Mods and cheat engine

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

- Even partially using mods as Xeno and other world popular streamers are getting affected by it beause their popularity stands on them being good at the game, but when half Limsa have Ultimates cleared (no matter if they used mods or not, because you can't proof they did used or did not used) they become nothing, everyone can do what they do. So they kind of shooting themselves in the knee, you can't be the noticeably good player when everyone have no troubles to "play" at your level.

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Why do you think content creators like xeno make guides for savage and ulti fights? They arent shooting themselves in the knee, they want more people to clear more savage and more ultimates because they find it fun content and it ultimately would (when successfully done) make it a bigger focus for the devs. Everyone can clear ultimates, people who claim otherwise just dont want to invest time into doing so.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Why do you think content creators like xeno make guides for savage and ulti fights? They arent shooting themselves in the knee, they want more people to clear more savage and more ultimates because they find it fun content and it ultimately would (when successfully done) make it a bigger focus for the devs. Everyone can clear ultimates, people who claim otherwise just dont want to invest time into doing so.

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Not to mention, Xeno's popularity this past year has never been higher. He's consistently averaging 1,000 viewers every time he streams. So in a post with a whole lot of nonsense that particular paragraph really stands out as just being comically incorrect.

They do guides because people need them, if the toys give you out the battle, nobody will watch their guides. And if you check the streams of Xeno and other hardcore players as him, their views jump from 1k to 15k when there is new content that people want to see cleared. When you have more and more tools to clear it day one before guide and you will not need to figure it out blind, people will not go to watch them, but just go and clear. And don't forget no matter if you like or not specific streamer, this is business model. Streamers don't put "good job" comments as food on the table. Videos with high view count may help better with the food.

I agree for ultimates, so far I can't find full group of 8 people crazy enough to clear them entirely blind. I personally clear content only in blind, so if there is no people for something, I just avoid it until I find. But I am looking forward to it, there are few people that started to feel the hype for it.

Something unrelated that I noticed. Stop the fake news. There is not a single streamer that was banned for using dps meter. Even Xeno, Zepla and Arthars agreed all banned streamers were using cheats after they saw more detailed info about what mods were used by banned streamers. SE do not ban for mass reports because they do this manually. For unaware souls, mass report ban works when it is bot enforcing the ban. The guy that became popular in Japan was banned once before for using cheating mods and it was not huge surprise for taking another one for it, it had nothing to do with him being massively reported because he is white in Japan as many tried to "fake news". My concern and all the points I explained down are related with possibility of SE to enforce their rules.

Right now the arrogance of people that use insane amount of mods is in "they can't know if you do" because Yoshi said they don't want to add anti cheat, but that was not solid statement as it will never happen, this entirely depends on the community. At the same time way before anti cheats were a thing devs were just adding "traps". I believe system like this is used against mods in FF because there are really not a lot of them, but pretty much it works by the devs dowloading targeted mod and look how it interacts with the game. They find interactions that can't be achieved in normal play and add code to check if those actions are performed, this can be done both on game files and only client side stuff and server side changes. And SE may start doing this at any point if they decide specific part of the communiy crossed the line too far, as in my opinion they already did.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

- Bard player is ruining the expirience for players that actually can play..

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You had me until this. I applaud people that can really play- but I do enjoy all the wonderful music that bards/bard groups make possible. The person that jumps up to show up another person isn't a jerk for not really barding, but for just being a jerk in the first place. I will never be convinced that of all the shady stuff out there, that this even qualifies for the list.

It is possible to make band with real playing players, nobody does it because the stage for it is already overewhelmed with "bard simulators". The tools to sync between few people are already in the game. And there is already a great mod for people that want to learn to play, btw. I don't want to write or promote mods here, but there is one that you can add songs and play them with controller as dancing game or rock band. I would be so happy if they add this kind of feature where you can compose songs and play them this way after. I know it will not work with midi files directly, but if you have all the notes, you can compose the song easily on console too and it will actually motivate players to learn to play, who knows, their bands may be quite better from what we have now if they had the chance. But nobody asks for improvements, because they already have "a way" that took over the stage.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

They do guides because people need them, if the toys give you out the battle, nobody will watch their guides. And if you check the streams of Xeno and other hardcore players as him, their views jump from 1k to 15k when there is new content that people want to see cleared. When you have more and more tools to clear it day one before guide and you will not need to figure it out blind, people will not go to watch them, but just go and clear. And don't forget no matter if you like or not specific streamer, this is business model. Streamers don't put "good job" comments as food on the table. Videos with high view count may help better with the food.

