What Would Make You Re-Sub?

Still subbed after a recent 3 month break. Play time has gone way down from maybe 18 hours a week to perhaps three which is pushing towards unsub again.

A new job would be cool. Cape consolidation would be excellent. Utilize existing content more like "Tier II mode Meeble burrows or Salvage etc". Make the game static unfriendly and force more random player interaction; 8+ players should be able to access 6 man content for example. Quit being obviously obtuse to your players SE. Let us play the game to have fun instead of lockouts; I want a second stab at the nm after I've spent an hour forming the party...

It seems like the common consensus is two fold:

• 1. Allow Ody / Sortie key items to stack like Omen ones do.

• 2. Allow for more than 6 players to enter content.

The first should be an easy fix for SE. I have been supporting such a change for years.

The latter change shouldn't even be contested by SE. Simply make it the content scaling and give players the option to do 6 or 6+. This doesn't stop hardcore statics, while still letting linkshells play together.

Question for general community:

Do I need an active FFXI account to post on the FFXI Official Forums?
I might ask a friend to translate common NA complaints into JP. Because let's face it, SE doesn't care about ENG / NA players. Hopefully this will stir changes (hopefully = less than 0.07% change of success).

I'd also like to see consequent actions against bots, rmt and all that bunch, wouldn't even need to be bans, so SE can keep the sub fee.

Maybe with correlating consequences to the offense.
Been JP or ML botting? randomly delvl to 99 during a event.
Leeched of such a bot? DoT type debuff to your capacity and exemplar points for the amount you leeched.
bought gil? remove their glow, turn their lockstyle into a more shitty version of sparks gear and tint basic "naked" gear purple gray or something.
Ja0wait? replace footprints with banana peels.
react? hit them with a annoying permanent debuff like high frequency paralyze or amnesia for the rest of the duration of the instance + next time they join instanced endgame content.
tacco? get drawn in by random targets with increasing frequence every time you use it.

Reward all multiple offenses of the above with a hidden debuff that ensures they bottom out on every parse till they got rid of their illgotten gains but at least for 24 hours with increasing duration.


I'd resub for a year just to praise deeds of justice like the above.

Sounds like a great way to drive even more people away.

I think they could allow alliances inside sortie no problem.
I'd love such a change actually.

But for Odyssey... not really. I mean for Sheol A/B/C maybe, but for Gaol? How would they even do that?
I mean sure they could but I honestly don't see it ever happening.

But yeah, it's long due they do something, anything, whatever to make catching up easier for people who returned, people who never bothered with odyssey, or people who are stuck on a certain low/mid Vengeance level and can't seem to progress.
I'm all for creating a divide between good and bad players when an event is relatively new but we're way beyond that for Odyssey right now.

Despite FFXIAH seemingly attracting a sizeable amount of pro cheating folks (or maybe just a lot of sock accounts, who knows) I'm not the only one advocating consequences for cheating.
They would repulse a certain audience at the same time it would attract a different one + cheaters always return. Wether side would outweight the other and which audience is the more desireable one to attract to your game is up for debate and without official data will probably always stay a opinion based debate.

Alternatively SE could redraw the redline, greenlighting everything from bots to exploits, which approach would be more popular one is again up for debate.

however, making a ruleset and then only arbitrarily, selectively or occasionally enforce it will lead to a sence of injustice and eventually erode every form of community.

I'm not sure the ones that would be attracted will be as profitable as the ones it sends away, and greenlighting everything would do somewhat the same as it makes it loud and clear they dont care anymore and at a point only people who bot/exploit will get anywhere in the game. Ultimately the damage has already long been done, and i dont see any change one way or the other really impacting things for the better long term

I would pay double if it meant getting something substantial like an expansion... I don't think most mind the monthly fee, as seen by how many people bought those mog wardrobes.

Cheating is the least of the games problems atm, we need better/more content..

I can't speak for others but personly, and i can't stress this enough, patching omen and sortie KI stacking to a minuscle amount like omen does would deter me even more from a resub. If there has to be a restriction at all then it should be selected generously so only bots would get hampered by it.

Imho it should be up to the individual wether they want to go once a day or save up for the weekend or holidays and spam to their hearts content, everything else is patronizing.

Can really only bang this drum for so long.

If you aren't willing to make it change it's not going to change. You want alliance sortie. Stop *** doing sortie. Every time you go you confirm it's exactly what you want. Make the metrics look bad.

Would be better to organize with the JP. Look at how Fujita responded to the backlash. I guess some issues they are forced to respond

SE aggressively pursued cheating, RMT, etc for many years and it got nowhere aside from some temporary fluctuations in the games economy. They supposedly still do in some capacity and I do know people have been banned for several common cheats/hax. I'm not "pro cheating", but I understand why SE largely gave up on it and enforces it piecemeal based on reports. It's a losing battle with many technical and staffing challenges.

You also have to consider just how you detect usage of these tools. It has to operate at scale and largely programmatic, to avoid requiring staff resources to hunt them down, so you have to identify patterns the addon/tool creates and then find a way to identify those server side so you can act appropriately, all while trying to avoid false positives on legitimate behavior or other (performance) issues. Many of the tools people use would be difficult to reliably detect outside of a few behaviors they already do. It's not as simple as saying "do x when you detect react", the detection part is non-trivial.

