Square Enix Bans Players with a Green Thumb

If you've got a green thumb, you probably now have a sore thumb thanks to the Square-Enix banhammer. Gardeners across Final Fantasy XI have been complaining on fan forums that they've recently lost their accounts, only now tying the cause of their bans to their gardening activities.

[DNAgent]

I guess that will teach some of those players not to play mediocre RPGs by garbage companies like Square-Enix.

[ZEEBO4LIFESTFU]

i guess it would explain your brain size..

[Sarick]

People where complaining about RMT this RMT that, Gil seller, gill buyer so SE made the STF. Not surprisingly it was very effective at cleaning house but now that it's cleaned up a lot of loopholes they continue to BAN and look for new things that could be used to make profits.

At some point they need to tack off. For starters they should be doing something about the spam tells from www.brogames.com. It's just sad wen things are finally to a good point where honest players can enjoy the game and they're still looking for ways to clean house even targeting the players who work hard to survive in this game.

[FantasyStar]

So what you think you just explained is that Square-Enix is banning gil farmers?

[Sarick]

I they're getting desperate now IMHO. Yea, going after players they think might be abusing the system. Gil farming in general is a target I remember getting reported killing low level mobs in a zone where no one was farming.

I got a GM tell, your being watched. << don't know what that was about but another player was in the zone just started competing for the same mobs I was farming for like 8 hours.

I responded with a few questions, and found out I was reported and it was a bot test. If I hadn't responded quickly i'd have been booted or even suspended.

Odd, though I was on a PS2 client so, how would I be using a BOT?

[Prototype]

I remember when I first played 11 the only RMT was the Ext players, then over time there was other RMT that appeared claiming NM's and fishing. It turned from banning RMT into banning people who are ASSUMED to be RMT which I personally think is stupid.

I'm glad I quit 11, yes I have some fond memories about it however situations like this make me glad I quit when I did and not look back. Whats next, banning people for getting Utsusemi Ni every BCNM 40 run? Or how about banning BLM for doing KSNM 30 runs for 5 hours on a sunday night....SE is getting more and more stupid as time goes on with these bannings claiming its to balance gameplay and to ban RMT but there's a line between RMT bannings and just pure assumption. Ban people for cheating/exploiting/RMT not because you assume something.

[Arnon]

Lol Brosale and Brogame now advertise within FFXI through /tells. Game should be called Financial Fantasy, as SE didn't think it out too well and caused every little aspect of the game to revolve around gil.

[Persistantthug]

What does RMT mean?

[pamkhat]

RMT = real money trading

[mirroredderorrim]

If they let automated programs do their work on FFXIV, I'll avoid it altogether.

There is no use in putting work-like time into a game and have all your time and money wasted, because they are trying to mimic the real world, by keeping you from excelling, when it should be yourself/competition/NPC-boss encounters that should be the only things keep you from excelling.

[NMC2007]

Real garden variety there, I hope this isn't their Final Fantasy......XI. Sorry.

[AhemZasan]

Just don't let it happen again.

[Reibooi]

I had a friend who was banned a few days ago for RMT activity and she had no idea why and after reading this I can safely say that it was most likely gardening related. She had like 10 mules and was probably using them to garden vast amounts.

That said I think that alot of people who get banned for this in some way deserve it. Why pay additional monthly fees for all those mules to make a little more in game money when you could do something more productive like getting Beastmen seals and kindred seals and perhaps trying to get a good drop in a BCNM like a Kraken Club. A single club would more or less set a player for life and it's perfectly safe and legit.

[Prototype]

Not everyone gets lucky on the BCNM/KSNM runs or gardening; I remember these few people who were lucky (not cheating, but just lucky) to get the Peacock charm every run; we'd randomize the order, go on certain moon phases, etc and every time get at least one Charm out of the run; I was lucky to even get Mannequin parts. However the flip side is I was able to get Utsusemi Ni 99% of the BCNM 40 runs which was an easy 300k+ at the time I quit, or sell god pop items for 500k+ it mostly depends on the person and how much time/effort they have devoted to playing the game. For the gardening side before an update it was almost guaranteed one of the ores for just planting a crystal on the corresponding moon phase and day, and harvesting it on that day (example plant a fire crystal on firesday and wait till harvest time on firesday to get it) and that was an easy 100k+ as well, however after that patch it was different things that made it less fun especially since real life came before anything in the game.

In my ls one rdm got the Kraken club the week I quit, which was the biggest accomplishment since I beat Maat as Ranger using a Fire Staff.

[Blasphemy]

Why would you deserve getting banned from playing the game legitly? For me it was very hard to earn money in FF especially trying to do BCNM runs when you A don't have the seals or B can't find the people. Gardening was guaranteed money and it doesn't take much to do. You can earn millions of gil just by logging on for less then one hour a day just to check your plants depending on what you are planting.

[Reibooi]

I have no problem with people gardening it's a great way to make money but these people who are getting banned are not just one person with 10 flower pots in their house they are people who have tons of mules all with max flower pots doing this over and over. Now legit player or not when you do that with that many characters OF COURSE you are gonna be mistaken for a gil seller.

