Reset time with xpansion. Lets deal with the cheating finally.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Rader.io didn't help either.

The community basically is fighting against itself.

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Didn't help, no. But it is more of a symptom of the bigger issues.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

Maybe we are beyond that point of no return.... I still want them to give us a way to more effectively deal with the non-rmt cheaters though. An easier-to-use report function and a faster follow-through need to be the minimum.

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Just having a right click Report Player opening the appropriate Support Desk window would be a big help, especially if it auto-filled the character name/world/location. Players would still have to fill in the details but at least they wouldn't be trying to negotiate a complicated menu first.

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Originally Posted by Wolwosh

I used to do Ultimate for a while, just to try something new, and it was downtime..
I was unpleasantly surprised though as to how many people in my static were using Cactbot.
And looking up PoV's (pigs or vampires?) also many of those had Cactbot running.
Felt like cheating to me.

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Careful, you're going to start a pages long discussion where a bunch of disingenuous people pretend they can't understand how Cactbot is cheating.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

None of those things destroyed the game. Absolutely none of them. Addons aren't really some huge advantage either since they are readily available and easy to install. What destroyed WoW was arrogance and hubris on behalf of the company and its developers. Sadly, they continue barreling towards destruction even now. It seems like you haven't played WoW much over the years, if at all. That's the only way you could have come to this conclusion.

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If you have tried Eden S12, you are lying to yourself by claiming these addons don't offer you advantage.
They do, gradually lowering the difficulty of entire fight

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

If you have tried Eden S12, you are lying to yourself by claiming these addons don't offer you advantage.
They do, gradually lowering the difficulty of entire fight

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If you looked at the context, I was talking about WoW. Which, again, is because they are readily available and simple to install, so most players have them anyway. As a result there's no real advantage over one's fellow player since most people use them by default. It comes down to accessibility, really. And in WoW they are extremely accessible.

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

It went so far that some fights now rely on you having the addon, and you cannot tell something is happening without the addon. This is a piss poor design and I support the complete ban of all these things.

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And this is why im for absolute 0 tollerance on that kind of stuff... once it turns to "lol just use the mod/addon/bot" its too far...

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because sniffers and spying software ARE bad and have no place on people's computers.

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Well then dont cheat on online games, easy.

Unfortunately for you then, they don't ever intend to install that kind of crap on anyone's computer. Stuff like spyware and DRM have such an awful reputation and for good reason.. at it's worst it negatively impacts your PC's performance. So I'm glad they elect to not put that crap on their software.

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

I agree, but pretending to be a saint in hell gets you nothing good.
Most people use Chrome as their browser for example, Chrome by default scans your processes and activity and sends it to Google. By default this scanning software is also running in the background when you are NOT using the browser.
If you don't believe me go to settings, open advanced settings, system and the first line will surprise you. :)

People who have this active on their PC also complain about game protection. At least game protection does something good for you in exchange.

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I always felt that Chrome is a steaming pile but I didn't know it did this. No I don't use Chrome. I use Firefox too. Not quite to the extent he does, but yes script blockers/etc in there. I don't want to get infected from anywhere and I don't want "personalized ads" from places like Amazon to show up on other pages. I consider Discord to be a steaming pile as well. Yes when I have to use it I do but it often messes with my sound settings if left running so I force it shut completely when I quit using it. If you just try to shut it down it doesn't, it keeps running in the background. I don't want anything that does that.

I am not sure that is a really good defense. We are all watched on our computers whether we want it or not anymore. It is just a way to try to argue against what is clearly against the TOS and never say never. If being spied upon you really mattered you would not even post here with all its cookie trackers and a myriad of optics. If people actually want to try to do something against the cheaters then they will get the point. Spyware against injections is not the only feather in the hat anyhow. pattern tools can easily be used to decipher patterns and a few well-placed tests to see how a possible bot reacts from a dm would also do well. Some bots have auto-responses that text them when they are being messaged so the most advanced paranoid cheaters might escape but the response against cheaters is so tepid at best most people don't even care to hide the tracks.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

I am not sure that is a really good defense. We are all watched on our computers whether we want it or not anymore. It is just a way to try to argue against what is clearly against the TOS and never say never. If being spied upon you really mattered you would not even post here with all its cookie trackers and a myriad of optics. If people actually want to try to do something against the cheaters then they will get the point. Spyware against injections is not the only feather in the hat anyhow. pattern tools can easily be used to decipher patterns and a few well-placed tests to see how a possible bot reacts from a dm would also do well. Some bots have auto-responses that text them when they are being messaged so the most advanced paranoid cheaters might escape but the response against cheaters is so tepid at best most people don't even care to hide the tracks.

