Calm before the storm?

According to BG thread here:
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/109245-Neo-Nyzul-Isle-(CAUTION-GMs-have-been-banning-for-flee-tools)/page128

Apparently one of the Nyzul vid posted on youtube made some players on JP official forum went /rage(I tried to avoid generalization here, considering there are also NA players rage against 3rd pt tool in Nyzul). That vid on youtube showed a group of players cleared Nyzul F100, with .dat swap and windower.

Then plenty of players on JP official forum /rage against it, demanding SE to take action against cheaters in Nyzul, especially the players in that Youtube vid. Thus there's a possibility that Salvage ban hammer nightmare will come back again, if SE really decide to do it.

Just to state my POV regarding 3rd pt tool/.dat swap. Personally I think using those are, regardless what reason for any player to use, are against the ToS and it's fact, and players have pretty much 0 excuse if its banned because of it. Terribly designed UI and macro doesn't make it legit, order lamp doesn't make it legit, random number generator doesn't make it legit etc. I have no intention to act as a justice freak to lecture anyone been using it, just that any consequence and risks come after using it is the user itself has to bear.

Further more, based on the SE's history, anyone in same pt as 3rd pt tool users/cheaters also deserves a ban according to SE's standard. So SE banned entire salvage alliance when they duplicate drops, not just the player lotted drops or alliance lead. SE also banned entire pt of flee hackers in Nyzul too, even if one player in pt doesn't flee, entire pt will be banned.

That is also understandable standard, since if you pt with cheaters, even if you're not cheating, you're still getting the benefit.(Although IMO, in the case of Salvage, it's just SE's lazy way to solve the problem)

However, what I care about is, whether it will be fair to execute ban hammer or not.

Honesty, I never understand SE's standard regarding 3rd pt tool/cheating. Nor some BG POV about "If you're not using windower/spellcast etc, you're gimping yourself".

The point of ToS is to create a fair playing environment, so everyone has same advantage/disadvantage.
As a player who never use any 3rd pt tool, I have to admit I'm often in a disadvantage in this game. I swap gears slower, parse lower(although I'm not the one parsing), has higher chance to die in an event, claim NM slower, I can't skill up craft or magic when I go to bed, and I fucking shoot my QD bullet twice in my life when other CORs never shoot it and ended up having to farm Akvan often. So basically, according to BG standard, I'm "gimping myself", and just happened to have worse performance in this game because of no windower/spellcast. This also caused myself to hate Nyzulv2 event as a whole, probably hate it as much as Abyssea, after all who'd love an event that I'm suffering more disadvantage compare with other players?
And at this point of game, I'm not going to expect SE, nor ask SE to ban those 3rd pt tool users also. Even if players posted youtube vid clearly showing they using 3rd pt tool/.dat swap, they're still not gonna ban the players.

So that means, if they're going to keep the "3rd pt tool/.dat swap is ok" standard, and keep Afania in disadvantage in this game, that's fine, but the standard has to be consistent and shouldn't be mass banning Nyzul pt also.

If SE plan to mass banning Nyzul pt with .dat swap due to against ToS, causing 1/3 NA players on this server to disappear, then the entire standard should apply to everything. Ban players spamming same magic spell in Abby Paradox for 4hrs, ban players who openly admitted on the forum or chat that they used spellcast, and ban every account posted on Youtube and showed that they used windower. And ban entire HNM pt/alliance if one person bot/ASE on 1 pop NM/VNM.

But the real question is, can/will SE do that?

Based on the past history, SE doesn't seemed have enough man power to ban illegal players accurately, and often rely on auto-jail thing(and often caught innocent players in between). Salvage item dupe ban, gardening ban, Nyzul flee ban can easily be executed with an auto-jail script or some sort(that's why innocent players got caught with Gardening ban). However, Nyzul .dat swap ban is much, much harder to execute accurately, unless they have a way to detect client side .dat swap.

