Handling Cheaters Gracefully vs Hardline ToS + Questionable legality of bans

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Originally Posted by hagare

you don't handle cheaters gracefully.
You deal with them decisively.

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This is partly why people cheat in the first place.

The whole "three strikes" system has led to habitual cheaters going right back to business after getting caught once because they know they can just figure out what went wrong, then resume their activity with little fear of actually caught a second time. If there's strong evidence suggesting a player has been involved in illicit activity for an extended period of time they should just get perma-banned then and there.

The fact that now strikes decay over time just gives them even more leeway to abuse the system.

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Originally Posted by StealthPaladin

snip.

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Dalamud has a plugin that does #5, I wouldn't use it because it'd trip up my muscle memory something awful because of how little I pvp lol

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Originally Posted by StealthPaladin

Content-only mods and snarky words in passing should not be actionable, it is more unethical to come down on a player you sold this product to, than whatever rude or lewd thing they produced at worst. At best an addon could be useful to the team.

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OK, how do you distinguish between mods, which can be used as an advantage in PvP and harmless content only mods? In a generic way it is not possible. You have to work with mod specific black-/whitelisting to achieve this. And i doubt, that the devs will introduce those black-/whitelists and keep them up-to-date.


And yes, you can get advantages in PvP when you replace things like textures. You can make walls transparent (so-called wallhacks) or you can make invisible players visible again etc.



Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

OK, how do you distinguish between mods, which can be used as an advantage in PvP and harmless content only mods? In a generic way it is not possible. You have to work with mod specific black-/whitelisting to achieve this. And i doubt, that the devs will introduce those black-/whitelists and keep them up-to-date.


And yes, you can get advantages in PvP when you replace things like textures. You can make walls transparent (so-called wallhacks) or you can make invisible players visible again etc.



Cheers

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I will forever fight against a hard crackdown on non cheating mods. I don't care if you can use texture mods to cheat. I care if the person using them is cheating with them. Ban the cheaters, do not make qol mods impossible to use.

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

I will forever fight against a hard crackdown on non cheating mods. I don't care if you can use texture mods to cheat. I care if the person using them is cheating with them. Ban the cheaters, do not make qol mods impossible to use.

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But you cannot distinguish between people, who use the mods for cheating and people, who do not. That is the problem. You can programmatically only distinguish between "modded client" and "client in original state" and not how the mod is used. And because this nature of it is so binary, there will only be a binary solution: ban all mods or ignore all mods. If you do not want, that this decision is made in a binary manner, then you have to use black-/whitelists. And again, it is unlikely, that SQEX will do that. It is much effort to keep them up-to-date. And if you start with black-/whitelisting mods then you would implicitly allow certain mods.

The best thing would be: design the game so, that the players do not have the desire to mod it. But this also needs some manpower to insert many new hairstyles, clothes ... and maybe nsfw content.


Cheers

Read through it, and hostility and bickering aside, it boils down quite simply:

A) You agree to the ToS to play; their house their rules. There is VERY little leeway (such as EU having transparency rules, etc).
B) You do not have Freedom of Speech in the game

You do not have freedom of speech in an MMORPG. If you spend time to google it, you will find
B1)Despite the headline, this is talking about REGULATING SALES of games and
B2) "Current legal precedent conclusively establishes that social media users do not have a right to free speech on private social media platforms."

C) The devs do not formally allow mods/plugins in any way, shape or form.
D) They also do not go out of their way to punish people using mods/plugins as long as it doesn't give a mechanical advantage (see the music-plugin that auto-plays or texture mods).
E) It is essentially a speed limit or seatbelt law; most of the time people might drive over the limit/not wear a belt..and nobody cares. But if you get caught, well, you man up and admit you are wrong.

Moreover, the devs' intention is for the PC version of the game to be as identical as possible to the console versions- both in development terms and in player-capability terms. That's a big reason why the UI is how it is and why some parts of the game are...clunky.

OP if you want to make plugins/mods, you do you, but you do

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

But you cannot distinguish between people, who use the mods for cheating and people, who do not. That is the problem. You can programmatically only distinguish between "modded client" and "client in original state" and not how the mod is used. And because this nature of it is so binary, there will only be a binary solution: ban all mods or ignore all mods. If you do not want, that this decision is made in a binary manner, then you have to use black-/whitelists. And again, it is unlikely, that SQEX will do that. It is much effort to keep them up-to-date. And if you start with black-/whitelisting mods then you would implicitly allow certain mods.

The best thing would be: design the game so, that the players do not have the desire to mod it. But this also needs some manpower to insert many new hairstyles, clothes ... and maybe nsfw content.


Cheers

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Or simply do not use automated enforcement, expand the enforcement team so they can have actual eyes on the problems to enforce the rules against the actual cheaters. Automated tools that not only eliminate the QOL mods and accessibility mods that disabled people use, but also eliminate mac and linux users, and would actually eliminate console users as well as consoles cannot run anticheat are not the answer. Extra enforcement staff to catch and punish cheaters is

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

The best thing would be: design the game so, that the players do not have the desire to mod it. But this also needs some manpower to insert many new hairstyles, clothes ... and maybe nsfw content.

Cheers

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No we don't need in-game NSFW mods, that sounds like a way too lose a lot of revenue! Would change the rating of the game and could possibly get the game banned by many cultures due to laws/religion etc.

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Originally Posted by forsakee

No we don't need in-game NSFW mods, that sounds like a way too lose a lot of revenue! Would change the rating of the game and could possibly get the game banned by many cultures due to laws/religion etc.

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On top of what I noted above: Automated enforcement tools in the form of anticheat would remove a good portion of the playerbase due to people that due to either their operating system or their equipment can't run anticheat.

Nah, you're just screaming into the void buddy!