An Open Letter to Square EnixFollow

(Originally posted to my blog site (http://kimiko-ffxi.1up.com) & BlueGartr forms.)

To the development team and special task force of Final Fantasy XI:

I would like to take this opportunity to speak with you in regards to some of the changes that were made to Final Fantasy XI during the version update of December 8th, 2008. Specifically, I would like to address the following changes...

"The sale prices for the following items have been changed: Black Ink / Bugard Skin / H. Q. Bugard Skin / Orc Piercer / Yagudo Freezer / Shellbuster / Leech Saliva / Bird Blood / Beast Blood "

"The respawn time for Treasure Coffers and Treasure Chests has been shortened, and the chances of obtaining artifacts, maps, and key items from them have been increased. Furthermore, after obtaining items or gil from a coffer or chest, players will temporarily become unable to receive items or gil from other coffers or chests."

While I must commend you on your continued efforts in the elimination of real money traders from the game, I find it extremely disappointing that you decided in this case to, "Cure the disease by killing the patient." Did you think for even one minute that in your relentless hunt for RMT, that you have single handedly destroyed one of the few viable sources of income remaining in the game for thousands of legitimate players? Not everyone in the game has a viable crafting income, nor does everyone involve themselves in the HNM scene for making a little bank. To these people, who I count myself as one of, being able to farm simple mobs for gil was a lifeline to a reasonable living within the game. A lifeline which you, in your sweeping brushstrokes to round up RMT, have forcefully severed. Did you even think that your efforts to crush RMT had already had a positive effect on the game? 82,000 banned accounts with over 33 billion gil removed from circulation in the last year alone. I would be remiss to say that you have already made an impact upon those that have chosen to cheat in this matter. While there may still be some RMT lingering about in areas, however they are nowhere close to the levels of a year or two ago. Why, at this point was such a catastrophic countermeasure required to combat the RMT presence? Why not continue the efforts that have made the game a better place for everyone? While this change does place a major strain against the remaining RMT, you have also placed that same burden upon the community at large. A burden in which, in my opinion, is detrimental to the game as a collective whole.

All I ask of you is that you please reconsider the changes that were made as of Monday's version update in consideration of the thousands of players that are needlessly punished by these changes. Together through the efforts of the STF & the community, we are winning the fight against the RMT. The medicine is indeed working; all we ask is the time and patience for the patient to become well once again.

Thank you,

Sincerely
- Kimiko of Siren

couldn't have said it better myself, Kimiko

Edited, Dec 9th 2008 9:13pm by ionia

If anything, it kind of speaks on working toward alleviating the rarity of some things so there's not this huge gaping void of basic stuff people have and the "holy ****, he must have no life!" kind of things.

I can understand it being an intention to getting gil circulating between players, but the nerf didn't exactly do anything to revitalize crafts, either. People will just try to find something else to pigeonhole until that presumably gets the nerf bat.

I've made this point numerous times before, but Assaults could really stand to have the tag system abolished. Limit rank ups to once per conquest tally, leave Salvage to once a day, throw in more point items (Khroma Ore, Behemoth Hides, Star Sapphires, etc.. Mainly the **** that translates to farming 100 stacks of beehive chips) that people can work for and know they'll acquire instead of praying for a drop, and suddenly the sting for gil isn't as pressing. This has the added benefit of helping people get clears while putting a dent in the optimum party formation stigma that can leave less favored jobs with their thumbs up their butts.

Crafters will still need gil to do their thing, and HNM shells and random NM hunters will still earn their keep. We're just dangerously approaching the point where luck is all that matters to success anymore, and that's a bad thing.

As an increasingly casual player, I am also upset about the changes that have come about recently as combative measures to RMT. I've played this game since the Christmas after the NA release and certainly much has changed.

It seems to me that allowing for easy ways of making gil is actually a fairly effective means of combating RMT. While I refuse to buy gil myself out of principle, I can see how people might justify buying it given the current Vanadiel economy. 1M gil goes a long way these days. Also, the killing the patient to cure the disease is an apt comparison.

Rare BCNM drops aren't worth the gil they once were. Crafting is top heavy and undercut all to hell so if you don't have gil to dump into it to reach 100 you're SOL. NPC'able farm items have been massively nerfed. The list goes on. FFXI is mirroring the real world in its deep recession. However, unlike the US, instead of cutting rates and attempting to make currency more fluid and available, SE continues to remove ways of legitimitely earning gil. Basic economic principles point to this being a poor move. How many players are really going to stick around as we continue to spiral downward toward the bottom of the barrel?

