Can SQ-EN draw a line in the sand w/ 3rd Parties?

[TheRealQuah]

I see. I personally think that using a program (especially for progression) takes away so much from the experience, and while to each their own, I really hope this doesn't become the norm in FF14 raiding.

Don't use them myself, and I don't know anyone who does, but it literally doesn't matter at all. If people want to make it easier for themselves then they can, it does not affect you or anyone else whatsoever.

Other people clearing with addons does not take away from your achievement whatsoever, and I'd hazard that anyone who is complaining about people who clear with addons, are the people who aren't actually good enough to clear the content themselves at all and are salty that other people can.

I will add to this:

• Your raid leader can make mistakes.
• Your raid leader cannot give your entire party individual callouts per your role in the mechanic.
• Your raid leader cannot give you callouts faster than the mechanic's in-game visual cues or with zero delay.

Stop rationalizing it and own it. You're using it to make the game easier.

Take it you've never seen Rin shot call or seen any of the recent Ultimate clears that Limit Max has done. Those guys straight up do give individual callouts to every member, for 15 minutes straight with no mistakes. Or what about the many parties who have a 9th man, that specifically does nothing but do the above things?

[TheRealQuah]

That is the most blatant lie I have ever read on this forum, and I've seen a lot. Are you seriously going to tell me that world first groups will not hire someone to code that specific timeline? Really? I guarantee you this will happen on the new Ultimate for world first prog.

Cactbot does a lot, and I do mean a lot of things that are good. But it's also a blatant third party cheat because the developers made the game so dysfunctional for people with medium to high latency. Zero animation lock for perfect triple weave (which you can never ever do normally), being able to tell exactly where melee range is on the screen always via a hud display, the ability to know exactly what to do years ahead of when the mechanic comes out. It's DBD if the developers of it were allowed to completely break the flow of the game itself. If you want an extreme example, you could double weave during Hypercharge with that program.

Don't be an apologist.

You're talking about XIVAlexander, which is straight up a cheat tool, telling the server you have negative ping. If anyone does do what you stated above and double weave in hypercharge, then the server would pick up on it and they would get banned.

Cactbot is never used for world first, reason being you don't need to, because the fight will be cleared much quicker than someone can code a timeline.

Do you know you have to fully know how the mechanic works before being able to write a cactbot callout for it, and if you fully know how it works, why do you need the call out? Not just that, but every world first uses scuffed strats, and they straight up don't even know how some mechanics work until days after.

[Enjuden]

I think you are mixing in XIVAlexander (and maybe a few other plugins) there with cactbot. Cactbot is just the timers and the callouts. A world first party would have to create all the callout triggers themselves, that's literally them learning the fight. There is no homework they can copy from.

Probably. Looking back on history it's XIVAlexander and its associated plugins. I've come from WoW and did DBD and all of that, so it was a relief to not deal with it during raid for the most part.

Also not exactly true either. The main argument against it is that you're removing human error once you allow scripts to call out the fights for you. That doesn't mean a player cannot fail the mechanic. But it's how far ahead the mechanic is called out that is the argument here. A rather big example is knowing exactly where Ifrit would land for UwU for his phase. Would it be a mechanic if you knew exactly where he would be before he even landed?

Edit: Also well aware of these things, as well as the speed some are able to code on such, Quah. Why do you need the callout? Dunno, tell me where Ultima Weapon, Garuda, and Ifrit will land before they are even on the screen in UWU and tell me it isn't a significant advantage.

Is it needed? No. Is it an advantage some will have over others, and will this push groups faster? Probably.

[Saraide]

Probably. Looking back on history it's XIVAlexander and its associated plugins. I've come from WoW and did DBD and all of that, so it was a relief to not deal with it during raid for the most part.

Also not exactly true either. The main argument against it is that you're removing human error once you allow scripts to call out the fights for you. That doesn't mean a player cannot fail the mechanic. But it's how far ahead the mechanic is called out that is the argument here. A rather big example is knowing exactly where Ifrit would land for UwU for his phase. Would it be a mechanic if you knew exactly where he would be before he even landed?

Edit: Also well aware of these things, as well as the speed some are able to code on such, Quah. Why do you need the callout? Dunno, tell me where Ultima Weapon, Garuda, and Ifrit will land before they are even on the screen in UWU and tell me it isn't a significant advantage.

They would have to find all about how a mechanic works out first which is a major time loss as that could be time spent on progging the next mechanic. World first strats are usually extremely scuffed so whatever works first they stick with. We also know that cactbot is not and never will be required for clearing anything so bothering with it in a world first race is just not worth it. By the time you have the knowledge to create a timeline you dont need it anymore.

