ToS Question on Discord Bots, etc.

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Originally Posted by Keizerwilson

Funny enough people who fall into the "I just play for fun" crowd almost always seem to be the most against personal accountability, and actually improving. There's a difference between trying and still coming up short, and flat out not caring. A lot of them just seem to not care.

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You're misunderstanding this. I'm fine with using a parser to improve my job. I'm fine with being held personally accountable in tough content for not hitting the numbers. This game does not allow it though. I'm not fine with breaking the rules to become a better player even if I disagree with those rules (which fwiw I do).

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Originally Posted by bgd624624

You're misunderstanding this. I'm fine with using a parser to improve my job. I'm fine with being held personally accountable in tough content for not hitting the numbers. This game does not allow it though. I'm not fine with breaking the rules to become a better player even if I disagree with those rules (which fwiw I do).

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https://youtu.be/3-WXYg-S05U?t=363

Parsers just mine yer local log data iirc? I know that certain ones do include addons that are definitely against the ToS but you are not forced to use em. I do not agree that parsing is cheating, and wtf kinda Discord are you joining? I'm in at least 10 channels and only ONE has a section for "adult" content which is one of the players doin consentual screenshots of other FC/Discord members with an adult themed mod (Not newdie stuffs, sorta BDO themed things from what I've seen). The only "bots" I've seen are those dumb Pokemon ones and the like <.<

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Originally Posted by Alucard135

https://youtu.be/3-WXYg-S05U?t=363

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Yoshi P doesn't even think its cheating, lol.

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Originally Posted by bgd624624

Parsing is explicitly against the ToS of this game.

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True.

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If you violate the ToS, you are cheating.

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Not necessarily true.

Violating the ToS is breaking the rules, but not all rulebreaking is cheating.
For example, insulting other players in the game also violates the ToS, but I don't see how it could be considered cheating.
"Cheating" implies that you are breaking the rules in a way that give you some advantage, but there are plenty of prohibited actions that do not give you any advantage.

There's an easy solution to this. Play on PS4. Join a linkshell/FC/Discord for PS4 players. They can't use parsers. Problem solved.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Not necessarily true.

Violating the ToS is breaking the rules, but not all rulebreaking is cheating.
For example, insulting other players in the game also violates the ToS, but I don't see how it could be considered cheating.
"Cheating" implies that you are breaking the rules in a way that give you some advantage, but there are plenty of prohibited actions that do not give you any advantage.

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Thank you! I read through several posts where it felt like no one wanted to address this.

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Originally Posted by bgd624624

Using a third party tool that is explicitly called out as a ToS violation to become a better player is cheating.If you disagree with the ToS and have no qualms about violating it, parse away, SE doesn't care. I'm not taking the moral high ground here. But it is cheating. To deny that is delusion.

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It's also been stated by Yoshi that parsers are fine as long as you don't use them to abuse other players.

So basically Enix have made 2 conflicting statements. Both are completely legitimate, from the makers of the game. Therefore both are rules. In practise however, they follow the second statement, parsers are fine and abuse is prohibited. Which renders the other one void. Yes they should update that on the ToS but that's how it is.

So why are you stubbornly acknowledging only the first, incorrect rule? And why are you wasting GM time reporting players and making threads here when you should be requesting they update the ToS to reflect the current rules?

Cheating already has a definition, you can't change it to fit your argument.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Violating the ToS is breaking the rules, but not all rulebreaking is cheating.
For example, insulting other players in the game also violates the ToS, but I don't see how it could be considered cheating.
"Cheating" implies that you are breaking the rules in a way that give you some advantage, but there are plenty of prohibited actions that do not give you any advantage.

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Furthermore I wouldn't call using an external tool to analyze your combat performance cheating. The game saves combat events to a log file and parsing those is fair game. Intercepting network traffic is a bit of a borderline case, but as long as no packets are injected and the data is only used after the fight is complete, I'm willing to give it a clean pass as far as cheating is concerned. It probably does violate the ToS though.

Now, some combat tracker programs are able to provide realtime alerts for certain events, such as when an important ability is about to come off cooldown or when the boss is about to perform a big attack. Those I would call cheating because they directly help the player to perform better in the fight.