My Proposal on Recent Drama

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Originally Posted by Banggugyangu

3: A progressive approach along the lines that I outlined above. This allows SE to evolve the game's engines using the mod devs as inspiration. Many of those devs aren't looking for financial reward, fame, or even recognition. Many just want to improve the game. Alongside that, it allows SE the ability to then bring an extremely firm hand against the exploitative mods with much less chance of community backlash. They then have the ability to say "we already go this far for you guys... Cheating is not going to be tolerated under any circumstances" with no chance for any valid argument from the opposition. These are the reasons I made my proposal. I see it as the best path forward for the game on multiple aspects.

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It should be this, the middle-ground, imo. To go to the extremes and completely allow or deny mods would be silly, but if SE approved certain mods or created their own that would be a fair compromise.

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Originally Posted by HolyReign

ToS is pretty simple to understand, don't use outside programs, addons or tools.

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Gonna respectfully disagree on that point, especially when Yoshida himself was referring to things like calculators, excel spreadsheets, and an MMO mouse as able to be interpreted as a 3rd party tool. Even if it was meant to be a little hyperbolic it still shows how far you can take the whole idea of what a 3rd party tool is.

Forgive me for asking but after seeing nearly three full pages of various threads about addons, I have to ask: Is this really that much of a big deal? I mean I am serious here. I want to know if this is really important. I don't use addons myself but I also don't do the really high end content. Are these addons really important for clearing high end content? Is it possible to clear high end content without them? If the answers to these last two questions are yes and no, respectively, then perhaps the high end content has been tuned too high?

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Forgive me for asking but after seeing nearly three full pages of various threads about addons, I have to ask: Is this really that much of a big deal? I mean I am serious here. I want to know if this is really important. I don't use addons myself but I also don't do the really high end content. Are these addons really important for clearing high end content? Is it possible to clear high end content without them? If the answers to these last two questions are yes and no, respectively, then perhaps the high end content has been tuned too high?

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Addons are not needed for high end content.

Very few people use any addons that actually make it easier. Many use QoL and parsing addons, however. The main QoL plugin has 795k downloads.

Some people are mad about the world first race but fail to realize that the addons that do make it easier, need to be programmed first to know what the strat for the fight is. Therefore, they cannot be used for world first.

Really this whole bout of drama isn't that big a deal since all they did was ban a few streamers (for 10 days) who were being super blatant about it. Now if they start trying to implement an anti-cheat or going after your average joe, then it'll be a big deal.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Some people are mad about the world first race but fail to realize that the addons that do make it easier, need to be programmed first to know what the strat for the fight is. Therefore, they cannot be used for world first.

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The world's first clear did have automated callouts in it.

All they need to do is see the mechanic a single time, and then make the network log available to their 9th/10th man and have them extract ability IDs to configure triggers with. Cactbot takes time to update because it's 1.) often programmed by people who don't do the fight and rely on consulting people who do and 2.) uses more complex methods to read and solve compound mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Forgive me for asking but after seeing nearly three full pages of various threads about addons, I have to ask: Is this really that much of a big deal? I mean I am serious here. I want to know if this is really important. I don't use addons myself but I also don't do the really high end content. Are these addons really important for clearing high end content? Is it possible to clear high end content without them? If the answers to these last two questions are yes and no, respectively, then perhaps the high end content has been tuned too high?

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It's unlikely that DSR would exist today in its current form had ACT never existed, but that doesn't mean the content requires addons. It's possible to benefit from the culture / knowledge that exists because of addons without directly using them yourself. Simply put, the game never would have been pushed to the extremes that it has if people couldn't measure and analyze stuff.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The world's first clear did have automated callouts in it.

All they need to do is see the mechanic a single time, and then make the network log available to their 9th/10th man and have them extract ability IDs to configure triggers with. Cactbot takes time to update because it's 1.) often programmed by people who don't do the fight and rely on consulting people who do and 2.) uses more complex methods to read and solve compound mechanics.

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That's pretty disappointing to be honest. I'd say that's a pretty cut and dry case of cheating. No bueno.

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Originally Posted by HolyReign

Square Enix doesn't need to amend any list, determine what is/isn't allowed, create additional tools to add any more bedazzling to your character, ect.

ToS is pretty simple to understand, don't use outside programs, addons or tools.

SE has made it's stance pretty clear, with the recent bans of people who blatantly use these things, during streaming, or video creation, that the use is against ToS.

FFXIV, is a beautiful game, it's content has been watered down so much that any content is done without too much effort, yet people keep going on and on about wanting them.

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While I agree that 3rd party tools that give in game advantages during competitive content or serves to ostracize certain players from content are sketchy , there are some simple QoL things that some of the addons I've read about do that should have been in the game years ago, such as moving furniture freely along the Z-axis when decorating, saving and exporting chat logs, or combining your main 1-2-3 class combo into a single button (which is something PvP already does.)

YoshiP was exactly right when he admitted FFXIV and SE has been failing the player base in this regard, it's a service issue that they need to improve on at some point rather than making the spaghetti code excuse.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

It's unlikely that DSR would exist today in its current form had ACT never existed, but that doesn't mean the content requires addons. It's possible to benefit from the culture / knowledge that exists because of addons without directly using them yourself. Simply put, the game never would have been pushed to the extremes that it has if people couldn't measure and analyze stuff.

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I do and and always will disagree with that. Been around numerous communities in more and less competitive game and I think attributing the fact we have any advanced knowledge to ACT is disingenuous at best and insulting ar worst. Every game, every community will eventually have people dedicated enough to work out things like damage mechanic, stat correlation. I've seen it in games that are much less open about their data compared to FFXIV. Hell the ACT exists because someone was able to access the data and make a tool that shows it in more digestible manner.
Did the tool speed up the progress. Yeah. Would the progress never be made without it? I don't think so.

Problem is that if SE made a list of allowed 3rd party tools, it's never ending work. The tools aren't static, they're constantly being updated and each update would mean that SE has to spend time re-checking it to ensure that it is ok. And then you could get the cases of someone taking an allowed mod and further adding functions to it like call-outs and then claim they are using an allowed mod.

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Originally Posted by Banggugyangu

The recent drama surrounding 3rd party tools has been a raging forest fire the past few days, as everyone knows. This thread is not about discussion of whether or not said 3rd party tools are good or bad. There are enough of those. Rather, I'm creating this thread in order to put forth my proposal for what I feel would be the best approach in solving the problem as best as possible.

My proposed solution would be 3-fold:
1st: For an internal team to determine which of the 3rd party tools add beneficial functionality to enhance the game, then implement those into the core game. Yoshi-P has already stated that they have plans to take this approach, so part 1 covered, I suppose.

2nd: Create a "workshop" of sorts for aesthetic modifications that then become sanctioned. These aesthetic modifications could function exactly the same as they do currently: Client-side only. Anyone that claims that model swaps, UI retexturing, etc.. is detrimental to the game, IMO, is simply incorrect. When these types of modifications are client-side only, whether someone has them or not really affects no one outside of those who use them. On the other hand, for some players, these types of mods become the life-blood of the game. Having a sanctioned workshop for such mods allows for these types of mods to exist, but before being usable they are vetted to ensure that they don't allow for any type of game-breaking behavior.

3: Officially sanction GShade/ReShade or implement a filtering engine into the game.

I love the game. I don't need any modifications. I do feel that there are certain aspects that are lacking in functionality or usability. It will inevitably and understandably take a while for SE to implement these functionalities. Unfortunately, I don't see this drama going away in the near future. I'm just hoping that the fires start to burn out soon, and the community can return to normal.

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Or... or, just hear me out.

Play the game as it is.