Special Task ForceFollow

This SE message just makes me laugh so hard. I hope to god someone in SE actually reads this.
This is SE's game. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want.

They can see everything you put into text and send, on all accounts, all trade transactions, etc.
Granted, that might be a lot of data, but I'm pretty sure in this day in age filters can quickly find any unusual/very large trades.
They can see everything. Not that they do see everything, probably not enough staff to do so, but they CAN.

It is their hardware, their servers, they can create programs to filter out certain things and pinpoint certain activities with ease.
But they don't.
I understand that SE has to be careful who they ban, because they don't want to ban a legitamite player.

But the fact remains that, in their own game, which they designed, they aren't implementing actions that can locate gilbuying/selling activities fairly simply.
I believe its becuase either they don't want to, don't care, too lazy, or just content with getting as much cash as possible each month.

I believe SE is just putting out these messages to stop the players from their endless ranting about the situation, and not much is actually being done about it at all.
I don't expect over the next few months for anything to change much, if at all.
SE could've simply implemented their own form of rmt, wiping out the rmt companies we know today.

The rmt problem has gone on for a very long time, longer than I have even been playing, so why do we see the messages now?
SE is just simply milking a dead cow, in my opinion. The game is on its last legs, new expansion or not.They are trying to string along what players they still have left, to keep rolling in the dough.
Also, I'm sure SE has thought about the loss of rmt accounts (and the according monthly fees) against the gain of what players might join/return to the game after hearing about anything done (and thier fees). I'm not a mathmetician, but

I'd say its a good bet that far more money is made off of the numerous rmt accounts than SE could ever hope to get off of prospective legitamite players.
What kind of company will go out of their normal procedure, start costly investigations, and employ even more staff, to eventually lower its monthly income?

To me it is common sense. SE might not favor for the rmt situation, but I seriously doubt they will take any steps whatsoever to decrease their income by that much. They will probably ban the occasional group of botters/hackers/rmt, to please the masses, but at the end of the day, rmt will still be here, up to the point where no one is even playing the game at all to even buy gil.

Like I said, I hope you are reading this SE, had enough of rmt antics, I'm leaving the game soon. If I want to compete with some ******* ruining my game, I'll go play Halo. Might not be much that you're losing, my measly $13 a month, but its adding up, and when all legit players are gone, the rmt goes too, then your cash pot is dried out. Hope you make your stock quotas so that hopefully your next game doesn't fail, as well.

Heres a link where and an email where we can tell them, recently created specificly for this purpose.

http://services.google.com/feedback/abg?url=http://ffxi.allakhazam.com&hl=en&client=ca-pub-7580377517271965&adU=m&adT=ImageAd&done=1

email: adsbygoogle+aff@google.com

Also Sergey tells me they are putting a link at the corner of their ads. If an ad offends us website vewiers, we can now tell them.

Just select "appropriatness of ads" as the subject.




Ba..1088 posts and I still fail to preview to catch mistakes before posting..

Edited, Nov 22nd 2006 1:03am by thatdamnelf

Warning: very long post, regarding craft/dig bots.

On my server (Fairy) before the choc dig nerf, we had one notorious choco dig botter named Momomo. Online 24/7, always travelling the same exact paths non stop. After battling this bot and getting fairly skilled at trumping it's digging by keeping one zone ahead of it at all times, the gilsellers must have noticed a sharp decline in profits. We then we got another 24/7 digger, named Nisemon. Then another, named Floris. Then another, named Generws who would never, ever leave Western Altepa and dug that zone 24/7.

It became absolutely useless to dig as those 4 bots had complete control on digging anything better than an insect wing or a flint stone. After battling GM's and enduring months of lies and no action, I was told to never call a GM again lest my account be terminated. Terminated for reporting bots that were online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, digging.

Often I would come across these bots running into walls or unpassable paths on their choco and they would continue running into the wall for upwards of half an hour at a time. I would sit there and watch them, and call a GM. The GM's turned a blind eye time after time. I gave up digging. They showed me time and time again that they would rather harbor undeniable 3rd party apps and against the TOS behavior than help out legit players.

