On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[KisaiTenshi]

They're talking about Cactbot, which is a different tool than ACT. They aren't going to touch parsers because they know the backlash it would have.

That is still ACT, and still using the ACT FFXIV Network module. I told you why this is a cheat tool, before, so I won't bring it up again.

The game sends the packets unencrypted is the only reason any of these tools work at all. Any counter-measures employed would break all the parsers. Now they could compress+encrypt the packets that spawn a monster, but that packet is still being sent, and if you know the mechanics of the fight, you wouldn't need to decrypt it, just know that "something is about to happen".

I don't seriously expect the dev team to change this because it would result in lag for everyone. The proper counter-measures would require randomizing the packet id's for every instance change, and that just adds a hurdle for the parser developer, not a wall. Applying and cycling an encryption key for every instance would be a higher hurdle, but not a wall, since the same network parsers can read the game client memory so digging a key out of the memory would not be an obstacle. That comes back to "you can't trust the client"

Obviously that means they need to consider that players are cheating by using parsers and thus they should not design a boss fight by pre-spawning anything.

Or you know, they could just ban players who use these tools in the first place.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Or you know, they could just ban players who use these tools in the first place.

And in doing so destroy their entire raid scene.

Regardless, ACT and Cactbot are not the same program nor do they utilize the same data. Hence why most overlay add ons aren't comparable with Cactbot. The game sending packets doesn't mean both programs follow a similar module. All that aside, the devs themselves have not only acknowledged the futility in blocking ACT, they have outright admitted it's valuable for raiders all while watching the World First racers who have it prominently displayed on their twitch and/or youtube clips. 5150 was mentioned by name from the dev team. They had ACT running.

No matter how much you argue, parsers are not cheating. Cactbot, on the other hand, does step on a very fine line. Which is what actually prompted Yoshida to comment. They may attempt to break the latter, but they aren't going to touch ACT. Why? Because it and FFlogs are they only reason Savage stays alive months after its relevancy has long faded. Without numbers, you have no speed kills or players having means of calculating their improvement. Therefore, they have little reason to bother with the tier save to obtain gear for Ultimate. And that assumes they don't simply play another game.

[Calladan]

That is still ACT...

Thank you for never letting me down!

Days since Kisai hijacked a thread to complain about parsers: 0.

[KisaiTenshi]

Thank you for never letting me down!

Days since Kisai hijacked a thread to complain about parsers: 0.

You'll note that I don't mention these things until someone brings up something they could only have known by using a parser. Bourne named the parser plugin first, and in this case it was Yoshi-P who brought it up at all. It is still my view that the parsers suck the fun out of the game, and this thread is a perfect example of why.

You want hard content? Then why are you using a cheat tool to win it? That should not count as a clear, and when these same people complain about there not being another "Ultimate" for the 4.x patch cycle, perhaps they should ask themselves why should the developers bother to spend months developing a fight only for a couple of people to spoil it for everyone two days after it's released. Wouldn't it suck for Yoshi-P to go "Well due to the amount of users who cheat using parsers, we're no longer going to invest any resources in high end fights. Enjoy your casual theme park." That would be the ultimate punishment for using parsers, is for everyone to be punished because of a few people who can't even be polite and pretend that parsers don't exist.

The developers will never be able to make the "hard content" you guys want if you keep using the cheat tools to solve it. Yoshi-P's only real solution to this is to make DPS numbers meaningless, randomizing and fake-out mechanics, or even recognizing players who are cheating and give them loaded dice so that they can not use their cheat tools to win it. In a sense, you're asking for Yoshi-P to make a fight that can not be cheated by any means, and that is probably something that will never exist.

*business hat on*

If I was SE's legal department, I'd ask why Yoshi-P has not banned people who blatantly using parsers, and the response would be "that costs money". Ok, so what about streamers who blatantly use parsers? I'm sure they are reported by the vengeful trolls all the time. "that costs money too". There is a specific level of abuse that has to be crossed where "that costs money to do" becomes a better option to "we're losing subs because nobody wants to play with cheaters"

Does FFXIV deserve a reputation of being full of cheaters? No. But people who keep mentioning parsers, ACT, fflogs, etc on the official forums without being being warned or having those posts ninja-edited gives the impression that SE does not care about the integrity of the game. I'm actually surprised Square-Enix hasn't put any pressure on the Reddit for the same.

[Rockette]

I'm sure I'll get a headdesk worthy response to this but I'm genuinely curious of the train of thought. How is knowing your own dps numbers cheating?

[Calladan]

I'm sure I'll get a headdesk worthy response to this but I'm genuinely curious of the train of thought. How is knowing your own dps numbers cheating?

Doing anything other than what Kisai says to do deserves to be banned. Use parsers? ban. Try to get better? ban. Raid difficult content? ban. disagree on the forums? ban. Use a DPS spell as a healer? BAN TWICE.

I fully expect to be banned for explaining this to you, so, nice to meet you!

[Rockette]

Doing anything other than what Kisai says to do deserves to be banned. Use parsers? ban. Try to get better? ban. Raid difficult content? ban. disagree on the forums? ban. Use a DPS spell as a healer? BAN TWICE.

I fully expect to be banned for explaining this to you, so, nice to meet you!

