Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

[EternalMalachi]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

I think its worse than that. I think that when they patched the bug Squeenix wasn't going to just look for who exploited it, but look into the people themselves who exploit and see what ELSE they've been doing. I wonder if those who were permabanned for more serious misconduct had more than just this dupe thing going on.

Or maybe part of the reason for not banning immediately had to do with getting a good picture of the person's account(s) so that they can round up the exploiters all at once and prevent people from trying to transfer gear/money and such to an alt account.

I don't know how much credit I really want to give the STF, though. Most simple explanation is that they patch the bug and pore through the logs when they found out that this had been going on for good long while. People exploiting the bug and keeping it hush hush in order to prevent Squeenix from patching it probably pissed the STF right off and so they went at the investigation with great vengeance and fuuuuurious anger. ^.^

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

Set up the mail filter on POL, its really the only venue they have left in game to advertise now. It will take some time to get them all, but you'll get most of them if you just take the time to set up the filter.

And the mail filter on POL is free, just remember each time you deactivate a content ID to take a break from the game, you have to re-estabilish the mail-filter POL Plus account, too. It will retain the sites you've added to your filter, though.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

They send it via /tell. There is no way to block that except for /blist, and it's always a different spammer every time anyway.

[EternalMalachi]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

I've only ever received one spam gilseller ad. I'm glad that my name starts with a V. ^.^`

[Van'derfel]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

Can someone post a link to the list of people banned? I need a laugh and too tired to go through the posts

[eticket109]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

There's no way they went so long without noticing the glitch. The RNG nerf was one thing, but this was a serious flaw that so many people abused. I think you're right and that they waited for just the right moment, biding their time until they had all the evidence gathered and a false sense of security established to lure and snare as many cheaters as possible.

Do you actually think SE knew about it before they patched it in November and just left it alone so people could abuse it? I think it's much more likely they found out about it and patched it out, then spent about 2 months going through logs and then banned or suspended people based on that. This wasn't a mafia sting or anything, it's sloppy code that people managed to keep quiet for the most part.
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Can someone post a link to the list of people banned? I need a laugh and too tired to go through the posts

The actual ban list won't be known until tomorrow at the very earliest. The list on BG includes suspensions as well and is the 'RIP' thread. A good portion of those names will probably be back in game by Monday. That of course doesn't account for the idiots that leave after the suspensions because 'the game has changed' too much or whatever.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

Do you actually think SE knew about it before they patched it in November and just left it alone so people could abuse it? I think it's much more likely they found out about it and patched it out, then spent about 2 months going through logs and then banned or suspended people based on that. This wasn't a mafia sting or anything, it's sloppy code that people managed to keep quiet for the most part.

Even if it wasn't left in there on purpose, the fact that they waited so long to act led these people to that false sense of security I was talking about. I do think they were ready to ban these people a lot sooner than they did, but waited to get catch people off-guard and have the community's undivided attention when they did it. If they did it in the midst of the holiday season, it wouldn't have had the same impact.

There still would have been a 130+ thread on BG, but would it have garnered the level of attention it did elsewhere?

I think it speaks volumes to see 100 relics - possibly more - removed from the game and to see at least 14 endgame shells obliterated. It shows us how low people were willing to stoop, instead of what we just suspected of others for a long time. It shows us how these people would have handled other things.

Those other things may have had some weight in their decision to ban, player history, number of times a GM had to jail or discipline a player. I don't think they only were looking at the duping here, but the bigger picture.

Those that didn't get a permaban will have a reputation to piece back together. Word gets around on the bigger servers really fast too; smaller servers usually will take what they can get, but perhaps they'll at least think twice now.

That's what I never liked about Titan - you could be the biggest piece of shit on the server and you could still get into a good endgame LS if you had the right jobs and kissed enough ass. I hope they think twice about who they take in now and who they let lead them.

