Another World First Clear got disqualified due to "Cheating"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Schan

From my understanding in Japan it's illegal for companies to scan... "privately owned"? computers so there's that.

---

At the very least we should have a definition for what's harmful to the game. Defining every mod as illegal and never taking any countermeasure to ban people, outside of leaked screenshots, is always going to cause the situation we have.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

While I agree about abiding by the ToS, this would kill the game. No, not because you remove AM, but because if they did that, they would need to do the same thing with the moon. And that population of players is massive. Your solution is also incredibly dangerous as someone could join a party that doesn't advertise "allegan melon", but then someone turns it on and uses it anyway. Boom, you're banned just because you joined an innocent party.

---

I think there's a definitive difference between going after moon and cosmetic mods and going after people doing blatant advertising in PF. Granted I say use the same rules for both say if someone is doing cosmetic mods in the WFR. It's the same concept. Granted SE has banned people before for cosmetic mods and HUD mods.

If the stance SE wants to maintain is some sort of grey landscape where they know people are modding but actively tell people essentially " we don't know if you're doing it but don't let us catch you", then yeah if idiots can't help themselves and get caught anyway, SE should be harsh with their retort and consequence. It's not hard to say if you can't do your due diligence with hiding your mods than you deserve to be banned.

Also for the record, I added a caveat with my suggestion on banning. They absolutely should ban players that join parties that advertised AM. These players are willingly choosing to benefit from something they know is against TOS. As for those that join a party that suddenly marks appear, two things:

1) With punishment being pronounced, people will naturally start leaving the party.

2) People can report the person doing the markings, which will start happening.

If people choose to stay in a party after AM goes out, then yes they are liable should SE become wise to such a party using said mods. Granted I don't see how SE would even know it's happening if no one says anything. The difference is, it suddenly also significantly becomes harder to complete these duties immediately as the overall playerbase has no idea how to do some mechs without AM, like Titan Gaols for example and chances are recruiting for these duties with no one having AM (since you can't advertise it) suddenly increases alot.

Eventually it would rebalance and people will do mechs the normal way but its all about shifting the culture on modding significantly. Again if the goal is to legitimize WFR or at least you want people to tackle content in more good faith, you have to get the community on board enough to looking down as a whole on modding this content. It can happen even in a game like this but sans something like Anti-cheat being installed on peoples computers, the only real solution SE has is harsh punishments on flagrant offenders. Maintaining the grey stance they have benefits all of us. Thus SE should be going after those openly abusing and we the players should actively support them in that endeavor. It protects the modding community just as much by calling out the idiots.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

As raid lead you identify the person who performs badly and kick him from the group, as it was the requirement to know your stuff before you joined, as you made that clear in the partyfinder description.
You don't really need tools for that I would argue. There are indicators that will give you enough information, aggro bar is one but not perfect. Looking at buff timings, looking at downtimes, if they are casting etc. once you know the mechanics they become routine and you can spend more time looking to optimize I guess.

---

So I have to police the entire fight to find that 1 person that performs bad and not use 10 seconds using act finding the problem. Sounds like the most backwards logic I have ever heard. I really love waisting around 10 mins of my time per person to check if they press buttons. Also you can write a lot in a party finder description if you get prog liar in a clear group then good luck finding these without act if the problem really is the dps check even 4 weeks later then week 1

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brinn12

At the very least we should have a definition for what's harmful to the game. Defining every mod as illegal and never taking any countermeasure to ban people, outside of leaked screenshots, is always going to cause the situation we have.

---

If they did that, people using it will still twisting their words to suit themselves. It just doesn't matter.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mortex

And what happens if you do really good yourself but still hit the enrage multiple times because one person in the group does not press his buttons and does waist the time of 7 other people ? What would you do as a party leader in this situation if you don’t know but you are stuck at this fight for more then…… let’s say 6 hours because people in pf are not that good. But only very specific people. How do you know what person is waisting your time and wants a carry and what person actually wants the kill.

