[Feedback] Add Epic Easy Anti-Cheat to FFXIV before is too late

[Insertusernamehere]

I have a feeling SE will regret PvP redesign

[-BlueGreen-]

about this, i believe that at least for the context of CC only, server verification could happen at the end of a match. sure, you mightve lost that match but if the other team truly cheated in blatant ways that mightve been the end of them. the game ALREADY has event logs that the servers keep track of, since GMs often use said logs to verify reports. it likely wont work against every form of cheating in cc, but can cut down on at least the biggest ones.

Oh certainly. Analyzing data after the fact would certainly allow you to run heuristics to your heart's content by offloading the workload to some server that's not part of the real time gameplay environment. Provided you still have enough actual hardware on hand to process that data, you can do whatever and have minimal to no impact on the game. Of course, you'd still want it processed reasonably fast so that results aren't kept in limbo for days or worse having a system spit out something like "without a doubt, Bob cheated in some match 3 seasons ago" (a little late to do anything about unless Bob happens to still be playing/cheating, but certainly too late for his victims).

Granted, again it goes back to the balancing act. If SE has a whole server farm running to try to catch cheaters by processing historical PvP match data while primetime login queues are insanely high or the housing wards are 1000% full yet again, it would appear to be that SE has mixed up priorities since the game is no good if even legit players can't play. This especially holds up if they were and cheating was still rampant (why spend so much hardware/dev time on something you're clearly failing to do when you could direct it to something you can do, like increasing housing wards or max simultaneous connections).

Given current events, I doubt SE just happens to have server capacity just laying around that could pick up the work of analyzing historical PvP matches in detail.

And just in case:

• I had very little trouble logging in to play EW at release most days, so login queues only caused me minor issues most of the time.
• I don't currently and don't plan to own a house in-game. I had one for a period of time and eventually just let the auto-demo timer claim it so I could get back a portion of the gil wasted on it.

[Johners]

Oh certainly. Analyzing data after the fact would certainly allow you to run heuristics to your heart's content by offloading the workload to some server that's not part of the real time gameplay environment. Provided you still have enough actual hardware on hand to process that data, you can do whatever and have minimal to no impact on the game. Of course, you'd still want it processed reasonably fast so that results aren't kept in limbo for days or worse having a system spit out something like "without a doubt, Bob cheated in some match 3 seasons ago" (a little late to do anything about unless Bob happens to still be playing/cheating, but certainly too late for his victims).

Granted, again it goes back to the balancing act. If SE has a whole server farm running to try to catch cheaters by processing historical PvP match data while primetime login queues are insanely high or the housing wards are 1000% full yet again, it would appear to be that SE has mixed up priorities since the game is no good if even legit players can't play. This especially holds up if they were and cheating was still rampant (why spend so much hardware/dev time on something you're clearly failing to do when you could direct it to something you can do, like increasing housing wards or max simultaneous connections).

You wouldn't even need to use the same server infrastructure, you could just pump the data into AWS instances and analyse there. They'd be modelling gameplay patterns using server side logs and client side anti-cheat data (if they implemented one like other games). It's a completely different challenge to running a live game environment that would be handled by a different team but it's valuable work for Square Enix to do to ensure a fair online environment for the entire player base.

Client side anti-cheat is a useful data collection point and while you can call it spyware or a rootkit, it's a standard toolkit in many games. Bad implementations exist but so do good ones like Blizzard Warden and Riot Vanguard. Cheats will always exist as it's a cat and mouse game here and there's even some AI-powered anti-cheats that I've seen demonstrated on YouTube. However, publishers have a duty to their legitimate players to ensure the online environment is fair. Riot's anti-cheat is pretty aggressive and will often just disconnect you from the entire game the moment it suspects any funny business. This would honestly be fine in FFXIV and would deter most modding/plugin usage and take out 95+ percent of low hanging fruit in one sweep.

[Larirawiel]

WoW has and will continue to use both, same for the majority of other online games. For example, the Honorbuddy ban waves in Warlords of Draenor used a combination of client-side and server-side verification.

It might be true. But, is WoW free of botters and cheaters because of client side rootkit-like anti-cheat systems? The answer is: no. And that is the problem. Much effort, potentially new security holes and it does not stop the cheaters.



Cheers

[HayaW]

im sure they can live without the 5 players using linux

yah this made me laugh pretty hard, but yah we gotta share the love with Linux users

[LianaThorne]

No thanks. Add in anti-cheat and you're neutering a pretty big part of the community in terms of gpose, cosmetic mods, bards...hell, it'll even remove harmless plugins like one that simply tells you the name of the zone music currently playing. This won't end well and will probably lead to a larger uprising than this past housing one.

Instead of punishing EVERYONE, suggest a solution that focuses solely on botters and those using game-breaking hacks. Leave the rest of the community be, they aren't harming anyone.

[Nanne]

Currently when Sage uses LB in PvP and WHM Imp's them it removes the Sage LB completely cause the game probably thinks that the Sage doesn't exist anymore due to Imp thus removing the LB. I watched couple of Sage players stream ranked CC matches and there were few WHM's that INSTANTLY turned the Sage into an Imp the moment they pressed LB multiple times in a match. The area didn't even appear cause the moment they pressed LB they were turned into an Imp in 0,000001 seconds. Cheating is just getting more and more rampant. And yes it can happen with random bad luck too but when same player does it all the time the exact same frame every time it can't be coincidence anymore

[KageTokage]

There is a bot several people have been using that's basically just scripted to automatically perform specific actions in response to certain situations (Auto-CC LBs, auto-purify CC, etc), and it's existed back in the days of the Feast, as well. It's also hacking by extension it ignores the built-in delay on OGCD actions to ensure the response is consistently instantaneous.

It's unlikely they'll ever actually do anything about it if they can't even keep the extremely obvious hacks in check, though...

[Nuki]

No thanks. Add in anti-cheat and you're neutering a pretty big part of the community in terms of gpose, cosmetic mods, bards...hell, it'll even remove harmless plugins like one that simply tells you the name of the zone music currently playing. This won't end well and will probably lead to a larger uprising than this past housing one.

Instead of punishing EVERYONE, suggest a solution that focuses solely on botters and those using game-breaking hacks. Leave the rest of the community be, they aren't harming anyone.

you mean punishing anyone that uses 3rd party tools

[Roflcopter]

There are at least 2 pvp addons that tracks cds and player profiles, if you are on Twitch, you can see clips of high elo Crystal players encountering a certain top 10 player using speed hacks now too. It shouldn't be hard to find.

Also there is a certain addon website that makes the better version of 1-2-3 combo addon do a pvp version that will ping you if samurai uses their ability and highlights players that ninjas can 100% execute, and a few other addons in development that shows the aoe radius of certain players.

Its still not too late to add Epic Easy Anti-Cheat to FFXIV, most recent games already use it like Lost Ark and Elden Ring and it gets the job done.

Why do you want what is essentially malware forced onto your computer in order to play FFXIV?