[CS_911]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

is there a rule in the book that sais that glitches are considered cheating and that you will be banned for using something thats originally put there by them? Is so, ill prob get kicked for using the glitches on mnk af and rng af.,\

but seriousely this can go either way and its a very touchy subject, i say, they should stop wasting time on banning people that cause of their mistake are exploiting the game and fix all the crappy things that they did that hurt the ffxi economy. People blame rmt for bad economy but the truth is that s.e did that way before any of us came into this game and if you want to argue that, talk to norm in bahamut server, he really opened my eyes to just how crazzy this game is when it comes to the economy.

[Feba]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

but seriousely this can go either way and its a very touchy subject,

No, it can't. You exploit the game, you break the rules, you get banned.

Pretty much a one way street, buddy.

[eticket109]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

I like the idea of the psychological warfare aspect of it but I just think they took their time to really dig into what was going on. For example, a friend of mine led a salvage group. They started using the exploit about a month before the fix. The person who told them about it and showed them how to use it was given at least the 72 hour suspension. The two people who usually led the alliances for the run each got warning emails and no one else in their group was touched. Granted, it could all be coincidental, but that seems pretty methodical to me. If they did hold off on the punishment, I don't think they did so for very long. Lord knows they're overworked and that is a crapload of logs to go through. Plus I think there may have been a lag due to logistics as well. More on that in a second.

As far as the stats, it's a little early to tally the numbers I think. Again, a lot of the people who got LM-17 messages were told they were banned permanently by overworked CSRs who were dealing with at minimum a 50-1 customer to rep ratio if not a lot higher. A week before all this happened, an ls mate was calling to get his character back and had to wait a long time on hold because 'they were training new reps'. So not only were the CSRs that dealt with the ban calls overworked, they were new as well. Trust me, in an environment like that most reps will do whatever they can to get off the line. Telling people it was permanent and they had no recourse is the quickest way to do that. Also being inexperienced they may not have understood how the suspensions worked. Later calls on Friday confirmed this as people were posting that reps looked deeper and found out some 'permanent' bans were temporary after all.

Granted, some shells will get hit harder, but even if an ls leader gets banned it isn't always the end of the shell. Our leader was suspended and if it turns out to be permanent, we'll probably just reform and move on. Then again we lost 6 at most but I'm only expecting about 3 or so to be permanent bans. One shell exploited the glitch for sandworm BCs and lost over 20 people. They're really the only 'endgame' shell that got hit hard and make up a good chunk of the Valefor list.

As far as players coming back from suspensions and being accepted again, I doubt it will have much of an effect. If the linkshell is still stable it will typically accept its members right back again. As far as the ones that end up 'homeless', I doubt they will have to look around for long. Reputation is often cast aside for the right jobs or gear. Add into that the fact that a lot of people are arguing that the suspensions were unfair to begin with and it's easy to see how people will just fit in to a new community.

Will it have an impact? Yes. Will it have a major impact in the long run? Maybe, but probably not. 500 players over the entire community really isn't a lot. Some places will get hit harder than others but for the most part in a few months a lot of this will be forgotten.

Unless of course SE is really being psychological and randomly drops hammer #2 in a few months. I don't expect that but it seems weird that some servers seem untouched.

[EternalMalachi]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

is there a rule in the book that sais that glitches are considered cheating and that you will be banned for using something thats originally put there by them? Is so, ill prob get kicked for using the glitches on mnk af and rng af.,

I'm not trying to absolve Squeenix of all guilt, but when you have such a huge world as this with hundreds of thousands of people populating it, there are bound to be some issues. It is stated in the ToS that if you run into any bugs/glitches you are to report them so that they can be taken care of, and you are NOT to exploit them or tell others how to exploit them. That is the whole reason all those people were banned. So ya, there is a rule in the book.

I think its silly to demand perfection from ANYONE. I want perfection to be their GOAL and for them to fix their mistakes when they fall short. IMHO, Squeenix has done a pretty good job in that regards. Due to the size and scope of this virtual world, Squeenix relies on their programmers to write stable code, players in the test server to help debug, and the rest of us to catch anything else that falls through the cracks. These people who were banned failed to live up to those expectations and are now paying the price for it. I'll not shed a tear for them.

I am curious as to this economy fixing conspiracy you mentioned. How did they build a bad economy into the game before it ever went live?

