June 2020 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Typral]

Why would they want to ban the RMT? That would be a huge net loss for them in sub costs. We are at the point they don't want to hurt the cash flow from this game or it could make them decide it isn't worth it anymore. The best thing they came up with was to slow RMT down and make them purchase more content IDs = more revenue. I think they stopped caring about the average user a long time ago because they figure they will stick around no matter what.

[Nyarlko]

Please remove any and all EX tagged items from counting towards the cap. There is literally zero benefit to including any of them, it hurts legitimate players and does absolutely nothing to combat RMT activity. It is a straight up, painful nerf to legitimate players with zero benefit of any sort involved. This new cap especially hurts newer players/characters who may need to rely on "sparks gear" as their first ilvl equipment source and are likely struggle to find groups for HTBs to acquire Rem's chapters at a reasonable pace.

Personally, I'd also appreciate it if you could exempt UNM special materials as well. There isn't much profit to be made from them when comparing the cost:income ratio, and the ability to buy them is mostly useful for collecting pop items (which I provide to my linkshell at no cost to them) and using as upgrade materials. Any significant profit involved with their sale also involves dealing with the demand/delay of using the AH to sell rather than selling to NPCs, and every item requires actually playing the game and defeating each UNM at least once anyway, so it seems like a low-risk adjustment to exempt them from the purchase cap as well.

Other than my reasoning above to exclude UNM materials, anything else that can be sold to an NPC for gil should be counted towards these new caps, with all other purchasable items excluded, for both sparks and accolades. The current implementation is clearly overreaching.

[Sirmarki]

I'd also appreciate it if you could exempt UNM special materials as well..

I disagree really. People are selling stacks of some of them for 800K. Also, since they have been limited, a lot more people are doing UNM fights, as this encourages them to do so.

[Nyarlko]

I disagree really. People are selling stacks of some of them for 800K. Also, since they have been limited, a lot more people are doing UNM fights, as this encourages them to do so.

There are only a handful that are worth much at all tbh, and trying to use them as a reliable source of income is a generally bad idea in my experience. (The only ones that are close to the max value that you are quoting are all pop items for GF NMs, and come from ilvl128+ fights.) At 10k accolades per, they are also a significantly worse point:gil conversion ratio than powders/shields/etc even in the best case scenario since the alternatives were 100% reliable and independent of the economy. They also do require defeating each UNM at least once to unlock their material for purchase, so there is a gameplay barrier involved (which can be bypassed by being carried, yes. But that goes for all content at this point other than Master Trials.)

I believe that there is very little inherent risk in excluding them in addition to EX items, and given how low demand on the AH is for any of them, I can only see the AH prices for all of them going down along with the current deflation trend, which will also discourage RMT from dealing with the low time:profit ratio.

[Flackooo]

Would it not be possible to implement some more Apex mobs, would love to see some in the old zones, such as;

Valkurm Dunes, Sea Serpent Grotto, Yuhtunga Jungle, Beaucedine Glacier.

I'm sure are parts of these map, no one ever goes to.

[Zuidar]

Would it not be possible to implement some more Apex mobs, would love to see some in the old zones, such as;

Valkurm Dunes, Sea Serpent Grotto, Yuhtunga Jungle, Beaucedine Glacier.

I'm sure are parts of these map, no one ever goes to.

I don't see that possible for older zones pre-adoulin maybe for some reasons. I can't think of a few apart from older zones having level correction pre-adoulin.

[Sirmarki]

There are only a handful that are worth much at all tbh, and trying to use them as a reliable source of income is a generally bad idea in my experience. (The only ones that are close to the max value that you are quoting are all pop items for GF NMs, and come from ilvl128+ fights.) At 10k accolades per, they are also a significantly worse point:gil conversion ratio than powders/shields/etc even in the best case scenario since the alternatives were 100% reliable and independent of the economy. They also do require defeating each UNM at least once to unlock their material for purchase, so there is a gameplay barrier involved (which can be bypassed by being carried, yes. But that goes for all content at this point other than Master Trials.)