The friend I mentioned who got banned for RMT activity had at least 8 mules and all of them were most likely used solely for gardening. When you do that it seems as if you are doing RMT because that's what the real RMT do as well. It's difficult for the task force to tell the difference between the two more so if it's the auto banner doing it. They most likely noticed that RMT were doing something like this and updated the auto banner to reflect that and players legit or not are getting caught in the cross fire. At the end of the day I think it's funner and more cost effective(I.E not paying 30+ bucks a month for all those mules.) to just play the game and have fun with it.

[PS360WII]

Gardening is/was a good way to make some gil in FF. I can see the logic to this as SE wants to end gil sellers.

[AhemZasan]

That is all.

[Vagrant_1]

that sux some of my buddies used to garden to make gil when economy was outrageous. He used to make good gil too. like someone said above lol BCNM/ KS are most times crap drops so that's not really a reliable source of income

[Blasphemy]

I used to have 4 mules all gardening with me trying to make ice ores. It was all I was willing to put time in. I did know people who had more though. At one point I can see where SE is coming from if you have 10 mules and they are all sending you hundreds of thousands of gil it does look suspicous. At the the same time if you are not giving the gil to anyone else I don't know why they would ban you. Don't they know how this game works?

Gardening was very easy to do and took very little time out of your daily life to get massive amounts of gil in return. It was my main source of income and I only had 4 mules. I can only imagine how much gil some one made who had 10 mules.

[pixelsword]

Because if there are a lot of people feeling like they need to do this to earn a decent living in the game, they need to either lower the costs of things or raise the rates of other things.

Or open some McDonalds and Wal-Marts.

[Arnon]

Yes, they do. That's the biggest issue with the game imo. The only way I can make money is to go afk when I sleep and sell crap in my bazaar. The stuff they do to make the game better only hurts the players. First, they threw in Goblin Bounty Hunters to get rid of the RMT fisherman. Problem is, is that those were major exp places. So there goes a good 60% of the lower area camps. Next, they do stupid crap to get people better gear and gil by holding a lottery. Problem is, is that it's A REAL LOTTERY. You have a 1 in like... 999,999 chance of winning anything. No mobs drop gil unless you fight Notorious Monsters. Which are usually camped or have a lottery spawn of about, 2-16 hours. Or spawn every other week. They usually only drop about 13,000G. Then they have these things called Beastman Seal & Kindred Seal Notorious Monsters. Problem is, the drop rates on ANY good item (even things out of these BCNM/KSNM runs) are usually 1-20%.

So that's great that SE is getting rid of gilsellers. But it doesn't help the fact that the only source of income is crafting.

[Arnon]

Problem is, is that obtaining gil is almost impossible on some servers such as my own, Carbuncle. You would have had to invest in a craft from when you started the game to keep obtaining gil. BCNM/KSNM runs are a pain in the ass and you usually will not get anything worthwhile.

It's the only reason my friend is able to obtain gil. He invested in Bonecraft and now it's his real big source of income.

[Prototype]

I used to be on Carbuncle as Uranium, wow so someone else from that server still exists outside the game :O

I did quit Jan 2008 and from what I've been told the guy who plays me now is an idiot and only uses BLM for everything

[Arnon]

Yup... the economy is crap on Carby. No possible form of gilmaking except synthesis.

[Prototype]

Sounds like SE is trying to find a way to end 11 before 14 comes out if this banning garbage still goes on. I remember a few of my boys getting banned for farming god pop items to get their relic weapons upgraded past the first stage. I will say around the time I quit the game economy alone was going to s-it - KSNM runs, farming god pop items, and even the occassional big money from Dynamis was the easiest/safest ways to make gil, now it seems if anyone has a certain amount of gil on them at one time they are considered RMT/buying/selling gil and automatically banned which makes it near impossible to have any type of decent equipment outside rare/ex.

Personally what SE needs to do before activating the banning hammer is remember that no one is guarenteed to play their next game once they are banned for something they had no idea was wrong.

[danielle007]

Everyone just go play WoW! Gil sounds lame anyways.. makes me think of fish.. Anyways, just farm yourself some hard earned gold. :) ..... and you won't get perma-banned for it! ... Decent?

[Prototype]

I'm actually waiting on The Agency to start something new outside the whole "casting magic" genra of MMO's

As far as FF14 I don't know about since SE likes to ban its loyal fanbase over assumptions instead of facts.

[danielle007]

I've never seen someone banned, unless they deserved it. Well... excluding those dumb "getting reported because you swear too much in trade chat even though there's a profanity filter on by default, so people who don't want to see swear words shouldn't even be able to anyways, unless they're dumb." ways of getting banned.

The only other times people I know of have gotten banned was because they were dumb and bought gold, botted, or bought a chinese person to level fishing for them. .... And that's what they were actually doing, so it was deserved. Noone has ever gotten banned for farming too much gold, at least to my knowledge.

Also, casting magic is fun. It's damn pretty.