"Unable To Obtain RP. An Error Has Occurred."

Today we did some RP farm. On V25, started with Kalunga, second KI was Xevioso and finally we finished with Ngai.

We received the expected RP from the first two, using the Amplifier for each fight and we used an Amplifier for the third fight as well.

For Ngai, we waited inside the fight instance and pulled the shark with around 2 minutes left, zerged it down to 84%. However, right after exiting the fight instead of getting our RP we received the error message: "Unable to obtain RP. An error has occurred."



Has anybody seen this before? This is very puzzling, haven't seen that. Nobody had full RP on it (I am at 39k RP) so it was not that. This just looks like a random error. Oh! And the Amplifier was NOT consumed so we still have it active for 71+ hours.

Did you check back later and see if the total RP changed?

Was anyone using anything that could have blocked player update packets? Like that Lua "feature" that lets you cast while running? Any position hacking or warping?

Umm.. this is a great point, unfortunately I didn't keep a record of the RP I had before the run to see if it was "just an error message" or if we indeed didn't get any. The amount of RP after a few hours still hasn't changed so either way it's gone poof.


Nope, nope and nope.

(Now I am curious about this "lets you cast while running" thing, although I don't think I would use it).

If you say you guys still had the amplifier buff then it's quite likely you didn't receive any rp, not even later on

I don't think blocking any server->client packets would cause this. It is almost certainly a server side issue, but never seen it personally or even heard of it. Full RP doesn't cause it either, I let someone use my mule to farm RP and they didn't bother to convert the excess so it sat through numerous wins at cap.

Is it possible someone in your group didn't have a Ngai win at all? I'm not sure what would happen if it tried to award RP prior to having the NM unlock, since it's probably a very unique case.

Is this a common strategy to inflict dmg this short before time out?

Definitely not this. I got a few v25 clears before I had ever fought the mob and RP was normal even on the failed attempts.

I have seen this error message one time in the last 2 years of doing Odyssey. It was sometime a year ago and it was actually for a V20 clear, we killed it and no one got credit for the kill. We determined based on our best knowledge of what could have happened that the culprit was someone in your group uses the addon to switch jobs via a shortcut command with the moogle.

The server didn't recognize the job switch correctly and the anti-cheat measure kicked in thinking you had duplicate jobs. The person who used the shortcut commands had been doing it for a while but this was the first time we had seen the issue happen. Since then I haven't encountered this error, so it may not be 100% correct, but we've avoided the issue since.

If the server thought you had duplicate jobs at the lobby it would not let you in the fight in the first place.

You're correct. The person wasn't ready when the leader brought us into the fight and they had executed the command for the job change while the leader brought us in. Something disconnected during this process, it let us in, we did the fight, and we received that error message upon killing the NM. Like I mentioned before, we've never seen the problem again, I wasn't blaming the job switch addon, it was a fluke event that happened due to the nature of the job switch packet from that addon.

Yup, correct, unless it was a part of the weird bug, although I would prefer it to stay like that to avoid us being flagged as "exploiting" the system if it was the case we got the RP but left the Ampli on.


Everybody had the win, unfortunately not this either.


Off topic but yes, depending on your farming strategy and the specific NMs you are fighting with the jobs you choose to do so.


This is an extremely important piece of information I forgot to mention because I just completely forgot that it happened! But yes, after the first two fights and when we were about to enter Ngai at the lobby we weren't allowed to enter and we had to confirm each person what jobs we had used in prior fights. I believe that after switching party leader and re-setting jobs for everybody we were finally allowed to enter the fight and I just forgot about it.

Here is our conversation about this issue I found via my logs:


Not interested in debating things but we are a pretty "vanilla" group when it comes to tools used, Windower with mostly "safe" addons. I personally had never heard about this shortcut commands to switch jobs but I'll inquire with the group if this was the case. At the very least we have a lead here and since this is the first time it happened at least we can know that if we have this error message before entering most likely the bug will come back and perhaps it's not even worth it trying the fight.

Thank you!

PSA: Packets. Stop it. You're asking for a 72-hour vacation.

Edit for people who don't get it: Stop using packets to bypass the UI.

