Use of tools that allow players to more easily complete content. Discord?

I just would like a clarification because according to that statement discord isn't allowed and breaks TOS. 1st time I cleared a savage was after ten tries I got on a team that used discord. The leader was well spoken and told us where to go and when. I cleared that savage easily all because of him. It is a tool that helped me complete the savage easily yes? or no? I need a definitive answer to the discord question. Use it yes allowed or no not allowed ...why do I need a definitive answer? because I do not want to get banned or suffer for 10 days

At this point Twitter enforces its standards better and more consistently than FF14 does.

Discord is fine. Its pure futility to try and stop peole from using voice chats even se knows that.

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

Discord is fine. Its pure futility to try and stop peole from using voice chats even se knows that.

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Yes but is it against that statement they posted? or are you saying shuuuuuuu use just don't tell anyone shuuuuuu

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Originally Posted by sagacious

Yes but is it against that statement they posted?

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No, when they say no third party tools means no programs that tamper with the game files or data. Discord does not touch the games files or data. Using discord is like using obs to stream its fine.

Remember that:

1) FFXIV works out of the box with PlayStation voice chat
2) SE collaborated with Panasonic to make a custom FFXIV version of the SoundSlayer wearable gaming speaker, which includes a microphone for voice chat
3) Discord, being owned by Sony, is more of a second-party tool, and
4) Sony enables you to link your PSN and Discord accounts and to show your game activity (including FFXIV) on your Discord user profile

For these reasons, I find it very unlikely that Discord would (or should) be considered an unauthorized third-party tool.

Similarly I don't expect that FFXIV wikis like gamerescape or consolegameswiki would be considered unauthorized third-party tools, particularly considering that SE has a community relationship with them.

I also wouldn't consider streaming tools to be considered unauthorized third party tool, and I'm pretty sure SE encourages streaming. The fact that they explicitly ask streamers not to spoil the story early in the patch indicates that streaming in general is acceptable.

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

No, when they say no third party tools means no programs that tamper with the game files or data. Discord does not touch the games files or data. Using discord is like using obs to stream its fine.

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Thank you I can stop worrying now .... this is why I love the forums if it were not for you forum people I would have taken my gil out of the housing entry but I checked the forums first before I did anything and found out it was trouble and what to do.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

1) FFXIV works out of the box with PlayStation voice chat

2) Discord, being owned by Sony, is more of a second-party tool

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Thank you I can stop worrying

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

No, when they say no third party tools means no programs that tamper with the game files or data. Discord does not touch the games files or data. Using discord is like using obs to stream its fine.

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That is not what they said previously. And Discord does not tamper with the game but if definitely gives people a bigger advantage than say a DPS meter, or a UI change to show buff timers under party members buff.

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Originally Posted by sagacious

Yes but is it against that statement they posted? or are you saying shuuuuuuu use just don't tell anyone shuuuuuu

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Discord does NOT fall into the category "natively" of what SE consider's a third party tool by definition.

"Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:

- Modifying, analyzing, integrating, and/or reverse-engineering game software or data."

Discord does not modify game files.
Discord does not analyze the game files.
Discord does not integrate with the game files.
Discord is not reverse engineering the game files.

But then again, I feel people who reference Discord with this line of reasoning are being intellectually dishonest as you know what they are referring to.

Obviously there are also people fishing for them to take a stance on Discord. And there is the obviously waiting GOTCHA moment when they do that in regards to ACT callouts and if they ban someone for that.

Wait a moment.
Is the steam overlay a 3rd party tool?
Does that mean that steam users are inherently in danger of rules being broken?
And we still can't switch to PC to avoid this heresy?
*wheezing*

/s

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Discord does NOT fall into the category "natively" of what SE consider's a third party tool by definition.

"Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:

- Modifying, analyzing, integrating, and/or reverse-engineering game software or data."

Discord does not modify game files.
Discord does not analyze the game files.
Discord does not integrate with the game files.
Discord is not reverse engineering the game files.

But then again, I feel people who reference Discord with this line of reasoning are being intellectually dishonest as you know what they are referring to.

Obviously there are also people fishing for them to take a stance on Discord. And there is the obviously waiting GOTCHA moment when they do that in regards to ACT callouts and if they ban someone for that.

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Discord reads your system memory to see what games you're playing, including FFXIV. It also has an overlay that integrates with the game to show who's talking.

Pretty sure Discord technically does fall under their definition of "Third Party Tool," just that they obviously have no desire to dish out punishments for using it. It does illustrate their definition is kinda bad though. The vague definition is only for their benefit. Not ours.

I'm sorry, but you may as well throw the windows operating system in there while you are at it with this train of thought. :(

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

Discord reads your system memory to see what games you're playing, including FFXIV. It also has an overlay that integrates with the game to show who's talking.

