Rant + Call For Solutions. Please read. (a bit long)Follow

Sorry if this is long, if it's a dead horse, and for my faulty english (not my native).

This is NOT a rant about getting gil (it might look like it at the beginning).

I am a DRK level 61. This translates for most DRKs in getting Haubergon and Snipers rings, and possibly Anemit Mantle + 1. I.e. ~4M equip (on Alexander, my server). (I'll be happy to get just Haubergon for now).

Now, I'm sorry that I'm not level 60 in some crafting (some claim they can make millions in a few days). I do have four craft in the mid twenties though. I can't spend many hours fishing.
When I have some time in my hands I find myself using it helping people doing AFs, missions etc. rather than leveling a craft. Or, lately, to farm toward my sought gear.


/rant on


I go to gusgen mine. Field equip and two stacks of pickaxes.
To my surprise, there is an Angelxxx character at many spots... waiting... some spot has even 2 players on it CAMPING it, one Angelxxx and probably a "normal" player, puzzled and angry.

Um... maybe this is a bad day to mine ^^; I'll come back another day... NOPE, they are still there.

Bah, let me go to Zitah for gobbues... just to notice that the xxxxkings are there. And ALSO the Rxxxxs are there.
To my suprise, many people already know them (and hate them). This is my first encounter with them. The kings are divided in 3 smaller groups, each composed by a elvan DD (all dragons if I recall correctly) and a taru white mage.

Um, I'm a bit tired of killing giants in Delkfutt tower... oh and btw, there are a few charachters there now too, with nerfed sub and w/o LS, that won't respond to my (Hello!) tells and that I find there 24/7 now...

Bah, getting Haubergon is gonna take long... but wait! I remember back in january hunting leaping lizzy! It was so much fun and I even got a drop ( I felt like a millionaire then). Such s drop would be a nice add to my financies.

/em travels to Castle Oztroja. Urm... the Applesxxxs are there... And Abbo+Marya+xxxs are there... 24/7... I'm not worried MUCH about the Apples as they seem beatable. But Abbo+Marya are competitive. Plus, how would you like to camp a NM against EIGHT PEOPLE? Notice that I wouldn't mind if they where occasional players, as they wouldn't be there 24/7 and I could come back in less crowded days. I check AH history. Marya has the 4 last Kote. Apples have the Fumas.

/em travels to Ordelles Caves. With three friends. Full of hopes: we have our chances in three people :)
Cucumi + Popu + Pipigirl are three other players that I learne dand confirmed that are TWENTYFOUR/SEVEN there.
We stayed there for some 10 spawns. Stroper spawned purple every single time... I thought that they fixed that in some past update!
Notice that with me there were also many other occasional players, but ONLY Cucumi, Popu and Pipigirl get the pop. Every...single...time.... Everybody there is pretty angry. We share stories and learn that AH history is flooded with these characthers.

I ask many of my friends and occasional players. All are aware of this and pretty angry and many are giving up on NMs.
This is bad, as "they" win.

/em pops up Allakhazam.com, nice list of NM there. There MUST be some NM with decent drop to camp.
Please notice again, I wouldn't camp a NM JUST for the gil, but I like the hunt per se^^ and its a things to do after mindless killing mobs for hours for drops or gil.
Ooooooo Poisonhand Gnadgad seems a nice NM to camp, drops Jujitsu Ji d('-`)b

/em travels to Davoi... nobody there! Yay... some Japanese (some very nice character, Takax and Emac) are there, but they seem to farm Troopers.
I ask them, NM pop? They surprisely answer me: "NM ; ;".
I'm confused. They say "/sea Wouini". After some talk, I realized what they were saying: at the NM pop time, a party led by some Wouini (I don't remember exact name) will come and claim it. And granted, six people arrive 1/2 hour later, two of them dragoon with wyvern out (as you might know that complicates /targetnpc /ja Provoke spam), ALL with nerfed sub and crappy equip. Hard to compete with 6 people, I try anyway... they get the NM... I talk with the Japanese, they are all very frustrated as me... They said they gave up on the NM.

