Protecting Final Fantasy XI From the Gil-Sellers

At GDC Austin, the technical keynote for Thursday focused in on the challenging task of developing the online game Final Fantasy XI. We were treated to a broad but vaguely technical discussion from Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of the half-a-million strong game world. He was joined by Sage Sundi, the global producer of the game, who gave a fascinating discussion about Square/Enix's battle against real money traders. Their successes have been hard-fought, and are illustrative of the problems facing anyone running one of these games. Read on for notes from the event.

Tanaka is one of the original members of Square, was a planner for the first three Final Fantasy games, and has long been the producer of Final Fantasy XI. He spends Thursday some time Thursday morning discussing a history of the franchise, harkening back to the 'poor' sales of Final Fantasy at 500,000 copies. The series has since sold over 75 million games worldwide, up through the more recent PlayStation titles. He references the upcoming FFXIII and Versus FFXIII as the definitive vision of the series for the next few years.

FFXI is celebrating its 5th anniversary, a full quarter of the Final Fantasy series' history (at 20 years). It was released in May of 2002, the first cross-platform RPG (PS2 and PC). It was also a worldwide title, both aspects of which were almost unheard of for online games at the time.

The roots of the game reach back to 1999. The Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, and Parasite Eve teams were roped together to make the game. In 2001 the public Beta began, and was released in May 2002 in Japan. November 2002 saw the Windows release, followed by the first expansion/US Release in October 2003, the second expansion/EU Launch in 2004, and the latest expansion in 2006. German and French versions were released just this year; it took two years to translate all the content in the game. They made sure as content was released (and the new expansions) that those teams were kept up to date. There are now four languages spoken inside the game world, each inside the same servers.

Early in the development of the game, they were already working on a version for the original Xbox. The main roadblock to the game's success was the small HDD; only 2GB wouldn't cut it. When the game was installed on the PS2 HDD, it reserved 8GB. They view updates as the 'lifeline' of the Massive game. No mass storage, no updates ... no MMOG.

PlayOnline is mentioned, with their concept being a 'portal for entertainment'. It's an independent platform for content, with a common information tool for all game playing options. It's crucial for the PS2 and 360, which don't have web browsers. It allows them to keep tabs on user statistics, as well.

The game is built around the concept of cross-region play. The three regions they support (US, EU, JP) are separated by big blocks of time, allowing them to financially support the concept. There are spikes, but the spike isn't all at once across the board thanks to the 24 hour day. A graph shows the different peaks around the world, with notes that the US peak is smaller than the JP one because of the number of time zones in the country. He provides some interesting stats: there are roughly 15-20k users per world. There's a fairly equal distribution between servers, and the service sees between 200-300k individual logins per day. The number of Hardcore players means that there is quite a bit of overlap between the 'US' timeslots and the 'JP' timeslots.

This overlap can lead to poor behavior for a number of reasons. Killstealing, Player Killing, and Spawn Camping are just three examples. They have tweaked the game's systems to remove some of the most easily-exploited elements. They removed general PvP, granted possession of a mob to the first player to attack it, and put in systems that encouraged cooperation. Their most successful outlet has been the sports-style PvP games. They're team vs. team sports, and give players the opportunity to beat each other 'silly' without causing grief.

The Auto translation feature is another success in bringing communities together. It translates FFXI-related terms to whatever language a player is using. It uses simple word and sentence structures, to avoid confusion. They have tied it deeply into the game to make it easy and fast to use; it's a part of the everyday game for many players. This was crucial to overcome the initial resistance that Japanese players had to dealing with thousands of American players. Despite requests from many points of view to host regional servers, they've always resisted. They see the universal servers as a real strength, a unique feature in the industry.

Unfortunately, they've had real problems with gold farmers. They've become much more aggressive due to the success of the genre, and have rapidly expanded across the globe thanks to cheap labor costs. They're huge organizations, spread across the globe, and seek to exploit weaknesses in an economy whenever they can find them. Mr. Tanaka then turns the floor over to Sage Sundi, the global producer of the game. He worked his way up to his position from a volunteer position with the Japanese version of UO. He's here to specifically address RMT.

There are several ways to deal with the issue: allow it all, the company can engage in it itself, or they ignore it. They chose the hardest option: fighting it. Acting against it is a challenge, and they assembled a task force specifically for the issue. They claim that they've eliminated some 90% of the traders in the game world.

