going through the motions at that point.

One good function would be to limit capacity points by how much time you've had interaction to help kill the targets.
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I.E. you're afk and do nothing, you get no capacity points. You cast one spell that does under 5% total damage dealt and that's it, then you get under 5% total CP on that kill, etc...
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This also negates the NEED to pay mercs under TOS, since you helped to remove the kill target IN ANY WAY, then no need to pay.
(Same rule about lotting on a treasure drop that you helped kill and the leader says you cannot lot, but legally you can; it's called trust and learning whom to trust - lessons learned)
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Mercs would not be legally able to charge for farming CP/JP (sadly what players do in betwixt as "donations" is a loophole).

I very much like this idea, although personally I'd also want to see that people who heal and buff allies who are engaging in combat likewise get credit. The system could work similar to campaign battles which already takes such things into account.

Maybe also make some of the locations actually difficult to reach. For example, after finding most gil farming locations overcamped I found a few in areas that took actual effort to reach which I couldn't just teleport to and found no problems doing my thing there because the bots won't bother with that. If some exp camps were the same way at least it could create an option.

If people want to ruin the game for themselves though, that's their prerogative. Ultimately, no rules are being broken unless they're selling JP for real money directly.

They aren't just ruining it for themselves. For an MMO to exist at all there must be sufficient players to justify keeping the servers in operation. If players can beat the game in a matter of weeks they will move on and do other things and even while playing they aren't likely to work with anyone leveling up which means it's even harder to get real parties going. Then servers have to get shut down and players are pushed together. Eventually, if this problem isn't addressed, the game will die. And, that aside, there's no real sense of accomplishment reaching max level when it's so easy to get there.

Speaking for myself, I come back periodically, but I don't play regularly because of these problems. I'll probably cancel after another month and then might pop back in a few months to a year later. In contrast to this, I was a regular subscriber for many years. I was also in the closed beta for the new Final Fantasy. I'd be a regular subscriber again if only it wasn't so easy to do everything all at once.

That aside, I am not convinced that they aren't breaking rules. I've noticed that the shouts from some players come in on exactly 10 minute intervals. Like, so exact it's fairly obvious that they are using a program to send on that interval. A real person would have some variability in that. Although, oddly, the RMT shouts (which still come in) are more irregular, but that's probably because they get banned almost immediately after. Still, even if it's somehow legit, I still think it's breaking the game.

[Alhanelem]

They aren't just ruining it for themselves. For an MMO to exist at all there must be sufficient players to justify keeping the servers in operation.

Job points are far, far, far, far from the only grind in the game and the only reason to play. Half the reason people pay to do these things quickly because there are other parts of the game they'd rather be spending their time on. People buying JP aren't taking anything measurable away from FFXI's survival.

[Tarmarkvar]

For the people who buy into job points, master levels, or mercenary services, if they could not avail themselves of those services, they'd just quit anyway. Whether the game is deprived of those peoples' presence through them progressing too slowly and getting bored, or progressing too quickly and getting bored, it's all the same.

[Sirmarki]

For the people who buy into job points, master levels, or mercenary services, if they could not avail themselves of those services, they'd just quit anyway. Whether the game is deprived of those peoples' presence through them progressing too slowly and getting bored, or progressing too quickly and getting bored, it's all the same.

So they get ML50 in no time and then stand in town complaining that they are bored instead?

Good, let them quit, they ruined the game - look at yell as a prime example.