Handling Cheaters Gracefully vs Hardline ToS + Questionable legality of bans

[StealthPaladin]

...tools you are talking about always in "gray area" ...it might change ...This is a unreasonable liability for them.

With a policy on acceptable addons, then there is no gray area. If a change is unacceptable it isn't allowed

how do you distinguish between mods...In a generic way it is not possible... things like textures. You can make walls transparent (so-called wallhacks)

You're exactly right. ToS can't perfectly distinguish. The line I've laid out focuses on actions that alter the value of other users' product or service because that is the most defensible position.

I have brought SDKs. Without goin super technical, an SDK must roughly exist already in the client for it to communicate. Working with Dalamud devs or starting an open project, addons would HAVE to use the Official SDK. Long story short, it gives devs the ability to very easily control addons at a feature level. For example, all plugins could be disabled in PVP. If any exposed functionality is abused it could be disabled very easily, by a toggle and all plugins using it would cease to work

There is a problem, despite what many assert, on the business side. If recent drama over addons forces them to come down harder on all addons suddenly you have a much faster growing pool of potential class action litigants.

Imagine 100,00 accounts suddenly having their already long spent game, expansions and sub fees reversed -- that's the ceiling for damages that will be negotiated against. They don't need to have a rock solid argument that wins, they only need good enough to not be thrown out. Then you're likely settling out of court - we're looking at likely 10s of millions of dollars

There are reasons they don't just go ban silly on everyone now.

There's no perfect anti-cheat solution. There's no winning an arms race in any cyber security; best you can do is make the playing field on your terms. By changing bans to be content-specific, the user retains their ACCESS so the devs and good players don't have to suffer the effects of the legal world invading FFXIV

Considering all that, the points I've outlined take away any argument by cheaters. Any plugin that does NOT use the official SDK must, by definition, be reverse engineering the game to maliciously devalue the subscription of users following the ToS. That puts SE in a position to sue those who make unofficial plugins or reverse any action against them.

[StealthPaladin]

Kupo they should just have a board in town that shames all the 'proven' cheaters. jk <3 kupo

Haha, I'm all for it. Any shift to in-game punishment I think would relieve the risks of enforcement. Make a Jury Duty roulette quest lol

I guess i am the only person that hopes they take a hard stance against Cheats/Addons/Mods.

I suffered my way up to Crystal by not giving up and improving myself in the given environments. All i achieved is now worthless cause people will just assume im another cheater.

you don't handle cheaters gracefully.
You deal with them decisively.

I can sympathize with WANTING this but I beg you to understand the balance of enforcement with accepting money from accounts. Also if there is no gradient in consqequences, often the result is not very effective.

A.. B.. B1.. B2.. C.. D.. E

A First, it does not matter that I've agreed. I'm not debating that I will follow it lol. This is feedback about the IDEAL ToS. Not the CURRENT ToS.

B, B1, B2
I haven't said SE had any legal requirement to provide free speech. I'm not talking about free speech legislation. Speech is involved because of simplifying the rules to effects on others' gameplay. That is pragmatic because of the logistics required to support it. Support staff is already hard pressed, and greater enforcement makes that worse.

C D and E made the same mistake as A

{bla bla bla, sanctimonious assumptions, bla bla bla} 'major line you click agree on in every single EULA:'.. {bla bla bla bla}

Ok well, ignoring your exceedingly rude act of bringing forth character attacks in a conversation about feedback, no that line is not a solution to these problems. Neither is the line about character ownership. The courts find such terms unenforceable and anti-consumer practices

Recent cases law on loot boxes show courts here in the US do not care about an MMO's ToS on the matter. They rule that the platform is selling a digital asset - either the asset is the character or ACCESS TO the character. This is totally different than anything social media faces. If a company sells a product and also sells a service that product REQUIRES then the company has very strict requirements imposed on it by the FTC and SEC both. Right now SE doesn't have to worry because enforcement is low -- if that changes, so does the risk

Plus, a class action suit does NOT need to WIN the case. They only need to not get thrown out of court to cost the team MILLIONS, likely tens of millions in settlement and legal fees. That money will go TO THE MALICIOUS PLUGIN DEVS who buy throwaway accounts and amass huge financial damages.


If no line is drawn for "good addons" everyone will have to stop using even things like Discord, or risk ban

If ToS is not simplified to focus on that line being drawn according to your impact on the value of others' product/service, and somewhat lenient -- it will be very difficult for SE to enforce and support

If ToS does not tell players, hey it is against the rules to generally report things that are not affecting their achievements, gameplay results, money etc then it is again hard on support and weakens their position against disgruntled customers

If ToS DOES change to draw this line, WITH a shift to in-game penalties, and especially if SDK/API is enabled -- SE gains maximum control for minimal cost

Finally, to your snarky snark miss lady, no I am not making any addons now. I would sure not talk about it on my only account that's been around since beta lol. I just WANT to. I talk about it NOW because the drama means there is a change in risk.

[StealthPaladin]

I think squeenix is already really permissive about mods and other activity which is great.

Now i would love them to say outright : you can use any mods that enhance or modify visual as much as you want (even parsing tool as long as you don't even make the slightest allusion about it) but if you're caught using automation tool, we will ban your account so hard every alt you create on a new account will have a default limp walking animation.

Absolutely agree. They are very chill about it and many folks have appreciated it. I do NOT think they are intentionally harsh just because I have a different view of the ethics and logistics involved. However the cheating going on now is taking away their ability to be so chill, unless a very clear line is drawn.

but you can always dream.

