Robonosto, I'm not THAT stupid...

Kimiko wants to talk, but was AFK when we were on together tonight. Might try later, but I wanted to update the list with some comments from an Robonosto, a user of Kaeko's blog and his post, regarding me and my stands on cheating.

Just really sounded like he came across as a little BluGartr bitch.

Don't believe me? Read what he has to say...

First comment:

"Second, the thing is that players like Starcade seem to think that "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" is a categorically true statement, so they take the contrapositive to heart, yet both are generally false for the most part. But they are more concerned about being right than the fact that being asocial/antisocial is part of why they can't "succeed." It's kind of like the C-student douchebag who points out in a lecture that the cell counts in a 2x2 contingency table are 1 more than what the total is supposed to be. D-bag is technically right but about shit that doesn't even matter. The most pathetic part is that still they subscribe to the "cheaters'" standard of success rather than develop their own intenral standards of success."

Let me debunk all that.

First off, the statement of Los Guerreros (and, a variant on old Jesse Ventura) is absolutely true with respect to Final Fantasy XI. If Square-Enix continues to turn it's back and allow the game to be made into an abject fraud, in the very legal sense of the term, I'm going to call them on their shit and basically tell people to run as quickly from both of their MMOs as quickly as they can!

If you take a look at the predominant communities in this game, either all of them cheat or the vast supermajority of them do.

You cannot do HNM's at all without cheating. You'll be run off without bots.

Windower = Cheating and should = Ban, if it didn't mean the end of FFXI outright. Where's the hammers from the December 24, 2009 statement, Square-Enix?

I just read a BG thread in which someone has apparently outed a list of almost three thousand characters (truly or otherwise, still not quite completely clear) who bought a (purportedly) NON-WORKING packet bot for upwards of a $45,000 profit for it's creator, just for the right to even be able to play the elite-level content.

There are dozens of other examples from the last 18 months all over this blog.

No, Robonosto, it is true in FFXI, because of the very social nature of the MMO that Kaeko speaks of: "If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying.", and the social pressure to do otherwise is quite intense!

Because, to go to your last statement in your first comment: I would love to believe that my standards of success meant a god damn in this game, but the people at Square-Enix (much to my utter chagrin, and perhaps in perpetration of the legal fraud which is FFXI), they don't. You need that elite gear that most of you cheat your fucking asses off to get to play much of this game, and numerous illegal third-party applications (many paid for - see above and the 12/24/09 statements by Square-Enix) on top of that.

THAT, Robonosto, is why what Kaeko said about me is true. That also is why I take the revelation that he was the one helping me quite badly. And that, combined with the utter death of Whitegate in the time of this Trial of the Magians nonsense, is why I'm relocating to Leviathan and my old Dynamis shell after the May 1 billings.

(And the claws are going to be out, and the shit is going to hit the fan. I expect to be banned by the second release of Abyssea, if not before.)

Because, again, this is the social nature of the game -- for exactly the reasons you give. I'll give you another school analogy: It's like the social outcast who's the A student and working hard in his classes seeing his high school (like one in Florida I read about this week in Yahoo) building an $80,000,000, 18,000-seat football stadium.

Why am I going to even study, when it's clear the only reason the school exists is to allow the football team to rampage the cheerleaders and run over the opposition in their new crystal palace?

The social fabric has already declared educational success USELESS. The very nature of the fabric, plus the pressure of the others, makes educational achievement a zero while the football team's success becomes the sole focal point of the school.

As it is with FFXI, with comments I've posted from all over the Net. If playing fair had one iota of value left, especially in the American FFXI playerbase, we'd probably have at least 8 fewer servers than we do now! (In fact, given the stated context from Vana'Fest, one almost has to admit that the first lopping off of 8 was because of how much illegal conduct was upholding the population on 32 servers.)

You don't understand something: If I used your styles of tactics to "succeed", a number of you would be having me arrested for the criminal conduct I would commit against your accounts.

