Dancing Salvage Bans.

Great forum skillz.

I don't care about windower or 3rd party tools that don't affect the physics of the game, the issue is with 3rd party tools that DO affect the physics of the game. You think anyone really gives a crap that a 3rd party tool user can't keep track of timers or access the menu fast enough to find out time left on the recast? What I give a ***about is the people who are using the game genie to jump over the entire level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros, because they keep getting killed by goombas. Just the presence of these people in the game trolls the entire legit player base.

Ban explanations are a courtesy at best.

As someone who has done server side programming and expanded functionality on GM tools for an mmo, its not in the interest of the company to be too verbose on how you catch them.
'Logs' are not some hard to read text file a bazillion lines long, they have visualization tools, filters and a ton of other things to make mountains of data easy to navigate.
The most extreme tools i've worked on logged your position every few seconds in an instance and you could timeline scrub through an instance run after it occurred and watch the path someone takes through a zone.

When you record enough player actions/items obtained and have good tools, going back a day, week, or a month to see what someone did can make little difference. You don't have to be caught red-handed to be busted when they record enough data.


People that want to know detailed circumstances for their banning can be the botmakers, or players just using tools that will still return and just 'cheat smarter'.

The expectation that you'll always get at least a 3day ban before a perma just allows people to go full-on exploit mode and invites the mentality of 'I haven't been caught yet, I can do whatever till I get 3-day'd'.
Permaban on 1st offence without an explanation should always be an option to the developer. Its also a great deterrent to the 'cheating curious' once people hear you aren't afraid to be that harsh in dishing out punishment.

Glad to see you're still keeping it classy. you always did suck and complain about everything.

On topic, so at the moment anyone can be banned or suspended just by talking ***to a GM for a few minutes. Takes more then one report but you can get it done even if the people havent done anything.

With that said, going to have my hands full leveling some new characters >.>

Apparently you do care, because that's a lot of vitriol for something you allege to not care about.

back in hnm days, we only had claim bots to worry about... times change...

Japanese players were way harder to beat than claimbots. I don't know if it was simple proximity to the servers or what -- or maybe it was botting and their bots were just better -- but my wife regular beat NA claim bots while playing on the PS2* and subsequently got accused of botting several times herself by the people with the bots.

Of course, then they put in that stupid summoning sickness action delay and people who were really fast and good at claiming legitimately got screwed over too.

(*She switched to PC many years ago).

It was more that you shouldn't go about proclaiming how you take down botters... when you don't do it unilaterally.
Like... You can't really go "I'm so good because I report the cheaters"... when you don't report the cheaters you like.

So I guess, you were addressing the opposite side of my implication. (Not that you should throw "friends" under the bus, but that you shouldn't brag about reporting botters in the same breath as you say you shield friends.)
EDIT: Though Taidis had the right of it... you really should tell your friends to stop cheating if you see them do it. Not doing so is like knowing your friend is using meth and not saying anything about it to them.
Just a simple heads up is enough. Don't go all It's Always Sunny Intervention on a person. This is just a game after all.

I almost never report people... really I think I've made all of 3 GM calls... the only times I ever have has been for griefing.
Cheating I'll leave to the cheaters and the judges who ban them...
But being an *** for assholism's sake? No. This is a game and that's just unacceptable.

I'm also SUPER paranoid about SE's ToS shenanigans. (I've known multiple people banned on the OF for using the word "bitching"...)
So I don't even windower.
(And while I DO consider many of its aspects cheating... I wouldn't mind 60fps. And I don't throw stones at/look down upon those who do use it.)
Also: my paranoia worries that all these UI and game adjustments drawing from functions of Windower... I wouldn't be surprised if they issued temp bans for Windower once the actual game has copied enough functions.

Haven't done dyna in forever but I think you can get 800+ coins without cheating to do it but you're not getting all singles when you go that route.

Correct, the only way to get 800 currency solo is probably a lucky Jeuno run, I would say I farm dynamis pretty efficiently and I only get 500-550, there's no way a legit player would get 250 more. That said I'm not complaining, farming 250 extra currency doesn't have a huge effect on currency due to the demand constantly being high, most people can make a relic these days so it's not like people using speed hacks are wrecking currency prices.

So in the end if you speedhack in dynamis, meh whatever, but by doing so you put yourself more at risk at being banned, it's not dumbshit obvious like coming out of a salvage run with thousands of alex but it's probably detectable.

ftfy

I won't deny Valli is a good player but 800 singles solo isn't possible no matter how good you might be.

He is one of those people that levels every job and just plays whatever is broken at the time.

That's the game SE has made. It's their world. We just live in it.

If you work hard and achieve something, nobody else's achievements affect it. It's YOUR achievement, and you've put the stipulation that you wanted to do it legit. If anything, having done it legit should be what makes it MORE meaningful. You obviously have forgotten the days when all the wrong people had kitty pants and a relic just because they were some LS leader's buddy.

The game's health is a moot point. They have, after 10+ years, decided to finally fix some of the most ridiculous limitations imaginable. They still haven't addressed the fact that everything under the sun crashes the game. If they had implemented some of these fixes years ago, things like windower wouldn't be the standard. If they didn't staff the game with a couple of monkeys and a summer intern, botting and flee-hacks wouldn't be so rampant. They enforce the rules once every few years with gestapo tactics and refuse to listen to the playerbase. If you want to blame anyone for cheapening your achievements, blame SE.

I never said cheating was ok, I said that massive holes in the game's design and weak responses from SE have made it far more prevalent, even using Windower specifically to allow you to view Wiki without shutting down. FFXI has problems, cheating is one of them, but to say that other people's use of tools somehow cheapens your achievements is an intelligent way of saying "WAHH!".

Hardly, I don't believe the same stupid debate needs to take place again. Let me break it down just a little further for you:

You go to work, do a good job, earn money and buy a new TV. Someone else scams people on Ebay and buys the same TV. Does the picture on your TV look any worse? Do you enjoy your programs less? Do you assume that anyone who also has a nice TV somehow didn't earn it? If so, you are a seriously unhappy person.

Is it strange that all this ban-talk makes me want to see if the character I haven't played in over a year is banned?

No, because it's not the same thing. Winning the lottery would be akin to winning bonanza, do you feel the same way about everyone who wins something? Your analogy is more like: some people around you have stolen/cheated/lied to acquire something that many people have obtained legit. You don't know for sure who has unless they tell you outright, so you just sit and stare at your item and cry because you had to work so much harder than everyone else. That's why I say you're just finding an intelligent way to say "WAH it's not fair!"

I think "WAH it's not fair" applies to a lot of perspectives in this thread.

People cheating the *** out of alexandrite and finishing dozens of Mythics does cheapen the game for others. It might not really matter since XI is essentially a game in hospice but that type of overt cheating ruins the game and accomplishment for those doing things legitimately. You're not supposed to be blitzing ultimate weapons or padding your gilpouch with mule after mule of duped drops.

I'm not about to go full potato on Windower since I feel that the poor UI of XI being fixed by a third party available to everyone is acceptable considering how long basic implements were unavailable using the official SE windower but even some features on newer versions of windower were essentially cheats. Spellcast and then Gearswap essentially optimize the game so much over the base UI that you might as well be playing a different game from a PS2er.

Generally SEs fault for failing to take firm stances on third party apps and clamping down on cheating until months after the fact. Blinkers were a thing forever, so were Rusty/Padded caps, Salvage/Nyzul/Sandworm dupes etc etc etc.