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Now that is just straight up false. We have guides down to content like dungeons and those do get views. Streamers dont need to be the best at the game, they need to make watching them entertaining in some way. It's a community experience and the more people get into the harder content, the more are potentially interested in watching a streamer do the content they also want to do. Do you think when people have cleared a specific fight they will never watch any streamer who tries to clear that content? As a streamer you do not even need to be good at all at the game, you just need to make it entertaining for the audience.

According to your logic the popularity of guide content should be on a massive downward spiral which is not the case.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

They do guides because people need them, if the toys give you out the battle, nobody will watch their guides. And if you check the streams of Xeno and other hardcore players as him, their views jump from 1k to 15k when there is new content that people want to see cleared. When you have more and more tools to clear it day one before guide and you will not need to figure it out blind, people will not go to watch them, but just go and clear. And don't forget no matter if you like or not specific streamer, this is business model. Streamers don't put "good job" comments as food on the table. Videos with high view count may help better with the food.

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You do realize players like Xeno clear Ultimate long before any of these programs even work, yes? His viewership spikes on new content release because it's new and players enjoy watching him. Third party plugins and the like won't impact this whatsoever because the whole point of Week 1 or WF racing is how quickly they clear not simply showcasing the content itself. Most people watching his stream either can't raid themselves, have no desire to or already have statics that simply aren't running 12+ hour days. Hence why they watch, instead. Plugins have nothing to do with it.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

I agree for ultimates, so far I can't find full group of 8 people crazy enough to clear them entirely blind. I personally clear content only in blind, so if there is no people for something, I just avoid it until I find. But I am looking forward to it, there are few people that started to feel the hype for it.

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Which isn't all that surprising. A lot of people don't want to invest the sheer amount of time blind prog demands. Or they simply don't find it fun. To each their own and all that.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

Something unrelated that I noticed. Stop the fake news. There is not a single streamer that was banned for using dps meter. Even Xeno, Zepla and Arthars agreed all banned streamers were using cheats after they saw more detailed info about what mods were used by banned streamers. SE do not ban for mass reports because they do this manually. For unaware souls, mass report ban works when it is bot enforcing the ban. The guy that became popular in Japan was banned once before for using cheating mods and it was not huge surprise for taking another one for it, it had nothing to do with him being massively reported because he is white in Japan as many tried to "fake news". My concern and all the points I explained down are related with possibility of SE to enforce their rules.

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You should really take your own advice. First and foremost, only two streamers were banned. Neither one of them were cheating. They used a UI plugin which put abilities timers on the party list, something Yoshida has even said they're considering doing themselves. If you're seriously going to call putting a timer under Nascent Flash on the party list some massive gameplay cheat, well, you may want to scroll up and see what actual cheating looks like. Nevertheless, both were banned entirely due to report bombing. We know this because 5chan literally orchestrated it to "see whether SE was serious." In the case of the more recent example, practically everyone has denounced that as cheating. There's a massive difference between the JP streamers adding buff timers to their party list and someone who had a mini-map which displayed how to execute every single mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

Right now the arrogance of people that use insane amount of mods is in "they can't know if you do" because Yoshi said they don't want to add anti cheat, but that was not solid statement as it will never happen, this entirely depends on the community. At the same time way before anti cheats were a thing devs were just adding "traps". I believe system like this is used against mods in FF because there are really not a lot of them, but pretty much it works by the devs dowloading targeted mod and look how it interacts with the game. They find interactions that can't be achieved in normal play and add code to check if those actions are performed, this can be done both on game files and only client side stuff and server side changes. And SE may start doing this at any point if they decide specific part of the communiy crossed the line too far, as in my opinion they already did.