Further explanation: Yes, the UI is inherently slow, but the delays are often intentional to ensure that race-conditions are avoided. (i.e. situations where synchronization between the server and client is disrupted). If you'd like to learn more, google the topic of "rate-limiting" and "eventual-consistency".

Historical context: Medal duplication created some of the best FFXI memes to date:

1.) https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/54172/medal-market-is-dead
2.) https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/54185/medals-a-discussion-reborn

... lol.

?

(Honestly, I didn't get it).

He's saying if your addons/plugins/luas/whatever are injecting too many packets too fast, or doing them in weird ways you could end up with a 3-day suspension (warning from SE for breaking TOS)

Presumably because that stuff would be more trackable than some other programs?

And that this //jobchange rdm/war command might have injected the job change too fast, confusing the system into thinking your friend was still on PUP (or whatever) when you got zoned up, causing your problem.

A lot of this is highly speculative, but that's his point.

Highly speculative? The locals are getting restless. We need another ban wave.

Alternatively: wait for everyone to give the thumbs up before entering the battlefield. Its very possible this could be replicated via menus considering how laggy Walk of Echoes is.

There aren't many(any?) things that are breakable via race condition, because the server evaluates packets individually on the same thread as far as we can tell. It is still worth considering whether the tools you use are sending illegitimate packets, though. The only way I can imagine this being related to the packet plugin is if the job change packet got sent with the menu confirmation for the 0x34->0x5C/0x5B communication for the actual warp. Server starts process of warping you, you job change before finishing it.

Interesting that SE thought enough ahead to block your rewards and clears if there was anything screwy with job compositions. Points to them, though it'd have been better if they just made it impossible to get the wrong job in in the first place.

Thanks. I don't believe anybody was using any job change plugin/addon (I haven't even heard about its existence up until it was mentioned here).

Very interesting learning about the potential consequences of some of this stuff and how SE "protects". I still think the issue was that we weren't allowed to enter at first even if we all were on different jobs, and we had to keep switching jobs / switching party leader until we actually got in. We were doing this manually so, not sure.

What worries me is this bug (if it is) is not widely reported, so...

It's probably not widely reported because it's not common, as only 2 people in the history of Odyssey have ever reported it.

I'd just move on with your life and not worry too much about trying to avoid it happening again. Chances are extremely high you'll never encounter this again

I actually saw someone in Asura's /yell mention this happened to them a few days ago.

If it happened on Asura, there is a one bajillion-kazillion percent chance someone was trying to stack packets on packets in an attempt to exploit something.

Your last statement should be more telling. SE had the foresight to protect against job changes that were caused outside of the UI. All we can observe from the UI is that when one character enters the party, there is a fade animation and the party is warped to the Sheol battlefield. I don't have the same packet sequences memorized, but I would still call this a race-condition (where sending a packet out of band from ordinary events leads to unpredictable or non-deterministic behavior. I would be very surprised of this was reproduceable via the UI.

(Two players would have to enter AND job-change via menu, in a very short amount of time).

However, I also see your point, that it's possible that the job change addon and job change behavior in Sheol Lobby are not 1:1 or are not the same exact invocation.

It was pretty easy to lock out your subjob using just the UI though, and that didnt involve Odyssey lag.

I do know you can enter Gaol with the same job twice. No addons or luas required. And it can potentially ruin your RP reward.

Well, there ya go, sounds kinda like what happened here.

Velner, does the scenario you're talking about give the same error message as OP?

Nah, definitely the packets yo. So bad. Best not to use packets on the internet because race conditions. (/s)

This is the third time I see this happen and everytime it involved the jobchange addon. It would appear that the function to check job variety is performed by the Pilgrim Moogle itself, not by the entrance script. But then there's another sanity check later, denying you of your ill-gotten gains.

Or maybe a moth walked on a memory bank at exactly the wrong moment. Who knows.

Just confirmed with the group again, nobody used (or even knew of the existence of) the job changing tool, whatever it is. I wouldn't have an issue using it if it really made my life easier but it's not the case here and now there are way more reasons to stay away from it.

In any case, just wanted to let you all know that moths in memory banks or not, this can happen while switching jobs manually I guess. Perhaps we just hit the FFXI jackpot on bugs ;)