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

[Eien713]

Well you said callouts are done via a programm, not a person, but that's not entirely correct. Admittably a bit of a cheeky remark but someone (a person) has to set up those triggers for the callouts. Dont get hung up on that.

I'm not getting hung up on it. I just prefer it when people discuss the points actually raised. Even for bots, they don't create themselves. People create them (as far as I know). But that's not the point. Nothing comes into existence out of thin air.

[LittleImp]

Who do you think sets cactbot triggers? Some deep learning AI?

Depending on the mechanic, specific memory signatures used to create triggers and other plugins are frequently identified using Cheat Engine. In fact, there's actually an entire section in the Cactbot official documentation on how to setup and use Cheat Engine.


edit: That is to say, the people making some of these triggers are actually violating the EULA on an even deeper level because they're using a program that can write to the games memory and send false data to the servers, as opposed to a read only parser like ACT.

[Nothv13]

As much as I like Yoshi P for saving this game and his continued work, his argument that discord, calculators, what have you, was a totally asinine. Tools that we're discussing here are essentially cheating, they inject code or sniff out data that isn't available to you. I think he needs to rethink his argument.

Is it impossible to have nuance with this? Or does it absolutely have to be 'ban everything'? If its the latter, then that, to me, is a cop out so they can be lazy. Forget the idea in that case.

Because the EULA is not written in a nuanced way and if I remember correctly, Yoshi P actually wanted addons at one point. Anything that is not available in game and changes your gameplay and this includes all those things we commonly take for granted is a violation. If you are looking for nuance look at how they have enforced them and Yoshi P's own stance. If you are getting in trouble for addons you are more than likely already in trouble for something. The EULA is quite literally just to cover their butts incase something really bad happens.

[Leigaon]

Title.

I've been watching streamers do high end stuff and I see and hear programs announcing mechanics before they even exist on screen. Certain mechanics are randomized in the order they will occur and people are reacting to them far in advance.

Folks try to rationalize this as ok by saying, 'oh it's no different than having your raid lead call it', but let me counter with this; does your raid lead have precognition and can tell the order of random mechanics before they happen all the time? If not, then you're cheating. Plain and simple.

Not here to reject, just here to ask. I've been playing FFXIV since 1.13a/b?? I do not watch streamers outside of a youtube video to re-learn some basic instances and try to memorize.

So the program can see what's coming and throw it out there for people to respond to? No I don't do Savage/EX (last one I did was Susanoo and ARR Primals.) content because all this time I figured I was just a horrible, slow learning player that took too many breaks to keep up. When in fact these people aren't that good they just use a lil pick me up to enhance their performance and are probably just as craptastic as I am otherwise!

I am just curious, do you think there's a way to cheat the cheating system? Through coding..or some sort of detect method? I know where I work if an application is shown interacting differently with the rest of our environment an alert is made and depending on the alert, a response is given. Is there any way you think that the game can detect things like this and give a direct response of some sort? This way you aren't saying "These programs aren't allowed" you're saying "We do not support these programs, so if they don't work..they don't work..but have at it!"

[LittleImp]

I am just curious, do you think there's a way to cheat the cheating system? Through coding..or some sort of detect method? I know where I work if an application is shown interacting differently with the rest of our environment an alert is made and depending on the alert, a response is given. Is there any way you think that the game can detect things like this and give a direct response of some sort? This way you aren't saying "These programs aren't allowed" you're saying "We do not support these programs, so if they don't work..they don't work..but have at it!"

Yoshida has given a response on this topic and outlined some of the difficulties related to detection of such programs, and it would essentially be illegal in some regions to implement the type of detection necessary.

Because parsers are generally read-only, there's no modified game-data to look for. Instead, they would likely need to either look at what other processes are running, or scan parts of your filesystem that are unrelated to the game itself. This has obvious privacy concerns, and as stated above, is essentially illegal in some of the regions the game operates in.

It's also extremely difficult to realistically control synthetic inputs. Many totally legitimate peripherals utilize what are considered synthetic inputs to the computer, so simply looking for a synthetic flag on inputs doesn't really work. People have been using Auto-hotkey scripts in this game for years with little to no punishment, most notably the ever-popular house auto-clicker.

