Pure hyperbole. Show me where someone claimed an add on with graphical enhancements gives players an advantage.
I’ve seen it said for cactbot and ACT. But nothing else. Blow some more hot air
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If they were cheating, SE would have detected this.
So likely its just a mod or application that doesn't give them real benefits meaning its not cheating.
Personally think world 1sts and ranked pvp are really the only 2 big things where addons are the big NOPE, otherwise its really not that big of a deal/could care less... and judging by SEs actions or lack of, would say they have similar ideals...
Minor:
Dalamud Plugin "Triple triad solver". One can argue this only works against NPCs.
Medium:
Dalamud Plugin "Shows where Bamboo falls.". This gives you an advantage against other players.
Dalamud Plugin "There are spaces where there is less overlap by potential AOEs". This gives you an advantage against other players.
Severe:
Dalamud Plugin "Showing exactly where to stand since 2020.". This gives you an advantage against other players while in combat.
Dalamud Plugin "A bunch of utilities to simplify bosses.". This gives you an advantage against other players while in combat. And if the entire group has it, everybody knows where to stand, move or look at all major duties, including Ultimates and Extremes.
ACT Custom Triggers: matches a text, triggers a text message, sound, or text to speech function. This gives you an advantage against other players while in combat.
Considering those are functions not available to non-PC players, as questionable or minor they are, they are giving an advantage to some players, so they are technically cheating. And I won't even go into the botting piece that, well, I've seen streamers doing pretty interesting rotations that have certain bot signatures.
They only ban people when they want to steal the mod and use it in game.
To answer your question about the texture mods being cheats. I would need to make a comparison from other game communities. I dabble in the speedrunning communities for other various retro games here and there. Lately I have been into the Randomizers and partake in some of the tournaments that a couple of them have set up. Texture Packs are flagged as cheating in both speedrunning and Randomizers because they can be created in ways that give a player an advantage. When I say texture packs, I don't necessarily mean shaders which aren't quite the same thing; but we still ban them regardless because of people's vague self-imposed definitions of them to circumvate the system. Some texture packs are made with quality-of-life gimmicks that make it easier to perform certain tricks. Lighter or darker markings on the floor or wall to indicate a safe spot for mechanics or when you want to jump for certain tricks. Sometimes they can fade dark rooms out or have lighter floor paths for areas where you aren't meant to be able to see where you're going. Which do give an unfair advantage to other runners. Now does this apply to FFXIV? Idk, texture packs for this game would have fundamentally different applications. But as far as we from the speedrun communities are concerned, a texture pack is a cheat yes.
You're being disingenuous. You know they (and I for that matter) refer to cosmetic mods when one says "graphical enhancements". You're just fishing for a gotcha by going "heh well they ARE rendered into your screen therefore they're graphics checkmate XD"
Since you apparently have taken up the mantle of this debate over the person from yesterday, I'll ask you since I still haven't gotten an answer:
How does higher-resolution texture armor give a user a gameplay advantage?
All squares are rectangles; not all rectangles are squares.
Texture mods are banned in your speedrunning community because there exist texture mods that enable cheating. That doesn't mean texture modding, the act itself, is cheating.
Going from zero to sixty (pardon the pun) cuz I can't think of a better analogy ATM: if someone runs over someone with a car, that doesn't mean every car is designed or used to run over people. You can still detest the act that took place, but you're rightfully called disingenuous when you say "clearly this means everyone who drives a car means to run over people".
And you can't, say, drive your car on the sidewalk for risk of hitting people. Could some people do so without hitting anyone? Sure I guess...? But it's reasonably banned because there exists the possibility that someone doing so may cause harm.
Bringing this all back, texture modding CAN be harmless, in the case you gave, but because there is the possibility it can be used to hurt the competitive process, it is banned because of the malicious actors.