A simple solution to combat all the cheating!

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

But there is another problem: the lower the barrier is to report someone the more likely it is, that the people will misuse this functionality. Someone is good in PvP or you hate the guy in the raid? Report him, maybe the GM had a bad day and will ban him. :) And no, false accusations are not an exception. ;)

Easy reporting can do much harm.


Cheers

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Easy reporting is only harmful if the STF doesn't know how to properly investigate a matter; which already seems to be the case but overwhelmingly in the favor of offenders as I've literally never seen someone complain about being wrongfully banned for cheating. and reports are almost never actioned in general. The only times I've heard of it actually being a problem are in games with exceptionally lazy moderation that will just auto-ban people for being reported too many times.

I'd like to think they have extremely detailed server logs that mention when events are happening down to the milliseconds so they can tell if players are exhibiting consistently inhuman reaction speeds and other jank associated with cheating, but they simply don't know what they should be looking for...or something.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Or in pvp where people use cheats which you can also detect through the log cause no human could switch between multiple targets in mere seconds to killsteal etc.

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While in essence I agree, this one thing I feel a need to correct you on: it is indeed possible to switch targets around very fast as a human. Specifically, you can bind the party list, enemy aggro list (or opposing team in CC, as it is treated internally as the enemy aggro list), or even the alliance list (though that gets wonky) to the mouse wheel, right in FFXIV's own input settings and keybindings.

I have the mouse wheel (on its own) bound to scrolling through the enemy aggro list. If I am tanking and someone pulls aggro on a mob, I can look at that list and just whip the mouse wheel up or down to get right to that target, provoke or ranged attack, and all is good. I then have Alt + the mouse wheel bound to the party list, allowing me to do the same speedy zip-the-selection through the party list quickly as a healer. (My zoom in/out is rebound to Control + the mouse wheel.)

It takes some practice to land perfectly on your target in the list instead of one above or one below, but I made that binding change a year and a half ago and I have had a lot of practice with it now, and thus muscle memory of exactly how far I need to spin the mouse wheel to get to position 2, 3, etc. (Though it also probably means if I ever use a different MMO mouse with slightly different scroll wheel sensitivity, I'm screwed.) And while it was originally meant solely as an aid to finding that one mob in the list while tanking, it has proven to be an unplanned but considerable benefit in Crystalline Conflict due to the enemy team display being functionally a reskinned enemy aggro list; I can indeed flip from one target to another in mere instants, with nothing other than a standard USB MMO mouse.

Now, if you mean whipping between multiple targets and attacking them all in like, under a GCD, that's obviously cheating. But if you mean seeing that someone in the enemy list has a potentially-disastrous cast being prepared and it needs to be dealt with right now? And then immediately switching back to your original target before the GCD cooldown is even over? It is absolutely possible to select them almost instantaneously to deal with them just via the mouse wheel method (and switch back afterwards), once you've got the practice to land on the entry you intend to.

Like, I have the enemy in position 3 on the list targeted, but the one in position 5 needs to be addressed right now? I can scroll down <this> far and they're instantly selected, I do whatever I need, and then I can switch back to the original target even while the action is processing. (I can't do anything to the original target I switched back to until my GCD is off cooldown, obviously, but I can sure as heck have them selected and waiting again for that next GCD almost instantaneously.)

This is also useful with the party list, as you can select a party member needing a heal woven in; changing targets does not cancel a cast, so I can hit attack on a boss, select the target player while the castbar is still going, immediately weave the heal, and be back on the boss before the GCD is off cooldown. (No adds? Any movement of the scroll wheel without a modifier key re-targets the boss with this setup; there's only one entry in the aggro list, so no matter how many slots you move through, you only ever select the boss.)

Admittedly, I may regret sharing this trick now that it has proven so useful in CC, if I find more people using it against me... but it also doesn't seem entirely fair to keep a mechanical trick like that to myself when it really does make target management orders of magnitude easier, including in CC matches.

It bears mentioning a lot of the functions performed by the PvP cheats are essentially using mouseover macros, meaning they don't even need to visibly change who their current target is to use CC or LBs on a priority target.

However, they skip over the whole "mouse over the target" bit. You can see other types of bots abusing similar functionality to instantly spam healing spells at any damaged targets within range without actually targeting them; often because someone forgot turn off their script before they went AFK for the night by an aetheryte.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

But there is another problem: the lower the barrier is to report someone the more likely it is, that the people will misuse this functionality. Someone is good in PvP or you hate the guy in the raid? Report him, maybe the GM had a bad day and will ban him. :) And no, false accusations are not an exception. ;)

Easy reporting can do much harm.


Cheers

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Isn't said misuse also a violation, ergo nonissue?

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

But there is another problem: the lower the barrier is to report someone the more likely it is, that the people will misuse this functionality. Someone is good in PvP or you hate the guy in the raid? Report him, maybe the GM had a bad day and will ban him. :) And no, false accusations are not an exception. ;)

Easy reporting can do much harm.


Cheers

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That is true and that is why i said that they should extend their GM team by a lot. Letting people literally cheat will do in the long run much more damage since as soon as they force SE hand to make a choice between letting them just cheat as they please or purging all users of third party software no matter what, that will destroy much more than some false reports.

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

Isn't said misuse also a violation, ergo nonissue?

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Yes. But it seems, that they do not really care about it. I have reported someone falsely over the "report RMT" function because i misclicked the name. But nothing happened to me.


Cheers

Finally a good suggestion to the cheating thing

I think more people would use this to report someone that killed them fair and square than an actual cheater. He couldn’t possibly have killed me?! I am too good to be killed by all these five people I dived solo into!!! They must be cheating… +5 reports for y’all. That’ll show ya.

Lets suppose they add this feature:
- Do you think player base is not going to be biased and be objective when using report tool?
- How would one validate veracity of these reports? Some people are just insanely skilled & good - would win a lot, would get reported a LOT.
- How to prevent this feature from being maliciously abused? Just check what happened in New World where opposite faction players were report bombed into automatic account suspensions.
- Do you think SE has enough resources to properly arbitrate each and every report? Or will they use automated tools?

This Is Monumentally Stupid Idea.

Disable mods? It's the nuclear option if it all comes to this.