[Packetdancer]

Because the EULA is not written in a nuanced way

Which is almost certainly entirely deliberate.

If you write your EULA/TOS in a nuanced way, people will try to rules-lawyer it; they'll go over the phrasing with a fine-toothed comb and try to find the way to obey the letter of the law while running roughshod over the spirit of it. And people being people, they will find ways, and then the EULA/TOS has to be rewritten again, and the whole process starts over. Writing it in a sweeping way lacking any nuance at all doesn't mean you have to enforce it in every scenario, but it gives you the freedom to do so.

If your EULA is something very precise, like, "The use of third-party tools which fundamentally alters the execution of mechanics is forbidden," then you end up with both the scenario where someone can try to argue that Cactbot doesn't fundamentally change the execution of mechanics -- no moreso than a raid caller does -- or that if it does, Discord itself also alters the execution of mechanics (by virtue of a raid-caller being able to tell you what to do). Which gets ridiculous. Similarly, if you try to change it by "The use of third-party tools which alters the memory space or rendering pipeline of the game is forbidden", now you've banned ReShade/GShade and Nvidia Freestyle (which are actually a handful of the few third-party programs Square-Enix has given official blessing to!) and Discord (by virtue of the in-game overlay)... and haven't banned Cactbot, because so far as I know, the timeline/script/callout stuff is done on a transparent window overlay and calculated by watching the computer's network traffic -- and reading but not altering the game executable's memory space -- so it doesn't qualify.

Moreover, trying to actually combat third-party tools on a technical level just leads to more and more inconvenience for people who aren't using them. Let's say they decide to block Cactbot on a technological level; they could force the game to always run full-screen -- i.e., eliminate the borderless-windowed mode -- so you can't use transparent windows atop it, and then they could engage in some shenanigans to make it more difficult (or borderline impossible) to add any additional overlays to the graphic pipeline. Of course, now you've also blocked both the Discord in-game overlay and the Steam Overlay, meaning that as a side-effect anyone who uses Discord can no longer see the list of folks speaking in-game, and those who relied on Steam's controller-remapping library to use various game controllers on PC are now out-of-luck (because for various reasons, Steam's evidently got their controller code tightly entwined with the overlay injection code). Which leads to a terrible experience for everyone else. Or imagine if they address the whatever-the-heck Cactbot-like tool handles automarking of players in ultimates by making it so you cannot set markers on mobs mid-combat -- now you can't put the 'Target to attack #1' marker on things during PUGs to let folks know that "no, you need to kill the tethered thing first!" or in Frontlines to communicate "Why are you attacking the gunbreaker when there's a white mage right there healing them?"

And doing the "install spyware that watches all programs you're running and examines what they're doing and tries to spot cheaty-tools" approach not only is unpopular with players, but has broken people's computers before when the spyware is badly written. (Plus it's, y'know, illegal in some regions.)

If, in contrast, you forego blocking things technologically save in the most dire scenarios and write your EULA to just say more broadly "The use of third party tools is disallowed and may, at the discretion of publisher/developer, lead to a ban from the game service." you're covered regardless. If someone tries to report someone for using Discord, or using NVidia Freestyle to adjust contrast for colorblindness to make mechanics easier to read... yes, technically it violates that EULA, but you-as-publisher are free to go "That's a ridiculous interpretation" and not enforce the EULA. Whereas if someone uses a third-party tool you hadn't even yet envisioned that allows them some game-breakingly large advantage over other players, you don't have to analyze how that tool works and adjust the EULA accordingly each time; you can just say "Welp, this is 'publisher's discretion' in action, you used a third-party tool" and kick them to the curb.

The devs have made it clear that because of the console players, they will never design fights around the requirement to use third-party add-ons. They've also made it fairly clear they don't actually care about parsers like ACT in the abstract -- at least, when a player or static is using them for personal improvement. (Though they care a great deal if people wield parser tools like a weapon against others, using it to harass them.) Cactbot et al? I imagine they don't like them, but I also suspect they don't consider them enough of a problem to obliterate.

