Dev Tracker - Discussion

This made me lol irl

When you were a kid you didn't have the choice. You either enjoyed the journey or you didn't.

You couldn't choose to not take the journey, or skip the journey entirely.

Now, if you go ahead and spend leisure time enjoying that, congrats, you just lost a year of retirement for the hour you wasted. (just kidding, no one here will ever be able to retire!)

The journey is what fuels the dopamine rush at the destination. When you overcome that obstacle to achieve that milestone and get the shiny reward and big "Congratulations!" at the end, you earned it.

But game developers discovered how easy it was to trick a player into enjoying a game by simply giving them the shiny reward and big Congratulations. As long as it's shiny enough and frequent enough, no one will question it. And all without needing to spend the time and money needed to develop the obstacles in the first place.

Philosophically speaking, there's not really any issues with that. Fun is fun, whether it's being artificially injected into your brain or otherwise. But as you (Stayfresh) mentioned in another post, it sort of leads to people wanting something for nothing. It also leads to these same developers putting more R&D into figuring out how to better monetize and better manipulate people with their cold and calculated game design. Not to mention, some people are just aware of the manipulation to a point where the constant, free "Congratulations!" just rings hollow.

See, now you're starting to get it.

I don't think so....since you still need to get the weapon manually in sub based games.

The difference is that monthly subscription (grind to win) gives players with more free time an advantage, and pay to win gives players with more money an advantage.

This advantage may or may not be overcomed with skill and knowledge depending on the game design of each game. A good game with either model generally would allow people with less time/money to catch up in some way so the player progression gap isn't too huge.

Which one is "better" depends on your preference and time/money availability obviously. I think pay to win currently has a much bigger market because our free time is often being splitted by many other entertainment, so FF11 being sub based kinda become a rare gem in the market for those who would rather grind for progression than pay.

ff11 going f2p will fundamentally change the game into something very different. The large amount of rmt and multi-account users in ffxi these days kinda proved that the market for p2w game is so huge that it's invading sub based games like ff11, and they do change the playing experience. It's up to the SE to keep ff11 as it is and not going into a different direction. Over the years I've been feeling some of the newer mechanics like monthly log in campaign or trove has been entering the territory of pay to win imo.

Not that I want to disagree with the point you're trying to make, but what is the difference between a game asking you to pay 200$ for a weapon, or a merc asking 200m gil? (where 200m gil can be bought for 200$)

Let's leave aside ethics and morals or this could get too complex.
The only differences I see is in the... ease of access.
Something sold directly by the company is "safe" and feels "legit".
Something done in any other way may scare a lot of people, thinking they could get banned, thinkin they could get tricked and stuff like that.
As such, I assume a lot of people are wary of some of these things, more than they would on an "official" shop.
This has the consequence of moderatly (greatly?) reducing the statistical frequency of people to involve themselves with these practices.

Said in other terms: if atm 200 people out of 800 make use, to a certain extent, of these mercs, it would likely be 500 if these services were sold through official means.
This is a clear difference, but other than that? What else do you feel is different between Mercs, RMTs and official P2W stuff?

And to be fair "direct" P2W has been very rarely used officially by companies. 99% of the times they sell services that give you a moderate-to-great advantage (skipping levelling grind, skipping story, getting priority queues, more inventory, more chances at something, stuff like that) or they give you roulette (gacha) stuff.
They very very very rarely sell you directly those rare items that you would otherwise be meant to farm/obtain through gameplay means.

Buying clears isn't p2w, since you still need time investment to generate gil in ff11. So basically buyers invest time in an easy gil content and change that into a reward from a harder content. It is still playing the game but in a different way.

Paying rmt for gil and buy clear is p2w though. Since the buyer completely skipped every content with their money. AND they saved subscription fee and give money to rmt instead of SE.

No you don't? Well I mean, not necessarily, since you can easily buy gil and more people than are willing to publically admit regularly do so.

I see your point though, just wanted to clarify.

Yeah I explained rmt is p2w in the second paragraph, lol. But rmt for 200m gil and going into dyna/omen/ambuscade 200 times for 200m gil are 2 totally different thing.

P2W used to be a term reserved for fees charged by the developers for advantages granted to players like gold, exp boosts, ect.


Anymore, people use it more broadly to mean any form of payment made supplementary to the base fees to gain advantage. Additional accounts, mules on the same account and RMT (gil, items or services like power leveling) qualify.

Afania isnt wrong. Theres a very clear line between paying RMT for gil to buy clears and using your own gil procured from playing the game to buy clears.

It feels like a semantics argument, but just because players can pay to win via merc or RMT does not make a game fundamentally p2w. The distinction is who's getting paid and how that influences the game itself.

If the publisher or developer has a direct incentive to push people towards the cash shop, that can affect gameplay for everyone, whether that's by padding the grind required to achieve rewards or by straight up making cash shop exclusives better.

It's the difference between somebody paying for an Odyssey clear and Odyssey augments being a paid exclusive.

RMT. You give me gil for clears, I trade it to someone else for money. It sells for the same amount regardless of how you 'earned' it. Though, I don't really understand why 'earning' it is even being mentioned here when it's obviously being used to AVOID 'earning' a clear...

Not really, SE is not selling your the win nor profiting by your purchase of the win, and therefor there is no incentive for them to punish those who chose not to pay for the win.

SE devs just design the content, then wash's their hands and walks away. There is no quarterly earnings report at SE that goes up as a result of one player giving gil to another player in exchange for services rendered.

