Should've seen it coming... And the guy (Millionsknives) has a point...
(http://rdmrules.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/petition-to-remove-starcade-from-the-ttto-due-to-differing-agendas/)
I do have a different agenda than the stated purpose of the TTO, and it wasn't my agenda when I joined it.
Over the course of the last three months, I have grown a very violent distaste for the player community -- its attitudes, its agenda, its modus operandi. I believe that the standard player of this game, rank and file, is disgusting.
As a result (and the fact that I don't believe I'm alone in those opinions), I believe that the player base has driven Square-Enix into the understanding that the game has no material future, and should be phased out as soon as is practical to do so. That's why I say that the game has officially died. The corpse is being left on a respirator because it still pays the bills nicely.
Oh, by the way, if you don't believe me, where's the news on the March update? We're at least two weeks late on that maneuver right now.
But, back to the point at hand...
He is correct that, on the top of the TTO, he says that the TTO:
"Bringing together, the FFXI Blogging Community"
He's also correct in saying that I want no part of the player community as it stands. (He references the post just previous.)
If the site administrator wants to throw me off the TTO, he or she is free to do so at any time he or she feasibly chooses. Doing so, keep in mind that most of my recent posts (whether the readers are for well or ill) are the most read in the TTO, or close to the top until the "recent posts" rankings scroll off once about 48 hours pass.
I do not believe that there can be a unified player-base, nor a unified blogging community, in FFXI. I believe that what you see in FFXI today is a bunch of elitist, me-first, cliquish children who never seem to have gotten out of high school, and finally found a place where they could exert the same kind of influence on others which was probably influenced on them when they were in high school.
I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "You have no place to talk if you haven't killed the HNM kings" or "You're so gimped. Shut the fuck up...", I could not only pay for FFXI for the rest of the year, but I could probably attend FanFest too.
No, I do not believe in a unified player base fan community. I do not believe in the impossible.
I believe that we, as players, have differing agendas. So much so that I believe that even Square-Enix has thrown in the towel, understanding that their vision for Vana'diel is now impossible as well.
If the TTO wants me out, that's their call. The only real way to prevent me from attempting to drive a wedge in the FFXI community is to expel me from the game itself.
Edit: Sounds like one change has already hit the table, probably because of me... As of today, registered members of the TTO can choose to hide any blogs they do not want to appear on the blog list when they are on TTO.
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6 comments:
........what is a blog......if you can't answer that then I am not gonna feed the forum trolls for you..... This guy is posting his opinion.....Yes on my blog I try to help other players with the techicle ease of the game, what I did on the game this week/night, and guess what ...post my opinion!
If you don't like what this guy is saying then either ignore him or STFU! opinionsd are like assholes ...everyone has one ...let this guy have his ;)
~BAM
That's the point -- they don't want my opinion, and they don't want me. Period.
I've read your last few blog posts and I've noticed a few recurring themes that I've had some thoughts about.
First, you've stated numerous times you believe FFXI to be officially dead since Square-Enix has announced that they intend to explore other online revenue streams. I disagree, my interpretation of what SE has said is that FFXI is a mature game now, and it is now in the natural decline that every game experiences, but is only measurable in subscription based services such as this. SE has stated numerous times that they're shocked that anyone still even plays the game and that they would continue to produce content so long as there are still players on the servers. This will take a backseat to Rapture in years to come but the game won't have the plug pulled any time soon.
Second, you tend to compare FFXI's growth(or lack thereof) with other MMOs, stating that basically since WoW is growing and FFXI is not, that FFXI is dead. I wanted to look at why WoW is so much more popular. Having played both, the answer(to me, at least) is obvious.
A) WoW is less of a grind, you get experience from quests as well as "casual gamer" exp bonuses, it can shorten the levels and definitely removes the monotony.
B) And this is something of an extension from A, WoW's UI. World of Warcraft offers a much more gamer-friendly User interface that is further customizable using Blizzard Sanctioned Addons.
For example, when you use a buff on someone in WoW, or they use a buff on themselves, you can see how long they have it on them. Onscreen icons show you exactly how much cooldown you have on an item or spell. In the case of jobs like Warrior you can see their rage(in my mind, their equivalent of TP) simply by clicking on them.
This brings me to my thoughts on cheating. I agree there are some cheaters in the game who need to be dealt with(the claimbotters, speedhackers, stunbotters, etc), a large number of them have been(an entire LS on Phoenix server was gutted by the Salvage bannings), but I believe you take an extremist view of what cheating is, defining it as anything outside the Terms of Service and what Square-Enix gives it's players. This, for obvious reasons given your definition, includes the windower.
But what does windower really give us? Let's look at it:
Windowed Mode: Used to be important but SE did eventually give us one anyways, something we should have had from day 1, something WoW has.
Inventory Autosort: SE gave that to us as well, not too long after the windower plugin performing this function was released. If I was more cynical than I am I'd say that SE had to wait for the Windower programmers to show them how to do this before they implemented it.
Onscreen Timers: WoW has this, and I think it's ludicrous that FFXI doesn't.
