Been 9 years since ARR and they still haven't managed(Or rather, haven't bothered) to shorten the animation lock due to latency while addons have managed to accomplish that just fine, it does seem a very ass backwards thing from them.
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Here is a vid where they talked about the damage meter tool.
They said multiple times that it is a grey zone cause they don't want and can't see what is installed on your computer and that they want to avoid a petty reporting war between players and that they rather should enjoy the game as long as it doesn't affect them in a personal way like getting harassed with parse numbers or all that crap.
But yeah they also say it's a risk you take, both in breaking the ToS and maybe getting caught and in maybe compromising your account or pc through third party software. Which is a clear stance they need to have to avoid troubles with the law, since you can't basically officially condone pornographic content (which many of the mods available offer) and you can't condone behavior that is against your own ToS. So no matter if they go after the modding folk or not they have to say that they don't condone it.
So yeah we are in this weird limbo cause they can't condone it without getting into legal troubles and they seem to not want to purge all the modding folk, probably cause they pay good money and keep the game alive through their interactive communities. Would be a huge blow to the SE stock if they purge the western playerbase from all modders.
GMs probably had to think about precedent, since so many people reported this well known person. If the GMs let him off easy, people would notice; it'd create a lot of animosity from regular players who don't use addons because they would feel as though the rules aren't being enforced. There might even be a sense of "oh, so it's okay to break rules if you're a streamer" which isn't a sentiment you want rippling through your player base. If any GM wanted to help that guy out of his bind, he made it impossible for them by filming himself breaking established rules in front of an audience that hated him enough to report him all at once. The community was watching and the GMs knew it; their hand was forced and they had to give him a clear punishment.
Frankly, I'm amazed anyone streams this game at all. Unless you're one of the old guard, you're gonna get like 4 viewers and one of them might report you for something stupid and get your ass banned. Literally no point imo
The timing is a bit sus - as in after the announcement and the mass reporting, dude was only banned a few short hours later.
Bots don't get banned fast enough that's for sure, but that's also because, IIRC, it's not the GM's territory but the STF's, which I believe consists of like 3-4 people?
The issue with banning for parsers or for 3rd party tools that most are calling QoL. Is that you have years of precedent where the enforced rule is, "don't bully people, don't mention it in game, don't talk about it in game." For the past few years this has been fine. There are many many many videos with parsers on stream/videos its standard even. To go from no enforcement to banning people in the middle of the hardest longest prog you get in a patch cycle is why people are reacting the way they are. If they did this release, pulled some streamers to the in game gaol, warned them to immediately cease and desist, then let them go on. People would have stopped/hid them and went about their days.
Hello, this is GM Elrisivana. We would like to thank you all for your feedback regarding this matter. Although I will be closing this thread at this time, we encourage everyone to read Producer Yoshida’s Lodestone post if you would like more information regarding our stance on third party tools: https://sqex.to/pWB5p