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The chief difference is that when opening a website, only the information you reveal and input there is processed. EU law forbids processing of user-specific data for anything that isn't cause-bound, specific and as minimal as possible unless the user explicitly consents. As FF XIV is accessible within the EU, they are obligated to abide by those standards. The data they process is limited and bound specifically to what is neccessary to use the website and the services it provides. Same for the game, the game sends data to the server to be able to operate. The website doesn't magically scan everything else you have running on your computer, and is in fact incapable of doing so. So comparing website cookies with spyware is *extremely* flawed.

That being said, you are absolutely right about the second half, this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing kind of deal where a no to spyware means a no to further anti-bot measures, which was mostly what this topic was originally about before people brought in the callout 3rd party tools and such. If they can cook up some smart ways to deal with bots in particular that don't require spyware and can run server-side only, with some smart intergration of Moderators to verify activity flagged as suspicious, then that would be great. I can't imagine that they aren't already doing that anyway, but if they can refine and improve the process, everyone can only stand to win from it.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Didn't help, no. But it is more of a symptom of the bigger issues.

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Raider.io exists because of all the risk of running keys is on the leader. I don't fault players for it at all tbh. I also don't apply to +10s when I've only done +2s even if I have the ilvl for it and will do like a 5 then 8 then 10 to ease into it a bit. If it wasn't IO it would be ilvl or achievements or armory anyway. I hope blizz will change it at some point but they seem to really like doubling down on dumb decisions lately even if current mythic+ is a few steps up from the past.

Ive never seen cactbot but I have heard it compared to WoW's deadly boss mods which means it doesn't do much if that is all it does. FF has huge arrows telling people what to do and they still mess up. Knowing about something doesn't make it free though. If anything I wish this game had real addon support but I do get it would kinda suck for the console players. At least FF has much better base UI control so things like hotbar and bag addons don't feel as needed. I refuse to play wow without at least dominos(hotbar addon) at this point though.

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Originally Posted by Miles064

Raider.io exists because of all the risk of running keys is on the leader. I don't fault players for it at all tbh. I also don't apply to +10s when I've only done +2s even if I have the ilvl for it and will do like a 5 then 8 then 10 to ease into it a bit. If it wasn't IO it would be ilvl or achievements or armory anyway. I hope blizz will change it at some point but they seem to really like doubling down on dumb decisions lately even if current mythic+ is a few steps up from the past.

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It's not really the players' fault, I agree. It comes down to overall content design, though it is still 100% voluntary to stick around. Having put so much time, effort and money into the game I had a hard time really letting go. I get it. I'll probably return at some point, but it's no longer an addiction. It's more along the lines of "welp, I've got nothing better to do" when I need something different to play. With how competitive things are across the board and the punishment for failure being so high, it breeds resentment and toxicity for the players themselves and for the developers. Not quite League of Legends levels of bad, but it is still rather unpleasant. I've seen people compare leaving WoW for other games to leaving an abusive relationship. It's...not entirely inaccurate. FF XIV tends to be a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. But basically anything but WoW is after dealing with them for years. lol

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

It's not really the players' fault, I agree. It comes down to overall content design. With how competitive things are across the board and the punishment for failure being so high, it breeds resentment and toxicity for the players themselves and for the developers. Not quite League of Legends levels of bad, but it is still rather unpleasant. I've seen people compare leaving WoW for other games to leaving an abusive relationship. It's...not entirely inaccurate. FF XIV tends to be a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. But basically anything but WoW is after dealing with them for years. lol

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I guess I never really saw it. Most of the toxic stuff in wow is performance based so as long as you dont play like trash you dont run into much. FF's feels more toxic in that I seem to clash with players a lot more here over the most basic stuff though. "dps pls aoe", "rdm why are you spam hardcasting verthunder?" "drk pls use tbn", and such which I feel is way harder to deal with compared to racial slur spam(which i can ignore/report) or trolls(kick/report) or something and even then trolls and slur spammer seem to get dealt with pretty fast. I will say the worse I've had to deal with in WoW was way worse then anything I've dealt with in FF so far so maybe there is some truth to it. I've also played wow for much longer though.

Feel like the people in this game are too afraid to get their feelings maybe hurt which goes back to this game's "addon hate". Things like the addon that puts deathblows in chat and dmg meters are useful tools that can help performance for everyone. "what happened?" can be answered by just looking at details/recount/skadda and saying "oh I took a ton of dmg from this" or "these adds need to be interrupted and only 2 interrupts went out", "tank a is taking way more dmg then tank b", "all our healers together are doing well according to details but we just don't have the hps" and such . The more I read the forums and play this game, the more it seems like I'm the outlier here though.

