Why graphical mods are bad for PvP.

With all the talk about mods lately I wanted to chip in some other situations where they DO impact gameplay.


The important thing to remember is that mods do two basic things. They can change a specific model into another model. And they can change the texture of such models. An example of this in play with nude mods is that they can change the player model from the default to one with altered shapes to include nipples and male appendages. The other change is that it changes the texture of the player from being a barbie doll to a more mature theme.

So while nude mods don't affect others, I wanted to address exactly why modding can be used to actually affect others in PvP or other competitive areas.

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First off, changing models isn't just limited to players. It can change models of anything in the game. A good example I've seen in other games is changing the models of PvP flags. Think you're hiding behind a wall? Not if your model is 2X bigger and your ass is poking through--revealing your location. Wondering where the healers are? Easy-peasey. They're the players with the big arrows sticking out of their heads. And while changing a model doesn't impact player collision or hit-boxes--it does significantly change how easy it is to detect hidden players or find critically important objects that may be harder to find.

Secondly, the ability to change textures can also wreak havoc on PvP (and also PVE). Imagine someone hiding in a bush wearing camouflage? Now they're neon-green. Imagine a raid boss with AoE mechanics? Now all the 'safe spots' can be displayed on the ground floor. The floor texture has been altered to be a handy-dandy guide to safety. Or, the most dangerous of all. Imagine being able to make walls invisible. Now no one can sneak behind walls or cliffs or corridors. X-ray vision. See someone naked--see them behind walls.

These are just a few examples of why graphical mods can wreak havoc on a PvP game, but not all of the possibilities. And often 'these' are the reasons why companies prohibit them as against the ToS as opposed to being prudes against nude mods.

At the moment the game is in a 'safe' spot as long as modders don't try and influence PvE content with their mods. And as long as Square-Enix never does anything super competitive with PvP. But uh. I'm so tired of people saying "oh mods are great, because they ONLY make character's naked. It's such an ignorant statement that I felt required to post this, if only to show that modding isn't 'just' about nudity.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Think you're hiding behind a wall? Not if your model is 2X bigger and your ass is poking through--revealing your location

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In pvp you can't do anything to anyone behind a wall. And if you're watching around the corner you can bail before they get to you.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Wondering where the healers are? Easy-peasey. They're the players with the big arrows sticking out of their heads.

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We can already mark healers. People already do that. You can't pvp without it.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Imagine someone hiding in a bush wearing camouflage? Now they're neon-green.

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You would see their name. The character model disappears from the game when you're hiding as a NIN as well.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Imagine a raid boss with AoE mechanics? Now all the 'safe spots' can be displayed on the ground floor. The floor texture has been altered to be a handy-dandy guide to safety.

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You mean markers? We have markers.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Imagine being able to make walls invisible. Now no one can sneak behind walls or cliffs or corridors. X-ray vision. See someone naked--see them behind walls.

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That would be a bad hack because you'd run into people ducking behind cover and you'd be attacking without realizing you can't hit them

This is definitely a more interesting and better thought out subject than the prior thread. I do indeed remember people modding player models in WoW to have huge spikes come out of them for PvP and even the good old FFXI trick of removing monster models to make yourself unable to target them making claims that little bit easier and quicker.

For the most part, FFXIV's core design renders this sort of stuff redundant though.

As far as PvP goes, the above has the gist of it really, marking players in PvP legitimately achieves what the spikes would have done back in the day and levels the playing field there, as well as making modding away walls such rather pointless. Half the time you can tab target around walls and corners with some camera play too, a good example of this is being able to tab target the boss in savage turns whilst the barrier is still up, just zoom right out and turn the camera 30 degrees or so to the side.

For PvE, again, waymarks and various guides already offer a handy dandy guide of where to stand.

About the only question mark in my eyes is changing the collision mapping, but then bots have been doing that for years already.

I know a lot of the PvP stuff doesn't directly apply to FFXIV, but rather to FPS style games. I was just throwing out examples that mods do so much more than just make people naked. As long as FFXIV is the casual MMO I don't think anyone will really care enough to change anything. I was just frustrated with all the people being so anal about mods "only" doing nudity stuff when that's clearly not the case. My post isn't an argument for or against mods. Just pointing out that it's a much broader subject then just nudity. Thanks again everyone for keeping it civil.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

First off, changing models isn't just limited to players. It can change models of anything in the game. A good example I've seen in other games is changing the models of PvP flags. Think you're hiding behind a wall? Not if your model is 2X bigger and your ass is poking through--revealing your location. Wondering where the healers are? Easy-peasey. They're the players with the big arrows sticking out of their heads. And while changing a model doesn't impact player collision or hit-boxes--it does significantly change how easy it is to detect hidden players or find critically important objects that may be harder to find.