Pretty sure Discord technically does fall under their definition of "Third Party Tool," just that they obviously have no desire to dish out punishments for using it. It does illustrate their definition is kinda bad though. The vague definition is only for their benefit. Not ours.

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Discord isn't integrating directly with the games files to provide said overlay. It is integrating with your system files. That is literally not the same thing.
Discord overlay also works with programs that are NOT video games. It doesn't even know where your installation of said video games ARE.

This argument IS part of the intellectually dishonest strawman.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Discord isn't integrating directly with the games files to provide said overlay. It is integrating with your system files. That is literally not the same thing.
Discord overlay also works with programs that are NOT video games. It doesn't even know where your installation of said video games ARE.

This argument IS part of the intellectually dishonest strawman.

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Discord was explicitly named by YoshiP himself on live letter as something that does technically violate their ToS due to the vagueness of the wording. So unless you're claiming he's intellectually dishonest too, you're just kinda wrong in this case. Yes, they will never issue an account action over it, but it's still violating ToS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

Discord was explicitly named by YoshiP himself on live letter as something that does technically violate their ToS due to the vagueness of the wording. So unless you're claiming he's intellectually dishonest too, you're just kinda wrong in this case.

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If I'm not mistaken, he paraphrased it as... "then we'll be asked about Discord ehhh"
Feel free to send me the video

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Discord does NOT fall into the category "natively" of what SE consider's a third party tool by definition.

"Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:

- Modifying, analyzing, integrating, and/or reverse-engineering game software or data."

Discord does not modify game files.
Discord does not analyze the game files.
Discord does not integrate with the game files.
Discord is not reverse engineering the game files.

But then again, I feel people who reference Discord with this line of reasoning are being intellectually dishonest as you know what they are referring to.

Obviously there are also people fishing for them to take a stance on Discord. And there is the obviously waiting GOTCHA moment when they do that in regards to ACT callouts and if they ban someone for that.

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no I follow Xenosys Vex and he said according to that statement discord was one

People need to stop being balantly obtuse. We all know what kind of programs SE means we dont need a list.

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Originally Posted by Neoyoshi

I'm sorry, but you may as well throw the windows operating system in there while you are at it with this train of thought. :(

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Welp, time to install Linux...oh wait someone made a thread asking if using Linux is third party lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Discord does NOT fall into the category "natively" of what SE consider's a third party tool by definition.

"Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:

- Modifying, analyzing, integrating, and/or reverse-engineering game software or data."

Discord does not modify game files.
Discord does not analyze the game files.
Discord does not integrate with the game files.
Discord is not reverse engineering the game files.

But then again, I feel people who reference Discord with this line of reasoning are being intellectually dishonest as you know what they are referring to.

Obviously there are also people fishing for them to take a stance on Discord. And there is the obviously waiting GOTCHA moment when they do that in regards to ACT callouts and if they ban someone for that.

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Is this a personal opinion, because i see nowhere where discord is clarified as a usable 3rd party tool by an official square enix representative.

People can say what they want, but until square enix fronts up and lists what is and is not a tool, then everything is considered against ToS.

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

Will SE's official translation do?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...802-14-2020%29




They claim both ACT and voice chat programs like Discord are ambiguous. Logically, we can assume they sit in a similar space as far as the devs are concerned because they are mentioned together and classified the same way; that's how classification works. But it seems ACT is now not so ambiguous, so it's a legitimate question to ask them to clarify. The ultimate point is the "grey area" term came from SE themselves, and they've now apparently decided there is no grey area. So people want to know what falls where.

They do go on to talk about specific implementations of plugins that could be actionable, but to my knowledge the streamer was that banned only had a DPS meter, so it's not relevant to the actions SE has taken.

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Asmongold says discord is a "separate party tool," not a third party because it does not interact with the game files

Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation in this thread. Go look up Yoshi P's talk from 2 years ago.

Even using excel or discord could be seen as third party tool use - in that previous speech, Yoshi uses both Discord and Excel as examples by name. So, yes, SE could ban you for it. Obviously, it would be ridiculous for them to do so, but the TOS is worded such that even those cross the line.

And, personally, I think this policy is stupid and plenty of other devs manage to outline what's acceptable and what's not, so it's not nearly as impossible as Yoshi keeps saying. But they'd rather have a blanket ban on everything, and leave us guessing on what exactly they won't enforce and occasionally change the enforcement as in the last day or two.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sagacious

Asmongold says discord is a "separate party tool," not a third party because it does not interact with the game files

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Asmongold does not speak officially for the development team/square enix. Yoshida does.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sagacious

Asmongold says discord is a "separate party tool," not a third party because it does not interact with the game files

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Asmongold is not an employee of SE, nor does he represent any of their affiliates.

This is the most accurate post I have read in regards to discord...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Is this a personal opinion, because i see nowhere where discord is clarified as a usable 3rd party tool by an official square enix representative.

