Can we take action against Bard Macro Player yet?

[Whalaqee]

Unless the person I know actually plays, I just keep performances off. Its just sound pollution in places like Limsa when hearing it from midibots.

[Johners]

I don't particularly have an issue with people playing music in Limsa etc but I do take an issue with people that used bard music bots to avoid AFK kicks during Endwalker launch. I know of people that did this because they worked during the day and would otherwise have to queue all evening to play for five minutes before going to bed. It's only an issue during expansion/patch releases but still something that would probably be actioned.

I am, however, require surprised at the lack of anti-cheat in general. You'd think a game with competitive game modes (savage, ranked PvP etc) plus an optional item store (you could just mod the appearance in client side) doesn't have an anti-cheat to protect the competitive game environment and cash store purchases.

[Risvertasashi]

I am, however, require surprised at the lack of anti-cheat in general. You'd think a game with competitive game modes (savage, ranked PvP etc) plus an optional item store (you could just mod the appearance in client side) doesn't have an anti-cheat to protect the competitive game environment and cash store purchases.

To address the shorter point first - modding the game client to see a cash shop purchase is just an extended preview. There might be someone here or there OK with that, but most people want to be seen with their cute/cool glamour - and using mods mean their friends, or the general public if they hang out in such spaces, don't see it.

But for raiding, SE's painted themselves into something of a corner. DPS checks are so stringent even now that, for example, you aren't going to clear p4s with a zero-DPS healer unless the other 7 members are world-first level players, nevermind DPS that have never researched their rotation. So those that are less than the very best need analysis tools to know what's going wrong. And they're hardline against providing such tools in game, and they have their reasons for it but the combination of these factors leaves us with this situation. If SE started enforcing analysis tool bans via computer scans - the software here doesn't hide like actual cheats do so it'd be very easy - they'd kill off most of their raiding player base.

SE actually already did this once (though it was a problem with tuning, not using invasive scanning software) and I don't think they're too keen to repeat.

-

That said, I don't think their stance is ideal. Other online game cos have managed to allow a level of modding/tool use while drawing some lines on what's acceptable and what's not (with the cheaty areas resulting in account suspensions), so I don't think it's such an impossible situation as Yoshi has oft made it out to be. But, he's the one helming the ship.

[Johners]

But for raiding, SE's painted themselves into something of a corner. DPS checks are so stringent even now that, for example, you aren't going to clear p4s with a zero-DPS healer unless the other 7 members are world-first level players, nevermind DPS that have never researched their rotation. So those that are less than the very best need analysis tools to know what's going wrong. And they're hardline against providing such tools in game, and they have their reasons for it but the combination of these factors leaves us with this situation. If SE started enforcing analysis tool bans via computer scans - the software here doesn't hide like actual cheats do so it'd be very easy - they'd kill off most of their raiding player base.

World of Warcraft has an anti-cheat but also has an addon framework for UI stuff and has a built-in combat logging function so you can analyse log files using external tools. If they added an anti-cheat to FFXIV but then provided a built-in logging to text file function alongside it, you'd be to keep existing performance analysis tools functioning.

As for the wider topic, I appreciate that some of the plugins are fine much like most of the UI addons in WoW are fine. Combat addons like DBM (WoW) or Cactbot (FFXIV) are a problem and not to mention in FFXIV the amount of people doing drastic model/texture swapping which would get you instantly banned in literally any other online game.

[Batbrat]

Drastic model/texture swapping which would get you instantly banned in literally any other online game.

Actually, they wouldnt. I've played most MMO's and the majority can't do anything about that for the exact same reasons XIV can't. It's too much of a headache and can't be monitored without invasive tactics that absolutely no one at all would like. People are acting high and mighty right now, but that's only because they arent dealing with what would happen if they DID choose to monitor it. They're sitting here saying they'd love it when in reality they'd hate it. It's very much the "housing lottery" situation. Hundreds here were adamant that that was exactly what we needed. and now we've got it and they're already panicking about how actually it was a terrible idea. There's nothing that wouldnt cause great harm that can be done and it has always been this way with MMORPG's. It has always been that way. Particularly Asian MMO's, that has always been a thing and it always will be. The only time it's bannable is if the person is caught red handed in a glaringly obvious way (so no, suspicion snitching has never worked either for any potential vigilantes salivating). They pretty much have to turn themselves in directly or indirectly via posting proof that it's them doing it.

Anyway, just turn your performances off.
Some of you are very annoying. I've seen people who are actually playing by hand get disgruntled comments about how they're playing a midi-fiddle or whatever it is. None of you are on XIV's payroll alright, Yoshi isnt going to personally bestow an award upon you for being obnoxious so stop trying police people as if you think you're some unofficial GM sidekick or something. You can complain here all you want, that's fine, but once you start accusing people in-game, you're going way too far and being disgustingly rude. Not everyone is doing it. And you're not some hero for trying to "keep people on the right track" or whatever it is that you think you're doing. Just turn. Your performance. Off. System Configuration -> Sound Settings -> Performance to 0. Thank you.

