In opposition of the inability to move waymarks in combat.

First, know that I do not advocate the use of 3rd party tools for cheating.

This includes ACT triggers doing callouts for you, 3rd party tool placing waymarks for you and anything giving you an unearned advantage compared to regular players.

This is exceptionally unfair in an environment where many players are on Playstation 4 and do not have access to those tools. Even if they were available on PS4, I am against it for the reason that people should not spend hours downloading files on random websites to prepare for a raid, it is an inconvenience and a security risk.

While I agree that there needs to be changes in order to prevent people from exploiting those tools, from the perspective of a High End PVE raider that has cleared all Ultimate fights, I strongly oppose the removal of the ability to move waymarks during combat.

Many mechanics in this game rely on strategies that use the ability to move those waymarks around.

In The Epic of Alexander, I move waymarks around multiple times during the fight. I move "1" and "2" waymarks about 4 times in this fight, and I change ABCD for last phase to make Fate Calibration Alpha easier on my team.

Moving waymarks in the middle of combat can be challenging for some players, I really admired the paladin of my group when he was putting down the waymarks for the divebombs in UCOB while doing his own mechanics.

In the most recent ultimate, Alexander, I picked up on the job of moving waymarks strategically, it is a skill that deserves recognition and should not be taken away because there is a minority using third party tools.

Forcing a single set of 8 waymarks is going to be detrimental as you are going to be forced to make choices: "Do I want waymarks for this mechanic or for that other mechanic later in the fight?"

It is going to destroy strategies for difficult mechanics with lots of randomness that rely on the ability to adapt waymarks, such as Divebombs in the Nael phase of The Unending Coil of Bahamut where the inability to adapt waymarks to the dragon pattern you get is only going to make a very hard mechanic even harder.

As such, in my opinion, I think this change is going to hurt the raiding scene in Ultimate fights considering they are very long fights with lots of mechanics and elements of randomness.

Once again, I do agree that actions need to be taken to prevent the use of 3rd party tools that give unfair advantages; however, I don't think a change that radical is what the game needs and I think this is going to do more bad than good, maybe at least keep the ability to move 2 or 3 waymarks for mechanics and block the others, or add the ability to switch waymarks preset in combat.

Mikana Teka

Player since A Realm Reborn, high end raider since the start of Heavensward.

I agree, having 8 set markers throughout the whole fight will also make visibility of some mechanics difficult.

In UCoB we purposefully removed some markers after reaching Bahamut since it was hard to see the difference between towers and the A mark against the red/dark background.

Gotta say, its another case of you reap what you've sow, just like the forced cutscenes. Ppl abused it and thats for that. Id still be more up for locking out all third party stuff but well...

I do say its slightly annoying as i cant replace em when showing ppl new fights or need it for a "quick get to A" or smt... but the saved sets are sweet, finally no more placing macros at every fights start.

Sadly I have to agree. The community has brought this on itself. Those trigger add ons were going to get called out at some point and while it isn’t exactly a palatable change for all of us. It’s the necessary change for the health and fairness of the game.

Sucks to lose the ability but got no one to blame but ourselves.

Thing is, i didn't bring it to myself, me or my static have never used stuff like that and we designed strats arounds waymarks we adjust and place manually in the middle of fights.

Just not fair to get punished because a minority decided to cheat.

Once again i agree actions needs to be taken, but we need to start punishing the cheaters rather than everyone.

It's like you're on math exam, someone decided to cheat by using a non reglemented calculator, and rather than punishing the offender, the whole class gets their calculator revoked, even those that weren't using it badly

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Originally Posted by Mikana

Thing is, i didn't bring it to myself, me or my static have never used stuff like that and we designed strats arounds waymarks we adjust and place manually in the middle of fights.

Just not fair to get punished because a minority decided to cheat.

Once again i agree actions needs to be taken, but we need to start punishing the cheaters rather than everyone.

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Problem is how? Why? Because you can’t be sure who is using what without checking for installed software which is illegal. As they stated, this fix is the easiest most assured fix to take.