People can say what they want, but until square enix fronts up and lists what is and is not a tool, then everything is considered against ToS.

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@segacious. No matter how you want to look at it, Discord is not supported by SE, and console players don't have access to it. Can you be disciplined for using it? Technically, yes you can. Will you be? No, it is extremely unlikely anyone will even be warned for just using Discord. Be that is it may, this isn't as ambiguous as people would like to make it out to be. If the shout outs in discord to tell you where to go makes you feel like it made the content easier, that more likely has to do with just doing what you were told instead of actually understanding the mechanics so you don't need to be. If you don't want to feel that way, then don't use Discord for shout outs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

@segacious. No matter how you want to look at it, Discord is not supported by SE, and console players don't have access to it.

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Eh, that's a stretch. Console players can use their phones, or a laptop, to voice chat on Discord all they want. Only very special cases would not have access to discord if they wanted to use it. In any case, PC players don't have access to PS4's native voice chat and it's not supported by SE, so by the same logic it should also be against TOS. But I don't think it is. I also don't think discord is. SE would have to be mad to say "no voice chatting with your friends while you play".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Discord does NOT fall into the category "natively" of what SE consider's a third party tool by definition.

"Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:

- Modifying, analyzing, integrating, and/or reverse-engineering game software or data."

Discord does not modify game files.
Discord does not analyze the game files.
Discord does not integrate with the game files.
Discord is not reverse engineering the game files.

But then again, I feel people who reference Discord with this line of reasoning are being intellectually dishonest as you know what they are referring to.

Obviously there are also people fishing for them to take a stance on Discord. And there is the obviously waiting GOTCHA moment when they do that in regards to ACT callouts and if they ban someone for that.

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Discord literally puts an overlay on the game window.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Discord literally puts an overlay on the game window.

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So does steam, m8. Can we ban steam as well!?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Discord literally puts an overlay on the game window.

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The overlays are not interacting with your game files. Discord interfaces with the OS system files. The overlay can appear with many different programs not game related. Discord doesn't even know where your game files specifically are located just what's your "main" screen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

Discord overlay works by hooking into the game. It's very similar to things like re/gshade, though not quite the same.

There's a reason it had an issue with setting off anti-cheat on games like Destiny in the past.

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You mean this?

That's an official post.

Please
Try
Again

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I know they can use their laptops and/or phones. It doesn't change that the console itself does not have access to discord. You have to use another device on top of the USB controller and Keyboard. Ever have to use 3-4 remote controllers to use a TV? It's kind of like that. Plus, like I pointed out to Segacious, I was disappointed that players just wanted to tell me where to go instead of actually explain how the mechanic works. I figured it would be more convenient considering you don't have to type up a wall of text. Nah. I was totally wrong about that.

Anywho, the thing about your argument where you say, "SE would have to mad to say no voice chatting with your friends", is that players are interpreting Yoshi's statements as exactly that. It is very similar to what we what just went through with the Adventure Plates, and players are asking to be more clear about what is and isn't allowed. Anyone with a firm head on their shoulders will know that the answer to this is far too broad. All they can really do is define for their customers what a third party tool is. And now you get players mockingly saying, "Is THIS a third party tool?" "What about THAT SE, am I going to get banned for THIS?" It makes this person sound like a third grader, looking for loopholes in the regulations and the enforcer's logic.

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People are not misinterpreting his comments. They are willfully being intellectually dishonest about what he is saying or implying to try and justify their loophole arguments. It's the same reason they want the devs to come out and say "Discord is allowed" because they know that by doing so, it opens the gate on automated callouts in Discord channels.
It's a trap being set for the devs, because if they later decide to ban for "automated callouts" on a stream, people can then say " BUT YOU SAID DISCORD WAS ALLOWED"

Let's cut the BS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

People need to stop being balantly obtuse. We all know what kind of programs SE means we dont need a list.

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i dont know about that. the japanese streamer that got banned was using harmless mods

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brynne

Eh, that's a stretch. Console players can use their phones, or a laptop, to voice chat on Discord all they want. Only very special cases would not have access to discord if they wanted to use it. In any case, PC players don't have access to PS4's native voice chat and it's not supported by SE, so by the same logic it should also be against TOS. But I don't think it is. I also don't think discord is. SE would have to be mad to say "no voice chatting with your friends while you play".

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I know they can use their laptops and/or phones. It doesn't change that the console itself does not have access to discord. You have to use another device on top of the USB controller and Keyboard. Ever have to use 3-4 remote controllers to use a TV? It's kind of like that. Plus, like I pointed out to Segacious, I was disappointed that players just wanted to tell me where to go instead of actually explain how the mechanic works. I figured it would be more convenient considering you don't have to type up a wall of text. Nah. I was totally wrong about that.

