[Armando]

Equip swaps are legit, swapping players in and out of alliances is a gray area, I guess. But SE's never done anything about it before, have they?

But doesnt AF hit everyone in range regardless of alliance status?

Even if it did, just keep the other alliance out of range.

It's too bad SE makes it totally unfeasable to make elemental resistance sets because most pieces of gear provide piss-poor bonuses, making it hard to have inventory for 1 elemental resistance set, let alone 8.

[Balfree]

Originally Posted by hexx

But doesnt AF hit everyone in range regardless of alliance status?

What Armando said.

I don't think its too avantgarde for most LSs out there...

[Sabaron]

Originally Posted by Armando

...swapping players in and out of alliances is a gray area, I guess...

How is it "gray"?

Being a gray area would indicate that some GMs have booted people for swapping alliance members and some have not. Since, to my knowledge, no one has ever been chastised by an SE employee for swapping someone out of an alliance, it would be considered a white or allowed activity.

[Armando]

It could be a gray area if encounters were designed to be beaten with an alliance but people beat them with more people, yet the game doesn't do anything to stop you from doing that.

Kind of like logging off to lose hate, or teleporting to another area of a zone to try to kite something.

[Sabaron]

Originally Posted by Armando

It could be a gray area if encounters were designed to be beaten with an alliance but people beat them with more people, yet the game doesn't do anything to stop you from doing that.

Kind of like logging off to lose hate, or teleporting to another area of a zone to try to kite something.

So gray in the sense that...

• A certain segment of the player population considers using the tactic cheating.
• A certain segment of the player population believes that Square Enix (without consult) did not take the tactic into account when designing said monster (regardless of whether or not it is the best tactic for fighting said monster).

I wouldn't base my strategy on either of those.

I say, if it works, and it's not against the rules, go ahead and do it!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally Posted by Feba

Really? No swapping players in and out of alliances, or changing equipment to suit the moment?

Gear Swaps and Alliance member swaps take place within the gameplay. A monster does not lose the ability to target you just for switching gear. These things take place within the flow of gameplay.

Logging out is not in any way, shape or form a gameplay function. It is something that removes you from the gameworld. The intention of logging out is to quit out of the game.

I don't think logging out to lose enmity is an exploit if you're just trying to escape a fight, as a DRK might do when trying to escape something he slept while out soloing some fields of valor EXP. But logging hate for Kirin, AV, PW and other big bad NMs that you very much intend to kill for loot is in no way a strategy and is totally an exploit.

I think its time SE finds a way to quash this so-called "tactic" Put a special status on people within or invited to the alliance fighting these NMs that places them in to another zone and makes them unable to re-enter the fight if they log out.

Lets say you're about to enter the area in A. Subterrane. An immortal is stationed there, you trade him the PW pop set and he places a this buff on everyone. This buff cannot be removed and lasts two hours. You log out, you get a free trip to someplace else entirely and if you make it back the zone, you cannot enter that zone because you still have that buff on and it wears out in two hours for people who should be inside that zone, not outside of it.

It would suck for people who got timed out by the server side and perhaps there's a way to distinguish that, but logout or force DC on the client side would eject you from the fight.

Really, the only ways there should be to escape enmity are -enmity items and abilities. And death, because watching other people lose EXP and delevel during big fights is always entertaining to me.

[Karinya]

Originally Posted by Armando

Equip swaps are legit, swapping players in and out of alliances is a gray area, I guess. But SE's never done anything about it before, have they?

Yes: they put maximum players allowed limits on many fights by putting them in special battlefields. Limbus bosses come to mind, or Bahamut, or Odin. Dynamis too, although the limits are higher. I think Sandworm sucks in a maximum of 18 people at a time - and once they're in, nobody can join them.

The fact that they didn't do something about swapping in players in *every* hnm fight in the game certainly doesn't mean that you can get away with it in all such fights, or that SE couldn't do something about the fights where it is possible if they really wanted to.

If they *really* wanted to stop it, they could make adding people to your party/alliance during a fight have an automatic effect of Call For Help in all zones where claim and cfh actually have an effect (i.e. the places where this tactic isn't already effectively blocked by zone population limits). Exp parties don't really need to reorganize during fights except in the case of d/c, and then you would only lose one monster's worth of exp, so if SE really considered reorganizing or logging out during HNM fights illegitimate, they could do that.

A lot of people who beat, say, Kirin right now wouldn't beat him with that change, though.

It's too bad SE makes it totally unfeasable to make elemental resistance sets because most pieces of gear provide piss-poor bonuses, making it hard to have inventory for 1 elemental resistance set, let alone 8.

