Freezing Brew Timer

how exactly do you go about banning people who did this?

Worst. Argument. Ever.

Except that you described a nonexistant group of people.

_EVERYONE_ can get an empyrean. Just some faster than others.

My shell just finished Armageddon 85 and Masamune 80 today and just from what we've seen from killing Carabosse... we ran into a whole bunch of different "low man" groups of 3-6 people who pretty much define gimp. Full perle sams with Ame-no-ohabari, full perle drks using some scythe, etc. They ALL killed Carabosse with very little difficulty. It just took them like 20+mins per kill.

Wasn't trying to argue any point really just stating a opinion is all.

^^^^^

Do your realize that:


Is EXACTLY what /every/ person who did the salvage glitch thought while they were doing it lol? I'm almost positive they knew about the glitch in salvage, but even then who cares? It's a massive glitch in the game that allowed for you to do something that /was not/ meant to happen. Brews last 3 minutes, and is exactly how long they should last. Its cool that they can last for multiple mobs, but you have to realize that is insane. There is a reason they put a 3 minute window on the thing to begin with.

And to agree with whomever said that the people who play these games are pretty much beta-testers. No game will ever have absolutely 0 glitches. Some of these glitches have preposterous requirements to activate... Such as disbanding an alliance in salvage. Who would have thought to try and disband an alliance in these areas that generally took 1 party to clear?

For another games example: In Gears of War, if you walked up from the ground into the back of a certain truck and hit AB at the same time, you would find a glitch that your character would attempt to walk while you were crouched, then the screen would start to flip out. After 45~ seconds you hit back jump and melee, and you instantly shoot up to 10,000+ feet above the map, and skydive towards the map. How exactly would someone beta testing a game have figured this out?

As players of any game, the idea of exploiting something like this to make the game easier is too tempting. Its just that in an online one, there may be the ramifications of losing the character/account that you do the glitch with, especially if it is one that can be monitored.

If they really wanted to, all they'd have to do is read chat logs, and see that you hit 3 different [insert the same NM here] with 3 kill shots in between there for massive damage, with a huge time window between, even assuming <3 mins for each, with only a single brew used @ the start... It screams how obvious it is what you're doing. Have you even thought of the fact that they have noticed, or thought of this but arent sure how to code it correctly?

Only time will tell, and hopefully the people who attempt this wont take it that hard if they do end up mass banning again...

i wouldn't put brew freezing up there with salvage dupes. i thought 7-man salvage groups were fairly common at 75, but i don't think duping only happened in salvage; that was just where it had the most impact because of the low drop rates.

it's also different in the fact that this mechanic has been widely known for a long time, and an understood mechanic of the game. a lot of people didn't know about duping, and it's pretty obvious it wasn't intended for players to dupe items.

keep in mind also that while you can make a brew last an hour, you're doing nothing but standing there for 57 minutes. if you kill a lot of mobs with one brew (the only instance where you'd be extending a brew very long), chances are that each mob doesn't take very long to kill (without a brew) in the first place. whether or not this tactic is "broken" or not is a matter of personal opinion, but i think it's more trouble than it's worth to change something that involves a common game mechanic.

edit: also, cruor is easy to get.

1) I'm fairly sure that duping only took place in salvage. I dont believe anywhere else you can disband your alliance, and still see party chat of your 'supposedly' ex alliance members, and party specific buffs would go across parties. (IE: BRD in pt 1 could hit 18 people with 1 song).

2) It shouldn't matter how hard/easy it is to get cruor, or that we dont place it on a value that is equal, lesser, or greater, then the salvage duping. The simple, straight to the point fact, is that this is an exploit that takes the game mechanics and manipulates them into which you gain more then you were supposed to. I dont see the old thing about Barone gear as a majorly bad thing, but they banned quite a bit of players who exploited it. Salvage wasn't that bad to me as well... The drop rates were hideous, and some of the NMs themselves were ***. Tripling the drop (when you actually got it) was awesome, but at the same time, it was an exploit.

TL;DR: They probably wont fix it, but dont say 'blah blah blah its not as bad as previous glitches' because the only part we play in this, is deciding whether or not its worth risking your character to do something that you could have done even without using it like this. And like I said before, dont be suprised IF they do something to the people using this to their advantage... You'd only set yourself up for disappointment in the end more then likely...

