Out of curiosity. A lot of Statics and FC's require members to use Discord Chat for high end content. Do you personally want SE to ban people using Discord as well since its a "3rd party tool" that can cause Gatekeeping?
Printable View
Right now it seems you're creating a hypothetical... BUT if something like that were to happen... IF someone is daft enough to send you a message that explicitly states that you are being excluded because of this reason, THEN yes you should go ahead and report. Again, bear in mind that SE rarely reveals actions taken against individual players based on reporting (I think they have addressed the streamer they suspended since it was so public already), so you're never going to get instantaneous retributive "justice" from reporting.
However, it's still a good idea to report so that on their end... IF they start seeing an increased volume of similar reports, THEN it might force their hand to do something about it.
I'm pro add-ons so...I can't really oppose the idea of having them. But anyone who uses them currently is rolling the dice, and it may come back to haunt them some day. Still, I'd like to have them officially.
I am noticing a trend here. The fact that this could happen seems improbable to some of you it seems? Players requirement of other players to have MANY third party things is a norm and has been for year in many other MMORPG's. It is standard, daily procedure. I am lobby to stop this slippery slope at the top. It's one of the things I am very passionate about, that I believe can destroy and MMO community. That and mythic+ timed dungeons.
As I understand the terms of service, third party tools are not in violation. Third party tools that directly interact with and manipulate the games code, are, and are easily detectable and bannable if they would just act.
That said, ironically one of the final influences to purchase a PS5 this month was the announcement that native discord support is coming to PS5 by the end of the year as Sony and Discord have reached a massive deal.
There's also the option of SE looking at 3rd party tools, examining why ppl are using it, and then seeing if there's a way they can just integrate it into the game.
I strongly suspect that a lot of the QoL adjustments we've gotten in game, especially for crafters and gatherers, were integrated because of the existence of some of the 3rd party tools.
Personally, I don't mind anyone using any sfw mod as long as they never harassed anyone with it.
If someone is playing the game peacefully with a mod that makes it look like WoW but never actually harassed anyone out there then there is literally 0 reasons to punish said player. After all, the game is for fun and if the person is having fun without hurting others then where is the problem?
While you are correct that it may be common place, it is much, much harder for it to be done in game through any chat channels. The game is generally well moderated, especially if there's in-game harassment going on. You're more likely to encounter this kind of behavior through game-adjacent channels, such as Discord servers.
As far as third-party tools, Yoshi-P has used Excel spreadsheets as an example for what could count as a third-party tool, and we all know Excel doesn't modify the game in any way. Discord has been brought up, and that counts, because it's a tool made by a third-party that could be giving an advantage to players without any means to chat. However, it's mostly un-enforceable as stated, and is mostly used there for legal reasons that protect themselves from blowback. If they called out a specific app or mod in the terms of service, then people would use something else. In any case, many of the bans SE does is for harassment, not for third-party tools.
Im curious if anyone has ever heard of a situation where someone was declined from joining a group due to being on console and/or playing with controller. That is the crux of my worry here.