---

You do what we used to do: you take people separately, on a dummy/mob, and you test. Test, test and test again, until you find the weakest link. As for the AOE, I may have misunderstood what you meant, but the game tells you what type of dmg you've received; you don't need ACT for that. You also needed honesty from your player, who must have realised over the course of the instances that when he was there, things were systematically slowing down, so there must be a problem... And that the only common denominator was him. Observation is also very easy on FFXIV, and when you're playing the class it's very easy to spot the player who's messing around on his side.


I'm not really ‘against’ addons, but to claim that they've only had a positive impact would be a lie. ACT is a good tool, that's a fact; but it's also, like all the dps meter and their associated sites, things that have had an impact on the rate of mastery of the class, and therefore the rate and speed of clear, and by extension the rate at which patches need to be released. Addons are largely responsible for the increasingly bulimic consumption of MMORPG players. So yes, a majority of players are happy to do without these extra stages, which are clearly tedious at times: but it's not without consequences. As a side effect, it has also completely wiped out a whole category of players who weren't the most excellent raiders (or not necessarily) but had a real place as connoisseurs of the game, and theorybuilders.

Addons are a headache to manage, mainly because not enough attention is paid to the impact they have on the overall health of the game and too much on the so-called ‘quality of life’ (well, having said that, you're right: some things should have been implemented earlier). Wow didn't succeed, and was literally eaten up by the guides and addons, so much so that entire systems of the game were called into question (talent tree).

Someone who complains they have to learn how to adapt to a challenge in a videogame like it's the most absurd expectation ever shouldn't be leading a raid party in the first place. Someone who is afraid of being pointed out by the leader if they under-perform again and again shouldn't be raiding either.

In all the statics I've joined in 12 years of playing this, we never needed ACT. It's not that complicated to clear raids without it if your party doesn't have anyone who thinks they need to yell at everyone nor any snowflake who thinks their heart will turn to dust if the party tells them to improve their dps. You know. All you need is a static of mature adults who don't expect a fast clear time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cutestfox

If they need hacks to play the game, and don't want to play the game without hacks... I mean? Why cater to this demographic by allowing them to thrive at the expense of everyone else?

---

Oh idk, maybe money? lmao

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Havenchild

Also for the record, I added a caveat with my suggestion on banning. They absolutely should ban players that join parties that advertised AM. These players are willingly choosing to benefit from something they know is against TOS. As for those that join a party that suddenly marks appear, two things:

1) With punishment being pronounced, people will naturally start leaving the party.

2) People can report the person doing the markings, which will start happening.

If people choose to stay in a party after AM goes out, then yes they are liable should SE become wise to such a party using said mods. Granted I don't see how SE would even know it's happening if no one says anything. The difference is, it suddenly also significantly becomes harder to complete these duties immediately as the overall playerbase has no idea how to do some mechs without AM, like Titan Gaols for example and chances are recruiting for these duties with no one having AM (since you can't advertise it) suddenly increases alot.

---

This is just not feasible. Players will always circumvent the system to not advertise something they are advertising if it would get them in trouble. That is why parse parties use the word "barse" instead. If the word "barse" would also flag them, they would just use something else. Its the same with the melon. How can square ban someone for joining a party that says "I have it". Its an impossible situation. Even you already pointed out that you can't punish someone for staying in a party when AM goes out. Its just a marking system. How are they to truly know if 3rd party did it?

How is this shocking to anyone when NA PF ultimates are full of open cheaters with "allagan melon".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mortex

And what happens if you do really good yourself but still hit the enrage multiple times because one person in the group does not press his buttons and does waist the time of 7 other people ? What would you do as a party leader in this situation if you don’t know but you are stuck at this fight for more then…… let’s say 6 hours because people in pf are not that good. But only very specific people. How do you know what person is waisting your time and wants a carry and what person actually wants the kill.

---

If you know the jobs and you know the concept of the bosses and how jobs works, you would be able to spot it without being able to see it in a parse, and that is all what can be said about that, how do you rule them out when the parsers is down to eg. Patches of FFXIV, or do you not play at all when that occur?

It asks questions as well.