It seems to me that having elemental resistance gear that was really effective would degrade the importance of resistance buffs (to the extent that they have any to begin with). And really, who needs more crap to take up space in their mog locker? There's enough different goals to try to meet at once with gear; let resistances remain a matter of tactics and party organization.

IMO, both elemental and status resistance buffs could use a major increase in effectiveness, but giving people more gear to carry around and swap into would be worse, not better.
______________________________

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

I don't think logging out to lose enmity is an exploit if you're just trying to escape a fight, as a DRK might do when trying to escape something he slept while out soloing some fields of valor EXP. But logging hate for Kirin, AV, PW and other big bad NMs that you very much intend to kill for loot is in no way a strategy and is totally an exploit.

I think its time SE finds a way to quash this so-called "tactic" Put a special status on people within or invited to the alliance fighting these NMs that places them in to another zone and makes them unable to re-enter the fight if they log out.

...

Really, the only ways there should be to escape enmity are -enmity items and abilities. And death, because watching other people lose EXP and delevel during big fights is always entertaining to me.

I don't think it's necessary to do anything as complicated as your suggestion - just make NMs (heck, even just HNMs) not drop logged out players from their hate list as long as the NM is still alive. If necessary they could be transferred to a separate list indexed by player name (if the normal list is indexed by some other variable that is thrown away when the player logs off) and transfered back to the main list if they log back on while the NM is still alive.

Hell, for all we know that's already the case and people only "lose" hate by logging off because they don't do anything for a minute or so, causing all their volatile enmity to decay to 0, and hardly anyone (especially the BLMs most likely to use this tactic) builds up enough stable enmity to have it be noticed after they log back in. And the effect where normal mobs forget about you when you sleep them and logout while soloing is solely because you were the only one on the hate list and therefore they unclaimed. (Come to think of it, I seem to recall times where I logged back in too quickly after a Sleep2 and logout and found that the monster hadn't yet woken up and depopped - and when it *did* wake up it remembered me. But maybe I was just getting reaggroed or something.)

[Caspian]

I've never watched the SE AV video so excuse me if I'm wrong, but I heard they used like 20 something people for it? Is that true? If it is, would that not mean that swapping players in and out of the alliance is something that could be considered condoned by SE?

[Feba]

Originally Posted by Armando

Equip swaps are legit, swapping players in and out of alliances is a gray area, I guess.

By your standards. Also keep in mind that just because SE doesn't do anything about something doesn't mean it's not abusing game mechanics. Hell, even while I considered equip swaps an exploit of game mechanics, I still used them. They're fucking broken, and IMO need a righteous nerfing, but they're there, and if part of your job is hugely impacted by them, you use them.

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

Gear Swaps and Alliance member swaps take place within the gameplay.

So does MPK. That is not the grounds for something being an exploit or not.

Caspian: %90 sure that two or three of those were there as cameramen. Also about %80 sure that SE said that a single alliance can kill AV. %70 sure I am not making these up off the top of my head.

[Armando]

It seems to me that having elemental resistance gear that was really effective would degrade the importance of resistance buffs (to the extent that they have any to begin with). And really, who needs more crap to take up space in their mog locker? There's enough different goals to try to meet at once with gear; let resistances remain a matter of tactics and party organization.

IMO, both elemental and status resistance buffs could use a major increase in effectiveness, but giving people more gear to carry around and swap into would be worse, not better.

It's still terrible implementation. Right now elemental resistances as a stat are almost completely trivial. They could've added elemental resistances to gear that's actually worth equipping even without it, and added them in amounts that aren't trivial. That way you don't rely 100% on a Barspell which is a no-brainer decision, and you can still buff your resistances through gear without adding an insane strain on your inventory.

Originally Posted by Feba

By your standards. Also keep in mind that just because SE doesn't do anything about something doesn't mean it's not abusing game mechanics. Hell, even while I considered equip swaps an exploit of game mechanics, I still used them. They're fucking broken, and IMO need a righteous nerfing, but they're there, and if part of your job is hugely impacted by them, you use them.

I still quote Hecatomb gear. That's been around since what, RotZ? It's totally worthless gear if you don't swap it in and out, and the dev team must know that. Yet they've been around since before gear swaps were all the rage.

[Sabaron]

Originally Posted by Caspian

I've never watched the SE AV video so excuse me if I'm wrong, but I heard they used like 20 something people for it? Is that true? If it is, would that not mean that swapping players in and out of the alliance is something that could be considered condoned by SE?

I heard it was 50, but that was probably an exaggeration.

