3rd Party Program might as well be legalized

[Kaurhz]

Or I can report your satire and try to get you banned a bit from the official forums, depends on my mood tomorrow

You have a greater chance of seeing this thread get Thanos snapped than you do getting an individual poster banned.

[caffe_macchiato]

Or I can report your satire and try to get you banned a bit from the official forums, depends on my mood tomorrow

And there it is. See what I meant when I said we make the rules? In the N.A. community, cheating isn’t nearly as big an offense as challenging the status quo. It’s why we’ve sheltered cheaters for so long and have integrated plugins so deeply into this game’s culture. Square Enix is the British crown to our continental army, and while we can’t topple their rule on paper, we can nonetheless keep ignoring them while enforcing our own rules here at home. What are they going to do, ban millions of people? Being accosted by your friends, static, and immediate community for not abiding by the status quo is a much more immediate threat to us.

Thanks to our independence, we’ve turned this game from Yoshida’s pet project into ours. There’s so much that we’ve added to the game he has no authority or power over. Come on, does Yoshida even know what Mare or XIVLauncher is? By refusing to do anything substantive about add-ons, he’s relinquished his project into our hands.

[Atelier-Bagur]

And there it is. See what I meant when I said we make the rules? In the N.A. community, cheating isn’t nearly as big an offense as challenging the status quo. It’s why we’ve sheltered cheaters for so long and have integrated plugins so deeply into this game’s culture. Square Enix is the British crown to our continental army, and while we can’t topple their rule on paper, we can nonetheless keep ignoring them while enforcing our own rules here at home. What are they going to do, ban millions of people? Being accosted by your friends, static, and immediate community for not abiding by the status quo is a much more immediate threat to us.

Thanks to our independence, we’ve turned this game from Yoshida’s pet project into ours. There’s so much that we’ve added to the game he has no authority or power over. Come on, does Yoshida even know what Mare or XIVLauncher is? By refusing to do anything substantive about add-ons, he’s relinquished his project into our hands.

Ok ARR Gaius

[dspguy]

From the picture, I just see someone crafting with an AFK symbol. I see an option for auto-AFK being set to 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure you can do a stack of 99 in over 5 minutes. So, it would appear AFK due to lack of input. Of course, if they were crafting without Quick Synthesis, that's a different story. And it wouldn't surprise me either.

Part of SE's problem is that they claim they will address botters and cheaters (such as the world-first cheats everyone is talking about), but then they also say that they won't announce the findings of their investigation either. As a player, I just have to assume that nothing is being done. And that is a reasonable assumption.

[Atelier-Bagur]

From the picture, I just see someone crafting with an AFK symbol. I see an option for auto-AFK being set to 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure you can do a stack of 99 in over 5 minutes. So, it would appear AFK due to lack of input. Of course, if they were crafting without Quick Synthesis, that's a different story. And it wouldn't surprise me either.

Part of SE's problem is that they claim they will address botters and cheaters (such as the world-first cheats everyone is talking about), but then they also say that they won't announce the findings of their investigation either. As a player, I just have to assume that nothing is being done. And that is a reasonable assumption.

I guess you also ignore the numerous RMT and Illecit activities ban report posted on the launcher that they share frequently. Just yesterday they've banned some accounts

[SaitoHikari]

Honestly, what the devs should really do if they want this 'grey zone' to be smashed forever is the following.

1) Make an in-game parser, with restrictions on its use to minimize abuse (party-wide only in extreme/savage/ultimate content and only as an option in pre-formed PF parties, personal only in all other instances, turned off completely in the overworld because there's no realistic need for that there).

2) Make it extremely clear that evidence of any use of third-party programs is subject to a ban.

Honestly, the only reason the 'grey zone' exists and the discourse around third party programs is so bad is because of their reluctance to do anything about parsers, and on some level, refusing to ban people for only parsing until it crosses the line into harassment is recognition of their value to the raiding community. But it's obvious that, as someone who used parsers since the Heavensward days, people have been using the current 'don't show, don't tell' stance regarding that to increasingly push forward with attempting to justify use of other types of third party tools whose sole purpose is actual cheating. People would probably still use third-party parsers for the sake of data collection for FFlogs, but the big thing is that legalizing parsers would rob the ability of people using other third party programs granting actual gameplay advantages to hide behind the current grey zone status quo.

[solimiano]

Honestly, what the devs should really do if they want this 'grey zone' to be smashed forever is the following.

1) Make an in-game parser, with restrictions on its use to minimize abuse (party-wide only in extreme/savage/ultimate content and only as an option in pre-formed PF parties, personal only in all other instances, turned off completely in the overworld because there's no realistic need for that there).

2) Make it extremely clear that evidence of any use of third-party programs is subject to a ban.

Honestly, the only reason the 'grey zone' exists and the discourse around third party programs is so bad is because of their reluctance to do anything about parsers. It's obvious as someone who used parsers since the Heavensward days, people have been using the current 'don't show, don't tell' stance regarding that to increasingly push forward with attempting to justify use of other types of third party tools whose sole purpose is actual cheating. People would probably still use third-party parsers for the sake of data collection for FFlogs, but the big thing is that legalizing parsers would rob the ability of people using other third party programs granting actual gameplay advantages to hide behind the current grey zone status quo.

I'm all in for this, because at that point you are only using the game, official software and not third party software. Implement 10000 mods in the main game for all I care, it's just more stuff to learn and tinker with.
The main problem is using third party software or something not design by the official team. That should terminate the account immediately, permban IP address, mac address, PSN I'd, your personal name and bank details, youre family if it needs to.
Third party add-ons don't belong here.

[Jybril]

we might as well get rid of the police

We're trying on this one lol.

[Wyssahtyn]

turned off completely in the overworld because there's no realistic need for that there.

striking dummies, my dude.

[SaitoHikari]

striking dummies, my dude.

Hmm, forgot about that. Maybe Stone/Sky/Sea then.

I mostly mention that because I've tried using parsers in the overworld. From a pragmatic standpoint, there's really no useful data to be gained there outside of striking dummies.