So what is this new way to XP on RNG buisness?Follow

So wtf is this?

http://www.ffxiah.com/screenshots.php?id=37635

that's hilarious.

Would you get banned, though? If your puller uses a low-enmity action to get hate (like a missed attack), it should be fairly simple to have a PLD/WHM use Barstonra (or something similar) by the gate so it hits the puller to get the PLD on the hate list, then use a Cure-cheat to make sure hate's on the PLD, and run away from the gate. From there, the Skoffin is clearly targetable, and the RNGs kill it. No 3rd party tools seem to be required, so while it's technically an "exploit" (like RDM soloing, or Astral Burns), it will probably still be allowed.

If this were AV, I'd see it getting patched. But since it nets less XP/hour than a normal TPburn, even, I can't see this getting patched, much less people getting banned over it. SE will more than likely just chuckle at player inventiveness, and go back to whatever they were doing before.

I don't know, while as far as the game mechanics are concerned, it's an obvious exploit, in actuality it's closer to the way real archers actually fought (let the enemy try to break down the main gate, and shoot them while they try).

Basically, what I'm saying is that I could see a GM banning someone over it if they come across it first. On the other hand, if a designer comes across it (or, maybe a designer that doesn't work for SE), I could see it even being expanded, with special XP camps designed like this just for Ranged Attackers.

Of course, SE "broke up" with RNG long ago, so I don't expect that to actually happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar shows up in FFXIV.

I'm not denying that it's an exploit. I'm saying that archers in real life use the same "exploit" shown here, by shooting from towers and up behind battlements. Art imitating life and all that. Just because something is an exploit doesn't necessitate that it is bad.

What I'm talking about here is the difference between the Javelin exploit in Modern Warfare 2, which was plainly broken and did nothing to make the game more fun or preserve balance, and the "Combo" glitch found in the original release of Street Fighter II (which was quickly expanded on in Street Fighter II: Turbo), which is the foundation for the entire modern fighting game genre. It's less a bug, and more a feature.

I find it more interesting to discuss games on the design level, since that's what really interests me about them. I don't know if you are the type of person who plays games strictly "by the book" (and I'm not limiting this to video games, either), but I never was. I'm all about expanding the game, introducing house rules to deal with weak points in the original game's design and such. For example, one of my favorite ways to play Super Mario Brothers 3 was to ignore the game proper, and play the "Mario vs. Luigi" sewers minigame until we got a "collect the coins" level. We'd collect all but one, and then just play Tag instead of racing for the coins. It goes completely against the way the game was "intended to be played", but I got more enjoyment out of it, as did my friends. I'm not a gamer or a meta-gamer. I'm a meta-meta-gamer, if that makes any sense.

If I'm reading you correctly, you seem to think this should be changed so it's impossible. I, on the other hand, would rather see SE introduce "Forts" designed specifically for this, but probably with gates that the mob can batter down so the attackers inside aren't completely safe, and would have to move from fort to fort in order to keep partying. I'm not about maintaining the status quo, but rather for improving it, because there is yet to be a perfect game (Portal is pretty close, though), and even if there were, FFXI is certainly not it.

If you want to continue to argue that it's an exploit, and therefore bannable, I won't disagree (even though I personally think SE won't bother banning them), but limiting the discussion to that is pretty boring to me.

Since I was the one who brought up the idea of a breakable barrier, yes, I would think it obvious that I can see the difference. Edit: although they're not *that* different, since if the barrier breaks on the first few mobs pulled, it's a pretty worthless setup unless you're getting massive XP per kill, since you'll spend so much time roaming to the next fort.

I still take issue with use of the term "exploit" as a negative. It's a neutral term, and can be good or bad. All it denotes is that the program is behaving in a way it wasn't intended to (but the programming allows).

Edited, Mar 18th 2010 2:04pm by Aliekber

I guess it really doesn't rub me the wrong way for 3 reasons:

1) 9k/hour. They're not killing NMs here (which is far more likely to get you a ban, especially if it's AV), this is XP, and not great XP at that.

2) Who dies in XP? Seriously, when is the last time you were actually in any real danger in an XP party when you weren't overcamping, playing with retarded people, or had an AFK healer?

3) RNGs don't get great invites. BLM pet soloing is a pretty cheap trick (even though I <3 it), as is Astral Burning, and both of those have been allowed (I'm assuming) because BLM and SMN are last-place invites to XP parties.

So yes, it's an exploit. I'd never bother with it, though, since I have my chigoe burns (which are 50 times more broken than this, yet completely legit), and am not a RNG anyway. I'm not trying to troll here, I honestly would be very surprised if anyone got banned for this as long as it is only used for XP, and no NMs are involved (which would probably bring the banhammer swiftly).

How are you not seeing that I'm agreeing with you?

The primary reason I'd be surprised is that this is SE we're talking about. People pos hack all the time and don't get banned for it. I don't, personally, but I know lots of people who do/have, and only one of them has been banned, and that's Rog.

He got banned for "instructing others how to use 3rd party tools", if I recall correctly.

Secondly, I didn't say he got banned for pos-hacking, only that he did it, and has been banned.

But I'm about 95% sure that Pahn is just acting stupid to troll me, so I'm done here. On that note, well done.

So long, RNG forum, and thanks for the (red) arrows!

for what it's worth, i neither rated you down nor am trolling you. it genuinely baffles me that you don't see how quickly these people would be banned if SE found out what they were doing. if someone walked by and GM'd them, they'd all be temp banned / GM jailed at the very least. just as if someone was pos hacking around bastok and someone GM'd them. everything you wrote about XP/hr and such was irrelevant...