The problems RMT inflicts are: inflation, farming and monopolizing of monsters, and cheating. All of these affect the play experience for normal players. RMT would not be a problem, they say, if the people who engaged in it were polite. They have a great slide showing the huge inflation of the currency wildly out of sync with the new number of players in the game. Around the end of 2005 they detected the upsurge, and investigated.

An RMT organization is made up of several groups: Hunters are the ones who actually do the killing, and send the gil along to Bank players. The Front-End folks deal with customers, and make sure they get their stuff. The website element is also public facing; the biggest groups can employ up to 500 people. The task force went to work last year, and their two primary jobs were to analyze server data and comb through feedback. They examined server logs, customer issues, etc. The task force looks through the logs weekly, while originally they were addressed only once per month

Their conclusions:

• The biggest RMT groups are connected.
• With a few small exceptions, most larger groups are using common funds to do their work.
• Removing Front-End folks and Bankers is not enough. It is effective in removing large amounts of currency from the game, but it will encourage the Hunters to increase productivity for their new masters.
• The real goal is to eliminate the Hunters. This helps players by removing irritating experiences from the game world. It indirectly weakens the RMT front-end folks by lowering their supply of goods.
• They'll be back. It doesn't matter if they're banned, they'll be back soon with new accounts. The company needs to keep cleaning, despite the 're-spawn' rate.
• You have to maintain a good back-end data system to ensure these people can be identified.
• Systems must be tweaked as often as possible to minimize Hunter success. Security holes must be closed, etc. At the same time, these efforts must be not harmful to the players. As an example: they added a monster to a high-level fishing area to ensure low-level Hunters were kept at bay. He's easy to kill for appropriate-level characters, but the low-level Hunter avatars run to the zone to do nothing but fish are easily destroyed.
• It's critical to construct 'fair' guidelines to determine what is and isn't accepted. You can't ban all accounts from a country, for example. Don't encourage witchhunts among the players.
• It's also important to keep it an internal discussion with the legal department, to get consensus with everyone on board.

The end result of their efforts is a slow deflation of the economy. They have already had some successes, and they project continued good 'correction' of the currency market. Approximately 2/3rds of the RMT sites that sold gil are now out of business. Some still provide 'gil on order services', but even then they estimate there are only a fraction of the previous number of Hunters left in the game world.

Tanaka returns to the stage to discuss their retention policies. They've had a very rapid expansion pack policy (3 in 5 years), along with major updates every 2 months, and monthly events like holidays. Changes and live feedback are their keys to this success. Wings of the Goddess is the fourth expansion coming, with a worldwide release. There are some 12 SKUs associated with that expansion, spread across all the markets.

They still have 500,000 users, and as long as they keep playing they'll keep developing the game. They are worried that the graphical capabilities of Vista and the 360 will make the game look faded. They are working on a new MMOG, also intended to be cross platform/cross region. They're also developing a common platform for all future games, borrowing technologies from their future MMOG and FFXIII. The new MMOG will be a cross-platform title, available for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360; Tanaka reveals that Nintendo is currently not allowing cross-platform online games. He does, however, say that it's not out of the question from a technical perspective. Soon, he hints, we'll be able to hear more about these upcoming games. With that, Tanaka ends the event by showing us the beautiful Wings of the Goddess trailer, and the keynote is over.

Re:Geez...

[Vacuous]

Yeah you did it wrong, around level 10 you should really begin partying with other players for much better XP. It's been a year since I played but i'm assuming the Valkrum Dunes is still the place to go for those levels.

Re:A player's viewpoint

[0racle]

They don't delete your account, they just don't guarantee it's going to be there after 3 months. Many people have come back after a year or longer and just logged back in and picked up where they left off.

The Best and the Worst

[Alzheimers]

FFXI has some of the best, and some of the worst, features of any MMO I've played.

The best:
-Seasonal Events - Not to be understated, but this is really the game's greatest feature. The holidays were always something to look forward to, as there were unique games and events that really built a spirit of community.
-Audio and Video - The graphics for the time were breathtaking, and it appears that the new expansions look just as good. The sound effects and music were top notch.
-Class Systems - So many different jobs to choose from, and the best part was that you could switch it whenever you felt like it. Dual classes made for some very interesting strategies.
-Crafting Systems - So many recipies and craft items to work with, you could literally spend all your time just making stuff.
-Quests - Really quite varied for the standard Fetch/Kill/Courier mission structures we see in all MMOs, the cutscenes were the true payoffs.