A few months back, in order to combat chocobo dig bots and monopolization of certain areas, SE nerfed digging... similar to the way they nerfed fishing except diggers got the nerf beatdown much more painfully.

The nerfed it so bad so you could only dig approximately 15 minutes per real life day.

That is fine, whatever, water under the bridge. Except, of course, for one small fact they seemed to overlook. As I predicted here, gilsellers/choco dig bots initially were hurt badly by this nerf as well. It was good. They were bound by the same rules as legit players and one could actually dig in zones without constantly getting "you find nothing" messages. Digging was good again, even though you could only do it 15 minutes a day. I started digging again.

However in time, as I guessed above, the gilsellers got wise to the situation. Given that it takes roughly 1 year digging hard every day to reach the top rank, no other legit player in their right mind would level a second, even third or fourth character to obtain more of a stranglehold on digging. Although it would be very profitable to do so, considering other players only have a 15 minute window per 24 hours to try their luck it is just not feasible considering the sheer number of mind numbing hours it takes to level up just one mule to the top level.

On Fairy server, currently, by just taking a rough look at commonly dug items on FFXIAH.com, I can easily pinpoint at least 20 (yes twenty.) chocobo dig bots that are in operation every day. What's funny is alot of them have reincarnated names of the original dig botters, instead of just Momomo now, we have Ohmohmo, Ohmohmorye, Ohmhmomokunbu. Instead of just Nisemon, now we have Niisemon, Khunisemon, niseymon... you get the picture. On top of this I am sure more are to come. The gilsellers would be stupid not to level more up.

The one thing that gilsellers possess that we legit players don't, and use to their full advantage, is time.

They have the resources to invest thousands and thousands of man hours into levelling up 100 chocobo dig bots per server resulting in total domination, which will be ten times worse than before.

Fellow diggers, take a look at FFXIAH.com and see for yourself. Look at names similar to those of your original dig bots or the sellers of stacks of black rocks, insect wings, flint stones, pebbles. You will probably see similar results to what I have.

To SE and the STF, if you are reading this, and I hope you are... the time is now to curb this. The 15 minute a day digging nerf only serves to limit legit players and your efforts, even though they had great intentions, have failed.

The gilsellers will continue to exploit this and the legit players will continue to get the shorter and shorter end of the stick the more gilseller bots that are levelled up.

Please put an end to this farce and stop casting a blind eye to the blatant botting that goes on in HELM'ing, all crafting, digging, AH botting, guild botting etc.

NO player can be online digging, crafting or be active 24 hours a day. This is against YOUR rules. You state that another person isn't allowed to play on someone elses account. This is the only way a character can be doing something every minute of every day. Enforce that TOS breach. It is impossible for some one to play 24 hours day, never sleeping for years straight. They would die.

Also, Hollboyboyboy has had his run. It's time to put him to rest. We all know the deal behind him.

Thank you for reading, if you made it this far.

Know what would be nice? Speed Belts, Strider Boots, Thief's Knives, Autumnstones, Enhancing Swords, Cross-Counters, Eurytos Bows, and a wide variety of other NM drops, being camped by players for enjoyment of their characters.

As is RMT runs all those camps and many more all over Titan. Hell, they shout their Sky Abj/Osode/Haidate sales in Lower Jeuno 24/7 as well, yet you guys can't see to find them.

Extremely disappointed so far. I used to love camping NMs.

2 more of my friends are quitting now. Good game.

I spent literally YEARS to get 100 Fishing and Ebisu Rod. This is now WORTHLESS. Your task force is doing NOTHING.

Note: The fishing problem will NOT be fixed purely by banning existing botters. As long as fishing skill makes little to NO difference in catch rates, they will continue to reappear. Bring back the old fishing system, or make skill matter in this one.

And who is to blame for dropping gil to like 8 pounds per million? If no one is buying, it would not have fueled that business, no?

I doubt players themselves will take action against suspected botters and active gil buyers within their own LS, no? You are not going to kick a LS member for buying gil or leave your ground king HNMLS that uses bot or leaders buy gil to fund their Speed Belts and Hauby +1?