Secondly, the ability to change textures can also wreak havoc on PvP (and also PVE). Imagine someone hiding in a bush wearing camouflage? Now they're neon-green. Imagine a raid boss with AoE mechanics? Now all the 'safe spots' can be displayed on the ground floor. The floor texture has been altered to be a handy-dandy guide to safety. Or, the most dangerous of all. Imagine being able to make walls invisible. Now no one can sneak behind walls or cliffs or corridors. X-ray vision. See someone naked--see them behind walls.

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Unless you change the ACTUAL size, it's hardly an advantage. And graphical mods would be client side, you don't see your gear all bright pink even if someone replaced all their textures on their end.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Unless you change the ACTUAL size, it's hardly an advantage. And graphical mods would be client side, you don't see your gear all bright pink even if someone replaced all their textures on their end.

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Yeah, but if you were a sniper in a FPS game and you relied on being hidden, knowing that someone out there could alter your character to be bright green would heavily reduce your chances of staying hidden. Again, that's a FPS game and not FFXIV, but it's an example. Just because you don't look green on your screen doesn't mean your enemy can't use that to their advantage.

Now THIS is the type of fear-mongering I like to see!

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Yeah, but if you were a sniper in a FPS game and you relied on being hidden, knowing that someone out there could alter your character to be bright green would heavily reduce your chances of staying hidden. Again, that's a FPS game and not FFXIV, but it's an example. Just because you don't look green on your screen doesn't mean your enemy can't use that to their advantage.

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In an FPS game, yes that would very much be an advantage...
But this is not an FPS game, you generally wouldn't have a big name hovering over the sniper telling you they're there.

As stated by kamenkuro, the only way to not have the class name sticking out there is to be a Ninja and use Hide.

Hrmn... maybe edit the title. "Why graphical mods are bad for PvP in Other Games."

Other tools already exist to cheat in PvP and you don't need to make the effort to mod your game to use them.

This post is bad and you should feel bad.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Other tools already exist to cheat in PvP and you don't need to make the effort to mod your game to use them.

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Basically this.

People aren't going to resort to graphical mods that provide little benefit when they can get away with far more blatant forms of cheating without being punished.

pvp bots are still an issue, this on the other hand is not really an issue. What really wrecks havoc on my pvp experience is being on a team with 7 other bots lol

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Yeah, but if you were a sniper in a FPS game and you relied on being hidden, knowing that someone out there could alter your character to be bright green would heavily reduce your chances of staying hidden. Again, that's a FPS game and not FFXIV, but it's an example. Just because you don't look green on your screen doesn't mean your enemy can't use that to their advantage.

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And this is why most FPS games have built in checks to ensure players can't do that. In fact, this very discussion came up with Mass Effect 3 due to the prevalence of modding BioWare games. Their servers checked your PCConsoleTOC.bin. If it were in any way altered, you were likely going to get suspended or banned outright depending on the circumstances. As FFXIV does not have such concerns given how PvP works, this is a non-issue.

I almost wonder how Elder Scrolls does it. I never looked into it, but I remember Skyrim having a vibrant modding community.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

I almost wonder how Elder Scrolls does it. I never looked into it, but I remember Skyrim having a vibrant modding community.

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Easy, its a single player game built with mods in mind.

Someone said Mass Effect 3 was having issues, because people were used to modding single player games and then there was a multiplayer component. I was mentioning Elder Scrolls as in the actual MMO part of the franchise. If people playing the MMO are conflicted because they're used to modding in Skyrim.

uh, the only thing that might be an issue I could think of would be that ppl might mod the walls in feast to be semi transparent ... maybe? Thats been an issue in other games. That pales in comparison to what people are already doing with parsers, though.

Are you talking about how parsers can call out mechanics similar to Warcraft or are they capable of doing other things now?

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Are you talking about how parsers can call out mechanics similar to Warcraft or are they capable of doing other things now?

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Sort of, more like tracking enemy cooldowns. Its always been a big problem

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Someone said Mass Effect 3 was having issues, because people were used to modding single player games and then there was a multiplayer component. I was mentioning Elder Scrolls as in the actual MMO part of the franchise. If people playing the MMO are conflicted because they're used to modding in Skyrim.

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That's because Unreal Engine is used by many cheaply developed MMO's, and that is primarily a single-player FPS game engine. So the better way to look at a Unreal Engine game is "single player with multiplayer glued on." FFXIV/FFXV's doesn't use a third-party game engine, and is designed around being a MMO game engine with a single player campaign glued on for FFXV.