After all, there's no content which is mechanically impossible to clear without them, and trying to find a way to shut them down from a technological standpoint is probably likely to cause more problems than it solves. :|

[Xaruko_Nexume]

People going on about discord and spreadsheets are being disingenuous. The problem is third party tools that directly interface with the games code

[Packetdancer]

So the program can see what's coming and throw it out there for people to respond to? No I don't do Savage/EX (last one I did was Susanoo and ARR Primals.) content because all this time I figured I was just a horrible, slow learning player that took too many breaks to keep up. When in fact these people aren't that good they just use a lil pick me up to enhance their performance and are probably just as craptastic as I am otherwise!

Brief digression, but...

First, extremes and savages (and presumably ultimates -- I haven't yet tackled them seriously, though I want to) are 100% doable without tools like this thread is discussing; you can't use them on consoles, after all, and plenty of people clear that content on PS4 or PS5.

But second, I also guarantee that if you want to do that content, you're capable of it. And yes, even without the tools in this thread.

High-end mechanics in this game are very, very good at looking visually overwhelming and complicated, and yet almost every one of them has a simple solution. It's less "you must perfectly execute this dance, instantly spotting what the appropriate move is", and more "here is a puzzle to solve; there's a simple solution hidden within, and when you find that solution, all the pieces fall into place."

Take, for instance, the emerald weapon extreme fight, Castrum Marinum (Extreme); there's a mechanic in the second half with falling swords that a lot of people find overwhelming; three sets of two swords fall in various parts of the arena, and you must move so that you don't get hit by the giant cross AoEs they make. It looks like it would require wizardry to succeed at, but in actuality there's only a handful of possible patterns, and one spot that's safe for the majority of them (and if you're quick enough to move after a separate mechanic that can happen first, it's a spot that's safe for all of them).

Doing high-end content is a matter of (when it's brand-new) learning to look for those simple solutions inside the visually-overwhelming mechanics, and (when it's no longer brand-new and the mechanics are understood) learning to execute a fairly rote dance from one mechanic's solution to the next.

Now, in organized groups, you'll often have someone who's good at reading those mechanics -- they recognize the element on E11S just due to the color of the effect rather than having to sit there and take a moment to process, or they remember the order the crystals are in for E12S and can just look at the tether positions without having to pan the camera up to look at the images on the crystals, or whatever else. They'll read the situation and call out what folks need to do ("Knockback line AoE!" or "Under the boss at intercardinals!") over Discord, in order to keep a group more organized, and provide a sanity check on your own read of stuff.

Because everyone can have a moment of "the Distracted" as an RL debuff. Or just of "the Dumb" for that matter.

(...okay, in typical Pax fashion, I suppose my 'brief digression' wasn't really that 'brief'.)

[Sotaris]

Depending on the mechanic, specific memory signatures used to create triggers and other plugins are frequently identified using Cheat Engine. In fact, there's actually an entire section in the Cactbot official documentation on how to setup and use Cheat Engine.


edit: That is to say, the people making some of these triggers are actually violating the EULA on an even deeper level because they're using a program that can write to the games memory and send false data to the servers, as opposed to a read only parser like ACT.

Correct me if I'm wrong but i'm pretty sure Cactbot doesn't inject anything to the game, it just reads off the memory or log data ACT gatherers?
CE manipulates the data and will get you banned if it's being detected as would most stuff that being injected to the game, this is why certain type of bots is being banned quicker than others I think.

[Kira_Yaeger]

Why do you care? Genuine question. Not enough people use them for it to be a problem. And even if they do it doesn't affect you in any way? People using whatever program to get over ping, well that's not on them now is it? SE says they have no idea how high ping works with their classes. Only reason they change anything is because of JP, and JP has what 10-30 ping on their servers? If anything it should be a wake up call to SE that the more people play their game the more problems people are going to point out and the more they should try and upgrade their servers. Playing on the east coast with 120-150 ping is just unacceptable in 2021 as it should be. As for any other third party tools. 99% of them are for user customization of their own screens that affect no one. Again, SE is usually pretty decent at seeing what players are doing (at least if they are JP players) and making adjustments based on that. Regardless of a TOS or not, what doesn't affect you or break the game for you in any way shouldn't be bannable. But that's just my opinion.