Salvage bansFollow

Anyone else outraged that SE isn't doing anything about the people blatantly abusing dozens of different exploits such as duping thousands of alexandrite in a single salvage run, or pulling afterglow mythics out of thin air, or casting blue magic on any job? People have been obtaining billions of gil and obtaining extremely difficult to obtain items in minutes and bragging about it on every forum and laughing at how they'll never get banned for it and that no one cares. There's some guy that made 18 mythics with the instant-mythic exploit. That's not even considering the utter destruction of the economy with the infinite gil and alexandrite exploits. It's all over BlueGutter.
And yet SE isn't banning these people or even bothering to fix the exploits and remove all the billions and billions of gil and mythics they did not earn. What gives? Where's the outrage?

New round of exploits and only suspensions for the most part. Latest was pos hacking back to the start point to run back though. A few did get perma but they had other strikes against them. Frankly can't even bring my self to really care to be truthful. Might be just jaded but those that didn't cheat the system know that they did it the way SE intended and those that cheated know they took a massive short cut. The main thing it comes down to is money and banning these people now could take not only those that cheated out the game but their friends would most likely move on with them. So it is catch 22 for SE ban them and loss money or temp ban and upset people that more wasn't done, either way SE stands to loss money they choose the way that they thought would be least painful to the bottom line.

I'll be fairly draconian and state that running this particular exploit should've resulted in a perma-ban. This isn't something one accidentally stumbled onto like hurting an undead for 9999 with a cure like happened sometime back due to SE fudging with their code. It's a deliberate act to circumvent intended game mechanics absolutely requiring the use of third party tools resulting in a grossly unfair financial advantage for those who did not take advantage, let alone know (as evidenced by the very first reply, not everyone did).

Big picture, it sends the message that SE isn't really taking XI's security as seriously anymore. The more snarky angle would suggest that simply having that person's sub money is more important than the server's social and economic integrity. Given the related content to the exploit, I'm more inclined to say it's time for pre-ilvl RMEs to get "catch up" quests implemented so people aren't spending 3 months+ grinding Dynamis (which also had an infinite access exploit of late), Salvage, or never seeing people do VW because it's not worth it. Though, I still say the wiser move would've been to let those weapons rot when Adoulin was released and instead let the related WS be learned at full power.

It honestly is the same policy as always, the issue was the policy was vague to begin with and has never been enforced fairly/evenly.

You have people openly bot fishing for years and nothing happens to them even though they make millions (used to) and are basically selling to rmt. Then you see someone who bought 1m gil from said rmt and are perma banned on first offense.

Its been this way for years. Usually someone has to specifically report you, otherwise nothing will happen, which is why most of the salvage 2.0 bans were 3 day bans, but then idiots spoke up that it wasnt perma-ban, and bragged and those same individuals were issued perma bans because so many people reported them.

SE customer service is awful to begin with. Every time i need a gm, i regret the whole process and wish i could resolve it myself. But to be told for 8 weeks now that my issue is still under GM review and that i can't get any status update on it because the people who respond to emails and live chat arent the people who actually resolve the issue, and the 2 groups arent allowed to talk. It is beyond me, but it sure does make it clear why perma-bans werent issued to begin with. Just flat out lack of communication/understanding.

Salvage has been on my list for a while now, however I just don't have that time commitment anymore nor do I want to compete with the exploiters. I'll just wait a tad longer for the Aby ilvl 119 +3 gear update.

Something needs to be done about this. It's gone far enough.
Do your Vana'dielian civic duty and report people you KNOW are using these exploits. If you see people on BlueGutter bragging about it, send a report to the Special Task Force, they WILL look into it in-game and see that your accusations are verified and they will be swiftly dealt with. The only reason it has gotten to this point is the complacency of people to put up with cheaters, or being cheaters themselves. You can help stop it. Post on the official forums about it, send bug reports about exploits such as unlimited assault tags, blue magic on any job, etc. etc. and report players notoriously known for using them. With enough outlash from the community, SE will do something about it.
There needs to be a purge of this blight on our realm if Vana'diel is to still be standing for years to come.
I've personally known many legitimate, honest, helpful, trustworthy, hard-working players quit because they no longer feel they can compete in a game where only the worst cheaters can get anywhere. Being praised for your ill-gotten gains is now the norm in this game. It makes you one of the cool kids. What happened to the feeling of accomplishment? What's the point of playing an MMO with gameshark codes on? It's not fair to legitimate players.
Please help stop the stigmatization of good honest players and make Vana'diel a better place.
Give Vana'diel a brighter tomorrow. FFXI was once known for its community... is this Hacker's Paradise the legacy you want to leave behind in the annals of time once the servers go offline?

Having played both, as an MMO addict who's dabbled in literally dozens of similar games, the words "texture pack for WoW" were obviously used in jest, but it's really not far off, no matter how much people defend it (does it need defending? Is that such a bad thing?) the game really 'is' a repackaged WoW. I personally see that as a triumph, to carry elements of an FF game into a WoW-quality system, playable from console... but, it is what it is, so like it or not, "texture pack for WoW" was an adequate enough description for me to discern that he meant FFXIV.

Edited, Sep 12th 2014 3:46pm by FUJILIVES

To me, it sounded like an insult to both WoW and XIV. The way it was worded implied that the poster hates WoW, and doesn't like XIV because it has similar elements that are also found in WoW.

I've seen enough WoW hate on forums (I seriously do not understand why there are so many WoW haters out there. If one doesn't like WoW, hey fine... but to just endlessly bash it everywhere? That's something else entirely..) that it very much looked like aimless hate to me.

To me, it looked like a cheap low jab at both games involved. I'm not denying that XIV does have similar elements (hotkey bars, minimaps, etc), but those elements (at least IMO) make the game more smooth to interact with.

Just because they aren't banned right away doesn't mean they won't be banned. If I remember correctly, a lot of the infamous salvage bans that happened years ago were months after the fact when the ones who cheated least expected it.

It takes time to gather evidence and pinpoint exactly who was doing it and who wasn't. They are likely going to ban them all at the same time once they've determined who was involved.

"Us"? You represent everyone involved in what the OP mentioned? What did you do exactly?

Did what? Item duping? Blue magic on non Blue Mage jobs, teleport hack-- or all of the above?

I understand SE is working on a shoe string and a prayer budget(maybe just the prayer) for testing but come on some stuff should be pretty easy for the devs or programers to think of ways to break it. Though I'm willing to bet they did test pos hacking out of the area and then back into to see what would happen but the cubical slave did just that only to the outside of the zone and back with nothing more. As for the client side handling of tags, did that not cross anyone's minds as a potential exploit. Really I thought at this point in the evolution of MMOs that anything that generates currency, drops or a means to access content handled client side was easy pickings for cracking open like a ripe melon you know kinda like all the other client side exploits that came before that.

I'm one of those people who "gave up hope" for ever obtaining fully upgraded REM years ago as I just don't have the time, so it's understandable why people cheated this event; they could rationalize their time spent vs reward far more easily. If they enjoy the game enough without those cheats, they could easily buy a new account (or existing account from resale sites, possibly also already having REM, depending how much money they can spare) and pop right back on, and if they didn't get banned, well then they could get rich as balls and/or have some of the best items in the game.

I'm old enough and cynical enough at my age to not even get mad when this stuff happens, I just kind of laugh a little, call up friends who used to play the game with me and rant to them about how crazy some of this stuff is.

That being said, it'd be nice to see a reward for NOT doing this now that they know so many did, like... toss a brother a fully upgraded REM of our choice, you know, for loyalties sake!