It re-levels the playing field. Because while it is a convenient tool. It’s only a convenience for PC players. What about those on ps4? They can’t have that convenience can they?

The community tolerated and was complicit in these add ons and didn’t call them out or restrain themselves from using it. Rather than let some people get away with it and others have no access to it, no one gets to use it and are restricted to the new system.

It's not a convenience for PC players, it's a convenience for cheaters, most PC players don't use those tools, from their perspective, it can be a good idea yes.

But from my perspective as a 6+ year old high end PVE raider, they're taking away a tool i've been using for years in my strats (and by tool i mean the ability to move waymarks, not the software that places them, don't even know the name of the software)

And let's be honest

Do you really think people won't find another loophole ?

3rd party tools have been grey area for too long, but come on, if they inject data to the server you tell me they can't actually find it ? the server can't find when 6 waymarks are removed and replaced within 0.1 seconds ?

Hell, there's clear videos with people blatantly using those tools. Has anyone ever heard of a sentence on that ?

Even the world first clear uses it, and SE congratulated them on it, at this point i don't know what to tell you other that we have Square congratulating people using 3rd party tools.

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Originally Posted by Mikana

It's not a convenience for PC players, it's a convenience for cheaters, most PC players don't use those tools, from their perspective, it can be a good idea yes.

But from my perspective as a 6+ year old high end PVE raider, they're taking away a tool i've been using for years in my strats (and by tool i mean the ability to move waymarks, not the software that places them, don't even know the name of the software)

And let's be honest

Do you really think people won't find another loophole ?

3rd party tools have been grey area for too long, but come on, if they inject data to the server you tell me they can't actually find it ? the server can't find when 6 waymarks are removed and replaced within 0.1 seconds ?

Hell, there's clear videos with people blatantly using those tools. Has anyone ever heard of a sentence on that ?

Even the world first clear uses it, and SE congratulated them on it, at this point i don't know what to tell you other that we have Square congratulating people using 3rd party tools.

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Dont disagree with you but it is what it is. The game is becoming more and more popular we are getting more and more new players so now they are having to clarify stances and make changes to level the playing field.

People will adjust and adapt to the new system. They may hate it, it may be unfair but it’s that or...no actually no or just that.

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Originally Posted by Mikana

Thing is, i didn't bring it to myself, me or my static have never used stuff like that and we designed strats arounds waymarks we adjust and place manually in the middle of fights.

Just not fair to get punished because a minority decided to cheat.

Once again i agree actions needs to be taken, but we need to start punishing the cheaters rather than everyone.

It's like you're on math exam, someone decided to cheat by using a non reglemented calculator, and rather than punishing the offender, the whole class gets their calculator revoked, even those that weren't using it badly

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Life isn't fair unless you were born with a silver spoon upbringing and hit the life lottery.

Just because you're holy and pure doesn't mean everyone else is. I regularly had to deal with those punishments in school FYI, you learn to adapt and deal with it.

And i gotta say, yes ill never manage any ultimate, but still, walking past perfect legends with their weps makes we wonder if they are legit... ppl are trash, im sry, i cant trust "you" would never cheat. Just look at... tentem or how that pokemon copy is called, they banned hundrets of cheater that most likely wanted to continue hacking just as they did on the original games. Its the same with pppl buying rmt stuff...


And using these addons on live cams during streams is kinda... just no, they corssed a line. I already wonder why the one streaming gotta show a parser...

I mean you are not wrong. In any sense of your post. I’ve felt the same as I am sure many others have as well.

This step was inevitable. We are lucky just this system got changed, this change is a inconvenience for sure but ultimately it’s necessary to draw a line in the sand and say no more. And that is what they did. No lewd mods, no add ons that inject data into the game and add server load. Play by the rules or get called out and punished.

We have all dealt with this idea of a few bad apples cost everyone everything. It’s not a new or controversial thing. Happens all the time.