Oh the no-dps healer type that doesn't raid but has correct opinions about raiders. Ok. Gotcha. They're like the anti-vaxxers of Eorzea.

I went and looked up Cactbot after reading this thread and talked to some friends about it. Apparently these sorts of plugins are pretty widely used on WoW (this is my first mmo so I don't know these things).

To be honest, its not the sort of thing I'd like to play with, I think it would take a lot of fun out of the game. It's a personal no from me but if it keeps people bombing PF primal farm parties because they can't mechanics then its whatever. It doesn't bother me what others choose to do.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm sure I'll get a headdesk worthy response to this but I'm genuinely curious of the train of thought. How is knowing your own dps numbers cheating?

Do you look up a walkthrough to a game without even playing it?

Here's almost everything you can do with the parser right now:
1. See every player and NPC/Monster in the zone, their hp, mp, tp, x/y/z location name and FC, immediately.
2. See every buff, debuff, time remaining of that buff/debuff and who casted it
3. See every mining node, before it appears
4. See the hate values for every monster
5. See the equipped gear of every player in the zone

The overlay is what actually puts that on the players screen. Which information you want to know and which information you ignore is what makes the difference between cheating and just logging progress.

Having any information on the screen that is not already presented by the game client is cheating. Knowing that a monster has a million hitpoints vs knowing it has 65% remaining HP isn't terribly different, but because that is a real value sent by the game server to the client, calculating real time DPS is possible, but also highly inaccurate. The reason is that DoT's, HoT's and Pets values are simply not attributed to the player, and buffs and debuffs are clipped over a certain number so the server doesn't report all the buffs. Hence the parser guesses what damage is being done based on the length of time the DoT would last from initial cast. Consider the logic gymnastics that has to be written to take into account a pet, a DoT, an AST Buff that is then subsequently overwritten by another AST's buff, and the crit value. The parser doesn't know any of this because that's not what the game client tracks. The game client doesn't care that a boss has 96 debuffs on it, it only cares what the last 30 are because it only displays that many.

Those "DPS meters" only reflect the DPS you can do in raw damage. If you play a class that deals in DoT's, what you're seeing is guesswork. SMN/SCH/ACN's pets, MCH's turrets, and AST's Earthly Star all involve additional NPC's to track, and hence it's entirely possible for these things to "miss", while the calculation is based on delivering damage.

Relying on the DPS meter to tell you numbers is just deceving yourself, and hence people using parsers to harass other people because they don't do the kind of damage they expect is entirely missing the point that the parser doesn't tell you 100% exactly what damage you're doing at all. Clipping DoT's ensures the parser won't track it properly. You can read the release notes or poke the source code for how that plugin works and see that is all true.

And as I've stated before, the problem is not the people using these things privately. The problem is the script kiddies who get these tools because their FC, or linkshell or some bozo they friended told them about it, and haven't the first clue about how these things work and why it's a bad idea to take them at face value. Anyone tell you "git good" because of fflogs is someone who hasn't the first clue how these thing work. To them, if you don't have anything on fflogs, clearly you must be a bad player. I'd say the opposite is true. If you have anything on fflogs that is publicly visible, go hide it and don't hand out that information to anyone. If a condition of joining a static or a FC is using a parser, and having parses on fflogs, then that is not people you should be dealing with, because it doesn't stop with parsers for a DPS meter.

Hence 'cactbot' is basically radar and fight reduction to "press x to win", you don't need to think, you just need to react.

See the lack of action by SE on parser users usually leads to the lack of action on people are actively botting, because they don't see SE doing anything about it, so they keep testing SE to see what gets them banned. Which appears to be nothing.

I report somewhere between 30 and 90 bot players a day on my server alone. All I have to do is sit there in front of any of the GC areas and punch search to get a list of bot names. These things should not be making it to level 50, yet they do, and they persist for days.

Yet somehow in that time, the GM found time to send a mentor player to the jail for saying some bad words. Meanwhile, bots all still there.

SE's priorities are really backwards. Instead of trying to protect the integrity of the game, they instead appear to be cherry-picking things that have minimal consequence to the game over those that are actively eroding player confidence.

If only players using cheat tools play hard content, then what is the point of developing any hard content at all? Just make everything a choreographed fight like Bardams Mettle. These players can not demand more hard content when they haven't even earned the clear on the content they have yet.

Finally, while the official stance of S.E. regarding third party tools says that it's not allowed, unofficially they really don't care as long as you don't harass people. Proof is that Yoshida watch streams of people using parsers and doesn't even seems to pay attention to it.

That's not endorsement. Going "Yoshi-P didn't immediately ban the world first clears who were using (whatever tool)" as endorsement of parsing is the same as going "well cops don't go after every speeder".

You don't go fishing to catch all the fish in the pond.

[Rogatum]

On mobile

May I ask why you seem to dislike parsing as much as you do? To dislike a tool seems odd to me since it seems you more so dislike players that abuse the tool, thus your disdain for such tools seems to be misplaced. I think we can all agree people that use any tool in a way it was not intended are scum, but why punish everyone for those that are not mature enough properly use something.

[Ceasaria]

"Cheat tools"

Do you include : Guide, stream, recording video, etc, too ?
In a way, it's a form of cheating by knowing the fight in advance and appropriating the work/effort of others, right ?
If not, then it would be very odd (from you).