At this point, allow me to be a little stressed. I learn talking with others that there are the Lifexxx, the Jwxxx, and others I don't remember. They are everywhere now.

I mean, I am not talking about just making gil by getting a NM drop, I'm talking about the fun of the hunt, meeting the occasional campers with their stories to tell. Horror stories as "yeah, I'm 0/45 on Meggi" or lucky stories "I'm 1/1 with emperor hairpin ^^" (lucky *******). And the thrill of seeing that NM close to you, and claiming it! Or losing it by a matter of 1/10 of a second to another player, then /cheer him/her anyway.

And, please notice, I DO NOT mind if I loose to Japanese players because they have faster ping, as there are times where they are not there (4pm out time for example). But these guys are always there.

So, a nice aspect of the game for me is gone.

And life is much harder in FFXI now, as these individuals do not only camp NMs and mining spots, but begin farming themselves. As in Delkfutt tower and Zitah. And those are just the experiences I personally had.

/rant off

This is not a rant about how to get gil fast, I will STILL be able to get my Haubergon without buying gil online or botting.

But a nice aspect of the game IS GONE.
...

T_T

...

So I'm calling for solutions.

I'm an optimistic, I think if we give SE some realistic ideas on how to improve the game, they WILL consider it.

Here is some ideas... to be honest with you, I don't like them particularly except #7 but maybe sharing them with you will help shape them into better ones, and/or collect new ones.


----------


#1 NM spawn ALL ACROSS the map.
I'm not sure how much this will help, if at all. Remember, some of these parties are of 6 people. They could just sub RNG, and divide the whole area between them. Heck, this might even HELP them, as there would be no more real camper.

#2 PK. I talked with many people, they'd like this a lot. I can foresee problems with this though :) ... maybe high level a$$ will kill lower campers.. besides, this would change FFXI A LOT. I'm not sure I'd like it.

#3 You can only stay in an area for 24 hours per week, unless some 500 xp per hour is gained.
This might work, but would introduce complication in how we play, as we would have to be careful not to spend too much time
AFK or just fooling around. Also, that will take care of some fishing bots (not the one in the cities though).
Downsides: why 5,000 players have to be affected by this? I would like to be free to spend my time where I want.

#4 world migration. -.- I won't do that. Alexander got it pretty bad I think, but I won't leave it, my ffxi life is here.

#5 make NM item rare. Well... um.. yeah that would solve many problems but... ; ; I like the idea of getting Kote and selling it for half a million :( Please don't take it away from me...

#6 Take massive legal action agains IGE and all gil selling companies. This must be done anyway, but I DO NOT see this solving the problem in a short amount of time. Legal actions might take months if not years.

#7 When a NM spawn, wait a few seconds. Many players will claim it. Make the NM decide RANDOMLY who to give hate to. This decision can be based on previous claims, i.e. probability gets exponentially lower for a party/single players everytime they get the NM.

<please insert your ideas>
<please do not insert ideas on how to make gil, as this is not the point>

---------

a little sad Mauri.


multiple edits: stupid typos. Also removed the UNWANTED line "Altough I dont mind" regarding PK. That was a wrong copy/paste. I do mind PK I dont want it.

Edited, Sat Sep 25 12:59:02 2004 by Maurizio

Edited, Sat Sep 25 18:27:27 2004 by Maurizio

I hear you brother I am On Unicorn server and there is bots hunting every type of NM available 24/7. Here is my solution, we we hunt NM we do it as a LS. We have al least 5-6 people in a party and sometimes an alliance. Dont give up beat them at there own game!!!!!

We hunt the Emperor and there is a Bot train that is constantly there. We have 2-3 players just run circles in front of the leader character of the bots, and around spawn time we cast magic on them constantly. A mage usually Rdm will just keep refreshing converting and casting on them while they run around, as often times when cure or some spell is being cast you cannot Voke or engage target.(Not sure if it works all the time but something I noticed happens to me quite frequently)


Then dedicate the rest of the group to Wide Scan, voke and claiming the mob. If you really work at this then the bots will not get the claim.