If they don't have a way, then they can only rely on chat log, and I'm 100% sure this won't be a fair execution to rely on chat log, as too many room for error to use chat log as evidence.

Players using chat log to indicated numbers of the lamp can argue that it's just their own communication code to make things faster to type. And players who uses skype/vent can escape ban hammer with .dat swap, making this method unfair. Thus I highly doubt chat log will be the standard of ban hammer, nor SE willing to use more resource/hire more ppl to ban those players(if you need to filter all the chat log to ban ppl, you need to hire more ppl to do so, that's more money spend). Of course they can if they really, really want to, although I'd doubt they'd use the resource on wrong area overall w.

Another easier way, and faster to execute without hiring more ppl, is to write an auto-jail script that bans any pt that beats lamp order on 1st try without failing. Although personally I've 1/1 on order lamp before without .dat swap, so this method will surely ban innocents also. Or they can write the script and ban pt that 1/1 on order lamp twice, since 1/1 on order lamp twice has a much, much lower chance to happen without .dat swap. But then more problem occurred, that pt with 1 order lamp floor will escape the ban, unless they adds all run up per player(instead of only counting one pt/run)

Of course, still room for banning the innocents, but SE probably wouldn't care.

Based on this blog post: http://kanican.livejournal.com/39517.html, and several other player experience, SE never care about being fair regarding banning ppl. What's written in that post is totally accurate assessment:

As the ToS clearly states, you can be banned "for any reason, or no reason," at any time.

As I stated months earlier, throw online morality out the window. You are not in real life with laws to protect you from being potentially screwed over by what you perceive to be unfair. The ToS is not capatable with law because in life, the law is written to protect its citizens - the ToS is written to protect SE, not you. Debating what is fair or unfair makes for an interesting forum debate, but ultimately, it just doesn't matter in the world of Vana'diel.

TL;DR Version:
As hard as it may be, don't take this game or your characters too seriously. I promise you - the guys that really own your account don't.

In other words, if you pt with other 3rd pt tool user, and SE decide to ban you, suck it up. If you don't want to use spellcast/windower, and play this game worse than everyone else+shoots QD bullet, suck it up too. Nothing is fair, and SE doesn't care whether it's fair or not.


Also, one word of advice.

Don't listen to/trust  BG POV ever. It's nice to get strat for new event, or ask for gear advice on BG. But when it comes to BG POV, it got really dangerous, due to those kind of POV worships succeed, and obsessed with succeed, that any means can be used to achieve the goal in most efficient/successful way, and this kind of POV is dangerous, in game and irl.

When Nyzul was out, plenty of player been suggesting using flee hack because "SE won't ban player for using it", so flee hack players flee hacks all day, beats F100 with ease, show off on BG then started to suggest players to flee hack because it's safe and SE won't bother banning them, until SE perma banned some player for fleeing.

Then BG POV suggested players to .dat swap and fillmode or else "you will never clear F100 ever", and "it's undetectable on client side". The fact is, if SE really want to, an auto-jail script targeting pt that 1/1 on order lamp can easily caught .dat swappers.

And honestly, it's this kind of "breaking ToS is ok because you will not get caught" POV that sometimes ruined many player's account, and slowly pushing players into more risk due to peer pressure. It's like entire class cheats, and tells those who doesn't cheat should cheat too because they won't get caught, or else those who doesn't cheat will have inferior grade in class.

And "SE can't afford ban hammer at this point of time or else the game will be dead" is also a risky argument, it's just an assumption. If they want to, they will still ban player regardless that will cut playerbase by 1/3 or not.

Either way, whether ban hammer would come or not, is pretty interesting to see. Personally I'm done with this game if it comes so I can enjoy RL more, and somehow I'm half expecting it, so I can quit FFXI, enjoy RL and see ppl's reaction when they're banned wwwwww. This game will suffer way more population lose than salvage ban anyways, if they auto-ban players that 1/1 on order lamp that is.