Handling Cheaters Gracefully vs Hardline ToS + Questionable legality of bans

[Johners]

Having mods bannable in the ToS of a service like FFXIV is not actually legal, at least in the US. Of course, doesn't stop Steam and others, but it's rarely challenged in court -- and usually results in a settlement out of court when attempted. There is a huge difference for an MMO tho

An MMO is nothing like the law you've mentioned. Blizzard have permanently banned cheater and even taken paid cheat makers to court and won which had their products pulled from sale in several markets as well as financial penalties on the creators. Not to mention Japan, where Square Enix are based and a large chunk of the player base is, has laws against modding games.

What a lot of people seem to misunderstand or just ignore is that a portion of MMO players, regardless of the game, doesn't actually see cheating as a bad thing. They're happy to use any and everyone tool under the sun to gain an advantage with no regards for the consequences.

In fact, we even seen this in games like WoW that have an official UI add-on framework. Combat addons like DBM, BigWigs and WeakAuras are so perfected these days that they're ready for new raids very quickly. Beyond that, there's tons of tools for min-maxing to the point in which large chunks of the game is reduced to balancing values in a spreadsheet.

Now I understand there's a lot of frustration around cheating and concerns of ALL plugins going away this time but you ultimately have to blame Square Enix for their inactions and vague statements. They've asked people not to use certain third party tools, including lewd mods, but they've not actually done anything to deal with their idea of bad actors. Not to mention really vague statements about typing the battle log into Excel or using Discord also being third party tools.

This is a key area in which Square Enix are failing the entire player base. Cheating is real and in PvP will just kill the game mode really fast if they remain hands off. However, there's also users that are so reliant on appearance mods or QoL UI plug-ins that they're threatening to quit if they no longer work.

They've backed themselves between a rock and a hard place while also ignoring the macOS and PlayStation player base which doesn't have ANY of these tools, QoL or just outright cheats/hacks. It needs addressing and all portions of the player base will probably have to concede on something.

[StealthPaladin]

An MMO is ...
This is a key area in which Square Enix are failing the entire player base. Cheating is real and in PvP will just kill the game mode really fast if they remain hands off. However, there's also users that are so reliant on appearance mods or QoL UI plug-ins that they're threatening to quit if they no longer work.

They've backed themselves between a rock and a hard place while also ignoring the macOS and PlayStation player base which doesn't have ANY of these tools, QoL or just outright cheats/hacks. It needs addressing and all portions of the player base will probably have to concede on something.

Well we disagree some on interpretation of things and I'd contend that the FTC issue briefly mentioned is where things do get into the MMO model (well only when both client and sub are paid and paid digital assets exist) but as mentioned above, I am completely out of steam to explore that any further and I am not a lawyer certainly not one to get that far into the weeds. I had to have it explained to me and it took a long long time. That's all I have the energy left to say on that.

But you provide very straightforward feedback, appreciated. I guess I don't like the combat plugins myself but you do bring up great points. Those players do exist and some of them probably don't even think they're doing anything wrong. If clear lines were drawn, then at least all players could be on an even playing field. If an addon does something that changes the difficulty EVERYONE has the option to use it, not just cheaters. So yea I think you have a very well balanced position there with some good insights. The potential of getting them on consoles is a whole can of worms, but cross-platform could be done with a well made SDK. It certainly can't be done with the current situation.