We have done this so often that I have seen the bots actually try to train flies on us while we wer fighting the Emperor.

I employ this same strategy in Davoi with the same results.

rate up here too , i especially like # 7 .

And the idea super came up with is killer , but its unfortunate that so much work is needed to stop these gil sellers.
Also training mobs on players should ,IMO , have a more stiff penalty then what most people get for it .



Edited, Sat Sep 25 14:01:24 2004 by Geocide

How about more "forced spawn" NMs, like the Guardian Crawler, Goblin Archaeologist and Morion Worm - these require an item to be traded (it'd be better, IMHO, if it were a Key Item or Rare/Ex trigger item), and then the mob pops pre-claimed for the player/party triggering it.

If things like the VE needed a key item dropped by another mob somewhere in the same zone, a lot of bots would be waaaay out of business.

SamsaX,


good point... they would have to store for each player a number for each single NM. Mmmmm lets see... if there are 500 NM, the memory per player for this idea only is 500 bytes. Multiply that by 5000 players, its 2.5 MB per server for this implementation only. Not too good in term of net flow, but not too bad. I would think this would equal to 5 bag slot per player (last update, gobbie bag 5) so it might be feasible.

Also, it would be fair that the probability would replenish itself after some time, like a week...

It would be nice if the NM said something like:

I decide to give my wrath to you <player> ! Prepare to fight!

ps: SamsaX... one post... now someone will think you're my sockpuppet -.-



Edited, thanks to Lienna Sat Sep 25 14:50:34 2004 by Maurizio

Edited, Sat Sep 25 15:28:08 2004 by Maurizio

quote]"ps: SamsaX... one post... now someone will think you're my sockpuppet -.-"


Haha, well there is a reason why I generally dont post on boards... [/quote]

to avoid comments like that? ;P'


While I gave up camping NMs long long looooooong ago unless Im just messing around or decided to help out a friend. But the first part of #7 sounds very good. the tracking isnt that good. even if you say its 'only' 250MB of ram per server.... btw where did you get that 400bytes/character number? I know of no server that uses 400bytes/user even if they arent doign a single thing. the number is usually 4mb/user + any appliocations that are being run. Hell just loggin g into windows XP uses 200 something :P

This kind of implementation would require a big server upgrade and yep! more maintinece complaint (***************** threads! While they migrated stuff around. SE should release a statement saying that MPK is against TOS unless its against a person with random characters in thier names ^^ Hehe. that would honestly be quite fun I think ^^.

Perhaps make a game-wide ls called "sellerkillers" or something, where their purpose was to disrupt and mess with the gil farming bots that we see all over.


(In an effort to clarify, I dont camp NM, I dont farm, I dont really fish, I dont really do quests, I simply craft and craft and craft.) So while I agree this is a problem, It doesnt really affect me. @potential trolls:And yes, it does NOT affect me, so dont try to pull the "it affects everyone blah blah stfu noob blah blah whine whine" BS. Cause it wont work)

*edit* heh..love that karma troll...


Edited, Sun Sep 26 18:55:15 2004 by Lienna

what burns me up is when you actually do get the NM , they train stuff on you to get you killed ! That IMO is absolutely unacceptable . Its like they are saying "These are our NMs and if you get one we'll mpk you to teach you a lesson "
If the servers were all NA this wouldnt be as much of a problem , as most people who have the money to play in NA dont need to sell gil to feed their families.


Edited, Sat Sep 25 16:49:20 2004 by Geocide

#8 Make all NM's spawn from a ???. You can only get the spawn once per week per character. (just like the ECO-War quest). There. Problem solved. Oh, and the NM spawns claimed, and aggroed on whoever touched the ???.

Are the exact same characters there 24 hours a day/7 days a week, or do 'fresh troops' come every so often to relieve the perennial campers?