Timestamps: This is a convenience thing that SE should offer, it creates no game imbalance to know exactly how long a tell came while you were AFK.
Those functions are 99% of the reason that people use Windower at all anymore, and in my opinion each of those functions are things Square-Enix should have given us to start with. You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but in mine, this is not cheating.
Other than use of third party tools such as this, I don't think there are too many ways that people transgress outside the Terms of Service, other than general e-thuggery that you'll find anywheres. Yes, there are the salvage bannings, but the people who knew about this kept extremely tight lipped about it. I'm fairly well plugged into FFXI's endgame community and I never heard a word about this until after the fact.
Further, the windower is the "gateway" to other exploits, it pains me to admit this but it's true. As such, I'd go so far as to say that 80% of the "cheaters" in this game are using windower, perhaps among other things, this immediately rules out approximately half of the playerbase as cheaters, since they're on PS2 or XBox360 and thus can't use these third party tools.
Now let's assume that 100% of the playerbase that can cheat, does cheat, using only windower. That accounts for about 250,000 people. Epidemic, if you count them as cheaters. But let's look at how many of those people -really- cheat.
At this time I'll make an example of the only bot I know of, as I understand it this is the most popular bot on the market, accounting for approximately 90% of "casual" cheating. Granted there are some others who use other more advanced protocols to gain an advantage but I believe them to be a very small minority.
I won't name the bot as I disagree with it's use and wouldn't want to point your readers towards it, but suffice it to say that it's multipurpose, containing a fish bot, claim bot, reaction bot, as well as a bot that does batch actions such as synthing something over and over again for you. They also kindly report their subscription statistics on their web page. Just to have some numbers to work off of, even today FFXI reports approximately 500,000 active subscriptions, broken down across the 32(?) servers this equates to a little better than 15000 active accounts per server.
The proprietor of this site has it set up such that 1 account = 1 subscription. Their usage statistics vary from 111 subscriptions on the least subscribed server, to 323 on the most subscribed, with an average of 171. This is 1%, ONE PERCENT, of the FFXI Playerbase, 2% of my high-balled estimate of the playerbase whose capacity it is to cheat. Assuming my statement that this is the most popular botting service to be true, which I will stand behind, let's say that this accounts for 35% of the playerbase who cheats over and above the use of windower(and I think that's fair, perhaps even low), that extrapolates to 3% of the playerbase actually cheating using third party tools.
That's really all I had to say, I don't really know what the point of making this post was, I just felt the need to say something. I also don't believe that it'll change your views in the slightest. I guess all I wanted to point out is that the situation may not be as bleak as you state it to be.
Whoops -- actually forgot an actual discussion in the face of these flames... So let's get to it...
First, you've stated numerous times you believe FFXI to be officially dead since Square-Enix has announced that they intend to explore other online revenue streams. I disagree, my interpretation of what SE has said is that FFXI is a mature game now, and it is now in the natural decline that every game experiences, but is only measurable in subscription based services such as this. SE has stated numerous times that they're shocked that anyone still even plays the game and that they would continue to produce content so long as there are still players on the servers. This will take a backseat to Rapture in years to come but the game won't have the plug pulled any time soon.
A mature game wouldn't have the company seeking its successor, at least in my opinion. Such a game would not have lost 25% of its revenue year-to-year March to December (while the rest of the online division was up 175% between the same two time periods).
The decision by Square-Enix basically is the transition between declaring FFXI a mature game and declaring it a game that's "over the hill", as it were. In contrast, I think one would consider WoW a "mature game", rather than one over the hill.
Believe me, if Square-Enix is as non-concerned about the quality of the game and the fairness of the gameplay as it sometimes appears to be, they won't have to worry about anyone playing the game anytime soon -- the garbage heap of the player base will take care of that.
Second, you tend to compare FFXI's growth(or lack thereof) with other MMOs, stating that basically since WoW is growing and FFXI is not, that FFXI is dead. I wanted to look at why WoW is so much more popular. Having played both, the answer(to me, at least) is obvious.
... along with the other factors I've already talked about. Let's be fair -- but that is a large part of it, that it has clearly lost to WoW, and will never even get within an order of magnitude of the leader in MMORPG's.
A) WoW is less of a grind, you get experience from quests as well as "casual gamer" exp bonuses, it can shorten the levels and definitely removes the monotony.
Which Square-Enix has tried to address (one can say several years too late, with the likes of Fields of Valor -- fair enough...).
B) And this is something of an extension from A, WoW's UI. World of Warcraft offers a much more gamer-friendly User interface that is further customizable using Blizzard Sanctioned Addons.
For example, when you use a buff on someone in WoW, or they use a buff on themselves, you can see how long they have it on them. Onscreen icons show you exactly how much cooldown you have on an item or spell. In the case of jobs like Warrior you can see their rage(in my mind, their equivalent of TP) simply by clicking on them.
But I bolded the two key words: Those add-ons are Blizzard Sanctioned. That makes them legal. If Windower and all its plugins are legal, I want all their capabilities in the legal FFXI Windowed Mode (and they should've been in the legal Windowed Mode upon its release). Since they are not, those capabilities not in there are illegal game advantages and should be punished as such.