[CS_911]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

No, it can't. You exploit the game, you break the rules, you get banned.

Pretty much a one way street, buddy.

I dont pay too much attention to the rule guide they have, so here how it goes, show me a reference that states that using a glitch, that was originaly put there by them, not a 3rd party thing, is considered cheating, and show me where it state that taking advantage of their mistake is considered elligal, if you can reference that i will bow down and say that youre right, but i have to go to s.e.com and make sure that you didnt make it up lol.

why do i ask of this, cause if there is no rules about this, then they cant banned people for it, and if they have rules about it, since when has those rules been there, cause they could have just added that and then use that agaisnt the people that where banned
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talk to norm about that economy thing, on the bahamut server, he makes more sence than what i would, lol but he did say that ffxi is way diff than most mmo when it comes to the economy and making gil, something about the game taking in more gil that it can dish out.
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I'm not trying to absolve Squeenix of all guilt, but when you have such a huge world as this with hundreds of thousands of people populating it, there are bound to be some issues. It is stated in the ToS that if you run into any bugs/glitches you are to report them so that they can be taken care of, and you are NOT to exploit them or tell others how to exploit them. That is the whole reason all those people were banned. So ya, there is a rule in the book.


I am curious as to this economy fixing conspiracy you mentioned. How did they build a bad economy into the game before it ever went live?

i can undertsnad that, but does it sais that its elligal?

[eticket109]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

Considering they've banned people for fighting AV using the 'wall of justice' glitch, the precedent is there.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

Unless of course SE is really being psychological and randomly drops hammer #2 in a few months. I don't expect that but it seems weird that some servers seem untouched.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me, but given the cleaning Titan and Asura got alone in terms of permaban, they may have nailed all they people they wanted to ban for now.

Those permabanned on Titan were no strangers to GMs and the Gael.

Also, I'm somewhat surprised no one has dug up this image since this whole thing started:



First offense, the glass is still half-empty. Benefit of a doubt.

Second offense, they start looking at it as half empty. Temp ban or Gael time.

Third offense, Banned.

Three strikes. Glass is definitely half-empty.

[hpsolo]

Re: Handling Misconduct (Jan. 22) aka Ban hammer!

Even if it wasn't left in there on purpose, the fact that they waited so long to act led these people to that false sense of security I was talking about. I do think they were ready to ban these people a lot sooner than they did, but waited to get catch people off-guard and have the community's undivided attention when they did it. If they did it in the midst of the holiday season, it wouldn't have had the same impact.

There still would have been a 130+ thread on BG, but would it have garnered the level of attention it did elsewhere?

I think it speaks volumes to see 100 relics - possibly more - removed from the game and to see at least 14 endgame shells obliterated. It shows us how low people were willing to stoop, instead of what we just suspected of others for a long time. It shows us how these people would have handled other things.

Those other things may have had some weight in their decision to ban, player history, number of times a GM had to jail or discipline a player. I don't think they only were looking at the duping here, but the bigger picture.

Those that didn't get a permaban will have a reputation to piece back together. Word gets around on the bigger servers really fast too; smaller servers usually will take what they can get, but perhaps they'll at least think twice now.

That's what I never liked about Titan - you could be the biggest piece of shit on the server and you could still get into a good endgame LS if you had the right jobs and kissed enough ass. I hope they think twice about who they take in now and who they let lead them.

Having read your posts, I guess I can only say that I am impressed with your ability to stand above everyone else in terms of cheating in the game. I would surmise that you probably never used a windower other than SE's own. Otherwise, that would be breaking the ToS, wouldn't it? If you truly aren't a hypocrite, like others who say they only use unofficial windowers for windowing purposes and not any of its plugins, and throughout your gaming history you've never "stooped so low" as to cheat, then kudos indeed.

