LBR Breaks Down the Bannings, Part II

As the commenters continue to fiddle while Vana'diel burns, we go back to the panel discussion from Limit Break Radio about the Salvage dupe bannings:

We pick it up at the discussion that Square-Enix clearly knew about the Salvage dupings for quite some time, and why come down so harsh now?

I go back to what DJ Plaeskool said in the comments to Chinchilla's article on PFA: This was retaliation for trying to wrest control of the game illegally from the owners. I've read comment after comment that basically says: "We rule the game, we can hax to haz whatever the Hell we want..."

My genuine hope is that this is the start of a lot of bannings (10,000 would be a good start, given what I've been reading from the cheater community.) to clean up the game.

But Square-Enix knew -- for a long time. All I can suppose is that they didn't realize (or, worse, chose not to realize) how serious this truly was. If that's the case, why do you think WoW is kicking FFXI's ass to the point that Square-Enix now has its lowest Japanese stock price in five years?

The person then goes to the point of calling the Salvage drops unfair.

First (as I've said numerous times): This gives you the right to essentially hack the game? So, the moment you don't like that you got your 1337 kewl Lord-over-everyone-else gear, you can basically hack the game's integrity

Second: Perhaps you need to read this interview (http://www.jpbutton.com/?p=1786): It's an interview that the people who made Salvage had around the end of 2006. Yes, things have changed, but there are legal things within the game that can turn the tide. (Treasure Hunter?)

If you don't like the drop rates (and this even goes to those who fail to get what they want after 100-200 runs -- fucking wah to you), then GO DO SOMETHING ELSE. Leave Salvage.

An interesting side-light came up: There is apparently discussion in BluGartr which basically says you can still dupe in Sandworm, even though it's BCNM was one of the areas which was under the November emergency maintenance. Perhaps laying the trap for another set of bans?

We can now place the taping of this episode at after the reporting of Pandemonium Warden's "defeat". Then, someone just goes off on Square-Enix and their handling of PW: One of the premiere linkshells in the entire game (of all worlds) basically walked out of FFXI and right into WoW because of how badly PW was (supposedly) mucked -- that it was so unkillable that it wasn't worth playing FFXI anymore.

I don't understand one simple thing: Why doesn't the player community just walk away from all the things they don't like and render them so unworkable that Square-Enix must either fix them or remove them from FFXI??

And this gets us to logging hate and Pandemonium Warden. I've already addressed this in numerous comments and in several posts. It's illegal, but one of the roundtable basically put it like this: Astral Flow is a one-hit kill, and logging off is the only way possible to circumvent it.

What, you can't run like Hell at that point? Get out of its radius or bite the big one??

You see, if this is true, shut down ZNM's. All of them. Now.

Reason?? You have now raised the exact place that I said that Square-Enix dare not go. You have, then, said that certain exploits are allowed (in fact, for certain ends, required) and certain are not. You have created a mob which cannot be killed within the Terms of Service at all. I've said on the wiki that I felt that people should just stop playing PW because it was not ever meant to be killed with present knowledge. This takes that to another level -- it can't be killed at all, except under danger of getting suspended or banned.

That's just asking to have your game completely discredited. Aneiro was right on the mark when he talked about the tie-ins between the PW-logout exploit and the dupers.

As far as I am concerned, you cannot, in any way, ban the Salvage dupers and then allow the PW exploit. If you are actually going to validate this "win", then you have to reverse all bannings and suspensions from January 22, 2009.

But then we get to the real question: What is wrong with the communication between the players and Square-Enix? One has to wonder how much Square-Enix even really respects the players... Could they harbor the exact same distrust and resentment I do?? It's possible -- but then why continue FFXI? That gets to the "vote of no-confidence by Square-Enix" discussion from back when I started this.