It does make me believe that Square-Enix is running a sham game here, to let this go for so long...
This brings me to my thoughts on cheating. I agree there are some cheaters in the game who need to be dealt with(the claimbotters, speedhackers, stunbotters, etc), a large number of them have been(an entire LS on Phoenix server was gutted by the Salvage bannings), but I believe you take an extremist view of what cheating is, defining it as anything outside the Terms of Service and what Square-Enix gives it's players. This, for obvious reasons given your definition, includes the windower.
A few have been punished. GIve me another order of magnitude more of bannings and we can declaring that a fairly large number -- especially with the number of players in end-game who play legit (many say few, some (other than me) have said essentially none, once you get to the hardcore endgamers)...
But, yes, that definitely includes the Windower. It's a third-party piece of software which, with it's plug-ins, gives players a significant in-game advantage (hence, an illegal and unfair one).
Windowed Mode: Used to be important but SE did eventually give us one anyways, something we should have had from day 1, something WoW has.
Perhaps. Doesn't give the players the right to break the rules in that regard. I'd assert the only reason that Windowed Mode became standard was because of places like FFXIclopedia replacing the Brady Games guide and its successors.
Inventory Autosort: SE gave that to us as well, not too long after the windower plugin performing this function was released. If I was more cynical than I am I'd say that SE had to wait for the Windower programmers to show them how to do this before they implemented it.
However, it's only legal with the first-party software. It is *NOT* with the third-party software. This would appear to basically say that they are too stupid to program their own game, so the players get to do what they want?
Onscreen Timers: WoW has this, and I think it's ludicrous that FFXI doesn't.
But, again, those addons for WoW are sanctioned. These onscreen timers, which grant a significant game advantage, are not. Hence, illegal and bannable.
(And if they were sanctioned, they'd only be legal under the first-party software.)
Timestamps: This is a convenience thing that SE should offer, it creates no game imbalance to know exactly how long a tell came while you were AFK.
Maybe not, but it's still not sanctioned.
Those functions are 99% of the reason that people use Windower at all anymore, and in my opinion each of those functions are things Square-Enix should have given us to start with. You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but in mine, this is not cheating.
Any third-party software is, by definition, cheating. Any advantage gained thereto is an unfair advantage and bannable under the rules. What is there to be said otherwise?
Other than use of third party tools such as this, I don't think there are too many ways that people transgress outside the Terms of Service, other than general e-thuggery that you'll find anywheres. Yes, there are the salvage bannings, but the people who knew about this kept extremely tight lipped about it. I'm fairly well plugged into FFXI's endgame community and I never heard a word about this until after the fact.
The more I've become plugged in, the more I've become aware of massive abuse (which see the Zulu on Fenrir garbage -- which the STF has to look into)... The only reason I wasn't aware was that I deliberately took the "lone wolf" role and played alone, only partying when I absolutely had to.
The more I find out, the less I like FFXI or its players.
I can say that the only reason you might get some agreement on your PS2 discussion is that the bulk of PS2 players are Japanese. The more sophisticated players, especially here in the States, use PC's, and I have heard estimates that over half the players in the game worldwide use illegal Windower. (I mentioned one such person giving that estimate...)
I can understand you wanting to reassure me that it's a small minority, but I can't agree with you, all due respect...
Just a couple of notes~ I see that you mention Japanese players being primarily on PS2 in your reply, I also saw you reference the japanese players in your most recent post.
"I feel sorry for the Japanese players who try to play with honor and have to suffer you shit-heads."
If you think the Japanese players are any better than the NA players in this regard you are sorely mistaken.
If you read transcripts of japanese community irc chats concerning this game, you'll see that for them it really is more about the item than it is the experience of the fight. As such they can be more cut throat than we can in many instances, we just don't hear about it.
Here's another little bit of FFXI history: The first Windower was developed for the Japanese client. We got the idea of the windower from them. We never even knew it was possible to make someone's TP appear on our screen, until it appeared in a japanese screenshot.
And just as a sidenote, the onscreen timers in World of Warcraft I referenced in my previous post are not the byproduct of an addon or extension, they're an inherent timer. I didn't include anything in my post when comparing WoW to FFXI that was the result of an addon.
ixthyse:
If you think the Japanese players are any better than the NA players in this regard you are sorely mistaken.
Read "JP Button vs. NA Button" on TTTO for a good illustration of what I'm talking about.
Are there Japanese cheaters? Yes.
But they are _SHAMED_ as well as expelled. And "face" is a lot more important in their culture than it is to ours.
Perhaps if the concept of shame actually meant anything in America, we wouldn't be such a piss-hole.
There are very real cultural differences between the Japanese and Americans, and that's why you see many of the former shun the latter in-game, as well they should.
And just as a sidenote, the onscreen timers in World of Warcraft I referenced in my previous post are not the byproduct of an addon or extension, they're an inherent timer. I didn't include anything in my post when comparing WoW to FFXI that was the result of an addon.
You miss my point completely: However it is in the game, it is Blizzard-sanctioned. Not the case with Square-Enix and FFXI.
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