Dancing Salvage Bans.

The methods used to determine bans may not be sophisticated.

I think the question is: does it really need to be?

I seriously believe this last ban wave was more focused in boting than salvage.

There is also a wrong idea that SE should ban everyone doing things wrong.

My opinion is, its not SE intention to ban everyone cheating/rmting/exploiting. Its not like SE is protecting people going against the rules, but commiting an infraction is a decision in the individual level, not a community decision. Being this choice an individual choice, its just impossible to prevent people cheating, or in theory, it would requires infinite resources to take the amount of cheats to zero.

Obviously SE is aware its powerless to eliminate cheating/rmt in game.

But it can prevent the growth of more cheatings. By making exemplar punishments, specially over players that participate in comunity forums. I believe this was what happened. Since trusts/sparks were implemented, at least in my eyes, it became too evident the growing of boters. It was almost common sense in every single forum you can check: cp -> bots, bayld -> bots, sparks -> bots, accolades -> bots. Lets just think how many people started to bot after it was passed as normal?

SE had to act because we had a strong tendency of more players starting to bot. it wont prevent boting but it will manage to revert this tendency to an acceptable limit.

Salvage exploit, despite how horrible its, i would say its pretty much established. Checking bazaars in odin, there is one char who totally break any reasonable limit in salvage (by neting 3k a day) plus 1 or 2 bazaars that exploit with moderation (1k ish) then all the rest seems legit farming. So, the tendency of more people joining salvage exploit is low, and it should be below some limit SE consider that wont disrupt economy, so i think thats the reason salvage keep unfixed, because its not worth directing gm resources toward that question, unlike boting issue, thats severe, and must be addressed. Too bad some people just became scapegoat to SE measures, and most boters will keep untouched, but at least it should prevent, at least in forums the idea, boting is normal, and maybe revert the tendency.

It's also comical to think that there are folks that clamor for "new content" while botting the most recent additions to the game.

All this talk of banning without a reason has got me a little worried. Trust me I'm not hacking or doing anything more illegal than anybody else.I only play on the weekends doing salvage and Dynamis and the occasional Kagenx2884838 with the taru shuler. After my last relic 2 months worth of work has only netted me 60 million nothing to brag home about. Sometimes I feel now in this game I'm just collecting Gill and logging off. As weird as it sounds it's still fun to me just doing these three events. //Ramble mode off.

Something about babies and bathwater.

I didn't enjoy a handful of aspects, and got accustomed to being able to effectually circumvent them. It was a major convenience that I'm no longer safely afforded. As illegitimate as they were, those conveniences were a part of my enjoyment as a whole. In their absence, my motivation is lessened.

Your psychoanalysis pretty off base. I'm lazy, not addicted. Stick to your day job.

The botters got temp bans for the most part and I know quite a few of them who are not 'players that participate in comunity forums'. I believe most of the permabans this time were people who cheated in salvage. So maybe the logic is first round temp ban, and following rounds after a temp ban for a behavior = permaban (regardless of if you personally have a history of cheating).

If you didn't enjoy those aspects of the game, you could have just not done them. It's not like refusing to do a certain activity reduces the amount of fun you can experience. You basically found a loophole that made the game much easier to you, and when you no longer could glide through the game with your 'conveniences' (interesting term), the fun of the game was diminished.

You're probably just as lazy too, but when you're only source of real enjoyment in a video game is your ability to break rules and benefit from it, I'd say that's a real problem. Always thought it was pretty cowardly as well when players use that cop-out.

I will agree with you that it's not fulfilling in any way to have to grind your way to accomplishments, I get that - but the end results are what you strive for, regardless of how long it takes. Unfortunately there is too much of a culture with acquiring things as fast as possible, otherwise, you're labelled as a lolplayer. I will never understand that.

To make matters even more interesting in the argument is the fact that what was being botted wasn't even required in any way to accomplish anything in the game (the exception being Bayld because of how horrible it is to farm). What difference does it make between manually farming your job points gradually than botting them in 2 days? There isn't even any content that requires those merits. You're just taking a risk to get ahead of everyone else.

You're.. struggling with this reading thing

I mean really you're sensationalizing something that's pretty simple. Keep me out of your intro psychology midterm please.

I liked doing <things>. <stuff> was a subgroup of <things>. I can no longer do <stuff>, ergo my interesting in <things> is diminished to a degree.

Capiche?

No, I need a case subject for my paper, and this thread has given me a few great examples. I don't need your real name, as your online avatar and in-game experience will suffice.

who the *** gets banned from FFXI? srsly.

Be sure to include that I am a dog

Regardless of whether STF's target was botting cause people were botting jobpoints, or exploiting salvage, they managed to nuke 10.5 billion gil in january.
There is still a significant gil flow sourcethat has warranted their attention.
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/rule/specialtask.html
6 billion more gil nuked than the month before and only 32 more accounts banned compared to the previous month, that's really interesting.

I guess we'll have to see what the feb 2015 numbers are to see if they really took out a lot more accounts, or the people that got banned were simply the new outliers targeted for investigation based on STF's data mining of gil/alex flow or job points farmed.

People not smart enough to not get caught cheating.

Pretty sure this was down to people cheating in ARII but moreso people who botted Lair Reives for H-P Bayld.

That is a lot of gil though.

The lair reive bots on my server are still alive and well (and have a lot of my gil T.T)

Lol go gadget go!