For banning people that buy gil or join known bot parties, first you have to identify them and assume there is enough logging to do this. I have no idea what kind of logging they are doing but again doing this at scale requires a lot of correlation and work, then you risk impacting legitimate players if a player is misidentified as RMT or parties with one and doesn't realize it.

It's ultimately a losing battle. Newer games use more invasive means of detecting cheats and tools like this, but the development effort required to integrate that into FFXI would be significant.

They did point out in an interview that this is something they wanted to do more about if given more resources, but it comes with a lot of challenges. All that said, it is frustrating that individual players are banned for things like farming tools when you can throw a rock in KRT and hit 5 parties using the same tools.

10 years ago you might have had a case. But in 2023, banning bots is not going to bring people back to the game. Bots or no, you still have to do Sortie and Odyssey.

Again, without official data this can only stay a opinion based argument.
Also OP asked "What would make you Re-Sub?" and while i'm aware that this isn't necessarily the right audience for this I personly find the overall idea of ridiculing cheaters amusing enough for a resub.

And there were already folks arguing similarly 10 years ago.
This has always been a central piece of cheaters narrative: It doesn't do any harm, almost everyone does it, the critical mass has switched camps long ago and if you'd take action now the game dies.
Almost as if they're trying to convince themselves.

Honestly, I haven't seen bots running and selling Odyssey or Sortie yet. Selling CP or ML? Sure, but Odyssey and Sortie?

Unless you consider all of the multiboxers a bot.

To be honest I understand why there are so severe limits on entering the two newest instances. It is clear that we will not get anything new for the next few years (or maybe never), so they were made this way to keep people in the game as long as possible.

Oh SE listens, but they have selective hearing. This one was my favorite: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/56105-November-2019-FINAL-FANTASY-XI-Digest?p=622300&viewfull=1#post622300

After that, they added Beastmaster pets that can buff the master. (I wish there was more of these to be honest).

Yeah, but if they overdo it it could turn out to have the opposite effect of what they are trying to achieve.
We'll have to wait and see how many cave in after the next welcome home campaign ends but the current trend seems to indicate they overdid it.

It’s difficult (basically impossible) to bot Sortie and Ody higher tier NMs while someone afk / leeches.

Given this difficulty, I don’t think opening up the player limit would lead to a sudden botting / RMT. Sure mercs will jump on it tho.

The limits still work to prevent bots/RMT. Odyssey limit means you can sell at most 4 nms a day, if you make excellent seg runs and don't use amps yourself. If you want more than that, you need an additional 5 characters to try to sell a second round. That's not very sustainable with the level of gear needed, so it's a reasonable deterrant to large scale odyssey mercing by RMT.

Sortie limit means you can maybe sell 3 slots a day if you can farm worthwhile gaullimaufry with 3. Without those limits, you could run a 4man sortie farm and sell 2 slots all day long, for a total of maybe 30 leech slots with higher output per slot. Again, if you wanted more than that, you need an additional set of farm chars. The output per farm char makes a dedicated operation selling either(or both) of these logistically difficult.

I still think they would be better off letting key items stack a little more (2-3 days worth?), but a particularly loose limit would definitely result in RMT taking over Sortie farming and making legitimate groups much harder to find the same way they took over job points then master levels.

by the way- the Ranger in me had fooled myself during the TVR storyline into believing we might be getting a "Valhalla"-typed endgame zone with actual Double Light Weather in an endgame event (first since Limbus I believe?). Call me crazy, but I would have danced in the street for an endgame event NOT in double-darkness.

1) F2P
2) Somehow making everything we used to do relevant again. Having 10 different options of things to do with all kinds of group sizes and configurations was what made the game unique and fun. Over the years of subbing, unsubbing, and free campaigns I had less and less to do each time I logged in - eventually leading to me not logging in at all.
3) Make crafting great again

The RMT and bots would argue it is still great. xD

I would argue it never was great.

It was pretty thrilling get a HQ or finding a T1 etc. The shields ruined crafting.

I had WW @ 110, guild points, etc. Once shields came out, and I saw that grind, I gave up on crafting entirely.

I would love an end-game event where the zone weather was randomized upon entering and static for the whole event.

While we're at, make the Beastman/Monster/NM combinations that we fight, also randomly generated from various lists.

...But please just, let it take place in zones that can be familiarized. For example, Shadowreign era versions of zones like Fort Ghelsba, Fort K, Merophitaud Mountains, La Theine Plaeau, etc etc. I mean, literally anything with recognizable structures ....but I'm just so sick and tired of mono-chromatic end-game zones where every room looks the same. (However, grey Escha zones are not bad for being monocratic because they have familiar terrains, but Outer Raz can die in a fire).

Fort ghelsba would be a fun endgame level with all the multi levels and path ways.

I personally enjoyed the current crafting system. Once you grind out the shield its a ton of fun. And shields not much worse than a rema just little longer, 3 months though isn't a terrible grind.

Farming Southern Pearls to make Haub -1's during the synergy days. Trying to make signed Amemet Mantle +1's for the whole LS. The random Dusk Gloves +1 when skilling up. Too many good crafting memories