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."

Comments

uhh

[nomadic]

It doesn't actually mention gil sellers, but its pretty well accepted that monopolizing NM spawns is mostly done by gil sellers.

You do realize you're talking gibberish, right?

Re:uhh

[ElleyKitten]

Translastion:

It doesn't actually mention [people who horde game money and then sell it for real money, on ebay, etc], but it's pretty well accepted that [people who, in the game, monopolize a perticular spot (not allowing anyone else there) to kill monsters that drop a lot of gil (game money) are gil sellers (people who sell game money for real money)].

Does that make any more sense now?

gil = game money
gil sellers = people who sell game money for real money
NM spawns = monsters that drop a lot of gil

Silly

[Altizar]

Wow, finaly a MMO company is blaming the players for caming static spawns rather than blaming themselves for having those spawns.

And even worse, they wrote into their TOS that you can not camp any spawns or they can cancel your account.

Static Spawn = Spawn Camping = Spawn Greifing.

Re:Silly

[SScorpio]

Square-Enix is not banning people over the camping of rare spawns. They are banning people over teh monolization of the static spawns through the use of Grief tatics which result is MPKs or in english players being killed in a non-PVP game (there is currently a single PVP event, but that event does not involve the static spawns).

The main issue is that a few players who appear to be Chinese would camp this spawns 24/7 on the same characters, I don't know about you but a real player may be able to do this; however, it's unlikely they would do it for months on end. When other players would attempt to all camp the spawns, these "Gil Sellers" would do things use a puller harder monsters into a lower level section of the area to kill off the other people attempting to camp the spawns.

Numerous people complained about these issues, and many people have left the game due to these issue. It is definately news worthy is that Square-Enix is finally doing something to combat this problem.

Re:Silly

[Ayaress]

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.

Re:Silly

[Ayaress]

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.

Re:Silly

[Maserati]

That's actually handled in World of Warcraft. Mobs will stop chasing you. And as a bonus, they recently took steps against an exploit involving aggroing a boss into other players. I'm not sure how that last exploit worked, something about stealthy rogues being teleported to safety. Further confusing the issue, most mobs will ignore other players while they run back to where they're supposed to be. And the toughest bosses are in instances where they belong anyway. Still, Blizzard does seem to be trying to control this kind of griefing.

Now, in english

[Palshife]

In the game, there are unique monsters that drop rare and expensive items, called Notrious Monsters (NM's). In FFXI, only the party that initiated the attack against the monster can engage it in combat, so there will literally be 50 people surrounding the area where it appears, and as soon as it does it becomes a race to see who can claim it first.

The problem then becomes that the drop goes from being kind of rare to EXTREMELY RARE, and the price goes through the roof.

Honestly though, unless the items are being used to sell Gil (in game money) I can't say I frown on it. If people are that organized and they want to affect the economy to make a better position for themselves in the game, I say go for it. As a player, I know that there are plenty of ways to sidestep the problem, and it only becomes important to people who are transfixed by the items that they cant get.

It's a big game. Do something else!

Who?

[IMarvinTPA]

Who is this Gill Sellers guy and why does he have to be struck?

IMarv

This is the game

[jgardn]

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?

good and bad

[Joe the Lesser]

It's nice to see a MMO company actually fight back.

Of course, FFXI is very well designed for this sort of behavior in the first place.

They do make it random (on some monsters)

[Morrisguy]

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?

When it comes to NM(Notorious Monster) spawns in FFXI, there are two type of spawns. Timed spawns and lottery pops.

With timed spawns, once the NM is defeated, it cannot appear again until a set amount of time (Such as real life 1 hour for most of them).

The other type of spawn, lottery pops, are tied into the spawning rate of regular monsters. For every monster of a specific type that spawns in the zone, there is a very slim chance that it will be a NM.

Here's an example. In one of the areas of the game, there are a bunch of windmills with giant sheep roaming around them. This area is also home to a NM called "Stray Mary", which happens to be a lottery pop. Now if I wanted to hunt down Mary (which is an actual quest in the game, btw), I would have to go there and hunt down every sheep I can find until one of the respawned sheep spawns as Stray Mary.

As for drops, it's also kind of random as well. With Stray Mary above, she normaly drops some high quality milk that sells pretty good. If you're really lucky, she'll also drop a highly desired bard horn as well (which is the kind of item the Gil farmers/sellers are looking to monopolize as well).

Few gil sellers get banned

[akypoon]

I have some friends playing FFXI now. They told me on Phoenix server, the IGE employees are still doing business as usual. It seems Square only banned those gil sellers who are very, very aggressive.

Banning 800 out of 32 servers make you wonder how many gil sellers are actually out there. Keep in mind that Square never said explicitly that how many out of the 800 are linked to gil selling activities. Players who have repeating records for MPK or using grief tactics are banning candidates as well.

Kudo to Square-Enix PR department. Well done.

Re:Gil seller?

[dodonpachi]

"Gil" is the currency of Vana'diel, the world of Final Fantasy XI. A gil-seller is a person who sells gil for dollars.

The problem is that they monopolize some monsters and zones that give good items. They sell the items to obtain gil to obtain dollars. So the "normal" players like me, are forced to buy the items at the ingame "ebay" instead of getting them the normal way... killing those monsters. It's possible to wait for the monster to appear and fight it before a gilseller, but unlikley.

Worst of all, some gilsellers bring highlevel monsters near the spawn spot of the monster with the good item... so, the new foe kills you and they are alone to get the item. That is the kind of player SQUARE-ENIX is banning.

Excuse my poor english (Spain here) and I hope this comment helped