Can we take action against Bard Macro Player yet?

[Kyrj]

I've seen it all now. Bard Performance Elitists.

Mythic + Bard Performance group. Must have an io of 2000+

[Sighearth]

(...) There is no competition (...)

Yes precisely, and was never meant to be. So you want to compete for other ppl's credit by playing songs yourself, while ppl is not playing themselves in a video game? Performance is a tool in the game for fun, it gives no rewards, there is no progression of any kind associated with it. The way you want to have fun with it is your call. You own personal reward is to practice and know that you can play a song yourself. Like you said "we lose (...)" there is no losers or winners, you are taking the wrong perspective here.

[Gyson]

You want all tools banned , so that you can feel like you're a max achiever?

I didn't read through this whole thread, so maybe this has already been brought up, but I want to bring up a different perspective to consider.

Many players have things they're good at, talents they can bring into a game. Maybe, such as in this case, it's music. Maybe you're an excellent tank, or healer, or you know how put out outstanding DPS. Maybe you have excellent reflexes and excel at shooters, or a strong tactical sense that gives you an edge in strategy games. You get the idea, I hope.

Think of something you're good at in gaming, and ask yourself if you would be happy with other players using a third-party program to trivialize what you can do well naturally?

Would someone using an aim-bot in a shooter be able to successfully use the rationalization "I just want my character to be good at something I myself could never do.", as someone in this thread argued about music?

If, for example, players start using third-party programs/add-ons to enhance how well they can perform the healing role, players who are naturally talented at playing healers will find themselves in the position of either using said programs to keep up with all the add-on users, or looking far less competent by comparison. This is what happened in WoW.

Having played WoW for a long time before moving over to FFXIV, I'm glad Square takes a stance against third-party applications. I feel like add-ons ultimately contributed to making WoW worse and its developers lazier. I'm not keen on seeing something similar happening here where we all start rationalizing the use of third-party tools over time.

[Assirra]

This is why there needs to be a hard line stance on third party addons. Either they are allowed, or they are not. Whether it's this, or ACT, etc.

There technically is 1.
"use them freely but don't be a dick about it"
Sure they cannot actually say (not due the current ones but not open the gates for other things) that but when Yoshida compared ACT with playing with a calculator it was pretty obvious what his point was.

[Ranaku]

There technically is 1.
"use them freely but don't be a dick about it"
Sure they cannot actually say (not due the current ones but not open the gates for other things) that but when Yoshida compared ACT with playing with a calculator it was pretty obvious what his point was.

Yeah no not at all. It's not really about being a "d" but it's part of it ofc. Don't talk about it. That is the rule. Even if someone knows you have act and asks you to post the numbers and someone reports you you get banned. That's how it is, don't talk about it. Don't post numbers ingame. Just shut your mouth about it, if you need to use it, in any way possible.

SEs stance on it is, and will probably always be, it's not allowed and we will ban you ,if ANYONE reports you for it, but we can't find out on our own since we don't spy on our customers.

What you are doing there is giving people false security, since they definitely will get banned (maybe) even if they aren't a "d" about it IF someone reports them and they delivered evidence by basically admitting that they use third party tools. And yes EVEN IF THEY ARE USING THE NUMBERS IN A POSITIVE WAY! EVEN IF ANOTHER PLAYER JUST ASKED TO GET HIS NUMBERS POSTED!

[Dreamsoap]

Are you the person who got mad at another bard when I went to go listen to them instead? If so it was because I just liked the other kind of song more, and it got really weird after that.

While I'm not a musician, I'm an artist who's got two decades of practice behind them. There's people nowadays using AI filters and tracing photos, hell the FFXIV subreddit is absolutely rife with people tracing screenshots and passing it off as though they made it. But only trained eyes will see it for what it is.
It's never worth pointing out because you know the inevitable reactions. There's a lesson you have to learn in these crafts which is "live and let live". You will become so totally consumed by an anger over these perceived injustices but you have to understand the perspective of the audience.
They have no reason to care, and will never really care. Let people enjoy the fake stuff, it doesn't take away from the wealth of knowledge you built your own empire on. If I want to indulge my ego in this situation, I feel like a fatcat sitting upon a throne of experience looking down at the peasants
who will one day be asked to perform live and have to rush to find the excuses.

But by large, the midi performers aren't pretending to be musicians, they're having fun engaging the community and bringing people together. That's so much more harmless than the situation I talked about above. Most people know it's a third party program. It doesn't mean they're going to enjoy it any less. you know
there's even a popular duo on Balmung. One has an orchestra of alts and the other plays manually. They always give a good show with their "bard-offs".

[villadelfia]

I will eat my hat if SE ever seriously cracks down on 3rd party tools. They can not afford the loss of players that would cause.

There are so many tools that many people use: ACT (+plugins that come awfully close to playing the game for you), alternate launchers with plugins that automate many things, bard players, gshade, ... And going back to the past there were tools like guildworks and xivhunt among others.

I've never used any of these of course but simply looking at the discords for these tools should be enough to show you that there are at least tens of thousands of users of these tools, and that's not counting the ones that aren't on the discord servers.

Let's also not forget the many streamers that use ACT visible on stream. SE would be out of their minds to crack down on it because streamers are advertisement, and a game without a draw is a game that doesn't make money.

They'll never proactively crack down on it. Worst they'll ever do is wag their finger and go 'tut tut, don't do it' to pacify the toxic casuals.

[Juun]

When I read mp3 player I thought this was a really old thread.

[Caitlyn]

Bard Perform or ACT are almost harmless. The only thing that REALLY hurts the game are bots and RMT! You should care about those more.

[Vahlnir]

I will eat my hat if SE ever seriously cracks down on 3rd party tools. They can not afford the loss of players that would cause.

But you're a Viera. How can you eat a hat you don't have?