Is FFXI Dying?

Depends who you ask. If you're asking SE, the botting is worse. They also (seemingly) don't have an issue, ToS-wise, with giving someone gil to get you ML, so they wouldn't say that's wrong. The wrong part is the RMT selling that gil to another player.

Asking me, I'd say they're quite close morally, but botting is a bit worse because you're gaining a greater advantage (not spending gil) and also directly breaking the rule. Not far off from each other though, like murder vs contracting a killer. I think most people would say being a murderer is worse than contracting a killer.


I am using windower which I don't believe breaks ToS (I've discussed this ad nauseum in other threads, I'll spare you all that again). I've never used a single addon in my entire life. I also hard disagree on the "equally" part of this.

Honestly, this whole train of argument is just cope for people who want to validate their own cheating as legitimate under the rationale that it's in line with what they believe the average player does.

Yes, Windower is (probably) against TOS, and all addons are. But, there's still a clear scope of offense that any human can evaluate. Everyone using windower doesn't mean that you're not cheating when you bot to ML50 and use the extra stats to limp through a fight you would've otherwise lost. Same if you're botting things for gil to get all of your buyable equipment, speed/posing to increase your galli, etc.

If someone is gaining an advantage due to a third party program, they are cheating. But, the advantage gained by simply using windower to multibox manually is far far lower than the advantage gained by the average endgame player running the average spread of addons.

This started because Seun used the excuse of “its bad because youre breaking the ToS”. If breaking the ToS for one thing is bad, then breaking the ToS for anything that violates the ToS is bad.

“But SE cant detect windower” isnt a validation why that act of breaking the ToS is acceptable, seeing as how they seemingly cant autodetect botting on their own. That or they choose not to because the entire player population would drop to Leviathan levels, and that would kill the game.

You can make a law, but if you can't detect any crime then you can't enforce it.

For anything they can't detect, they rely on player reports. If enough people report something they will investigate, but they're not doing sweeps nearly as often as they used to.

I agree with most of your post and appreciate the support but I'd say this isn't even necessarily an advantage TBH. As someone who has multi-boxed with multiple boxes in the past, using Windower is a disadvantage when compared to using multiple PCs to run the game 100% vanilla which is completely in line with the ToS. I'd say using Windower to multibox is, if anything, a disadvantage compared to playing vanilla.

The crux of the matter is I don't want to run a second PC because it's a pain in the *** to fit it in my setup, it's a waste of electricity, and it is (in my opinion) alleviating absolutely 0 advantage gained over using Windower.

Didn't mean to derail this conversation and turn it into another one of those dreaded Maletaru soapbox threads. I blame Nynja for slandering me.

It's definitely a sprectrum from vanilla to full automation and base Windower is either 1mm on the cheating side or (IMO) 1 mm off the spectrum on the non-cheating side.

I don't think this is as clear cut as you think, and while I can appreciate you may be invested in the argument, I urge you to consider it objectively.

For some people, you absolutely may be better off with 2 input devices and 2 machines. For others, perhaps those with motion impairment, the time and energy hitting alt-tab may be less than swapping devices would be. Muscle memory will play into this considerably, and the biggest tradeoff seems to be the ability to execute simultaneous or near-simultaneous actions is lost when multiboxing on one PC.

But, plain and simple, someone following TOS does not have that option. Being able to choose a different method of control that is even debatably better is an advantage.

...I would consider anyone paying for a second machine's upkeep and electricity solely to obey TOS to be bordering on fanatical. I just don't think it's fair to state that it offers zero advantage.

Maletaru should buy a copy of VMWare Workstation and run two copies of Windows (not pirated copies, thats illegal) so he can properly play XI vanilla without breaking the ToS.

There you go, no more “but electricity and resources” excuse

Fair point theoretically and I'm sure if someone were in those circumstances (motion impaired) and using it for those reasons I could see it as an advantage. I would also point out that the ToS don't say jack-diddly about any advantages.