No matter what the Special Task Force does, the STF cannot fix the long term problem when a big part of the problem resides in the players that STF or fellow players can do much about it.

The RMT and botter problem are not a FFXI only problem, it exists in WoW and other US or Japanese made online game. The ultimate solution is to have players play the game the way it is intend, and we all know how impossible that is.

Edited, Nov 24th 2006 2:08am by scchan

If I had solid evidence that someone on my LS was buying gil I would turn them in to the GMs in a heartbeat.

I don't doubt it. The need for gil is no doubt greater at the higer levels, and so it makes sense that the temptation is greater to succoumb to RMT. I guess I'm not going to get invited to an LS with gilbuyers or botters, then. Even if that rules me out of all high-level LSes, then so be it -- I'll enjoy other content, of which there is plenty, rather than get involved in endgame. I would rather be known as someone who doesn't tolerate cheating than be known as a hypocrite, even if it means I end up stalling at level 70 or 65 or whatever.

Hmmm, nice start. 9000 (+2500) for just speed-hack, claim-hack and related RMT activity from JP-active accounts.
I am guessing another number like that from the US/EU-active accounts. And then the way will be free to go after the botters and crafters.
Considering the numbers now, I am betting this is gonna cost money. Who said SE wasn't prepared to kick those accounts because of the money?
Also a nice touch: More information about it than before. I hope they keep that up.

Hollyboythingybob or whatever his name is, isn't on Pandy.

And all the RMT in Sky, Windurst farming Carp, other NM camps and so on... are no longer online.

Now I'm not saying they're gone for GOOD, but they're gone for now.

Stop complaining and get a f*cking life. Seriously, you're never happy, and I don't get it. You whine for months about this, then when you get it, you continue to whine...

... why do they even bother.

Well to continue the tradition of whining no matter what SE does, allow me to play devil's advocate here, and be the first to say:

Waaaaa! SE don't care about teh NAs!1!! They only care about teh JPs!!1! Waaaaa waaaa waaaa!

First to SquareEnix (if they really do check these threads... or this far into the discussions).

Thank you for that last huge batch of bannings. The RMT in sky have all but vanished even if its only a break until the next wave, we on siren greatly appreciated that you gave us back sky. No longer is it dominated by crappily-outfitted characters who are all /anon and who's names look like the person just mashed their faces on the keyboard . Yesterday for a 24 hour period, siren server's linkshells were able to do something they hadnt done in ages. Sky Trigger hunts / God fights. We thank you for giving us that joy back in the game.

Now for next task! Attack those using third party tools. I mean seriously attack them, not just "investigations". RMT were the most numerous problem when it came to FFXI-related issues but now we're facing a few real players who simply think its ok to break the rules on a daily basis. Go into files, check logs, whatever you have to do to catch these people. If you must? Change the Rules and Agreements for when people sign online so they know they will be under constant scrutiny. RMT ruined smaller NM camps and items because they were all for profit. Now we're faced with the remaining problem: Those who monopolize camps because they are just plain greedy and apparently never learned how to share.

I know not of anyone else on here's opinion, but I'm tired of getting the same macroed messages of "We will look further into this matter." Yet in a 2 month period the same people we've been making calls about are still wandering Vana'Diel; botting every HNM and Movement-Speed-Hacking everywhere they go. They are a poison to your game which makes many quit in frustration that you would let them continue without long-term punishment. Siren server has a shell or two that are so notorious for botting? They admit it openly! "HAHA We made claim AFK!" or "That's right, bow to the bot!" and yet nothing is done other than an imaginary investigation that apparently means "We do absolutely nothing and watch you suffer."

For the RMT? Thank you. Next objective? Any and all Third-party Tools. Change the agreement if you have to. Anyone with morals will still click that "Agree" button if we know you're doing it to improve our FFXI experience.

Except using a third party program that doesn't cheat isn't against the ToS. it's been that way for well over a year.

You should read it sometime, and enlighten yourself, instead of spewing your holier-than-thou babble when you clearly know nothing.