These people were always cheaters. It was obvious. It won't change. How about SE makes content like midcore or anything for the majority playerbase then update after update of savages and ultimates? There is your solution. Stop fixating on this stuff such a small percentage of cheaters, i mean players, actually do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tint

I have to agree.

It is niche content anyway. And the people who engage with the content don't even seem to play it at the intended difficulty. People say they want more difficult content, but their actions speak otherwise.

It seems only a percentage of an percantage is playing it without cheating. The main value of ultimates is the PR FF14 gets out of the world first race and streams, but when the only PR is that everyone is cheating in FF14, then there is nothing to gain here.

---

The main value of Ultimate is keeping a sizable enough portion of the raid scene alive during odd numbered patches. Without it, Savage becomes effectively worthless outside parsing and speed kills which, ironically, is yet another third party aspect XIV doesn't like but won't police because it's profitable. While Ultimate is niche, it's also extremely cost efficient due to the low amount of resources invested into it. Yoshida outright said UwU was roughly 95% reused assets. With the final phase being entirely new since TEA, you could argue it's more 85-90% nowadays. The end result is essentially free content that keeps the raid scene active. As Yoshida put it, Ultimate is aspirational content. UCoB is seven years old and still regularly run to this day. Almost nothing else in the game has that level of longevity. Up until FRU released, both DSR and TOP had handfuls of PFs up daily.

What resources that are invested into Ultimate won't impact casual players whatsoever nor provide any new content. It would simply make a good portion of the raid scene quit, meaning a lot less of the good players in PF helping others clear. After all, what's the point of Savage gear if there's no content that requires it? And no Criterion will not hold interest. The Savage version saw the lowest portion in the game's entire history (2.2% from all three regions combined) because the rewards were dreadful.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Araxes

I agree. People are just modding/cheating their way through it or straight out buy the kills. There is no need for hard content if people don't want to play it on the intended difficulty.

---

The vast majority of hard content is effectively souped-up versions of their easier counterpart, thus making them very cost effective. Case in point, while Savage is technically developed first and then scaled down for the Normal equivalent. Very little "extra" is left over. You can gleam this yourself by watching a clear of M1S then do M1N yourself. Almost everything is there in terms of assets and models, which are where the bulk of costs go. The fourth fight is the sole expectation as that gets a separate phase.

Why is this all important? Because if you were to scrap Savage entirely, very little resources would be gained to do anything else. At best, you'd get a 5th Normal mode or a slightly extended version of the four fights (think one extra mechanic). Put another way, Savage and Ultimate wouldn't equate to say, a third Exploratory zone, a completely revamped and revolutionized Island Sanctuary or anything remotely substantial. This isn't unique to XIV either but what virtually all games do when developing harder content/difficulty modes. They're cheap and efficient to keep a portion of the playerbase content without impacting resources much. In XIV's case, the loss of players quitting if both Savage and Ultimate were gone would far outpace any costs or resources saved.

Something to keep in mind is nearly all of the social media presence XIV has comes from the raid scene. All the guide makers, content creators and streamers are predominantly raiders. All of whom would no longer have any reason to play XIV. Especially when this game already has a problem with content longevity.

As for selling clears. That isn't unique to difficulty but rarity. Go have a garner on Ebay and you'll see the Mountain Dew mount that was quite literally "buy a product" levels of "difficulty" going for more than any legacy Ultimate. What it boils down to is if something is rare, some people with money to throw away will, regardless if it's difficult, rare or simply time consuming.

Disregarding the obvious venting surrounding some of them and just trying to address arguments like these...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grumblecakes

[...]How about SE makes content like midcore or anything for the majority playerbase then update after update of savages and ultimates? There is your solution.[...]

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arrius

SE might as well dedicate themselves to make more mid-core content than this.
What the majority of players would play, instead of maybe the top 2% or so.

---

...in what I hope is reasonably good faith:

Definitions of "midcore" are going to vary so widely that it's a nebulous request. Personally I'd say alongside Extremes, many early Savage fights each tier could easily fall under that label as well. But difficulty is an inherently subjective measurement so that's like arguing taste.

