They need to find a way to detect XIV Alexander and ban people

[LianaThorne]

Gonna regurgitate what I usually say in these threads:

MODS do not equal PLUGINS. Just stating that outright.

Plugins are what actually affect the games code (like the Cactpot & WT odds helper, the housing one that makes floating easier, the portable orchestrion that lets you change the BGM of the game, etc.) while mods are client side (cannot be seen by other players, at least that was until a certain plugin was born and now that option is available to those who want it) and only change things like clothing or character models through the client side files of the game, not the games actual code or servers.

Mods do not give any sort of advantage in game outside of cosmetic/visual and is not cheating in the traditional sense of the word. Unless giving a Viera a hat buffs their combat in some way that I'm not aware of now.

Is it unfair to the console community? Sure. However that is a fault of consoles themselves and is also not fair to punish those who are capable of using mods for the fault of design/hardware choices by Sony and Microsoft. Unless consoles reach a point where they are physically capable of modding (which they are if we look at Bethesda for example, though I don't know of any other examples) to the point it becomes a norm, this is going to be an argument that doesn't really go anywhere.

The devs have also stated, to the point of being a broken record, that they will not be putting anti-cheat into the game or any real way to detect mods or plugins. There are multitudes of reasons behind this ranging from issues implementing anti-cheat in certain parts of the world to the amount of effort that would have to go into keeping up with every single new mod or plugin that comes out. Our modding community is HUGE, I think some really underestimate how large it actually is or don't want to believe it. There are hundreds of thousands of players that engage in this side of the game, all you need to do is check a popular website to see the amount of downloads some mods have. Square would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to remove them at this point, it's too engrained into the social aspect of the game. They also most likely know that as they literally do not want to talk about this topic anymore when people bring it up in LL's. They've stated their position, they need to be left alone about it now.

Those who use plugins in official competitions (like World First or ranked pvp) should absolutely be punished but I heavily disagree in having them banned as a whole. What people do on their own time is their business and I don't see why it would affect anyone unless it personally affects your game and ability to play (like someone lagging out your game to force you to do worse in pvp, for example).