The real difference between FTP/P2W and non-FTP is how much the content creators are incentivizes to punish lower tier players. The best phrase I've seen used to describe this is "malicious segmentation".

What happens after is irrelevant, otherwise we are all RMT:
Most HPB are farmed by RMT. Most Alex is farmed RMT. Most dyna currency is farmed by RMT.

If the premise of "mercing supports RMT", then buying any currencies off the AH is also supporting RMT and therefor P2W.

This discussion is like a marx bros film...

This game isn't P2W because SE isn't directly profiting by being predatory in it's intentional game design. It's profiting by being predatory by charging the same sub while vaguely promising less content and offering no real transparency.

They're still jerks. They just made this game before it was acceptable to be total garbage to your player base and make awful games.


The player base on the other hand is 100% P2W. We sell power to each other. Scum bags!

SE is indirectly profiting from the merc/rmt culture because without it the number of subs would drop drastically, you’d lose both the merc/rmt subs and the subs of those who pretty much rely on Gil buying/paying Mercs for stuff.

And just based on the frequency of mygilshop shouts and general rmt clear shouts, id say Gil farming/selling/buying is pretty widespread.

It is what it is. You can still do your thing as if those aspects of the game didn’t exist, but at this point it’s part of what’s keeping the lights on.

I guess the premise is that gil is easy and clears are not. Clearing dynamis was more meaningful to me than earning 10k JP was more meaningful than earning gil for a clear. I don't understand why someone would brag about doing the easy part themselves, then turn around and pay someone who is possibly RMT to do the hard part for them and somehow claim 'legit'.


I really haven't had to buy currency since way back when it was more rare. With Ambu and the frequent campaigns, it's really not difficult to obtain currencies anymore. Even if you don't get what you need, it's easy to trade up. Maybe a few sticky items like riftcinder/riftdross.

No trading up, thats potentially supporting RMT. You never know if that person you're trading with will be selling the gil, and that encourages P2W.

Also I'm presuming you have multiple accounts, cause it'll take over a year for a solo player to finish any REMA just from Ambuscade.

10-11 months actually, with gallantry rewards too

Trading one currency for another. RMT wouldn't waste time trading with you because they're selling, not making a weapon. There's really no interaction there unless you're buying.


I play a single account. While I agree with your estimate of solo ambuscade for a weapon, skill permitting; you're still able to keep farming campaigns after you exhaust Ambuscade. IIRC it's just shy of 300k hallmarks to empty the sellables. You're only limited in HTMB by how much time you can invest.

Since FFXI is mmo, clearing content with player interaction is part of the gameplay, it's not 100% skill based.

Farming 200m from omen/ambuscade/dyna then pay 200m to someone for a carry is about as 'easy' as cybering with ls leaders for a carry, or be that nice helpful person in the ls for a carry, or getting a carry because a friend from irl is an established player...and so on. It's all interaction with other players and part of game.

You can argue that social interactions like paying gil or cybering isn't healthy relationship, but it is still part of the game.

This is the reason why SE bans rmt but they never ban mercing, they see mercing as a legit way to play mmo.

If you want a game that is 100% skill based you should be playing a single player game instead. In mmo player interaction will forever be part of the game, healthy or unhealthy, they aren't going away.

Mercs making money from rmt is a completely different thing. It's one thing to say mercing promotes rmt culture(which I probably would agree), it's another thing to say mercing with gil from an easy content is the same as rmt/p2w only because it's easy skillwise. Just to clarify.

Idk if pretending to be a gender someone likes and perform virtual sexual favours for them in exchange for virtual goods is “part of the game“.

Might be another Asura thing.

server is irrelevant, lol. As long as social interaction is part of the game a good portion of people will use every mean to make progression.

SE is indirectly profiting from merc/rmt culture but as a side effect to what they are actually doing. They aren't making the game in such a way to actually attempt growth from regular players because the game is 20 years old. There is no more potential for explosive growth. Instead they are aggressively cost cutting by downsizing salaries and deregulating players so they can maximize the profits that they do make on the existing game by not spending money.

They don't want to maintain a GM presence or the special action task force because those are monthly salaries that detract from profits. Make a chat filter that lets you, the player, tolerate Merc/RMT easier so that you don't need engagement from SE staff. Create a recycle bin feature so there are significantly fewer people that petition a GM for an item restore. Only step in to address large scale automation from RMTs when it affects regular zones that players still use. Cycle Ambuscade so that players stay out of the zones RMT farm so we stop complaining about bots.

These are blatantly what they have spent their development budget on for the last couple years. Ways to make us more self sufficient so we don't need help from people that cost money to keep.

This also makes it so they can keep all the subs from RMT and other people that violate ToS because they don't care about that anymore. They are part of the player base and they keep the lights on as you said. It costs money to keep them out and it makes money to let them in.

They aren't spending money on QA because things come out broken every patch. They aren't spending money on another pseudo expansion like Rhapsodies because they already know the cost to profit ratio from trying it. They aren't spending money unless it saves them money long term or makes them effortless profit like Wardrobes expansions.

They aren't spending money.

This is blatantly obvious. Bots are absolutely rampant and no difference between RMT or other players.

Will add that the super grindy content like MLs are a big reason for it too.

At some point you would think people would get tired of saying the exact same things over and over again yet this thread exists... We get it. Game bad. SE bad. RMT bad. Got anything actually new to say? Or would you prefer to waste more of your life arguing over something THIS pointless?