I cannot operate in your world. Therefore, I wish to destroy it, and, if Vana'diel goes down with it, that's evidence that Square-Enix never wanted to enforce its stated rules in the first damn place.

As for "being social, rather than being 'right'", if I were to operate in the socially accepted modes, I'd be "compromising others' standards of play".

Kaeko responded:

"As far as Starcade, your analogy probably works, but for me it's just about accepting (or maybe tolerating?) someone with different views. I made a strong effort to be social and interact with him and found him to obviously be very socially awkward (even online), but not a bad person at heart. For that reason, I'm not going to bad mouth him or overtly try to cause trouble for him regardless of what he does now. It's probably out of pity more than some personal self-righteousness but whatever."

The problem I have is that it never should've been that way in the first place. It's like this Jim Cornette interview I'm reading. He has now been referred to the Federal and Tennessee governments as a terrorist for stating to a (former) old wrestling friend (Terry Taylor) that he would like to see Vince Russo dead.

(As would a lot of us who would've rather wanted to see Bischoff/Turner win the Monday Night Wars over Vince McMahon. There is a glorious "shoot" from early NWA/TNA in which Roddy Piper just rips him several new assholes.)

The thing is that he spent three years in TNA working with Russo, compromising his principles to the point that he could not look himself in the mirror anymore, and that, frankly, is how I felt after I learned who I was lying down with, with all other parties in the equation knowing what was going on.

Pity me if you must, go ahead. But the facts remain that if I hadn't worked with you for so long, I would actually openly accuse you of trying to sabotage my character (both in-game and personally). FWIW, I don't know what I can say to that now.

Robonosto (I assume) continues: "Actually, I did not mean to minimize the cheating that exists. I'm just more irritated with do-nothing, passive, excuse-making attitudes of which Starcade's is representative. (I would consider the STFU reporting he blabs about to be merely "fake hustle.") Maybe I'm totally biased here, but Japanese players have way more of a "pickup" culture (doing pickup Salvage for one) than non-Japanese do. But I'm someone who's done most things by pickup, so it could be argued I'm just bitter.

Also, his being upset about being "deceived," making "concessions," the "rank necessity of cheating," putting moral purity on a pedestal, as it were... you would think this "people out to get you" B.S. would eventually become tiresome for the one promulgating it, but I guess not.

Why am I even typing this? "LOL""

Do-Nothing, Passive, Excuse-Making...

I will swear on my parents' graves that you do not want the alternative to what you consider to be "Do-Nothing, Passive, Excuse-Making", as far as that goes.

I've already said that, if they ever held another FFXI FanFest, that I would have to be restraining-ordered from the event. I do mean this quite seriously. There are a number of top people in the player community against whom a criminal incident would be a very real possibility.

I have to hold a lot of that back, because I have other things in my life which are more important to me than this game (Hell, this is basically true of all of my passions at this point -- if I were to attend Fanime next month in San Jose, I'd be going to prison. I still have grudges from that specific con three years standing that would end very badly. That's why I've already told them they better have me banned from the event, similarly to why I am physically banned from AX. Put me in a room with the head of Crunchyroll? Ditto.). That's why I take three nights a week off so that my dear roommate (who is not of this Earth much longer, if aggravations continue) can work on her Net project.

The thing is that I assume (and this is probably, more every day, a VERY BAD assumption) that I can at least try to work within the system and take the cheating in FFXI down.

Fact is, you want the programs, the bots, the RMT, and all that stuff, to gain every conceivable advantage over those (like me) you consider lesser.

I pay my $12.95 a month with the expectation that the game will be administered according to the rules. If that's not going to be the case, Heaven help FFXI.

I'd like to try to work within the system. If that's not going to work, they better ban me, and quickfast.

"Fake Hustle", huh? Do you read half the shit about FFXI, or do you just accept what is being rammed down your throat and ask for "another"?

If playing by the rules has zero value in this game, you don't want me around.