Anything that people do to mod FFXV (which SE has invited modding for) could be done against FFXIV.

The other thing about Unreal Engine, Source and CryEngine, is that it's difficult to actually secure any game designed primarily to be a single player game. Ever since Quake, FPS game engines have had people cheat, and use all kinds of ways of doing so. Most solutions to preventing cheating are short-lived, because you can not secure the game client as long as it runs on the user's system. There are features in macro's for Mice, Keyboards, even computer monitors for "creating advantages" over other players. Macro tools that use their own processors in the mice/keyboard/monitor, can't be detected as being macros, however those hardware devices can be blacklisted by asking the OS what hardware is plugged in.

Ultimately the only way to create a game that is uncheatable is to stream the video from a secured machine. That is so exorbitantly expensive and unworkable that if FPS tournaments were being played for money/prizes, the first thing they'd do is hold the tournaments on their own secured hardware in locations that are secured. That will weed out the cheaters because they can not perform without their illicit tools.

But more to the point, people who "need" third party tools to play the game, are simply bad players to begin with. People defending the use of mods or ACT or any other tool, are the ones most likely to be implicated as cheaters themselves. I've seen how this ends before, it only takes one careless person posting that they use such tools to the official forums for it to get cracked down on, and there are many careless people on the forum.

Do you really think Square-Enix would crack down on these things?

Considering how inept they've been at curbing the flood of gil-farming bots and RMT spammers, I seriously doubt they'll ever attempt to find a more lasting solution (IE, finding some way to make the client reject foreign processes or simply close if it detects them) to any of the game's issues with cheating.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Do you really think Square-Enix would crack down on these things?

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They will if it affects their bottom line. A lot of mods start out as QoL stuff, but then they start being used to pass illicit information via back channels in order to win prizes that have limited availability, or find the locations of secrets that would require effort. FPS games are notoriously cheated because they are intensively F2P games, and anything that gives a player an advantage is quickly proliferated. One "PvP" site known for creating most of the mods/bots for MMO games out there destroyed at least one MMORPG by going too far.

There is a term for this "Script Kiddie", when tools that can do a lot of damage, proliferate and fall into the hands of people who don't actually know what they're doing. So for one game that meant the game was shutdown due to rampant destruction. For another game, it resulted in many players having their characters destroyed, and malicious players used the tool to target their enemies.

So yes, Square-Enix would have to crack down on things if the games reputation being destroyed by players who go too far. They show a willingness to go after the RMT side of things, but not much willingness to go after bots because they can't be sure a player is a bot without spending a lot of time monitoring them. That's why players using parsers are told to use fight club rules. If you say anything about parses through the game, you've implicated yourself.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

They show a willingness to go after the RMT side of things, but not much willingness to go after bots because they can't be sure a player is a bot without spending a lot of time monitoring them.

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It really doesn't take much effort at all to distinguish bots from real players, whether they're doing FATEs, PvPing, or gathering/crafting.

They stay online for abnormally long periods of time without ever ceasing their activity/going AFK, which should be an immediate red flag for an investigation, afterwhich just observing their stiff, repetitive "Point A to point B" style movement for a minute or two would be the nail in coffin for them if the STF was actually competent. Not to mention that as far as I can tell, bots are functionally incapable of taking flight while in motion, so you can pick them out from real players nine times out of 10 by just watching for the ones who jump in place before flying after completing a FATE or gathering from a node.

Even the gil farming bots that spend most of their time under the ground or in walls have sometimes managed to avoid being banned for so long that their initial 30 days of playtime expired (Despite me reporting them about two weeks prior). Aside from that, the gibberish names are such a unifying trait among them that just doing a player search for level 1-50 CNJ/WHM and THM/BLM will basically reveal every gil farmer on the server who isn't in an instance.

I suppose it's possible that they're required to conduct needlessly in-depth investigations even if all of the signs point towards them being bots, though...

So, this topic was clearly created by someone who doesn't PVP and is fishing for some excuse to try to rile people up about modding.

You already have "big green markers" on the healers' heads because the actual game UI puts them there with green job icons by their names. In other cases, people use Target-to-Attack markers and a variety of the included UI markers and tools to pick targets, and even put on countdowns for burst using macros that place 5-1 marks over people's heads.

There is no instance in PVP where being physically unable to see someone has any impact on anything whatsoever. If someone is standing behind a wall in Feast, 90% of the time you can still see them or their name, and the other 10% of the time it's because they might be behind you and in a really, really bad position if that's the case (AKA, out of position or overextended). There are no "critical items" hidden anywhere in PVP. There are giant crates that appear at fixed positions on the map and very specific times, which are highly visible and easy to target.

