Special Task ForceFollow

There is a NA LS on Cerberus (which Cerberus people know) has monopolized Fafnir/Nidhogg for over a year that even non-Paladins all have M Body. The monopoly is broken up after a alleged-botting NA LS formed a former member of the monopoly LS came to DA, and out-claim his old LS.

Some key members of both Cerberus LSs are always been critized for botting and buying gil :P And those 2 LSs have made an agreement to split their FF camping time, and uses even the same TS server o.O

Edited, Nov 6th 2006 at 10:44am PST by scchan

Not sure... but Nicolai (I checked your profile :P) , someone in one of you two LS would probably know the answer, and there are current/former members of one of the LS you listed are current/former member of those two LSs I specified.

And say Hi for me to Puss :P

Edited, Nov 6th 2006 at 11:29am PST by scchan

Ban 'em all, and let the game sort itself out. If it dies, it dies. If it survives, it'll prosper on a clean slate of fair play. Considiring the alternative is RMT infestation and rampant cheating, i'd much rather see FFXI die out before the crap keeps being tolerated. No more shades of gray. Black or white, SE.

Hmm.. Special Task Force.

Maybe they will put out graphics with snazzy colors and buzz-words. Perhaps a Vanadiel Security Advisory System.

I greet any moves by SE again RMT (more specifically the people obtaining the gil to sell) with pessimistic optimism. As I've said to so many things in the past though, I'll believe it when I actually see some results. I haven't noticed any difference in the number of RMTFs(Real Money Trade Farmers) on my server lately, even with all of the account bannings. If anything the numbers have increased dramatically... ; ;

As I told all of my friends before I left FFXI, I would be the first person to come back and devote my time to the game if S/E did some house cleaning. As it stands right now the game is ruined by RMT. I for one am very happy to see this news. Let's just hope this new task force nails every RMT/Botter/Cheater in the game.

Sometimes I do feel, it is wrongful to blame RMT for all the problems. RMT is really caused by players themselves -- people buy gil and write hack programs. Most Alla posters tend to have the play-by-ToS altitude. I can tell you, just go read KI and other forums, it is a jungle out there, and people will brag about buying gil and cheating.

It FFXI was dying, they wouldn't bother. Most business don't just set up activities before doing research as to the impact it will have financially. First, the research cost money, second the task force cost money.

SE must have figures that show its cost effective.

The xbox is out, the ps3 is coming out, they have probably figured in the profit and loss from these new venues.

That being said, the idea of a task force made me laugh.

knock, knock: whose there?

The tast force will have to be local one's in each country where there is a problem, or in the country where the biggest problem lies.

I'm going to make a comment on various asspects of this problem as I see it.

1) Gil sellers

Sales can be made with level 1 chars (i.e. transfer the gil to a level 1 char for the last delivery to a player). If that char gets busted? no problem just whip up another one. If a bank gets busted, sure it hurts the bankroll (you may have had to pay out real world money for those gil that just evaporated) but you just get a new credit card and off you go and you're back in buisness the next week.

So although killing banks is a good idea, it takes time to impact these. I.e. you need to cause enough losses in inventory month after month for the volume gilsellers to shutdown shop as it's costing them more than they can make.

So we've established that the time investment in the "bank" part of the operation is minimal. And if the accounts involved at least generate more profit than they loose out when the accounts are deleted, it's worth keeping going.

2) Gil farmers

As any experienced player knows, The gil generation potential at the high end of the level scheme is much higher than the generation at the lower levels (with certain exploited exceptions). This means that the investment in making a good gil farming character is substantial. This is the main reason that high level chars sell for quite a bit of money. Players don't buy characters worth 600$US, Gilfarmers do since it saves them enormous amounts of time.

Here there's not much you can do per see. You need to be able to accept change in billing because of real world considerations (CC card stolen, so you get a new number and need to change all the auto billing stuff you've got setup). And a player leaving the game (especial if they leave with bad feelings towards the game) may not be above the temptation to recoup some of the $ he spent on the game by selling the character. And let's face it it costs what, close to 200$ a year to play this game. Cheap as hell when you consider going out for dinner with friends and stuff a few times a year is equivalent your entire normal costs to play this game, but when a char sells for what 600$, someone leaving just sees that they can recoup everthing they pumped into the game (if they haven't been gil buying). Or even more likely, they got disenchanted with the game after they bought gil and want to get a bit of their money back. So they sell the character. It's not like SE can go after the guy who sold his account, he doesn't care any more.

There are also two types of supliers. The occasional ones (real players who just decide to sell some of their gil to fund whatever) and the serious ones (the "chinese gilfarmers" who do the farming professionaly)

Why SE don't ban the account base on the RMT credit card numbers used. Sure investigating new Bots, RMT and such is good for the game but RMT only have a certain numbers of credit card numbers to use. All they have to do is pull up the credit card numbers of previously banned accounts and check how many accounts are using the same number. Ban the accounts that is using the same credit card number that more then once.

I really hope this measure will help. Armors like Plastron and things went crazy. There is no way I can get that. I hope economy can improve and lowering the price to reasonable level.

I miss the good old days people were shouting to sell fire crystals at BASTOK! Now, Bastok is DEAD! I miss those good old times ..

On the other hand, SE should offer windower-like options for players. It is very inconvenient for looking at walkthrough on the web. Luckily, I have 2 computers in my room .. still it is inconvenient!!

Ok, so official comment/question/consideration directed to Square (Since you said they will read the topic):


Many PC users, in fact the vast majority, use the Windower program. The Windower has the optional capabilities of allowing the player to view other party members' TP, a monster's current HP%, as well as distance from the monster, among other things. At the bare minimums, without these addons, the program allows the ability to alt-tab or minimize/window the program. Currently, this is considered bannable, since not only do the plugins provide an unfair advantage over those without them, but they make it easier for people to use other third party tools such as fleetool, POS, and MrArgus.

However, there are non-cheating applications for these enhancements. Consider the following:

-If the game were to crash on loss of fullscreen, Anti-Virus programs (Norton, McAfee, etc) displaying notifications (A harmful process was blocked, the program should be updated, etc) would remove the player from the game. Conisider an unfortunately timed removal from the game of a White Mage healer in a party and its effects on the party members. It would cause otherwise unnessesary death of people who had no control over another player's computer displaying a notice that "Norton AntiVirus has been successfully updated"

-With the ability to change Windows, a player with access to only one PC would be able to check their email or view message boards while waiting for a ship or Airship to arrive/take off/land. Surely there are more productive ways to spend your time than starting at your screen for 15-20 minutes waiting for your boat to arrive in Nahmau?

-While some have access to another computer to view mission guides and maps, not everyone has this ability, and some may not be able to print out these maps. It would be nice to be able to Alt-Tab to check a reference website for where an NM is and Alt-Tab back, rather than logging off, checking, and logging back on while anywhere between 5 and 17 people are waiting on you.


While I personally have access to multiple computers and have no need to use Windower since my Antivirus and Anti-Spyware programs never cause me to lose fullscreen, I understand that these concerns may be important to other players. As such, my question to Square is as follows:


Under consideration of the above instances, and since Square is going to be more harshly punishing third party tool users (including Windower users), will Square be introducing the ability to natively alt-tab the game, as well as remove the idea of a player being removed from the game as a result of a popup that (usually) is beyond their reasonable control?

As an aside, the ability to see other players' TP (via the TParty plugin for the Windower tool) is a good idea; one not currently available in the game, and one I wish I could have access to without having to break the ToS. Would it be possible for Square to also add in this functionality as well if possible?



Thank you for your time,

-Mikhalia, Carbuncle Server