Just give us a list of what addons we can use.

[Ranaku]

That’s a fallacy. You are suggesting that the only reason many players play is because of their add-ons. I’d suggest to you, instead, that most players don’t use them; that users are the minority.

How do I know this? Simple logic. You can’t use add-ons on the Playstation consoles. A good chunk (around half) of FF14 players are on console, so they’re unable to use them (a big part of the reason even QoL add-ons are against the ToS). Also, it stands to reason that fewer PC players use them than don’t, if only because not everyone is going to think to go looking for them to see what appeals to them. And of those who do, at least some are going to decide that none of them are worth using. Varied tastes in that regard, you know.

I’d like to say that add-on users are a small minority; but while reason suggests they are a minority (I’d be surprised if half of the PC players use them, reducing the most that could be to 25%) reason does not suggest how large or small that minorty may be.

Still most serious communities the game has are build with and around third party tools. Be it gposers who use stuff like gshade and tools to pose. Be it raiders using damage meters to gather data to improve themselves. Be it guide makers who rely on data from damage meters to actually find the perfect rotations for jobs, no dummy training in the entire XIV world can tell you how to play your job right. Be is housing maniacs who rely on tools to actually do stuff that should be in the game anyways. Roleplayers who heavily rely on chataddons cause the chat in XIV is outdated and just plain bad...try to read something when hundred players are in the same house with you. These communities would most likely die out if third party tools would be gone and that would hit the game really like REALLY hard.

And while it might be true that not even half the playerbase is using mods it is also true that most of the good publicity the game gets comes from people using these third party tools. Be it as i said gposers which you can find all over social media. They passively promote the game more than you could ever imagine and throwing all the goodwill SE has with these players out of the window could deal a huge blow to the stock.

Console players don't really do anything to promote the game everywhere. I mean you can see it with all the streamers that jumped on the game recently, like Asmongold and Preach and all these they also visited a community that basically exists cause of third party tools which is the roleplay community.