Final Fantasy XIV players who have exploited a glitch to tackle the hardest battles in the game for months are now facing bans. The amazing part: the glitch involves a simple chat command.
Many Final Fantasy fans are familiar with the Limit Break. Typically, these extremely powerful abilities become available when characters take significant damage.
In Final Fantasy XIV, some players discovered the ability to abuse the NPC Limit Break known as “Ungarmax” via chat commands to conquer tough boss battles.
Now Square Enix is swinging the ban hammer.
Exploit massively increases damage output
Initially, the Ungarmax Limit Break was only supposed to be available in certain content. These so-called Command Missions, where you navigate dungeons alongside 3 NPCs, were intended as an alternative way to level solo.
However, players quickly figured out that the Ungarmax Limit Break could be used relatively easily outside of Command Missions through the chat command “/ac Ungarmax” and that with a massive effect.
In FFXIV, a full group of 8 players has a limit break bar that is divided into three parts and fills up slowly over the course of a battle.
The NPC Limit Break Ungarmax has several unique features:
- The Command Missions can have a maximum of just two limit bars, with Ungarmax consuming only one of them upon activation.
- This makes it quickly available in long boss fights and can be used multiple times.
- It increases the group’s damage output by a whopping 50% for 15 seconds.
- The duration of the effect can be extended to 25 seconds by the Astrologian job’s ability “Opposition”. For a single player, it can last up to 40 seconds.
This extreme DPS boost has been used by some players to conquer difficult content with high DPS requirements.
This includes the hardest battle in the game, “Endless Shadows of Bahamut”, and the latest epic raid “Omega: Sigmametrie”.
How this looks in action was demonstrated by the streamer “Feelstoastedman” and his raid group.
The fight was immediately wiped afterwards as the glitch was used solely for demonstration purposes.
Investigations have been initiated
However, Square Enix’s response to the glitch comes a bit late. Several Reddit users claim they reported the “Ungarmax exploit” to the game masters at least 4 months ago.
When the story exploded in the FFXIV subreddit, the director and producer of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, personally addressed the issue in a forum post.
In it, he apologized for the delayed response and reported that the game master team is currently prioritizing the following points:
- Determining whether the claim that the glitch was reported to the GMs early is indeed true.
- If it is true, finding out why no appropriate actions were taken.
- Identifying the characters that intentionally exploited this glitch.
The glitch itself was fixed on February 28 during an emergency maintenance of all servers.
First bans followed a week later
The first report regarding a ban associated with Ungarmax recently appeared on Reddit.
In an email, the thread creator was informed that their account was banned for 9 days. However, the following sentence is important: “Additionally, the service account will be investigated and considered for termination.”
The 9 days represent the maximum temporary ban duration imposed for severe rule violations. Based on experience, accounts that received a 9-day ban are often permanently banned.
According to the thread creator’s statement, another member of their group was also banned, who had likewise used the command “/ac Ungarmax”.
This raises the question of whether players who used the chat command “just for fun” to see what the glitch actually does will also be affected by the ban.
So far, it seems to only impact players who exploited the glitch before it was made public on Reddit.
The top players who achieved World First kills in the challenging raids have demonstrably not made use of the glitch.
Another type of glitch has been affecting monsters in FFXIV for some time now. The result looks hilariously funny:
In Final Fantasy XIV, cacti are running around crazily in circles