Anywho, the thing about your argument where you say, "SE would have to mad to say no voice chatting with your friends", is that players are interpreting Yoshi's statements as exactly that. It is very similar to what we what just went through with the Adventure Plates, and players are asking to be more clear about what is and isn't allowed. Anyone with a firm head on their shoulders will know that the answer to this is far too broad. All they can really do is define for their customers what a third party tool is. And now you get players mockingly saying, "Is THIS a third party tool?" "What about THAT SE, am I going to get banned for THIS?" It makes this person sound like a third grader, looking for loopholes in the regulations and the enforcer's logic.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Discord does not modify game files.
Discord does not analyze the game files.
Discord does not integrate with the game files.
Discord is not reverse engineering the game files.

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This is also the case with ACT. It does also not touch the game files. So it should be allowed, right?


Cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Is this a personal opinion, because i see nowhere where discord is clarified as a usable 3rd party tool by an official square enix representative.

People can say what they want, but until square enix fronts up and lists what is and is not a tool, then everything is considered against ToS.

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If they ban Discord users, they would ban the vast majority of the North American (and probably European and Oceanic) user base. As in, literally everyone I know who plays the game has Discord, which they use for all sorts of things. Trying to make the argument "Discord is the sort of third party tool they are totally talking about" is either a.) being deliberately disingenuous which means you're not really trying to have a real conversation, or b.) you're trying to be hyperbolic to point out the vagueness of the ToS without realizing
everyone knows what kind of mods Yoshi-P is talking about.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

And, personally, I think this policy is stupid and plenty of other devs manage to outline what's acceptable and what's not, so it's not nearly as impossible as Yoshi keeps saying. But they'd rather have a blanket ban on everything, and leave us guessing on what exactly they won't enforce and occasionally change the enforcement as in the last day or two.

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As long as console players make up a major part of Final Fantasy XIV's player base, officially, every sort of third-party tool or add-on will be against TOS. Unofficially, I highly doubt SE cares all that much unless you're doing some obvious cheating or openly streaming it. That's should be common sense... But it feel like this whole "debate" has shown me that people don't have common sense.

Discord doesn't interact with or modify the game. The rest you should be able to work out.

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Originally Posted by Droxybrobotnik

Discord doesn't interact with or modify the game. The rest you should be able to work out.

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I'm just assuming this is all a giant bait thread, if anyone unironically thinks Discord is an illegal program despite the fact what you said.....well....there's bigger problems.

It's obviously bait, but an ounce of me does think that the person thought this was a smart debate starter.

does this mean there is going to be no bard music, unless you know how to smash those notes on your keyboard

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

So does steam, m8. Can we ban steam as well!?

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Please do, get me off this platform :P

Discord is obviously allowed. We all agree on how stupid it would be if it wasnt. The point of threads like this is not to argue that discord should get you banned, it's to prove that just pointing at the ToS and go "well read what's written" is meaningless. Rules need to be interpreted for the goal they are trying to achieve, not followed to the letter. The ToS are not meant to enable malicious brigade reports, they are meant to solve actual problems. No one who report brigaded had an actual problem with the first streamer they hit, it was just to try it out.

Hardcore rule sticking does not prevent loopholes from being exploited, it creates them. Rather than asking what does a rule say, you should be asking what does it mean to achieve. Remember, if the only thing bad about an action is that it's illegal then it shouldnt be illegal at all. An action has to be illegal because it's bad, not the other way around.

And a lot of mods/third party tools dont have a negative impact or provide more upsides than downsides. In the case of ACT it's already covered under harassment if you decide to be a toxic person with ACT.

I reject this notion that if SE would do nothing after mass reports it would harm their reputation and make them look incompetent. It proves the opposite. It shows that they wont just cave in to some stupid demand just because a lot of malicious people yell about it. Instead they commit to their current approach. What makes them look incompetent is at the same time admitting that the UI features in this game are lacking and then banning people for fixing it.

Overall streamers will survive having ACT off screen and a vanilla UI. It's nothing more than a meaningless token gesture afterall. What I think SE should take a hard stance on is hyper toxic forums like the one that instigated this report brigade. They are not doing it to make the game better, they're doing it for "fun". And SE has the means to act on them. They have the records on who participated in the report brigades and they can terminate any account for any reason. They have the means, they just lack the conviction to make sure their own ToS are used with good intentions.

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Originally Posted by Sarevok_Thordin

I'm just assuming this is all a giant bait thread, if anyone unironically thinks Discord is an illegal program despite the fact what you said.....well....there's bigger problems.

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Not true and after readding all of these threads I am still unsure if discord is allowed or not

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Originally Posted by Lufir

It's obviously bait, but an ounce of me does think that the person thought this was a smart debate starter.

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I don't like debate I like answers and the fact remains discord remains shrouded in uncertainty