Mods and cheat engine

[Koldan]

Its still surprising how people continue to justify game balance harming mods and addons like ffxivalexander, combo shorter, hunt callouts and bots, raid callouts and mechanic solvers and such. While "the most casual players want to witch hunt".
Most people dont use those tools, some use reshade, some replace ingame models or textures on their side to get hair cuts or different glams LOCALLY. There is a big difference between automatic tools that inject themself into game memory/catch network packets to give unfair advantage and harmless tools that only affect your game client.

[Sarnai]

Its still surprising how people continue to justify game balance harming mods and addons like ffxivalexander, combo shorter, hunt callouts and bots, raid callouts and mechanic solvers and such. While "the most casual players want to witch hunt".

It's not that ppl justify those, more that the discussion went from ffxivalexander to "every mod is harmful and needs to be removed"

[Melorie]

give unfair advantage and harmless tools that only affect your game client.

But again this goes to a zone of what really affects you. Someone wearing a custom hair, make up, taking better screenshots than you, finding a way of dealing with ping or even knowing that they better go left instead of right in a trial will never impact me.
I can consider it a crutch, and do not use it because otherwise this will make enjoy the game less... And still not be impacted by others using it. Unless you're actually feeling you're competing with someone in this game, into which case, imo, you're playing the worst game ever to have this sort of attitude. The difference here is that for many people, the concept of "harmless" is way more broad and accepting than yours. You're feeling harmed by things that basically can't harm you.

If you're actually playing PvP and get impacted by a bot or a hack, then yes. This is actually harming your own experience. But for PvE? Balance in this game in PvE is simply job balance, it's not you against other people. This power trip doesn't exist in FFXIV, only in your own mind. The only possible way to compete with other people is actually by installing a third party tool and seeing if you're doing more DPS than then... And even so, you're into a group-setting so there's no reason to compete with the people that are working with you towards the same goal (clear a fight).

[EaMett]

Its still surprising how people continue to justify game balance harming mods and addons like ffxivalexander, combo shorter, hunt callouts and bots, raid callouts and mechanic solvers and such. While "the most casual players want to witch hunt".
Most people dont use those tools, some use reshade, some replace ingame models or textures on their side to get hair cuts or different glams LOCALLY. There is a big difference between automatic tools that inject themself into game memory/catch network packets to give unfair advantage and harmless tools that only affect your game client.

What of simulators that are completely independent and allow you to practice mechanics without actually having to get to them in-game? Reducing the intended difficulty. And what about xivalexander is a balance harming (at least in it's default setting, I know it can be abused)? What's the actual advantage you get from it compared to other players that live, say in California? If anything, it restores balance.

To use your own phrasing: It's still surprising how people continue to classify game mods and addons in such black and white categories.
Everyone has their own sauce of what a "cheat" is. I find it outrageous that people can go to gamerescape and see where NPCs, gathering nodes, and drops are/comefrom without having to manually search in-game. That's totally using reverse-engineered data to gain an unfair advantage in-game and should be a bannable offense.
In fact, if you've melded crit>det on your character you should also get banned because there's no way you would know that's optimal without using software that interacts with the game to reverse-engineer the data. Totally against the ToS and clearly cheating.
And don't get me started with discord overlay. Getting to see who's talking when you aren't familiar with the people in chat is such a big advantage that I miss out on by being a ps4 player. In fact, I'm going to standup for players who might not have smartphones (or have old ones that have shit batteries). They shouldn't have to change their setup to gain access to this balance-breaking tool where people can do callouts for you. That should also be a bannable offense.
Or reshade that can be used "client side" but may allow you to make telegraphs easier to see. That's not fair.

Anyone who doesn't play the game vanilla and without external resources is a cheater who simply speaking just shouldn't be allowed to play the game. It ruins my fun just knowing that they're out there.

I shall now drink this poison called resentment and expect someone else to die.