You may not use software designed to modify the Game and gameplay.

Does Windower modify the Game and gameplay? I don't think so. I'd be interested to hear how FFXI is modified by playing it in two instances. How is the gameplay modified?

Using a second computer could offer an advantage, as would using a larger monitor...but it's not software designed to modify the Game and gameplay so...not relevant to a discussion of the ToS.

it runs noticably worse and you have to hit escape key before alttabbing which makes it even slower

i doubt it was a serious suggestion, but it is gross

pretty hard to argue it doesn't modify the game when it's directly rewriting memory addresses(hooking calls to allow multiple concurrent instances) and inserting it's own code into the game's process space, and by your own post it doesn't need to result in an advantage

Is that not Software...? I think you're missing the point.

If Windower is cheating because it allows you to run two instances on a single PC, then VMWare is also cheating because it allows you to run two instances on a single PC.

Admittedly I don't know that much about how Windower works behind the scenes but I had assumed it wasn't changing FFXI since the check for whether you have another instance running happens in POL, before FFXI is even running.


Also worth noting that the ToS lists modifying the Game and gameplay. not or.

Hehehehehehehehehehehehe

Im guessing youve ran xi on a vm?

One example would be hooking functions that create and access mutexes to rename the handles. Without that, each process would compete for the same mutex and you'd have constant deadlocks and freezes.

I use VMs to run seperate VPNs so accounts aren't associated by IP. It's perfectly fine at the 800x600 I run at without any graphic mods and minimal addons, but since consumer graphics cards don't have SR-IOV there's a ton of overhead tied to translating GPU calls. So, if you want to run fullscreen at a decent resolution, you'll see slowdown.

Suppose it matters less in this case since no texture mods and no dgvoodoo in a fully vanilla install, but dgvoodoo doesn't work properly either without considerable tweaking.

...If you throw in an enterprise GPU or run a 3-GPU pc (to direct pass through one to each VM while keeping one for main PC), you're probably good.

I remember when Windower was the only way to play in a windowed mode so you could tab over and check up on Alla or Somepage to get sick viruses recipes or quest/mission info

Bots and bans may not be black and white but these are:

Used to be the definition of were you cheating or not was can you alt-tab.

Times change.

Try using the actual quote instead of your paraphrase with no context in quotation marks.


ML still not worth.

Stats stats stats! Think about how much gil has been spent on +1s for a couple more stats and then pretend again MLs are not worth.

:)

Quoting snippers on Safari doesnt work. Zooming on FFXIAH pages also fails like 80% of the time. Quoting Thorny's post above was a pain.

But since I'm home now

Here is the quote. This is you stating that as long as what you're doing isnt breaking ToS, then its perfectly acceptable. Such a statement infers the opposite to be true as well: if something is breaking the ToS, it has to be unacceptable.

Dudes who spent 100 mil (probably the equivalent of two characters with capped gil in 2024) on a cursed Haub -1 back in the day for STR+1 DEX+1 Acc+1 Atk+1 Eva-1 talking bad about ML's lol

TBF, back then we had like 70 STR, not 130+320...

1-
70 STR + 1 = 1.42% increase
450 + 25 = 5.56% increase
Why 25? ML25 is attainable in a day with minimal dedication. Its 1.5 mil EP, a group doing 200k/hr can do it in less than 8, and most people here would consider 200k/hr shitty. If thats too high, ML20 is 816k, which is about 4 hours.
450 + 20 = 4.44% increase
Point still stands

2-Your ilvl numbers are vastly inflated. My ML39 war has 148 STR, which is 109 without ML bonuses. Not sure what job a taru could be on that gives them 130 base at ML0, even after the balancing adjustments between the races.
I also think your STR from gear seems very high, unless thats including external buffs.