Perhaps its this pure record that you have that prevents you from sympathizing with those who will be losing their accounts. This raises the question of whether you even bothered to think about just who might have lost their accounts; or are all those who banned automatically cheaters? And what is cheating? At what point does exploiting game mechanics become cheating? Does logging out to clear hate equate to an exploit or cheating? And what about mobs like Acamoth, against whom the general strategy is to have someone zone the spawns? Or casting DoTs on mobs, zoning, and repeating? Are we not exploiting certain game mechanics? The only people who gets to decide is SE. Maybe today they clearly spell out what is allowed and what is not allowed. Maybe they say nothing, only to decide much later after having seen too much "abuse" of these "exploits."

I myself freely admit that I took part in the duping process for about six salvage runs. My salvage group got temporarily suspended. But a few managed perma-bans. I will be returning this Monday, though I'm not sure if I'll be staying long due to the arbitrary nature of how the bans were given. You see, a few of our members had just joined our group, and knew nothing about salvage. To them, the disbanding of the alliance without the hindrance to any party's attacks on the enemy thereafter was no different from Dynamis and Einherjar. The actions taken by the group leader seemed just as normal as when they were instructed to log out and back in, or to not use their cells (even though intuitively it made more sense for everyone to use their cells to clear floors faster). And sadly, they were permanently banned for being unknowing participants in the duping process. At the same time, someone like me only gets a suspension (for the record, I did not lot on any gear or alexandrites and perhaps that may have been what saved me... then again, neither did some of those who were perma-banned). And still others (feel free to check BG) have not only abused the exploit in salvage and finished off a set or two, they also used the exploit in Nyzul -- and come Monday, they'll be right back in the game. Even worse, some merely got a letter of warning via email.

You might wonder if I knew what I was getting into -- of course I knew. Did I think about the consequences? Honestly... no. I was too excited about this chance to further the goals of the group with which I did salvage, so it never even occurred to me that I could lose my account. Truth be said, I figured they'd just ninja patch it and like with all other ninja patches, all was said and done with the update. This in no way makes what I did ok. Nor does it somehow warrant a lesser punishment. What I did was wrong, and in retrospect, I should have known better.

Many people might feel vindicated that those of us who "stooped so low" got what we deserved. To an extent, I agree with that sentiment. I deserved being suspended, and had I been permanently banned, I (probably) would have accepted that as well. However, many of those who gleefully relish in these bans fail to see how SE has failed to serve even those who didn't "stoop so low." Come Monday, there will still be people who exploited the duping playing the same game -- namely, myself. Even worse, there will be folks who exploited the game and made off with a good amount of gear (I could only wish this were me). But the tragedy is that there are folks who won't be coming back due to sheer bad luck -- being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Granted, they may be a very small number, but they exist nonetheless. I truly feel badly for those who were excited about joining a salvage group, and in their want to impress the current members with their obedience, got unintentionally burned by their friends.

In the meantime, SE continues to allow the use of programs such apradar, distance calculators, spell timers, spell recasters for spells such as utsusemi, sneak, etc, bot-claiming, etc. and the list goes on. No, they don't directly condone the use of these programs, but they indirectly do so by failing to devise a way to truly hinder or substantially dissuade the use of these programs that break their own ToS. And it's not as if these programs just popped up last night -- they've been around for years. To this day, I see a myriad of screenshots (be it here, on BG, KI, or ffxiah.com) with these plugins in blatant view.

My point here is that SE's use of the "ban hammer" is quite arbitrary. If you think about it, your account could be banned at any point of time. Maybe you find a new way of killing PW or AV, and you think it's legit. Maybe you continue to use the log-out "trick" in salvage to pop a certain frog NM rather than have all your members not use cells until much later, and for the time being SE does nothing. Wouldn't it suck if some time down the road that they decide to retroactively ban people because they finally noticed that other people who used the same technique got more drops from AV and/or PW than they should have, such as the LSes who spammed AV when it was known that it could be zerged by DRKs? or if they decide that logging out is circumventing the "spirit" of that particular salvage zone and it's pop conditions? Even among the guilty, their solution is just as arbitrary. Some folks get permanent bans, while others who seemingly abused the exploits are simply slapped on the wrist.

I find it amusing that you don't see any problem with how SE is handling the situation. Then again, it appears you have a perfectly pure record, so perhaps these musings never occur to you anyway...