I understand square's position on this, it is after all a fix to people exploiting a tool that gives an unfair advantage, still doesn't change the fact that it is also an inconveniance to people that makes strat relying on the ability to move waymarks.

If it comes to pass and they don't ever change, then so be it, we'll learn to adapt, but it is still a worst system than before for the user.

And to those saying it's not fair but you have to accept it. Doesn't mean I don't have the right to make my point of view clear for square, if they decide to ignore, so be it, it is a good thing for them after all.

But at this point, with the fact that they've shown that you could have multiple presets for each fights (edit : might only be 5 presets TOTAL, but unsure with it being japanese and all), i would be okay with the posibility of switching each presets within the combat (which is kinda what the tool that started this drama is doing).

So they've got 3 possibilites :
- Remove the function to move waymarks in combat (me, as a user doesn't like it)
- Let it be as it was before (which would be bad for Square as it leads to people exploiting the game with tools)
- Compromise and give the ability to switch presets in combat (as a user, i'd be fine with that, but that means implementing a tool that cheaters already had before to everyone, so i do not know if square would really accept it)

In the end, it is all going to depend on square's decision, what is good to me isn't what is neccessarily good to square, and as such i understand their point of view on the matter.

Why people tolerated those, was that it never affected other people (i don't care if other cheats outside of my static, i do the content for myself not for the others)
But this is a change affecting me, so now i care and if square can at least aknowledge my point of view as a user, then this is good enough for me

I can't believe what is happening in this thread. You guys rather advocate for 100% of the playerbase to be punished for the actions of 0.01%. You can blame the community all you want for "bringing this upon themselves" but let's call this what it is: The devs are taking the easy path of restricting a feature that has been there since the beginning because they are too lazy to actually figure out a way to punish people for literally cheating.

Yes, this is, in essence, the fault of the players that abuse the system but you don't have to lie there and take such a ridiculous solution when the real answer should be in making sure people risk their accounts when they commit so heavily to 3rd party tools.

Where does this end? People will find other loopholes and do it again and we'll just end up with less and less features? No, just hit the desk for once and punish obvious, gross disregard for the ToS PLEASE. This shouldn't even be up for debate.

If you could cycle through presets the cheating tool would be literally irrelevant. This was a simple solution, but they're taking the worst way out they possibly can. The best way to tackle cheaters is to make the cheating more of a hassle than doing it legit. It's the same way as piracy. Pirating hit a decline for games with the growth of steam and the growth of Netflix caused a decline in movie piracy because it was just more convenient and safer to get the things legitimately.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

If you could cycle through presets the cheating tool would be literally irrelevant. This was a simple solution, but they're taking the worst way out they possibly can. The best way to tackle cheaters is to make the cheating more of a hassle than doing it legit. It's the same way as piracy. Pirating hit a decline for games with the growth of steam and the growth of Netflix because it was just more convenient and safer to get the things legitimately.

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I can't like this post enough.

The most frustrating part is, the solution is so simple that they actually implemented it with those presets, but broke it on purpose. They monkey's paw'd us hard, and I'm just so... livid about the whole thing.

Someone on Discord said it best: they started an arms race with 3rd party users that they cannot win.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

If you could cycle through presets the cheating tool would be literally irrelevant. This was a simple solution, but they're taking the worst way out they possibly can. The best way to tackle cheaters is to make the cheating more of a hassle than doing it legit. It's the same way as piracy. Pirating hit a decline for games with the growth of steam and the growth of Netflix caused a decline in movie piracy because it was just more convenient and safer to get the things legitimately.

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Meanwhile, you have Facebook loudly and proudly declaring they killed Adblock with their new million dollar technology... only to be humiliated two days later. SE cannot win a third party battle because they won't dare risk killing their raid scene by doing anything drastic like blocking parsers. So it's immediately a lost battle. There's already talks it'll become client side.

They should have taken the time to break the app rather than punish the other 99.99% of the players. This is going to hurt all the regular players much more than it hurts the very small handful of cheaters.

