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

[redheadturk]

The PvP mode is pretty much as good as dead if cheating is openly allowed to continue. The tool is already pretty well developed and it's only adding more features. More importantly, what happens if this blatant and open cheating makes it's way to other areas of the game? There's enough players that are willing to do it that it'll become a problem for all content. The secret is out now, there's no hiding it, something has to be done and "legitimate" plugin usage may have to be on the chopping block as part of this.

No. I will repeat no killing legitimate plugin usage. Period. They need to get more STF members so that the actual cheaters can be banned. I will quit this game if automated anticheat is ever added, and there are many many others that have said the same.

[Johners]

No. I will repeat no killing legitimate plugin usage. Period. They need to get more STF members so that the actual cheaters can be banned. I will quit this game if automated anticheat is ever added, and there are many many others that have said the same.

People threaten to quit games all the time over the slightest thing. I played WoW for over a decade, I've seen it enough times, most people didn't quit when threatening to do so. Square Enix can't hope to moderate this game correctly when they clearly lack the tools to determine if someone is actually cheating or not. You really underestimate how cat and mouse situations like this are for EVERY online game, FFXIV is no exception.

[Ayer2015]

No. I will repeat no killing legitimate plugin usage. Period. They need to get more STF members so that the actual cheaters can be banned. I will quit this game if automated anticheat is ever added, and there are many many others that have said the same.

The thing is, there is no "legitimate plugin usage", only that which SE has chosen to turn a blind eye to. Its clear Yoshi P never wanted to address this subject matter with game changes, but this situation will only continue to get worse without intervention.

[Johners]

The thing is, there is no "legitimate plugin usage", only that which SE has chosen to turn a blind eye to. Its clear Yoshi P never wanted to address this subject matter with game changes, but this situation will only continue to get worse without intervention.

Yoshi-P's stance only worked when the player base was small enough for any moderation to actually work. It saved them a ton of money in having to license, implement and support a proper anti-cheat implementation both client and server side. However, the player base is drastically bigger now and the mentality of other MMOs such as WoW are becoming ever present within FFXIV.

There is a mentality in WoW of "exploit early, exploit often" and thus a portion of the player base will be pushing beyond any boundaries because there's something to gain from it. This happened when Blizzard implemented an honour levelling/ranking system and it was partial rollbacks for the worst offenders. This happened in Battle for Azeroth when you could split the stack of XP gain potions to use multiple at once. Popular WoW streamers were openly abusing the XP potion bug and they got 30 day bans with no rollbacks so only gained from it.

Lest we forget WoW add-on development, which is an officially provided function, represents 10+ years of rock solid developments and the mentality of making addons for everything worth optimising. Blizzard are implementing FFXIV-like crafting mechanics with the next WoW expansion and unless they change the add-on policy, someone will very quickly make a Teamcraft-like add-on within about five minutes of the expansion being released. Onto the topic of FFXIV, in which all third party tools are against the ToS, this same mentality is beginning to show itself fully. Sure, there's harmless QoL stuff but at the same time, there's outright cheats that are openly being distributed because Square Enix lack any real mechanisms to prevent it.

The balance of play has changed and the community can no longer self-moderate plugin usage and development like it once did. Either Square Enix need to step in which will ultimately mean a clamp down across the board or cheating will only become much, much worse in this game.