SE, file the lawsuit against RMT sites and get this whole mess over with already. The nerfs that have taken place have decreased my enjoyment of the game. I accepted the time sink inherent to this game long ago, but it only seems to be worsening to the point of unbearable. I'd say I appreciate the reduction in costs to dynamis and limbus, except the reduction in available gil sources has left everything right where it started.

I've had to lay off two of my 75 jobs just to get by...the way things are going, soon the best source of income will be farming beastmen for auto-gil drops. That is until it gets nerfed...

They want this to be a player ecomomy... that is why they have NPC's that sell spells, items, etc. This is why Chocobos cost money, Limbus costs money, boat rides cost money, Dynamis costs money... yet none of these things return any money... just items that can be traded.

This game was founded on money being brought into the economy from quests, missions, killing beastmen, BCNM, and yes, Vendoring useless junk! I've been NPCing stuff that doesn't sell fast on the AH since the beginning, I may not turn as big of a profit, but I'll fill my inventory faster and have room on the AH to sell stuff that will sell fast.

I like the letter... I just know how well SE listens on things like this. They had their reasons and I trust that they did what was needed. Doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it.

This was indeed a very bad move from SE side.

If you consider the amount of money that is paid to npcs by the player base everyday:

Dynamis
Enjerial
Outpost
Chocobos
Limbus

If you add all that per week, the money that we lend to npcs, you will find it to be a quite huge amount of money, well it happens that this money comes precisely from the people farming stuff and selling it to npcs for gils, or opening coffers during their farming sessions.

This update made that money not worth to be done anymore, and while the top endgamers could be doing millions with 1 or 2 drops, that money actually it's meaningless for the player base balance, it comes from us(the player base) and it ends with us.

If we cannot get as much money from the npcs as we pay them the community will run away of gil and the economy will bankrupt eventually, and the new FoV doesn't have any chance to stand to the rate of gil that we use to get before by selling weapons to npcs and opening coffers.

More than this being just a problem of "Casual Players" loosing their ways of making money, is a very serious problem that could end really bad for the community itself.

I would like to know your comments.

Sincerely.

Ken.

I normally would not chime in on this sort of emotionally fueled topic but this hits too close to home. Yes I can still make gil even now that is made through npc and crafting combined means. But several years ago many of the same people complaining now were frothing at the mouth with glee when SE nerfed the hell out of rusty gear synths.

This started the ball rolling, and like many things in life was fundamentally flawed from the very beginning, but few complained until the last axe drops on them. This path should have never been taken it was the wrong way to approach problems. Many of the damages should be reversed but at this point in time I can say with most certainty they will not. The rusty cap nerf was sold at the time as a temporary nerf, does it seem temporary now?

The dev team should be able to reasonably sit down and calculate how much gil/hr can be made through npc means given level and level of craft. Then design drop rates and Npc prices to match set goals. Say starting out a level 10 player can expect to receive 10k an hour but if they start leveling ww they could get 15k an hr by level 10 ww. And by 75 50-75K/hr seems reasonable but if combined with a level 100 craft one could expect 100-150k/hr. And this is completely based on Npc prices and drop rates + crafting time.

This type of system would benefit SE greatly because it would take more time for RMT to get to a reasonable level to benefit from. Crafting would be fun and rewarding. SE would get all those nice payments from rmt for a month or two before striking with the ban hammer. Farming/crafting would be spread out. And the casual player could afford food and events while the hardcore get their gear.

Go cry me a river... please...

People who are losing out on farming these items have nothing to complain about compared to past npc'ing nerfs.

I leveled my alchemy to 90 and had my sole source of income farming mistletoe and synthing remedies. Now I'm left crafting worthless crap because prices have plummeted to a fraction of their old worth and are always fully stocked on the AH and dropping more each week.



Are you serious? The simple quests you have access to at the start of the game can easily supply a new player with the spare change to start supporting themselves on the AH with little to no effort at all.

Just killing mandragora in East Sarutabaruta can get you loads of items they can turn in for quick and easy cash. And eitehr way we're talking about low level players placing things on the starter city AH's... it costs like 10g to put something up there.

If people don't have the patience to do a little farming or quests in a game like this then they probably weren't going to last very long anyway.

It never ceases to amaze me how whenever you have a community finally band together for a greater cause, that is obviously in the wrong and in need of change, there are always a few idiots who will "Go against the grain" and try to find reasons to justify themself, against all logic.