So let's focus instead on engagement, which we can track to some extent. And the truth there is:
Savages (and even a few Ultimates) are more popular than some like to make everyone believe.

According to achievment tracking website FFXIVCollect, roughly 6.3% of tracked characters have cleared the current Savage tier (based on having the achievment). Luckybancho gives a similar number, putting ownership of the M4S mount at around 11.3% of the currently active playerbase. Even if we lowball it (although Luckybancho tracks more overall characters so that one is bound to be more precise, as per FFXIVCollect's own statement) with the first number, and then round further down to 5% to account for an insane amount of alts (which we have no way of proving or disproving actually exist), that is still 5% of people who have cleared the tier. Many more have likely at least attempted it. Looking at PF, many people each week still seem to be trying and they don't show up in the statistics yet.

Looking at older savages for more "final" clear rates is always a bit tricky since unsynching makes them way easier to pass, but if we take the most recent non-Dawntrail Savage, Anabaseios, it sits at a comfortable 10% of players, while the first one, Asphodelos, reaches a whopping 20%, which is likely closer to the amount of people that attempted it. Every fifth player was interested enough in Savage to clear it, even if some of those are late clears or unsynchs.

To put it into another perspective, if we stick solely to FFXIVCollect data points for the rest of this post (which again is probably lowballing those numbers), 23% of people cleared the Normal mode of the current raid tier. So roughly one fourth of those also successfully went through all of the Savage tier.

Also, more people finished this Savage tier than:
-did 20 or more current treasure map dungeons in Dawntrail
-finished their Field records in Bozja/Zadnor
-queued Rival Wings PvP 100 times
I could go through the listings and find many more examples, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are many, many pieces of content in XIV that have an engagement rate of about the same as Savage. Savage is not the one outlier of content that almost no one does that some try to make it out to be. Especially considering many of those pieces of content are significantly older already which should lead to higher completion rates.

And the cherry on top: Some of the older Ultimates even have similar clear rates or higher to the current Savage. Weapon's Refrain sits at a comfy 12% clear rate of tracked characters.

Now, of course one can make the argument that then logically all of those pieces of content should be removed and the game should only ever focus on content that 50%+ of the playerbase engage in. But then even supposed "midcore" content is going to way of the dodo. The last few Extremes of Endwalker, which can by now be unsynced (at which point you're not even really doing the content anymore) sit between 40% and 15%. Not even all Beast Tribe Quests from previous expansiosn, the easiest content of them all, reach 50% completion rates. It's an insane standard to hold any content to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

As opposed to all the casual and midcore players that keep bleeding off since 7.0 launched because there's nothing noteworthy for them to do right now?

But hey, if FF14 wants to pretend hardcore raiders are all that's needed for a healthy playerbase, I'll send WildStar their way and they can be besties.

---

The lack of casual or midcore content has quite literally nothing to do with Savage or Ultimate. Neither have any impact on each other. Like I said, you could scrap both and it wouldn't even be the resource equivalent of the current 24 man because everything they offer already exists. That's the entire point. They are cheap, cost efficient content that requires minimal investment. Especially Ultimate.

And you don't have to take my word for it either. As I noted above, Yoshida outright admitted just how little resources are put into Ultimate despite its spectacle. You're trying to conflate two entirely different issues.

So why is there a lack of casual content? Because it's expensive to develop new animations, assets, models and etc and SE doesn't fund FFXIV nearly to the extent it should. Put simply, don't blame raiders for the lack of content, especially when they also want other things to do too. Blame SE for funneling so much of XIV's revenue into their next big failure.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

That doesn't change the fact that more attention gets put into hardcore content despite being supposedly asset flips only for a sizable portion of it to be CHEATED THROUGH ANYWAY to the point that Yoshida himself was asking "why bother then" at one point.

---

Its mean but id find it very funny if yoshida actually just cancels the next one... *wishfull thinking*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

That doesn't change the fact that more attention gets put into hardcore content despite being supposedly asset flips only for a sizable portion of it to be CHEATED THROUGH ANYWAY to the point that Yoshida himself was asking "why bother then" at one point.