My point is that no matter what "feelings" players have about strategies and techniques used in a given fight, the following things are currently true:

1. There is no official rule against logging out to remove hate. This tactic has been around since the very beginning of FFXI and has been used on pretty much every HNM in the game, and SE has never made any attempts to prevent it despite their obvious knowledge of it.

2. There is no official rule against swapping out alliance members. This tactic has been around since the very beginning of FFXI and has been used on pretty much every HNM in the game, and SE has never made any attempts to prevent it despite their obvious knowledge of it.

3. While alliance swapping and hate logging may not be the most efficient method for killing Pandemonium Warden, no one else has a proven workable strategy for beating the warden other than the one used which employs both alliance swapping and hate logging. Therefore, at this time, the only known good strategy for killing Pandemonium Warden involves both, and while it may anger you that someone else is in possession of a Hachiryu Harimaki, SE has not seen fit to take away the rewards for said fight, and therefore, they did, in fact, OFFICIALLY win the fight regardless of how a given player (who has no authority in the matter) feels about it.

4. You can complain about their strategy after you make a better one and prove that it works.

I also put forth that you must logically concede the following:

In real life as well as in games, people develop strategies that are outside the scope of those envisioned in a defensive plan, game model, or counter-strategy.

Square Enix knows that people use the two above tactics and did not implement any solution to prevent either one. However, it is highly unlikely that they designed Pandemonium Warden in such a way as that it can only be defeated by employing one or more of these strategies. Therefore, Square Enix, with full knowledge of both tactics, ignored the tactics in their design. This indicates that strategies involving one or more of these ignored but legal tactics could result in a win, but they will not, in general, constitute the most efficient strategy. Therefore, since the strategy is obviously viable, and Square Enix was aware that it could be used regardless of whether or not they chose to test the viability of such a strategy beforehand means that it is nonetheless a winning strategy.

Since you don't have a better one, you can bitch about it all you like but it doesn't change the fact that they won and you didn't.

Nah, Nah, Na, Nah, Nah

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Feba

By your standards. Also keep in mind that just because SE doesn't do anything about something doesn't mean it's not abusing game mechanics. Hell, even while I considered equip swaps an exploit of game mechanics, I still used them. They're fucking broken, and IMO need a righteous nerfing, but they're there, and if part of your job is hugely impacted by them, you use them.

As much as I agree with you Feba, gear-swapping has become something like Windows: it is the de facto method with far too many people to even imagine a way to get them all accustomed to doing something else, with or without causing massive uproar.

Gear-swapping as a mechanic in FFXI has two advantages over Windows as an OS: 1. gear-swapping is, assuming you care to make the macros for it, free, and not sold by a monopolistic corporation, and 2. it is, as you said, broken, and this combined with its de facto status unfortunately means you're gimped if you don't use it. Everybody uses it, but only a handful don't like it as a mechanic (inventory groaning aside).

And so you all know, all this crap I just posted? 90% devil's advocate (the other 10% being my own bias).

[Feba]

YM, that's just retarded.

[Yellow Mage]

Also, Sabaron, Objection.

[Sabaron]

Here's an analogy with food:

Kitten, Puppy and Lambykins are making fudge for a fudge making contest.

Puppy spends all day making hers according to an old family recipe, but she uses Peanut Butter in hers.

Kitten, however, makes her fudge in the microwave 2 hours before the party.

Lambykins tries to make fudge according to the recipe in her Betty Crocker cookbook, but fails.

At the contest, the judges determine that both Puppy and Kitten's fudge are equally delicious and award both of them the blue ribbon. Lambykins gets third prize.

Lambykins bitches to the judges that since Puppy put peanut butter in her fudge, it's not really fudge and therefore she can't win and that Kitten used a Microwave fudge recipe instead of a traditional recipe and therefore she cannot win either. Thus, Lambykins, even though her fudge totally sucks ass, is the true winner since she is the only one who actually made fudge despite the fact that neither peanut butter nor microwaves are prohibited by the rules.

The judges laugh at Lambykins and she runs home to tell her friends how she would've won the fudge making contest but for the stupidity of the judges.

The moral:

1. Although Kitten and Puppy received the same reward, Puppy put far more effort in than Kitten. Greater investment for same reward. Therefore, Kitten is more efficient, but both achieve the same outcome.
2. Lambykins failed entirely and seeks to strip Kitten and Puppy of their rewards based on rules that she feels should be in the contest but are not. However, it is likely that if someone made a similar complaint about her (e.g. Since Lambykins didn't use her own recipe and rather used one from a cookbook, she cannot win the contest), that she would flip to the other side of the argument simply based on the benefit to herself. Lambykins doesn't care about the game itself, only about winning and being better than everyone else.

------------------------------

YM: Explain how what I've said involves an argument from silence or be silent.