Increasing number of players using 3rd party tools

[Elissar]

Absolutely disgusting. It's mods like this that will destroy the game.

I can see a time where you won't be allowed into any end game group unless you are using a UI addon that shows your ping. And don't get me started on a mod that inserts a comma into damage values. That is peak cheating and completely ruins everything the game is about.

You are trolling, ROFL
Loved your style.

[Jadedsins]

My husband uses acts because he enjoys testing himself and trying to get better and better. I don't, so I could careless.

If addons was allowed. The game would have to be balanced around them. In wow that is what happen. Boss design got balanced around addons.


Addons are fine, but if you complain about the game is too easy, and use them to help. Than your input on how hard the game is in invalid. (not saying acts does that.). As long as you don't harass people when you use them or talk about it in the game. You are free to use whatever you want. After all, my husband said it best. Rules only are rules if they are enforced. And they can't enforced it. They do heavily enforce harassment and talking about it is a no no.

[TheRealQuah]

You are trolling, ROFL
Loved your style.

Yep, I'm just trying to point out how ridiculous some of these people sound. Like the comment I've quoted below.
At what point is the community going to require you changing the colour of magic damage text to blue a pre-requisite to you entering a raid.
It's just fearmongering, and I think most of it comes from a place of envy at not being able to complete hard content and wanting to take down those who do.

Toxic casuals are and have been the biggest problem this game has. Far, far worse than any client-side addons that people like to use.

I like Yoshi P's statement on it. What is a third-party addon and where does it end? Is Excel an addon? A calculator? Discord? When he says they don't know what's on your computer and will never know, he is legitimising client side addons. That was him saying they were okay. The only thing I've seen them upset about is using mods to make lewd images of children in game (Ryne mostly).

I'd say it's a legitimate cause for concern.

SE doesn't support add ons and they're not actually legal to use, but that won't stop the community at large from requiring them if they become a common crutch for high tier content.

[Jadedsins]

Yep, I'm just trying to point out how ridiculous some of these people sound. Like the comment I've quoted below.
At what point is the community going to require you changing the colour of magic damage text to blue a pre-requisite to you entering a raid.
It's just fearmongering, and I think most of it comes from a place of envy at not being able to complete hard content and wanting to take down those who do.

Toxic casuals are and have been the biggest problem this game has. Far, far worse than any client-side addons that people like to use.

I like Yoshi P's statement on it. What is a third-party addon and where does it end? Is Excel an addon? A calculator? Discord? When he says they don't know what's on your computer and will never know, he is legitimising client side addons. That was him saying they were okay. The only thing I've seen them upset about is using mods to make lewd images of children in game (Ryne mostly).

Kinda weird since it is not real, so don't care people do that, whatever floats people boats. I guess the makers have passion and part of the chars are real to them in making the story. So it bothers them more...hey if they keep making good content with that mindset. I don't mind it.

I'm as casual as they come, and I think most casual people really don't care what raiders do or addons they use. The ones that say it is cheating or dislike it seems like a lot more because they are very loud or could be jealous console players who knows.. The only time we would have a problem, if they balance the content that we do around said addons, and they won't do it.


So if what you do and how you play will not hurt my content, or changes in the game, and I am WELL protected from being harass by players using it. I don't understand why people care, I feel like this is just a dumb sort of gatekeeping. If someone wants to use that combo addon that makes them hit the same button for a combo. Or chat bubbles. Why does that bother some people? It is weird.

[Goji1639]

Yep, I'm just trying to point out how ridiculous some of these people sound. Like the comment I've quoted below.
At what point is the community going to require you changing the colour of magic damage text to blue a pre-requisite to you entering a raid.
It's just fearmongering, and I think most of it comes from a place of envy at not being able to complete hard content and wanting to take down those who do.

Toxic casuals are and have been the biggest problem this game has. Far, far worse than any client-side addons that people like to use.

I like Yoshi P's statement on it. What is a third-party addon and where does it end? Is Excel an addon? A calculator? Discord? When he says they don't know what's on your computer and will never know, he is legitimising client side addons. That was him saying they were okay. The only thing I've seen them upset about is using mods to make lewd images of children in game (Ryne mostly).

