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Square-Enix Bans Over 800 FFXI Accounts
wpoitras writes "It appears that Square-Enix is striking back at Gil Sellers in Final Fantasy Online. After what appeared to be an unscheduled server outtage, many players were kicked from the game. It doesn't actually mention gil sellers, but its pretty well accepted that monopolizing NM spawns is mostly done by gil sellers."
People are killing video game monsters to harvest money from them for the purpose of selling it on ebay.
De-nerded even further...
People are do bad things, and someone punishes them.
So, they create a game with static spawn spots. These monsters give valuable rewards for fighting them. Players learn about the spawn spots. They capitalize on it. It soon turns into a game of who can strike the monster first.
I don't see what the problem is. They created the rules, and this is a logical progression. Why don't they remove the static spawning from the game, or make it random, or make these monsters tougher, or stop handing out rewards for camping?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I've played a lot of MMOs (eight if memory serves, although I only play one of them regularly anymore), and I've found no reason to change my opinion regarding gameplay flaws: If the system is designed in such a way as to invite abuse, if it has a flaw that can be exploited, whatever, it has to be fixed.
Banning people isn't a solution. You can't ban an abuser until after he's abused. At that point, damage has been done to the game, in a sense. You can ban him as punishment for that damage, but the flaw is still there.
Somebody else will come along and do more damage. People will be inconvenienced by abusers, there will be misunderstandings and confusions, newbies will accidentally do something they didn't know they weren't supposed to, and abusers will fall through the cracks. No matter how many GMs you have, you can't get perfect coverage. GMs are human, and they make mistakes. And through all this, the system is still abusable, and there's a path for damage to be done to the game.
You have to change the system so that the abusable flaw, oversight, or just plain bad design is removed, and abusers can no longer cause damage.
I haven't played FFXI, but from the article and a couple posts I've read here, I can think of two ways this can be countered:
A. Get rid of the static spawn for unique mobs and shift to area spawns. One of my more recent MMOs was Ashen Empires, and it did this in most situations. The boss has an extended area that it could spawn in, so parties and soloers tend to spread out in that area and move around rather than camp (they still have a couple static spawns, and there are issues with people camping them. Things have been done to remedy that, as well, though, and other changes are probably on the way).
B. Dungeon instancing. Anarchy Online has a dynamic dungeon system that will basically allow a player to get a randomized dungeon whenever they want just by accepting a mission. The dungeon is tied to an item in the player's inventory instead of a door (so several dungeons can be extended off of a single entrance). Parties also have the added bonus of getting a "free" boss at the end of the dungeon. No camping, no loot or kill stealing (unless somebody in the party is an asswipe), no timing respawns.
AO's system also has an added bonus that after you kill the boss, you can't sit around and wait for it to respawn. You have to leave and start a new mission, and then you have to get to, and then fight through a new dungeon (Complete with a different layout, locked doors, mines, traps, and mobs) to get another boss fight.
The two aren't mutually exclusive either. General area spawns would make camping harder, and dynamic dungeons would draw people out of the currently overcrowded spawns.
use bots to get the claim
Now we get to the real issue, and what should be in the TOS. All this talk of camping is moot.
. . . I'm struck thinking about the kayakers and other boaters outside of the Giants' baseball stadium waiting for Bonds' home run balls to rain riches from the sky. Is this what these Gil Sellers are like?
I'd made a bigger post just below about this, but there are also easy fixes for the other problems you've mentioned here that I hadn't known about making that post.
I covered in my other post that all static spawns invite abuse, and there are easy fixes for it, the simplest one being just using an area spawn instead of a static spawn.
As for monster dropping, there's a good counter that I don't why more games don't use: Simply limit the distance a mob will pursue a target. Every mob just stores the coordinates it spawned at, and will mill around when idle in that area. When engaged with a player, it will pursue them a longer distance, but will stop and turn back. It doesn't take all that much no-man's-land between spawns for this system to stop people from dragging mobs into a lower level area. Perhaps an even easier one would be "barrier" points that mobs won't cross that denote area spawn borders, but I can think of some possible (but moch more minor) exploits of that system as well.
The grandparent's point is that punishments are all well and good, but they can only be enacted after damage has been done. You can't ban an abuser who hasn't abused yet, and odds are an abuser can get away with considerable annoyance before he's caught. The system should be changed to prevent the grief tactics from working. Sure, the changes might introduce new problems, but it's a step in the right direction. Once the developers are willing to change the system instead of just changing the rules, they'll be more likely to change it in the future to prevent new abuses. Not only would player not have these problems anymore, but the GMs won't have to waste their time dealing with them constantly.
It's the "It's just a game" mentality. When something is just a game, there are no consequences. Your actiond don't hurt anybody, and there are no hard feelings, nothing to be guilty about. It's pretty easy to be exceedingly cruel to a few pixels on the screen, even if you have a hard time bringing yourself to ask for an exchange when your new shirt ends up being the wrong size. The issues arise when those pixels on the screen are connected to a real person at the other end, some people treat them no differently than they would an NPC.
Well, let's see:
Nothing to do with the money you do make.
No high end game content. (Getting to make a new character at lvl 50, is not exactly exciting).
No player owned anything (i.e. apartment, super base, frickin telephone booth for that matter).
Repetitive quests. Sure the story text changes but not much else.
No player vs. player. (ok this should sort of be in the next update)
Seriously, I am a CoH player and have been for about 7 months. I do enjoy the game and it's pretty impressive for me to find something that entertains me for that long.
That being said, lately I have been getting bored as the high end game degenerates into a grind. Once I hit lvl 50 (I'm 46 currently and yes I don't have enough time to play to have 8 lvl 50s like some people) I will probably hang up my tights at least until City of Villains comes out. Especially if they do get the super/secret base thing in there. I wish there was more to SuperGroups than just being a convenient way to hookup with your friends.
The game is a good start, but I think more features are going to need to be added to keep long term players.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I needed those 50 Monster Signas! Sure you can only equip one at a time and I don't have any jobs that can actually use it, but thats why I had to sell them on the Auction House. Of course that generated more gil than I could hold so I had to sell it in real life. :P
On a serious note - I played FFXI for almost 2 years. I had 2 jobs leveled that needed a Monster Signa (fancy staff for Bards and Beastmasters). 6 months I camped the monster that dropped it and didn't get it once because there was constantly campers there running bots. Eventually it became apparent the only way I could obtain this item would be to either farm a low level area and ruin the game for someone lower level than I, or pay real money to get the gil I decided it was time to go.