As people have said before, not everyone is the same, and not everyone wants to make money the exact same way. If there was only one way to make money in a MMO and it was insanely hard, the MMO wouldn't last a day, I can guarantee you that. People are different, as they are in the real world, and how they make money is based on their own preference and personality. By taking these options from people to make money, you are also depressing them out of wanting to look to new methods and frustrating them. This frustration can often lead to things like gil buying, or quitting. If anything there needs to be MORE ways for players to be able to make a decent income/per/hour while still maintaining a real life and being able to do other activities in the game other than farming. Because this is not a job, and when it starts feeling that way, people tend again, cheat or quit. No one wants to farm in all their free time just so they can afford some in game food/meds/endgame fee's. It takes the fun out of the game

People don't need to be insanely rich, but if they don't feel like they can have fun or at least not be completely bored to death by making some currency, again, they get frustrated and resort to quitting or cheating. There is a point where something goes from being hard or taking a long time, to being impractical and not worth the time involved, and cutting into real life activities that people are starting to learn, matter more than a video game.

Square Enix needs to get with the times, on alot of issues. FFXI is a incredible game, with a few minor things holding it back. They don't make it hard, it's just as one person said earlier in this thread :



This really is a problem in the game anymore... I hate seeing people put so much time and work into something only to lose all their hard work and time, it's just not worth the risk. I see it happen to people all the time in end game and it is very upsetting. I don't mind things taking a long time or hard work, I just don't like seeing people LOSE their hard work over the stupidest of things. And now they take even the farming aspect out of it... As I said before, this is a great game, SE just needs to make some changes.

You have my full Support Kimiko.

Edited, Dec 9th 2008 10:07pm by EndlessJourney

SE does not do research nor testing. They use us as the testing group... their paying customers. Overall it is great letter that Kimiko wrote, very polite and to the point. I doubt SE will ever do anything about this. Whenever the player base found out how to get by in the game, SE will do everything in their power to make sure that is no longer the case. The December update is still a big huge disappointment, no tweak on Campaign for mages, no adjustment on Puppetmaster automaton AI, no skill ups on level sync... One of their worst update, though judging from the attitude from the developer during Q&A, this is just the beginning...

Well that's all well and good, but we're playing a videogame here. This isn't real life. This is for fun. If you keep making gil-making more and more challenging for less and less profits, you will erode the entertainment value. MMOs are all about time sinks. But those time sinks have to have a tangible reward at the end or people rapidly lose interest.

SE went a little too far. They've removed most of the good vendor farming in the last couple updates. But they haven't reciprocated to improve AH selling. THey haven't provided more AH slots. They haven't reduced taxes at Aht Urghan and Jeuno AH's. It's just swinging the nerf bat without offering alternatives.

Stop and think for a second.







This was an anti RMT measure in intention, however, it is anything but. This is a PRO RMT measure. What happens when you leave thousands of players with suddenly no way to make any gil? They still have **** to do! They have to get it from somewhere! Yep, this will force MORE (not less) players to buy from RMT. RMT have an indefinite time to make gil, players do not. RMT will still farm this stuff because it's not wholey unprofitable, it's only unprofitable for people who have school/work in the morning.

SE only managed to help RMT gain a monopoly on these items so that they can sell the gil they make doing it, back to the newly impoverished thousands of players.

GG SE.

In 5 years they nerfed every possible way of obtaining gils,from the nerf in silk thread drops and cuttings in rolanberry to npc sell prices reduced,to retarded drop chances in bcnms and ksnm.

They clearly FAIL to understand that the gilsellers involved in rmt are making money out of legit ways.Farming is LEGIT,NPCing is LEGIT,farming a BCNM IS LEGIT.

They CLEARLY FAIL to understant that it's sufficient to just ban the GS and remove the GIL sold.Where does the need to nerf means of obtaining gils come from ?

So...they CLEARLY FAIL to understand that as gs make gils in legit ways(not everyone,many are cheaters),the player too has to make gils.

Why are they fighting rmts if they leave us with NO CHOICE to BUY the gils?

Why at level 75 you spam ODS and get ALWAYS Crappy drops?

Why Beehive chips and black tiger fangs are the only viable mean of farming?(Unless you can afford to solo the gobbues in boyhada )

Why this game has become a depressing haven of retards running around with super heavy R/EX ,Full dusk set ,blah blah blah and yet there are people who can't afford a freaking dusk gloves?

Why do i Call GMs to signal Tele-Bots,in Fairy it's Samisa, and they are still there to invite you as soon as you press Enter on your shout?

Why i do get the feeling that they are mocking me and STEALING the fun from this game?

I've always recommended this game to friends and in other forums,now i think i'll tell them to stay away from this sh*t ^^ .



Edited, Dec 10th 2008 4:52am by aylard