Illegitimate waymarkers for P7s

[Petite]

This issue reminds me of Apple making it impossible to change your battery (P7S) while other manufacturers let you do so at your leasure (Any other fight).

Don't blame players for working around unreasonable design when that design could have been made differently from the start.

[Packetdancer]

This issue reminds me of Apple making it impossible to change your battery (P7S) while other manufacturers let you do so at your leasure (Any other fight).

Oh, how I wish it were true that was a restriction unique to Apple...

ANYWAY.

Don't blame players for working around unreasonable design when that design could have been made differently from the start.

I don't think even the devs are actually blaming folks for wanting to make the waymarkers; they've acknowledged it was a poor choice on their part to have the arena grow after the fight is underway, for precisely this reason.

From everything they've said, it's not "you made illegitimate waymarks" that's the issue; the waymarks are the side-effect, the evidence. The person wasn't given a time-out due to making the waymarks, but rather due to the fact that making those waymarks was taken as proof they were in fact modding the game.

That may seem like a subtle/minor difference -- either way they're getting a time-out -- but it's really not, at least from a ToS enforcement standpoint.

[Petite]

Oh, how I wish it were true that was a restriction unique to Apple...

ANYWAY.



I don't think even the devs are actually blaming folks for wanting to make the waymarkers; they've acknowledged it was a poor choice on their part to have the arena grow after the fight is underway, for precisely this reason.

From everything they've said, it's not "you made illegitimate waymarks" that's the issue; the waymarks are the side-effect, the evidence. The person wasn't given a time-out due to making the waymarks, but rather due to the fact that making those waymarks was taken as proof they were in fact modding the game.

That may seem like a subtle/minor difference -- either way they're getting a time-out -- but it's really not, at least from a ToS enforcement standpoint.

I get it that they had to punish that one person for blatantly cheating. But I heard from two PFs I've been in that if you stream yourself setting up these "illegitimate" waymarks, people can report you for it, even if you simply copied them from people spreading them around.

[Packetdancer]

I get it that they had to punish that one person for blatantly cheating. But I heard from two PFs I've been in that if you stream yourself setting up these "illegitimate" waymarks, people can report you for it, even if you simply copied them from people spreading them around.

Nope. SQEX has outright said they will not take action against people for having or using the waymarks. People can sure report you for it, but SQEX has already said -- on the official blog, no less -- that they will ignore said reports.

(Now, if you stream yourself setting up the waymarks using a mod that maintains a waymark library or something, they can sure report you for that.)

[Jijifli]

Nope. SQEX has outright said they will not take action against people for having or using the waymarks. People can sure report you for it, but SQEX has already said -- on the official blog, no less -- that they will ignore said reports.

The problem, however, is just because Yoshida said it as such, does not mean that the GM's will feel the same about it.

Yoshida has also gone on record to state GM's stance and his stance have had conflict. And that's ignoring the extra consideration of just how vocal the JP community can get on that stuff. They hate anything that 'avoids the law' and if they make a big enough stink about somebody, they might just slap it anyways rather than risk the idea that they don't enforce their ToS.

[Beddict]

they've acknowledged it was a poor choice on their part to have the arena grow after the fight is underway, for precisely this reason.

Which is the wrong takeaway for the devs. The big issue is changing the arena back at the end of the fight. You spend a little over 80% of the fight with the arena in the triple platform layout, the enrage occurs with the platform in the triple platform layout, then you kill the boss and it reverts to the single platform for no reason. The solution is simple: don't revert the arena at the end. It's something they've done before too, just look at Diamond Weapon EX. You load into the fight, there's only one platform, second spawns, finish the fight, and the second platform remains. The arena change persisted after the fight was complete so people could easily place waymarks without third party tools. In fact, this is something they acknowledge they've done in the past. To quote The Lodestone post itself:

However, in consideration of duties where the battlefield changes during the battle, we allow players to place waymarks for the changed battlefield after completing the duty and save them to be used next time. Therefore, waymarks loaded from the save slots are not determined by whether or not they are in contact with the ground.

So yeah, that's all they need to do, keep the triple platform layout after the clear, and probably move the loot chests so they appear on the north bridge or something. Except they aren't actually gonna go with the simple solution for whatever reason, and instead "certain fields will be made slightly larger so that it will be possible to set the same waymark coordinates as in the currently widespread data, but through legitimate means." Clearly the smarter solution than just doing what they've done in the past with fights that have changed arena layouts. The whole situation is dumb, the arena changing back at the end should've been caught by the team that playtested the fight, and it sounds like they're making more work for themselves in the long run.

[AwesomeJr44]

The solution is simple: don't revert the arena at the end.

Even simpler solution: Have the arena be slightly larger (large enough to encompass any space that would be made later) and once the arena changes, it never goes back to that size until after the boss is dead. If you look at P7S, the initial large circle platform is destroyed almost immediately, so why not have the initial platform be larger, break it, and have any subsequent similar platforms (like the one before the towers and birds) in the fight be the normal size? This would make it so that you don't have to clear the fight to place proper markers. That's important because typically markers help you prog the fight, and thus having to wait until you've already cleared to come up with a proper marker set kinda defeats the purpose of them. (Yes you can get markers from people who already have cleared but that shouldn't be mandatory to get proper markers pre-clear)

(And I'm pretty sure this is the solution they're going with, so everyone wins)

[Packetdancer]

Which is the wrong takeaway for the devs. The big issue is changing the arena back at the end of the fight. You spend a little over 80% of the fight with the arena in the triple platform layout, the enrage occurs with the platform in the triple platform layout, then you kill the boss and it reverts to the single platform for no reason.

I disagree, and here's why: if you only didn't revert it at the end (a'la Diamond Weapon), you'd need to clear the fight before you could put down your waymarks (which are, let's be honest, mostly useful for illustrative purposes during prog).

I think the takeaway here is that where feasible, you should be able to lay waymarks across the entirety of the valid battlefield -- even if that battlefield changes -- both before and after the fight, at least for any of the more serious endgame content, but most crucially before.

Sure, there are things where it would be hard to do it all at once. The Engles fight in Copied Factory comes to mind; you start on one platform, and end on the other, meaning the arena you set the marks on pre-pull and the arena you end on aren't just a different shape, they're in an entirely different spot; if you want marks on both platforms you'd need to lay out the one half pre-pull (on the first platform) and then the second set after the fight (on the second). Diamond Weapon, as you note, you don't have a second platform to get onto pre-pull and thus no way to make markers there.

In that case, having the arena not change back -- having the part you can't lay things out on ahead-of-time be the form it stays as at the end -- is at least a good secondary option.

I just think it's a bad one for this particular fight, where you spend arguably the majority of the fight with the arena in that configuration, but have no way prior to the fight to lay out relevant waymarks in order to prog that fight. In which case, just making the original arena bigger, and then dropping the edge off when the fight starts (remove it with the first smash of the platform, as was suggested earlier in the thread) solves the problem. You can even restore the original size at the end, if you need.