Cheating is a massive arms race and even the most aggressive anti cheat software cant catch everything. That said there are some painfully obvious examples for which no anti cheat software is needed to see like the forever gathering bots. It's just not possible for a single human to farm multiple days with the same inputs with no pause ever. I personally dont trust SE to include an anti cheat software that doesnt negatively affect performance, therefore I dont think SE should introduce it. I also welcome the approach of not putting what is essentially spyware on computers, I wish more companies behaved like that.

In the grand scheme of things it doesnt matter that much. If you want to make gil, you can make it yourself. If you just want crafted gear you are kinda benefitting from market bots. Raiding is designed around not needing 3rd party tools so they will remain completeable without them and cactbot users have no significant advantage over someone just playing well. You are cheating prog but that also means that you have no ability to adjust and improvise if something goes not according to plan. For me others cheating on raids doesnt diminish the achievement of legit clearing those raids.

I wish people would stop with the panic about addons/3rd party tools.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Just having a right click Report Player opening the appropriate Support Desk window would be a big help, especially if it auto-filled the character name/world/location. Players would still have to fill in the details but at least they wouldn't be trying to negotiate a complicated menu first.

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The problem is, if you make the reporting of other people so easy then the players will use it. And the GMs could be flooded with very light-minded reports about literaly nothing.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

None of those things destroyed the game. Absolutely none of them. Addons aren't really some huge advantage either since they are readily available and easy to install. What destroyed WoW was arrogance and hubris on behalf of the company and its developers. Sadly, they continue barreling towards destruction even now. It seems like you haven't played WoW much over the years, if at all. That's the only way you could have come to this conclusion.

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I didn't say it destroyed wow, you did. Don't put your words into my mouth, my mouth is for other things.
I said it destroyed dungeons and raids, you went from people having to learn and master the mechanics to people listening to an addon and doing what it says. Next step is auto-play.

I agree that cheaters of all types, whether it be bots, hackers, or even "minor" cases of people using apps that provide them with information they wouldn't/shouldn't be privy to like the hunt radars are starting to really undermine several aspects of the game.

The hunt system has been turned a shell of what it used to be thanks to the aforementioned hunt radars and bot relays basically ensuring that if there's even one person using the app present in a zone when a S rank spawns, the entire data center's (And soon, the entire bloody game's) population of hunters will be converging on it within seconds, and it can actually make actively trying to spawn S ranks detrimental as if it spawns in a bad place, it's potentially going to get picked off before you can even find it.

The Firmament rankings were a complete joke and something I hope never happens again after seeing how many routine cheaters just from my server alone were in the top 12 over the course of the event. Only one of them seemed to have actually gotten purged after his DoL bot started malfunctioning and making it way too obvious to overlook.

There are herds of treasure map bots making rounds on basically every server now, JP included, and they seem to be the new fad for RMTers.

Even the duty roulette system is routinely cheated by people using add-ons to determine what their "random" duty is and skip out on it if it's too lengthy and/or difficult for their tastes.

You also can bet that once the 6.1 PvP updates arrive the mode is going to have a significant uptick in the number of bots.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

The problem is, if you make the reporting of other people so easy then the players will use it. And the GMs could be flooded with very light-minded reports about literaly nothing.

Cheers

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This could be circumvented by just requiring a certain minimum number of reports from different people before a player is regarded as worth their attention, because a DoL bot who routinely shows up at timed nodes 24/7 is naturally going to accumulate more reports then a normal player who intermittently visits them.

It would make it much harder to weaponize with ill intent and it's not like the STF won't ban people without really good cause given how difficult is to get them to take action against even the most obvious of bots.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

Careful, you're going to start a pages long discussion where a bunch of disingenuous people pretend they can't understand how Cactbot is cheating.

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Its funny too that the people that were using it were the guys with the biggest ego's and the 1st too complain too others they weren't learning fast enough :p
Like yeah i'd learn faster too if I were cheating.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

... people pay this game competitively in PVE!

Y'all need to chill.

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Fixed.

10char

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

Auto callouts, markings etc. destroyed dungeons and raids in WoW. Instead of playing the game, knowing the mechanics you just do what an addon yells at you. Using such things has devastating effects, and it's a HUGE advantage over other players.
It went so far that some fights now rely on you having the addon, and you cannot tell something is happening without the addon. This is a piss poor design and I support the complete ban of all these things.

