[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.

[Rolder50]

The only thing Easy about Easy Anti-Cheat is how easy it is to get around. All you would do with this is harm low level plugin users whereas the full on hackers you might see in PvP would just get around it and continue unabated. Unless the plugin tools get around it too, in which case it's just a complete waste of time and money.

[DeNada]

They really need to nip this cheaters issue in the bud though. Otherwise more and more people will resort to using cheats so as not to be disadvantaged and pvp becomes a mode where who can cheat better.

If an anti-cheat which would disable certain addons/mods has to be implemented to stop the cheating, I would say go for it, especially since addons are already a legally grey area in the first place and SE is only closing one eye as they weren't affecting game balance before.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Sure wish we'd advocate for a more robust STF team- heck, perhaps an STF per region or per DC - than trying to kill off every single add-on and harmless mod a good majority of casual players use (you know, the people SE keeps trying to pander to?). Or adding invasive anti-cheats to the game, which won't stop hackers regardless.

Genuinely will never understand why people's solution is punish players rather than have SE actually hire more people to cover reports of blatant cheating.

[Ranaku]

The truth is that they worked themselves into a situation where they can't implement anticheat software without hurting their playernumbers so much that the shareholders/investors would riot. Companies love money and to ban half your customers cause everyone is using some sort of third party tool nowdays would hurt the stock so much that this would be a death sentence for SE.

Which is really funny in my opinion cause Japan itself has really strict laws against modding, you can go to jail over there for modding. (To be fair that also includes modifying hardware and consoles) But a substantial amount of their business is done outside of japan and thus they tapped into the western modding culture.

So yeah they can't ban them cause it would ruin the company and they can't allow it cause they have their hands in so many countries it would cause mayhem without end especially when it comes to lewd mods, which are so illegal in some countries where the game is available that you could go to jail for it. Especially the arabic countries.

[Shiro--Tsubasa]

I'm curious about this. Not saying you're wrong or anything as I really honestly have no idea what the numbers is so don't take this as some sort of call out.
Of course, given that console players can't use 3rd party add ons of any sort, I do wonder how many PC players there are who do use add ons for reasons not involving cheating and what the breakdown would be between QoL, visual upgrade and performance appraisal (which are all valid uses IMO).

idk about the breakdown, but I just checked on one discord server they are nearing close to 100k members and this is mainly those who join for the more mature type of mods. This isn't even including the possibility of there being other discord servers or places like nexus mods. (I just checked and the most downloaded mod on nexus is nearing a quarter of a million and it is a mod to make your hair look better. lol)

so yeah, the amount of people are no small number just by going through a quick glance using google. The amount of money SE would lose by going scorched earth on the modding community would be in the millions assuming they all pay the monthly.

[Ranaku]

idk about the breakdown, but I just checked on one discord server they are nearing close to 100k members and this is mainly those who join for the more mature type of mods. This isn't even including the possibility of there being other discord servers or places like nexus mods. (I just checked and the most downloaded mod on nexus is nearing a quarter of a million and it is a mod to make your hair look better. lol)

so yeah, the amount of people are no small number just by going through a quick glance using google. The amount of money SE would lose by going scorched earth on the modding community would be in the millions assuming they all pay the monthly.

Not to mention that the modding/roleplaying community also leaves the most cash in the cashshop AND what you wrote there doesn't even take the plugin users (like damagemeters) into account which is also a gigantic amount of the raiding scene.

[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.