A simple solution to combat all the cheating!

[Canadane]

I think the bunny just has no idea how deeply embedded third party tools are by now in the community. So calling for anti cheat software is easy from that uninformed standpoint. But when we look at how many of the sub communities in this game outright rely on these programs to make guides, gposes and all that stuff then he would probably also understand why banning over half your playerbase and most of your communities from the game is a bad baaaaad idea.

No I think it's a fine idea.
They all know the risk. I'm sorry but if you wanna stake your time in this game on ensuring people can see your toenails or whatever, then I will not shed a tear when you are banned with the rest of the third party program users.

[Ranaku]

They have this, it's the Special Task Force.
It's not enough.

I mean do they have it for every datacenter? Or just one team for all? It definitely needs more gamemasters either way.

[Kaurhz]

They just need a hard and strong enough stance on their policies and actually maintain them to act as a deterrent for people that feel inclined to cheat. But of course, they won't, largely in part they do not like stepping on players' toes, regardless of the reasoning behind it.

[Ranaku]

No I think it's a fine idea.
They all know the risk. I'm sorry but if you wanna stake your time in this game on ensuring people can see your toenails or whatever, then I will not shed a tear when you are banned with the rest of the third party program users.

Problem is that it also will detect all damage meter programs and without these people who make guides well can't make them anymore. Which means at the end of the day we also won't have rotation guides. It's not just "seeing your toenails" anymore.

Also you will be affected by it too, SE would nuke themselves into a dark age. Killing half your playerbase would be a economical suicide or do you think with less than half the budget they would be able to keep their standards and income up to make investors happy? Of course not.

[Kes13a]

Problem is that it also will detect all damage meter programs and without these people who make guides well can't make them anymore. Which means at the end of the day we also won't have rotation guides. It's not just "seeing your toenails" anymore.

Also you will be affected by it too, SE would nuke themselves into a dark age. Killing half your playerbase would be a economical suicide or do you think with less than half the budget they would be able to keep their standards and income up to make investors happy? Of course not.

how do you know that having a game that comes down hard on cheaters wont bring even a larger group of people in? you dont. just like you cant say they would lose half their player base.

[Kaurhz]

how do you know that having a game that comes down hard on cheaters wont bring even a larger group of people in? you dont. just like you cant say they would lose half their player base.

Because it fractures a large portion of the player base, effectively in some shape or form shunning a particular method of play that isn't necessarily detrimental to the experience of another individual. Be it with shunning parsing (unless used exclusively as a tool to harass), or similarly with banning certain plugins or third-party tools that if anything adds to the QoL experience, and should realistically be natively supported. Granted, I don't think it would impact the facets of gameplay or guidance that they're thinking of. People writing guides are already adept enough that they can do such simply by reading the tooltips with adequate spreadsheet knowledge.

That being said, there needs to be a distinction between something that is inherently toxic to the game community, fostering one, and something that is objectively detrimental, and more in the black and white zone of cheating, e.g. botting, and PvP hacks. With the latter being something that shouldn't be condoned, and arguably many in the former falling into the realm of potentially being QoL.

[Ranaku]

how do you know that having a game that comes down hard on cheaters wont bring even a larger group of people in? you dont. just like you cant say they would lose half their player base.

Sacrificing your players/communities for a gamble like that sounds like a REALLY bad idea. Might work, yeah i can't tell that. But the roleplay/raiding/gposing community would be lost. And these are also the communities, at least the roleplay and gposing, that leave most money in the mogstation.

And exactly that is the reason why i suggested a different approach than just murdering every goodwill you have with the community for a false sense of security. I know games who have anti cheat software running. And i played them. And i got anyways aimbotted and shot through walls and saw bots galore. There are other ways to come down hard on cheaters.

[KageTokage]

I mean do they have it for every datacenter? Or just one team for all? It definitely needs more gamemasters either way.

It's literally four people for the entire game.

GMs are explicitly unable to action cheaters unless their activity is openly interfering with others in a manner that could constitute harassment or obstruction of gaemplay.

[Kes13a]

Because it fractures a large portion of the player base, effectively in some shape or form shunning a particular method of play that isn't necessarily detrimental to the experience of another individual. Be it with shunning parsing (unless used exclusively as a tool to harass), or similarly with banning certain plugins or third-party tools that if anything adds to the QoL experience, and should realistically be natively supported. Granted, I don't think it would impact the facets of gameplay or guidance that they're thinking of. People writing guides are already adept enough that they can do such simply by reading the tooltips with adequate spreadsheet knowledge.

rather this not turn into another WoW where you end up spending more time updating QoL mods than you do updating the game.

they do need to hard ban the cheaters. but the 4 person team doing it, is not up to the task

[Ranaku]

rather this not turn into another WoW where you end up spending more time updating QoL mods than you do updating the game.

they do need to hard ban the cheaters. but the 4 person team doing it, is not up to the task

That's why i suggested to implement a gamemaster team for EVERY datacenter and let them be able to actually ban people. Cheaters have to get banned that is for sure. But it is a double edged sword when you do it with anti cheat. One that would burn all goodwill they have left and all the fun communities players build around the game. Housing, roleplay, gposing and even people who create guides cause they won't have access to data anymore. There would be not much left to thrive in this hostile environment and in the end that would affect everyone cause SE would lose money and that would affect of course the budget of the devs and content.

Edit: Also what the heck are you talking about, players develop the mods and stuff like plugins not the XIV devs. So idk where you connect the devs updating the game and independent players developing mods but yeah maybe think again. xD