And that's all I'm doing here. Just trying to let the staff know how I feel, having worked as a lead dev on projects and dealt with business concerns along with user and financial concerns. I just thank you for actually responding rather than trying to read some ulterior motive into my thoughts.

I've considered it a while, and felt bad that so many mod users feel they can't speak up to the devs for fear of ban. So I present my wishlist and a reasonable proposal on how it could be accomplished while lightening the load. Anyway, like you I think SDK is the way to go. Especially because it allows feature-based whitelisting and creates a strong legal protection at the same time

I'm sure there are some better suited, but SE if you do ever happen to care about this line of thinking I can go into great detail on implementing a system with minimal effort

[hagare]

I can sympathize with WANTING this but I beg you to understand the balance of enforcement with accepting money from accounts. Also if there is no gradient in consqequences, often the result is not very effective.

No. You paying a sub doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you want.
ESPECIALLY when you've agreed to the ToS.

You break the rules, you get punished. Period.

[StealthPaladin]

No. You paying a sub doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you want.
ESPECIALLY when you've agreed to the ToS.

You break the rules, you get punished. Period.

None of that is in question good sir.

The question is about what should the rules be, what level of enforcement is not going to be a burden on development, and what will the legal system say if enforcement creates a massive class of banned consumers.

It's also about the reality that under your so-called hardline approach you must stop using tools like Discord or face ban and all you hardliners just don't want to think about that very deeply

[Insertusernamehere]

Idea not bad but I don't see any reason for SE to implement it.. or take responsibility for it.

First SE needs to remake game launcher with a selection of approved mods (if they are going to validate every mod a control mechanism necessary you can't trust users for making mods they can alter it anytime).. and they have to make it available for play station users (or they will invade forum with pitchforks).

I think it is a tall order.. and perhaps not even possible.

I am not sure how WOW handled it tbh.

[hagare]

None of that is in question good sir.

The question is about what should the rules be, what level of enforcement is not going to be a burden on development, and what will the legal system say if enforcement creates a massive class of banned consumers.

It's also about the reality that under your so-called hardline approach you must stop using tools like Discord or face ban and all you hardliners just don't want to think about that very deeply

then why the "I beg you to understand the balance of enforcement with accepting money from accounts"
Because this is starting to sound like "you don't pay my sub!? don't tell me what to do!"

and I said nothing about discord. I said cheaters.
You're the one who seems to be conflating discord with cheaters.

legal system? that sounds almost as hilarious when Mihoyo sued someone for breaking NDA and people got all up in arms about it on twitter.

[StealthPaladin]

Idea not bad but I don't see any reason for SE to implement it.. or take responsibility for it.

First SE needs to remake game launcher with a selection of approved mods (if they are going to validate every mod a control mechanism necessary you can't trust users for making mods they can alter it anytime).. and they have to make it available for play station users (or they will invade forum with pitchforks).

I think it is a tall order.. and perhaps not even possible.

I am not sure how WOW handled it tbh.

To accomplish it, the simplest route I think would be to say OK you folks can use Dalamud, with a few exceptions, until the transition is over.

See, the client software already has to have its own code libraries to communicate to the server and to your screen. Simply by categorizing and listing those all out they can then store a map of functionality between the Dalamud plugin system and that functionality. Eventually the launcher would devour the Dalamud project. They wont have to approve mods because this SDK takes care of that, you have to use the SDK which has approved functions to build the mods instead.

So for instance if some kind of abuse is happening with textures, they can just instantly break all mods that use textures in that content. It really incentivizes the addon community to try and keep SE happy. Again, it wont be perfect there are issues you can think of for sure. But it will be on SE's terms and not on the cheater's terms imo

[StealthPaladin]

then why the "I beg you to understand the balance of enforcement with accepting money from accounts"
Because this is starting to sound like "you don't pay my sub!? don't tell me what to do!"

and I said nothing about discord. I said cheaters.
You're the one who seems to be conflating discord with cheaters.

legal system? that sounds almost as hilarious when Mihoyo sued someone for breaking NDA and people got all up in arms about it on twitter.

You claimed to have read through this, but obviously that is not the case if you're asking the above. Can't blame you too much, it is alot.

I'm talking about class action suits filed by banned accounts and the burden of taking them on. Go ahead and assume I haven't researched the law with a mindnumbing amount of reading. Assume I'm wrong. It is still a problem because of how civil cases work

Even if SE wins it would still cost the team millions. If they settle, 10s of millions. If they lose, absolutely ridiculous amounts. Current case law on digital assets will come down hard on the lines of the ToS that I brought up as problems IF there is a large amount of banned customers. That's the money WE paid SE going to cheaters instead of content. That is annoying to me.

[hagare]

You claimed to have read through this, but obviously that is not the case if you're asking the above. Can't blame you too much, it is alot.

I'm talking about class action suits filed by banned accounts and the burden of taking them on. Go ahead and assume I haven't researched the law with a mindnumbing amount of reading. Assume I'm wrong. It is still a problem because of how civil cases work

Even if SE wins it would still cost the team millions. If they settle, 10s of millions. If they lose, absolutely ridiculous amounts. Current case law on digital assets will come down hard on the lines of the ToS that I brought up as problems IF there is a large amount of banned customers. That's the money WE paid SE going to cheaters instead of content. That is annoying to me.

So TL;DR
Don't ban cheaters because they might band together and make SE's life a living hell.
So basically the equivalent of Slapp suits.
And you actually think the cheaters actually have enough resources to fight a case where they knowingly and deliberately break the ToS.

again, as hilarious as the people who thinks the person who broke NDA have a legit case.