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Was waiting for someone to bring up wow bad argument.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Was waiting for someone to bring up wow bad argument.

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* swims by, ignoring the bait *

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

* swims by, ignoring the bait *

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What bait? That's what you're hinting at. Go on.

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

Because that's exactly what it is, cheating.

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It's not though.

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

* the fisher tries desperately to catch the fish, unfortunately the fish doesn't give a damn and just swims away *

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cringe

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

What bait? That's what you're hinting at. Go on.



It's not though.

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* the fisher tries desperately to catch the fish, unfortunately the fish doesn't give a damn and just swims away *

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

Auto callouts, markings etc. destroyed dungeons and raids in WoW. Instead of playing the game, knowing the mechanics you just do what an addon yells at you. Using such things has devastating effects, and it's a HUGE advantage over other players.
It went so far that some fights now rely on you having the addon, and you cannot tell something is happening without the addon. This is a piss poor design and I support the complete ban of all these things.

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If you can't do it on console, it should be banned.

After reading through the rest of the thread, it's obvious many people have no idea how deep and powerful the rabbit hole goes with many of these mods. Teleporting to bosses. Executing mechanics for you. Invulnerability. A quick google search followed by a few minutes of research is all it takes. They all manipulate the games code running in RAM the same way more innocent ones do. These are not LUA addons or jpg files or innocent changes. A line has got to be drawn soon.

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

If you can't do it on console, it should be banned.

After reading through the rest of the thread, it's obvious many people have no idea how deep and powerful the rabbit hole goes with many of these mods. Teleporting to bosses. Executing mechanics for you. Invulnerability. A quick google search followed by a few minutes of research is all it takes. They all manipulate the games code running in RAM the same way more innocent ones do. These are not LUA addons or jpg files or innocent changes. A line has got to be drawn soon.

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So most mouse and keyboard programs would cause bans. Discord would be a ban till next year sometime. "You can't do it on console so it should be banned" is stupidly limiting to the point it is impossible to enforce.

The only real cheating in FFXIV is voice callouts for boss castbar a fraction of a second before it appears on screen, and not that many people use them because the advantage is only on the cutting edge. Markings used to be a thing but they stopped that during Shadowbringers. There are no automated players besides gil bots, and trying to automate a rotation would probably go quite badly. I'm not sure what you're trying to resolve.

There have been other stuff before that saw players banned but not for a long time. Other third party software is mostly just DPS meters, minor quality of life hacks and visual mods. Cheating is not a problem in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Nothv13

So most mouse and keyboard programs would cause bans. Discord would be a ban till next year sometime. "You can't do it on console so it should be banned" is stupidly limiting to the point it is impossible to enforce.

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Mouse and keyboard programs that do what? Allow you to set up macros so that a single key press executes multiple key commands? Absolutely. As they are in many other games.

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

After reading through the rest of the thread, it's obvious many people have no idea how deep and powerful the rabbit hole goes with many of these mods. Teleporting to bosses. Executing mechanics for you. Invulnerability. They all manipulate the games code running in RAM the same way more innocent ones do.

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Nobody on reddit or the Balance discord raiding community has ever reported seeing any of this, but someone rolls up on THM claiming they know the truth about some huge cheating phenomenon going on in raids constantly.

Yeah right.

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

Mouse and keyboard programs that do what? Allow you to set up macros so that a single key press executes multiple key commands? Absolutely. As they are in many other games.

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Impossible to enforce. I have not actually played any game which banned such programs and I've played pretty much every single major MMO out there. You'd also have to flat out ban specific peripherals. No MMO mice, no gaming keypads, and so many more.

Not going to lie I never got why people care so much about cheating outside of a competition or something. Life is way too short to waste so much energy on a personal level. All we can do is make SE aware but the reality is not much they can really do. If scan your PC no matter how common it is even for web browsers I really do not see SE going out of their way to destroy tye moving community.

Life is short enjoy or don't but getting annoyed or upset over what they are not doing is honestly wasted energy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

If you can't do it on console, it should be banned.

After reading through the rest of the thread, it's obvious many people have no idea how deep and powerful the rabbit hole goes with many of these mods. Teleporting to bosses. Executing mechanics for you. Invulnerability. A quick google search followed by a few minutes of research is all it takes. They all manipulate the games code running in RAM the same way more innocent ones do. These are not LUA addons or jpg files or innocent changes. A line has got to be drawn soon.

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None of these things are possible with ACT or Cactbot to my knowledge. What you describing seem to be bots.

