Is it just me ..orrrr

[SydeBeheln]

This might just be me thinking too much, but it seems like allot of the features/systems within the game were made the way they were, because of "botting".
Some type of anti-bot strategy is in almost all of the main features, including the combat system, crafting, AH, gathering, etc..
(these being most of the only available content at the moment^^^)

I understand this is an important matter, but at the cost of playability and ease, it seems like the original Dev. team was more worried about people banking a buck off there product, than the actual product itself.

Honestly I love the whole interactive style of game play offered in this game. It just seems before all of these updates, and patches and what not, the game was more anti-bot, than fun.
Since then though the system has been upgraded allot and is much easier/better.

But I just cant help to think, that when this game first came out, the first thing that really struck me was "man bots would have a hard time getting things done". As this is true, I feel like this also played a part in the games failure as well. =[

A few minutes ago, I read a post titled "jig-lag". It talked about an anti RMT feature where it would actually LAG your fishing results on purpose...
Now IMHO there HAS to be better ways of doing things other than adding lag to your own feature..

Anyway.. I know it seems like I'm hating on the game, but I'm really not. I love the game, and I see HUGE potential in it. I just seem to think ANTI-RMT based mechanics is what caused allot of annoyance to the beginning player base, and may have been the reason for them leaving.
I think if the game is popular enough, RMT will always find its way in. Maybe other methods of anti botting would be better.

[Hotohori]

Well I think the high amount of anti-bot features that ff14 has is due to the fact that when Tanaka was in charge of ff11 (2003-2006 roughly, 2006-2010 was time spent on 14), the only thing he was pretty much doing was fixing the massively unexpected amount of exploitations and abuses with bots, third parties tools and RMT which the original development team of Square-Soft created in 11. FF11 was squares first online version game and they never had any measures against bots and RMT. He probably just wanted to not make the same mistakes and tried to take the initiative on prevention instead of needing 3-4 years worth of changes and the constant enforcement of fair play among players. But yes I see what you are saying when he lost focus on making fun elements instead of making sure elements were free of exploitable loopholes.

Some examples of major anti-bot/RMT elements could be:

1) Market Ward over an Auction house, Auction House bot was one of the most powerful and overused bots among players to allow automated purchases of any and all desired goods posted below a set price threshold. There were so many naked mithras in Ru'lude Garden standing there 24/7 it wasn't even funny. No history of transactions also made it difficult for third party sites to record the transactions of their customer base which SE has been frowning on for years. I don't mind having to walk to pick up my item because I don't think there is a bot that can do this right now. An improved and more convenient system is still needed though.

2) A mini-game, ranking system and movement system for gathering classes to collect goods instead. Overall, this wasn't a bad change in my opinion. The gathering system was pretty dull and ended up with just RMT bots collecting the rarest goods at level 1 by stationing them at potential points to collect from as they spawn til dry. They were even hard to spot because they would fly off screen so monsters would not attack them. Again, I don't mind the fact that I have to move around and rank up to continue gathering the good stuff and it the world is pretty safe anyway. I can see why it is reasonable for players to be unable to have interactions with gathering nodes but its still a bit weird not being able to interact with other in-game features like crystals and such.

3) As for character fatigue over world fatigue, I really hated the fact that chocobo digging was monopolized by bots. The chances for me to dig up ores were too hard that I had to give up. Gardening bots really spammed the market with ores too making the value drop so bad with over stock. Now the fact that other people have been gathering all day has no effect on how much I can gather myself even though there are many others doing the same thing. Supply will not over shoot demand rapidly because more gatherers means there are more consumers in general as well.

4) Experience fatigue I have some mixed feelings about. I can usually hit yellow fatigue on a class over a weeks time with no problem after the sp/exp changes now. With the original system though I never saw it once. I can imagine that it is very hard for a RMT to raise a new character from rank 1-50 account in a short amount of time to sell. They say fatigue is for casual players but I don't see this working very well. My friend plays about 2-3 times a week and he is rank 32, I play about every day and have a rank 50 archer and play my conjurer with him when he plays. I basically lapped him and doing another run of sp grinding with him to have stuff to do with him.

5) Just various little features such as status timers, TP to name color associations and a full time mini-map with radar were big improvements that many people used outside tools like windower or apradar and such to have in 11. Having it as a basic feature really kills the need for players to use third party tools to enhance the game experience. I think this is what they were sort of hoping for with the aggro icons as well but really overshot it. The action bar has all of the cool down timers displayed nicely as well but I wish they could be better synced sometimes.