I believe that there is very little inherent risk in excluding them in addition to EX items, and given how low demand on the AH is for any of them, I can only see the AH prices for all of them going down along with the current deflation trend, which will also discourage RMT from dealing with the low timerofit ratio.

But then the RMT would just bot Unity points, and run back and forth to that NPC buying pop items and selling them, setting the price trend (as opposed to sparks).
There are more than a handful of unity items that sell for good amounts of gil.

Why not just get the group in question who needs whatever Escha NM's, to come along with you and farm the needed Unity fights for pop items?
That way, everybody has something to do.

[Nyarlko]

But then the RMT would just bot Unity points, and run back and forth to that NPC buying pop items and selling them, setting the price trend (as opposed to sparks).
There are more than a handful of unity items that sell for good amounts of gil.

Why not just get the group in question who needs whatever Escha NM's, to come along with you and farm the needed Unity fights for pop items?
That way, everybody has something to do.

If RMT all decided to shift their energy into farming accolades to buy UNM mats, they'd have to wait for stuff to sell on the AH rather than instant NPC-sourced gil, and demand simply isn't high enough for any of them to support the overly inflated supply resulting from them jumping into the market. Prices would crash, and crash hard, making it a less lucrative market for them to be a part of. It'd still eliminates the ability that RMT had to generate non-economically interactive funds due to being able to directly convert unlimited quantities of sparks/accolades directly into gil at a 1:10 ratio via instantaneous NPC sales. The mats are all dirt cheap when sold to NPCs, and even at the highest end of current pricing, AH value is much less than 1:10 value, so RMT income potential would still be vastly reduced. Even if UNM mats were excluded from the cap, it'd be less gil/hour potential for them to continue botting trash mobs for accolade/sparks farming than just about any actual content. That's still a big win IMO.

Still need to exclude all EX items regardless (that can't be sold for gil, if any exist,) since that almost exclusively hurts newer players/characters who need gear/Rems.

No one ever wants to actually fight UNMs. They are straight-up miserable with a full alliance. <,<
As the leader of a large, active ls I also have absolutely no desire to double~triple the amount of time required for any events. Our event schedule is full enough without trying to cram in UNM farming (which is also best done with smaller groups due to scaling, resulting in member exclusion.) We have no shortage of things to do even without forced UNM farming added to the mix. There was absolutely no need to when I was able to personally cover the pop item costs for everyone with my own accolades before this change.

[Sirmarki]

The Job Point sellers (aka botters) need to be dealt with, the Apex camps that players often (try) to use are swamped with them, all stuck on top of each other repeating killing monsters 24/7, and yell is 95% Job point sellers.

If something isn't done soon, there will be no spots left at all for us genuine players.

[Rwolf]

I'm in favor of the cap to spark/accolades despite the minor inconveniences, but I hope the developers and STF know they can't stop here. The crackdown needs to be harder on players who are using crafting exploits and item duplication.

• Remove more of these accounts sitting on thousands of medals or who have started to try and massively trade them into popular shard/void items to hide them. I don't expect overnight to get them all but I don't see how it's possible for 7 stacks of 99 medals on AH not being a red flag or buying 6 of them in one day (Bismarck).
  
  
• Look into these accounts selling suspicious amounts of Su5 weapons / +2 necks. Just on Bismarck I'll look at one person's AH history and it contains multiple crafts +2 necks being sold frequently. Instant ban? No. But these things should be suspicious enough to look into where they got them from and then ban all associated.
  
  
• Farming items needs an overhaul: Gardening, mining, logging, harvesting, fishing, clamming, chocobo digging, enemy farm, etc. needs an overhaul on grinding materials. Make things fun, non-competitive for spots, and deterrent to players who automate bots to complete the tasks like what spark/accolade farming was.