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This is some tinfoil hat nonsense right here. The devs have never added "traps" or done anything of the sort. If they did, maybe they'd actually catch the multitude of bots destroying the crafting aspect of the game. Nevertheless, that isn't how developers work because it wouldn't be efficient. You're assuming these third party programs wouldn't be able to detect changes to the the very code they hook into to operate. Even on the assumption they couldn't, which is a massive assumption, it takes just a single person being banned for the programmers to immediately work on an update to get around it.

Nonetheless, it's not arrogance but simple pragmatism. Banning third party programs like mods, ACT and the like isn't cost efficient for SE. They will lose a sizable amount of money while gaining absolutely nothing for it. Hence why a certain website has been around for nearly a decade now.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Xeno clear Ultimate long before any of these programs even work, yes?

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Bagel got banned for using telegraphs for boss attacks that were not suppose to be there. Way before Xeno cleared, Bagel group was world first in prog and all others were watching mechanics from his stream. So some of the tools already work on day one. The streamer from japan and the World first youtuber had addon showing them when they can start moving during cast and addon to see numbers they are not suppose in party list.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

They used a UI plugin which put abilities timers on the party list, something Yoshida has even said they're considering doing themselves.

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Yoshida never said such a thing. What was written in his note is that they will look at the third party tools used by community and evaluate what they may add to discourage usage of those tools. This specific addon was not mentioned in any way by his statement, they never stated they may add those numbers to the party list or they will implement any of the mods, the streamers were banned for. For example they added new sounds on specific mechanics to discourage players from using auto call bots, did they added auto call bots when they wanted to discourage players from using them?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Tdevs have never added "traps" or done anything of the sort.

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Fast example. They implemented code to catch up on people that fake not being afk by using forward, backward macro on their keyboard when servers were overwhelming and nobody wanted to be DCed for AFK. The "dungeon bots" are almost extinct species, and if you played during HS or SB you would know what I am talking about. For crafting they need to press one button on a simple macro that maybe makes it too complicated, or we don't complain about it enough to make them take actions.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Banning third party programs like mods, ACT and the like isn't cost efficient for SE. They will lose a sizable amount of money while gaining absolutely nothing for it.

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This mods are not allowed in first place, to be banned. In the last two days we saw around 7 really toxic communications both ingame and in discord related to ACT/FFlogs. You may not see it personally, but people get frustrated and stop playing the game because of it. For huge portion of the players, the selling point for this game was there is none or at least is reduced to an absolute minimum of this behavior. For sure SE already are losing money because people see the same bevaior they ran away from. BTW go back to first streams of Asmongold, even for him that was a one of the big selling points of FF XIV.
Just imagine if the NSFW mods generate a pedo scandal, as George Cacioppo knows pretty well, Sony have zero tollerance for it and may remove the entire FF from their platform. No money lost at all.

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Originally Posted by Grebeny

Just imagine if the NSFW mods generate a pedo scandal, as George Cacioppo knows pretty well, Sony have zero tollerance for it and may remove the entire FF from their platform. No money lost at all.

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Let's be real, Sony is just looking to axe anime/Japanese games from it's platform since they moved HQ. It would be better for the game in the long run if they just shook off the baggage that is Sony, imo.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Now that is just straight up false...

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There are many streamers that are popular because they know how to entertain the audience like Josh Strife, Asmongold or Zepla. But other streamers like Xeno and Arthars build reputation by being good at the game. This is the reason Arthars stream had 15k+ viewers when he was on world first ultimate and 6k when another group cleared the ultiamte. Xeno was not part of world first community and his stream was a lot smaller, even if he was one of the best warriors in FF way before the specific events made him popular.

Both Arthars and Xeno reacted super defensive when they heard people are banned for using mods, but after they saw more information about it, they moved backward from their first statements. They are not stupid and realize if people use mods to cheat world first offstream, their own streams are going to be hurt directly, I mean, numbers show it 18k one hour before world first on last ultimate is quite higher number from 8k twenty minutes after and 6k one hour later.