Yoshi P statement regarding third party tools

[BokoToloko]

None of is strictly illegal because it's not breaking law. ToS violations are not illegal and I will die on this hill. In game rules are not legal issues, no one is getting criminal marks for using parser.

Argh this bothers the hell out of me.

Terms of Service means the set of rules the company sets in order to use their products, where they're within rights (right you grant them by agreeing to their ToS) to sanction your account or outright ban it as they deem fit.

Mods aren't illegal but they're not allowed either by the company and, if they decide to ban you over them, you'll have little say about it.

[Ranaku]

Terms of Service means the set of rules the company sets in order to use their products, where they're within rights (right you grant them by agreeing to their ToS) to sanction your account or outright ban it as they deem fit.

Mods aren't illegal but they're not allowed either by the company and, if they decide to ban you over them, you'll have little say about it.

Not entirely true, the modification of either soft or hardware is highly illegal in japan. You can get serious jailtime for that. That said in most western countries it is not illegal.

[BokoToloko]

Not entirely true, the modification of either soft or hardware is highly illegal in japan. You can get serious jailtime for that. That said in most western countries it is not illegal.

The thing about it is they can't exactly enforce japanese law outside, well, Japan. So the most they can do is set Terms of Service and use it as a reference for legal battles in any country's court.
At least, that's my understanding about it, since I'm not a lawyer.

[Twizzlers]

ITT cheaters justifying cheating
should just be grateful they're even implementing popular tools as in-game features (marker presets and collectible checkmarks are two that come to mind)

[angienessyo]

When the servers were in Canada my ping was awful due to the ddos protection they were using. And I was on the east coast.

There is no reason for you to get 120 ms from the Midwest to California. I get that to CA from Sweden ffs.

My ping from Ohio to California is 120ms and I don't live in a rural area. I'm on cable internet so it's not like I'm on anything like DSL. I don't know why it's that high, it's not something I can control. The thing about NA is our stuff is just set up in a terrible way. I don't even have the option to go to a better provider because in NA different ISPs have monopolies over different states.

[Xelanar]

We believe that people use the aforementioned tools to expand the HUD and display more information because they feel that existing functions are insufficient for tackling high-end duties. In recognition of this, we intend to review the most prominent tools, and in order to discourage their use, endeavor to enhance the functionality of the HUD. Though it will take some time, we're determined to make it happen ─ not least for the benefit of those who play on consoles.

Please look into other sections as well! Specially in the housing department. There is tools out there allowing for placement of furniture in the air, and while I do not promote third party tools, I do wish this was a basic housing feature. Glitching is so commonplace these days they might as well make things easier for everyone.

[ForteNightshade]

ITT cheaters justifying cheating
should just be grateful they're even implementing popular tools as in-game features (marker presets and collectible checkmarks are two that come to mind)

I suppose living in California is cheating then.

[Oizen]

Every time you enter PVP, you're cheating.

[Packetdancer]

Good players can absolutely clear raids without addons. In the hands of a great player, some addons simply become a tool that pushes their gameplay further. I found that with DBM in WoW, you could push your planning, mapping and optimization in ways that a bad player never would regardless of addons.

I'll be bluntly honest: the single most useful third-party tool I've seen in this game isn't one that helps you clear anything, but tells you why you didn't. There's an ACT addon called "Oopsie Raidsy" which literally just dumps out a list post-encounter showing who took what avoidable damage (e.g. something that gives you a vuln or damage down), and for any death it shows what the most recent thing that damaged the player was -- and how much damage they took, versus how much health they had.

I think that's an excellent example of the sort of QoL mod that helps a good raider become better. (Or at least, helps a static become better.)

You can do the fight just as well without it -- it provides no benefit during a pull -- but from everything I've seen it can be extremely useful for helping a static figure out where something's going wrong afterwards. Did that DPS die to being clipped by an avoidable mechanic that turned the unavoidable one into a one-shot, or did they just not have enough healing before the unavoidable one? If someone takes 200k+ of damage in one go, it's pretty likely they got clipped by something (or did a mechanic wrong), and the healer couldn't have done much to get them through it. If someone dies to 23k of damage when they had 18k health out of their total 53k max health? That's probably on the healer, not the player who hit the floor.

It's basically the same as taking a VOD of the pull and rewinding it to watch carefully for what went wrong, except already expressed in a convenient data format to save time.

So if there were anything inspired by a mod they were going to add into the game other than general QoL UI/UX tweaks, I would absolutely want it to be that: not something that makes the actual fight easier, but some sort of optional post-fight damage breakdown or timeline you could review. (Or at least, one in a format that's easier to read than trying to scroll through the "Combat" tab to find the right line.)

That said, I don't miss DBM. There is a line you can cross where an addon goes from QoL or self improvement to a straight up advantage over playing the intended way. Addons that call out mechanics before they even happen, show telegraphs when there normally aren't any or automatically assign markers are crossing that line imo. I don't think players are automatically "bad" for using them, but we don't need them in the game either.

As I've said before, I don't care too much if people use those. I think it's a problem if they rely on them, but I think it's a problem if a group relies on me as a shot-caller, too. Because it's unquestionably a potential problem if you can't raid without the mod doing callouts... but I'm not sure it's a worse (or even fundamentally different) problem than if you can't raid if your shot-caller misses a week or has laryngitis or whatever.

A shot-caller -- human or otherwise -- should only ever be a sanity check on your own read of mechanics, for if you happened to be looking away or turned the wrong direction to see the telegraph or whatever. They are not instructions to be blindly followed. If you use those mods only as a sanity check on your own read, I'm not going to judge.

If you use them to blindly tell you where to go rather than even trying to read them yourself... well, I'm going to admit I think that you're doing yourself no favors. Especially if it means you are completely unable to raid on patch days. Because if I encounter you in PF and you can't do a single mechanic because your automated callouts are broken... maybe I won't judge you for it, but I'll probably be at least mildly annoyed.

[MintnHoney]

Every time you enter PVP, you're cheating.

I can attest to that.
Once, I went in as AST, as I usually do, and I pressed buttons. It felt dirty, but also, I felt so good doing it that it became almost addictive. I soon felt myself pushing buttons more and more, and then, before I knew it... the deed had been done.
The buttons were pushed and victory was achieved. It was almost euphoric.
I, Aylin Bielawska, an Astrologian on the Adamantoise server, pressed buttons in direct defiance of the healer design in FFXIV's general design modus operandi, and, in doing so, have seen relative success and reaped benefits. And I liked it.
And I would do it again, too.