My protect/shell/haste and even 2hr ability lasts for longer than their intended time when I open chests in abyssea. It's so OBVIOUS my buffs don't wear off at the same time as my party members! I'm totally exploiting the game OHNOES! But no hard feelings when I get banned with the rest of the entire ffxi population.

Get over it. Comparing this to salvage dupes is like comparing Amanomurakumo and Masamune, there is no comparison. This is a minor issue that no one gives a ***about. Except for those people who still think this game is the same game it was at 75.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, salvage gear was king and king abjurations were mostly king, and other junk was king. It was also relatively hard to obtain.

Ever see that monk bandwagon thread? Verethragna monk with twilight belt, anyone?

Look, I can do it too. I dont honestly care that people can make a brew last however long they can. I'm simply saying that its an exploit. Anyone who says else wise is fooling themselves.

i was still a fairly new player when the salvage bans happened, so i don't know exactly what it entailed, or glitches that happened there that were specific to salvage. but i have seen alliance break chat glitches before when doing limbus, and at some other point i don't remember (both after the salvage bans i believe).

my point was not that it is not an exploit because cruor is easy to get. my point was that it is less obvious as to whether or not it was intended, UNLIKE salvage duping, because it is a COMMON GAME MECHANIC that is being applied. the same thing happens with ANY buff with ANY npc. i don't know what this barone thing is... it was probably before my time.

i then said that even if it were an exploit, it wouldn't be increasing gains by much since cruor is easy to get, which was an afterthought because it wasn't very relevant. not that the severity doesn't matter when it comes down to who gets banned and who doesn't.

tl;dr i was not saying that "it's not as bad as previous glitches," i'm saying that it's possible it's not even considered a glitch or an exploit, because it involves a common game mechanic.

if extending a brew by talking to npcs is an exploit, so is extending any other buff by talking to an npc. this would imply that any time you talk to an npc with a buff on, you are exploiting game mechanics. you can kind of see where it's hard to draw the line. i'm not saying it's not an exploit; i'm saying it's questionable.

However, the talking to an npc in order to freeze the timer of a brew is an exploit. You cant just "accidentally" talk to an npc for half an hour and drop it to kill an NM, then go back to "accidentally" talking to the npc again without it being 100% intentional. That is where this becomes an exploit

edit: Same could technically be said for any buff, but in this given situation... Its brew. Some (almost every other) buffs arent worth doing this for, but the one that can multiply your dmg by as much as taking 5 minutes to kill an NM, to 15 seconds of magical WS, is definately one that would be worth doing it. However it is what it is.

it's not an exploit if it was intended to work that way, though.

it can also get messy; say you want to brew multiple pops of a force pop nm. say a chest drops from the first nm. if the brewer opens that chest, it's hard to say what the intent is.

I find it hard to believe that the CS thing was intended to work that way. As you can obviously tell >.>. Like I said though, I honestly don't believe you can "accidentally" talk to a chest/martello/moogle book/??? for long enough that the brew will last x2 of the same NM. I still believe it would be very easy to tell, assuming that most people who do it, will do it multiple times. Once, yeah, slap on the wrist at most. Those who kill 3 "x" NM per brew, and do it to build their x-item fast enough, it'll show.

Another thought is this: If they go from 1 NM, to npc, then to another NM... More then likely they are waiting for procs, be it Yellow/Blue, or TH. If they jump off an NPC as soon as whatever they require on the NM, to kill the NM.... I believe thats a tell-tale sign.

Don't get me wrong, I see that you're saying there can be a line in which "oh ***I hit the chest that dropped off NM, and didnt realize it til the NM was in front of me!" I just say that theres very easy ways to tell that you're doing these things on purpose as well. I think people should avoid doing this, BECAUSE there is a line. We think we're on one side, but others don't. It's all a game of risk. To those who try this, they should be prepared to pay for it if the time comes.

I must admit the OP is pretty vague. I'll get a little more in depth.

First off. GM calls had nothing to do with salvage duping. The Salvage thing got out of hand because people were using a next to obvious exploit to cut a massive amount of time out of the procurement of mythic weapons.

I hope what I meant is obvious now. My curiosity is even if empyreans pop up everywhere in the next month, will using this exploit/glitch/oversight (or whatever you personally think it is) cause SE to drastically change how brew mechanics work? My personal opinion is not so much important, but if this is wrong it must be fixed and if it's right we need to make sure it is so we can start spamming the ***out of this.

tldr; Would the game be able to sustain itself if it became a common and acceptable practice to use 1 brew for 5-6 of the most difficult NMs in the game.