Whether you like it or not, it's players versus players competing against each other for things to do every patch cycle, and when you get a front-loaded patch for one side and nothing for the other, the casuals and midcore left with nothing are going to be banging on the hardcore's door wondering "what makes you so special" especially when the group being spoiled has the audacity to trivialize what they were given, where it's harder to prove who DOESN'T cheat at this point with how often people keep getting caught, or the general prevalence of third-party tools.

You can blame Square-Enix for creating the scarcity, but we can rightly blame the raiders for preening and crowing about the part of the pie they walked away with and then threw on the ground, smug grin and all.

---

1) lmao for you thinking the hardcore crowd is being pandered to after the easiest savage tier we've ever had, the worst job balance since hw, and the worst job quality ever.

2) You sure so have a lot of hate for "raiders" considering those players are the reason the other 90% of the community can get through combat content in a reasonable time.

Honestly, the ignorance is cute.

Just shut it all down, no one gets to play the game anymore, period. Won't have to worry about cheaters and content of any level if there's no more game.

Yoshi P will still make Ultimates for the game but he wont merit or congratulate the World First anymore and I doubt the community regians his trust unless the WF all plays on PS5 Pro.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mijeme

Yoshi P will still make Ultimates for the game but he wont merit or congratulate the World First anymore and I doubt the community regians his trust unless the WF all plays on PS5 Pro.

---

that works both ways, and the goodwill is running low.

I don't know why people expect a statement from Yoshida, his last stance on it was like many mentioned before that he won't comment or congratulate world first groups anymore.

Some people are just so used to modding every game they play that they are unable to play it vanilla. No one should be surprised.

My statement is more of a better balance. I do not think savage or ultimates should not exists but not releasing any sort of content more accessible that isn't over in an hour sonce DT release is bad. It has been savage and the iltimates. The alliance raid is good but thats only a weekly thing. The only ones against that are savage raiders who rhink no one else's opinion matters unless they do hard content. There are players like me who don't do that stuff but also don't log in to RP at venues either as my hobby. I am tackling some older stuff but that is not an answer that I find acceptable. There should be something new other than a short MSQ patch and garbage hildebrand which I despise but am forced to do incase something else like last expansion relics are gated behind it. So have your savages but other players deserve stuff too whether raiders want to accept that or not.

Edit: I am only doing older content because I have literally nothing else to do in current endgame. And when that dries up then I will be down to logging in once a week if nothing comes out.

I don't do savage because I can't, I don't do it because I don't find it fun at all. It is tedious and isn't complicated. Memorize or die and if someone else screws up. Then die. Not really fun for me.

Ultimates are a very cheap method to stretch content. So i doubt, that they will disappear.




Cheers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kuroka

Its mean but id find it very funny if yoshida actually just cancels the next one... *wishfull thinking*

---

If they actually did that, there would be a mass unsub the likes of which have never been seen. I remember when the pandemic happened and they said they weren't going to have more then TEA during Shadowbringers... Many raiders starting cussing and blaming the "casual" crowd.

If SE removed the entire way of being able to read the data from the game, then people would adapt, parsers = over rated and the only check you need to put in, is if you can beat the combat dummy assigned for to be able to do the EX, Savage, Ultimate or similar duty meaning you need the achievement from beating x type Dummy.

And problem solved.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Themarvin

If SE removed the entire way of being able to read the data from the game, then people would adapt, parsers = over rated and the only check you need to put in, is if you can beat the combat dummy assigned for to be able to do the EX, Savage, Ultimate or similar duty meaning you need the achievement from beating x type Dummy.

And problem solved.

---

Yah... Modern parsing programs work by reading the game packets sent to and from the game. They kinda can't just remove those lol.

And good luck with encrypting them. It'd be broken in a day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Infindox

If they actually did that, there would be a mass unsub the likes of which have never been seen. I remember when the pandemic happened and they said they weren't going to have more then TEA during Shadowbringers... Many raiders starting cussing and blaming the "casual" crowd.