But banning people, even though without any strikes on their account, because they're farming CP for 5 hours without even attempting to validate a human presence will drive up the subscriptions, right?

Meanwhile, I'm sure half of those "cheesy" mythics are rotting inactive accounts because those people got bored after rushing to their goal.




So they allowed the people who generated 2000+ alex per character per day to keep their accounts without any rollbacks, because "it was a warning", and now they're banning people who are farming CP alone without validating a human presence. I'm pretty sure the amount of accounts they've banned in the past month vastly exceed the amount of accounts they merely let off with suspensions back in September.

SE new-age thinking!

SE is monitoring all Banhammer discussions on FFXIAH.com.

Crosscheck user name against current player database.

Ban.

Banned player vents on forums.

Win!

You will never be able to substantiate this claim. Venturing to say that SE didn't do what's in its best interest financially, in the absence of the aforementioned figures, requires substantiation.

Furthermore, whether or not you think it "makes sense" or isn't fair is inconsequential.


What is your alternative theory?

The claim being "the amount of accounts they've banned in the past month vastly exceed the amount of accounts they merely let off with suspensions back in September"

9/1/2014 - 9/30/2014 555 Approx. 6.1 billion
8/1/2014 - 8/31/2014 345 Approx. 1.9 billion

900 Accounts banned between Aug and Sep, which is around when those suspensions took place

1/1/2015 - 1/31/2015 664 Approx. 10.5 billion

664 accounts banned in the past month (more than 2/3 of the amount of two months combined), which is when this wave of bannings took place, and there are still plenty going on in feb, not to mention there has been more gil frozen in this one month pool.


Considering none of these have had any GM interaction, it seems safe to say this has been a STF investigation and any bans would fall on this list.

Source please! Nowhere in this data is the number of suspended accounts.


You do know the difference between the definitions of the words "banned" and "suspended" right?

Good to know that I'm too poor to get banned now. 158mil per account average for January.

I think a potential problem with that data is the possibility that suspended accounts may not be considered bans on that list.

And there's more problems with that data. If anything, it shows a pretty regular trend of 350 to 600 accounts every month. To call this a "wave of banning" that 1) isn't yet represented in data and 2) could be MUCH smaller than you believe is pretty disingenuous.

Allow me to simplify this for you. Here are the steps you need to accomplish to verify your claim:

1) Isolate the number of SUSPENSIONS issued specifically for pos'ing throughout salvage and dynamis.

2) Isolate the number of accounts BANNED specifically for automated actions within the last three weeks.

3) Compare the two


tldr; You will never be able to determine how many suspensions were given from "banned account number reports." Nor will you be able to separate "freshly banned players for automated actions" from routine RMT related bannings.

You should ask yourself what you're trying to prove? Are you trying to prove SE is "doing it all wrong?" That their business practices leave your personal standard of right and wrong wanting?

Some people do it for themselves, because it's simply more convenient, comfortable and practical.

I used to use a specific cheat to not lag during HNM. It wasn't even to claim, I've probably claimed 2 HNMs ever, and they were legit, but I had 7FPS on my computer when I used to run HNMs and this was helping me perform "properly".

The same way, people are going to skill bot because it's incredibly annoying and shitty to level some skills. Also, they may not have time if their play time is 100% taken by events.
I don't see how it makes them want to be above anyone, they merely want to make themselves better.

I'm all for bashing bragging retards for the right reasons, but only for the right reasons.

that's 55 hours per job at 6JP an hour, add an extra ~20 hours if they add an additional two JP categories tomorrow. further, if you are getting 30+ a night botting, that is roughly 4JP an hour given an 8 hour night, which is 120,000 CP per hour. XP, sure; that rains from the heavens, though it is largely pointless as fewer and fewer people do the recycled new BCNMs offered month to month.

additionally Merits could be earned on any job, whereas JP need to be earned on the job you want to spend them on. I feel bad for all those pet jobs/lesser jobs that will not feasibly get their JP because a party isn't going to take them, or they're geared for *** (because Sparks gear lacks the accuracy to make them remotely feasible in a CP party situation). maybe they're going to fix CP (hahahaha!) or more likely fewer people are going to put in the effort for what has up until now been minimal gain. there's a reason the saying "broken as intended" has been used throughout the years regarding a variety of topics.

CP are an inherently broken system and I have been of this opinion for a long time. that people have been so ready and willing to risk their account to get them in a timely manner with a minimum of tedium is proof enough of that.

I dont aggre. My opinion is that they started to bot not because of how boring/grindy its, but because boting became commonplace.

If everyone in your ls/forum start to talk boting as commonplace, its more likely you will do the same.

As well, for example, gearswap. None discuss, for example, that gearswap works sending packets, what is more likely to be noticed than some craft script, and thats became commonplace to the point dome ls even advise their members to have it.

Similar, salvage isnt that commonplace as most already know there was a ban wave in the past, so its more likely to happen again, so its not like someone will start exploiting just because farming cash is boring/grindy by definition.

I dunno about you, but with them announcing 2 new categories and 7 new gifts per job, I am not enthralled with the idea of sitting in a CP party trying not to gouge my eyes out in boredom. maybe I am just suffering what they used to call "relic sickness" but sitting there grinding out chain 300 on crabs colibri bats is just not appealing to me anymore.