Mod users in FFXIV are getting out of control

[HyoMinPark]

No, at best, SE has not cracked down on modding, third party tools, etc, because up until relatively recently people were not putting a spotlight on it. SE can continue to ignore modding at it's own peril, and then when they finally decide to ban everyone, they will get a PR blowback because they hadn't enforced their ToS at all before. Either SE starts cracking down on known ACT users, or it's going to have to live with the lewd mods proliferating and ruining the game's reputation further.

I don't expect SE to do anything, really. Not till someone carelessly shows them on a twitch stream that SE staff are watching.

SE hasn’t focused on banning people that use third-party tools because it would hurt their bottom line. They are already well aware that people use mods, ACT, ReShade, and the like. It’s not like this suddenly came up within the last six months or so, and they aren’t as ignorant about it as you think.

Also, the developers were watching Ultimate streams. ACT was very vividly present on those said streams.

[KageTokage]

Also, the developers were watching Ultimate streams. ACT was very vividly present on those said streams.

I can't help but wonder if they watched any of the streams where people were hacking the camera so they could zoom out far enough to see the entire arena at all times and thus make the divebombs and other mechanics easier to avoid.

[Yeol]

I can't help but wonder if they watched any of the streams where people were hacking the camera so they could zoom out far enough to see the entire arena at all times and thus make the divebombs and other mechanics easier to avoid.

You don't need it if you play on Ultrawide monitor.

[KisaiTenshi]

I can't help but wonder if they watched any of the streams where people were hacking the camera so they could zoom out far enough to see the entire arena at all times and thus make the divebombs and other mechanics easier to avoid.

If you play in 4K, you can make your character less than 120 pixels tall in some cases. It's dependent on the arena/field size. on a 4K screen that's 5.5% height. This is actually problematic in early ARR dungeons where if you zoom all the way out, the actual backgrounds get in the way. But this is not a mod, this is the content that was produced before 4K was doable.

SE hasn’t focused on banning people that use third-party tools because it would hurt their bottom line. They are already well aware that people use mods, ACT, ReShade, and the like. It’s not like this suddenly came up within the last six months or so, and they aren’t as ignorant about it as you think.

Also, the developers were watching Ultimate streams. ACT was very vividly present on those said streams.

FFXIV suffers from broken windows theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

Under the impression that a broken window left unfixed leads to more serious problems, residents begin to change the way they see their community. In an attempt to stay safe, a cohesive community starts to fall apart, as individuals start to spend less time in communal space to avoid potential violent attacks by strangers. The slow deterioration of a community as a result of broken windows modifies the way people behave when it comes to their communal space, which, in turn, breaks down community control. As rowdy teenagers, panhandlers, addicts, and prostitutes slowly make their way into a community, it signifies that the community cannot assert informal social control, and citizens become afraid that worse things will happen. As a result, they spend less time in the streets to avoid these subjects and feel less and less connected from their community if the problems persist.

In the context of a game, the more egregious modders, ACT users, and botters chase out other paying players, and we've all see this activity, if not experienced first hand from the "parser" users who harass and kick people just so they can get a better score on fflogs, to this thread with the lewd mods, and players maxing sexual advances on players who they think are into erotic role play because their client-side mods show them naked.

ACT use is the easiest low-hanging fruit they can go after, because you've all been warned before about it by Yoshi-P. Yet people keep posting about how they use it on the official forums. SE could just turn on a silent "hook check" and track exactly what's been hooked into the memory space of the game client upon connection to the game world lobby, and one day everyone who tripped that flag get's warned, then banned if it continues. ACT actually works in exactly the same way bots do. So if they want to kill the bots, they have to kill ACT.

Texture mods are incredibly easy to detect by running checksums on the files, it takes 4 seconds per 2GB file. So it would add an entire minute to the launcher or a self-test on zone changes for someone with a SSD, or possibly several minutes for people on laptops with 5400RPM drives. But the way modders tend to get around checksum checks is by not running the official launcher, and instead running the game with outdated versions of game data, or re-patching the game data every time the game is launched. So that makes everyone suffer with additional loading time just because the modders wouldn't behave.

You guys using ACT don't even know what ACT does.
It can read/write to memory in the game client for:
Targets
Chat log
Monsters
Party members
Server time
ZoneID's
Player

So there is nothing stopping anyone from writing a bot using ACT, and it's likely bots exist that use it.

[KaivaC]

snip

There is just so much 'no' in this post. With the way the game engine is set up, you cannot write a bot through ACT. Good luck using a bot for that in V5S if someone were to try, what with its random elements. Good luck doing that in V7S, what with the OT having to drag Ultros to the opposite corner he spawned from (which changes based on the order in which it was summoned). There are too many variables in an actual Savage fight that its next to useless to try to writing a bot through ACT. ACT reads data and relays it to you. That's all it does. It does not work in the way that bots do.

[Sebazy]

You guys using ACT don't even know what ACT does.
It can read/write to memory in the game client for:
Targets
Chat log
Monsters
Party members
Server time
ZoneID's
Player

So there is nothing stopping anyone from writing a bot using ACT, and it's likely bots exist that use it.

I think you're reaching a little too far with this frankly.

There is nothing stopping anyone from writing a bot using keyboard macros, and it's likely bots exist that use it.

I could add pretty much any software that could be used to parse the logs FFXIV puts out to that list, even simply pixel peeping at the frame buffer could be used to write a bot (This is how I fished in XI).

Please keep in mind that ACT isn't the Windower framework from FFXI, don't confuse the two as they are very different in the functionality they offer and as such it'd be good if you could stop trying to paint it as something that it isn't.

[channell]

I'll just leave this here...

[Levarius]

I think you're reaching a little too far with this frankly.

There is nothing stopping anyone from writing a bot using keyboard macros, and it's likely bots exist that use it.

I could add pretty much any software that could be used to parse the logs FFXIV puts out to that list, even simply pixel peeping at the frame buffer could be used to write a bot (This is how I fished in XI).

Please keep in mind that ACT isn't the Windower framework from FFXI, don't confuse the two as they are very different in the functionality they offer and as such it'd be good if you could stop trying to paint it as something that it isn't.

While it would be hard to create a fully autonomous bot, you absolutely can use Triggernometry to send keypresses to FFXIV based on triggers. I'd imagine you actually could automate a fair bit with the plugin.

[Calladan]

ACT use is the easiest low-hanging fruit they can go after...

Days since Kisai took an unrelated thread and turned it into ACT bashing: 1 0