When people make posts about stuff they don't know anything about *thinking*

Yeah, PVP has more problems than just graphical mods. There's software or a plugin that tells you when an enemy is about to burst so you can get your shields and such ready, and there were exploits in the past where people could get on top of walls in the Feast arena and rain fireballs down on you and there was nothing you could do. I don't know if those issues have been fixed but between that and the bots in Frontline, there are far more pressing things about PVP that need to be fixed.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

It really doesn't take much effort at all to distinguish bots from real players, whether they're doing FATEs, PvPing, or gathering/crafting.

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I suppose it's possible that they're required to conduct needlessly in-depth investigations even if all of the signs point towards them being bots, though...

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That's probably the crux of the problem. They're spending more time investigating and are unwilling to carpetbomb (as that creates negative PR.) What is an obvious bot to you or me, would have to be observed, by a GM to actually warrant banning them, and then all they do is move on to the next account. Like if you watch any of these bots for any sufficient amount of time, you realize the problem is that the bots are going through the quests at nearly the same speed that a player does, they're just not moving between point A and point B. SE could solve that by actually moving things around, or having quest NPC's move around. That way their teleports are useless as the NPC won't be in the place they expect them to be, and can be honey-potted to listen for players who try to activate a NPC that isn't there.

Need I remind everyone about the gil deletion incident of 2.00.
http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/0...per-interview/

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Nova Crystallis: Do you have any plans to combat RMT (Real Money Trading)? It was a large problem in 1.X as well as FFXI.
Yoshida: We believe that with the type of game we have now, it is discouraged, RMT is all about getting gil and selling it, but we have a game here where a lot of gil is not necessary to progress. Something in our game that FFXI didn’t have is gear binding, and so because of this, you cannot sell worn equipment. The only thing that requires gil is the housing system, so there are RMT that might try and get gil through housing, but most RMTs work by using their free account to create many characters, and then make lots of gil in that time, and then transfer that gil all to one spot before the trial ends. We have systems in place so that the amount of gil you get at lower levels is really insignificant, so during that free period, will they even get a decent amount of gil? We also have systems in place that prevent trading at lower levels, so we do have lots of small systems that discourage RMT, and hopefully RMTs will see that there aren’t good ways of making money. On top of that we’ve strengthened our special task force that has been active since FFXI, and we’ve made ways of scanning bots to make sure that even those RMT that try and make gil will be combated.

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5 years later, RMT is still a problem, but the most obnoxious part of has been mostly resolved (the spamming)

With PvP, there are incentives (eg limited time mounts) and thus people who can't sink the amount of time needed to get to the top to win it, will likely use a bot to secure their position. Thus SE should consider all PvP winners as potential bots, and audit their battles before rewarding anything. If activity looks like botting, then the reward is jail and a visit from the GM.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

Sure SE could do something similar to NCsoft with BNS, that game does a file check and re-download any tempered file. Totally useless, BnS modding community created a tool to bypass it (and they did something to also improve performance/stability so kudos).

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Hackshield and Gamegaurd are not a very good products. Basically they hook into the game and operating system and look for "unauthorized" processes. But both are defeated the same way, drop a dll file that the game actually initiallizes (eg winsock, direct3d, libpng, libjpeg, libvorbis etc) before HS/GG into it's directory, patch the CRT so that HS/GG load to make the game happy, but are otherwise just stub-loaded, eg whatever bits they're supposed to be doing to "prevent" hacking are neutered. Hackers laugh when they see these programs because they've been defeated forever. Those tools also screw up stability with the game. You can find thousands of pages of people complaining about these tools failing. It just creates more support nightmares. If you're not willing to develop your own in-house solution, then no solution ends up being better than a bad solution that you end up throwing more support staff at, and still doesn't stop the script kiddies.

And a lot of that comes back to changing how the game client communicates with the server. Why are bots able to teleport between two locations at all? Because the game developers want people to have a smooth experience when they walk between A and B, and not experience rubber-banding like in other MMO's. When you disconnect in the game, you are "still" in the game for up to two minutes, auto-attacking if you were mid-battle. Hence, the game is maintaining state between the game client and the game server, and when they're out of sync, the server pushes it back to the client (eg after a disconnect) but otherwise let's the game client move between two points unhindered.

If the game had more invisible walls, like it did in 1.0 there would be more opportunities for honeypots. But since you can pretty much get anywhere, expecially in the 3.x and 4.x areas due to flying mounts, the walls don't solve anything.

HA just no sorry it don't work that way.

