Is it against TOS to use this tool?

[Goji1639]

All third party tools are against the ToS.

As far as I'm aware damage parsers are the only third party tool where SE acknowledged their use and stated they won't actively hunt down people who use them. They will, however, punish you if they become aware you're using one; so if you are then keep it to yourself.

That's what's official. Unofficially there's really not anything SE can do about you using third party programs that don't provide visible evidence. Bots, for instance, are noticeable, but I'm guessing a zoom tool wouldn't be. If you're just quiet about it you'll probably be fine.

[Packetdancer]

As far as I'm aware damage parsers are the only third party tool where SE acknowledged their use and stated they won't actively hunt down people who use them.

They've also acknowledged ReShade/GShade/etc. as being used before. And they've said that while they prefer to be able to pretend not to see it, they also don't particularly care to enforce that one; it's still technically against TOS—as is any external tool—but gives no real advantage as opposed to just making the game pretty. The one thing they've openly asked is that if you're using ReShade-like post processing or shader injection to please not stick the Square-Enix copyright notice watermark on the bottom like normal in-game screenshots have, as they'd prefer shader-injected/post-processed stuff not be mistaken for the stock game.

I mean, that one's a weird case to start with, though; Nvidia now has a version of ReShade (literally ReShade, not just "something like ReShade") embedded in their GeForce drivers now anyway as "Freestyle", and last I checked Square-Enix let FFXIV be added to the supported games list for Freestyle on the Nvidia website. So it's clear their objections there are minor at most; even if the ReShade family of tools were actively cracked down on for some reason, anyone using a ReShade derivative could just copy their ReShade stuff over into Nvidia's version which SE has evidently officially sanctioned.