---

Very few people Ultimate raid. There would actually be 'more' players coming back to XIV if they used those resources on more normal and EX level content additions.

Honestly I think the modders would never have started modding if they actually gave Viera and Hroth the same attention to helmets and hair as the other races in the first place. That seems to be the pipeline: Player doesn't like that SE is lazy and released yet another $30 clothing on the mog station instead of fixing the game, they start modding, then they start cheating, and then they world first an ultimate and get caught mod beasting. Someone on here said that more people use that mare thing than people who use the steam client. That's a lot of ultimate clears.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IOwn92FCHouses

Yah... Modern parsing programs work by reading the game packets sent to and from the game. They kinda can't just remove those lol.

And good luck with encrypting them. It'd be broken in a day.

---

Clearly they should remove damage-based combat and replace it with actual DDR. If everyone does all the steps correctly for 15-20 minutes, the fight ends and you win.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by All_Nonsense

Honestly I think the modders would never have started modding if they actually gave Viera and Hroth the same attention to helmets and hair as the other races in the first place. That seems to be the pipeline: Player doesn't like that SE is lazy and released yet another $30 clothing on the mog station instead of fixing the game, they start modding, then they start cheating, and then they world first an ultimate and get caught mod beasting. Someone on here said that more people use that mare thing than people who use the steam client. That's a lot of ultimate clears.

---

Fuck man. Warn a dude before you make your slope that slippery!

Also it's wild that you think people started modding more due to Viera and Hrothgar. Modding begins, and always has begun, with players wanting a feature to exist that doesn't already exist. That's why we have a parser. Why we have a thousand mods that do small things like defaulting answers to "yes." Why we have an alternative launcher that actually fits modern standards.

Mods exist to fill a gap, and they have existed long before a few people got upset that their anime races couldn't equip a hat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raim

Very few people Ultimate raid. There would actually be 'more' players coming back to XIV if they used those resources on more normal and EX level content additions.

---

I'm 99% confident that dropping ultimates would not result in more/better normal and mid core content. I think people are grossly overestimating the resources used to make ultimates.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raim

Very few people Ultimate raid. There would actually be 'more' players coming back to XIV if they used those resources on more normal and EX level content additions.

---

Very few people do raid, perhaps

But it is copium to think that the removal of an ultimate raid would result in more normal and ex-level content additions. That resource would go into a black hole and it would never be seen again. - Maybe they'll add an optional hard mode dungeon, but at that point they may as well do nothing at all because the overall cycle and gameplay loop is rigid as hell.

Unless the redaction of ultimate is going to result in large-scale or repeatable content being released sooner then absolutely nothing is going to get resolved because outside of relics the game doesn't really lend itself to a solid gameplay loop. You could add several extreme primals, it will still amount to very little, to be honest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

That doesn't change the fact that more attention gets put into hardcore content despite being supposedly asset flips only for a sizable portion of it to be CHEATED THROUGH ANYWAY to the point that Yoshida himself was asking "why bother then" at one point.

Whether you like it or not, it's players versus players competing against each other for things to do every patch cycle, and when you get a front-loaded patch for one side and nothing for the other, the casuals and midcore left with nothing are going to be banging on the hardcore's door wondering "what makes you so special" especially when the group being spoiled has the audacity to trivialize what they were given, where it's harder to prove who DOESN'T cheat at this point with how often people keep getting caught, or the general prevalence of third-party tools.

You can blame Square-Enix for creating the scarcity, but we can rightly blame the raiders for preening and crowing about the part of the pie they walked away with and then threw on the ground, smug grin and all.

---

Welcome to how the raid community feels practically every other patch where the bulk of content released is for casual players. If we were to do a side by side comparison on which demographic gets more in a given expansion, it wouldn't be much of a "competition."