Came here hoping this thread would exist, and it does, which is great.

This change is awful for everyone who tried to do everything above-the-board, and the initial reaction from the people behind the tool that prompted it was just that they'd make a version that everyone can run that just cheats locally with client-side way marks. It's ultimately not going to get people who were using this tool to cheat to play legit, they're just going to cheat harder. The people who lose out are literally the entire rest of the playerbase who persist in not cheating, and that's not great. Adding more waymarks so people can just pre-mark everything is an option, I guess, but it's a lot messier visually and it's open to way more abuse (There's a clear waymark button--you don't think that's 'accidentally' getting hit right before a pull in 24 mans to troll everyone? Really?)

I appreciate the urge to crack down on the growing prevalence and unfortunate acceptance of tools that allow for automation of what were intended to be manually handled game mechanics, but punishing the people who were doing it right in the first place is a bad look. As mentioned in the OP, people who can place way marks while keeping up with the demands of their job mid-pull have a valid skill worth recognizing, and instead it's getting wiped out. The community will adapt to the change, but given the existence of things like the tool that would place party markers on people for Titan Gaol, the precedent of 'cheaters abuse it, so all will lose it' could eventually scale out to touching other features and it really, really doesn't need to.

We should absolutely have at least one way mark we could place in combat, for on-the-fly positioning explanations. Yes, it's open to abuse by third party tools, but the people using those for hardcore early prog aren't going to stop using them with this change anyway, so why punish the rest of us contentedly progressing slower without the assist?

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

I mean you are not wrong. In any sense of your post. I’ve felt the same as I am sure many others have as well.

This step was inevitable. We are lucky just this system got changed, this change is a inconvenience for sure but ultimately it’s necessary to draw a line in the sand and say no more. And that is what they did. No lewd mods, no add ons that inject data into the game and add server load. Play by the rules or get called out and punished.

We have all dealt with this idea of a few bad apples cost everyone everything. It’s not a new or controversial thing. Happens all the time.

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Except none of that is going anywhere. Do you think people using mods weren't aware they were against the ToS? People did it anyway just like with parsers. And given mods are client side, literally nothing has changed as SE has no way to detect whether you have lewd mods installed. The creator of the marker tool has already said they'll make it client side.

This is a losing battle because they aren't going to do anything to disrupt client side programs and risk the backlash banning parsers would cause.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Except none of that is going anywhere. Do you think people using mods weren't aware they were against the ToS? People did it anyway just like with parsers. And given mods are client side, literally nothing has changed as SE has no way to detect whether you have lewd mods installed. The creator of the marker tool has already said they'll make it client side.

This is a losing battle because they aren't going to do anything to disrupt client side programs and risk the backlash banning parsers would cause.

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Losing battle or not isn’t the point. The game has grown quite a lot since shadowbringers, and continues to do so. The dev team had to take a stand on where the line is. They’ve made it clear.

Everyone says this alternative is so easy it’s this it’s that, or this is the wrong or worse way to go about it. That’s false. The worse way they could have gone about it is to change ToS to allow for a scan of any files attached to their game (which they admitted was illegal and arent going to do) as for affecting 99.9% of the playerbase. Outside of niche situations. Nael, TEA, UCoB most waymarks are placed pre-battle and not touched again during any pull post wipe.

So no this doesn’t really affect the player base at large in any meaningful negative way. In fact presets and additional waymarks are more positive.

The sky isn’t falling the game isn’t breaking for dealing with this convenient add on to a third party program that wasnt even available to everyone. It’s against ToS it always has been. Least they were up front and told it to everyone rather than just dropping the ban hammer without warning. Better to take the blanket solution then try to play whack a mole with every person that abuses the system or cheats to get ahead.

So stop acting like it’s a personal sleight and insult that SE is holding the community accountable. It’s life and this is a game. They were well within their rights to make this decision and in this instance they likely will not back down.

Do you actually think this is going to change anything for people using third party tools ?