Your 75 stat is also off. Depending on race, 75 STR was between 58 to 69. At the time of the great ban, max you could increase from merits was by 5. I cant remember what a good WS set back then looked like. Quick search seemed to show anything between STR+35 to +55. Lets just average that out to 120 STR (Hume with 64 Base, 5 STR merits*, +5 from sole sushi, 46 in gear).
120 STR to 121 STR = 0.833333% increase

This is the same increase as getting a whooping 4 ML's will grant in 2024 if you have a combined 450 STR between base, equipment and buffs. 4 ML is a joke to obtain.

*How long did it take to get 36 merits back in the day for these 5 STR merits btw? Bueller? Bueller?

Not that it's perfectly acceptable, just that it doesn't measure as a violation so they won't take any action.


The idea with the 'no third party software' was more of a blanket to avoid having to police a bunch of player created tools for compliance. Good luck getting a straight line from this community about where cheating starts and ends.

Cheating starts at anything past vanilla. Where the moral high ground starts for acceptable cheating is the line that you're thinking of

I made up numbers so ya got me there.

Either way though, nobody was saying "Gotta get Armada Hauberk otherwise I'll never clear Kirin" or "I'm not inviting you unless you upgrade your Adaman Hauberk to an Armada" so...it's not exactly the same thing.

I hate to break it to you, but PuG's werent a thing back then. LS's werent too stringent about minimum requirements because the name of the game was bodies:
Better chance to claim Kings when you have more bodies in the field.
Better chance to get sky pops when you can split people up around the 7 NM's (Not really counting Curtana here)
All of the endgame events were alliance-or-more (Dyna 64, Ein 36).

None of these events needed max possible attendance to be successful. Its easier to be more lax under these conditions.

The same cant be said for 6 person content.

Right, but it's this way because people try to apply their own variables to an equation that's supposed to be universal to everyone. The only high ground is that balance, but the intent of the majority is advantage.

Clearly not, but it's hard to debate that the TNL ratio past ML45 (past 40, arguably?) is absolutely nonsensical.
Surely they could've aimed for a better ratio than the current, without making it too easy/fast.

Also some quality of life. Why do current content like sortie give such shitty EP? They could've made it like bosses gave a bonus. Small compensations or small EP bonus (sort of like Peach Power) wouldn't have made people reach ML50 in 2 days but it would've "felt" much better. Like a carrot on a stick, sort of.

And let's not talk about the fact there is no cap to the amount of EP you can lose when you die, which at ML50 is insane.
This is so *** hardcore we didn't have it not even in Vanilla FFXI (well, after 2005 or whatever it was, where they put a cap on the maximum amount of Exp you can lose for each death).

In a sense it was good for them to give purpose to death again, other than weakness. Making it feel "bad" as it did originally.
But they clearly overdid it and the fact after, what, 2 years? They show not even the slightest sign to make small (and I repeat SMALL) adjustments to that, is quite frankly disheartening.

Not tryin to deny the overall meaning of your message (I too concur ML25 is quite attainable) but considering 200k/hr "average" is quite unrealistic.
I'm sure it can be done, hell before they added Locus I broke 300k/hr in an AoE PT once.
But to consider that "average" is quite... an hyperbole.

First you need to have a proper party composition (and good luck when you want to ML jobs which don't fit the meta), but that goes without saying.
Then you have to find a camp with good mobs that's not overcamped, and good luck on that on servers like Odin, Ragnarok and Asura.
And trust me this can be a pretty big problem because the camps with the good mobs AND enough respawns are a pain to find these days.
Even supposing you do the EP/hr you get goes down the further you go up in ML. Yes there's LevelSync but you know what I mean.


All of this to say that yes, I totally concur with your statement of ML25 being easy to obtain, but 8hrs? (with 200k/hr)
Nope. Possible but I would call that pretty hardcore, not "average".
And honestly playin 8hr non stop without any means of automation without going crazy doing something as tedious as XP grind is very, very, very hardcore regardless of how much EP/hr you get.

This sticks out even more in 2024, standards are waaay different from what the world of MMOs had like 15 or 20 years ago.