The Exploitation & Monopolization of Monsters for Money

[Vespar]

I have seen dozens of people monopolizing monsters EVERY DAY in multiple locations for various items used in Weaving/Leatherworking synthesis recipes and so on. These people round up all the monsters and mow them down with BLM aoe spells or use Bot scripts. Then they sell the items on the market boards for inflated amounts of gil, and buy up all the lower priced materials and resell them at inflated costs.

The videos posted below reference what I mean in regards to the exploits. These people openly "acknowledge" on Youtube that they exploit these monsters. If you don't believe me, see for yourself. To those crafters affected by the Market Board prices/Monopoloization you have my sincerest apologies. As a BLM, I would never sink this low and it really pains me to see others doing this..

Square Enix, I really hope you fnd a way to combat this soon please!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ0ZRym3iRo -- User Openly admitting to using exploits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP-uSHqU3Bc -- A Player showing a Bot farmer, farming up fleece from Karakuls using Scathe.

As a suggestion, maybe make it so that players who do sufficient damage on a monster, be it claimed by them or someone else, also get a share of loot? Just a thought....

[Loxius]

Euhm if nobody farmed the mobs for the materials do you think prices on the market are lower or higher? You know supply and demand how it works?
What is your problem that people farming them? I farm them a lot too, i just pull them to me with aero and then nuke them down with holy, am I a bad person now? I use them mostly for crafting so then it is ok that i farm them.
I mean i farm them for my crafting to make something i then sell on the market to make money. So what is the difference if someone else farm them and sell the items directly to make money.
Stop bitching about it, really sucks if you need the materials but you think prices are high cause everyone farm them while that isn't the issue.

[Shuon]

it's only a problem if they are bot-ing.....

[Gonzothegreat198]

As the other two said, the only way this would be exploiting is when they use bot scripts to do it. Otherwise, tell me have you ever played any other MMOs? THis is done in every mmo, its how you get the mats on the Marketplace/AH, and its a perfectly viable way to make money. If you really see that much of an issue with it, then maybe it's not this that's the problem, maybe it's the fact that this just isn't the game genre for you.

As a suggestion, maybe make it so that players who do sufficient damage on a monster, be it claimed by them or someone else, also get a share of loot? Just a thought....

Btw this already happens. As long as you get xp for the mob you have a chance to get the item, or at least it always works for me. Maybe it's not supposed to work like that and you're only supposed to get xp.

Also not everyone who does this does it solely for the mats. It's also a good way to help powerlevel guildies, it's just coincidental that those mobs are also for mats.

[KisaiTenshi]

Btw this already happens. As long as you get xp for the mob you have a chance to get the item, or at least it always works for me. Maybe it's not supposed to work like that and you're only supposed to get xp.

Also not everyone who does this does it solely for the mats. It's also a good way to help powerlevel guildies, it's just coincidental that those mobs are also for mats.

Pretty much every mmo game with a crafting system, this is how it's done... well not exactly.

Depends which is easier, harvesting or killing things. FFXIV's harvesting is extremely slow to say the least. Better than version 1's, but still terribly slow. I've played other games, and usually there's different grades of harvesting, so like a rank newbie would only get 1 item at a time and a rank S would get 3 at a time, randomly getting 25 every so often based on luck score. So if there's a way of killing mobs faster that drop the same harvestable item, then yes, it's a completely legitimate reason to kill the mobs.

Now say you have a problem with players camping the mobs you need, you either go camp something else, or you grief them by pulling the same cruft they're doing, in their presence.

As for SE "fixing" anything like this, this seems to be working as designed, but if they want to go ahead and make it less worthwhile to do, the should make the monsters respawn within different fence parts of the zone so that it's harder to camp.

[Nekodar]

RMT and other botters monopolizing a resource is not "working as designed".

They make sure noone else can get the items so they can charge extreme overprices for the items on the market board, which in turn is intended to drive them to buy gil.

[Tsukiyo]

It's only a problem if they're botting. Other then that you have a problem with what's been done in mmorpgs for years, people farm, people undercut, this isn't new.......

[Covertghost]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ0ZRym3iRo -- User Openly admitting to using exploits

Tagging a bunch of mobs isn't exploiting, lol

[unholykrusher]

Personally I think he is mainly complaining that they buy all the low priced items and reselling them at inflated prices. To ALL Who sell things in this manner. once the items are abundant they drop in value. even in games. Rarer items will stay around the same prices as most but the common ones are easy to come by no matter which way you put it. I have lots of common crap I Just use for fodder LoL...