Add ons aren't limited to cosmetics. World of Warcraft has a alot of add ons that read incoming packets and create logistic signals to basically walk you through every mechanic in the game, sometimes making you aware of mechanics before there's even any visual indication. Reading through some of this thread it sounds like ACT has plugins with similar functions. WoWs dedicated modding community could probably expand on that considerably.

I don't even really care since I don't plan to do progression in this game; and if I did I wouldn't mind using add ons anyways (I used them all the time in WoW). I'm just stating the obvious; Mods can be crazy performance enhancers and if they become pervasive enough then they'll be required for serious progression in most cases.

[ForteNightshade]

people will use these helpful tools to abuse others and shame them or just be miserable.

And they would swiftly banned for doing so. In theory at least. This is often what gets overlooked in why WoW had so many problems with add ons, DPS meters and so forth. They literally did nothing to punish players who berated and harassed others. The tools themselves aren't going to cause toxicity to suddenly run rampant despite what many think. It's the minority of jerks being allowed to do as they please that would.

[Jadedsins]

And they would swiftly banned for doing so. In theory at least. This is often what gets overlooked in why WoW had so many problems with add ons, DPS meters and so forth. They literally did nothing to punish players who berated and harassed others. The tools themselves aren't going to cause toxicity to suddenly run rampant despite what many think. It's the minority of jerks being allowed to do as they please that would.

But it can shape the balance of the game. That is why I say no to having them allowed and accepted.

[Packetdancer]

They've made it pretty clear that the TOS is broadly written because it makes it easier to enforce correctly.

To clarify: if you wrote a TOS that was very specific and said, for instance, "parsing tools are permitted to aid in improving job performance, but using them to be abusive will be disallowed and may lead to a ban", you would have people examining all the terminology with a metaphorical scanning electron microscope looking for loopholes, because this is the internet and someone's always going to do that -- someone's going to try to find a way to obey the letter of the law while violating the spirit of it.

And then you have people who are like, "I wasn't being abusive, I just was providing constructive criticism! Very emphatically! Like Gordon Ramsay!" or whatever, trying to argue they shouldn't be banned.

Whereas if you just say "the use of third-party programs is disallowed save where explicitly indicated, and may lead to a ban" that gives them a lot more freedom in dealing with infractions.

If someone uses ACT for personal improvement (or within their static, sharing numbers with folks on console who can't otherwise measure their own performance), the devs are likely not going to care. Even if it's on a static's stream, they're probably not going to care, as long as the numbers are just being used by that static for personal improvement.

Start calling someone out in a dungeon ("You know, the healer should just leave you on the floor. Your DPS is so bad that them just casting Glare is a better use of the MP!") and hey, look, you were clearly parsing... that's a TOS violation, so long, don't let the door hit you on the way out, goodbye.

THAT SAID, there actually are a handful of third-party tools they've said are not considered problematic in any way and which are thus actually openly okay with them: notably, ReShade and its variants, used to do depth-buffer-aware post-processing via pixel shader injection. (I.e., change the colors to be more colorblind friendly, improve shadows/lighting, turn the game into a pencil sketch or an oil painting for artistic screenshot purposes, etc.) I don't feel like looking through this forum for the thread here in the last five minutes of my lunch break, because the forum search engine is kind of awful, but there is a thread somewhere here where they do explain that.

Additionally, Nvidia Freestyle (Nvidia's variant of ReShade) lists FFXIV in the officially supported games, with Square-Enix's permission and approval; you can find that one if you hit up the Nvidia website.

(The one request they did make in those threads that I recall is that if you take screenshots using shader injection, you don't manually add in the "Copyright Square-Enix" tagline on the bottom, because they don't want shader-modified images being mistaken for stock game images.)

[Caurcas]

Add-ons stole my wife, and ruined my mother! They are a menace that must be stopped!

[Rinhi]

Threads like this remind ne that the XIV community dislikes the *potential* of aggression so much that they go full horseshoe and enshrine passive-aggression as some sort of moral imperative. They don't call you out for bad damage numbers on JP servers, nor do they often try to turn a bad pull into a teaching moment. They add you to the passive-aggressive 2ch blacklist and silently kick you going forward.

FF14 has a really pleasant community...on the surface. The "you don't pay my sub!" crowd is evidence that it's not exactly better. They're just cattier about conflict. The mere fact that the community actively hides from basic information like damage output and pretends that even knowing it is "cheating" speaks for itself.

preach it, sister