Nevertheless, that's a silly way to look at it. This isn't a competition because many raiders want other stuff to do themselves. Contrary to what you might believe, most of the raid scene is equally frustrated with the slow content cadence. Heck, if it wasn't for FRU, I'd be playing BG3 more because this game has nothing to do right now. So on that point, I agree with you. But it has nothing to do with the raiders why there's such a dearth of content outside the hardcore scene. That's on the dev team for their continued baffling decision to delay the relic a year into an expansion's life cycle.

If I could hazard a guess, it's likely due to the assumption many casual players will take a considerable amount of time to get through everything and/or don't actually mind the delay. While purely anecdotal, most of my more casual friend circles aren't complaining. Heck, a couple have argued with me, saying there's still plenty to do. And before anyone asks, most of them are caught up to DT. Personally, I don't know how they feel that way but hey, more power to them, I guess.

With that in mind, I can only speculate it's a combination of Yoshida's infamous "we don't want to overwhelm players!" and a general sense they can afford to delay more casual content because that demographic is likely to stay around longer. Conversely, the higher end scene will push through content much faster and leave without a carrot to keep them occupied. FRU will last well beyond 7.1, and like I mentioned before, it's cheap to develop. So it makes sense from a purely business perspective to frontload it even if I dislike their content approach just as much as you do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kuroka

Its mean but id find it very funny if yoshida actually just cancels the next one... *wishfull thinking*

---

Realistically, it's an empty threat he will never follow through on because it will lose SE money. While yes, Ultimate is a niche piece of content, it exists primarily to keep the raid scene active during odd patches where that demographic would otherwise have nothing to do. Not to mention, it serves as evergreen content as players can and do tackle Ultimate years after its release. Even a small loss of revenue is still a loss. Less revenue means SE isn't really incentivized to add anything else. Especially when you factor in new content that might attract casual players comes with a substantially higher development cost than Ultimate does.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raim

Very few people Ultimate raid. There would actually be 'more' players coming back to XIV if they used those resources on more normal and EX level content additions.

---

To be blunt, this is complete nonsense. Like I've mentioned several times now, per Yoshida's own words, Ultimate has a very low budget. That's literally the only reason they make it: a cheap and effective way to keep a demographic of the playerbase active. At best, you'd maybe see massively scaled down "Extreme" version of Ultimate, which would lack anywhere near the spectacle because several of the mechanics are simply too difficult for the lower midcore level. And then you could farm it 50-99 times for each weapon. Why that many instead of the usual 10? If there's no mount, they need another way to extend it's life otherwise you'd be done with it in a weekend. We all know how much SE loves artificial gating.

Considering the three current EXs aren't grabbing people and making them come back in droves. Do you really think a slightly harder "fourth" one would be of much interest over a 5 month period? Cause that's all you'd get if Ultimate was scrapped. And even that is a maybe. Ironically, we already know the answer because this kind of happened with Memoria Misera. Guess what, most of the casual playerbase complained about it.

The far more likely scenario if Ultimate were scrapped is nothing else is added at all. Just like Summoner's rework was supposedly just a foundation to build upon... until it wasn't. Or how healers were simplified to add more depth in future expansions... until they never did.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IOwn92FCHouses

Yah... Modern parsing programs work by reading the game packets sent to and from the game. They kinda can't just remove those lol.

And good luck with encrypting them. It'd be broken in a day.

---

Most likely not, unless light encryption, the penalty will fall just this harder as well.

You don't need them, well unless you can't play without a crutch that is.

Isn't it funny that so many people, who think of themselves as 'raid elite' or good raiders can just beat the content during the world firsts with cheating? xD

Unpopular opinion: The true challange behind hard content is to find 7 other reliable friendly people. :x

Find it funny that keep reading one's complaining about ultimate content is too easy, but I keep seeing these articles about them using cheats to make content easier.

I feel like this conversation is a CTRL+C -> CTRL+V of the last 3 Ultimates that have come out. How does anyone still have the energy to care about this anymore? Nothing will change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

...Then why rush to cheat through it if said raiders are supposedly equally desperate for content? They got exactly what they asked for, squandered it anyway, and then have to gall to come back saying "there's nothing to do" or "everything is soooo easy now".

