On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[Dezwaan]

Snip

I'll disagree with this. Cactbot is just a fancy ui over basic ACT and I don't see how it's cheating aside from things like goals or A11S where ACT could call out the Patten before the animation.

Right now people frequently use discord for VoiP. Someone usually has a timeline to call out mechanics from a second monitor or memory. These tools replace the burden on who calls things out. Cactbot is just timelines and triggers. I see it very similar to voice comms.

However I dislike ACT in general like yoshi. It's a great tool to get better but many in NA focus on there numbers and play less safe/consistent which you see hindering progression especially in ultimate. However it has helps so many people to get better.

Solution? Personal in game ratings after a duty. Not a DPS meter but a ranking based on DPS, mechanics, mitigation that gives you a SS, S, A, B, C, etc. ranking like classical FF games. It'd curb a lot of the need for ACT and help players grow.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'll disagree with this. Cactbot is just a fancy ui over basic ACT and I don't see how it's cheating aside from things like goals or A11S where ACT could call out the Patten before the animation.

Right now people frequently use discord for VoiP. Someone usually has a timeline to call out mechanics from a second monitor or memory. These tools replace the burden on who calls things out. Cactbot is just timelines and triggers. I see it very similar to voice comms.

However I dislike ACT in general like yoshi. It's a great tool to get better but many in NA focus on there numbers and play less safe/consistent which you see hindering progression especially in ultimate. However it has helps so many people to get better.

Solution? Personal in game ratings after a duty. Not a DPS meter but a ranking based on DPS, mechanics, mitigation that gives you a SS, S, A, B, C, etc. ranking like classical FF games. It'd curb a lot of the need for ACT and help players grow.

Oh, I don't believe Cactbot cheating. You could argue it being a grey area though given its far more robust than simply trigger call outs. Personally, I couldn't give a damn what people use, provided it isn't something like Ungarmax, of course.

As for ACT itself. I disagree with your proposal since it only relays vague information. A letter grade lacks any details such as cooldown management, overheal and etc. Not to mention, it does nothing to help progression. If you're hitting enrage or simply struggling to push a mechanic, well, you have no way of knowing that Black Mage is contributing 3,300 DPS when they should be well over 6k. As for Ultimate. People treat it very differently. You see far less min/maxing and greed because it punishes you severely.

[KisaiTenshi]

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.

I'll disagree with this. Cactbot is just a fancy ui over basic ACT and I don't see how it's cheating aside from things like goals or A11S where ACT could call out the Patten before the animation.

You're both wrong, and you'd know this if you actually looked at the source code. For everyone else, this is exactly how these tools work:

The FFXIV plugin for ACT is what loads data into ACT by both looking at the game client memory and the network, and in doing so creates the parser logs for fflogs that are otherwise independent of ACT.

There are several overlays for ACT that actually overlay data into the game, they do this by invoking a web browser engine (Chromium) and this is why the overlays slow things down.

The mentioned overlay cactbot, actually comes with timing scripts for every fight in the game, it works the same way as the triggers do. When some packet is fired off that indicates a mechanic that comes up, that's when it gives visual/audio cues.

You can see how these work in the source code of those plugins.

Hence Yoshi-P's comment about this. It would affect the base plugin that allows all of this to work in the first place. They're also painted into a corner about what to do about it, as these plugins are usually updated a day after a patch release once they've sniffed out all the battle mechanics and packet id number changes. Anything that would "solve" this problem would be defeated the same way. Likewise anything that actually would solve this, would solve the bots.

Expect more cactbot-like tools to keep popping up until SE finally starts banning people who use them. If that kills the raider scene, then maybe a raider scene that relies entirely on cheat tools shouldn't exist.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Expect more cactbot-like tools to keep popping up until SE finally starts banning people who use them. If that kills the raider scene, then maybe a raider scene that relies entirely on cheat tools shouldn't exist.

Perhaps, I am. Admittedly, I do not know the inner details. Regardless, SE has not banned people for almost four years and proudly endorsed World First teams who have ACT visible on their screens. They aren't going to suddenly do a 180 because of Cactbot.