[LittleImp]

Take it you've never seen Rin shot call or seen any of the recent Ultimate clears that Limit Max has done. Those guys straight up do give individual callouts to every member, for 15 minutes straight with no mistakes. Or what about the many parties who have a 9th man, that specifically does nothing but do the above things?

I must have missed the part where Rin shadow-cloned himself 7 times and individually simultaneously explained everyone's mechanics with a ~1ms delay from the point his client received the packet.

Cactbot will never be comparable to traditional shot-calling, no matter how far people stretch their logic. It's a piece of third party software which fundamentally automates an important element of a fights execution. Even if you had a perfect shotcaller, that person is still a human element of the team who is having to execute on a skill they've practiced.

I'd hazard that anyone who is complaining about people who clear with addons, are the people who aren't actually good enough to clear the content themselves at all and are salty that other people can.

There are plenty of folks in the high-end community that look down on Cactbot. It's just not a hill many of them are willing to openly die on, because as many have said it doesn't matter that much and it's usage has become increasingly widespread.

[Saraide]

Jesus. I forgot XIVAlexander existed. That's yet another thing that needs to be axed. From my understanding, people tend to use that if they have very bad lag issues, but then you get folks who use it that don't have that issue to get an advantage. This thread isn't just about Cactpot (even though that's what I was primarily mentioning in my OP), but anything that is crossing the line. This definitely fits that description.

XIVAlexander does far more good than it does harm. At most XIVAlexander can disrupt the top ranks on fflogs if used by someone very competent and even then you are very much held back by the resource generation and the cooldowns your job has. Wow what a nightmare.
Meanwhile it allows people to play with friends from other regions without having to restrict themselves to the lag friendly jobs.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Jesus. I forgot XIVAlexander existed. That's yet another thing that needs to be axed. From my understanding, people tend to use that if they have very bad lag issues, but then you get folks who use it that don't have that issue to get an advantage. This thread isn't just about Cactpot (even though that's what I was primarily mentioning in my OP), but anything that is crossing the line. This definitely fits that description.

Is it an actual advantage when you could just move to Sacramento and get the exact same advantage without the program? :thinking:

XIVAlexander shouldn't even need to exist as a 3rd party program tbh. The program's functionality, by nature of it existing showing that its possible and thus instantly disqualifying any attempt from the devs saying its not doable, should be baseline in the actual game.

[Nexxus]

That is how WoW work, and it doesn't make the game any much easier. The difficulty is based on the use of it tho, it is less of a choregraphy, more on instant reflex !

The game is full of items that required your attention that you have to choose sometime where to look (and it is even more difficult, for us with attention disorder >.>, i've used to take medicine for headache while doing hardcore content u_u').

[RobynDaBank]

Dunno about addons/mods, how does XIVAlexander help with latency?

[EryxGG]

I genuinely don't care about cactbot or addons in general because they don't affect my experience with the game if I don't choose to use them. It's really that simple in my mind. I'm not a gate-keeper, I'm not gonna tell people how they should play the game and why, that's Square's job. I will say I absolutely would care about something like cactbot IF FFXIV did things the way WoW does, where they open up a new raid tier on the PTR(beta realm, essentially) first, giving people a chance to see fights ahead of time and even down them. Sure, fights may be tuned further between PTR and official release, but it would still give people an early advantage and the ability to script cactbot for new fights and they'd have that advantage going into a world first race. That would be where I draw the line. As it stands now, this isn't possible. Content gets released for everyone at the same time, and it's the most even playing field you can get during those first days/week.

World first raiders don't need Cactbot. None of the content in this game requires Cactbot in the slightest, and thus I highly doubt any of the world first competing static groups would be taking the time between wipes to code/script cactbot to do callouts for them lol. I know people who've used it, and I've watched those same people screw up mechanics because they followed what cactbot told them explicitly, only the PF group was doing a different strat in terms of positioning, so they went to the wrong spot and got people killed, etc. I think calling it a cheat is a bit of a stretch considering thousands of players kill content without it on a daily basis, and the people killing the content first are 99.9% doing it without it. The high-end raiders and skillful players aren't the ones who will end up getting hurt the most by a cactbot "ban wave", it'll absolutely be more casual players/raiders who think they can't do content without it and thus choose to use it. I'd much rather Square find a way to "break" Cactbot on their end rather than go around banning people for it or start scanning people's pcs for 3rd party tools, that's for sure.

If people choose to use it and keep it to themselves, it doesn't affect me or my experience at all. That's pretty much why I draw the line where I do.