One can't even say "they're not the same people" because I'm pretty sure PF mainstays and statics have the same small subset of players within them per data center (because it's not exactly the kind of content that pulls in newbies), and even if someone could prove they're not personally cheating, they can't really vouch for the other people they're with. How many players in the hardcore community can actually prove they've accomplished what they said they've done when even the supposed "best" going for world-first are caught cheating every single time? How many of those people with lopsided win rates in PVP actually did it legit now?

It goes beyond just questioning why content should be made for these players, but even for the ones that are fair and square about it, it just gets you side-eyed any time someone sees those titles/weapons/mounts because we're at the point where modding to the top isn't suspected, it's assumed.

---

Static groups and more is the ones that abuse these exploits and cheats the most that gives unfair advantages that console users wont be able to use, that is the worst group gameplay wise there is right now, what they accomplished at best is to crowd gather data to crowdfound these cheats and to feed parsers and more.

That is not saying that they are not good, they got the experience of things as it is, but they all still use the crouches which is really not needed for any gaming community to be able to beat the content easier with cactbot/ACT telling them what happens next, or what they instructed it to tell or react with if different tactics from the normal Hector or whatever strategy in place.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I do imagine that's a subject of discontent that console players can't use mods themselves thus putting them at a disadvantage if said mods are considered "the crutch standard" as it were.

There's also the very real possibility that if cheats are going to be such an assumed facet of this content, Square-Enix might throw their hands up and build-in their OWN cheats that allows anyone to blast through the content, and where doing it the "hard way" is purely optional and comes with zero additional accolades or applause, it's purely "for fun". It's not as outlandish as one might think either, given that a majority of the other Final Fantasy games on PC right now have all sorts of toggles to make playing through them easier (or harder), or how even their OTHER Final Fantasy MMO eventually turned into a purely solo-able experience with Trusts that do most of the heavy-lifting. And now we have a mobile game on the horizon, where if it plays like any other mobile MMO out there, a large chunk of it is going to be automated and/or have ways to pay-to-win.

Now keeping all of that in mind with the PC version, where cheats to clear content is increasingly rampant and people paying for clears (gil or real tender) is an "open secret" and all it does is give Square-Enix ideas to do it themselves in some capacity. So they might just keep making Ultimates after all, but now the previous difficulty is "opt-in" because it's been shown to them time and time again that even those demanding a challenge don't actually want it, or god forbid they think about letting you pay THEM to give you a clear for the drops. Just ask yourselves how much do you really trust Square-Enix to not consider it.

---

99% of statics use third person software or cheats on the PC front, else they will not be able to join the statics to begin with, that is a fact, there is next to no holy people about it either other than a select 1-2% of static PC people that does not use or or am affected by it, which alone should tell you the numbers of how few 'pro' players who is actually in the clear.

Stop trying to defend something that is wrong, especially as the big gun on repeated times in live has stated that it is not permitted or OK at all.

The only people that has been doing anything the hard way, is those that clear the content before cactbot or similar is released when new ex, savage and Ultimate content is out, but probably using other tools ad seen to gain advantage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I wasn't trying to defend cheating, but rather pointing out that if it continues to be an issue, and Square-Enix remains adamant about not wanting to implement an anti-cheat program, they might think about adding their own type of cheats because it wouldn't be the first time they've added options to their games to let people do that. One might even argue that the options you can already pick from in the Duty Finder settings is similar, and there's certainly no shortage of people who just unsync stuff to farm it easier (I know because I'm one of them).

A large portion of the playerbase (maybe not 99%, but certainly a lot) are playing with fire by putting Yoshi-P on the spot to address cheating in some way and he doesn't have a lot of options to work with.

---

99% of Static groups, not entire population uh.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Themarvin

99% of statics use third person software or cheats on the PC front, else they will not be able to join the statics to begin with, that is a fact, there is next to no holy people about it either other than a select 1-2% of static PC people that does not use or or am affected by it, which alone should tell you the numbers of how few 'pro' players who is actually in the clear.

---

I like to do my own research. Can you point me to your source for this 99% so I can educate myself?

Thanks!