Because if you do think yes, then you're dreaming, this only blocks one of the most minor tools, no banhammer in sight since as they said they won't scan your PC for files, and the devs of the tools are apparently already thinking about fixes by adding stuff on the client side rather than the server side.

This is just to give hackers a tougher time for the one single tool, and they're going to find loopholes, with everything people can do with mods nowadays, it's definitely going to happen.

It doesn't cast a blanket over a burning fire, it's throwing a small glass of water.

And you say niche, maybe for you, but not for me or any of the ultimate raiders, this is thousands and thousands of players, just because we are a minority, doesn't mean it's okay to take away features that have been here ever since the start of A realm reborn and that we use all the time.

8 Waymarks in an area is a lot visually, it is common to take waymarks away if they're not needed for visibility, while savage may not need those 8 waymarks (who knows what mechanics there will be)

If they want to make their stance clear, then apply the banhammer, rather than keep saying stuff like "please don't do it" or doing things like "people are using tools to exploit a feature, rather than patch something to prevent the tool from working, let's remove the feature".

Wasephvox said it clearly earlier, they take the easy fix of removing the feature rather than making it so people can't exploit it, i do not know if it viable, i am not a programmer, but come on, a minority of raiders (which is already a minority), we are talking about a minority of a minority use a tool to automatically place waymarks and now we can't adjust them for any strat with randomness and if you think 8 waymarks (which is gonna be a pain visually, but that's not my point here) are going to cover ALL the mechanics in a 17 minutes fight (taking into account all mechanics variables due to randomness), you're sorely mistaken.

I love ultimate fights, mechanics are challenging, interesting, i especially love making strategies for my static, and this is just making it harder, forcing people to do less elaborate and in ultimates most likely, less consistent strategies.

It doens't matter the reason, it isn't a question about cheating here.

It is a question that they are removing a feature that has been there since the beginning, that have been allowing people to make strategies ever since the start of raiding in this game away and that is it.

What's next, remove the ability to see what damage your ability does so that ACT can't know what your DPS is ?
Remove cast times of boss and the entire "Battle" chat box so tools can't read it for triggers ?

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Losing battle or not isn’t the point. The game has grown quite a lot since shadowbringers, and continues to do so. The dev team had to take a stand on where the line is. They’ve made it clear.

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How is losing the battle not the point and how have they made anything clear?! If the entire point of this decision is to battle cheating then losing the battle is absolutely a point! They keep telling people to "please not do this" without actually swinging the ban hammer. You can draw lines in the sand as much as you like if people just step over them without getting hit in the face. None of what was said will actually deter someone from finding another way to cheat if they think nothing can actually happen to them.

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Everyone says this alternative is so easy it’s this it’s that, or this is the wrong or worse way to go about it. That’s false. The worse way they could have gone about it is to change ToS to allow for a scan of any files attached to their game (which they admitted was illegal and arent going to do)

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Cool strawman argument, nobody asked for that.

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So no this doesn’t really affect the player base at large in any meaningful negative way. In fact presets and additional waymarks are more positive.

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Doesn't matter how many people it affects, everyone is in their right to call it out when their QoL is compromised. Also, nobody complained about additional waymarks or presets, don't mistake the actual complaint.

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The sky isn’t falling the game isn’t breaking for dealing with this convenient add on to a third party program that wasnt even available to everyone. It’s against ToS it always has been. Least they were up front and told it to everyone rather than just dropping the ban hammer without warning. Better to take the blanket solution then try to play whack a mole with every person that abuses the system or cheats to get ahead.

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I have two problems with this statement: 1. You're making this sound like everyone advocating for not removing this feature is actually using this tool. Sometimes it is just as simple as "I've been using waymarks in battle for 6 years and I'd like to keep using them". 2. What the hell is wrong with asking for actual punishment for cheating?! Like you keep throwing around "tough life, just deal with it" when you could just as well ask for proper community management that sorts out bad apples until people are too scared to be bad apples. Like actually please explain to me how this blanket solution is better and healthier for the game at large than making a system that detects cheating like you claim.