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Originally Posted by PippinTarupin

The only real cheating in FFXIV is voice callouts for boss castbar a fraction of a second before it appears on screen, and not that many people use them because the advantage is only on the cutting edge. Markings used to be a thing but they stopped that during Shadowbringers. There are no automated players besides gil bots, and trying to automate a rotation would probably go quite badly. I'm not sure what you're trying to resolve.

There have been other stuff before that saw players banned but not for a long time. Other third party software is mostly just DPS meters, minor quality of life hacks and visual mods. Cheating is not a problem in FFXIV.

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Don't be on discord with your static then, since someone making a callout when a mechanic happen is cutting edge now.

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Originally Posted by PippinTarupin

The only real cheating in FFXIV is voice callouts for boss castbar a fraction of a second before it appears on screen, and not that many people use them because the advantage is only on the cutting edge.

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Automated shot-calling is in increasingly wide-spread use. Cutting-edge players are actually the least likely people to utilize them, because the FFXIV parsing plugin isn't generally updated in time for the world-first race. It's also worth noting that Cactbot doesn't just read castbars; It can also provide dynamic solutions to some mechanics, without the user having to interact with the game the way other players do.

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Originally Posted by PippinTarupin

Markings used to be a thing but they stopped that during Shadowbringers.

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Ground markers are no-longer automated, but marking players heads is an extremely common automation in UWU. If you have an active ultimate pug scene on your DC, notice most of the UWU PFs say something like "Have AM" or "Need AM". AM is short for "auto-marker", and is accomplished by a triggenometry trigger which parses the combat log, and then sends automated inputs to a hidden hotbar based on priority logic defined in a script.

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Originally Posted by PippinTarupin

There are no automated players besides gil bots, and trying to automate a rotation would probably go quite badly. I'm not sure what you're trying to resolve.

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There was actually a scandal not too long ago where some high-ranking phys ranged players were caught fully automating their rotations, and logged runs in the top 10 with said fully automated rotations. Phys-Ranged is really the only role that can effectively get away with it, since their rotation is essentially entirely detached from their positioning.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Don't be on discord with your static then, since someone making a callout when a mechanic happen is cutting edge now.

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I need to join one of these statics where the raid-leader is a hellish biblical angel with eight mouths, capable of whispering eight unique callouts to eight different people simultaneously.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

I need to join one of these statics where the raid-leader is a hellish biblical angel with eight mouths, capable of whispering eight unique callouts to eight different people simultaneously.

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More dots, more dots!

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Originally Posted by Setesh45

However, at this point the modding community is so big that if they actually added these things and made modding the client impossible they would lose a significant portion of players. At least that's what I believe.

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So? Good riddance, we don't need people that believe are above the rules just to satisfy their perverted kinks. In fact, Square Enix should report to the authorities any player with modification to lalafell files since they might be potential pedos

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Originally Posted by lezard21

So? Good riddance, we don't need people that believe are above the rules just to satisfy their perverted kinks. In fact, Square Enix should report to the authorities any player with modification to lalafell files since they might be potential pedos

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This comment can only end poorly.

This thread will now become a discussion about pedos and actions we can take against them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lezard21

So? Good riddance, we don't need people that believe are above the rules just to satisfy their perverted kinks. In fact, Square Enix should report to the authorities any player with modification to lalafell files since they might be potential pedos

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Or, looked at another way, those who try to play as what can be mistaken for a small child, while behaving in a mature or adult-like fashion, are essentially feeding into those perverted kinks and enabling them, therefore the only possible answer to prevent this gross scenario is to remove Lalafel from the game entirely in order to avoid this potential issue from ever happening.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PippinTarupin

The only real cheating in FFXIV is voice callouts for boss castbar a fraction of a second before it appears on screen, and not that many people use them because the advantage is only on the cutting edge. Markings used to be a thing but they stopped that during Shadowbringers. There are no automated players besides gil bots, and trying to automate a rotation would probably go quite badly. I'm not sure what you're trying to resolve.

There have been other stuff before that saw players banned but not for a long time. Other third party software is mostly just DPS meters, minor quality of life hacks and visual mods. Cheating is not a problem in FFXIV.

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I love the mentality of "I don't see any problems with cheaters, therefore there must not be a problem!".

Bots are far, far broader in scope then a mere source of income for RMTers, and in actuality a lot of the people involved in RMT do actively play the game on a main account but also run farming operations on the side. They're an enabler for lazy people and scripts exist for virtually every form of content in the game that many routinely use to skip out on doing stuff where they want the rewards but find it too tedious to bother doing manually.

And yes, that includes ones that can automate rotations in a manner that's actually efficient.