First of all, you didn't specify the above before. If they're not earning omgwtfbbq XP/hour, other people aren't going to care, and probably won't go out of their way to GM them. It's easy enough to play it off if someone wants to zone out of MMJSP and the Skoffin is there ("oh yeah, we zoned into the staging point to lose aggro and it followed us lol"). The main thing going against them is that they were camped at Mamool Ja Staging point, and people need to use that gate for their merit parties. If it were a place that nobody ever goes unless they absolutely need to (Dvucca Isle Staging Point on Qutrubs comes to mind; most people rarely go there for anything besides Assault, and they don't need to use the gate for that). If nobody sees them, nobody can GM them. SE certainly isn't going to seek them out from an FFXIAH picture.

Also, checking FFXIAH activity, none of them have been banned, since they have activity for yesterday. So there's that.

But, short version, just so we're 100% clear: I agree that a GM would probably ban them (like I said earlier), but I don't think they will get banned because people aren't going to care enough to GM them/SE isn't going to care enough to follow the people in the screenshot until they try it again (because the XP/hour sucks, they're RNGs, etc.). If they had instead posted a picture of them getting 120k/hour from this exploit, and/or killing some hard NM using it, SE might take more of an interest (and people would be more likely to GM them), but I really can't see them caring enough to bother as things stand.

The Red Arrows comment was a riff on "So long and thanks for all the fish", more as a joke than anything else (since RNGs shoot arrows, and this is the RNG forum, blah blah blah). If I really cared about karma, I'd never talk about melee RDM and would probably be Guru by now, no? Oh, and I guess I'd post in the BST forums a lot. Those guys know how to spread the love.

Finally, I am more interested in the design implications of this than whether it's a ToS violation (it is), whether it's bannable (yeah), or whether they will get banned for it (doesn't look like it so far). If you would like to discuss that, then I'd be happy to stick around regardless of any red arrows that may fly my way, but if you keep responding with 'no, you don't get it, they're gonna get bant!' type responses, I really have nothing else to say, because I do, in fact, get it. We just seem to disagree about SE's competency/ability to care enough to go after these guys from one FFXIAH screenshot.

Ah, my bad. I just woke up, didn't recall you posting that yesterday. The rest of the post still stands, though.

Edit: Actually, you know what? You're right, they're going to get banned if SE ever catches on to this. How about that.

Now, can we please talk about the interesting part of this?

Edited, Mar 19th 2010 7:21am by Aliekber

It's interesting (to me) for two main reasons:

1) because the way real archers fought IRL is the equivalent of a video game exploit (which I just find funny, possibly I'm alone in this).

2) because it brings to mind alternative ways to set up an XP party (in the game design sense, not in the party leader sense), such as having it set up like a Tower Defense game, where the mobs run past, and you try to kill as many as you can before you are overrun. I already talked about the breakable barrier idea, which is similar in concept to the idea of a Tank, but it doesn't lose XP when it "dies" (so that can be a part of the strategy without anyone complaining), and instead of curing it up, you find a new one when the one you were using breaks. When I think more about it, it doesn't have a place so much in FFXI as it might in other games (possibly FFXIV) because FFXI already has a "throw more DD" at it approach, and if you did away with the need for Healers and Tanks in XP, it would just be worse all around for everyone because everyone in XP would demand DDx6 parties, and there would be no Tanks + Mages for endgame.

I lol'd cause.... while everyone in the party is mostly healed, both rngs and the pld are engaged on the mob, somehow all the pt members got through the gate w/o dieing, then arranged themselves properly, while killing off th erest of the mob... yeah DOESNT sound fishy to me at all. Looks pretty setup to me. Looking at both Rng's hp's (being a hume ranger) i would say they were synced to 70 at the very lowest, which would make a skoffin quite killable.

and lol the Fuzzyllama is doing 41 dmg/hit more than Abela in the shot.

Edited, Mar 19th 2010 2:49pm by Aryden

What? Your examples could be considered Acceptable Breaks From Reality, while the exploit shown here is something that makes the game more realistic, yet is against the rules. It may seem like nitpicking, but there's a difference between the two; the latter is very rare compared to the former. I'm only mentioning it for the humor aspect, nothing more.



I don't disagree with any of this--I basically laid out why it was a bad idea for FFXI (even if the barrier is breakable), but including something like this in FFXIV, which is supposedly more casual-focused, could make sense.

Sadly, I also agree that SE isn't likely to make changes to help RNG, especially after that last update where they yanked the good part of the changes to the job out at the last second.

we had to kill it in order to get back to our camp, saying that we set this up is stupid. why would i even bother. only reason i titled the screenshot as "the new way to exp on rng" was because i thought that people would see how funny it was for the skoffin to be stuck halfway through the gate. let me ask you this was that supposed to happen, i don't think so yet all you trollers are are so bent on labeling a glitch as we were exploiting the game mechanics. after we killed the skoffin we went back to our party. the jp rdm and brd in the party were laughing when i said that godzilla was trying to get us. you guys need to grow a sense of humor and stop bieng so negative. screenshot meant to be laughed atnot to speculate as to whether its an exploit. get a life you losers.

Oh, I don't expect you or anyone else really to be interested in what I'm interested in. After all, if everyone was as interested in design as I am, we'd spend all our time debating mechanics and design in forums and nobody would play the games themselves.

As a side note, I was in a bit of a crabby mood yesterday (well, most of the week, really), so apologies if my comments were irritating/upsetting/whatever. I'm going to Vegas tomorrow, so I'm suspecting I'll be significantly more pleasant to talk to after I get back from there.

It's called logical gymnastics.

Wow, I think some people are missing the point. They tried to zone a skoffin when that happened. None of them were trying to use an exploit.

derailed topic is more fun than "lol silly skoffin."

Old school chigoe burn was more fun though, I'd rather AFK and come back 7 levels richer. (63-70) xD