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So stop acting like it’s a personal sleight and insult that SE is holding the community accountable. It’s life and this is a game. They were well within their rights to make this decision and in this instance they likely will not back down.

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Again, looks like holding the entire community accountable instead of doing actual community management is somehow preferable... We're here to tell them, as players and consumers, that we are NOT Ok with this decision/solution. This kind of feedback is what the OF is for. The nonsensical "life's unfair" argument has no place here. This is literally a service I pay for, not a freak natural disaster, I am allowed to make these statements, whether the stay unheard or not lol. They're well within their rights to do pretty much anything, it's their game, they ban you tomorrow without any cause and they're in their rights. Might doesn't make right.

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

Losing battle or not isn’t the point. The game has grown quite a lot since shadowbringers, and continues to do so. The dev team had to take a stand on where the line is. They’ve made it clear.

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They reiterated what we already knew: Mods and Parsers are against the ToS. Did it stop anyone? Nope. People aren't going to stop using mods, triggers or any of the things they already did. And the very program they're trying to beat is being made client side, which means they can't detect it. I'd say that was a pretty big point.

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

Everyone says this alternative is so easy it’s this it’s that, or this is the wrong or worse way to go about it. That’s false. The worse way they could have gone about it is to change ToS to allow for a scan of any files attached to their game (which they admitted was illegal and arent going to do) as for affecting 99.9% of the playerbase. Outside of niche situations. Nael, TEA, UCoB most waymarks are placed pre-battle and not touched again during any pull post wipe.

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That's a scare tactic and little else. They will never, ever attempt anti-cheat software. Not only does it not work (Guild Wars 2 tried), if it actually did, they would lose millions because of the sheer number of people banned. There is precisely zero chance they risk destroying their raid community, which an anti-cheat program would do.

The rest of your post is nothing but a giant Strawman. I never brought up the markers but called out your insistence they drew some silly new line and that we have to play by these new rules. Those rules are exactly the same as before and people will do what they were already doing.

I think it's good that the Dev Team and Yoshida himself have a stance regarding 3rd Party Tools. It's totally fine and I can align to that their stance. I don´t support the use of 3rd Party Tools, and expecially not the ones that affect the client and modify data, like the thing with the waymarks or cosmetic mods.


At first I want to tell you guys why I think positioning waymarks during a fight is necassarry during progression for (savage) ultimate content:

My Party just cleared TEA three weeks ago, and the ability to move single waymarks during the combat was mandatory for our progression speed. We had a lot of schedule issues, which alread delayed our progress heavily. If we wouldn't have had the ability to move waymarks, it would have taken even longer. In every phase we moved at least 3 waymarks to a different point, because it made learning so much easier if a player has a point to orient himself to.
We want to clear UCoB and UWU too, I already know about most mechanics, and when I think about not having the possibility to move waymarks for Grand Octect for example, it just feels horrible, because we will probably be stuck on that mechanic for few days at least.


They could have went a different way, regarding this 3rd Party Tool that places waymarks instantly and waymarks in general.
1) They punish the people from which they know that they have used it, just like with the dataming thing a few months ago.
2) They implement the ability to position presets during a fight ingame. It's kind of innovation for the game done by players, isn't it?
3) They remove the ability to position waymarks during a fight.
4) They let it be like it is and people can abuse it.


Please don't punish the whole playerbase for something that only a small percentage is using or doing. It will probably be limiting out gaming and raiding experience, also because we have some PS4 Players in our Static and those are completly lost regarding this issue.

Edit: Writing, Grammar and Spelling

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Gotta say, its another case of you reap what you've sow, just like the forced cutscenes. Ppl abused it and thats for that. Id still be more up for locking out all third party stuff but well...

I do say its slightly annoying as i cant replace em when showing ppl new fights or need it for a "quick get to A" or smt... but the saved sets are sweet, finally no more placing macros at every fights start.

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Except it's 100% of players reaping what .03% of players sow.