The Worst:
-Leveling/Grind - Difficult to solo past level 10, after 30 you're practically forced to be in a group, and some classes can take hours just to find one.
-Market - The Auction house was a total lagfest and a nightmare to browse. Letting players sell their items directly was a nice touch, but the inventory was too limited and the economy decimated by farmers when I left
-Spawncamping - It wasn't bad enough that spawncamping was the only way to get certain mission-critical items (The key quest was a waste of a weekend), but training and aggro bugs made it easy for one high-level magi to run through a map, "steal" spawns for their group, then annihilate the entire bunch with a few spells and give the rare/bind loot to his low-level friends.
-Variety (or lack of) of mobs - When you're a level 2, you're fighting goblins. When you're level 20, you're fighting ... goblins. When you're level 30, you're fighting goblins.

Re:What a crock of shit.

[pieaholicx]

There is no gold in FFXI you WoW fanboi.

Gold, Gil, same difference. No need to fight over the term used. We all know it means in-game money.

Are you sure you are talking about FFXI? Skills do not cost money.

Ever played a mage? Those spells do seem to cost money.

That is simply not true. You can buy all your gear from the AH and do fine. No need for drops from NMs.

I don't think the source of equipment was the point there. I think the fact that you need rarer equipment that was the point.

Re:Another player's point of view

[Derekloffin]

A lot of WoW players would disagree. They have the exact opposite complaint, that old content is made worthless with each expansion. When BC came out, Azeroth endgame became a ghost town. A lot of people spent a ton of time on Azeroth end game gear, getting attunements, raiding and such, that overnight became green quality. With Blizzard having set that pattern you can expect as soon as a solid release date is known for WOLK that BC endgame will quickly start to die out.

I actually really appreciated the fact that FFXI didn't suddenly devalue old world gear and continued to keep it relevant. It kept the whole game interesting longer.

Re:RMT?

[pat_trick]

Real Money Trading.

About Grinding

[mjhacker]

I honestly don't see it being as bad as people are claiming it to be. The battle system is by far more interesting and strategy oriented than WoW. The only complaint that I can understand is that since it is party-based, if one person is a moron and screws up, everyone suffers. That is the frustrating part.

If you really wanted to solo on FFXI, though, you'd play a BST (beastmaster). They are the only job in the game that solo quite effectively.

WoW vs FFXI

[Dewser]

One way to deal with farmers is make them not needed! WoW has done this by creating daily quests. You get an average of 12g per quest along with faction rep. So basically you are giving players a steady cash flow. With the ability to make enough gold to eventually buy one of the epic flying mounts, it deters most players from buying gold. Granted it may take a year if you do not do them every day, but you know it will happen. Just like granting epic gear through pvp, you need to pvp a certain amount of time in a battleground or arena (arena you have to win) and you are awarded points. You know it will take a certain amount of points to get said piece of gear.

Some may say that this takes some of the challenge out of the game but on the other hand some of these quests are not the easiest and it allows you to spend time doing other things instead of camping a mob all day.

Three things I like about WoW compared to FFXI:
1. It is only a time sync if you want it to be. I can jump in game and do something really quick and jump out, whether its a few BGs, arena or just doing some fishing.
2. Experience gain is greater and allows you to make it to mid level fairly quickly which makes it easier to catch up to friends and join them in end game. Also the quests are design to get you levels appropriate to the next set. By the time you hit the next zone you are at the level you should be for that zone.
3. Soloing - this goes back to #1 on the list. One MAJOR thing I didn't like about FFXI was waiting around to join a group just to kill mobs for xp.

Now the things I liked about FFXI compared to WoW:
1. The community was better in FFXI. Having to play with people from Japan it forced you to be polite to others. The community in a whole seemed more intelligent. If you don't believe me, spend a day in Barrens Chat or the Trade channel on WoW. You will grow dumber just reading the crap that flows from there.
2. Group mechanics - yeah I like to solo, but I also like some social interaction. Much of FFXI required you to be in groups at low levels. so by the time you got to end-game content you should know your class and how it works in the group. WoW makes it TOO easy for people to rush to 70 and then you get someone with a pet or totem that keeps breaking CC because that pet keeps attacking anything nearby.

Ok, thats all. These stories always get me going.

One thing FFXI can do to improve on fighting farmers is give the players more gil through quests or mob drops making the need to use the farmers less.