EDIT: Really foolish spelling error.

That comes down to personal opinion, but we cant exactly say yes or no, because of who the main opinion is in this situation: "What would SE think about this?"

I personally dont think it should be common/acceptable practice to be /forced/ to use a brew to kill an NM that you cannot kill on your own, even with a full alliance. I think that strategy should play more, then an item that buffs you to insane limits. The fact that the 2nd is more accepted in an MMO defeats the purpose of playing imo... but again personal opinions.

I /hope/ nobody gets banned over this, but I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this.

Even WITHOUT this brew thing. There already are insane amounts of people walking around with (multiple) empyrean weapons. I think I just walked by like 5 SAM with Masamune from Horst to moghouse. Empyrean weapons are nothing to brag about, nor are they any sort of accomplishment.

Would the game be able to sustain itself? Yes, because even before 200k brews and before people talked about npc+brew there were ridiculous amounts of people with empyreans.

Remember, back when cap was 85 you could DUO a Masamune85 in about a week. This is before 3rd lunar abyssite, before 200k brew, before abyssite of discernment.

tl;dr ? blown way out of proportion

You could also draw the line at 3 people who just team up to do it for +2 items because they don't have any/many grellow procing jobs and don't like dealing with people? so usually 1 most I have seen is 2 +2's per kill, 3-6 +2items(if you get real lucky).

and the how different are people that suspend the timer till after they proc? I mean this way 3 pops will get you 6-9 +2, and 1-3 other +2 item.

I know people that do way 1 their choice, they have the crour and don't like abyssea linkshells. Then there are groups that exploit it to the point of killing 5+ with procs on every one. If it gets to the point of banning se will probably ban just as many people from group 1 as group 2. Its all exploiting a game mechanic though, but qq over group is just pointless its not enough to be game changing, where as group 2 is actually obtaining the gear at a rate much faster then what WE ASSUME SE intended.

if you've got enough pops to really differentiate between group 1 and group 2, chances are you're not speeding up the process by much for that group either.

I think one big difference between this and the Salvage duping, is this is debatable. As can be seen by the last 3 pages, there are a lot of people that legitimately seem to think there's nothing wrong with doing this, but NO-ONE doing salvage duping thought it was ok. Every single person doing salvage duping KNEW they were cheating, which is also why it remained such a well kept secret. You can argue 'til you're blue in the face about whether or not this is, or should be, against the rules, but no-one ever argued that about the salvage dupes.

Personally, I think this is an exploit, using the games mechanics to your own advantage in a way they weren't intended to be used. However, I also think it's not that big a deal in the long run, yes it saves you a bit of time on 2 or 3 extra NMs, but don't forget that you still have to farm all those pops legitimately.

With the possible exceptions of Rani, Apademak and Shinryu, brew does nothing but save us a little time. Those three NMs are unkillable by a lot of people without brew due to lack of skill, and you'd be very hard pressed in my experience to get two Rani's out of one brew, let alone 3 or 4. Shinryu is impossible to get more than one out of a brew as you have to zone in between fights. So that pretty much leaves you with Apademak only where you can gain any real advantage with this method, being able to kill multiple with a single brew of a mob that would otherwise be out of your reach (potentially).

Actually, you can probably put that *** Indrik in there too <_<

My point here, is that there's really very few mobs where extending brew timer is really a big help. Most people are talking about using one brew to kill 3-4 Sobeks or w/e, which just about anyone can kill anyway, it just takes them that little bit longer. So unless you're using one brew to kill 3-4 of something that you otherwise can't kill, then you're really not gaining anything. For that reason, comparing it to salvage duping is pretty ludicrous. Salvage, especially at the time was famous for reeeaaally shitty drop rates, and that dupe turned each of those drops into 2 or 3 of that drop (I believe?). Massive difference.

False. Sandworm was also being exploited in the same manner.

I think it was possible in any battlefield area? So KSNM and limbus too?

iirc it was only battlefields from Aht urghan and beyond.

Dynamis currency was being duped too! That's right you missed your chance at getting a Claustrum.

given all this exploit/not an exploit / oh ***it's another banhammer talk I would expect this to be fixed in this supposed February update. That is...assuming they figure out how to move the unused FFXIV servers from the 3rd floor to the 5th floor to use for FFXI.