I don't use mods but I have heard about them since FFXI where they use Dat files to change their appearance it gave no special benefits only to look different to them and nobody else could see it just them or a person they shared the dat file with.
I am figuring all this is about the talk about ffxiv clothing mods going around lately, no benefits its not the same as cheating with teleport botting in pvp and super speed cheating.

Its not graphical its botting should of said directed this at botting cause I don't think you know what you are talking about since SE uses programs to make clothing but server side for everyone so is everyone cheating?

id say its a good if the change clothing.

if you don't want to see someone dressed in underwear or in a dress or guys wearing girly clothing they could change it for them so they don't have to see it.

just my opinion

Y'all need to stop making posts about stuff that is against the ToS before you get banned, if you want to discuss this make a thread on Reddit or something.

Also if you're against modding putting a massive spotlight on it doesn't seem like a good idea, you're just encouraging more people to seek them out.

Find me a source where it says talking about this is against the ToS and I'll delete the thread. I had no idea, the ToS is stupidly complicated sometimes, lol.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Find me a source where it says talking about this is against the ToS and I'll delete the thread. I had no idea, the ToS is stupidly complicated sometimes, lol.

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Technically, the ToS doesn't say it anything about not discussing it, only participating in modifying the game or using third party tools.
http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...2&tag=users_en

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2.1 Cheating and Botting. You may not create or use any unauthorized cheats, bots, automation software, hacks, mods or any other unauthorized software or hardware designed to modify the Game and gameplay. In addition, you may not take advantage of game system bugs and exploits during gameplay.

2.2 Real Money Trading, Farming and Power-Leveling. You may not sell, purchase or exchange for real-world money or value any in-game currency, accounts, characters, in-game services, or in-game virtual items. You may not play the Game for the purpose of acquiring virtual items or advancement in game play on behalf of a third-party or for the purpose of selling any virtual assets to a third party for real-world money, specifically including "gold-farming" and power-leveling services.

2.3 Commercial Use. You may not exploit the Game for any commercial purpose (for example, advertising any product or service in-game, or use by the operator of a cyber café) without Square Enix's prior written consent.

2.4 Private Servers. You may not create, operate, participate in or use any unauthorized servers intended to emulate the Game.

2.5 Data Mining. You may not intercept, mine or otherwise collect information from the Game using unauthorized third party software.

2.6 Hacking and Circumvention. You may not hack, disassemble, decompile, or otherwise modify the Game or server computer code, whether the Game code is located on a DVD, Blu-rayTM disc, your computer/console or on Square Enix's servers, except as expressly permitted by Square Enix or applicable law.

2.7 Modifying or Creating Derivative Software. You may not modify or cause to be modified any files that are a part of the Game or Service in any way not expressly authorized by Square Enix, and may not make any derivative works of the Game.

2.8 Commercial Spamming/Spimming. You may not use (or abuse) the in-game chat and message services to distribute advertisements.

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So nitpickery, using mods and third party software is not allowed, but discussing them is more likely to get covered by :

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3. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES
In addition to the License Limitations, there are other activities that you are forbidden from doing in connection with the Game ("Prohibited Activities"). In its discretion, Square Enix may use a variety of methods to deal with violations of this User Agreement and the Prohibited Activities, including, but not limited to, any of the following:

Issuing a warning;
Placing a character in a "virtual jail" for a specified period of time;
Removing or deleting ill-gotten in-game items or currency;
Temporarily suspending an account;
Permanently terminating an account;
Permanently banning your IP address, residential address, or credit card number;
Asserting a lawsuit for breach of contract, copyright infringement, or other cause of action as may be applicable; and/or
Seeking injunctive relief in any court or jurisdiction to prevent you from continuing such activity.

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And yes, the ToS says "Spimming", to which I believe that is "spam instant messaging"
http://i66.tinypic.com/2v2jz1x.png

And then we have ACT which is sanctioned by the devs since they watch world first teams and don't go after them.
I love the double standard at SE.

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

And then we have ACT which is sanctioned by the devs since they watch world first teams and don't go after them.
I love the double standard at SE.

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I feel more concerned about the fact that some of said teams are widely known by their servers to run large-scale botting operations to keep themselves supplied with infusions, food, etc, yet SE seems to be oblivious to it.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I feel more concerned about the fact that some of said teams are widely known by their servers to run large-scale botting operations to keep themselves supplied with infusions, food, etc, yet SE seems to be oblivious to it.

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This is also very concerning. Maybe Yoshida justifies it cause they run world first? Lol

Isn't that the same FC that bought up huge swaths of houses when the latest round of them was released?

Not afaik!