And then we get back to "What might get their attention and force Square-Enix' hand?" I think the answer is simple, and I intend to start doing it: Public embarrassment of the company, not unlike the announcement of the 18-hour Pandemonium Warden failure. In fact, as I said in Part I, I listened to the first part of this discussion, and basically figured out that what probably got Square-Enix on the ball for these bannings is because of the fact that someone went to a prominent gaming site with lots of advertising and respected in the community, and blew the whistle publicly outside of FFXI. This would be a move which might damage Square-Enix' ability to gain new players, especially when they are getting their asses kicked by WoW because you can't level a job in FFXI to 75 in one week.

What if the outside world knew that half the players in the game were using illegal third-party software with doubly-illegal third-party plug-ins to circumvent the intended means of gaining information (or gaining more than they would otherwise ever be able to)?

What if the outside world knew what Aneiro spoke of shortly thereafter, that Square-Enix decides to be silent about the criteria for bans vs. suspensions vs. warnings vis-a-vis January 22nd because of the players holding them to those criteria in the future... (*Ahem...* You've been seeing this anyway in places like this. Consider the number of people in BluGartr who are completely hosed with the PW "defeat" as well... Again, ban Apathy or reverse the January 22nd bannings and suspensions... They're already in an inconsistency on that end)? The problem with coming out and speaking on this being a detriment to the game because of the players holding them to those words is already happening -- that horse is out of the barn.

(You could even go to the "some people are allowed to use exploits while others are not." motif too, at that point.)

Why would you, if you were considering entering an MMORPG, play FFXI right now if you had no assurances that the game was legitimately being policed, nor that the players gave a damn about the rules until they all QQ after being banned?

(The only reason I'm still playing FFXI is because it's Final Fantasy and I don't want to quit because of the cheating bastards, because they win another player who gives a damn about legitimacy leaving the game.)

I don't think Square-Enix has the fundamental understanding of how close they come to running a sham game here -- just taking our $12.95 a month and having us think the rules are enforced because they throw out the occasional Rafael Palmeiro (one player who got banned on January 22nd had four completed relics) with all the minor-leaguers (the RMT's you hear lumped in every month).

Someone, in the discussion of that the number of downloads of FFXI (through services like Direct2Drive) is going down in the rankings said that part of it might be that the players who might enter have no one to look up to when Square-Enix bans several hundred of the top level players.

Well, why should they be looked up to? They fucking cheated, in case you didn't check. You might even get to the discussion that part of the reason that people aren't coming in to the game in sufficient numbers is that people are finding that it is necessary to cheat to succeed -- and, as I said, the moment that happens, there's no more FFXI, for this very reason. New players won't enter a sham game. And if a linkshell basically cannot function without it's cheating leadership, na na na-na hey-hey-hey goodbye.

Actually, Aneiro brings up a point, in trying to slam Square-Enix, that should be made public and policy: Square-Enix has very high expectations of its player-base, and, when those expectations are not met, they can, with or without exposition of cause, take away your privilege of having an account on the game. I think that is a very reasonable expectation and should, in fact, be demanded of more people in more games. If the games cannot be upheld (economically or otherwise) with this level of expectations, then the games cannot continue.

Then we get to the point of "how many of the temporary bans were, in fact, permanents?". Let's remember, a 72-hour ban is not necessarily a 72-hour ban. That's the last step before banning a person for good. I still think, bluntly, anyone who knew of the duping and used it (at minimum) should be banned.

Are there going to be more bannings? I'd say once a month for the foreseeable. Give this about two more weeks, and I expect another bunch to go down (perhaps not as many and not as prominent) for misconduct. They have to. There's no way they could have gone through even all the Salvage-dupes in 60 days. And what really gets to the problem is that they pretty much have to say how many more get banned for misconduct. That might not be a good thing in your eyes, Aneiro, and you might think they have a deterrent here.

What deterrent? There's no fucking deterrent. There's no deterrent to any action without some degree of force behind it. There's no deterrent to robbing me on the street if I can't kick your ass or call the police and have them jail you. There's no deterrent to any of this without the banhammers in FFXI.

Well, with that, there's a storm brewing, and not one in the game. I gotta get off the computer.