[Johners]

Snip for character limit

Final Fantasy XIV is one of two major online games I've played on PC that doesn't feature an anti-cheat with the other being GTA Online. Anti-cheats, while somewhat invasive in how they work, are necessary and they do work. They're not a one sized fits all solution to game moderation but a useful tool in determining what a player is actually doing on their PC with the game client. Riot Games shipped a very aggressive anti-cheat with Valorant that'll disconnect you from a game automatically the moment it even sniffs something funny but it also has the least cheaters of any online FPS game.

Blizzard Entertainment do a great job with cheat moderation... even if they also fired a large chunk of their human GMs so the overall customer support got worse in other areas. I've seen many ban waves to the point in which they started actively doing them for certain cheats during peak raiding hours. It happened several times during Warlords of Draenor with the result being some Mythic guilds losing 3 or 4 of their best DPS players to the wave mid-boss pull which in most cases, ultimately led to the death of those raiding guilds because they couldn't recruit suitable replacements.

There was also a little program called tmorph from the pre-transmog (glamour) days. A lot of people used this to locally change the armour appearance of their character. Some people went a bit further to have their mount be the Spectral Tiger, an item you could only get from rare WoW TCG cards and they've been $1000+ on eBay for years. Note this is all client side only. However, some people used this to make the flag in Warsong Gulch, a capture the flag battleground, 10 times bigger and easier to locate in the multi-tiered base from the other side of the map. This is where the problem lies, innocent users were using the same tools and mechanisms as actual cheaters.

I don't think an anti-cheat is a monkeys paw wish here. A large chunk of the player base is on PS4/PS5, a platform with no plugins at all, so you'd only be ensuring a truly level player base for them. More importantly, all the content is entirely playable by design without any plugins. If you opt into using any of these to the point in which you suddenly couldn't if they went away, that is your problem and you'll have to learn to play without them. The only situation in which that should change is combat logs as analysing those is import for higher level gameplay such as Savage and Ultimate. Simply add a mechanism for the game client to generate the combat logs as a .txt file and then let users analyse with their desired tools afterwards. As for parses from this, they're fine and actively harassing people for bad parses is already harassment under the current terms of service so nothing changes here.

[GiR_Zippo]

Some days ago it happened again:
Two bards were playing duets, after a while more and more bards joined their group, other bards left and they all played together.
The crowd around them cheered and looked like they had fun.
As I wrote some posts earlier, it seems to be hard to create good sounding music with the limitations and it's even harder to get all the bards together and sponaniously switch the songs.
I was impressed.

Btw. everyone who works with MIDIs (I'm using them with my DAW) is aware of the fact, you can't simply skip tracks, if they ment to be played.

[DeNada]

I don't understand why people have issues with bard macro players, it's not like they are gaining any in-game advantage over other players from doing that.

Instead they livened up the game world with their music and make the game a more enjoyable experience which is a plus point.

[HollowedDoll]

snip

You bring up GTA Online which does have anti-cheat, unless Rockstar has since removed it. Now, did this mean that GTA Online was free of hackers? No, of course not.. did this however mean that cheaters could drop money on you flagging your account and you'd get banned? Absolutely! Did R* outsource their support team? Absolutely. What is the end result? Tons of false bans while the game is legit unplayable filled with tons of script kiddies, and this wasn't even a pc only issue, consoles had just as much illicit activity if not more, seeing as a lot of clearly hacked accounts were grandfathered in with the import feature introduced in next-gen. So be careful what you wish for.

Also WoW had a ban-wave that caught pretty much the entirety of MG for client-side stuff, they reversed that in about 3 days. Doubt the situation would be any better here.

[GiR_Zippo]

The Blizz Warden Anti-Cheat isn't as perfect as it looks like.
This thing had a 3 stage check model:
1st -Serverside checks for speed-, fly- and a kind of wallhack
2nd - Checking on client side particular memory offsets the client is using
3rd - Checking on your computer the processes which are running on the computer (specially checking the dll which are running in the memory)

the second and last one was error prone as hell, sometimes it would simply ban users cuz they are using a program wich was named like a 3rd party tool, or loaded a dll wich was named like a dll the tools were using.

Bringing an anti cheat like warden to XIV leads to a problem you maybe don't want in this game:
First of all, if you are checking memory offsets, you have to rely on the fact that a tool is changing the values. But as far as I could read from the code this isn't the case. But there is an other popular tool for screenshots, this uses the trick.
This will lead to a ban for all pll who are making beautyful screenshot in this game. Don't underestimate this community, cuz it's a large one.
In this case you have banned some innocent ppl, just for making good screens and game promo. This will result into a few other ppl are leaving the game too.

Okay, then simply check the processlist:
And now you running into the same problem like blizz did. If the program is using the same dll like some other legit programs (discord, or whatever), you'll ban these ppl too.
Fine, so ignore these dll and concentrate on the program only... Yep, you can do this and they rename it.
And nope, creating a hash value and compare against it, isn't solving anything: New version, new round and if the hash collides (like MD5 tends), it's reporting a false positive.
Btw in some countries it's against the law to scan the process list.

Implementing an anti cheat isn't an easy task and it's more like an balance act between law, programming, traffic and the community.
If you are doing one thing wrong, it will take a long time to get the players back.

As far as I experienced, playing a mmorpg on server with 100ppl isn't as much fun as it sounds.

Just let them play and mute them if you want.