If the former, that is not physically possible UNLESS there are different people playing these characters, which is definitely against the EULA and gives SE the right to pursue bannings. I think, if this is usually the case, we should try to rally the rest of the worlds' peoples to write calm 'request' letters to SE to ask them to 'investigate' the major NM spawn points to confirm for themselves this is happening.

If the latter, I guess either your suggestion #7 might work (although I too think that the 'tracking' might be too much for SE to take on), or I suggest totally random spawnings for these NM - times and places, over several zones - so, while it becomes harder for everyone it also becomes near impossible to 'camp' without a LOT more 'gil-trackers' being on 24/7.

'Camps' in EQ are 'player' institutions, not Sony/game imposed. Player/peer pressure keeps that a viable option within EQ. We have a very different, and more diverse, crowd in FFXI unfortunately. It would only be 'us' against the 'gil-campers' (unless SE gets involved), but, for them, there are no repercussions we can impose - only some that SE might impose - that they would find distasteful enough or would make them quit. They don't want to party with anyone else, have no need to interact with any of us. They are, in a sense, an organized and isolated 'union'. This is definitely not like it is in EQ.

Zanzibar,
if you make the NM spawn triggered, I loose the fun in the hunt :(.

Tetra, you do have a point: being a good voker should be rewarded... but here we are dealing with network speed and bots that voke 100 times a seconds (ok this I don't know for sure I assume it from conversations and facts).

SamsaX, I didn't play EQ (arg I wish I did). But I'm pretty sure the people I mentioned would not care about claimed camp.

On a related note, let me share this: when I farm I come across so many nice people! For example, a Gobbue spawn in Zitah, I run toward it. I KNOW <niceplayername> could get it before me (I don't have voke), but just because it is clear that I saw it first, he/she let me have it, and maybe /cheer me. This is VERY refreshing and nice. I do the same. This kind of "etiquette" makes my FFXI days.

Alumni, I can tell you from conversations that I had with many players AND from the fact that I feed my anger by /sea <zone> every time I play that Cucumi, Popu and Pipigirl are in Ordelles since 10 days 24/7 (with a player going to AH). Same for Abbo & Marya in the Castle. I assume, different people play the same character, thus rotating "shifts".
The apples are also always there, but since there are so many of them I see them also around sometimes.

Thank you all for this intelligent replies. I have no idea how complicated would be implementing the tracking idea, however I think it is worthwhile to submit this idea to SE and see if they pick up on it.

Hi Kwontos,

thanks for your intelligent reply. I have to say I agree with most of your points :), I am not advocating any of them and I like to work or dismiss them and accept new ones.

I would not like PK either, and yeah a time limit on some area does not help IF they don't change spawn terms.
Of course, if they make the spawn time RANDOM instead of on a clock^^.

Also, I AM NOT asking for gil money idea. I said this before, I just want the thrill of the hunt back. I want to be able to go mining. And all.


Ummm ... AF has nothing to do with NM camping. Unless you meant: these are players with some experience, yet I beat them.

Allow me to doubt your statement though. If you play against a person that has much better ping than you AND uses a bot that voke 100 times a second, I think you WILL loose even if it spawns right in front of you.
Unless you know something I don't know.

I will not say I'm a good NM camper. I do want the chance though.

Nevermind that NMs are spawing purple in front of me... I can understand people can be better than me and much faster. However, I will NOT accept that these people are there 24/7 for the sole purpouse to get the item, sell it, and sell gil.

Sometimes back I could wait to (Incredible Tough) campers like you to go to sleep then give it a shot ^^. Now I can't anymore.

The only idea I can think of is to have the NMs that give expensive drops as a quest sort of thing and it will spawn only for you when you do certain things. The very lower priced items could then be the lottery type spawns.

Edit: And what I mean by spawning only for you is that only you would see it. And if it's for a specific type of gear, you must have that job equiped.

Edited, Sat Sep 25 18:36:57 2004 by Asirae