Mods and cheat engine

[Melorie]

So, I know this was a typo, but I realized that I'm noticing a lot of things getting conflated in this thread, so it might be worth adding a little clarity.

Ooops! hah Thanks for the correction. And yes, people might branch this discussion as simply "waaah it's against the ToS ban it all" but it is way more nuanced than that. Look at the community built around g-shade, and creating their original characters exactly like they would want... There's a lot of room for creativity with these things, so acting like they're all bad isn't doing anyone favours. Seems over the top imo.

[Packetdancer]

Look at the community built around g-shade, and creating their original characters exactly like they would want... There's a lot of room for creativity with these things, so acting like they're all bad isn't doing anyone favours. Seems over the top imo.

GShade (and other ReShade variants) is kind of an odd duck with regards to third-party software, since the devs have explicitly said—on these forums, even—that they have no problem with it, though they have asked in the past that folks not include the copyright line that the game usually includes in images, just so folks don't mistake it for the stock game. Nvidia's ReShade variant—Freestyle—even lists FFXIV on the officially-supported-software page; if you've got an Nvidia card and are running an even remotely recent version of GeForce Experience, Freestyle's already enabled in-game and you can pull up that particular ReShade variant with Alt+F2 (unless you've changed the keybinding, obviously).

So those are less "unauthorized third-party software" and more "authorized third-party software". I mention this only because that renders them (mostly) irrelevant to the topic at hand.

(Though in the interests of full disclosure, I'm also a contributor to GShade; I write shaders that are included with it and have made bundled presets that are also included. So where my interest in most of the tools folks have brought up in this thread is academic, that one I'll confess to having some actual direct relevance to me.)

[Risvertasashi]

GShade (and other ReShade variants) is kind of an odd duck with regards to third-party software, since the devs have explicitly said—on these forums, even—that they have no problem with it, though they have asked in the past that folks not include the copyright line that the game usually includes in images, just so folks don't mistake it for the stock game. Nvidia's ReShade variant—Freestyle—even lists FFXIV on the officially-supported-software page; if you've got an Nvidia card and are running an even remotely recent version of GeForce Experience, Freestyle's already enabled in-game and you can pull up that particular ReShade variant with Alt+F2 (unless you've changed the keybinding, obviously).

So those are less "unauthorized third-party software" and more "authorized third-party software". I mention this only because that renders them (mostly) irrelevant to the topic at hand.

(Though in the interests of full disclosure, I'm also a contributor to GShade; I write shaders that are included with it and have made bundled presets that are also included. So where my interest in most of the tools folks have brought up in this thread is academic, that one I'll confess to having some actual direct relevance to me.)

The problem here is if you consider this "authorization", SE has also said in interviews they know people are using ACT and don't really have a problem with people using it for self improvement. You can call it "authorized" from that but it's a stretch and you can still get suspended if you say you use it in game. SE's official policy is no third party apps, full stop. They've also noted in a live letter that technically this could include discord or using microsoft excel to calculate DPS.

So, GShade, ReShade, etc aren't really in any better standing. SE's official policy is "just don't use it." For everything, including shaders.

Though, it's also worth noting - on games willing to implement anticheat, they often tell people not to use shaders because, apparently, it looks just like a cheat program in how it interacts with the game. If official anticheat ever comes to FF14, shader mods would probably be in the same boat. (But, probably one more reason SE feels it's not worth it...)

[Packetdancer]

So, GShade, ReShade, etc aren't really in any better standing. SE's official policy is "just don't use it." For everything, including shaders.

Fair, but someone oughta tell Nvidia that, then, because they have it on the list of Officially Supported with Developer Blessing games on the Freestyle website.

(To be fair, though, while most ReShade forks function by replacing the Direct3D DLLs and getting loaded into the game, then proxying all calls it makes to Direct3D and post-processing the resulting frame, Freestyle went way off the beaten path; it doesn't seem to hook/replace anything because it post-processes everything in the actual Nvidia driver, and just uses GeForce Experience to hook the activation hotkey outside of the game itself and provide the Freestyle UI.)