Third party tools are a game design failing in a multi-platform game

[Colt47]

I'll drop the hot take at the start but third party tools are a failing in a multi-platform game and lack of any proper anti-cheat mechanisms on PC lets the entire player base down, especially PlayStation users.

This parts seems to be forgotten or just willingly ignored in the entire third party tools discussion. Square Enix are developing and publishing a multi-platform game that's also cross-platform and they're failing an entire group of them by not properly enforcing the existing terms of service.

Before people do the "console OMEGALUL" thing that I've seen a lot around the plug-in discussion, they're a massive part of the player base and in Japan there simply isn't the PC gaming that's in Western markets. There's a duty on Square Enix to design a game that's fair and equal for the entire player base regardless of how they choose to play. This extends to the toolset available to players via the default UI and ensuring both input methods (controller and KB+M) are both balanced.

I appreciate some of quality of life user interface mods but at the same time, some of these are a product of people playing other MMOs and wanting that same experience in FFXIV. A notable example with streamers was Limit Max getting an exact replica of his WoW UI in this game but that also extends to plugins to replicate mouseover macro functionality that WoW has which I personally know many people that use.

Square Enix seemingly don't like to truly confront the player base in a way they'd take negatively and up until now, every discussion on third party tools has mostly been rewording the terms of service and asking people not to use it. Unfortunately the game is too popular for the "don't do it stance" statement to actually work anymore and the solution is proper moderation from SE, not self-moderation from the community.

At least they finally addressed the implications of console support in the most recent letter regarding third party tools but until they're actually willing to implement the client-side anti-cheat they'd need to enforce this, absolutely nothing changes. They're between a rock and a hard place. On one side it's ever improving plugins with more visibility than ever. On the other side it's implementing an anti-cheat for the PC users so they can actually solve the problem.

Anti-Cheat is to prevent malicious behavior in a game conducted by people that harms other players in the game. Modding itself does not constitute cheating and implementing anti-cheat simply to fight mods is a mistake. The terms of service are very clear what is and is not allowed and the only gray area has been the enforcement and punishment of violations.

If the company were to institute technology to detect the usage of third party software as described in the ToS, it would be a huge maintenance issue and liability for SE that provides no financial benefit to the company and if you believe this is false, imagine an anti-virus scan triggering your banning from FFXIV because it opens and scans the files for FFXIV, or getting banned for an overlay that is always active by default from some common communication software such as Discord or webex.