The Case For and Against Third Party Tools

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Originally Posted by LotteYanson

Ive just had a talk with a friend some weeks ago.
He said if he could have skipped the story he might still would have played ff14.
When i told him that theres a skipping option, he first didnt believe me until i told him you would have to take some extra steps and find the hidden online store, that is not available through the game ui.
Something unthinkable by today standard appearently.

For a bigger company like SQEX this should have been crystal clear since a long time allready.
Yet they refuse to even implement stuff that would increase their profits.

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I am extremely happy they don't have the game shop tied to the in-game UI, but I don't know how your friend has no idea the cash shop exists when it's advertised on the launcher. If they could miss that then unless it's flashing in big bright colors right on the screen I doubt they'd have noticed it in-game too. I don't care how much money they make I don't want "BUY A SKIP, BUY A SKIP" being plastered on the game screen.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

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Imagine they went down the route of streaming services where the lower priced subscription actually comes with ads in-game! It's unlikely they'd do it for players paying the top sub, and the Free Trialers have restricted access to stuff on the online store anyway so it would be pointless to advertise to them, but the basic sub... would not put it past any company to consider it.

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Originally Posted by LotteYanson

Ive just had a talk with a friend some weeks ago.
He said if he could have skipped the story he might still would have played ff14.
When i told him that theres a skipping option, he first didnt believe me until i told him you would have to take some extra steps and find the hidden online store, that is not available through the game ui.
Something unthinkable by today standard appearently.

For a bigger company like SQEX this should have been crystal clear since a long time allready.
Yet they refuse to even implement stuff that would increase their profits.

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Finding their services is one thing, but paying them is another story. I pay my sub in 6 month lots and every time it involves about 3 days of finangling to get them to take my money, just because I moved to another country.

They have to be the WORST company I have EVER experienced to pay.

For example, I worked around this for a time by having my spouse (who lived where I am now the whole time, thus dodging my issue) buy me things from the store. Well, they removed that.

I go to find a work-around and ... oh, they won't take my VISA or Mastercards, for some reason. They won't let me buy Crysta. They won't let me use online payment options... wouldn't, I should say. Amazon Pay popped up as an option and it works... for now... because they always stop working.

For or against, at the end of the day it doesn't matter. They're against TOS so Square will ax them if they are so inclined. This was going to happen. Move on with your life.

Let's also not gloss over that stealing copyrighted assets to use as mods in 14 could also land SE in hot water. Maybe next time to be so blatantly obvious about your mod usage to force SEs hand.

I was totally fine with people using mods until I heard that there was underage content being made. Of course this is such a small minority of players but they have a massive impact on a company if that stuff were to take off or somehow make its way into the media. If I am a business owner nothing shuts my company down faster than underage modding, its gross and everyone religious, non religious , left , right , center white, black ect finds it repulsive.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

I am extremely happy they don't have the game shop tied to the in-game UI, but I don't know how your friend has no idea the cash shop exists when it's advertised on the launcher. If they could miss that then unless it's flashing in big bright colors right on the screen I doubt they'd have noticed it in-game too. I don't care how much money they make I don't want "BUY A SKIP, BUY A SKIP" being plastered on the game screen.

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Modern gamers dont have that much attention to read the launcher, they hit play and are happy it finally starts.
Obviously the implementation in the game UI could be without aggressive popups.
I would just like the purchaseflow to be better.
Ingame previews on your characters would also help often.
Imagine a preview of music scrolls that they offer that doesnt include to pray that some random guy on YT uploaded it
Mogstation is also annoying to navigate to renew your sub.
Upgrading from free trial to paid or buying a new expansion is the worst; it feels like they dont even want your money lol

They need to adopt to newer generations/modern standards if you like it or not doesnt matter.
Theres enough room to make both sides happy there.

On Mods, some of them are just quality of life upgrades, nothing that touches gameplay necessarily in a meaningful way...

The official Chat Bubbles are worse than the mod ones as I'm pretty sure they don't actually work in combat and you have to look over to the chat log to see messages and callouts in the middle of a fight.
And why would anyone dare to want to have pictures on loading screens, or an actual functional in-game ping meter...

And quite some time ago, on the topic of mods, I did hear that mods offer better accessibility features for stuff like color blindness than what SE themself have.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Alright, I’m going to come out and say it: Mods are a result of a game being played out for so long, in so many ways, it becomes boring/a chore. This dates all the way back when Steam first announced Steam Workshop. You could play a game, but if it has no REPLAY VALUE for the player after the fact(which XIV does in *some* content) for whatever content the player is seeking, they do one of the three:

A) Quit the game and play something else. - The most common answer.

B) Self-impose challenges on the gameplay itself(i.e. No Healer Clears).

C) Add Mods for flavor or for extra content that is generated by player creativity - or in some cases, for cheating.

While we do adhere to FFXIV’s EULA, Third Party Tools have been around for a long, long time - even all the way back in 2.0 with Parsers for raiding. The FFXIV Development Team in my opinion took down Mare because of the potential of it causing a security breach similar to what happened with the previous one since it looks at character data.

The other argument I’ve read in the other thread is that it’s because of MogStation Item Sales being down, though if the Developers decided this was the route to take action…they do not realize the irreparable harm they have caused to both XIV’s team(on top of what already has been seen as problematic in other topics/criticisms of the game) as well as the communities that see that for what it is: It’s all about the $$$$.

So, regardless of what optics are taken, it is a lose-lose for both sides short-term. Long Term we don’t know - but there are ramifications for the actions taken that I will quote Gabe for, as he said it best:

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

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There IS NOT case.... it is stated it is not permitted with this software, so stop making up things, SE holds the Pink Slip on Final Fantasy, so that is the end of the story right there.

That does not mean that modifications does not exist and the likes, but the final say is with SquareEnix, not the Final Fantasy XIV team.

What SE should do, would be to like allow mods as they are with other games and even being able to apply them inside the game like you can in Baldurs Gate 3, that has a mod 'shop' in a figure of speech at no cost of course and with that SE could release a toolset for people to mod within certain borderlines and of course to be released in the possible mod shop, for all, Xbox, PS4/5 pro and PC, and of course needs to be approved by SE that would then host the mod on one of their servers.

Would be quite popular if such feature would exist for cosmetic stuff and the second thing would just have it and then release cool stuff made by players as new set items that is craftable in simple ways.

My opinion is strictly against all and any types of mod including UI and QoL stuff