6) The claim system seems really bad right now. I think this may have been to prevent a party from holding and such. Party capabilities are really crippled so that you are unable to claim a monster when the leader is not near. You cannot add and join or even leave mid-battle, all of these little things seem to be to prevent abuses and enforce fair play but it seems to cause its own set of problems. Using the experience chain and level sync function for things like Astral Burning and other party dynamic abuses led to a system where you can only claim 1 party of monsters at a time for skill and experience points. Even if added later, I am sure it won't be the same. I hope the new team can find a fix for this without sacrificing too much. The current claim features still include many of the fixes that came later in 11 such as the inability to claim instantly on spawns.

7) Battle regimen over Skill Chain/Magic Burst. RMT loved Skill Chains and Magic Bursts and were some of the most skilled users of such. The original Black Mage was truly a powerhouse. Galka Paladin, Mithra Thief, Elvaan Ranger and Tarutaru Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage was the signature party of RMT for the longest time before an STF even existed. This 18 account party could be controlled by 2 people and could kill anything in the game for the longest time. Battle Regimen does not allow for someone to manipulate 10 Black Mages to nuke in sync with perfect timing to deal massive amounts of damage. It forces a queque of commands and probably requires a real person to join in the process of battle regimen. Now that I think about it, this may be the reason offensive magic is so crummy right now. Heavy Shot > Shark Bite > Thunder 4 x10 was the hot stuff back then. Battle Regimen doesn't seem hard once you understand the bonuses and I feel it really flexible in comparison.

I played through ff11 through these times and these are just some of the things from the experiences I can remember. I am told 11 is pretty much on easy mode now so there is no need for all this hardcore game tactics but I think it may be also due to the fact SE profits are suffering badly with 13 sales being so poor. 14 is clearly rushed and no one can argue that seeing the game like this. A friend told me profit estimates for SE company in the upcoming year is a historic low of 10 million and this was before 14 even was released.

I also remember the reactions of Tanaka's first expansion to ff11 and imagine this is what greatly influenced his desire to make 14 more casual. Chains of Promethia was probably one of the hardest sequence of missions I have ever experienced in any game when it was released. The required skill, luck, party set-ups and tactics to pass through it all made it only possible for a handful of players to do so back then. I have no doubt in my mind that Tanaka could have made a super challenging game of 14 but it would probably have the same reaction as CoP was released. Many adjustments were made later to the difficulty such as scaling gears and job improvements just so regular players could make it through. Classes right now are pretty much the same and don't play specific roles nearly as well as the jobs system did in 11.

I don't know much about Tanaka himself but he gives off the impression of someone who must have been traumatized by all this to design 14 purposefully in the direction it was going. I do remember SE saying something about how it was embarrassing to them that they did not imagine their game to be so popular yet unable to counter things like bots and RMT in 11 for so long. I think Wada fired the original developers of 11 back in 2003 because of something similar to this and considering the talent of some of those individuals, I bet he wished he has a time machine right now.

tl;dr: Yeah I agree the game is sucking up all the fun when there are too many restrictions.

[SydeBeheln]

It's really not that bad anymore. I mean, I am obsessed with the idea of having mini-games for crafting and gathering, it makes it feel involving and more like i have control over the character within the world. It seems like when he designed this system though, it wasn't because it sounded or would be cool, but because it would make RMT too difficult to bot. That goes with all of the aforementioned features. Seems things are looking up though, hopefully within this year the new DEV. team can make due with the foundation tanaka and the crew left behind.

[Keith_Dragoon]

Tanaka is the grim reaper to RMTs, he put ALOT of focus on anti-rmt tactics which in turn became all that XIV is.

[SydeBeheln]

Tanaka is the grim reaper to RMTs, he put ALOT of focus on anti-rmt tactics which in turn became all that XIV is.

Yes I can see that. lol I blame that factor on why people were annoyed with the game. Should have focused more on the enjoyment of a feature, than rather how to make it anti RMT.

[Teknoman]

Another player suggested a great way to fight RMT gathering: Use the beast tribe bounty hunter system from XI.

I think the method they applied to FFXI is smarter than this idea. Where they have goblins patrol the area that are equivalent in rank as the grade a DoL is gathering. Occasionally you would get interrupted. By the goblin mob, but it was a quick fight and only occurred once every 30mins.

This way bots could not react to the battle because they only know how to fish. So botters are dispatched Nd we can go back to our business.

[SydeBeheln]

Another player suggested a great way to fight RMT gathering: Use the beast tribe bounty hunter system from XI.

I am unfamiliar with the system. Do explain please.